Collected Short Fiction, page 64
“ ’Nother words,” Jerry said, “this beer’s too hot an’ you’re looking droopy. Here!” He emptied his glass into the schooner. It ran over onto the table foamily and dripped onto the thick rug. The girl straightened up.
“ ’S better,” he said. With exaggerated care, he got up and maneuvered around the table. Once free of it, he rolled toward the kitchen as if his feet were several inches off the floor. When he came back, he had two cold, unlabeled bottles in his hand. He set them down on the table and carefully flipped the cap from one of them with an ivory-handled opener.
Gently, he tipped the beer into his glass and set the bottle alongside a number of others on the floor.
He blinked at them and began to count, lost track, and started over. “Thirteen,” he said finally. “ ’Tastic! Each one’s ’quivalent 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—bell-’cose, lachr’mose, com’tose. Skipped ’em all. Stands to reason. ’S perfect beer. I feel wonderful.”
The girl nodded happily.
“ ’Meuphoric,” Jerry said triumphantly. “Who cares ’bout future?” He tried to snap his fingers. “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 any man ask of any woman? What more can any man ask of beer? Eh?”
He began to wave his glass 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 just 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.
He’s euphoric, Jerry thought, like the beer.
Dion 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 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 my ruin.”
“Ruin is so final,” Dion said gayly. “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?”
“ ’S perfect,” Jerry said, his unnatural melancholy lifting a little.
“Naturally,” Dion said, nodding. “But this creature complicates the sales, is that it?”
JERRY gravely outlined the situation. “Where were you when I needed you?” he ended on a plaintive note.
“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 lute, 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 is a 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?”
“ ’S truth!” Jerry agreed solemnly.
“Man gets glimpses of reality,” Dion said mournfully, “but does not piece them together. Of course, many can never see direct evidence of his catalytic action. What catalyst can?
“Men have the truth in their hands, and they can’t see it. They talk about luck and premonitions, talents and green thumbs. 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.”
“ ’S truth?” Jerry asked, open-mouthed.
Dion nodded, sighing. “But Man calls it superstition. The ancients knew better. They knew the obvious—a brewer is more important than his materials. 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?” Jeff echoed.
“North America, 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. I had to 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.”
“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 where did it come from and how can we get rid of it?”
“ ’Cisely!” Jerry exclaimed. “Logic is ’peccable.”
“Flattery,” Dion said sheepishly. “Matter of fact, my reasoning is all intuitive. 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 exclaimed triumphantly.
“That’s the spirit!” Dion applauded.
“We must denature the spirit without denaturing the alcohol!”
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 you now that you’re standing up. She was facing you when you were sitting over there. Which way does she usually face?”
“That’s a funny thing,” Jerry said thoughtfully. “Toward mealways. 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 solemnly, “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 sinking down into a chair. “Love. It is something to be loved, if only by a spirit. What do 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 already ruined me,” Jerry groaned. “What would hate do?”
“So,” Dion ignored Jerry’s question, “we must lure her out.”
“Like a fish?”
“Very like.”
“What’ll we use for a lure?”
“The best lure for what we want to hook. You!”
“I’ve always wondered what a minnow feels like,” Jerry said.
“But,” Dion said, “where do we cast you?”
Jerry snapped his fingers. He looked up. “Come on!” He dashed through the front door with Dion close behind him. The elevator was standing open.
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 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. 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. 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-beautiful and perfect.
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 helplessly. “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—strange,” he said.
He took a deep breath and reached out again.
This time a 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, stepped 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 from 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, appropriately, her first word. Her hair was long and blonde, tumbling around her shoulders. Her skin was creamy white.
Her eyes followed Jerry adoringly. “I’ve loved you for so long.”
“How long?” Dion asked interestedly.
“Ever since I came here with the barley,” she said, aware of 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, you know.”
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 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 ice-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?”
“We?” 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 said very flatly, “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. Then we’ll belong to each other.”
“Oh, no!” Jerry protested. First, Joan had wanted to own him—now this foam-girl. It was too much! “I don’t want to belong to anybody.”
He left quickly, 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 cry behind him.
Jerry glanced back. She was following him, moving lightly and swiftly. He felt the touch of fear. As a tiny, inanimate figure of foam, she had been appealing. As a live girl born of beer, she was—impossible—frightening.
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. The girl 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 nymph might pass by, unaware. But it would be a fatal trap, if she suspected. The laboratory 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. He heard the door open. Maybe she won’t know about the lights, he thought.
“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. To her, it’s just a game. The room stayed dark, but she moved confidently among the tubs. She can see in the dark.
Jerry shivered and cautiously tiptoed toward the door. When 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, then dashed for the stairs leading to the fourth floor. Behind him, the fermenting room door opened and shut.
There was no place to hide except in the adjunct cooker or the mash tub. But now she was too close for anything like that. He turned the corner and raced up to the fifth floor. The burlap sacks of malted barley, corn grits and spent grains were stacked in neat piles. He ran between them, trying to reach the freight elevator.
But she caught him.
DION eventually found them. And by that time, Jerry had discovered that there are other reasons for wanting a person besides possession.
“She’ll need a name,” Jerry said, “and a birth certificate. Oh, God! She’ll need so many things.”
“To love,” Dion stated, “all things are possible.”
“Love?” Jerry echoed. “Love?” He looked at her, wide-eyed. “Well, I’ll . . .!” Suddenly, his expression changed. “Don’t you feel well?”
Her face was pale. “Why? What’s the matter?”
“You seem to be sagging.”
“I’m standing up straight.”
“Then you’re shrinking,” Jerry exclaimed. “You’re not five feet tall.”
She looked up into his face. “You do seem bigger.”
Jerry turned fiercely toward Dion. “Can’t you do something?”
Dion spread his hands helplessly. “The gods give and the gods take away.”
“No!” Jerry said violently. “I won’t let it happen! I’ve just found her!”
A single tear ran down the girl’s cheek. She brushed it away with a slender arm.
“There’s no law saying she has to shrink away, is there?” demanded Jerry.
“No,” Dion said.
“Then there’s a reason for this. We’re going to find it—fast! And when we find it, we’re going to do something about it. She’s shrinking. Why?”
