by James Gunn
He blinked at them and began to count, lost track, and started over. “Thirteen,” he said finally. “‘Tastic! Each one’s ‘quivalent of ounce of whisky. ‘M out on feet an’ don’t know it.”
The girl seemed to nod in agreement.
“Nope!” Jerry said, shaking his head vigorously. Three stages to drunk’ness, somebody said: bel’cose, lachr’mose, com’tose. ‘Ve skipped ‘em all. Stands to reason. ‘Sperfect beer. I feel wonderful.”
The girl nodded happily.
“‘M euphoric,” Jerry said triumphantly. “Who cares ‘bout future?” He tried to snap his fingers. On the third attempt, he succeeded. “Let future care ‘bout ‘self.”
He tipped a little beer from his glass into the schooner.
“Why,” he asked indignantly, “should anyone ‘ject to you on his beer? Most d’lightful drinking ‘panion man ever had. Dec’rative, ‘preciative an’ silent. What more can man ask of woman? What more can man ask of beer? Eh?”
He tilted the glass to his lips and drained half of it. When he brought it down, he began to wave it back and forth in time to the rhythm of a poem.
“If all be true that I do think
There are five reasons we should drink — ”
He broke off. A man was standing in the open doorway. Jerry stared at him.
“Good beer — a friend — or being dry —
Or lest we should be by and by —
Or any other reason why.”
The man had finished the quotation. “And I hope Dr. Aldrich will forgive the paraphrase.”
“Dion!” Jerry exclaimed.
The man in the doorway was a little less than medium height. He had medium-brown hair and undistinguished features. In compensation, his clothes were a blaze of individuality.
His tie was purple, his shirt, yellow, his coat, a royal blue; his slacks were Kelly green, his socks, scarlet, his shoes, white buck. He was a walking prism. But even his clothes paled beside his expression: it was a joyful defiance of everything held sacred and a sacred delight in everything found joyful. It surrounded him like an aura. Near him, a man wanted to laugh, to sing, to dance, to love, to do all things not wisely but too well.
He’s euphoric, Jerry thought, like the beer. At the same time, his presence seemed mildly sobering.
He looked ageless. Sometimes, like tonight, he seemed younger than the greenest brew pumped from the fermenting tubs to the Ruh cellar. At other times he seemed centuries older than the brewery itself.
“You’ve tapped the new brew,” he said, and his voice was excitement, vibrant with life to be lived. He looked down at the foamy schooner. “Nymphs and satyrs! What’s this?”
“This,” Jerry said gloomily, in a perverse reaction to Dion’s presence, “is ruin.”
“Ruin is so final,” Dion said gaily. “Many a girl has found it to be only a gateway to a fuller life. Well, let us consider the matter.” He sat down on the edge of a deep chair and studied the figure in the foam. “Lovely. Exquisite. How is the beer?”
“‘Sperfect,” Jerry said, his unnatural melancholy lifting a little.
“Naturally,” Dion said, nodding. “But this creature complicates the sales, eh?”
“‘Stoo true,” Jerry said gravely and outlined the situation. “Where were you when I needed you?” he ended plaintively.
“Tending to some necessities. Pleasant, true, but necessities for all of that. Just as you are now. Pretty well under, aren’t you?”
“Under the table?” Jerry said with great dignity. “Of course not. Half seas over, yes. Also: fuddled, lush, mellow, merry, plastered, primed, sozzled, squiffy, topheavy, tight, oiled, and one over the eight. I am drunk as a piper, a fiddler, a lord, an owl, David’s sow, or a wheelbarrow. I feel fine. But where were you when I needed you?”
“Old Baldwin was cleverer than you thought. He had a party going night and day for a week, but the girls and the liquor were exhausted before I was. And here I am. Unless we exorcise this creature, you lose the brewery. I can’t let that happen. Did anyone have an explanation of the phenomenon?”
Jerry chuckled reminiscently. “Gerhardt said it must the yeast be. Fennell said it was a comb’nation of carbon dioxide and gum ‘rabic.”
