And on the eighth day God created Beer.

Beer is what separates humans from animals… unless you have too much beer.

Seriously anthropologists, archeologist, and sociologist seem to think that when humans first emerged on earth as human they possessed fire, language, a sense of spirituality, and beer.

Some nice folks at the Discovery Channel proved it. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-beer-saved-the-world/

Hammurabi loved beer so much he codified the making of it. Today micro brews and craft breweries rely as much on art as they do science to create marvelous treats for the palate and the psyche. In centuries past people had to rely on copper kettles and patience. You too can make an approximation of the original according to this article:

http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.5/hitchcock.html

Warning there is a reason why in our first story by Brenda Clough. Suri, the ancient goddess of beer, pours her nectar through a linen sieve and proffers a reed straw. So unless you like to chew your brew, stick with more modern recipes.

Fermented grains have been a mainstay of the human diet almost as long as we have been human. Increasing barley production for beer triggered the agricultural revolution and turned hunter-gathers into farmers. Dividing fields created a need for mathematics. Recording beer production and distribution brought about writing. The need to transport beer brought the wheel into play. Ancient Egyptians fed the pyramid builders one gallon of beer a day in place of bread. Beer replaced unsanitary water in Medieval Europe. Pasteur’s investigation of why beer spoiled led to the discovery of germ theory and a revolution in medicine. The need to brew lager cold created the need for refrigeration. Large scale production of beer brought about the modern factory at least a decade before Henry Ford. The list of how beer saved the world goes on and on.

The authors of “How Beer Saved the World” offer up a few of the instances, past, present, and future, on this world and on others. For, without beer we might still be still roaming the plains of Africa as hunter gatherers.

I leave you with another website that offers:

Our Lager,

Which art in barrels

Hallowed be thy drink…

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Beer%27s%20Prayer

The slope was endless and dry, a skidding descent of scree and dust that took three days. The sky above was hot as molten metal. Early on the third day he saw the streak of green in the valley that spoke of canals and crops, gods and men, but it was not until his shadow stretched out long and weary before him that he came to the first village. It was a humble one, farmers probably, but there was a single business: a brew-house marked by the sheaf of straw hanging on the wall. He ducked under the faded and tattered awning at the front, past the single crude bench set out for customers, and leaned on the narrow table that blocked the inner doorway.

“Suri,” he called. “I’m thirsty.”

All bars are run by Suri, as all kitchens are managed by Cook. She came out of the darkness beyond, a buxom woman no longer young. “You look like one who has traveled a long way,” she greeted him. “Can you pay, or do you beg?”

“I can pay.” He had not called on his purse for a long while now, but it still clinked. He shook out a dried-clay ball and rapped it with his fist. It broke open, releasing ten small chunks of silver marked with the assay cuneiform of the treasury of Uruk. He knocked the broken shards aside and swept all but one of the pieces back into the bag. The remaining silver bit was a month’s wage for a working man.

She made no remark about this flash of wealth–a good sign. Instead she took the largest pottery beaker from the shelf and set it before him. “Sit,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

He lowered himself onto the end of the bench closest to the table, the best seat. When he loosened his sandals, the stripes of the straps showed dark against the white dust of travel. He unhitched the battle axe from his shoulder so that he could lean against the wall. The coolness of the mud-brick was like a welcoming hand on his back.

“You won’t need your bronze here,” she said. “We’re peaceful folk.” Under one arm she carried a cloth strainer, freeing both hands for the dripping earthenware pitcher that smelled deliciously of yeast. He watched as she poured carefully through the strainer into his beaker. “There’s the reeds. Give it a moment to settle out, and then drink your fill–I have plenty of this brewing.”

He was too parched to wait. He took a cut reed from the jar and stabbed it down through the foam. He sucked the brew down, cool and tangy-sour and fragrant—the food and beverage of the gods together. When he paused for breath, she was ready with the refilled pitcher. Again she poured through the strainer, and again he drank, dipping his beard into the foam.

The third time however she put her hand over the reed. “You owe it to my brew,” she said. “Let it settle! Beer is like the world, with the wild waters above and below–the best is always in the middle, between the froth and the lees. Besides, if you don’t burp you’ll bloat up like a toad.”

“Nobody,” he declared, “has ever compared me to a toad.” He belched, voluminously.

She laughed. “You sound like one. You’ve enough years to know the fumes rise better to your head, if you spin it out.”

“Do I look so old?”

“Old enough to not waste good drink.” She turned the strainer out over the slop jar, slapping the linen to get the sludge of herbs and chaff out. “Give it a chance, and my beer will restore the youth to your step.”

“In truth?”

“For a while, anyway.”

“Then it’s not what I’m looking for. Although it is good.” He positioned the reed in the middle and sipped. With the sediment collected at the bottom of the tall beaker, the beer was the best he had ever tasted.

“Tell me your quest, then.”

He saw she was distracting him–spinning him out, to slow him down. But the potent brew was already loosening sinews and tongue. A boy came in with a wooden baker’s paddle. On it, just out of the oven, was a flat barley loaf, crackling hot and crusted with delicately browned sesame seeds. Suri spread a clean napkin to receive it. She broke off a bit and pushed the rest toward him. “Your blade shows you are a hero,” she said, idly. “You are not Lugalbanda, back from scaling the World Tree to see the Anzu Bird. Clearly you are not Inanna, returned from her sister’s house in the Deadlands below. So what’s your story?”

Once, the mention of the goddess would have sent him into a towering fury, smashing crockery and kicking over benches. Now he was too tired. The smell of the toasted sesame seeds beckoned. He broke off a piece, saying, “I knew Lugalbanda.”

“So did I.” She chewed, and sipped from her own smaller beaker.

He gave this no credence–a rural barmaid who knew his father? But rather than arguing he took another deep drink, and spoke the heart’s truth. “My story would bore you. A hash of pointless combats and windy conflicts. I have wasted my life on braying idiocy.”

She leaned to glance at the level in his beaker. “But you have just come back from a quest. Was that pointless?”

“It was worse than pointless.” He tore off another hunk of the dark bread. “I had it, in my hand. The treasure we all quest for, the desire of the ages. And then it was gone. Through my own inattention and stupidity.” He bit down on the crust as if it were the bones of an enemy.

“Let me top you off,” she said. He pushed his beaker forward and she refilled it.

The sun burned red on the mountains, but down here in the valley a long blue evening slowly cooled the furnace air. Two farmers shuffled in, sweaty with the day’s labor. They stared at him, the stranger, open-mouthed. He knew these, the lowest of the low, day laborers scarcely better off than slaves. When they held out their beakers and clay pots Suri filled them all in turn.

He drank slow and deep, reflecting muzzily on the fate that had set them all in their places. Why was he set high, while they were below? And yet a sup of beer here was the brightest moment of the day for all men. Here in the middle only was where gods and men could meet…

“Give way. That is my seat.”

Deliberately he finished sipping, removing the reed before looking up. Towering beside him was a meaty younger peasant, surely of more muscle than wit. He sighed, wiping a fleck of foam from his beard. “I will kill you. But only if you force me to it. I think Suri here would not like the loss of your custom.”

“I would dislike it very much,” Suri said firmly. He kept his attention fixed on the big farmer, but from the edge of his eye he saw her jerk a finger down and sideways. His big axe was tucked close to hand between the bench and the table.

As with bulls or dogs, the commanding gaze of the better was sufficient. The farmer fidgeted and looked away. Suri held up her dripping pitcher and he set down his beaker. When it was full he carried it meekly out into the evening. “This is what I’ve come to,” he grumbled. “Is there more in there?”

“Yes, plenty.” She adjusted the strainer and poured. “So you do not look to many adventures facing down farm lads.”

The thought of how it used to be made his chest ache. Once, his rage would have been a black storm, breaking over this village like a thunderclap. He would have roared and ripped and destroyed. It would have been so much fun! His fiery spirit had been proverbial, looming behind him like a shadow of dread. Now he could only lean over his beer. “My life is over. I have stared into the abyss. I shall curse the gods and die. After,” he added thoughtfully, “I get drunk.”

She nodded approval. “Up in the hills they have a saying that one should always consider a new project drunk, and then sober.”

“Or…” He brooded, waiting for the brew to settle. “I could go back. Grab that sneaky old man and wallop the truth about eternal life out of him.”

“If one has eternal life, I’d think a thrashing wouldn’t be a bother.”

It sounded sensible, but rather than admit it he drank again. After another long pause she said, “Are you so unhappy, then?”

He considered. “When I set out, I was aboil with grief and fear. But now—” He spoke with a sort of surprise. “I am… resigned. Surely this is despair.”

“Could you be… at peace?”

He gripped the beaker hard with both hands, but it was well-fired and did not crack. “I have been restless, a seeker and disturber and wanderer, since boyhood. My people complained of it. I have never been at peace before. It is not how the gods made me.”

“And nobody ever called you a toad before either.” Her words startled him into a bark of laughter. “There’s a first time for everything,” she went on. “Perhaps you should learn the ways of peace.”

Another group of locals came in. Word must have got around. Nobody spoke to him or met his eye; he was as invisible as a god. As she poured for them he drank his own beer slowly, rolling the complex flavor across his tongue: bitter and sweet and sour, all unified in one mouthful. At last he said, “It sounds dull.”

“Surely no duller than those pointless conflicts and windy combats.”

“True enough.” It was fully dark now, and she set out small oil lamps, one on the table and a couple more in wall niches. The flames were no larger than his thumbnail, the light so meager that he could make out only the curving paleness of her linen shift, and the occasional glint of her glance. It was plain that he would have to ask, for she would not offer. “Teach me then the ways of peace, for I am weary of war.”

“You need no teacher,” she said. “You know the way. You have been above, and you have traveled below. Now you could go home. Embrace your wife–you have a wife?”

“Several.”

“A good beginning, then. Beget children and love them, Gilgamesh. You found your destiny, and it was ashes in your mouth. Now, choose your life and live it.”

He could not remember now when, or even whether, he had told her his name. The brew must be softening his skull, the way soaking softened a hard nut before planting. What sprout would burst forth from within? The words emerged from his mouth without, apparently, passing through his head: “Suppose I embrace you. I would enjoy that.”

She smiled. “Not after this much beer, you won’t. And do you want to start yet another feud with a goddess about sex?”

Again he almost laughed. “When you put it like that…” It came to him that the urgency down below was a much more mundane need. Yet another customer came in, and he took the opportunity to gather up his axe and rise. On his feet the fumes rose to his head with alarming speed, and he tottered.

She steadied him, leaning across the narrow table to grip his elbow. “Grow up,” she said. Quick as a feather flick she pecked a kiss onto the side of his head, adding more practically, “The piss jar is around in back.”

He took care not to stumble on his way out. But once past the awning it was easy to follow the wall around to the back, where the big reeking jar was lit by another tiny lamp in the window-slit above. The valuable urine must have been collected recently by the dyer or the tanner. His water made a fine ringing sound in the empty vessel, and the release seemed to clear his thoughts. Her beer restored youth, she said–for a while. Indeed he felt full of strength, refreshed and ready. He had sat complaining long enough. It was time to be a-doing. Like the farmers, he had his allotted role in the cosmos, and there is always work for a king to do.

He tightened his sandal straps. For a moment he thought of going back to say goodbye. But the moon was high enough now to light the way, and a breeze tugged at his cloak, inviting him on. If he started now he could get most of the trip done in the cool, and arrive in the city by tomorrow night. And it came to him that there was no need to return. There were bars in Uruk, and the goddess of the brew presided over each one. He would see her there.

There was a time in the world when the idea of a Zombie Apocalypse was on par with winning the lottery, something to contemplate when sitting on the porch watching red tail hawks with a cold beer in your hand.

That was, of course, before the Zombie Apocalypse. Frankly, I’d have rather won the lottery.

Now that it’s happened, the beer-induced planning paid off, and here we are. There seemed no better place to ride out the Zombie Apocalypse than the Angus Grant brew pub in Kennewick, Washington.

We planned on surviving in a degree of comfort. The brewery was in a big-ass stone building, used to be a warehouse, with no windows and the loading dock only opened to a parking area enclosed on three sides. That fourth side opened to the street with a gated chain link across that. Not that ten foot of chain link would help if it got really ugly. I’m told the East Coast has a pack of two million munching its way to Canada. They might stop it in New York, but my money’s on the zombies. With winter coming, I figure it will take an ice storm and a couple thousand Canadian loggers with chainsaws. We’ll know in the spring.

There were a few things the hundreds of bad movies about zombies didn’t tell us. Actually there were dozens of things, but so be it. The big one is that you don’t die and turn into a Zombie. You die and you stay dead. None of that waking up all groaning and bleary eyed with a taste for brains. If a zombie kills you, you’re just dead. You don’t get to come back as a zombie. Not that I wanted to. Much.

I heard tell of a lot of folks met their maker ’cause they got bit and everybody freaked out. You know the drill. “Kill me, don’t let me turn into one of them.” And then the turned head, the pained expression, the raised pistol, and ‘BAM.’ Lot of really embarrassed people out there once they found out a bandage and bit of ointment worked better and wasn’t near as messy.

The truth is if you aren’t already a zombie, you’re immune, about twenty percent of us are, or were anyway. You turned about a week after exposure to the airborne virus, plus or minus a day. You go to sleep with your sweetheart, you wake up feeling really good by all accounts, none of the flu like symptoms crap, and then you get a headache, and then you get hungry. Lots of couples went that way. ‘What’s wrong honey?’ probably became the most common last words in America.

And then you were a Zombie. Not at all dead. Nope, Zombies are about alive as it gets; at least your body and a small chunk of brain about the size of a lemon. And I mean it lives like it is on steroids. We all figured it was a military virus gone bad. It made you healthy, vicious, stupid, and hard to kill. A perfect soldier, except for that lemon sized brain thing. And the sex drive? I’ve seen things now that six years in the navy couldn’t match. I’ll let the history books handle that little detail.

And the hard to kill part? That’s a no shitter. The head shot thing kind of works, but you damn near have to shoot them in the nose, that’s about where what’s left of the brain is. The rest has already turned to mush.

Also, forget the gaping wounds and rotting flesh. Oh yeah, for about a week, then it just kind of coats over. You cut off a zombie’s arm, it just heals over like a surgical amputation, except maybe a chunk of bone pokes out. Kind of gross, but it is what it is.

I figure scientists will figure out how it spread, but it is hard to say. Most likely super airborne. Breathe in clean air, breathe out the Zombie bug. By the time the air lines, busses, and truckers stopped moving, the Zombie bug was everywhere.

But back to our Zombie Apocalypse. We were very near set. Very near is the key point. We had one tanker of diesel and another of gasoline. We had big screen TVs, generators, guns, and beer. Did I mention beer? If you’re going to make a last stand, a brewery is a great place. We didn’t think of it as a last stand. We were planning on being survivors.

Even then we knew there were enclaves and there were pockets. Enclaves are what you called the big, government camps. Once they got established, they worked pretty well, if you could get there and if you could stay fed. I’m told zombie tastes like pork, but I don’t want to find out. It was mostly army bases, airports, stadiums, and other places already set up for security. I heard of some places where the jails were cleared and the local constabulary brought in their families.

The rest of us survived in what were called pockets. We were a pocket. A dozen people in a place the zombies couldn’t claw or hammer their way in. I heard the Space Needle was quite a pocket there for a while. At least until the gun nuts shot their way in and didn’t leave doors enough to close behind them. I saw the videos. Ouch.

As for us? The whole damned thing is still in the air. We live in the middle of the desert side of Washington State. The virus hit slow, we had about a two week day delay from the onset on the east coast and about a week from the west coast. We got to watch. Had time to make a few phone calls and make some decisions. A lot of folks went out to the old nuclear plants. The last we talked on the radio it was fine, those are some big tough buildings. But what point is surviving the zombie apocalypse if all your hair falls out.

Communications are good. Satellites are automated and the power comes mostly from wind and dams out here. Pretty hard for a zombie to scale a 150 foot windmill or bust into a concrete damn. Hear lots of folks are making a stand at the wind mills. Family gets inside and locks the door. Kind of a natural zombie proof thing it is.

I’m here at the Brewery with Angus because I like Pink Floyd. Actually I love Pink Floyd and say to those who don’t, go screw yourselves. That, and I got a trunk load of anti-terror gear, gadgets, and government comm gear along with two crates full of guns, and more bullets than we could ever hope to shoot. I may have abused my shiny gold Marshall Service badge a bit, but it is the Zombie Apocalypse you know.

I also have a band, or part of one anyway. A Pink Floyd cover band, as we were billed when we played the brewery. The stands and stage are still up out in the parking lot from the last gig. We’re pretty good. I’m 47 years old and that makes me younger than the actual Pink Floyd band, let alone the surviving members. Surviving members, now that’s a phrase that will gain new meaning. We do concerts at the brewery. I don’t say did, because we did a show last night. Kind of hard without the base player, but we got canned music when we needed it. Some of the zombies seemed to like the music. When the zombies are coming, there is a special appreciation for “Just Another Brick in the Wall.”

We had a concert set for exactly two weeks after the first news report about a fellow in Georgia getting eaten by his family. The next day it was dozens. The next day, Georgia shut down. It spread from there. We still did the concert. Attendance was light, but that was when Angus, me, and the band made the decision that this would our ground for the impending apocalypse. Angus rented a couple of generators. Like he’s ever going to pay that bill. We had a couple a guys that drove fuel trucks for Mr. H. R. Jones. The son of a bitch has, or had, a local monopoly on fuel. Before the zombies got him, he had the biggest house in town down on the river. I think all that’s left of him is a little bit of zombie shit. We got two of Mr. Jones trucks, one full of diesel and one full of unleaded gasoline parked inside our little pocket. Wish we had the drivers, they brought in the trucks. Supposed to be back the next day with family. They never made it. The shit was starting to hit.

So power is not a problem. Food is another matter. You can live on beer, but it loses its appeal. We made arrangements. Two truck loads of groceries headed for the local Safeway, with what was left of the families trailing, that was the deal. All the non-perishable food and shit paper we would need to last out the winter.

And right now? It is sitting across the street with the trucks still running.

We got the families in before the pack got wind and came after them. One of the drivers made it, the other? Thirty years of driving a truck and not much else means that you might not oughta try to outrun fifty or so zombies. Puts a bit more strain on a heart than climbing into the cab. We told his wife he was dead before he hit the ground, but he wasn’t. He was still thrashing when they dragged him off. They were more like wolves than people in this state.

So the trucks are there, still idling. Right under the big blue sign advertising Ainsworth’s Pool supply store. That brings you up to date.

“You gonna talk into that thing all day or we going after the grub.” Angus was a big man, he didn’t appreciate my Zombie Video Diary.

“Stand right there,” I said and flashed a picture. It showed the big blue pool supply sign, the two trucks and a posse of half naked Zombies sniffing around the trucks. You could just barely see the Piper boys sitting on cupolas of the tanker trucks. The Piper boys were God’s gift to us. Two rednecks in from Texas. I’d hired them to tote speakers at the last concert. They worked hard, laughed when they should, and could shoot, we invited them in. They brought squirrel rifles. Little bolt action 22 caliber rifles. The kind the survivalist laugh at. They dropped more zombies than my AR15 assault rifle ever thought of. Of course they tend to shoot straighter than I do.

We weren’t a very big group. Me and Sally, and her two friends. They showed up the same night the trucks had. We did a session with the amps turned up. Just for the fun of it. We’d finished and were turning off the lights and they drove right up to the gate horns honking like hell. They weren’t there for the music, just looking for a hole to crawl in. The zombies were already thick. The Piper boys manned up and together we tried to clear the way, but most of the newcomers never made it to the gate. And we were shooting like heck. Three of them made it in. Turns out Sally was the only one worth a shit. The next morning, while the other two was sitting around crying, she got to working in the kitchen. We put the other two digging latrines. They complained, them being girls and such and there being asphalt to dig through. But Angus and I talked and we’d be damned if we was gonna keep flush toilets going with drinkable water. After that we had the one driver, his mother and a sister-in-law, the other driver’s wife, God knows I thought about putting her out, but I owed her old man. Then we had two waitresses, a cook and dishwasher the three preschoolers that I foisted off on the driver’s wife, let her do something. That was all that was left of the staff. And that was us.

That and of course the Piper brothers.

And my chickens. I kept a flock of fifty little salmon favorelles. I figured it might be good for meat and eggs. They bitched like hell when I threw them in the gunny sacks for the trip over, but I like my eggs. If we survived they’d make good trading stock.

Every now and then one would fly over the fence. We’d all watch. Ain’t nothing funnier than a zombie trying to catch a chicken. Zombies are fast, but it’s just flat hard to catch a chicken. After a couple of zombies got a handful of tail feathers, the chickens learned. If we wanted to watch zombies chase chickens we had to throw one over.

We were set to get the trucks. They had now been idling for three days. The driver said they’d idle til the tank was empty. We didn’t want that.

We had a plan. The three of us that could shoot would lay down the cover, that would be me and the Pipers. Angus had a shot gun, as did my drummer. They could be cover for the driver. He was the only guy I trusted to take a sixty foot semi and back it into a tight gate at 20 miles per hour. We had the cook and the dishwasher at the gate, one had a .410 shotgun that’d been my wife’s and one had an old straight bore pump 12 gauge. He could handle the shotgun but he was half blind and I’d be damned if I was giving him anything with muzzle velocity. They’d keep the zombies out of the compound. If they got in we were stacked thin enough we wouldn’t make it. We all knew it. The other trucker’s old lady was in the with the kids. Sally manned the stage. She had my thirty-thirty lever action rifle. I didn’t really know if she could shoot, but she was our only backup.

