Loneliest Man Who Ever Lived Ch. 03

Goldie grabbed his hand, and for a moment, time seemed to stop. She looked up at him. "Harry, I'm not claiming anything."

He looked into her eyes, which were crystal blue. A shudder of pure excitement went through his body.

And then time speeded up again, and the waiter asked if their food was all right. Harry cautiously cut a piece of steak and bit into it. "Excellent," he said. He looked at Goldie. He watched as she cut her own piece and put it between her lips. Slowly. He watched the piece of beef slowly disappear between her lips. As she chewed, he saw her lush, red lips moving, back and forth, back and forth. Harry took a sudden deep breath as he saw/heard her swallow, with a small gulp. There was something inexplicably erotic about all of it.

Goldie grew a smile which only became broader and broader as she chewed, staring intently into Harry's eyes. "Juicy. Tender," she said. Then she looked up at the waiter, and the spell was broken. "Just the way I like it."

They ate in silence for a moment. Harry felt like the luckiest man in the world, having a gorgeous woman sitting there, eating food he paid for, acting like she was attracted to him. And yet, he knew it was an act. Even as he enjoyed the sensation, he couldn't let go of that part of it.

"You claim to be attracted to me," said Harry.

"Harry!" said Goldie, giving him a warning look.

"All right. You are attracted to me," said Harry.

"Better." He loved her smile!

"But I have to wonder, how can you be attracted to a man who tries to kill himself every day?" Harry asked.

"Well, if you've been trying every day, Harry, you're obviously not very good at it," said Goldie. "Have you ever thought of reading a How-To book?"

"You know what I mean," said Harry. "No woman in their right mind would be attracted to a man with suicidal tendencies."

"But do you have suicidal tendencies, Harry?" Goldie asked, squinting at him in a cute way as she pointed a fork in his direction. "I would submit to you that you don't. I don't think you're really suicidal at all. I just think you have intellectual angst."

"Intellectual angst?"

"You worry about your place in the world. Are you making the most of your life? That sort of thing. Am I right, Harry?" She peered at his face for clues. "Frankly, I think that makes you more interesting. I prefer it to a man who's perfectly content with his life, like a horse tethered to a carriage with blinders on who is all too happy to go wherever his master leads him."

She had a way of saying things, of arguing, that Harry found so pleasing... and yet so frustrating. "So it's just a coincidence that you are attracted to me, and at the same time want something from me."

"A coincidence? Not in the slightest! If you hadn't been assigned to me, I'd never have known you existed, Harry! I will always be honest with you Harry. Always." She chewed in a very cute way for a while, before resuming their discussion. "You seem to treat my other purpose as something nefarious. Is it really, Harry? Think of all the husbands who met their wives, and wives who met their husbands while working in sales, soliciting a client. Did that make them monsters? Or happy beneficiaries of random chance?"

"So it's just random chance that you're... attracted to me."

"Yeah..." said Goldie, staring at him in a way that made Harry a little uncomfortable. "There's just something about you... something I can't quite put my finger on... something I just.... like."

Harry looked away, and reddened.

"Oh, have I made you blush, Harry? I'm so sorry. Or am I?" Goldie said.

"I'd just feel better if I knew what you wanted," said Harry.

"All in good time, Harry. Everything in its proper time."

"I'm not going to work for The Foundation," said Harry. He waited for her reaction.

Goldie smiled. "And that's a good thing, because I'm not offering you a job with The Foundation." She enjoyed his obvious confusion. "You had your little AI run a search on me, didn't you, Harry? You think you know all my little secrets. You may know my bra and panty size, Harry, but don't think you know everything. Not yet you don't."

She sat back, and relaxed, and put a hand to her chest. "That was good, Harry. Really good. There's nothing better than eating warm animal flesh, full of juice, savoring the taste of it in your mouth, is there, Harry? You liked it too, didn't you, Harry?"

Harry nodded. He was starting to get excited again, but wasn't sure why.

"And now it's getting late. Will you escort me back to my hotel, sweet prince?"

********

They took a cab back. Harry escorted her into the hotel lobby.