“The infidels!” Dion breathed. “The joyless, materialistic infidels! Always the direct cause. Always. Never the catalyst. They’re brewers. They should understand catalysts. But they don’t. Nobody does. This sad, sad age. It hasn’t even recognized the most important catalyst of all.”
Jerry frowned. “What’s that?”
“Man,” Dion said breathlessly, spreading his hands. “You know the definition of a catalyst: a substance which accelerates a reaction but is itself unchanged. Isn’t that man?”
“‘Struth!” Jerry agreed solemnly.
“Men get glimpses of reality,” Dion said mournfully, “but they don’t piece them together. Of course, men can never see direct evidence of their catalytic action. What catalyst can? Things always happen a certain way when he’s around, and when he isn’t around, he can’t see that they happen differently.
“They have the truth in their hands, and they can’t see it. They talk about luck and premonitions, talents and green thumbs, accident prones and the perversity of inanimate objects. If man ever applied himself to the study of his own catalytic action, he’d become a god. That, after all, was the secret of the gods.”
“‘Struth?” Jerry asked, open-mouthed.
Dion nodded, sighing. “But men call it superstition. The ancients knew better. They knew the obvious: a brewer is more important than his materials. You have a modern brewery. What do you have? Fantastic accuracy in the measurement of quantity, temperature and time, and microscopic control of quality. Why is it that the beer you brew isn’t half as good as that of the medieval monasteries?”
“I give up,” Jerry said breathlessly.
“You control everything except the brewer. The old wisdom has been lost. A brewer impresses his own personality on the beer. He must, first of all, be continent during the brewing — ”
“Continent?” Jerry echoed. “North American, Europe, Asia — ?”
“Arctic,” Dion said. “Absolutely. You can imagine the strain.”
“Certainly,” Jerry agreed.
“By the time I finished the brewing, my unnatural existence had fermented me into a frenzy. It was seek release or burst!”
Jerry thought of Dion exploding like a bottle hot with carbonation. The vision was too much for him; he buried his face in the glass and drained it.
When he looked up again, Dion had opened the other beer and was sampling it out of the bottle. “Ah!” he said appreciatively. “A true daughter of the malt. The world must have it. Whatever we have to do is worthwhile.”
“Forget it!” Jerry said with an airy wave of his hand. “Drink and be merry.”
“And tomorrow lose the brewery?” Dion said horrified. “No, no! For then this beer would be lost to the world, and I would lose my job. Even a catalyst must eat. Now! I find this head quite attractive, but I can appreciate how some drinkers might be upset. The problem: Where did it come from and how can we get rid of it?”
“‘Cisely!” Jerry explained. “Logic is ‘mpeccable.”
“Flattery,” Dion said sheepishly. “Matter of fact, my reasoning is all intuitive. These words are only a sop to Apollo; they’re meaningless to me. But let’s go on. The catalytic process is, by its nature, basically uncontrollable. The immaterial approach opens the gate for other immaterial aspects.”
“Spirits!” Jerry said suddenly.
“Wonderful!” Dion said, clapping his hands together exuberantly. “You understand. We have in our beer spirits of alcohol in a more literal translation. Our brew has become possessed; we must exorcise it.”
“To possess the brew, we must dispossess the spirit!” Jerry explained triumphantly.
“That’s the spirit!” Dion applauded.
Jerry was standing. “We must dena
ture the spirit without denaturing the alcohol.”
“Now you’re the one with the head on you!”
Jerry did a few wild dance steps around the room. He came to a sudden stop. “How?” he said.
“The question, exactly,” Dion agreed.
“Garlic? Mistletoe? Wolfsbane? Silver bullets? Holy water? Crucifixes?”
“No, no!” Dion protested. “Rank superstition. Worthless.”
“Well?”
“The girl is facing toward you now that you’re standing up; she was facing toward you when you were sitting over there. Which way does she usually face?”
“That’s a funny thing,” Jerry said thoughtfully, “Toward me. Always. You’d think she’d face some other direction occasionally.”
“Where there is a persistence of phenomena, there is a reason. Why does she face toward you?”