The drill was simple, swing the gates out. The waitresses from the dining room did that. Me and the Piper boys would start taking head shots the second the Zombies took notice. Angus, the driver and my drummer, would hit the truck, driver in first with Angus covering the door, the drummer in the passenger seat. Angus following it back in. The cook and the dishwasher take anything that got too close to the gate. And the two waitresses bring the gate closed. It was a great plan.

Angus unlocked the gate and lifted the anchor peg. Step one. Nothing but passing interest, no zombie charge. The gates open. Piper-the-older has the right flank, Piper-the- younger has the left. The pops of their twenty-two long rifles sound small. They aren’t. When a head shot is what you need, something that will get in and bounce around a bit is pretty damned good. A twenty two does a fine job of that. I had the AR-15, semi auto. I batted clean up, if my crew put a Zombie down but it didn’t want to stay down, I took it out.

It was good, Angus, the driver, and my drummer were already across the street and in the parking lot. Only about a hundred feet to the cab. Fish in a barrel. Then yips came from the left. Young Piper’s station.

“Oh shit,” I heard him say. But he was good. He had three twenty shot clips and a bolt action. He could get off thirty rounds a minute. Not a great condolence when a swarm of what must have been sixty of the things turned the corner. Maybe a hundred yards out. I could do a hundred yards in less than ten seconds. Most of these things could do it too if they put a mind to it. They seemed to.

The waitresses screamed in unison. They started to pull the gates shut. The cook and the dishwasher were helping. Angus and the driver could see it. They didn’t give the truck a second thought as they turned back to the gate. I heard the heavy crack of Sally sending out lead from behind me. I was glad.

“Come back, back in,” I screamed. My drummer was already pulling at the door to get in the cab. The zombie charge was coming from the other side. He didn’t know. I jumped off the stage next to Sally.

I screamed again, everybody screamed. It didn’t matter. My drummer was half deaf. Being a drummer in a rock and roll band didn’t prepare you for the zombie apocalypse. He went into the cab, just like the plan. Ok, I figured, we could clear the cab in a bit of time. Stay put.

The cook and the dishwasher weren’t shooting. They were tugging on the gate. Sally seemed to know what she was doing. When the firing stopped I glanced over. She was feeding ammo in like a pro. We shared a smile.

The gates were going closed. I risked a jump from the stage and with only a slight stumble on the landing I made for the gate and smacked the cook across the back of his head with my free hand. “Let them in.” He wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box but he got the idea. He held the gate open. The waitresses ran. Sally came up from behind. She’d left the half loaded rifle and had pocket pistol. She fired off three rounds. Two zombies stumbled. One was young, a redhead, a really hot red head. Intact. Something about the steroids in the mix made them look better. For a moment I wondered if they could be tamed. Sally answered the question with a head shot that sent red everywhere. I’d liked her from the minute I drug her through the gate, now I like her more. The zombies were less than a dozen yards away when Angus and the driver stumbled through. The steady popping of the twenty-twos didn’t stop and the bodies fell like drops in a rainstorm. Funny thing about drops. You don’t miss a dozen or so of them in the middle of a storm. And it was a storm.

That rainstorm was clawing at the gate. The cook seemed to have come to his senses and he stuck the shot gun between the bars of the gate and let go three quick rounds. This gave Angus time to slip the anchor pin and the gate was secure.

The feral yips and growls didn’t stop, they just found a new focus. My drummer was standing on the board of the truck looking confused. The door open behind him.

He was on the wrong side of the fence. Way on the wrong side of the fence. He was a great drummer, he just wasn’t real smart. He came for the fence. There were easily fifty of them between him and the gate. The Pipers were good, just not that good. Angus and I both emptied everything. For a second I thought my drummer might make it. He had good hand eye coordination and he emptied his shotgun on the run with solid effect. If they had still been people, they would have scattered. Zombies don’t have survival instincts, they have pack instincts and the pack instinct said close in. He had both hands on the fence when they finally got a grip on him.

I pulled out my Glock. I didn’t turn my head and he didn’t ask for it. He turned loose of the fence and tried to cover his head against the bullet. I saw the stigmata appear on his hand and then his head exploded. I empted the clip into the crowd until it stopped working and the survivors hauled off the dead. The Piper’s stopped their tune as well.

We sat inside that night licking our wounds. Not talking.

The news feed was still on. A cute young news girl from up the valley was reporting on the epidemic. She was interviewing a biker dude with heavy leathers, heavy gut and beard he must have figured would cover it all.

He said he “wasn’t worried.”

He said it was a “government plot to get his gun” and then patted the saddle bags. That was when a dozen or so of the critters came out of the ditch. They were yipping like a pack of wolves. He got his hand in the saddle bags and pulled out this foot long shiny cannon of a revolver that looked like something Clint Eastwood might jack off to. About that same time a couple of Mexicans came out of a Hop field hollering and motioning for them to run. He didn’t, but the girl and her camera guy did. A bunch of the kind of jerky camera work we’ve all gotten used and she was in the field. These Mexicans looked strange. They had their straw hats and their guns and machetes but every damned one of them had Hop vines strung around them like bandoleers.

The camera guy filmed the whole damned thing. The biker dude lasted long enough to get off a round into the asphalt and then screamed like a wet panther while they drug him to the ditch. Then he screamed some more off camera while the camera guy did a thoughtful serious shot of the gun lying on the blacktop while its owner screamed for his mother.

Then it got creepy. The zombies were bloody when they came back up on the road and started towards the reporter and the folks that were in the hop field. You could tell from the camera angle that the camera guy was backing into the field. The tall hop vines grew up the ropes, framing the zombies perfectly. The pack broke into that run they have. I’d have said adios to my Mexican friends and the cute babe. But the pack got to the edge of the field and stopped. These guys just sniffed the air like some freaking dog and paced. A machete wielding arm flashed out and a streak of red crossed some fat zombie guy’s belly. It howled and stepped back. Finally, they just left. The girl got back in the camera van. She tried to get the Mexicans to go. They kept saying no and kept trying to wrap her in Hop vines.

“You take, you take.” Their English was bad. Her Spanish was worse. She tried to ask questions and just got hop vines shoved in her face. Finally both sides gave up and some very nervous farm workers escorted them to the van.

The footage made it to the station, she didn’t. The Burger Fest traffic cam caught her and the camera man being dragged out of a burning van when they took a corner too fast on the way back to the station. According to the news guy that survived, she was a hero. She looked dead to me.

The news guy rambled on about camouflage and brave young Amber. Camo my ass. Hops stink fierce, like being in a pot field in August. It made me think. Actually it made me want to be stoned. Of all the shit Angus made sure we had, he never thought about pot. For the first time in twenty years nobody would care if I got stoned and not a freaking bud in sight.

On other fronts, updates were coming through the emergency channels. It was simple, if you were alive, and safe, stay there. If not. Directions on where to go.

I grabbed Angus, Sally, the Piper brothers, a chicken, and a growler of cold beer and went to storage room. The hops and grains were in bags against the wall. I shut the door behind us and set down the chicken who promptly found a few grains scattered on the floor and settled in to happy murmurs.

I cut one of the hops bags open and grabbed a handful of the smelly leaves and shoved it into Angus’ shirt pocket.

“Feeling lucky?” I asked.

We spent a day on our Hop Vests. Table cloths had little use in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Turned out the trucker’s wife could sew.

Sally and I took a break on the Hops bags. Nobody seemed to care that we were gone. My drummer certainly didn’t. The stigmata of his raised hands, the jerk of the pistol, flashed through my consciousness at wrong times, but Sally and I still left the room with a bit less of whatever pain we went in with.

We were up with the sun. The trucks still sat idling. The Pipers took their spots.

The street was clear of bodies. Only stains. Zombies eat dead zombies. Waste not want not. We armed ourselves as before, the plan had worked except the zombies just hadn’t cooperated.

We gathered in the parking lot and saluted my drummer, each of us with a sixteen ounce mug of Autumn Gold Ale. The hoppiest beer in the brewery. It must have made us a bit relieved because we took a second round. Sally leaned in and kissed me. I kissed her back and she dumped half her beer over my head. “For luck” she whispered and kissed me again. Our lips were wet with beer. Would have made a good commercial without the zombies and all. I poured the rest of mine into her moderate cleavage. She laughed and I wished she wasn’t covered in the hop vest. What was under would be respectable in any wet tee shirt contest I’ve ever been to. The hop vests looked like thick children’s bibs. The Piper brothers called beer foul over the spillage, but repeated the action, as did all.

I took more clips. I had a truck load of ammunition. That wasn’t a problem, but I sure wished I had something for the Pipers that wasn’t a bolt action. Sally took my 8 shot Luger pistol this time, an easy reload. Not a big gun, but it didn’t need to be big, and she still had her little pocket 32. Angus and the driver took the driver’s side and Sally and I took the left.

There were a couple of zombies prowling around the truck. The Pipers played their tune and the zombies fell in unison. One was a grandmother looking old woman. Clothes tend to not last long on the zombies. She was no exception. Her pot belly, shrunken breasts, and granny panties made a picture. I’ve still got it. The head shot didn’t drop her completely and she tried to get up. I gave the younger Piper a look. He shrugged and fired again. This time she stayed down.

I kissed my chicken on the head and threw her over the fence.

The zombies dived.

The chicken ran. And it was on.

Pop. Pop. The gate was open. The waitresses looked calmer. We all looked ridiculous with our beer stained vests packed with hops.

Like clockwork the pack showed around the corner. I was curious where they stayed. Must be the mattress factory a block down. Made sense, Zombies need sleep too.

I added my heavier rounds to the steady pops of the Piper boys. The younger, faster lead zombies leapt the dead with ease. I was beginning to feel screwed. A head shot on a running zombie ten seconds from ripping your throat out is not as easy as it sounds.

Behind me I heard a scream and the scrape of the gate and cook and dishwasher helped the waitresses start to pull them closed.

“Not even.” Sally’s voice behind me. The scraping sound stopped, the Piper boys fired and two more zombies tumbled. A truck door slammed. I heard the roar of the diesel and the sulfur fumes joined the hops and gun smoke.

And the zombies slowed.

The chicken launched itself back over the fence.

I shot two more, a couple of teenage boys who spent too much time on the X box from the look of their sunburned skin with patterns of white hiding from the sun, the rest a pink mass of teenage fat boy skin.

I’d never really been this close without a fence. It was like looking into the eyes of a rabid dog. They stopped, nostrils flaring as they scented the hops. We stared at them. I was afraid as hell. By the time we brought the second truck in everybody outside the fence was all but out of ammo. But they didn’t attack. The Pipers kept up the fire, working the edges and when the gates closed, they left.

The chicken sat atop the fence.

Zombies hated beer.

We put out the word.

Turns out Sally made a decent drummer.

The army stripped every hop field in Washington.

We were a footnote in history.

Angus Grant’s Beer was credited with saving the world. I think the chicken helped.

It was almost summer but a north wind blew in that afternoon, bringing a touch of chill. Paco Fernandez fired up his wood-burning stove, likely for the last time until fall. No matter how many times his daughter-in-law told him their solar panels provided cleaner heat, he still liked a wood fire.

Tonight his daughter-in-law and son had gone into Ontario for dinner and a movie, leaving his eleven-year-old grandson, Diego, in his care. Diego aimed his mobile at the stove to get vid to go with the interview of his grandfather he was doing for school. “Abuelo,” the boy said, “How come you like wood fires so much?”

“Just smell it, hijito. It smells like the forest, like the great outdoors.” The old man took a sip of his beer. Home brew, but as good as the best up in Portland or Seattle, his son always said.

“But Mama says…” the boy began.

“Your mama is right,” Paco said, “but a little fire every once in awhile won’t hurt anything much. This is a good stove and it doesn’t take much to heat this little place; it’s not so big as your house.”

Paco’s cabin was in back of the old farm house where Diego and his parents lived a few miles from town. They had enough acreage for good money crops of potatoes and onions and enough hops to keep them in home brew.

“Anyway, it takes me back.”

The boy remembered his assignment. “Tell me about how things were when you and Abuela first came to Cascadia,” he said.

“It wasn’t called Cascadia back then,” Paco said. “That was before the United States broke up. It was just Oregon. Your abuela—rest her soul—and I worked our way up through California, picking spinach, strawberries, whatever anyone wanted harvested.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Mexico?”

“More than once we asked ourselves that, mi hijo. Lots of people here didn’t want us. But people were starving….” He stopped suddenly. “Did you hear someone outside?”

“Just the wind, Abuelo.”

Something banged—a car door or maybe someone throwing something into the bed of a pickup. “There’s definitely someone out there. You sit here. I’m going to go look.”

Paco picked up his flashlight and stepped out of the front door. Several men in combat fatigues were standing in the driveway, each with some kind of weapon slung over his shoulder. He started to ask what they were doing, then thought the better of it and switched off the flashlight.

Too late. They had already seen him. “Hey old man,” one of them yelled. “We’ve come to take our property back.”

“It’s not your property,” Diego yelled. The boy had come to the door behind him, mobile still in hand.

“Ssh,” Paco said, but that was another thing that came too late.

The men were close to the cabin now, shining their own flashlights onto Paco and the child. “Shit, it’s more Mexicans. Them people took over all this country when they run us out.”

“We’re Cascadians,” Diego said.

“Quiet, child,” Paco said. He wanted to yell at the men himself, but unlike Diego, he knew they were trouble.”

“You’re Communist Mexicans is what you are and we’re here to get rid of the likes of you,” the man said. He raised his gun.

Paco dropped to the ground on top of Diego as the man started to fire. Bullets sprayed all of the room. Paco felt blood pouring down his face.

“Jesus Christ, Hank. You just killed an old man and a kid,” one of the other men said.

“Just Mexicans.” Hank shrugged. “We can move in now.” He stepped over Paco and walked over to the table. “Hey, they got beer here.” He picked up Paco’s glass and downed the rest of it. “Man, that’s good stuff. How come these Mexicans got good beer and all we get is rat piss?”

“Because we’re living in Mormon country now,” a third man said. “We move back up here, we can get good beer again.”

“Right on,” said Hank. “Let’s look around and see if they got more beer.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the first man said. “We weren’t supposed to kill nobody. The colonel is going to be pissed.”

“The colonel can go fuck himself,” Hank said. “Aha. Beer” He pulled the small keg out of the refrigerator.

“Come on, Hank. We gotta get out of here,” the third man said.

Hank snorted again. But he let the others drag him to the truck.

Only after he had heard them peel out did Paco dare move. He sat up slowly, blinded by blood in his eyes. Scalp wound, he thought. “Diego? Hijito?”

“I’m here, Abuelo. But my arm hurts.”

The old man wiped the blood from his eyes with one hand and saw the hole in the child’s arm. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the boy’s arm, for all the good it would do. And then he picked up the child’s mobile and called for help.

After he disconnected he realized the mobile had caught the whole thing on vid.

Verity Landsdottir, prime minister of Cascadia, closed her tablet and sighed.

“That vid is not going to get any better no matter how many times you look at it,” said her companion, a woman in her eighties who sat in a rocking chair near the window, knitting.

“I know, Mom,” Verity said. “It’s just so hard to believe people act like that.” She got up and walked over to the window. It was a sunny day, giving her a perfect view of Mt. Rainier to the southeast.

Her mother snorted. “At least the thug was a lousy shot and the people aren’t dead. It could be much worse.”

“It could be a whole lot better. There have been a dozen similar incidents near Ontario, and other people have been hurt, some badly. We’ve got to do something about it, but outside of sending soldiers out there to beef up border security, I can’t figure out what. I don’t even know if it’s some sneaky trick by the Deseret government or just a bunch of punks.”

“You’ll figure it out,” her mother said. The resemblance of the two women was obvious. Both had brown skin—Verity’s a shade lighter due to the genetic influence of her other mother—and thick hair, though the mother’s hair was almost white and cut very short, while the daughter’s was long and black. Verity’s mothers had been among the radicals that led Cascadia to secede when the United States began to fall apart. Landsdottir was an adopted name that reflected their politics more than their heritage; neither was Scandinavian.

A young man opened the office door. “Excuse me, ma’am. The public safety and defense ministers are here.”

The young man—Verity’s administrative assistant—smiled at the older woman. “Afternoon, Miss Jessica.”

Jessica Landsdottir nodded.

A lanky man and a petite woman—Rob Allen, the minister of public safety, and Emily Harrison, minister for defense—followed the aide into the room. They gave polite hellos to Jessica and arranged themselves around a conference table made from a highly polished cross section of a limb from an old-growth sequoia cut down by vandals during the shaky years when Cascadia first declared its independence. Another cross section from the trunk of the ancient tree was used in the official cabinet room.

“Well, we know who the shooter is,” Rob said. “We ran the DNA he obligingly left on the beer glass. Turns out he is from here, just like he said on the vid. Henry Dawson. He lived out near Ontario until he got arrested for a serious aggravated assault. His father bailed him out and they skipped out to Idaho, which was pretty much ungoverned back then. We didn’t have any luck trying to get him back.”

“We knew there were some disgruntled extremists out there, but that doesn’t explain why they decided to do these raids now, unless someone is stirring them up,” Verity said.

“Someone is stirring them up. I’ve got some more news, and while I’d like to take credit for it, it’s pure serendipity. About mid-morning, a woman came into the police station in Ontario seeking help. She’d been beaten badly.” He tapped the screen of his tablet to send copies of the picture to the others.

“Damn,” said Emily. “She looks like she was in a war.”

“She says she’s Mrs. Dawson.”

Both women made faces. “Mrs.” was not a title used in Cascadia.

“Well, that’s how they do things in Deseret and she seems to be happy enough with it. Anyway, this guy Dawson came back from his raid stinking drunk, woke her up for sex, and beat her when she resisted him. She slipped away when he passed out, said this time was the last straw. According to what she told our local authorities, some guy the men call the colonel has been coming around and giving them instructions on where to go and what to do. According to her, this colonel ‘wasn’t one of them’. From the interview notes”—he clicked on another file—“I gather he was probably somebody official from Deseret. She said he didn’t wear a uniform, despite the title.”

Jessica spoke up. “Those mountain men always liked to say they were independent, but it was always easy for someone outside to rouse them.”

“Mountain men?” Verity asked.

“That’s what we called them back in the day,” Jessica said. “The people who believed all that ultra-right crazy survivalist stuff. Homegrown terrorists. They were in these little militias and had hordes of guns and didn’t want anything to do with the cooperative society we were building in Cascadia.”

Emily read the transcript. “From this it sounds like there’s a whole community of Miss Jessica’s mountain men just across the border. A lot of them who lived in eastern Cascadia andv moved into the Idaho mountains after our independence. But Southern Idaho is part of Deseret now. I don’t see that kind of people being willing to act as pawns of the Deseret government, though.”

“Except that, according to Mrs. Dawson, Deseret has promised them some homesteads in our eastern territory if they’ll help to take it back,” Rob said.

“Oh. Do you suppose they mean it?” Emily asked.

“Maybe,” Verity said. “Or maybe they’ve got something else in mind. Either way, now we know we’re dealing with Deseret and not just a bunch of thugs.”

“It’s not enough for a declaration of war.” Emily had served in the military during Cascadia’s many battles to preserve its independence and was not inclined to go to war lightly.

“No,” said Verity. “War is not the answer, whatever some of the more excitable people in the Assembly have to say.” Several of the younger members had called for invasion of Deseret on the ground that they were harboring terrorists.

Rob nodded his head in agreement.

“Let’s not release this information just yet. We need to see what else we can find out.”

“Well, I’ve got one more piece of information from Mrs. Dawson that might be of use. She says her husband is planning to cross the border again and go back to the Fernandez home. She heard him talking to his friends about it when he first got back, before he beat her up. He figures there’s more good beer there and he should go get it. If we can nab him there, we might get some information out of him.”

“His taste for that beer is proving to be mighty useful,” Verity said. “I think we might be able to set a nice trap for him.”

Rob grinned. “I’ve got some folks who are just waiting for the chance.”

“Meanwhile, we need to call up the volunteers and increase the number of soldiers on the border up by Ontario.”

“I’ve already started on that,” Emily said. “Though it’s possible that they’re using that region as a blind and are planning something elsewhere.”

“Yes, but that’s the only place on our border with them that has significant population. And I don’t think they want an all-out war. My guess is they’re looking for some way to put us in a bad position, so that we’ll give in on their petition to let them transport stuff to Longview for shipping at very favorable rates. Being landlocked is killing their economy and they don’t like paying our truckers to take it to our port.”

“I hope you’re not going to agree to that,” Emily said. “They don’t just want access; they want the port. If we let them drive across our territory, they’ll find a way to take it—or at least, they’ll try to.”

“Which is why we’ve been saying no,” Verity said. “They must have a plan that will put us in a position where we have no choice but to say yes.” She paused a minute. “Emily, I want as many troops as we can get in the Ontario area, but I think it might be best if Deseret thinks we’ve only sent a few people down there. Can we do that?”

Emily grinned. “Leave it to me. We know who most of their spies are; we can feed them some juicy false info.”

Verity stood up. “We need to move fast. We can’t keep Ms.—um, Mrs.—Dawson under wraps for long. And it’s hard to keep troop movements quiet.”

As the two ministers stood to go, Jessica said, “And don’t forget the beer. It shows your mountain men aren’t real Deseret people. Real Deseret people don’t drink any alcohol, the more fools they. Two to one the terrorists are just pawns. You can use the beer.”

Verity walked over to the window as the door closed behind the others. “Mom, do you have any ideas on how we can use the beer?”

“Not yet. But if you’ll take me out for a pint of stout, I’ll try to think of a few.”

Verity hesitated. “Okay. But just one pint. You remember what the doctor said.”

“Doctors, bah.”

Verity raised her eyebrows.

“O.K. Just one. But take me to that new brew pub down near Elliot Bay. If I can’t have more than one, I want something very good.”

“Sure, you can use our place to set a trap,” Paco Fernandez told the Malheur County police officials. “We want that son of a bitch.”

