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“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. “Down to the foot of Main Street, Onaback, Illinois, and I’m bottling a sample of the Brew there. Then I’m reporting to my father as soon as possible.”
She tossed her long black hair. “My orders don’t say I have to. If, in my opinion, your presence becomes a danger to my mission, I may leave you. And I think you’re a definite danger—if not to my mission, at least to me!”
I grabbed her wrist and whirled her around. “You’re acting like a little girl, not like a major in the U.S. Marines. What’s the matter with you?”
She tried to jerk her wrist loose. That made me madder, but when her fist struck me, I saw red. I wasn’t so blinded that I couldn’t find her cheek again with the flat of my hand. Then she was on me with a hold that would have broken my arm if I hadn’t applied the counterhold. Then I had her down on her side with both her arms caught behind her back. This was where a good little man was better than a good big girl.
“All right,” I gritted, “what is it?”
She wouldn’t reply. She twisted frantically, though she knew she couldn’t get loose and groaned with frustration.
“Is it the same thing that’s wrong with rne?”
She quit struggling and said, very softly. “Yes, that’s it.”
I released her arms. She rolled over on her back, but she didn’t try to get up. “You mean,” I said, still not able to believe it, “that you’re in love with me, just as I am with you?”
She nodded again. I kissed her with all the pent-up desire that I’d been taking out on her in physical combat a moment ago.
I said, “I still can’t believe it. It was only natural for me to fall in love with you, even if you did act as if you hated my guts. But why did you fall in love with me? Or, if you can’t answer that, why did you ride me?”
“You won’t like this,” she said. “I could tell you what a psychologist would say. We’re both college graduates, professional people, interested in the arts and so on. That wouldn’t take in the differences, or course. But what does that matter? It happened.
“I didn’t want it to. I fought against it. And I used the reverse of the old Jamesian principle that, if you pretend to be something or to like something, you will be that something. I tried to act as if I loathed you.”
“Why?” I demanded. She turned her head away, but I took her chin and forced her face to me. “Let’s have it.”
“You know I was nasty about your being bald. Well, I didn’t really dislike that. Just the opposite—I loved it. And that was the whole trouble. I analyzed my own case and decided I loved you because I had an Electra complex. I—”
“You mean,” I said, my voice rising, “that because I was bald like your father and somewhat older than you, you fell for me?” “Well, no, not really. I mean that’s what I told myself so I’d get over it. That helped me to pretend to hate you so that I might end up doing so.”
“I’m in a terrible fix,” said Alice. “I don’t know if you fulfill my father-image or if I’m genuinely in love with you. I think I am, yet…”
She put her hand up to stroke my naked scalp. Knowing what I did, I resented the caress. I started to jerk my head away, but she clamped her hand on it and exclaimed, “Dan, your scalp’s fuzzy!”
I said, “Huh?” and ran my own palm over my head. She was right. A very light down covered my baldness.
“So,” I said, delighted and shocked at the same time, “that’s what the nymph meant when she pointed at my head and said that if it weren’t for that, she’d think I hadn’t tasted the Brew yet! The Brew that fellow poured on my head—that’s what did it!”
I jumped up and shouted, “Hooray!”
And scarcely had the echoes died down than there was an answering call, one that made my blood chill. This was a loud braying laugh from far off, a bellowing hee-haw!
“Polivinosel!” I said. I grabbed Alices hand, and we fled down the road. Nor did we stop until we had descended the hill that runs down into U.S. Route 24. There, puffing and panting from the half-mile run and thirstier than ever, we walked toward the city of Onaback, another half-mile away.
I looked back from time to time, but I saw no sign of the Ass. There was no guarantee he wasn’t on our trail, however. He could have been lost in the great mass of people we’d encountered. These carried baskets and bottles and torches and were, as I found out from conversation with a man, latecomers going to view the departure of the bone-boat from the foot of Main Street.
“Rumor says that Mahrud—may his name be bull—will raise the dead at the foot of the hill the Fountain of the Bottle spurts from. Whether that’s so or not, we’ll all have fun. Barbecue, Brew, and bundling make the world go round.”
I couldn’t argue with that statement. They certainly were the principal amusements of the natives.
During our progress down Adams Street, I learned much about the valley’s setup. My informant was very talkative, as were all his fellow Brew-drinkers. He told me that the theocracy began on the lowest plane with his kind, Joe Doe. Then there were the prayer-men. These received the petitions of the populace, sorted them out, and passed on those that needed attention to prophets like the Forecaster Sheed, who screened them. Then these in turn were relayed to demigods like Polivinosel, Albert Allegory, and a dozen others I had not heard of before then. They reported directly to Mahrud or Peggy.
Mahrud handled godhood like big business. He had delegated various departments to his vice-presidents such as the Ass, who handled fertility, and Sheed, who was probably the happiest forecaster who’d ever lived. Once a professor of physics at Traybell and the city’s meteorologist, Sheed was now the only weatherman whose prophecies were one hundred percent correct. There was a good reason for that. He made the weather. All this was very interesting, but my mind wasn’t as intent on the information as it should have been. For one thing, I kept looking back to see if Polivinosel was following us. For another, I worried about Alice’s attitude toward me. Now that I had hair, would she stop loving me? Was it a—now I was doing it—fixation that attracted her to me, or was it a genuine affection?
The next moment, I did leap. It was not from joy, however. Somebody behind me had given a loud braying laugh. There was no mistaking the Ass’s hee-haw. I whirled and saw, blazing golden in both the light of the moon and the torches, the figure of Polivinosel galloping toward us. There were people in the way, but they ran to get out of his path, yelling as they did so. His hoofs rang on the pavement even above their cries. Then he was on us and bellowing, “What now, little man? What now?”
Just as he reached us, I fell flat on my face. He was going so fast, he couldn’t stop. His hoofs didn’t help him keep his balance either, nor did Alice when she shoved him. Over he went, carrying with him bottles and baskets of fruit and corn and little cages of chickens. Women shrieked, baskets flew, glass broke, chickens squawked and shot out of sprung doors—Polivinosel was buried in the whole mess.
Alice and I burst through the crowd, turned a corner and raced down to Washington Street, which ran parallel to Adams. There was a much smaller parade of pilgrims here, but it was better than nothing. We ducked among these while, a block away, the giant throat of the Ass called again and again, “Little man, what now? What now, little man?”
I could have sworn he was galloping toward us. Then his voice, mighty as it was, became smaller, and the fast cloppety-clop died away.
Panting, Alice and I walked down Washington. We saw that the three bridges across the Illinois had been destroyed. A native told us that Mahrud had wrecked them with lightning one stormy night.
“Not that he needed to worry about crossing to the other side,” he said, swiftly making the sign of the bull. “All of what used to be East Onaback is now sacred to the owner of the Bottle.”