“I give up.”
“You. You’re the reason!”
Jerry shook his head. “I’m too happy to be a reason. I’d much rather be an excuse or a rationalization.”
“I may have been the gate,” Dion said, “but you were the goal. This spirit wants to look at you.”
“At me?” Jerry exclaimed. “Incredible.”
“Spirits are moved only by strong emotions,” Dion warned.
“And emotions,” Jerry added, “are moved only by strong spirits.”
“Love and hate,” Dion said. “You’ve done nothing to be hated for. It must be love.”
“Ah!” Jerry said dazedly, sinking down into a chair. Love. It is something to be loved, if only by a spirit. “What can I do? Tell it to go away?”
“We must be careful,” Dion said cautiously. “Spirits are simple things. And love is mother to hate.”
“Love has ruined me,” Jerry groaned. “What would hate do?”
“So. We must lure her out.”
“Like a fish?”
“Very like.”
“What’ll we use for a lure?”
“The best lure for the type of fish we want to hook. The perennial lure for females — a man. You!”
“I’ve always wondered what a minnow feels like,” Jerry said weakly.
“But,” Dion said, “where do we cast you?”
Jerry snapped his fingers. It worked the first time. He looked down at them in amazement. He shook himself and looked up. “Come on!”
He dashed through the front door. The elevator was standing open. As soon as Dion entered, breathing quickly with suspense, Jerry pressed the button marked “1.”
As the elevator started down, Dion said, “Ah! The finishing cellar!”
“That,” Jerry said, “will be only the beginning.”
The door slid open. They walked quickly down a long corridor. Jerry felt light-headed; he wobbled as if he felt the ground under his feet and didn’t like it. He opened a heavy door. Cold air hit them. The temperature was close to freezing. Jerry flicked on the overhead lights.
The room was filled with long, horizontal tanks; white frost was piled up under them in chunks. Jerry led the way between the tanks and through another heavy door into the racking room.
“Here,” Jerry said, kicking one of the barrels in the racking machine, “is a keg of the new brew.” He pulled the spigot out of the upright keg, ignoring the gout of beer and foam that followed it. It was old beer; the foam was ordinary foam. “Here,” he said, “is a spigot.”
Dion had set one of the barrels on end. Jerry pushed the end of the spigot through the cork stopper and down into the barrel. “Now,” he said, “let’s dash our spirit.”
He turned the tap on full. The beer streamed onto the floor in a white torrent, hit, splashed, foamed. The pungent, hoppy odor of beer made the air thick. On yellow pools formed thick, creamy blankets of foam. In the middle of the pools, the foam mounted high. It shaped itself. It became human. It became feminine. It became the girl. Her hands were outstretched.
She grew. She was a foot high. Two feet. Three feet. When she was over five feet tall, Jerry hastily slammed the tap shut. She grew a few more inches and stopped. For the first time, Jerry saw her complete, bare, beautiful and perfect, from the top of her head to the tops of her feet, just visible above the foam.
She seemed almost alive. She was a work of art, done with that loving care that can make cold marble seem warm. The foam stirred gently as if she breathed; she swayed as if she would like to walk.
Jerry turned to Dion. “Now what?”
Dion shrugged. “Let your instincts guide you.”
Hesitantly Jerry held out a hand and touched the foam. The girl stirred. Jerry jerked back his fingers and rubbed them together. His face crinkled up. “That felt — funny,” he said. He took a deep breath and reached toward her again.
This time the foam-hand seemed to reach out to meet his hand. He jerked it back. The foam came with him; the girl came with the foam, stepping out of the yellow pool as if she had legs, standing on the pavement as if she had feet. Her creamy chest rose and fell. Her eyes opened. They were deep blue, like a summer sky mirrored in a mountain pool.
“Venus,” Dion murmured, “rising out of the foam.”
Jerry pulled his hand away. “That’s not foam,” he said weakly. “That’s skin. It’s warm.”
“That,” Dion said softly, “is the power of love.”