His son nodded in agreement. Diego was still in the hospital—his mother with him—but they expected him home tomorrow. The bullet had broken two bones in his arm.

“I’d like to come with you, though,” Paco said.

The lieutenant in charge started to shake his head and Paco’s son put a hand on his arm. “Papi….”

“I don’t mean I want to be on the scene, dealing with those punks,” Paco said. “I’m too old for that and anyway my head still aches. But you’re going to have an observation post nearby, right? That’s where I want to be. I want to see you take those guys.”

His son threw up his hands in resignation, but the lieutenant said, “I guess you’ve earned the right to do that.”

Today there were clouds blocking the view of Mt. Rainer.

Verity liked the new vid at the Fernandez house so much she watched it twice straight through. Hank Dawson had shown up at the house about midnight with another man and a teenaged boy. The vid showed him breaking the lock on the front door of the main house and coming across a stash of beer in both small kegs and bottles in a couple of old refrigerators in a room off the kitchen.”

“We had to provide the beer and the extra refrigerator,” Rob explained. “The Fernandezes don’t make beer in that kind of quantity and anyway it seemed better to use crap beer than their good home brew.”

As the two men and the boy came out of the house, each one loaded down with beer, a half dozen police officers appeared with guns pointed at their heads. The boy dropped his load, but stopped midway toward reaching for the gun slung on his back and put his hands up. It was all over quickly.

“Well, they’re thugs, but not fools,” said Verity. “Have they revealed anything interesting?”

“Outside of a stream of abuse, the men aren’t saying anything. But the boy has had some interesting information.”

“Is he old enough to be interviewed?” Verity asked. She badly wanted information, but Cascadian law was adamant about protecting juveniles. It was one of the principles their founders had considered important.

“He’s Dawson’s son, meaning he’s also Mrs. Dawson’s son. Our people brought her in for the interview. She told him, ‘Tell them what your idiot father is up to,’ and after a bit of teenage posturing and face-saving, he started doing just that.” Rob clicked on his tablet. “Here’s the interview and the transcript. The most important information is toward the end.”

Both women skimmed down the transcript. “Fifteen mountain men squads?” Emily said. “And they’re all going to do raids on June 23?”

“Five nights from now, all in places in Malheur County, as near as we call tell. They figure the police can’t respond fast enough.”

“Well, except for this last raid, which we knew about, that’s been true. Of course, they’ve usually targeted rural areas. Are they going to do that again?”

“The boy didn’t know what the targets were, except that his dad’s group was going in near the Fernandez place, aiming at another homestead out there. Probably the colonel has kept the information on a need-to-know basis.”

Emily frowned. “That’s a lot of territory. It’s going to be hard to defend if we don’t know where they’re coming in, even if we know when.”

“True enough,” Rob said. “We certainly don’t have enough police officers out there.”

“I don’t see any alternative to putting troops all along the border,” Emily said. “That will protect the civilians.”

“But it will make it clear to Deseret that we know what’s going on,” Rob said. “They’ll just change their plans. And we can’t keep troops there forever.”

“Still, we can’t leave our people unprotected. Someone could get killed this time.”

“You’re right,” said Verity. “Much as I’d like to do something that lets us figure out the whole plan, we have to protect our citizens.”

Rob looked glum, but he nodded.

“Don’t forget about the beer.”

Verity jumped. In her focus on the situation, she had forgotten her mother was in her usual corner.

Jessica put down her knitting and got shakily to her feet. “Those mountain men love their beer. Why don’t you send them some?”

Verity stared at her mother. Send the thugs some beer? And then she smiled. “A jailbreak,” she said.

The other two looked as if they thought both she and her mother were crazy.

“We let Dawson and his friend break out of jail. Transfer them to another facility—maybe say they’re taking them to Portland or up here—and have the guards act either venal or stupid. And in the place where they escape, have a beer truck sitting there, just waiting to be stolen.”

Rob’s eyes lit up. “Put some GPS receivers on all the kegs. Figure Hank will want to sell them to the other mountain men.”

“We’ll be able to follow their every move, so we can have police and military in the right spots when they come across. Nab them quick.” Emily grinned. “We’ve got enough copters for some fast deployments out there. We’ll look all powerful.”

“It’ll stop it for now,” Verity said. “And we should be able to use it to embarrass Deseret sufficiently to keep anything else from happening for the foreseeable future. But I’d still like to know what they’re up to. I don’t think they’re encouraging mountain men to harass our people just for the fun of it.”

“Could be they’re trying to get rid of them. They must cause problems for their government, too. After all, those mountain men really don’t subscribe to the Mormon faith.”

Verity shook her head. “I think they’d just arrest them all, if that was the case. They’re bound to have grounds. No, there’s something else going on.”

“I was afraid even those punks would see through the plan,” Rob said. “It was one thing to have a guard pretend to sympathize with them—we decided that was the best way to let them ‘escape’ without anybody getting hurt—but having a beer truck up the block with the keys in it seemed awfully obvious. But apparently they just thanked their lucky stars.” He sent the vid to Verity and Emily.

“And has he been distributing the beer?” Verity asked as she watched the vid show the two men speed down the street, letting an empty keg and a ladder clatter to the street in their hurry to be off.

“He has. Kegs and cases have gone to 27 different households so far. We’ve got some voice transmitters as well as GPS on most of them, which is giving us some of the raid spots in advance.”

“I hope that’s all the raiders.”

“We’ll have some troops ready for fast deployment in case we don’t have them all,” Emily said.

“People living out there have been put on alert,” Rob said. “We’re getting quite a few false alarms, but it will help us make sure we get all the raiders.”

“There’s a bigger concern,” Emily said. “Deseret seems to be beefing up its military presence along our border. I just got the latest reports this morning. Most of them are up near Ontario, though they also have some along the more deserted regions to the south.”

“Do we have enough troops in all those areas if they decide to cross over?”

“Yes, but civilians could get caught in the cross-fire if there’s an actual invasion. I’d like to evacuate the area.”

Verity shook her head. “There isn’t time. And we can’t do it without putting them on the alert. If they figure out we’re expecting this raid, they’re going to postpone it. We need to catch them in the act if we’re going to put a stop to it.”

Emily sighed. “I thought of that, too, but I hate leaving the people there if we’re actually going to end up at war.”

“Hauling in their mountain men and bringing our soldiers up to the border should prevent an invasion,” Verity said, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.

After the others were gone, she turned to her mother. “I never thought I’d put civilian lives in danger for strategic reasons. That’s not what you all wanted to see when you began the movement for Cascadia.”

“Leaders always have to make hard choices,” Jessica said. “When I was young, I thought they were all corrupt. Now, though, I know that sometimes the options are between bad and worse.”

“Mama Alice wouldn’t have done it,” Verity said.

“Alice was a thorough-going anarchist, much as I loved her. She wouldn’t have had your job for a minute. And if she’d been involved in this at all, she’d probably have poisoned the beer.”

Verity smiled, but she didn’t stop worrying.

The night of the 23rd, Verity sat in her office, accompanied by several aides. Rob and Emily were in Ontario, coordinating with the troops and local police. She missed them; all the aides were too deferential.

She missed her mother, too, but Jessica was too old for all night vigils.

A phone buzzed. One of the junior aides grabbed it. “Yes?” He handed it to her. “Mr. Allen, ma’am. With good news.”

“We just took custody of the last group, Verity. No casualties, though we’ve got seven people wounded—four invaders, three of our officers, none of them life-threatening. No civilians, thank all that’s holy. There were five shoot-outs, but we managed to grab the rest without a fight.”

Thank all that’s holy, Verity thought. “Excellent news. Are we sure there’s nobody else out there?”

“Nothing else is moving on the GPS, though we’ve still got patrols out looking for movement and we’re still fielding calls. The military has moved most of the troops up to the border. I don’t think… just a second.”

Verity heard him talking to someone else, but she couldn’t make out the words. She did hear a snort of laughter as he came back on the call. “This is our lucky night. One of the men we’ve rounded up appears to be the mysterious colonel. He’s not carrying papers, but one of the thugs we arrested called him by that title. If he’s who we think he is, that’s going to tie all this back to Deseret. We’re running a trace on him now.”

Verity clicked off only to have her aide hand her another phone. “The president of Deseret, ma’am.”

“Mr. President.”

“Miss Landsdottir. I hope you won’t think I’m meddling in things that are none of my business, but I understand you have some serious trouble down in your southeastern region, right along our expanded border. I’ve got a few troops in the area; we could send some people over to help you deal with the troublemakers.”

That was it, the purpose of the whole thing. Send the mountain men in to wreak havoc and then offer—as a “friendly” gesture—to get rid of them. And, probably, leave their troops in the region to protect against future raids.

“Why that’s very kind of you, Mr. President, but we’ve got the whole situation under control. I understand all the terrorists have been taken into custody. All.”

“Well that’s very fine, ma’am, very fine. If you’re sure. We could just run a sweep through the area, to make sure.”

“Not to offend you, sir, but if anyone else from Deseret steps across the border, I fear our citizens and our soldiers are going to assume bad intentions. These terrorists have upset quite a few people.”

“Of course, of course. But….”

“You should know, Mr. President, that we’ve also arrested a man who appears to be one of your military officers.”

“Nonsense.”

“Perhaps he’s a rogue, then. We’re investigating. But since the invasion came from your side of the border, we are understandably a little concerned about how it came about.”

“I can assure you we knew nothing about it,” the president said. “When the people of Idaho joined up with us, we ended up with a lot of these semi-civilized folks. I’m sure you’ve got some people like them. They’re hard to control.”

“And easy to stir up,” Verity said. “Mr. President, I regret that this episode is going to make any future negotiations between us more difficult. You must understand that my people are deeply suspicious of your country right now. I don’t think we’ll be able to hold any trade talks.”

“But Miss Landsdottir…”

“Thanks for your concern, sir.” She hung up.

The security division had an extensive file on the colonel. Deseret continued to call him a rogue in public, but through private channels they negotiated for his release. So far they hadn’t offered anything worthwhile, but Verity thought she might eventually get something useful. The colonel was a thorough professional, according to the military investigators who questioned him; it was unlikely that they’d get any valuable information from him.

Several weeks after the raid, Verity went down to Ontario for a ceremony honoring the officers who had captured the raiders. She pinned medals on those injured in the fights, warmly praised everyone, and honored the various citizens who had been attacked.

“We were most fortunate that the excellent beer brewed by the Fernandez family attracted the attention of these terrorists,” Verity said, “because that gave our police and military the information they needed to fight back effectively. Once we knew who they were, we were able to trace them and figure out where they would strike next.”

“My abuelo’s beer saved the world,” Diego yelled.

Everyone laughed.

“Well, it helped save our small piece of it,” Paco Fernandez said.

UNITED SPACE PATROL

REPORT OF INCIDENT #GA-435-U26

SUPPLEMENT B: Transcript of Communications Log, Laser Relay Station EU-28

Note from Patrick Lerenor, Investigating Officer:

What follows is a transcript of live communications sent and received by the EU-28, a tight-beam communications satellite around Europa. It presents a real-time perspective of the events of E.C. 6-08-2967, beginning at 22:31 system standard time. It was at this time the ship piloted by Murray Laverne Williams, aka “Fat Squirrel” arrived within range of this communications satellite, en route to Europa.

The majority of communications on this frequency are to and from merchant shipping pilots. These “truckers,” as they colloquially refer to themselves, spend most of their time alone in their cabs, and have taken to using relayed tight-beam communications to socialize with one another. I have attempted to provide translations of their jargon where necessary. Truckers are logged by the communications satellite according to their ship’s license numbers, which appear at the beginning of every communication.

-TRANSCRIPT BEGINS-

EA-29384XB: Breaker, Breaker, one-niner-six, this is Fat Squirrel, coming in off the long haul from the blue dot.(1) Who’s out there in Europa local tonight?

EU-4356: Fat Squirrel, this is Hot Chicken. Been a while since we’ve seen you kicking around the crush ball.(2) What’re you haulin’?

EA-29384XB: Hot damn, Gladys. Good to see you’re still riding the vaccuum. I’m bringing in about one and a half teralitres from Big Larch brewing company for offload at Delta Station.

CA-936: Fat Squirrel, this is Puddlestomper. Did I hear you tellin’ us that you’re bringing actual beer in?

EA-29384XB: That’s an affirm, Puddlestomper.

CA-936: Hot diggity. They’ve been dishing out greengrog(3) for way too long. Tastes like yer’ gettin’ drunk off a salmon’s ass.

EU-4356: (laughs) Copy that, Puddlestomper. I’m on the backside right now, but I’m picking up a load of vat sealant, then I’ll be bound for Delta soon as I can. Murray, can you confirm they’ll be selling that brew up in the EUX Truck Stop on Delta once you tank in?

EA-29384XB: I’m not sure on that. If anyone’s got the line to Jenny at the EUX, maybe they could give her a direct call. I’ve just started my deceleration; ETA is 1:32 at Delta.

CA-936: I’ve got that number. I’ll check in with Jenny. If she’s serving once you’re tanked, I’m buying a round for everyone at the stop.

IO-3698: Breaker, breaker one-nine-six. This is Old Henry.

EU-4356: Copy Old Henry, this is Hot Chicken. Did you hear the news from Murray?

IO-3698: That’s a negative Chicken. Are we talking about Fat Squirrel here?

EA-29384XB: That’s affirm, Hank. How you doin’ this fine evening?

IO-3698: Murray! Can’t complain. So what brings a homeboy(4) like you out to the crush ball?

CA-936: This here’s Puddlestomper, and I’m back y’all. I have a big ol’ confirm from Jenny. I’m a gonna repeat that so’s I know you all heard me. Jenny at the EUX on Delta will be serving Big Larch Lager for as long as it lasts, once Fat Squirrel there can get himself to Delta Station and tank off.

IO-3698: Well, well. Murray’s bootlegging.

EA-29384XB: Ain’t no bootlegging, Hank. Running the first leg off of permits. You Jovians have a hell of a time growing grain, so Big Larch has the contract to deliver the good stuff. I’ll be making the long haul for a long time, thanks to that contract.

IO-3698: That’s a mighty fine deal you have for yourself, there.

EU-4356: I don’t know, Hank. That’s a long haul with nothing but empty air(5) to keep you company.

EA-29384XB: Yeah, but once the burn is made you can just leave Newton in the driver’s seat and do’s you like. I’ve been tying my own flies; next cycle I get off, going to head to the woods for some trout fishin.

EU-4356: I guess if that’s your thing. Me, I like the short hops between the pinballs.(6) Good money, decent company.

CA-936: And now actual beer!

IO-3698: I am sad to miss that. I’m burning outcycle(7) from the Flaming Pincushion (8) to the New Kid (9) with another load of hydroponic equipment.

CA-936: Hank, them rebs is just filling your wallet, ain’t they?

IO-3698: Heh, that’s an affirm, Jimmy. Every time the militants torch another station, I get to make another run. Their little crusade against dependence on the inner moons is just crazy talk, but it is lucrative.

EA-29384XB: Hey, Hank, I haven’t been keeping up on you pinballs. What’s going on over on the New Kid?

IO-3698: Oh, nothing but the usual. Every time there’s a new colony, at some point they decide to get all political. It’s fool-talk if you ask me, to call yourself independent and then blow up the machinery what keeps you fed.

EU-4356: Ain’t nothing but a lot of hogwash. They’ll settle down, soon enough. Once more people move to a colony, it starts to get domestic-like. It’s just that the sort of folk who like to be first to colonize are also the sort of folk who don’t want anyone to be second. It’ll sort out in the long run.

IO-3698: In the meantime, I get to haul replacement equipment.

CA-936: Time you get back, like as not Jenny’ll be sold out of Fat Squirrel’s load.

IO-3698: What the hell was that?

CA-936: Aw, shucks Hank, I’se just pullin yer chain. I’ll make sure we save a drop of…

IO-3698: No, not you. I mean what in tarnation just went past me? I had something long and narrow just buzz my rig.

EU-4356: Joyguzzlers? (10)

IO-3698: Maybe. They look to be on course for the Whisky Cooler(11), but if so they’re way past Rubicon and still accelerating.

CA-936: Drunk Joyguzzlers? You think one of the Skypigs(12) can get them towed off collision?

IO-3698: Not sure. I’m about to head out of range of this sat, though; if someone else wants to try to get ahold of Skypig local about it, maybe.

EU-4356: Copy that, Old Henry. I’m on it. You have a good flight.

(Investigator’s Note: It was at this point in time that Gladys McHavernathy, aka Hot Chicken, contacted Space Patrol HQ on Europa via direct com channel. Please refer to this report’s Supplement C for a full transcript of that conversation. A pause occurs in the laser relay’s recordings at this point, roughly the length of that phone conversation. It appears that the timestamps on our inboard calls and the laser relay station match.)

EU-4356: All right, the Skypigs are looking into Old Henry’s contact. We’ll let them deal with it.

GA-54: Breaker, breaker one-nine-six. This is Firebarrel. I just passed Old Henry goin the other way; any you have word on them joyguzzlers of his on a foxtrot-six(13) with the Whisky Cooler?

CA-936: Firebarrel, this is Puddlestomper. Always good to see your fine self flying into Europa local. I believe Hot Chicken’s been on the line with the Skypigs about them joyguzzlers. You headed for an offload at Delta station?

GA-54: That’s an affirm, Puddlestomper. You going to try to invite me for another round of greengrog? I don’t recall the last time going so well.

CA-936: I think it went all right, but that’s none to the point. We got us Fat Squirrel here in Europa local, and he’s about to fill up Delta Station with honest-to-God beer from the blue dot.

GA-54: Jimmy, if you’re pulling my leg I’m going to find you on Delta and smack you so hard your last remaining teeth will…

EA-29384XB: Firebarrel, this is Fat Squirrel. I can’t vouch none for Jimmy’s tolerableness on a date, but he ain’t lyin’ about the beer. I’ve got me a teralitre and a half of Big Larch Lager on its way to Delta, ETA 1:32.

GA-54: Well, if that ain’t just a thing to get a girl’s attention. Jimmy, I do believe I’ll take you up on your offer to buy me one.

EA-29384XB: Puddlestomper, I think you owe me for getting you a second date.

CA-936: That’s an affirm, Fat Squirrel. We’ll catch up on Delta. Maybe I can set you up with my cousin Doreen. She’s not as pretty as Leslie out there, but she’s got most’er teeth an’ she cooks a fine stew. Maybe I’ll get her on a shuttle up to Delta, see’s if you two…

SP-1: This is an activation of the Emergency Lightcast System. This is not a test. Please stay tuned to this channel for further instructions. Repeat. This is an activation of the Emergency Lightcast System. This is not a test. Please stay tuned to this channel for further instructions.

(Investigator’s Note: This announcement is followed by a standard fifteen-second two-tone alarm. Once the ELS is activated, inbound and outbound signals from the relay station are blocked for the duration of the emergency broadcast. Therefore, we have no recordings of the assorted trucker’s transmissions during this time.)

SP-1: This is the Emergency Lightcast System. An object accelerating at a high rate of speed toward the crust of Europa is hereby confirmed to be a rebel missile. Current analysis suggests that this missile is of the planet-cracking variety. We ask all citizens not to panic. We do not have Space Patrol craft on course capable of interception. We ask all citizens not to panic. All spacefaring vehicles in Europa Local, please forward vehicle specification and current vectors to 65.334.2305.67 for immediate processing. Repeat…

(Investigator’s note: This message repeats itself three times prior to allowing normal conversation to resume. In the interest of brevity, I have not included all three repetitions in transcribing this recording. However, they should be taken into account given any potential analysis of timing.)

GA-54: Did he just say planet-cracker?

CA-936: That’s an affirm, Leslie. New plan, how’s about you and I burn our vector up to high orbit around the crush ball?

GA-54: Nice thought, Jimmy, but I’m way past Rubicon on the Ice to Ice run.(14) Gonna reaccelerate incycle and try to burn to low orbit.

CA-936: Damn it all, we just turned into ships passing in the night. T’ain’t nearly as romantic-like as it sounds.

EU-4356: Give it up, Jimmy, it was never meant to be anyways. Firebarrel, I’m going to be joining you on that incycle burn; I’m swinging around towards Delta station and am about to burn to break orbit. Fat Squirrel, you got yourself an way out?

EA-29384XB: Well, I’m coming in hot, figure I’ll bust past and back outcycle with Jimmy if I…

SP-1: EA-29384XB, This is Space Patrol One. Please copy.

EA-29384XB: Shit, boys, I think I’m in trouble for something. Ok, SP-1, this is EA-29384XB, Fat Squirrel in the driver’s seat. I copy.

SP-1: Er, yes. Mr. Squirrel, you are hereby requested to vector towards X thirty-five degrees, Y seventy-two degrees, Z negative forty-eight degrees. Please confirm.

EA-29384XB: Uh, SP-1, this is Fat Squirrel. I copy your request of X thirty-five, Y seventy-two, Z negative forty-eight. Is this an official order? I am currently on a course confirmed in flight plan number…

SP-1: Standby.

(Sergeant Greg Wilicutty’s report is available as supplement A. Based on timestamps it is reasonable to say that during the interim period when Sgt. Wilicutty is absent from this transcript, he is confirming the requisition order from his superior officers.)

EU-4356: Murray, them Skypigs trying to pull you over(15) in the middle of a planet-cracking attack? That don’t seem right at all.

EA-29384XB: Not sure. They just went all quiet on me.

GA-54: Odds are the vacuum porkers(16) didn’t even listen to their own emergency notice. Fat Squirrel’s gonna get a load ticket, and we’re gonna watch the Whisky Cooler blow while he does. Typical.

CA-936: Dammit all, Murray, just get the hell out of there. Let them match your vector if they want to board. Don’t let them get you…

SP-1: This is Space Patrol One to EA-29384XB. Fat Squirrel, you are hereby ordered, not requested, to set vector as previously mentioned, with an additional negative one-point-five Z.

