He hung up and sat down in his largest armchair, loosening his belt. This required some thought.
Damn women, he grumbled to himself, always trying to horn in on a man’s game. Why can’t they stay home?
But they were free citizens, he reminded himself. Still, it just didn’t seem feminine.
He knew that, historically speaking, the Emotional Catharsis Board had been established for men and men only. The board had been formed at the end of the fourth world war—or sixth, as some historians counted it.
At that time there had been a driving need for permanent, lasting peace. The reason was practical, as were the men who engineered it.
Simply—annihilation was just around the corner.
In the world wars, weapons increased in magnitude, efficiency and exterminating power. Soldiers became accustomed to them, less and less reluctant to use them.
But the saturation point had been reached. Another war would truly be the war to end all wars. There would be no one left to start another.
So this peace had to last for all time, but the men who engineered it were practical. They recognized the tensions and dislocations still present, the cauldrons in which wars are brewed. They asked themselves why peace had never lasted in the past.
“Because men like to fight,” was their answer.