The girl opened her mouth. “Love,” she said. It was, with a peculiar appropriateness, her first word.
Her lips were red; her tongue moving between them was pink. Her hair was long and blonde tumbling around her shoulders. Her skin was creamy white. She stood in front of them, naked and unashamed.
“It was, after all,” Dion said judiciously, “a full-bodied beer.”
Jerry pushed a tentative finger toward her. “May I?” he asked dazedly.
She arched toward him. “Please do,” she said softly.
Jerry jerked his hand back. “Never mind,” he said hastily. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“I do mind,” she said. Her eyes followed him adoringly. “I’ve loved you for so long.”
“How long?” Dion asked interestedly.
“Ever since I came here with the barley,” she said, noticing Dion for the first time. “I was the Barley-Bride. You know, the last barley cut in the field.”
“Ah!” Dion said wisely. “I see. But you have made a great deal of trouble.”
Her eyes widened. “Have I? For Jerry? Oh,” she said passionately, “I could kill myself. But it was the only way I could make Jerry aware of me.”’
“You did,” Jerry muttered. “Oh, baby, you really did.”
“Everybody was so mean to Jerry,” the girl said, her eyes blazing like pellets of potassium dropped into water. “Especially that Joan creature.”
Joan! The thought of her was like being drenched with icy water. Jerry took a quick, sharp breath. “If you don’t mind,” he said with sudden clarity, “I think I’ll be going.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, stepping forward eagerly to stand beside him. “Where shall we go?”
“Go?” he said in alarm. “You don’t understand! I want to be alone.”
“That sounds like fun,” she agreed happily. “Let’s do it.”
Jerry looked at her with horror-filled eyes, as if he were seeing her for the first time. “I want to be alone all by myself!”
“How dull!” she said, pouting. “And it’s not fair. You lured me into this world. It’s only right that you take care of me. In justice, you belong to me.”
“Oh, no!” Jerry protested. Joan had wanted to own him; now this naked girl out of the foam. It was too much! “I don’t want to belong to anybody.”
He turned and ran, back through the heavy door into the finishing cellar, between the long carbonating tanks, and through the doorway into the corridor.
“But I belong to you!” he heard her shout behind him.
Jerry ran a little faster. He glanced back. She was chasing him, running lightly and swiftly on bare toes.
With a terrorized burst of speed, Jerry sprinted up the concrete steps to the second floor. The copper brew kettle gleamed dully in the darkness like a wet, shiny brontosaurus raising its long neck out of a Jurassic swamp. Jerry hesitated beside the brewmaster’s office, but two sides of it were windows. He turned toward the concrete steps leading to the third floor. The girl was whitely luminescent behind him. She was closer.
The third floor was only a balcony. Jerry looked longingly at the lautering tub. If he could slip through the man-sized opening and lower himself into the sheltering darkness, the foam thing might pass by, unaware. But it was a fatal trap if she suspected.
The laboratory, on the left, had the same disadvantages as the brewmaster’s office below it. Jerry pulled open the heavy, insulated door to the fermentation room and dived in among the tall cypress tubs and the heavy odor of yeast.
He crouched behind a row of tubs, shivering in the thirty-six-degree temperature, and heard the door open. Maybe she won’t know about the lights, he thought. Please don’t let her know about the lights!
“Jerry!” she called gaily. “Jerry!” She laughed. It was a beautiful and chilling sound, like youth and joy and triumph all melted together and poured into a bell. “Here I come!”
Good God! Jerry thought, horrified. To her it’s just a game. The room stayed dark, but she moved confidently among the tubs. She can see in the dark, he thought desperately.
Jerry shivered and moved cautiously away from her. He turned the corner of the tubs and tiptoed toward the door. When he was halfway there, he sneezed.
In the silent room the sound was thunderous. The girl laughed in the distance, and Jerry ran to the door, swearing under his breath. He slammed the door behind him, wasted a moment looking for a lock that wasn’t there, and dashed for the stairs leading to the fourth floor. Behind him, the fermenting-room door opened and slammed shut. Bare feet pattered up the stairs.