EA-29384XB: Uh, SP-1, Fat Squirrel here. I copy your order and am complying. Course adjusting now. Can I ask the reason for this board?

SP-1: Mr. Squirrel, this is not a request to allow boarding. This is a requisition order under Space Patrol Charter, Section…

EA-29384XB: A requisition? What do the Skypigs need with a teralitre and a half of beer?

CA-936: Greedy sons of bitches, them Skypigs.

EU-4356: Hush now, Jimmy. Let the adults talk.

SP-1: Mr. Squirrel, please confirm that you have adopted the new heading and re-send vector data.

EA-29384XB: Uh, copy. Confirmed and complying, SP-1.

SP-1: Roger that. We are going to need you to make a 3.5G acceleration burn for thirty seconds at t-minus twenty-five…

EA-29384XB: 3.5G? That’s max burn forward! SP-1, I am currently attempting deceleration for in-system docking… that kind of burn is going to wreak havoc with Delta station.

SP-1: EA-29384XB, acknowledge 3.5G acceleration burn in t-minus thirteen…

EA-29384XB: On your head be it, then. Order acknowledged.

GA-54: Holy crap, anyone else look at the flight vectors on that burn?

SP-1: t-minus five

EA-29384XB: Firebarrel, this is Fat Squirrel, what do you…

SP-1: Initiate burn.

EA-29384XB: Burn Initiated. Firebarrel, what do you mean the flight vectors?

GA-54: Fat Squirrel, pull all incoming up on navcomp. I think the Skypigs are putting you on foxtrot six with the planet cracker.

(Investigator’s Note: A moment of silence follows this. An examination of the consoles of Leslie Malera aka Firebarrel, James Wotenheim aka Puddlestomper, and Gladys McHavernathy aka Hot Chicken show they all ran this simulation at roughly the same time. Judging by the following transmission, Mr. Williams ran a similar program, but due to the EM pulse of the blast we were unable to reconstruct his navcomp’s memory.)

EA-29384XB: Well, I’ll be. SP-1, you got any idea how I’m gonna…

CA-936: SP-1, this is CA-936, Puddlestomper piloting. Request that I be given vector to foxtrot six with incoming missile instead of Fat Squirrel.

GA-54: Jimmy! That’s one hell of an offer. You sure you want to do that?

CA-936: We can just emergency blow away from our loads once the course is set; shouldn’t get us caught in the blast. Only problem is, Murray’s about to blow up the first chance we had at real beer. I ain’t gonna drink no more kelp ifn’s I can help it.

SP-1: Puddlestomper, that’s a negative on your request. EA-29384XB is the closest vessel. In addition, we show that the cargo of EA-29384XB is almost entirely liquid, which should provide less dangerous shrapnel post-explosion. Fat Squirrel, we show appropriate course and speed. You may detach your cab at any time.

CA-936: (Investigator’s note: At this point in the recording, there is an open transmission from CA-936. No actual words can be heard, but closer inspection reveals a choked sob at one point during the transmission.)

EA-29384XB: Cargo away.

EU-4356: Goodbye, sweet lager. We hardly knew ye.

CA-936: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

GA-54: Jimmy, you know Shakespeare?

CA-936: Who?

GA-54: Nevermind.

EA-29384XB: SP-1, permission to vector away and burn an acceleration to avoid that blast?

SP-1: Standby.

EA-29384XB: Ummmm… SP-1? What, exactly, do you mean “standby”?

SP-1: Projected impact in t-minus three…

EA-29384XB: Oh, shi….

(Investigator’s note: At this point, the impact occurred. See our main report as well as the vector analysis of the remaining beer in Supplement D and the meteorological report detailing the pattern of the rain of beer on Europa for details on the explosion.)

EU-4356: Murray?

(Investigator’s note: A thirty-second silence follows this)

EU-4356: Fat Squirrel, this is Hot Chicken, please respond. Repeat, Fat Squirrel this is Hot Chicken, respond.

GA-54: I’m coming in from that side of the Whisky Cooler. Space Patrol One, this is GA-54, Firebarrel piloting. Request vector information to make visual check on projected intercept with Fat Squirrel.

SP-1: Standby.

GA-54: Of course. Another Standby.

(Investigator’s note: While there is a significant amount of displeasure at Sgt. Wilicutty displayed in this transcript, a review of this report as a whole should recommend him for significant commendation in his quick calculations. It is this investigator’s opinion that, without the heroic actions of Sgt. Wilicutty, Europa may very well have been victim to the Ganymedean rebel attack.)

EU-4356: Sons-of-bitches.

GA-54: Exactly. Ooo, I can see the blast site on my scope now. It’s a giant, expanding star, made of freezing beer. Here, I’m streaming it; check your visuals.

CA-936: It’s… beautiful.

SP-1: Firebarrel, permission to vector granted. Come to X negative twenty-two, Y twelve, Z eleven.

GA-54: Roger that. Initiating vector shift.

EU-4356: You see him, Leslie?

GA-54: Ummm… not yet. SP-1, do I have an ETA on contact?

SP-1: Stand…

GA-54: …by? How did I not see that coming. Ooo, there’s his cab. Pulling it up on scope now.

EU-4356: Do you see Murray? Is he OK?

GA-54: No, not yet. It’s pretty dark in… wait, there he is! He’s got a handlight, shining back and forth. It looks like he’s alive, but no power systems. SP-1, are you copying this? Fat Squirrel is alive but stranded on your projected course. No idea how much air he has in there.

SP-1: Copy that, Firebarrel. Deploying fast rescue units now.

EU-4356: Oh, thank God.

CA-936: Hey, SP-1, when you haul him outta that dead can of his, can you get us an ETA on the next shipment he’ll have coming in?

SP-1: Uh… standby.

(Investigator’s note: This transcript largely confirms all other reports contained herein. However, it does specifically contain the requisition language Big Larch Brewing has asked about. It would appear that, given Mr. William’s reticence to respond prior to being ordered, we are liable to Big Larch for the cost of one tanker truck and 1.5 Tl of beer. As this investigator is currently quartered on Delta Station, it is requested that recompensation be made with all due haste).

-END TRANSCRIPT-

(1) “Long haul from the Blue Dot”—Jargon for making the trip from Earth to the colonies on the Jovian Moons.

(2) Jupiter

(3) Slang for the fermented kelp beverage currently used as the primary intoxicant on the Jovian moons.

(4) Someone who works primarily from Earth

(5) “Empty air” does not refer to actual air. Rather, it refers to “air waves” of the late twentieth century, where atmospheric radio communications were the primary method of communication. Empty air simply means noone to talk to.

(6) Jovian Moons.

(7) To a higher orbit around Jupiter

(8) Io, so named because of its many mountains and volcanoes.

(9) Ganymede, so named due to its very recent colonization.

(10) A person who drives at maximum acceleration until Rubicon, then maximum deceleration. A practice reviled by the truckers, as it tends to be out-of-control wealthy teenagers who can afford the massive fuel expense.

(11) Europa; presumably so named because it is a giant ball of ice.

(12) That would be us, the Space Patrol.

(13) Collision course. “Foxtrot” bears here the same meaning it does in the more common term “Charlie Foxtrot.” “Six” refers to direction. Thus, putting oneself on a course for a foxtrot-six means, delicately, to invite fornication from the rear.

(14) The run between Ganymede and Europa.

(15) Another term adopted from ground-based trucking. Colloquial for executing a standard boarding check.

(16) i.e., Space Pig. Us again.

Looking at Maxwell (“Mac”) Horace (didn’t like to be called Maxwell or Max) you’d never, ever guess this six-foot-six, 250 pound bear of a guy with ruddy face, full head of black hair, and the greenest eyes that would make even plants blush, could ever have anything—anything wrong with him. Boisterous laugh, loved blue jeans and pearl buttoned monochrome shirts of vivid color—looked like he would not only be the life of a party, but the life of life itself. And you’d think him the happiest, healthiest person you’d ever met.

However, if you went out to the Lumber Jack Tavern, out there in Darrington, this little town huddled near the base of the vertical, 6000 foot vertical, jagged wall of brooding, ice-capped Whitehorse Mountain just an hour northeast of Seattle, it became obvious—he had a problem. Especially noticeable after he had a beer or two. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first.

I met him in the evening at the opening of the coffeehouse, The Mountain Loop. Beautiful place with blond, wood floors, walls painted magenta; one section a book store, the other, for snacks and coffee with round, glass-topped tables and behind the counter with low open cooler next to it, a big, black board with menu written in bright, orange chalk, the prices in white.

Anyway, I got there later than planned and found it unexpectedly crowded for a Sunday evening. I looked about and finally saw an empty seat at the table where this fellow sat. And as I sat, I plopped on the table a long-sought copy of Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and then proceeded to wrestle off my coat. The book caught this fellow’s attention. “Oh, hey, you a Bradbury fan?” His eyes got big as he drank in the cover art of Thee Bradbury.

“God,” I laughed, “who isn’t? Fantasist superb and one of those folks who I think wrote magic realism. He wrote everything—even wrote for The Twilight Zone.”

“Magic realism?” He leaned back, plopped hands on the table, then picked up his latte. “Heard about that. Fantasy, right?” He sipped his drink then slowly put it down on the table.

I smiled. “Actually, it’s not a lot different than lucid dreaming where the strange and real co-exist. You don’t think anything about how strange the dream may be, except when you wake up and remember it.” I then added as an afterthought, “Been thinking recently that maybe ‘magic realism’ is code for ‘lucid dreaming’.”

“Oh, okay—” and so, after introductions, there began a most spirited and earnest conversation that revealed Mac to be a voracious reader of everything. From romance (“Hey! Guys like love too!”) to folks like Allende, Marques, Kafka and the paranormal (had all the episodes of The X-Files on DVD) and science fiction (had all the episodes of Star Trek) and everything else in between.

So we sat at a table at the opening of this new coffee shop and it soon became very obvious that we had a lot to talk about. And as the evening began to move into the night and, to the closing of the coffee shop, Mac said, “Lumber Jack Tavern just down the street. Beer? We can talk more. But first—”

“Oh, yeah—”

He trotted off to use the facilities.

Then, to the tavern, local dive with bright red planking up the front. To the right and left of the door, big windows with neon art for Skagit Porter and Coors in the right window. The left side held a flashing “open” sign in red letters in a circle of bright, vision-numbing blue neon.

For a Sunday night, it was crowded, but after a minute, a table against the wall opened up. Sturdy, high-backed wood chairs, Formica tabletops of interlocking, green triangles over white background.

“Used to be a café,” said Mac. “They just kept the décor when it became a tavern.”

Smiling waitress came over, long chocolate hair, dark eyes, and business-like. “Beer for you guys?” she slapped down a coaster for me and then Mac. “Somethin’ ta eat?”

She then stood straight. I surmised that beneath that oversized plaid shirt she wore, she was, as they say, weight and height proportional. But had that look of someone who was used to dealing with just about anything when it comes to customers.

“No,” I said, “for now, a Cascade Stout would be fine.”

“Skagit Porter,” said Mac and the conversation continued on, punctuated by frequent trips to the bathroom for Mac. At one point when he came back he sighed, “Curse of the Horace family—small bladders though I notice it more when I drink beer. Don’t know why unless it’s something about beer. But—” He grinned, sitting back and taking a big gulp of brew, “not about to stop. That’s for sure.”

I laughed, held my glass up. “A toast to beer. One can only guess how many relationships cemented and wars averted by sitting down and having a glass of beer.”

Mac grinned. We clinked glasses. “Amen. To beer.”

And before long and several more beers later, and feeling pretty tipsy, we both had to go but, after some minutes and polite knocking on the door to the one bathroom—

“Fuck,” said Mac. “Fuck me but I gotta pee.”

“You and me both. Whoever’s in there must have passed out. Well—”

Mac motioned with his head. “Patch of woods out back beyond the parking lot.”

We made our way through the Lumber Jack. Once outside, wove through parked cars and to some tall trees just beyond the parking lot. The moon was out, making our task a bit more in need of cover. After finding convenient trees, we, as they say, let fly.

Funny what things you notice during such times; especially when feeling the effects of fine beer, the coolness of the air, Whitehorse, shining like a ragged, icy ghost just a ways away, and, just finishing my task, I pointed skyward. “Shooting star! You see that?”

The shooting star abruptly slowed but kept coming and then—stopped shooting. It just sat there as if suspended in mid-air.

Mac, still zipping his fly, began stepping back out of the trees, looked up, kept stepping back. “I don’t think that’s a shooting—”

A blaze of light. And a smell like a burned clutch.

Next thing I knew, we were lying flat on a yielding surface in a small room suffused with a faintly golden light. Along one side, a shelf or counter. I stood, then went over to get a better look but each step sent me a bit airborne. “Shit, Mac—gravity—”

“Lack of it.”

I pointed to the counter. He came over. “Probes,” he said, as we gazed at what appeared to be highly-polished medical-looking instruments.

We both looked at each other. I am sure we both shared the mutual look of abrupt understanding: alien abduction.

I don’t know how someone’s face can turn so white, but Mac’s face was certainly white. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “What do we—”

“Don’t know. Never put any stock into alien abduction stuff,” I whispered, “but this sure looks like—”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit. We gotta do something before someone or something wants to get friendly with us and wonder how we tick. What’s worse—”

I looked at him a long moment. “You gotta pee.”

He nodded his head vigorously. “I gotta pee.”

“Well—” Exasperated, I looked around as if looking for a place to do that and came to my senses. “I’m sure whoever has abducted us has probably had all sorts of stuff spilled on the floor from their examinations. Go ahead and piss.”

He turned, went to the nearest wall and began to let go—and stopped. “My God!” He pointed, “my God—”

I came over to look. Where he had pissed on the wall, that part of the wall—had melted. Eagerly, I tried. Not as much came of my effort but certainly part of the wall where I had done my duty had obviously softened.

“Yeah,” I said, “whatever that beer does to your piss sure doesn’t work for this place.”

I saw Mac relax and I smiled. A weapon?

Dong in hand, Mac went over to the counter with all the formidable and weird medical-looking paraphernalia and said, “No, no, not tonight, dear. I don’t want an examination.”

And he promptly aimed a forceful yellow stream all over the equipment and the shelf.

Wow! I don’t know what beer did to Mac’s pee—maybe it was coincidental, I dunno, but the instruments acted like they’d been hit by a laser; everything just— melted, shriveled up and gave off a God-awful acrid odor of piss as if mixed with sulfur and garlic. The metal shrieked, squealed as if they were living entitles that had somehow taken on static forms of instruments.

At that point, part of the wall yanked back, revealing our captors who looked like somehow feminized lizards: big dark, soulful eyes, more or less set as if to give binocular vision, no nose, grayish-green skin and dressed in some sort of body-hugging, synthetic wrap, almost as if sprayed on. They looked around, pointed and squealed, I assume in shock.

We turned and faced our abductors directly. Mac still had his “weapon” in his hand. I pulled down my zipper and found my own, guessing that our friends had seen the damage Mac had done, I could only assume I could do the same. We approached. Then stopped, raised our formidable weapons and made like we were going to fire.

Our friends screeched. Blam! The wall slammed shut. Golden light.

And we found ourselves flat on our backs on the parking lot outside the Lumber Jack. We looked up in time to see the star streak away at high speed eastward. Suddenly, I imagined a vast armada of glowing ships heading toward Earth, then abruptly stopping as if hitting a wall—then suddenly retreating. For a few minutes I guess, we both conked out, maybe from shock or relief combined with the effects of the beer. Anyway, when I came to, Mac was trying to sit up.

“You get a picture in your head before we zoned out of a bunch of ships in retreat?” I asked. “A mass-mind telepathic command to am-scray?”

Smiling hugely, Mac slowly got to his feet and gave me a hand.

“Yup,” he laughed. “Maybe having a small bladder ain’t so bad. Maybe what beer does to me ain’t so bad either. Certainly saved the world from alien invasion tonight.”

“That it did,” I said, “that it did. Suggest we celebrate and have another round.”

“Sounds great,” said Mac, “but first,” he turned his back discreetly.

“I know,” I laughed. “I know. But first—you gotta pee.”

The following is transcribed from an interview with extremely aged (1) German pig farmer Gustavo Dourtmundschtradel, conducted in English(2) by Roland Halifax, an oral history researcher from Bisonford University in Littleville, Iowa, (3) originally recorded on November 22nd, 1993 at Gustavo’s ancestral farmhouse in the hamlet of Frauschlesundmunster. (4)

RH: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.

GD: A man of my age is of no further use with the pigs, Herr Halifax. It is good to have some other occupation—and to hope, of course, that some of my ancestral lore may be preserved… For some more appreciative audience, perhaps, than my dummkopf (5) son, who never believes a word I speak… and his even dimmer offspring with their video games and little music players. (Thoughtful pause) I must confess to fearing that the Dourtmundschtradel line is failing. Soon, our stories may be all that remains of us.

RH: Ah… Well then… What story would you like to start with?

GD: It is always best to start at the beginning, ja?(6) So I will tell you first, Herr Halifax, the oldest story in my family’s possession. A tale of the liberation of Durn in Schkerrinwald—the place from which my line originates, too many centuries ago to count now.

RH: Can you give me even an approximate century in which to place this account?

GD: Ach du Lieber Himmel. (7) No, lad. My tale comes from a time before centuries had been invented. This is from the… How is it in English?… The Jahren sehr lange Geschichten. (8)

RH: Good heavens! (9) That’s quite an old story! However did you come by it?

GD: I had it from my father.

RH: And… do you know how he came by it?

GD: Had it from his father, of course—who had it from his father, and so on. I am 91 years old, Herr Halifax. The time we have is maybe short to waste on such trivialities, ja?

RH: Sorry. Do go on.

GD: Well, as you will no doubt have heard, Europe was a dark place to be living in those days. But even by such standards, the isolated village of Durn was darker than most. It had many nicknames then, all of them words for misery of one kind or another.

RH: I’ve never heard of any Durn Village.

GD: Of course not. It was gone not long after this story transpired. The meager valley to which it clung was but an inhospitable rent in the high mountains of Schkerrinwald.

RH: Where is Schkerrinwald, exactly?

GD: Gone as well—a mere century or two after Durn. The whole empire of Vorkenfast was never more than one of many tenuous experiments in kingdom-craft back then.

RH: I must confess, I’ve never heard of an empire named Vorkenfast either.

GD: How could you have? I would never have heard of it myself, were my people not descended from the place. (10) And yet, out of Durn, meanest village of Schkerrinwald, least kingdom of the tenuous Vorkenfast Empire, came the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon Europe.

RH: Which was…?

GD: Why, beer, of course! (11) And my own many-times-great-grandfather was the man who first brought that golden gift into the land of Germany.

RH: I’m sorry… Did you just say… that your family introduced beer to Germany?

GD: Ja. (12)

RH: (Unintelligible sounds of surprise and/or confusion.)

GD: Before you inform me once again that you have never heard of this, Herr Halifax, allow me to concede that any tangible evidence of this claim vanished with my ancient ancestors, which is why I have never elected to tell even my disappointing son of this secret handed down through so many of my forefathers. I have no doubt of the tale’s veracity. Neither my father, nor any of his fathers were liars—or fools. (13) My son, alas, is the first of us for that. But I am German,(14) and my people do not so much enjoy playing the laughingstock as do those of your young country, so I have kept silent until now. You seem a pleasant fellow, wise enough to value the past more than most, but if you think my tale too improbable, let us leave it and proceed to some other.

RH: No, no! Please, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, continue. I’m quite fascinated.

GD: Very well, then…

The valley of Durn, as I was saying, had been oppressed for decades by a tyrant who styled himself Lord Augustus Stephenson of the Brown Feather; (15) a paranoid bombast who kept a small army of henchmen stabled like cattle in his heavily fortified manse upon a steep rise at the valley’s southern end. This pretense of a castle squatted like a guardhouse between the village and a great waterfall that marked the valley’s only navigable passage to the outside world. No one came or went from Durn without Lord Stephenson’s leave, which is to say that almost no one ever came or went from Durn at all—except as prisoners or exiles. (16)

This self-styled ‘Lord’ was universally referred to by the valley’s unfortunate inhabitants as Mad Gus—never within his hearing, of course—for few in Durn had not suffered frequent outrages at his unpredictable whim. Mad Gus saw punishment as a preventative measure. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was not just his favorite Bible verse; it was the only one he knew. He liked it so well that he had it carved upon his coat of arms. (17) A week did not go by without someone’s wife dragged from the house and sold to slavers in remuneration of some petty debt to Stephenson, real or imagined—or someone’s home or barn torched in the middle of the night as warning against whatever wrong Mad Gus imagined was being contemplated in their hearts—or someone’s child abducted and caged up at the castle until he or she grew old enough to serve Mad Gus as yet another henchman or kitchen drudge—or someone’s husband beaten just for entertainment in the fields or village square by the tyrant’s ‘peacekeepers.’ Neither loitering, truancy, gossip, nor public play or celebration were allowed in Durn. Only labor was tolerated there, and Mad Gus took all of whatever anyone’s labor produced beyond the little required by them to starve through another winter without actually dying. (18)

RH: What a grim situation… Why did these people not revolt? It doesn’t sound as if they had much to lose.

GD: It was the beer, Herr Halifax.

RH: The beer? I… don’t quite see—

GD: The one exception to Mad Gus’s insane selfishness and cruelty was the beer. Or so it seems, at first glance, ja?

RH: Ah. Right… First glance at… what, exactly?