Goldie smiled and faced him. "Thank you, Harry. I had a wonderful time today. The best I've had in a long time." She looked at him for a moment. "A bold man would invite himself up to my room. Are you a bold man, Harry?"

Harry shook his head, though he was breathing heavily.

"I didn't think so. Your file said you weren't bold, not in that way," said Goldie. She came close and put her arms around him. He felt a shiver go down his spine. "But what about a kiss, Harry? Surely a goodnight kiss is permitted under your byzantine rules, is it not?" She looked into his eyes. "Maybe not. Maybe you're going to let this one pass you by. Maybe I'll just be one of those many, many ships in the night who passed by, desperate for a kiss."

Harry looked at her, at her blue eyes, her perfect face, her red lips. He wanted to kiss her. He really did. But then he remembered the Rule of Onnika. If he kissed her, it would end, all of it. And he didn't want it to end.

Goldie watching the struggle within him, sensed the moment had passed, and she shrugged, and pulled back a bit. Instead, she handed him a data chip.

"What is this?" Harry asked.

"Your first homework assignment, Harry," said Goldie.

"Homework assignment?"

"A small math problem. Hardly worthy of your talent," said Goldie.

Harry frowned. "What do I get if I do this?"

"Why, another date with me," said Goldie. "My comm code is encoded in the chip. Send me the answer, the correct answer, by 11 o'clock tomorrow morning, and I'll be here at noon, ready to go for another day on the town with you."

"And if I don't do the assignment, or if I get it wrong?"

"Well, Harry, then... it was nice meeting you," said Goldie. She smiled, and walked off. He watched her hips wiggle with such femininity as she made her way to the elevator.

And then she was gone.

********

"A little complex," said Carl.

"Not very complex," said Harry, staring at the equation. "I should have this solved in an hour. Maybe two."

Harry overestimated the time he needed, as he always did. He had the equation solved in just under 50 minutes.

"And now, what does it mean?" Harry asked.

"I have compared the equation to all scientific databases," said Carl. "The closest match would be in the area of astrophysics, concerning the decay rate of a star-"

"Decay rate of a star? Why would a biomedical company need to know that?" Harry asked. "The answer: they wouldn't. No, I think they knew the answer to this question before they asked."

"Then what was the purpose of giving it to you?"

"To see if I could solve it," said Harry. "They're testing my intelligence. They want to see if I'm smart enough."

"Smart enough for what?"

"That's the question," said Harry. "Anything more on Goldie, or The Foundation?"

"No," said Carl. "Goldie appears to be exactly what she seems. A 28 year old woman with a college education. She graduated with a degree in art history from Wesleyan University. She worked in a series of minor jobs before going to work for The Foundation. As for The Foundation, they specialize in biomedical cure for diseases. Their last major patent was on a drug which could cause cells to reproduce more rapidly. It's found to have application in healing wounds."

"Then what in the world do they want with me?" Harry asked. He lay back in his desk chair and put his hands behind his head.

"What do you think of her?" Carl asked.

"She's nice," said Harry. "Really nice. Puts on a great performance. Acts really interested in me. It's very convincing."

"You're enjoying yourself?"

"Of course," said Harry. "I just wonder how long it will go on for."

"How long do you want it to go on for?"

"Every day is a priceless gift," said Harry. "If I can get one more day with Goldie, I figure I'm way ahead." He looked up at the wall. He had an electric frame which now displayed the second image he took of Goldie. The one where she was smiling at him as she sat in the Cove with him, that first night they had drinks together. He looked up at it and sighed.

For a long moment, he considered whether to call up Veronika. He certainly felt agitated. But then he looked up at the electroimage of Goldie, smiling at him, and simply shook his head and sighed. He couldn't do it. Not in front of her.

********

[THE PAST]

"We'll be friends forever," Gary predicted.

Harry and Gary were sitting on a boulder in Riverside Park. They were both outcasts in the seventh grade, but at least now they were outcasts together.

"Harry and Gary, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," the kids would chant. But neither Harry nor Gary were homosexual. What attracted them to each other, to use the term loosely, was the fact that they were both outcasts.

Harry had been tested and recently learned he was a Fourther. His IQ wasn't just up there; it was off the charts.

