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“Well, why not?” asked Alice. “They don’t seem to have to work very hard to live in abundance. I’ve noticed we haven’t been bitten by mosquitoes, so noxious insects must have been exterminated. Sanitation shouldn’t bother them—the Brew kills all diseases, if we’re to believe that squirrel-reader. They don’t have much refuse in the way of tin cans, paper, and so on to get rid of. They all seem very happy and hospitable. We’ve had to turn down constant invitations to stop and eat and drink some Brew. And even,” she added with a malicious smile, “to participate in orgies afterward. That seems to be quite a respectable word now. I noticed that beautiful blonde back at the last farm tried to drag you off the road. You’ll have to admit that that couldn’t have happened Outside.”
“Maybe I am bald,” I snarled, “but I’m not so damned repulsive that no good-looking girl could fall in love with me. I wish I had a photo of Bernadette to show you. Bernadette and I were just on the verge of getting engaged. She’s only thirty and—”
“Has she got all her teeth?”
“Yes, she has,” I retorted. “She didn’t get hit in the mouth by a mortar fragment and then lose the rest of her upper teeth through an infection, with no antibiotics available because enemy fire kept her in a foxhole for five days.”
I was so mad I was shaking.
Alice answered softly, “Dan, I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t know.”
“Not only that,” I plunged on, ignoring her apology. “What have you got against me besides my teeth and hair and the fact that I thought of this conditioning idea and my superiors—including the President—thought enough of my abilities to send me into this area without ten thousand Marines paving the way for me? As far as that goes, why were you sent with me? Was it because your father happens to be a general and wanted to grab some glory for you and him by association with me? If that isn’t militaristic parasitism, what is? And furthermore…”
I raved on, and every time she opened her mouth, I roared her down. I didn’t realize how loud I was until I saw a man and a woman standing in the road ahead of us, watching intently. I shut up at once, but the damage was done.
As soon as we were opposite them, the man said, “Newcomer, you’re awfully grumpy.” He held out a bottle to me. “Here, drink. It’s good for what ails you. We don’t have any harsh words in Mahrudland.”
I said, “No, thanks,” and tried to go around them, but the woman, a brunette who resembled a cross between the two Rus-sells, Jane and Lillian, grabbed me around my neck and said, “Aw, come on, skinhead, I think you’re cute. Have a drink and come along with us. We’re going to a fertility ceremony at Jonesy’s farm. Polivinosel himself’ll be there. He’s deigning to mix with us mortals for tonight. And you can make love with me and ensure a good crop. I’m one of Poli’s nymphs, you know.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got to go.” I felt something wet and warm flooding over my scalp. For a second, I couldn’t guess what it was. But when I smelled the hop-like Brew, I knew! And I responded with all the violence and horror the stuff inspired in me. Before the man could continue pouring the liquid over my head, I tore the woman’s grip loose and threw her straight into the face of her companion. Both went down.
After we had run about a quarter of a mile, I had to slow to a walk. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest, and my head was expanding to fill the dome of the sky. Even my setting-up exercises hadn’t fitted me for this.
However, I didn’t feel so bad when I saw that Alice, young and fit as she was, was panting just as hard.
“They’re not chasing us,” I said. “Do you know, we’ve penetrated this area so easily, I wonder how far a column of Marines could have gone if they’d come in tonight. Maybe it would have been better to try an attack this way.”
“We’ve tried four already,” said Alice. “Two by day, two by night. The first three marched in and never came back, and you saw what happened to the last.”
We walked along in silence for a while. Then I said, “Look, Alice, I blew my top a while ago, and we almost got into trouble. So why don’t we agree to let bygones be bygones and start out on a nice fresh foot?”
“Nothing doing! I will refrain from quarreling, but there’ll be none of this buddy-buddy stuff. Maybe, if we drank this Brew, I might get to liking you. But I doubt if even that could do it.”
I said nothing, determined to keep my mouth shut if it killed me.
Encouraged by my silence—or engaged—she said, “Perhaps we might end up by drinking the Brew. Our water is gone, and if you’re as thirsty as I am, you’re on fire. We’ll be at least fourteen hours without water, maybe twenty. And we’ll be walking all the time. What happens when we just have to have water and there’s nothing but the river to drink from? It won’t be as if the stuff was poison.
“As a matter of fact, we know we’ll probably be very happy.
And that’s the worst of it. That X substance, or Brew, or whatever you want to call it, is the most insidious drug ever invented. Its addicts not only seem to be permanently happy, they benefit in so many other ways from it.“
I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “That’s dangerous talk!”
“Not at all, Mister Temper. Merely the facts.”
“I don’t like it!”
“What are you so vehement about?”
“Why?” I asked, my voice a little harder. “There’s no reason why I should be ashamed. My parents were hopheads. My father died in the state hospital. My mother was cured, but she burned to death when the restaurant she was cooking in caught fire. Both are buried in the old Meltonville cemetery just outside Onaback. When I was younger, I used to visit their graves at night and howl at the skies because an unjust God had allowed them to die in such a vile and beastly fashion. I…” Her voice was small but firm and cool. “I’m sorry, Dan, that that happened to you. But you’re getting a little melodramatic aren’t you?”
“Bare your naked soul? No, thanks, Dan. It’s bad enough to have to bare our bodies. I don’t want to make you sore, but there’s not much comparison between the old narcotics and this Brew.”
“There’s no degeneration of the body of the Brewdrinker? How do you know there isn’t? Has this been going on long enough to tell? And if everybody’s so healthy and harmless and happy, why did Polivinosel try to rape you?”
“I’m certainly not trying to defend that Jackass,” she said. “But, Dan, can’t you catch the difference in the psychic atmosphere around here? There seem to be no barriers between men and women doing what they want with each other. Nor are they jealous of each other. Didn’t you deduce, from what that Russell-type woman said, that Polivinosel had his choice of women and nobody objected? He probably took it for granted that I’d want to roll in the grass with him.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “But it’s disgusting, and I can’t understand why Durham made him a god of fertility when he seems to have hated him so.”
“What do you know about Durham?” she countered.
I told her that Durham had been a short, bald, and paunchy little man with a face like an Irish leprechaun, with a wife who henpecked him till the holes showed, with a poet’s soul, with a penchant for quoting Greek and Latin classics, with a delight in making puns, and with an unsuppressed desire to get his book of essays, The Golden Age, published.
“Would you say he had a vindictive mind?” she asked.
“No, he was very meek and forbearing. Why?”
“Well, my half-sister Peggy wrote that her steady, Polivinosel, hated Durham because he had to take his course to get a credit in the Humanities. Not only that, it was evident that Durham was sweet on Peggy. So, Polivinosel upset the doctor every time he got a chance. In fact, she mentioned that in her last letter to me just before she disappeared. And when I read in the papers that Durham was suspected of having murdered them, I wondered if he hadn’t been harboring his hate for a long time.”