GD: Understand, Herr Halifax, the people of Durn were allowed one male goat or cow and one female. Any kids or calves produced were confiscated just as soon as they were weaned, and taken off to grace the royal table—as was any milk not used for making cheese. Mad Gus’s subjects were encouraged to make all the cheese they wished, but not allowed to eat a bite of it. Off to the castle with that too, straight from the molds. Folk kept just half a bushel of whatever produce they might eke out of the rocky soil. All the rest was seized as ‘tax’ upon harvest and sent up to the tyrant’s bulging granaries and cellars against some rainy day. His rainy day, of course, not theirs. BUT! Strangely enough, folk were allowed to keep all the hops and grain that they might wish—just as long as it was brewed straight into beer. You would expect that once the work of brewing had been done, all that beer would vanish up into the castle with the rest, ja? But to everyone’s carefully suppressed astonishment, no! Mad Gus allowed the folk of Durn to keep their beer as well. As much as they could make and store and drink.

RH: Why?

GD: Mad Gus claimed to hate the stuff. With a passion—as one might expect of such a tyrant, ja? What other kind of man could hate such divine elixir? One might even surmise that this deviant abhorrence was the very cause of his degraded character. But the truth is otherwise, I think. Mad Gus was likely not so mad as that.

RH: But still… why then? It makes no sense.

GD: Does it not?

RH: Why are you smiling that way?

GD: All in good time, young man. First, you must know something about how beer came to be, for, as I said, it came to be right there in Durn. No one else had ever tried—or thought of trying—to make beer then. (19) Why would they have? Beer begins as pretty noxious stuff prior to the miracle of fermentation. Its first manufacture in Durn was just an accident—the result, in fact, of Mad Gus’s own relentless greed.

It is said that some poor farmer, whose name is sadly lost to us, had tried to cheat Mad Gus out of his excessive ‘tax’ by hiding a few scant ingredients for bread and herbal soup within his little hovel, thinking that the tyrant’s henchmen would not notice such a small omission. But Mad Gus had trained his men quite… passionately, let us say, and they were not deceived. So, when the poor man saw them ride into his yard, he poured all his illicit grain and herbs and yeast into the only hiding place at his disposal, an extremely large urn of water, unfortunately still half full, then jammed a rag into its mouth in hopes that his assailants would not look inside. They did, of course. That urn was likely the only object in the hovel worth examining. When they saw the soupy mess he’d made of his ill-gotten grain, they shoved the rag back into place and left the mess to rot. The man himself was left to rot as well, inside Mad Gus’s dungeon.

Somehow, though, the hapless man survived Mad Gus’s hospitality, and three months later, was released—which was not so great a favor as it may seem at first. Winter was well arrived by then. The valley was all hunkered down to starve until the spring, and the paroled farmer, already weak and hungry from his ordeal, had no one to assist him. Amidst the snowdrifts that had blown into his open hovel since they’d taken him away, he found nothing but the water urn they’d left, still containing all the food he had possessed. Without much hope, I imagine, he removed the rag and peered inside. Have you ever seen the afterbirth of fresh beer, Herr Halifax? (20)

RH: I fear I haven’t.

GD: It does not smell too bad, and it gives off a certain heat in fermentation, so it was not likely frozen, which was doubtless fortunate, but it is otherwise a most unappealing sight. Still, a man starving in winter might try anything. It seems he drank some of the fizzy, clotted broth into which all that grain and yeast had composted in his absence, likely hoping it might still provide at least a trace more nutritional value than could be derived from the frozen clay of his packed-earth floor, or the weathered wooden lintel of his doorway. (21) It must not have tasted too badly, for it seems he drank enough of it to experience a strange and wonderful euphoria.

RH: You’re not telling me that no one had ever been drunk before this, are you?

GD: Not in Durn, they hadn’t. And no one ever anywhere, not from beer. (22)

RH: Good heavens.

GD: Indeed. The urn was apparently large enough to provide a bit more of the miraculous substance to share with neighbors, who, in exchange for this transcendent experience, gave him enough food to delay his death from excessive starvation for several more weeks.

RH: He still died—after all that?!

GD: Alas. It seems he did. Martyred to bring beer into the world. I am told that one could find shrines dedicated to him throughout Schkerrinwald for centuries afterward.

RH: I’m sorry, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I feel compelled to ask: does this story of yours get any happier?

GD: Has beer ever made you… happy, Herr Halifax?

RH: Well… er… I suppose it… may have… Once or twice.

GD: Then you have your answer. This is the story of beer, young man, which has not just one, but many millions of happy endings. (23)

RH: I’m not sure that’s exactly what I—

GD: Returning to the point, however, they say that when Mad Gus was informed of the poor man’s struggle to survive on rotted grain in spoiled water, he laughed long and loud, then ordered one of his henchmen to bring him a small flask of the substance to examine. It is further said that he found the sample so revolting, he killed the man who’d brought it to him. (24)

RH: What a monster.

GD: As I’ve said, what else can be expected of a man who dislikes beer? After that, it amused him to invite the rest of his subjects to drink all the rotten grain and bitter, spoiled water they wished—which is, ostensibly, how the limitations on retention of certain staples became so liberalized. ‘If these ungrateful subjects find my provision for them insufficient,’ Mad Gus is said to have announced, ‘then they may drink all the bread they want.’

RH: Er… Well, all right. But it could not have taken long for him to notice that they liked the stuff. Wouldn’t he have changed his mind then?

GD: Oh, they were no doubt careful to pretend dislike of this new concoction, and that they drank it purely out of dietary desperation—as may well have been the case at first. But I suspect the real reason they persisted in drinking it, and the real reason Mad Gus went on letting them, were one and the same: beer’s effect. Left so little else to eat, they must have pinched their noses and endured this new ‘liquid bread’ for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, ja? No doubt they found the drunken state this left them in as… engaging, shall we say, as so many of us still do. But can you not see how useful Mad Gus may have found this unintended consequence as well?

RH: I’m… not sure I can. Assuming most of them were happy drunks, I’d still expect a man like that to have put a stop to it, just on principle.

GD: Think of them not as ‘happy,’ Herr Halifax, but as ‘pacified,’ for I suspect that is how Mad Gus saw them. He must have known—as you yourself have pointed out—that he was in danger should they ever decide they’d had enough. But while a people always pleasantly drunk or at least partially hung over may clearly still get angry, they are far less likely to get very motivated, much less organized, ja? (25)

RH: Why, that’s… diabolical. Your father told you all this?

GD: The outlines, young man, the outlines… And this is where my story really starts. Or where the story starts being mine, at any rate. My family’s ancestral founder was a man named Gundar Dourtmund. The schtradel portion of our surname was not added until many centuries later. Young Gundar was technically a barley farmer in Durn, though, like all the others in that benighted valley, he lived as little more than a miserable serf. He too had lost crops, cattle, property, and family members to Mad Gus’s vindictive whims. But he too subsisted largely on beer, and so had simply drifted like the others into a state of muddled resignation.

One autumn morning, as he was pulling a great cart of freshly harvested barley from his fields through the village on his way to Mad Gus’s castle granaries—without benefit of any oxen, for his only animals had been stolen by Mad Gus’s men the previous week (26)—he chanced to see his good friend, Horning Brock, the village innkeeper, standing outside his establishment. After more than a millennium, of course, none can say exactly what passed between them there, but one can well imagine how their conversation must have gone.

“Where are your oxen?” Brock would surely have asked.

“Where do you suppose?” Gundar probably replied.

They would likely have glanced up wearily at Mad Gus’s hulking manse.

“Ah,” Brock sighs. “Just so with my dear Marya.”

“No!” Gundar gasps. “They took your wife?”

Brock nods sadly. “Two weeks ago. And my sweet daughter, Hester, just last Tuesday. Had you not heard?”

“Sadly, no,” Gundar answers. “I’ve been busy in the fields with harvest for some weeks now, as you see.”

“And poor Lily just last night.”

“Your five-year-old?!” Gundar gasps. “Whatever have you done to piss them off so, Horning?”

“They’ve not told me yet,” Brock answers. “They’re clearly very busy at the moment, but I’m sure they’ll get around to explanations just as soon as there’s a lull in all this kidnapping.” The two men likely turned another wistful glance up at the tyrant’s fort. “At least they’ve left my little Kamber,” Brock adds, trying to seem stoic. “It’s true he’s only three; but he can fair well reach the stove already, if he stands upon a box. Should they come for me as well, I’m sure he’ll make a fine innkeeper just as soon as he can lift more than his nose above the counter from behind the bar.” (27)

Or, if not these words exactly, I am sure their conversation would have been something very like this. It’s how things were in Durn back then.

At any rate, it is passed down that Brock invited Gundar inside to share a stein of beer; and given all the sadness both men had to process, it would have been extremely rude of Gundar to refuse him. He removed the yoke from his shoulders, and left his barley wagon in the street.

It is never a good idea to drink beer quickly, of course. There were no antacids in those days. (28) So they lingered over that first stein, as one does. It turned out that many other calamities had been suffered recently by various townsfolk, of which Gundar had heard nothing, being preoccupied with harvest. So another stein or two were had as Brock brought Gundar up to date on all of Gus’s latest shenanigans.

To that point, they had been drinking a light and pleasant lager, (29) as one did then in the mornings after breakfast, but before they knew it, lunchtime had arrived, and being an hospitable man by both trade and nature, Brock could hardly have sent Gundar back to his long slog without some meal to sustain him. So he brought out a potato, (30) and poured them each a pint of pale ale(31) to wash it down with. Of course, Gundar was not the sort of man to accept another fellow’s largess and then just rush off without so much as a fare-thee-well. Even peasant manners dictate that one linger after such a meal for at least the minimal pleasantries and small talk.

This courtesy occasioned another stein or two, and, it being afternoon by then, they moved to hearty oatmeal stout.(32) As the sun slanted lower through the inn’s bottle-glass windows, and the air began to chill, the two men finished off their very satisfying visit with a pint or two, or five perhaps, of Brock’s fine late-season porter.(33) Then Gundar stood at last, with relatively minor difficulty, and thanked Brock warmly, while insisting that he really must be off to finish his delivery.

They stumbled outside together, and soon had the barley wagon’s yoke untangled from the ground and firmly settled onto Brock’s stout shoulders. It took just a minute more to have it off again, and onto Gundar’s shoulders. Then, with a determined heave or two, my many-times great-grandfather was off again toward Mad Gus’s hilltop granary—even by Durn’s standards, quite profoundly ‘shitfaced’, as you Americans say. Little did he know what was about to come of such a mundane visit with his friend.

RH: Herr Dourtmundschtradel, I really must congratulate you on such clarity of memory at your age. (34) How long has it been since you last heard this tale from your father?

GD: It is difficult to be certain. He told it to me many times, but the last I can recall was during a long train ride to visit one of his mistresses when I was… eight years old, perhaps. He died not long after that. Of a gunshot wound. To the back. Quite a tangle at the time…

RH: My condolences, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.

GD: Thank you, Herr Halifax, but I assure you it is all ancient history to me now.

RH: Well, I must say, this tale of yours is really… very long. Perhaps I ought to change the tape before we go further.

(Tape two)

RH: All right. I think we’re ready to continue. You were saying…?

GD: Yes. Well. By all accounts, Gundar was so drunk, the fact he ever even reached the granary gates is yet another sign of divinity’s hand in this affair. It was near twilight when Gundar finally wheezed and wobbled to a halt within the castle courtyard. And who was he astonished and dismayed to find there waiting for him, but Mad Gus himself.

RH: Uh-oh.

GD: (Wheezy laughter, followed by a fit of coughing.) The brevity of which your language is so capable never ceases to astonish me, Herr Halifax. It is just so… laughable. (35)

But yes. Just as you say, ‘Uh-oh.’ From what my father handed down to me, the ensuing conversation between Mad Gus and Gundar went something more or less like this:

Mad Gus says, “You’re late, you drunken sot! We’ve been waiting for you here all afternoon and into dinner!”

All Gundar’s inebriated brain can manufacture in reply is, “Why?”

“You dare ask me WHY?!” Mad Gus bellows. “What an impertinent question! Are you too drunk to see who stands before you?”

“Before me?” Gundar looks around, bewildered. “I didn’t mean to cut in line. If someone was here first, I’m glad to wait.”

“I’m talking about ME, Barrel Brains!” says the tyrant. “Your KING stands before you—WAITING for a wagonload of barley that should have been here before lunch!”

“You’re before me?” asks Gundar, even more confused. “But… why would you be made to wait in line… in your own courtyard? You’re the king.”

“There is no line, you idiot!” Mad Gus shouts. “You’re the only one in line!”

“Then… what’s the problem?” Gundar pleads.

“YOU’RE LATE!!!” screams the tyrant.

“For what?” whines Gundar. Even he can tell this isn’t being managed well, but granary deliveries were never ‘by appointment.’ If there’d been some schedule here, he had never been informed of it… Then again, his friend, Brock, still hadn’t been informed of why they’d kidnapped his two daughters and his wife…

“I sent men to your farm this morning for the barley,” Mad Gus growls, (36) clearly struggling to regain his composure. “They were informed by a neighbor of yours—since imprisoned—that you’d already left to drag your little wagon here—where we’ve been WAITING for you all damn day!”

“Waiting?” Gundar asks again. “For a cart-full of barley…?”

“When you failed to show up as expected, I’d have bet my second pair of pants that you were trying to flee the valley with my barley! In fact, I still think that’s what you tried to do. So what went wrong, dummkopf?”

“I wasn’t trying to flee anywhere,” Gundar protests. “You know the only way out of Durn leads right through here. Where else could I have gone? Up a cliff? With a cartload of barley?”

“Call me stupid one more time,” says Gus, “and you can laugh it up down in my dungeons with your insolent neighbor. If you weren’t trying to run away, where have you been all day? It should not have taken you two hours to get here from your pathetic little farm.”

Gundar opens his mouth to say he’d just been visiting with Brock, but some lonely, semi-lucid synapse in his finally sobering mind suggests that Brock has already suffered too much at Gus’s hands. Sadly, this brief window of lucidity then closes up again as quickly as it had popped open, and Gundar is so pie-eyed that he can’t quite distinguish at that moment between thoughts and words—which is how the thought, I should just have turned this Gottdamn (37) barley into beer, (38) becomes so inconveniently audible.

“You should have… what?” says Mad Gus very quietly.

“What?” Gundar replies, still only half aware that he had thought aloud.

“Leave your wagon when you go, cur,” Mad Gus tells him, very quietly indeed. “I will have that with the barley for your insolence.”

“But… but without the cart, how am I to bring you next year’s harvest?” Gundar stammers.

“Shut your bung hole, peasant,” Mad Gus answers as quietly as Gundar has ever heard him speak, “and leave here. Now. Or I will have your worthless head to decorate the cart with.”

Well, as you might imagine, Herr Halifax, all this distressing banter had finally cleared Gundar’s mind enough to understand that it was time to run—and not back to his farm where who knew what fate might await him. Where Mad Gus was concerned, displays of quiet restraint were never known to be propitious.

RH: Very ominous indeed. But since you’re here today, I must assume your ancestor survived this misstep.

GD: Indeed, for, though Gundar did not realize it, he had just induced Mad Gus to a commit an even greater misstep of his own.

Unsure that anywhere within the village would be safe for him, Gundar slept out in the forest, wrapped in his cloak against the cold. Early the next morning, he snuck back, hoping to find sanctuary underneath the inn kept by his friend Horner Brock. There was a secret second cellar there, you see, dug out just spoonfuls of dirt at a time over many years by a wide conspiracy of barroom patrons. This small space was used to hide important things or people in times of extraordinary need if Brock deemed it could be done without arousing suspicion in the castle. We will never know whether Brock would have deemed Gundar’s need qualified, for he arrived to find an hysterical mob gathered in Brock’s barroom.

“Gus’s men have emptied all the brewing vats, and carted off the beer!” they cry when Gundar enters. “Every barrel, bottle, and bota bag in the entire village!”

“Gott in Himmel!” (39) Gundar exclaims, quite hungry by that hour, and having hoped to get a stein or two of breakfast there, if not even a potato to scrub it down with. “Why would they do such a thing?”

“They came last night,” he is angrily informed, “claiming you’d spat into Mad Gus’s face and told him no one ought to pay his grain tax anymore! He thinks we are ungrateful now!”

Gundar gapes at them in utter disbelief, then slaps his forehead.

“Can this be true, Gundar?” Brock asks him. “Were you so insane?”

“I do vaguely remember that Mad Gus and I misunderstood each other when I went to offer up my harvest,” Gundar tells them. “That much is true, I think. But if I’d spit at any part of him, would I be living now to speak of it? And why would I have dragged a whole cart full of barley up that Gottdamn hill just to tell him I’d not pay his tax? I was certainly not that drunk.”

“It does sound hard to swallow,” someone in the mob concedes.

“Everything is hard to swallow now,” someone else complains, “without our beer.”

“They burned your farm last night, you know,” Brock tells Gundar gently.

“I’m not surprised,” sighs Gundar.

“Well, we’re not just going to stand for it, are we?” someone else insists.

“Please, don’t cause yourselves more trouble on my account,” Gundar replies stoically. “Winter’s not for several weeks yet. I can build another farm.”

“Who cares about your farm?” protests the other man. “I meant our beer! Winter’s only weeks away, as Herr Barrel Mouth has just observed, and that beer’s all we had to eat!”

This remark is met with cheers of outrage from the mob.

“With winter upon us and all our grain already tucked away up in the castle granaries, we have no way of brewing more!”(39) complains a third man.

“And even if we could,” a fourth man groans, “how would we survive the months required to brew it?”

“Where’s he keeping it all?” asks someone else. “That’s what I want to know. Mad Gus can’t stand beer, so he won’t have many barrels up there.”

“I have it from Hans Schloser, the carpenter,” confides a fifth man, “that Mad Gus has turned one of his granaries into a giant vat!”

“So that’s why they tore down my barn last night!” exclaims another fellow. “Without a word of explanation when they carted off the lumber!”

“Same with my tanning shed!” complains the village taxidermist.

“They’ve made a beer vat from your tanning shed?” someone asks, aghast.

“He’s poured all our different kinds of beer into a single vat?” gasps the man behind him.

“Has he no conscience?” cries a balding man with bandied legs.

“Has he no taste buds?” demands another.

“He has no soul!” booms out a third.

“It’s… sacrilege!” sputters a fourth.

“It’s psychotic sociopathy!” shrills a fifth. (40)

“It’s just too much!” shouts a nearly toothless geezer near the front. “For decades now, that monster steals our cattle with impunity! He burns our barns and houses! He drags our very wives and children from their beds at night and sells them into slavery! Okay, we can live with that stuff; life is never easy. But marching in and grabbing our beer? That crosses the line! I say the time—has come—to take—this FÜCHENMEISTER (41) DOWN!!!”

(Sudden silence, punctuated after some time by a spate of quiet throat clearing from Mr. Dourtmundschtradel.)

My… apologies, Herr Halifax, for that… outburst. Always, at this point in the story, I… This is the moment of liberation awaited by my longsuffering forefathers since even before their own births. The emotion… It is… rather distressing, ja? I… hope you will consider, possibly, deleting this embarrassing lapse in discipline from your recording?

RH: I will certainly consult my superiors, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I assure you, there’s no need of apology. I sympathize completely. (42)

GD: Danke, (43) Herr Halifax. Your understanding does you credit.

RH: The honor is mine, sir. Shall we continue?

GD: Of course, of course. Where were we?

RH: Er… at the, uh, dawn of Durn’s liberation, I believe?

GD: Ja, ja. Well. A respectable civic leader like Herr Brock would, of course, have found that old man’s disturbing emotional outburst as unseemly as you and I do, Herr Halifax, and perhaps have worried also about potential consequences for himself and his establishment should any of Mad Gus’s men happen to be lurking near enough to overhear the indecorous display of seditious sentiment developing inside. He quite properly insisted that the discussion be suspended immediately and taken “elsewhere.”

Now, everyone in Durn, except, of course, for Mad Gus and his various agents, knew very well what ‘elsewhere’ meant. In times of extremis, one was likely to hear that so-and-so had gone ‘elsewhere’ for a while, or that ‘the thing in question’ might be looked for ‘elsewhere.’ In Durn, elsewhere meant that secret second cellar, which I have mentioned, underneath Herr Brock’s inn. Thus, with knowing looks and crafty nonchalance, the hysterical mob sidled furtively down Brock’s cellar stairs, and passed in single file through the slyly sequestered slot behind the curtain, cleverly concealed inside a false-backed barrel into Brock’s secret second cellar to resume their rabble-rousing in greater safety.

Unfortunately, this space is said to have been no larger than eight feet in any direction, so one must assume the hysterical mob was packed inside quite tightly. The smell alone of all those rustic fellows jammed together in the darkness must have been appalling, (44) though they were likely far too angry at that moment to care much about such trivialities, ja?

At any rate, once all were pressed inside, their rebellious conversation was resumed.

“So,” Brock commences sensibly, “how exactly do you bravos think that we, without any weapons, can hope to overthrow Mad Gus with all his henchmen and that cannon he is always polishing?” (45)

“Anybody ever seen him fire it?” asks a voice from near the back. “I’ll bet it doesn’t even work, or he’d have fired it at us long ago.”

“You are volunteering, then,” Brock counters, “to stand between it and the rest of us while we find out?”

“Our cause is just!” cries the old man with hardly any teeth. “God will surely supply us with whatever weapons are required.”

I do not doubt Brock rolled his eyes, though no one would have seen it in the darkness. “And what kind of weapons do you imagine God would send us?” he asks wearily, having watched this kind of theater come and go in Durn too many times before.

A consternated silence fills their crowded refuge.

“Beehives!” someone exclaims.

“Beehives?” Brock asks. “Mad Gus’s beekeepers will have many more of those up at the castle than we’re likely to assemble here. What would we do with them anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter,” says another voice. “Don’t need the hives—just a couple tubs of honeycomb, and take it to the castle as an offering to make amends for Gundar’s blunder.”

“I told you,” Gundar protests. “I did nothing!”