His sister Rachel, who was by now in high school, treated Harry like he was an alien from another planet. Not that she ever displayed much interest in him. But as she grew older, the differences between them became more and more obvious. She treated him like a space alien, and mostly avoided him. She spent her free time trying to attract the attention of boys.

Harry's mother assured him that the test meant nothing. He was smart, yes, she had always known that. But that didn't mean he was different from other people.

It was his father, though, who looked at Harry with sad eyes. His father knew. He had always known. When they were in private, he had said, "Harry, you will always have a life different from other people."

"I don't want such a life, Papa," said Harry.

"It does not matter what we want," said his father. "It is what life deals us. You must be strong Harry. You must be strong, even if you are alone."

Harry remembered those words. He remembered those words, six months later, when his father died of a sudden heart attack. Gone was the only person who understood Harry. At the graveside, Harry looked at his mother, and sister, and cousins, and realized he was totally alone. He was like a spaceship, in a fleet which had been ambushed. All the other ships had been destroyed. His was the last surviving starship.

From then on, Harry always walked around in his spacesuit. Always.

In school, they evolved from calling him Harry the Rat to Hairy Dick. The kids started to beat him up.

Harry realized that as the last starship, it was his duty to survive on his own. No one would help him. So he nagged his mother until she agreed to let him take karate classes.

"I don't know, Harry," she had said. "You hitting people with fists and kicks? It doesn't sound civilized to me."

But Harry had nagged her until she relented. And so Harry started intensive training. He was a skinny 12 year old boy. He would never be a prize fighter. But he learned how to absorb a punch, and, more importantly, how to throw one.

"Look, it's Hairy Dick!" cried Kevin Ortega. He and Rolph Swenson and Tony Dola circled around Harry, who was getting books from his locker.

Harry looked around. There were no adults. Only other kids. The other kids wouldn't involve themselves to help him, of course. Some of them would even cheer if he received a good beating.

What usually happened is that Kevin, or one of the other boys, humiliated Harry, and pushed him around a bit. But today, two months after starting karate training, things would end a little differently.

"Hey Harry! Want to suck my dick?" said Kevin. Some of the other kids tittered.

Harry just kept pulling books from his locker.

Kevin smacked him on the head. "Hey, I'm talking to you."

Shields up!

Harry took a series of deep breaths. He was trembling.

"What's the matter, Harry? Eager to suck my cock?"

Phasers, locking on target.

The other boys laughed. Harry clenched his textbook, a heavy one, tightly.

Phasers, locked on target.

"Drop the book and suck it, Harry. You know you want to," said Kevin, with his hand over his groin. He turned and laughed with the others.

Fire!

Harry slammed the text book into the side of Kevin's head. Kevin recoiled in shock.

Fire!

Harry landed a fist in Kevin's stomach. Kevin blinked, and started to raise his arms. Harry threw his other fist in Kevin's face. Kevin screamed as his nose was bloodied. With a snarl, he launched himself at Harry.

In moments they were rolling on the floor. Harry knew he had to end this quickly, and decisively. His arms were locked with Kevin's.

Pho-ton torpedoes... away!

Kevin screamed as Harry's knee caught him in the groin.

Harry was suspended for two days, but it was worth it. They continued to call him Hairy Dick, but never, ever within arm's length of him.

From them on, Harry was in his spaceship, when he was in combat mode; but at other times, at all other times, he wore his spacesuit, everywhere he went on the planet surface.

********

Harry was bored by his classes. He had pressed his mother to let him skip a year, but she refused. If his father had been alive, Harry felt sure he would have allowed it.

So instead he daydreamed.

And he watched the human children.

The intelligence test he had taken had only confirmed what he already knew, what he had always known, on some level; that he wasn't the same species as the others. Technically, genetically, perhaps, he was partially human; but Harry knew that he was a genetic mutation, that his genes differed somehow, however fractionally, enough to make him a member of a completely different species. Harry might look human, and eat and sleep and go to the bathroom like humans, but he thought nothing like them. He was a stranger in their midst.

In his mind, when he was wearing his spacesuit, he looked at the others with alien eyes. They were the humans. Not him. He could pass for them, in appearance, if he didn't speak, but the minute he opened his mouth, then the differences became painfully apparent.