“Hold your tongue, Gundar,” scolds the first voice. “I’m not finished yet. Being such greedy bastards, I bet they’ll tear into that honey right in front of us and shove it all into their faces while we look on, hungry, ja?”

“Which will accomplish what of any help to us?” asks someone else.

“Nothing,” says the first voice, ‘‘til we set the bears loose on them!”

“What bears?” asks Gundar, backed by many a concurring grunt.

“The woods are full of hungry bears this close to winter,” he replies. “We just catch five or six of them, and sic ‘em on Mad Gus and his collaborators when their greedy faces are all covered in our honey. They’ll be torn to pieces.”

“How are we to trap these bears without being mauled ourselves?” scoffs Gundar.

“And how are we to sneak them up into the castle?” asks another voice as scornfully. “Shall we hide them in our breeches while presenting Mad Gus with the honey, or just whistle for them once he has indulged this bestial sweet tooth you describe?”

“We could use weasels, then,” says a new voice. “They’re easier to catch, and small enough to hide—even in our breeches, if we have to.”

“Are you seriously proposing that we kill Mad Gus with weasels?” Brock asks crossly.

“Just ‘cause they’re small don’t mean their claws and teeth aren’t just as sharp as any bear’s,” says this latest idiot, near drowned out by boos and raspberries from the others.

“Weasels care for sausage, not for honey,” Gundar laughs. “So I think we know what they will use their teeth on first if any of us tries hiding them inside their pants.” (46)

“A peace offering of goats then,” says yet another voice, “with beehives stuffed inside them, (47) so that when the castle butcher cuts them open—”

“—all the kitchen staff is stung to death!” Gundar roars with mirth. “That will show Mad Gus who’s boss in Durn. And how are we to get these beehives into goats?”

“Just wrap them up in trash, and leave them in the goat pen,” says yet another man. “There’s nothing goats won’t eat.” (48)

“Are we finished with this nonsense?” Brock snaps. “It’s getting rather close in here.”

But they weren’t even near to finished, Herr Halifax. Someone next suggested they send a cauldron of soup up to Mad Gus, filled with poisoned parsnips, but everyone agreed that no one in the valley, least of all Mad Gus, could stand parsnips, (49) so not only would Mad Gus not eat them, but the village would be punished further just for sending him such an insulting vegetable. Another man suggested they persuade Mad Gus’s own henchmen to insurrection by offering up the village women as a bribe. But a brace of others reminded him that the only women in their village not already kidnapped were the very ugly ones, suggesting he’d have thought of that if his own wife were not still safe at home.

It didn’t help their progress any that with every passing hour each man there was becoming soberer than he had likely been in years. As things got hotter under everyone’s collars, Brock began to fear they’d simply kill each other right there in the secret cellar without anyone the wiser. His only reassurance lay in the fact that there wasn’t room to draw so much as a butter knife—which Durn’s peasants were allowed to own and carry.

It was then that Gundar finally bellows, “Silence!” And, to Brock’s amazement, silence falls. “Men of Durn,” Gundar growls, “is it not time we all stopped living like Mad Gus’s children here?” The silence stretches. “You know as well as I that there’s no silly circus act by which to overthrow Mad Gus. If we truly care about our beer, then we must make whatever weapons we are able from our farming implements and from the branches of our trees and the sharp stones of our fields. Then we must march as one to Gus’s gates, and fight like men until not one of his hired scoundrels is left standing to defend him. Are there not many more of us than there are of them?”

None of them were skilled enough at math to provide him with an answer. But, remembering, perhaps, how handily Gundar had managed to drag a fully loaded barley wagon clear across the valley and up to Gus’s castle—or moved by how he’d walked away alive after whatever insult he had offered Gus to cause them all of these problems—they enthusiastically declared Gundar leader of their imminent rebellion.

Thus inspired, everyone rushed home and quickly fashioned bludgeons out of tree limbs, slingshots out of harnesses, scythes and pitchforks out of, well… scythes and pitchforks, and reassembled early the next morning at the village inn, where Gundar got them all formed up in rows, as befits a fighting force that fancies itself fearless in the face of any foe. When this was done, he shouted, as any good commander must, “Forwaaaaard MARCH!” Whereupon, they all turned sharply, if in numerous directions, and, after just a few collisions and a minor shouting match or two, managed to get headed all in more or less the same direction.

Probably because they hadn’t taken care to march up to the castle quietly enough, they arrived to find Mad Gus’s gates shut tight against them. Atop the walls stood Gus himself, flanked by several dozen henchmen armed with swords and cudgels. Frowning down at them, Mad Gus yelled, “Whatever are you nitwits doing now?”

Gundar stepped forward and called up with great ferocity, “We’ve come for our beer, Your Highness.”

“No, seriously,” Gus called back down. “What are you up to?”

Gundar exchanged uncertain glances with his men, unable to think of any answer clearer than the one he had just given. Looking back up at Mad Gus, he called, “With due respect, Your Highness, you tend to make even the simplest conversations very complicated.” (50)

“Well, let me try to be a little clearer then,” Gus said. “What…” he started making bizarre hand gestures, which may have been some proto-attempt at sign language—or at Italian— “are… you… NITWITS,” he cupped both hands around his mouth for added volume, “UP TO?”

Gundar rolled his eyes, having had it up to here by then with Gus’s poor communication skills. Instead of answering again, he grabbed a four-foot length of tree branch from a stout lad nearby, walked to Gus’s lavish gates, and started pounding on them with it.

“Stop that!” Mad Gus shouted. “Stop that immediately! You’re damaging the finish!”

Gundar kept on banging, having already knocked some impressive chips out of the fancy carving there.

“I said—” Gus started to repeat.

“I heard you,” Gundar cut him off. “Did you hear me? We’ve come to get our beer back! Now open up this gate, Your Highness, or we will knock it down—one small chip at a time, if that’s what it takes. Could make it very hard to sleep in there tonight!”

“Open my gates?!” Mad Gus shrilled. “Is that your wish, you lout? My gates open?” He directed an outraged wave at his henchmen, who turned as one and disappeared. “Fine then, I’ll be glad to open up my gates, moron! Hope you’re ready! Here it comes!”

Of course, Mad Gus could just have had his henchmen fire arrows down at Gundar’s band, and slaughtered everyone in minutes, had he not years earlier declared bows illegal in his kingdom, even in the hands of his own men, fearing any weapon with the speed to reach him faster than he felt able to react. Given his own laws, however, it was now necessary for Gus’s men to come down in person to dispatch the rabble. (51) Gundar and his men braced themselves as Gus’s gates swung open and dozens of men in mismatching armor (52) swarmed out with a mighty hue and cry, bristling with weapons in various states of repair, but still more than equal to the job.

After decades of encountering nothing but the flaccid (53) resignation of hopeless, half-drunken serfs, however, Mad Gus’s men were not at all prepared for the inconceivable sobriety and determination which Mad Gus’s misstep had suddenly engendered. Nor, it turns out, is a standard, pre-owned sword or cudgel as effective as you’d think against heavy branches two or three feet longer, wielded by men who’ve been required, lo those many years, to use their arms for work more strenuous than drinking wine and whoring. (54) Gundar and his men were increasingly mystified by the strange clumsiness of all these so-called ‘seasoned fighting men,’ until they started noticing the stench of stale beer on their breath.

“Why, they’ve been making themselves free with all our stolen beer!” somebody shouted, which made the village men even more irate and formidable. Before the castle’s tipsy henchmen quite had time to realize how badly they were losing and retreat, Gundar and his peers had forced their way inside the gates, and moved the brawl into Mad Gus’s courtyard.

Once inside, strangely little effort seemed required to fend off half-assed feints and forays aimed tentatively at them from time to time by Gus’s discombobulated force, now trying—rather badly, it seemed—to improvise guerilla tactics inside their own stronghold. More urgent for Gundar and his band was the blessedly bitter, yeasty smell of beer that hung upon the air around them. Their heads swam with it, their mouths salivated, as they gazed about, trying to triangulate the lovely odor’s source. It took their veteran noses hardly any time at all to home in on the second of Mad Gus’s three huge granaries, built against the courtyard’s farthest wall.

“Our BEER!” shouted several men at once, as Gundar’s motley army charged together toward the open granary entrance. The sad fact that none of them had thought to bring their steins along would not likely have impeded them from simply kneeling down and lapping it out of the vat. These were men more practical than proud. But here is what they found as they raced through the granary door:

Directly before them, filling more than half the room up to the ceiling nearly thirty feet above, stood an unimaginably large beer vat, its hastily constructed walls groaning audibly in the sudden silence. In front of this stood nearly every henchman Mad Gus employed, which helped explain the odd lack of resistance they’d encountered in the courtyard. And finally, dead center, out in front, stood Mad Gus beside his cannon, staring right at Gundar’s rebel band, and smiling blandly.

In one hand Gus held a white lace handkerchief, with which, it seemed, he had been giving his beloved cannon a last-minute polishing. Without shifting eyes or smile from Gundar’s men, Gus gave the cannon one last swish, and said, extremely quietly, to a henchman standing just behind the cannon, “Fire at will.”

Of all the müdder füching (55) dirty tricks, thought Gundar, certain that he and his brother peasants were completely had. But in that instant, a lifetime of bottled rage fountained up inside him, and, no longer caring how few minutes long his life might be, he tucked his head defiantly, and charged straight at the cannon with a bullish roar.

Fortunately, Gus’s fussy cannon was of the kind ignited by those silly six-inch fuses that burn down so slowly and dramatically in movies—which provided Gundar just sufficient time to close the gap and shoulder the cannon’s barrel upward as it went off with a deafening boom. Gundar felt his hair part on one side as the cannonball whizzed past on its way to hit a heavy metal plate bolted just above the entrance to support a hanging pulley system, then bounce back to fly with nearly as much speed across the chamber toward the high vat wall, into which it slammed and stuck, not ten feet above the heads of Gus’s startled henchmen. All of them turned now, looking up with open mouths to where the leaden ball hung half-embedded in the splintered wood. An instant later, with a tinny pinging sound, the cannonball popped loose and fell onto the upturned head of one unhappy henchman, who went down like a sack of sand. Where the cannonball had been lodged, a little fountain now appeared, spitting out a slender golden arc of beer, which splashed down onto other upturned faces among Gus’s corps—igniting momentary envy in Gundar and his crew. Then, an ominous grumbling sound issued from the vat’s straining wooden walls, rather like that of a stomach filled too full.

“RUN!!!” Gundar screamed, already racing for the granary entrance.

Being so near the door already, Gundar’s men just made it out as the awesome vat gave way. Only Gundar failed to make it through in time, though he was so few feet inside that the tidal wave of beer just picked him up and spat him through the straining entrance like an olive pit. Gundar’s wide-eyed men backed rapidly away, sure the granary’s quaking front wall would collapse at any moment. But it held, causing most of that unthinkable tide of beer to rebound off its inside face and surge back toward where Mad Gus and his henchmen lay broken and scattered now amidst the ruins of their ruptured vat. Afterward, it was surmised that the rebounding flood had gathered up all in its path and flung the load so forcefully at the already shaken building’s rear wall that it gave way at once.

As a sodden Gundar climbed back onto his feet out in the courtyard, his men and the remaining castle staff stood frozen, staring in shocked silence. Then, when it seemed certain that the front wall would stand, they began to move—first slowly, then with greater speed—back toward the granary door. Inside, they found nothing left but a giant frame for open air where once the granary’s back and the castle wall behind it had stood. Rushing to the vast gap’s edge, Gundar and his men looked down—a long, long way—at the still roiled and foaming waterfall, which plunged even more precipitously than usual into the valley’s sole outlet ravine, beside the steeply switch-backed trail that led one out of Dorn and down into the wider world. There was no sign of Mad Gus and his henchmen. The great tide of beer, in combination with the waterfall’s usual raging torrent, had washed them all away.

“Mein gott in himmel!” (56) Gundar murmured. “We are free.” He turned, beaming at his brave companions. “We are free at last! To live however we wish! To eat all the food we grow! All the milk and cheese our cattle give us! To sleep nights without fearing for our homes or wives or children! To drink all the beer that we can make again—without fearing that some dummkopf in this castle might come take it all away! Do you hear me, brothers? WE ARE MAD GUS’S SLAVES NO LONGER!”

(Another lengthy pause, broken by the sounds of quiet weeping from Mr. Dourtmundschtradel. Then, after further sniffling, in a broken voice:)

As you may imagine, Herr Halifax, a great cheer went up at this. Not just from the village men, but from the castle staff as well.

There were many weeks of celebration after that, for there was no end of food and drink stored up in Gus’s remaining granaries and storerooms… I have no doubt it was… a very… beautiful time to be alive…

RH: What a tale, Herr Dourtmundschtradel! I’ve heard nothing more astonishing in all my years of research. I assume they all lived happily ever after?

GD: Ach, no, Herr Halifax. Regrettably, they did not.

RH: Oh dear. Did Mad Gus come back after all? Had he survived somehow?

GD: No, no. Nothing half so dire as that. They sent a party down the riverbed to look, of course. Wanting to be sure. But all they found were planks of wood, several dead henchmen, and a lot of inebriated fish, still flipping onto shore in drunken confusion. It is presumed all other bodies, including mad Lord Stephenson’s, lay tangled in the rocks and roots below the river’s countless rapid shoots and pools. Mad Gus was never seen again.

RH: Then what went wrong for them?

GD: Alas, they could not bring themselves to end their celebration, Herr Halifax. They had been so miserable for so long, and risked so much to free themselves, that no one thought they should be made to work again—on anything. Without a dictator to organize their labor and keep the valley’s complex civic logistics in motion, the peasants just ran out of goals, and food, and reasons to get up each day. (57)

RH: That’s… so sad.

GD: Not entirely, Herr Halifax. Not ultimately, at least. Their inability to live without a dictator forced them all to leave in search of another one to give some order to their lives again. This search for new enslavement caused them to disperse all over Europe, (58) bringing the previously secret knowledge of beer’s manufacture (59) with them everywhere they went. As I mentioned when we started, Gundar Dourtmund’s journey ended here, in what would much later come to be Germany. It was here that Gundar met my many-times great-grandmother, and we have been enjoying what he taught this country about brewing ever since. There are no better brewers in the world than ours, Herr Halifax. (60)How much more happiness can one demand of any ending, ja?

--

(1) At the time of this interview, Mr. Dourtmundschtradel was 91 years old and largely confined to a wicker wheelchair. He died just two years later, having fallen, somehow, from his chair into an old well more than 500 meters from the house.

(2) Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s English was quite good owing to a lifetime of extensive international travel and very active participation in American commodities markets, trading primarily in pork bellies.

(3) Not to be confused with Oxford Community College in the unincorporated town of Verylittleville, Ohio—or with Deerford Vocational School in Teenytinyville, Idaho, both commonly confused with Bisonford in Littleville, Iowa.

(4) Since this interview was conducted, the hamlet of Frauschlesundmunster has been leveled to accommodate an industrial bio-engineering facility and shopping complex. The Dourtmundschtradel ancestral farm now lies largely beneath the new development’s seventeen-acre parking structure. Hence the value in preserving oral history.

(5) An uncomplimentary German term referring to someone of questionable analytic skills.

(5) German term for ‘ya.’

(6) German phrase roughly translated into English as, ‘Akk to God in heaven!’

(7) Roughly translated: ‘The Age of Rather Long Stories;’ a very brief and obscure period between the Teutonic Age of Legends and the subsequent Time of Succinct Essays, which, in turn, ended some seven centuries prior to The Moment of Memos preceding what we now refer to as ‘recorded European history.’

(8) An English phrase roughly translated into German as, ‘ach du Lieber Himmel!’

(9) Subsequent research has confirmed that the village of Durn, the kingdom of Schkerrinwald, and the Vorkenfast Empire are certainly quite gone, and apparently unheard of by anyone other than Mr. Dourmundtschtradel.

(10) This assertion is disputed by some scholars.

(11) As is this one.

(12) And this one.

(13) This assertion is both verifiable and undisputed.

(14) In conversation with Mr. Dourtmundschtradel after the recording of this interview, the interviewer learned that the ‘brown feather’ referred to was on display in Stephenson’s so-called throne room, where he made loud and frequent claims that it had been plucked by his father from the tail of a phoenix, and thus somehow proved his divine right to rule—though, to virtually all others, Dourtmundschtradel asserts, it looked an awful lot like the feather of a common owl.

(15) This policy might go a long way toward explaining the dearth of any reference to Lord Augustus Stephenson or Durn Valley in the known historical record.

(16) If not apocryphal, this detail places the origins of Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s tale sometime after the introduction of Christianity to Europe, and thus well after The Age of Rather Long Stories—not to mention the first known invention of beer—casting potential doubt upon the rest of his tale, though Durn may conceivably have been the cradle of modern beer for that part of Europe—whatever part of Europe that was, exactly.

(17) The practice described here was actually fairly common in medieval Europe, often referred to in official documents as ‘managing the tax base.’

(18) As Mr. Dourtmundschtradel attributes his tale to The Age of Rather Long Stories, a period by definition outside the historical record, it is impossible to ask, much less determine, whether the historical record corroborates or contests his claim that no one else had made or heard of beer prior to its creation in Durn. (See footnote 16.)

(19) Mr. Dourtmundschtradel’s description of the process by which this particular mixture came into being engenders some doubt as to whether the ‘beer’ described bore much if any resemblance to the modern libation so named.

(20) A sound assumption, even under scrutiny by modern investigative methods.

(21) Again: a claim impossible to test from any tale attributed to The Age of Very Long Stories, etc.

(22) More rigorous analysis places this figure closer to 14.6 billion happy endings to date, though this result must be balanced against an estimated 9.375 billion unhappy endings to date. Individual results may vary.

(23) This practice too was fairly common in medieval Europe, commonly referred to as ‘information management.’

(24)This strategy has been a staple of good governance in nearly every empire known to history, though means have varied widely from vodka in Russia and gin in Britain, to opium in China and the Middle East, to marijuana, chocolate Ding Dongs, cheeseburgers, television, and, of course, handheld video games in the US.

(25) Given the situation described in Durn, it does seem plausible that Gundar might have gone to such trouble in transporting his harvest to Mad Gus’s granaries, desperate not to leave Gus’s men any excuse to visit him at home and perhaps burn down the place while they were there.

(26) There were no laws at this time forbidding minors to serve or sell alcohol.

(27) There were, of course, antacids in those days. They just hadn’t been discovered yet.

(28) A standard lager of medieval vintage would likely have weighed in at 4.7% alcohol.

(29) This passing reference may be even more startling than Dourtmundschtradel’s assertion that beer was invented in Durn—as potatoes are not thought to have been introduced to Europe from the New World until sometime around 1500AD. This apparent anachronism now has some scholars speculating that if Durn Valley was the lowly potato’s actual cradle, and some of the tubers made their way to Scandinavia, (which could not have been far away given the naming conventions prevalent throughout this narrative), they might well have been transported from there to North America by seafaring Nordic explorers, whom we now know visited the New World many centuries before Columbus did, where they could have flourished and spread, only to be rediscovered and brought back to Europe centuries later just in time to catalyze Ireland’s great potato blight! How ironic would that be?

(30) A standard pale ale of the time would be estimated at approximately 5.2%.

(31) A hearty oatmeal stout of the time, estimated close to 6.4%, though batches doubtless varied widely.

(32) Quality late-season porter of the day: 8.9% at very least.

(33) By this point in the narrative, any wary historian will likely have begun to question such an extraordinary volume of detailed dialogue woven through an account ostensibly one or more millennia old. It does seem that some degree of apocryphal embellishment may reasonably be posited.

(34) As any competent linguist will confirm, to translate a sneeze into German requires at least two paragraphs of text. German words and syntax are renowned for their length and complexity. Apparently, Mr. Dourtmundschtradel finds American linguistic minimalisms equally absurd.

(35) Alas for Gundar’s considerable effort to avoid just this kind of attention.

(36) Colloquial expletive.

(37) Recall that villagers were permitted to forgo surrendering their grain to Mad Gus if it was surrendered instead to one of Durn’s many beer distillers for immediate brewing.

(38) German phrase roughly translated into English as ‘Holy cow!’ More literally as ‘God in heaven!’

(39) Most beer scholars agree that the real issue being skirted here by this exclusively male group is that most early brewers of beer were female (known as brewsters). The abduction of so many village women may have been a much bigger impediment to new emergency brewing than the late season or sequestered grain harvest.

(40) An intriguing interjection for two reasons. First, such concepts of clinical psychosis would not appear in the rest of Europe until around the 19th century with the work and writing of Sigmund Freud. (Was he too, perhaps, descended of the Durn Valley?) Secondly, the speaker here makes this accusation of psychosis even as he and his companions exhibit such clear symptoms of full blown cenosillicaphobia, (fear of an empty beer glass.)

(41) Another colloquial expletive.

(42) Deft sidestep by a consummate professional who, with all deference to German sentiments about displays of sentiment, clearly understands the value of uncensored authenticity in oral history. Our respectful apologies to the late Mr. Dourtmundschtradel, and any surviving family members.

(43) German term for ‘thank you,’ not to be confused with ‘dunken’ which pertains in Germany, as in America, primarily to warm, soft, mouthwatering, God-I-wish-I-had-one-right-now, donuts.

(44) Some scholars theorize that men and dogs were brought into partnership in ancient times by the fact that they smelled much the same when wet. Further research suggests that when dry, ancient men smelled worse, but this was likely no deterrent for dogs, who, as any layman knows, are only too glad to shove their noses into any heap of dung they pass.

(45) This detail too, if not apocryphal, suggest the tale’s origin must be much later than Mr. D has indicated.

(46) This reference continues to confuse historians as it seems to suggest carrying sausage in one’s pants was common practice at this time—an assertion supported by no other known medieval reference, and made all the more mysterious in light of the fact that the men in question here have made it clear they possess no food at all.

(47) An idea likely inspired by accounts widely published at that time of the famous Trojan Horse, though it’s puzzling that they didn’t just adopt the Greeks’ tried and true approach without alteration—unless perhaps the construction of Mad Gus’s vat had left in its wake a village-wide lumber shortage.

(48) There is, in fact, a firmly established if rather brief list of items which goats won’t eat, including, but not limited to, bathroom cleanser, granite, jet fuel, haggis, marshmallow peeps, and any object larger than the goat which cannot be broken into smaller portions. Pretty much anything else though.

(49) This detail is indisputably apocryphal. Parsnips are delicious.

(50) Being new to the science of leadership, Gundar was clearly still unacquainted with standard diplomatic syntax used by seasoned leaders everywhere expressly to make even the simplest conversations complicated for the very prudent purpose of discouraging anything so reckless as decisive action.

(51) Lord Augustus is credited earlier with having a cannon, which one must imagine capable of delivering its lethal payload faster than any man could react, if not with nearly the silent stealth of a bow. However, it appears that Gus had allowed just one such weapon in his domain, and reserved access to himself alone.

(52) Further evidence of Lord Augustus’s penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to leadership.

(53) Unclear whether this refers to the villagers’ limp resistance to harassment, or their general digestive condition, as either one might be consistent with a regular diet consisting almost entirely of beer.

(54) Lord Augustus’s men were also regularly required to beat up villagers, burn down buildings, and kidnap women and children, of course. But given the hitherto general flaccidity of response denoted earlier, it seems likely that none of those activities had required much more in the way of muscular exertion than drinking and whoring normally do. Quite possibly less.

(55) An archaic colloquial term for ‘mean,’ or in some cases, ‘mean to mother.’

(56) Yet another variation of the German phrase for ‘Holy Cow’—more literally translated as, ‘My God in Heaven!’

(57) A common syndrome easily observable at smaller scale whenever adolescent children are left home alone for longer than a day by too-trusting parents.

(58) Where, happily, even minimal further research suggests they had little difficulty finding what they sought.

(59) Again, doubt is cast upon this assertion by some scholars who point to evidence such as one 4,000 year-old Sumerian stone tablet inscribed with the words ‘Drink Elba Beer, the beer with the heart of a lion.’ Then again, maybe Elba’s franchise had simply never branched out into Europe…

(60) This assertion is vigorously contested by most British scholars, though it must be noted that the oldest acknowledged functioning brewery in the world is 900 year-old Bayerische Staatsbrauerie Weihenstephan near Munich. Coincidence? We think not!

I’m not going to describe where the White Horse is; one American finding the place, despite the jukebox the owners mistakenly placed in the public bar in hope of attracting them, was quite enough. He was an American military man who liked real ale. And, in retrospect, that was our first clue.

I was a bit late for getting a couple of pints in before closing, and trotting down to the Embankment from Fleet had left me a bit breathless. In spite of my haste, Mr. D. was getting a pint of Fuller’s London Pride ready for me by the time I’d gotten from the door to the Saloon bar.

He was standing there, in his American Army Major’s uniform, his long dirty-blond hair almost reaching his eyebrows, looking critically at what was likely a pint of Young’s stout.

“We don’t get Dunkel like this in Ulm,” he said.

A dozen eyes turned his way. There was a war on, of course. And he pronounced “Dunkel” as if it were spelled doon-kil.

“Oh. New Ulm, Minnesota. We sometimes drop the ‘new.’ I’m Wally, Wally Petersen.” He stuck out a beefy palm toward me as the most convenient British victim. “The place was settled by Germans, but I come from Minneapolis now. I’m an engineer. Valves, current, that kind of thing.”

Arthur’s head came up at the mention of valves. He and his brother Fred sat near the dartboard—but not too near, given that Harry was there and had a tendency to mix darts and draughts. Wally happened to be looking in Arthur’s direction, and his eyes narrowed at Arthur’s reaction. A couple of other heads turned and the chatter faded away.

We generally knew what Arthur was working on, and generally did not discuss it aloud, in public, ever. But high power amplification valves were an important part of it.

“Hydraulics, pumps, that kind of thing,” Wally said, as if he had to divert attention from electrical valves.

“You like the Young’s?” Mr. D. asked into the silence.

“Ah, it’s not quite Hamm’s,” he said, “but good, very good.”

That brought a quick smile from John Sims, our occasional Sunday Times astronomy columnist. John had actually been to Minnesota before the war.

“Greetings, Wally,” John said. “I know a man in Minneapolis. Bill Luyten, astronomer, science writer. Ever run into him?”

Wally pursed his lips and looked up as if trying to remember. “No, don’t recall the name. Is he involved in the war effort?”

A brief frown passed over John’s face. “Not that I know of. He’s more the academic type.”

Wally nodded and looked over to Arthur. “You’re interested in valves.”

Arthur smiled nervously. “Not that I’m free to discuss now, am I?”

Wally grinned. “Of course not. You barely know me. Barkeep…”

“Our barman is Mr. D,” John said.

“Yes, of course. Mr. D., I would like to purchase a round for the group. Are there any rules for that here?”

“There are tonight. It must be consumed in the next fifteen minutes. Then out the door. Closing time approaches.”

Nonetheless, pints were passed around, not the first such ritual as last orders approached.

I took the barstool next to Wally. “Arthur is into spaceships, you know.”

“Spaceships?” asked Wally.

Harry nodded. “Rockets, except with people inside of them.”

“That would hurt coming down.”

“Spaceships don’t come down. Or rather, they come down softly, on their tails, wherever you want them to. There are some engineering details to work out, of course, but the main thing is propulsion.”

Wally looked interested. “Could they come down in America, or Germany, for instance?”

“I think Arthur is more interested in the Moon. But yes, in Germany, if one wanted.”

Wally’s smile flicked off for an instant. “Very interesting,” he said. Then the smile was back on. “You betcha.”

Mr. D turned the light off, then on again, as Wally waddled along the Embankment into the mist. After he was gone, we all re-entered, guarded by the “closed” sign. Should anyone have asked, we were the volunteer cleanup crew; many places depended on such with all the help off on the war effort.

“German,” Mr. D said. “Or I’ve not been doing this for thirty years.”

“He hasn’t been to Minnesota, I should think, John added. “Hamm’s, indeed. That gave him away.”

“I rather thought that was an American beer of that region,” Harry said.

John nodded. “Indeed. And nobody who likes real beer will drink it.”

“What’s he doing in an American uniform? All this talk about pumps and the like,” Harry asked. “We’re building the…”

I put a hand on his arm. “There’s not a little mingling of forces; Yanks in the RAF, RAF chaps flying Yank bombers, and so on. I imagine someone with credible looking papers could get himself involved as an exchange officer, and as such, he could be a little different without being too obvious.”

“He’d be in on the whole bloody thing,” Mr. D said. “We should talk to someone.”

“Or he could be what he says he is,” Fred said.

“An American wouldn’t connect valves with electronics,” Harry said, now quite sober, “and then correct himself so clumsily.”

“An American who likes beer wouldn’t have a good word for Hamm’s,” John added.

“If he is a spy,” Arthur said, “he would need to communicate with his handlers. Perhaps a clandestine radio.”

“I hazard certain parties could pick that up rather quickly,” John said.

Harry nodded. “Yes. And other things. We are being watched.”

Arthur got a faraway look in his eyes. At twenty-seven, his imagination was a little less hindered than ours, and we were a not unimaginative group. “Watched. Hmmm. Yes, well, I imagine such a transmission would have to be a one-shot sort of thing. Send it, then get out if you can.”

I nodded, with a slight feeling of compassion. In all likelihood, we were going to trick Wally into sacrificing his life for the wrong reason. On the other hand, he was going to sacrifice it anyway.

“Perhaps we could get him to use that one shot for something other than my work or whatever else is a-building. I may, inadvertently, have already laid the groundwork. John, you have a fairly large telescope.”

He nodded. Rooted firmly in his garden, John had made a half-scale working model of Herschel’s largest telescope, which he took delight in showing off to the occasional grammar school class.

“It would work in reverse, would it not? If one were to replace the eyepiece with a powerful lamp and place an aircraft-shaped mask at the prime focus…”

A couple of weeks later, we were ready to spring our trap.

Wally came into the bar at his now-usual time and Mr. D. started pouring his now-usual stout. Once he was with beer, he turned to Arthur.

“How fast does your rocket go?” he asked. “As fast as sound?”

“I don’t recall saying that I had a rocket,” Arthur said. “But if I were to design one to travel through space, it would go many times the speed of sound here on Earth. Of course, it would not be proper to say that it went faster than sound in space, where there is no air to carry the sound.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. It could get to Berlin, or Washington, in a few minutes.”

Arthur stared across the room, saying nothing, which I knew to mean his mind was elsewhere. Then he came back. “At orbital speed, it would be about three minutes to Berlin.”

“Or the Moon in a couple of days,” John said.

“I’d like to see something like that,” Fred said.

“Me too,” Wally added.

“Perhaps something can be arranged,” Harry said, then took a long slow drink of his Pride.

Arthur looked upset. “Really, we shouldn’t be talking about something that could get someone to one of Dr. Luyten’s stars in a lifetime. If someone wanted to weaponize that…”

“Wally’s okay,” Harry said. “The Yanks are on our side, this century.”

Everyone chuckled at that.

“Now, I’ve talked to Mr. Bray at the Met Office…”

“Group Captain Stagg’s aide?” Wally interjected.

“The very man, yes. You do get around, Wally,” Harry said.

“Ike expects his exchange officers to be up on stuff.”

“Ah, quite. Well, Bray thinks conditions should be just about right tomorrow night for, shall we say, an unusual event.”

“Are you sure, Harry?” Fred asked, alarm written on his face.

“I think we can trust Wally to do the right thing.”

Mr. D quickly put a bar rag in front of his mouth and coughed slightly. Wally, with a big grin on his face, appeared not to notice.

I didn’t smirk. Everything had gone smoothly so far, but if we made a mess of this, it could be at best very embarrassing. At worst, lives would be lost.

As expected, there was a dark low cloud deck over clear air that night. We arrived early in Fred’s car on the south side of Albany Road near the end of Bagshot Street, where one could get a relatively unobstructed view over the lake. It was not far from where John lived on Mina Road; though, of course, John had sent his regrets for this expedition. Trouble struck immediately.

“You’re here early, Wally,” Fred remarked.

“Yeah, your British cabs are efficient.”

I had an essential piece of setup to do, that we didn’t want Wally to see. While I was trying to think of a diversion, Fred took charge.

“Quite. Now, Wally, what we are looking for should show up over there,” Fred pointed toward the western side of the lake, “and proceed east, rather rapidly. You see the oaks across the lake? It should pass…”

While Fred had Wally’s attention, I pulled a big box from the boot and lugged it over a few yards right of our vantage point. I came back unobtrusively trailing a wire, attached to a button.

“Look carefully. It will be very subtle,” I said. “There will be a glow, somewhat like a searchlight beam. Something to do with ionizing the air to lower friction, I should think. Mind you, I don’t know anything about this. Nor does anyone else here.”

Wally bobbed his head.

We waited, and waited. Half an hour passed. Conditions were just right now, but might not be in another hour. John was having fun with us, I thought, or maybe playing a psychological trick; information gained too easily might not feel as important to a spy.

“There!” Fred said.

It was very subtle, only a patch of distant searchlit cloud scudding rapidly over the lake. I looked through my binoculars and smiled. A deep black triangle lay in the center of the glowing spot, wavering slightly as the clouds whipped by. And then it was gone. I had almost forgotten my button, which I then pressed, only microseconds after the tardy thought had entered my mind.

A soft distant-sounding boom echoed from our right, long after the triangle had passed.

“Much faster than sound,” Harry covered. “Like lightening. It takes the sound a while to catch up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wally said.

I could detect no suspicion in his voice.

“Mind you, this didn’t happen,” Fred added.

“I saw nothing,” Wally said, and I imagined the “o” in his nothing had more of an “oh” sound to it than an “uh,” but I might have been mistaken.

“Two minutes 48 seconds,” Arthur said. From the look on Wally’s face, he didn’t have to add “to Berlin.”

We had played our roles to perfection. The hook was set. The only question now was whether he would run with it and Section 5 could reel him in. But that was out of our hands.

Wally wasn’t with us on the fifth of June.

I arrived last and got my pint from Mr. D. Harry already had a nice cluster around the bullseye, and Fred, in his usual place, had an eye on him. Arthur had his head in a book; not totally unusual.

John was at a side table staring at the foam of an as-yet untouched stout.

“Anything from five?” I asked Harry, pint in hand. He frowned at my use of the number, but one had to call those people something.

Harry nodded, and the room fell silent.

“They homed right in on him. Walter Petersohn.” He pronounced the “W” as a “V” and dragged it out into a buzz. “They waited until he got off everything about Arthur’s supersonic spaceship, then nicked him right proper, clean as a whistle. “He didn’t get a word out about the invasion.”

“German! I knew it. Cut it a wee bit fine, if you ask me,” Mr. D. said with just the hint of a smile.

Harry shook his head. “Bray says it’s all up to the weather, and the weather isn’t talking very clearly to us or the Gerries right now. Wally couldn’t have compromised anything. And their intelligence should now be thoroughly confused as to Arthur’s activities.”

Arthur looked up from his book and gave a quick smile.

John also looked up, as if confused about something. “It worked, then?”

“Perfectly. Exactly as planned. You know, if you had whipped that beam across the face of the moon in a hundredth of a second, its apparent velocity would have been roughly the speed of light.”

“Do you think we’ll ever go that fast for real, Arthur?” John asked.

“Given enough time. Given we don’t kill ourselves in wars. Or maybe something else will find us that already goes nearer light speed.”

“In this case, faster than sound was more than sufficient,” Harry said. “Another pint. Mr. D. Make it the Young’s Stout; as it betrayed Wally and helped secure our invasion’s success. Is something wrong, John?”

John looked around, with the oddest sort of look on his face. “I was going to apologize. The operation was all a complete flop on my end. The power supply for the lamp burned out and I couldn’t get the light on at all. There was no projection.”

Then what was there?

After a decent interval, Harry said, “To reiterate, we are being watched. Another pint, Mr. D.” He lifted his glass with the kind of manic smile with which a man greets his dentist. “Cheers. Shouldn’t be long now, should it?”

“Ah.” Alice Mary, Our Lady of Justice, Solace to Superheroes, sipped her latest brew, savoring the light honey and berry notes. She shoved back the light cotton cuffs of her pale blue work shirt and raised the clear glass high, studying the amber liquid carefully for any floaters. Nothing. She compared the color of the beer to her own straight, ash-blond hair, pulling a strand forward to hold next to the glass. In contrast, the brew brought out the faint copper notes buried amongst the dull gold hair fading into brown. She could see the beer’s faint glow much better. A good sign, especially when brewing for superhero consumption. If the beer didn’t glow in plain light when compared to her hair, then it lacked the appropriate supernatural touch. “This should work for tonight’s War Council.”

She carefully took another swallow, inhaling deeply and smiling at the light aroma of honey and berries. Her talents didn’t include fighting battles, but at least she could brew up a beer to ease the pain of the superheroes, deities, saints and Holy People who formed the alliance battling the Kraken’s forces.

Someone stood behind her. Only a slight displacement of the warm, late afternoon breeze whispering through the open door of her brew shed in a garden courtyard of Monalba monastery told her of the arrival. Then the improbably lily-shaped magic wand hanging from her belt tingled. Itchy spot behind her right shoulder. Alice Mary smiled to herself.

“Hello, Coyote,” she greeted her old friend, rising to pour a glass for him. “Come early to taste my latest brew?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I always know when it’s you. You fill the room differently from anyone else.”

“Ah.” He sighed, took the mug, and sat heavily, his shape blurring between canine and human. His muzzle grew more pronounced as he sniffed her beer deeply. “And how do you produce such ambrosia?” His shape morphed toward the canine as he lapped the beer. A hind leg scratched at his left shoulder. He paused in his drinking to twitch the shoulder’s skin.

“Got something there?” Alice Mary asked.

Coyote shrugged and continued to lap his beer. “Nothing. Just an itch that won’t stop. This beer is marvelous! You’ve outdone yourself! How do you do it?”

“It’s just a knack,” she said. “Nothing big.”

Coyote stopped halfway through his change back to fully human, scowling. He scratched at his left shoulder with his right hand, growling deep in his throat. “You give us heart. That has value.”

“But does it stop the Kraken?” Her words came out sharper than she intended.

“Not all of us are called to war,” Coyote said. He lapped further at the beer, struggling to angle his muzzle deeper into the mug before pulling it out just enough for him to finish his transformation back into mostly human shape, that of a handsome young Native man with long black braids, laughing dark eyes, faintly pointed chin, and, incongruently, a gray and white tail. He took the mug in both hands once his nose had receded and drank deeply, slamming the now-empty mug down hard with a grin and wiping his face on the pearl snap-buttoned sleeve of his gray Western shirt. “And this—this, my lady of Justice, this will bring us the solace we need after today’s battle. Those hobgoblins—” He shook his head. “They are nothing like those we’ve encountered in the past. We’re losing superheroes, saints, demigods and humans alike. Something keeps sucking the strength out of the hobs’ victims. Foul, pustular growths appear on those the hobs attack, so they collapse and die. We can’t see where they come from, but those things grow freely on the hobs without affecting them!”

Alice Mary shuddered and got up to pour him another. “That sounds horrible. I’m glad this little brew gives you heart.” Her lily began to tingle again, this time in warning. She paused during the pour, frowning, trying to isolate the sensation. The vibration intensified. Invader. Invader.

But what? And how? She turned and slid the filled mug back toward Coyote, looking around, seeing no intruders. She frowned. Sometimes the lily sent her false warnings. This might well be one of those times. She took another sip of her brew. The world around her shimmered. Curious. She drank more. There was something on Coyote’s shoulder, a knobby, gnarled little gray and white knot that didn’t go with the shirt. Another drink. The carbuncle swelled larger.

“Is something wrong?” Coyote asked. He scratched at the outgrowth. His skin paled, gray under tan, almost the shade of his pale gray shirt.

“I’m not sure,” Alice Mary said slowly. She watched the growth. “How are you feeling?”

The growth faded away, but the skin on Coyote’s face began to sag. She took another drink, and the excrescence returned.

Coyote shook his head. “Faugh, I feel faint. More beer!” He drank deeply. “Ah.” Color returned to his face and the monstrosity shrank slightly.

Her lily buzzed insistently. Beer in one hand, she pulled it out of her belt, holding tight to the stem. A gift from her patroness St. Catherine, the lily had been known to develop a mind of its own at times. The lily pulled toward the thing on Coyote’s shoulder, tugging at her hand.

Alice Mary whacked Coyote on the shoulder, knocking the outgrowth loose. Coyote flinched away, a hurt look crossing his face.

“What the—Alice Mary, I didn’t do anything!”

“Look,” she said, pointing at the malignant, pulsating globule on the table between them.

“At what?”

“Drink. Drink it all.” She shoved another full tankard into his hands.

Coyote took a deep swig, his eyes on the table. Suddenly he leapt back, raising his hands protectively, spilling his beer on the table.

“That’s what appeared on those who died! I thought I was clear!”

The horror began to ooze toward Coyote, until it reached the puddle of beer. It stopped, then drew back.

“It doesn’t want to cross the beer,” Alice Mary said.

Coyote dumped the remaining contents of his mug over the excrescence. Foul black smoke nasty enough to provoke both of them into choking coughs rose momentarily, then snuffed out.

The pustulant monstrosity was gone. Her lily stopped vibrating. Alice Mary drank deeply, staring where the thing had been.

Nothing.

“It’s gone,” Coyote breathed. He shook his head. “My Lady of Justice, I do believe I owe you a favor. And more.” He looked sorrowfully at his mug and shook his head. “But to my regret, it meant wasting some good beer. But—beer as a weapon? Hmm. It’d be worth a try.”

Alice Mary reached for his mug. “I can take care of the wasted brew. There’s a small keg to share for tonight, more than enough for all. I’d say you’ve earned another mug.”

Coyote’s lips pulled back in a feral grin. “Oh my dearest lady, the War Council will most definitely want to hear about this! You may have given us the weapon we need for victory!”

“Perhaps,” Alice Mary said. “Most likely it will prove only to be a cure.”

“Even a cure would be most welcome, my dear Lady of Justice.” Coyote drained his mug. “But if we can find a way to drench those hobs in the beer, then maybe we could stop this battle. After all, if it kills their weapons, what would it do to them?”

“I don’t know. Even with divine help, there’s no possibility that I could brew enough by myself to drown a whole army.”

“Hm.” Coyote frowned thoughtfully. “I might have some ideas about that. Let me think further. Meanwhile. Current business. May I help you carry the keg?”

Alice Mary frowned at him. “And how much of the beer will actually make it to the War Council?”

“My lady!” Coyote protested.

Alice Mary relented. “You may help.”

The tail protruding from Coyote’s jeans began to wag slightly.

“But—” Alice Mary scolded, wagging a finger at him. “I’m watching you.”

“As if I would do anything wrong!” Coyote protested.

“I know you far too well,” Alice Mary said.

“So.” Michael the Archangel, Defender of Earth, peered deep into the tankard Alice Mary had poured for him. “Coyote. Were you aware of this growth after you drank the beer?”

“The most I felt was annoyance at an itch on my shoulder, until I’d drunk a couple of mugs and Alice Mary knocked it off of me.” Coyote’s voice was quiet. Alice Mary noticed a faint haziness around his right hand as its shape wavered between firmly a hand one moment, shading into gray/black/white paw the next.

On Coyote’s other side, Ullr, the taciturn Norse god of hunting and skiing who was Coyote’s fighting partner, stirred. The icicles that clung to the fringes of his shirt faintly jingled as he moved, glistening more than usual in the summer heat but still intact, not melting. “I saw nothing out of the ordinary while we fought,” he said.