Harry noticed young males starting to show interest in the females. They, like him, had entered puberty, and were starting to feel that natural attraction. Harry felt it too. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to be with Susie McCormick from his gym class. Susie McCormick had long, thin legs, and was beginning to develop breasts. Harry could always tell when the girls had made the change, even before they grew breasts. He could tell by the way they walked. After the change, they walked more like a cat. And they looked at boys like cats too. It was so obvious to him he wondered why everyone else couldn't notice it.

But whenever a girl would smile at Harry, he would just redden and look away. He hadn't the first idea what to say to a girl or how to interact with them. The only girl he knew was his older sister Rachel, who barely spoke to him. In the brief years they overlapped in school Rachel tried to pretend that she didn't know him and that they were unrelated. He even overheard her tell a girlfriend, "Harry Crater? Really? There's someone else named Crater at the school? Sorry, don't know him."

Harry always related more to his teachers than he did the other students. He sensed he would someday become even smarter, even more knowledgeable than them, but for the moment they were the closest thing to sentient life. He totally failed to relate at all to the other children, or the humans, as he thought of them. What he thought of himself he was increasingly unsure. As he sat in the lunchroom or the play field he would often look about himself, wearing his silvery space suit, and feeling more isolated, and alone than ever. Whenever he went outside he referred to it as going on "the planet surface" to "study the natives".

During careers day, Harry told his teacher that he wanted to be a "logician" when he grew up, which attracted titters. Not that there was any such thing as a logician; rather, Gary was expressing his disgust with the sheer irrationality of the other humans around him. Why couldn't they be thoughtful, dispassionate, and clear thinking... like he was?

His parents noticed this alienation, or some elements of it, and they decided to send him to sleep away camp for the summer break. Harry was appalled. He had reason to be. The children in his barracks, once they learned his true nature, terrorized him. He wrote and called his parents and begged to come home. His mother, laughing, refused, saying it was good for him and he'd learn to enjoy it. The kids harassed Harry every day, calling him "Hairy Dickless" or "Mr. Smarts" and jeering at the different way he saw things. He refused to play sports with them, and his self imposed isolation only made him stand out more. A bully tried to beat Harry up, but Harry showed him the sting of his forward phaser array, and he was left alone--physically, at least. Finally, when his parents arrived midsummer and saw how unhappy he was, his father relented. After that, Harry spent his summers at home.

Harry did have a friend, though, for a time, in the seventh grade. His name was Gary. Harry was an outcast because he was so smart. Gary was an outcast because he wasn't any good at kickball. Each had their own failings, and they bonded together, in their outcast status. Gary would come over to Harry's house and play computer football with him. They would talk about what they would do when they grew up and escaped the world of juveniles. They spent many hours together.

"We'll be friends forever," Gary had assured him.

And they were friends, up until the beginning of the eighth grade. Then, during gym class, Gary miraculously kicked the kickball for once, sending it flying.

It was no fluke. On successive days, he hit the ball again and again. He began to be invited to play kickball with the other kids during recess. They began to open up and be friendly towards him. Once Gary got new friends, however, they looked down on his continued association with Harry.

"Why are you spending time with Crater Bomb?" Robert Jelagni sneered. Gary looked at Harry, standing alone as he waited for the school bus after school had ended, and he looked at his new friends, and knew he couldn't have both. So he stopped talking to Harry.

"Friends forever," Harry muttered to himself, watching Gary laugh and joke with the others. It became a rule, one of many that Harry would learn. This one he would call the Rule of Gary. That friendships never, ever lasted.

********

When Goldie turned 13, the differences between her and her older sister Claire become much more apparent. They teased each other and fought more. Claire had been tested, and found to be something called a "Fourther". That meant that she was a genius or something. Naturally that meant that Goldie was a disappointment by comparison.

Her parents didn't say anything, but Goldie saw how Claire suddenly got all the attention in the family. Look how brilliant Claire was! Look, another A+ in math! Claire is amazing! Claire is really going places!

No one ever said that to Goldie. She felt neglected. Claire, who was 15, with brilliant blonde hair and budding breasts, was starting to attract the attention of the boys. Goldie, who was flat chested, didn't merit a second glance.