“I had to drink quite a bit to see anything,” Alice Mary admitted.

“And yet—” Michael sniffed the mug. He looked over at one of the masked Holy People and handed her the mug. She sniffed the beer and took a sip. The mask hid her expression but her deep, slow, contented sigh suggested her enjoyment.

“There is power in this brew,” she pronounced. “A subtle power, but power nonetheless.” She drank again. Another deep, long, satisfied exhale, followed by a discreet wiping of foam off her lips by one gloved hand. “Ah. Delicate and tasty. Alice Mary, the fruit nicely conceals the depths in this one. Coyote, you said pouring this beer over the globule killed it?”

“Utterly.”

“Then we need to cover the hobgoblins completely with beer.”

“Alice Mary, have you the ability to brew enough beer both to fortify our army and drown the hobgoblins?” Michael asked.

“Not alone,” Alice Mary admitted.

“And this beer’s power might come from Alice Mary’s skill only, not what she put into it,” Coyote added. “At best, it would take a god’s help for her to brew enough.”

“If we can get a deity to create an everlasting flow of Alice Mary’s beer… There are certainly enough deities of beer out there to be able to do this,” Michael snapped. “Deities, saints, demigods—”

“But only Alice Mary created this particular brew,” Coyote said.

“True, true. Perhaps the aid of Arnold of Soissons—”

“Or Metz,” an anonymous friar down the table from Michael interjected.

“The Saints Arnold,” Michael said heavily, “might well provide us with the ever-flowing brew if they bless it, Alice Mary.”

“And what if your Christian blessing eliminates the positive properties of Alice Mary’s magic?” Bear growled, rolling her heavy, fur-mantled shoulders and huffing slightly as more ursine characteristics slowly transformed her already part-bear human form into full Bear shape. “Dare we take that risk?”

“I would think we run into that risk with any deity not directly tied to beer,” Michael said. “Whoever helps Alice Mary has to be dedicated to the beer.”

“That we can do, and help is on the way,” Coyote said. “I spoke to my Mesopotamian friend and she will be here shortly to help Alice Mary. I doubt her assistance will cancel out Alice Mary’s own power. In any case, quantity is the issue if we want to immerse the hobs.”

“Even if we could get enough beer, how would we drown them?” Bear asked.

“Drown them—there’s a thought. We just need a container. An ever-renewing container.” Coyote grinned wickedly. “A cauldron. Ever-renewing. Friends, I need to speak to one who does not ally either with us or the Kraken.”

“It depends upon who it is,” Michael said.

“Our lady Ceridwen.”

“Ceridwen—hmm. Yes. I approve,” said the masked Holy Person who’d tasted the beer. “I have had dealings with her of late. She will be friendly.”

“I agree. But even if we decide to drown them in Ceridwen’s ever-renewing cauldron, how are we going to get the hobgoblins in it?” Michael asked.

“Leave it to me,” Coyote said. “That I can handle.”

A falcon flitted across the room, dropping a tiny clay tablet into Michael’s hand. He glanced at it and smiled. “Alice Mary, good news. Your brewing help has arrived.”

“Then I’d best go brew.” Alice Mary hurried out of the chambers.

As she entered the garden courtyard, Alice Mary noticed that her little corrugated aluminum brew shack had surprisingly—or not so surprisingly, given the typical state of affairs at Monalba—transformed from metal to clay and tripled in size. Light poured out from every window, and the walls glowed as if the sun shone directly on the golden-brown adobe.

Alice Mary stepped inside, eyes wide as she took in the huge fermenting vat, easily four times the size of the biggest one she possessed. The combined scent of yeast and fruit almost overpowered her with its heady, rich aroma. And presiding over the vat was a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman with elaborately braided hair and kohl-lined eyes. When she looked up and smiled, the warmth projected from her smile rolled up and down Alice Mary’s lanky frame. The Lady gestured and a smaller version of Herself stepped up to oversee the vat.

Without thinking about it, Alice Mary dropped to her knees as the Lady glided toward her. Her sheer authority compelled it.

“Come, come,” the Lady said, taking Alice Mary’s hands and lifting her back up to her feet. “You should not be kneeling in my presence. If anything, I should be the one kneeling to such a talented brewster.”

“I—I—Lady—” Alice Mary stuttered, beginning to realize just who this Lady was. “I—I am but a lowly practitioner of the craft of brewing.”

“My name is Ninkasi, the Lady Who Fills the Mouth,” she said. “And I say that your practice is anything but lowly. Your brew is exquisite.”

Alice Mary swallowed hard, the old self-effacing habits of her pre-superhero days reasserting themselves. Praise from Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of brewing? “I—well—there’s not much to it.”

“Your touch is—shall we say, magical?” Ninkasi’s eyes twinkled with a private glee. “Worthy of respect in its own right. Come. We have much brewing to do tonight, and little enough time to do it.”

Alice Mary frowned. She smelled that the proportions of fruit to barley in this mix were just slightly off. “We need to add more fruit,” she told Ninkasi.

“Tell me and I will make it so,” Ninkasi responded.

Alice Mary took a deep breath, and began to recite ingredients and proportions for this particular recipe.

That night and the next morning passed in a flurry of brewing, roasting, mixing and fermenting. Alice Mary and Ninkasi worked quickly, Ninkasi’s divine touch speeding up the fermentation process (albeit with a bit of experimentation to discern just how much they could speed it up without ruining the magical mix). It seemed as if Alice Mary’s whole world was subsumed in a yeasty haze of barley, hops and fruit, nearly thick enough to make her drunk just breathing the air.

Whenever they amassed enough beer to fill the small garden courtyard with jugs, Coyote whisked it away.

“The battle goes well,” he told them at one point in the afternoon. “Keep brewing!”

They kept brewing.

Sunset and darkness approached, close to the time when the forces fighting for the Kraken would withdraw for the day. Coyote’s visits to restock the forces slowed, or so it seemed when Alice Mary scanned the results of their latest batches stacking up high in the courtyard.

Then Coyote appeared, absent-mindedly half-human, half-coyote, driving a sledge pulled by great black and tan foxhounds yoked in hunting couples. On it squatted a fat, shadowy cauldron. The nothingness that projected from it repelled Alice Mary, and even Ninkasi frowned, troubled, at it.

“Pour every bit of beer you have left into this cauldron,” Coyote said.

They scurried to fill the cauldron. Surprisingly, the vessel grew until every last drop of beer Alice Mary and Ninkasi had prepared filled it to the brim.

“Help me,” Coyote said to Ninkasi. “Don’t touch it!” he warned Alice Mary. “Superhero though you may be, you are still mortal, and this cauldron is a danger to mortals.”

“What are you going to do with this?” Alice Mary asked.

“Come and see. But no!” he cautioned as she would step up on the sledge with him and Ninkasi. “Not even this close, not for you.” He whistled again, and a black horse with white spots across its haunches appeared. “Come see.”

Recognizing Coyote’s favorite mount, Alice Mary slipped onto the Appaloosa’s back. The hounds leaned into their harness, baying as if they’d just spotted a fox. The cauldron moved slowly at first, then began to fly, lifting off of the ground as the seven couples of hounds started to gallop, their voices blending in an unearthly call to the hunt. The Appaloosa gave pursuit, pushing off gracefully from levade to capriole, then began to gallop as if he were still on the ground. Alice Mary grinned and hung on. Sky-riding the nameless Appaloosa by herself was a rare treat, something she’d only been able to do three times before. Coyote rarely shared this mount.

At last they reached the battlefield. Rather than stopping behind the lines, Coyote drove the pack through the troops.

“Make way! Make way!” he bellowed, as Ninkasi steadied the rocking cauldron and Alice Mary rode escort behind them.

At last they stopped. Alice Mary looked around, shocked at the devastation of blasted trees and ripped ground as well as the piles of bodies—more wounded and dead gods and heroes marred by the pustulant growths than of hobgoblins. On one side, Michael frowned at Coyote, the pantheon of the much-thinned ranks of surviving gods and heroes behind him. On the other, gnarled, pale-skinned creatures with big eyes, twisted limbs, and wart-like protuberances snarled. Their leader stood only slightly larger than those he led, scraggly and oily gray hair dangling down his shoulders. A cephalopodan purple and green shape glowed on the top of his helmet, sure sign that the Kraken itself controlled him.

Coyote bowed to Michael. He unhitched the pack of hounds, talking softly to each dog as he dismissed it. Then he faced the hordes of hobgoblins, unflinching when they began to throw excrescent globules at him. Coyote leapt into the cauldron, yipping defiantly. For a moment he disappeared underneath the surface and Alice Mary’s heart sank. Then his head bobbed to the surface. He laughed, treading the beer, then cupped his hands and drank deeply.

“I can outdrink your whole army!” he bellowed. “All of you are weak little babies who can’t handle a real brew! Nyah, nyah, nyah!” He drank again. “Waugh! What a fine brew this is!”

With a roar, the first line of hobs charged the cauldron. Ninkasi leapt off of the sledge and ran toward Alice Mary. The Appaloosa snorted as a squat buckskin mare appeared next to them. Ninkasi jumped onto the mare’s back.

Coyote laughed as the hobs swarmed the cauldron and dove in.

“Drink deep! Drink deep!” he challenged them, then with a twist ducked underneath the surface. The hobs dove after him. Bubbles rose to the surface. Seconds passed.

Then Coyote bobbed back to the top. “Ha, where are the rest of you? I’ve drunk them under the surface! Weaklings!”

More hobgoblins bellowed and charged the cauldron. Coyote yipped gleefully as they mobbed over the edge, plunking in, sinking under. Once again Coyote dove and the hobs followed him. Bubbles rose to the surface.

Coyote bobbed up again, laughing and yipping defiance as the hobs kept coming. By this time the Kraken leader and a handful of smaller hobs with a similar but smaller device on their helmets tried to beat back their fellows. But they were too few against the determined crowd and were swept into the cauldron with their companions.

Alice Mary watched, her hands over her mouth to keep from crying out as the hobs kept coming, kept coming, kept coming, scuttling over the edges of the cauldron in teeming masses.

And then there were no more. The surface of the beer in the cauldron roiled slightly, only half-empty. A single large bubble appeared, then popped, sounding almost as if the cauldron itself had belched. Coyote had disappeared during the last great crush. Alice Mary slipped off of the Appaloosa to run forward but Ninkasi slid off of the buckskin to hold her back.

“Wait. It is not yet done.”

Even as Ninkasi spoke, damp chills came over Alice Mary. Darkness rose from where the hobgoblins had come.

“Hold!” Michael commanded.

The sky seemed to split in front of them, and the Kraken appeared with a loud boom that echoed throughout Alice Mary’s body. Its purple and green tentacles momentarily appeared to fill the sky before they were dwarfed by a globular, gnarled purple, green and gray head with a brown beak. The tentacles writhed and twisted around each other to form a foundation, obscenely three times taller than even Michael, who stood twelve feet high in this manifestation, until the gelatinous head rested firmly on its teeming, crawling, intertwined base and assumed a humanoid shape.

“What have you done with my army?” the Kraken roared, lashing at Michael with one tentacle.

Michael brushed away the tentacle easily with his lance. “Why, they—”

The cauldron belched again, even louder this time, sending Coyote flying to land at Michael’s feet. Coyote shook himself, grinning.

“I outdrank them!” he boasted, burping loudly. “Outdrank—every—single—one.” He swayed and fell over.

“This? THIS bested my army?” the Kraken raged.

Coyote emitted a series of farts, followed by a long, drawn-out belch that was a smaller echo of the cauldron’s last one. “Well, me ‘n Alice Mary’s fine beer.” He punctuated the sentence with another set of farts, capped by an even deeper burp. “An—an—I’m betting I can out-drink YOU!” he drawled, rolling back to his feet, reeling slightly.

“You? YOU? Insignificant wretch—”

“Beat you to it,” Coyote slurred, wavering in a circle. “Betcha I can dive in before you do!”

“You’ll lose that bet!” The Kraken rose even higher on his tentacles. “Drunken fool!”

Coyote yipped, switching to canine form, and darted off, the Kraken in pursuit. Alice Mary squinted as he galloped toward the cauldron, yipping loudly. Was it her imagination or did the cauldron tip slightly to make it easier for him to leap inside? Nonetheless, he dove in, the Kraken sliding in after.

Both disappeared under the surface of the beer. Giant waves roiled across the top and threatened to spill over the edge. Two tentacles waved above the surface, and then fumbled for purchase on the cauldron’s rim. Coyote’s sharp, pointy canine muzzle broke the surface and he bit down hard on one tentacle. Coyote and tentacle disappeared into the beer again, followed by the other tentacle.

Steam rose from the surface. The waves slowly decreased. The beer stilled. Quiet fell over the battlefield.

And then, with another gigantic belch, the cauldron expelled two figures. The dark, roiling clouds exploded open with a bright crash of simultaneous lightning and thunder, wide enough to admit a limp-tentacled Kraken through a narrow slit. Brightness flashed around them. Then, slowly, the dark clouds softened to pale gray with streaks of white. In the distance, a single warbler burbled a soft call. Silence followed for a few moments, and then a meadowlark answered.

Coyote landed at Michael’s feet, half-canine, half-human. He looked up, grinned, and emitted a series of long, drawn-out belches followed by a very loud fart.

“An’ that should take care of the Kraken and his minions. This time.” He hiccupped. “Mighty fine brew our Alice Mary makes, ‘specially with Ninkasi there to help.” He shook himself and rose to his feet, now steady. “And even more thanks are due to our lady Ceridwen for the use of her splendid cauldron, and the cauldron itself!”

He bowed to the cauldron, and, marvelously, it tipped to him. Then it disappeared.

“Coyote, Coyote, Coyote,” Michael said, shaking his head. “If a drinking contest was enough to banish the Kraken and his hobgoblins sooner, why hadn’t you figured it out a few days ago and saved us all this trouble?”

“Because Alice Mary had not yet brewed this fine elixir,” Coyote said. He snapped his fingers and a fine, gray felted cowboy hat appeared. He brushed an infinitesimal wisp of dust off of the brim, then bowed his head slightly to put it on, nestling the crown down steadily on his head and snapping his fingers when it was settled. “All a matter of circumstances, oh honorable Archangel, all a matter of circumstances coming together.” He strode over to Alice Mary and Ninkasi, offering an arm to each of them. “And now, ladies, shall we go celebrate? Or did we use all the beer in the cauldron?”

“I think we used it all—” Alice Mary began.

Ninkasi laughed. “Ah, my dearest lady of Justice, one never pours all the brew! I held one small crock back for just this circumstance!”

“A lady after my own heart,” Coyote laughed. “And now, let us go celebrate!”

Alice Mary let herself be swept along. “But how did you keep from getting too drunk?” she leaned over to ask Coyote.

Coyote laughed. “Oh Alice Mary. Is there ever too much drink for the Trickster?”

She had to ponder that one for quite some time afterward.

An icy chill shot through Eleanor, clear down to her bones. She paused at the open doorway to Master Harte’s library. Still as a statue, the Master stood, wearing his smoking jacket and Sunday trousers. The play of light and shadows on his sand-colored hair and mutton chops revealed no vitality, like he was one of them mechanical blokes with fake whiskers and skin. Not only that, the gas-lamp flickering above his portly hulk—barely a good spit away from a bookcase—refused to reveal his right arm. Well, most of it. Did she need spectacles? The steady tick of the mantel clock grew louder than it should. Things was wrong here. Eleanor could feel that in her bones, too.

Regardless, she ought to serve Master Jeremy Harte his late-night libation although he’d mostly ignore it. ‘Twas one of her duties, one she’d best perform right and proper. Eleanor stepped forward. The beer she carried sloshed a bit. Wouldn’t do to spill spirits on the plush Persian carpet. She gripped her silver serving tray tighter. Blimey. If the Master didn’t fancy brew, why request such a brimming-full tankard? Another shiver crossed her shoulders, it did. What a strange place, Brighton House.

Master Harte remained half-turned toward his largest bookcase and only partially faced her. How unusual for him not to notice her presence. He was an inventor. Noticed all manner of things. Something must have put him off. Maybe she’d done a mistake.

“Yer stout, sir,” Eleanor said. She should have said “your,” but certain words from her childhood vernacular kept slipping out. “Shall I leave the stout on yer desk, sir?”

Why didn’t he answer? Eleanor glanced down at her starched white apron and the ankle-length skirt of her gray dress. She hadn’t reached her twenty-third year without learning basic facts of class and life. Men of Master Harte’s station didn’t need to justify their eccentric behavior. Servants like her bloody well did.

“Did ye hear me, sir?” Eleanor asked.

“The tankard,” Master Harte said, his voice flat. He still didn’t turn. “Hand me. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

He’d just spoken with all the polish of a ten-year-old stable boy talking to a hound. Did the Master play a little game she didn’t understand? Eleanor set the tray upon the desk. She moved nearer to him, gripping the tankard’s cool sides with both hands. The handle remained free for him to grasp. Nary a muscle, he moved.

“Closer,” Master Harte said, his voice firm. Silvery threads in the collar of his smoking jacket shimmered. “To me.”

A warm tingle raced across the backs of Eleanor’s hands. This strange speaking had to be a bit of sport he made with her. In a minute she hoped he’d give her an affectionate pat on her shoulder and send her on her way for the night.

“Handle,” Master Harte said, still not looking at her. “In my left hand.”

In his left hand? He was right handed. An odor, like dried-out bogwood and sulfur heaped onto a smoldering fire, wafted out of nowhere. By Our Lady! Even flatulence couldn’t generate such a disagreeable stink.

“Step,” Master Harte said. His hand—chilly as an eel packed in snow—brushed her own and grasped the vessel by its handle. “Back. Now.”

Eleanor edged backward. A long stream of warm breath purged its way out her mouth. She must have been holding her air all in, afraid to exhale. Her eyelids raised as far as they could. Master Harte tilted his tankard and poured the stout down the top of his right arm near the shoulder. Had he gone balmy?

Liquid dribbled on the carpet. Now the Master turned his face toward her, his wide eyes shiny as polished agates. Her gaze shifted downward. His black shoes moved and pointed straight toward her own. Eleanor tilted back her head, lifting her chin. Master Harte stood fully before her. Except it wasn’t there. His right arm really weren’t all there. Just ended at the blooming elbow, it did. Holy saints and Trinity! Eleanor let out a high-pitched shriek.

“Quiet, woman,” Master Harte said and shoved the empty tankard into her hand.

“What’s happened to ye?” Her heart raced. A man missing half-an-arm might need a tourniquet. She must help him now. “Should I fetch a doctor?”

“Hush.” His thick eyebrows blended into a single black, blurry line.

Master Harte leaned back against the glass doors of a bookcase. No mangled stump gushed blood or even dripped. He didn’t seem in pain, neither. Inch by inch, his lower arm appeared—sleeve and all—as if he pulled the half-limb out of a magician’s top hat. The sulfur stench receded.

His fingers wiggled, pink and healthy. There he was, all put back together. Blimey.

“For now,” he said. He rubbed his regained arm. “Safe.”

What did he mean, for now? First, no arm. Then plenty of arm. What the bleeding heck had happened? Why was he safe only for now?

“That will be all for the evening, Eleanor.” He glanced down toward the soiled carpet. “A good stain to mark the spot, don’t you think?”

The grandfather clock chimed the hour from the hallway. Eleven o’clock. Eleanor couldn’t move. Speak. Do anything.

“I said that will be all.” His piercing brown eyes stared into hers. “Be a good girl now and get some rest. It tried to get me again, that’s all.”

Eleanor inhaled the aroma of cooked bacon and served Master Harte his breakfast eggs and rashers. A morning greeting squeaked its way out of her mouth. The Master appeared to lavish the majority of his attention on the morning newspaper. Just as well, after last night’s unnatural events. They’d deprived her of sleep, they had. Did the other servants know about them strange happenings? Her fingertip itched to tap the sleeve of Master Harte’s suit coat. Surely real flesh and blood now lay below.

The newspaper rustled. The Master turned another page. Black-and-white headlines facing Eleanor declared the latest goings-on in and around London. The temperance ladies stirred up a fuss in Kensington. Parliament argued about the cholera outbreak in Whitechapel. Anarchists had rioted near Hyde Park. No obvious front-page reports of unexplained disappearances of hands or arms.

“I have a research project in the library this morning,” Master Harte said. “It can’t wait until Parker’s return.” He folded his newspaper, until it matched the size the delivery boy had left upon the front door stoop an hour ago. “You would be of great service to me if you kept notes.”

“The library, sir?” The room had to be daemon possessed. Why couldn’t the Master wait until his valet got back from London? ‘Twas him who sent Parker to the city in the first place. “Yer sure about going in there so soon?”

“Most definitely,” he said.

“Then,” Eleanor said, “I’d be… pleased to take notes for ye.”

She was not at all pleased. Not anyhow, but wouldn’t say so. Her fingers rubbed her elbows. What if one of her arms disappeared? Best she bring along a tankard of beer?

“The stroke of nine it will be then,” Master Harte said. He cleared his throat and slipped a folded piece of paper—the size of a calling card—into Eleanor’s hand. “In the library.”

A message? Eleanor dropped the paper into her apron pocket, then poured Master Harte more tea. Dared she read this note in the kitchen? She didn’t want Mrs. Blake, the cook, to start rumors about special attentions. The upstairs and downstairs maids, neither. She was a good girl, she was.

“Nine’s a civilized hour for a project, sir.” She curtsied. Better than eleven at night.

Master Harte grinned, like he knew a secret she didn’t. That note? Serving tray in hand, Eleanor hurried toward the kitchen.

“Beware the nine.” The warning scrawled on that piece of paper from Master Harte still rang in her brain like parish bells before a funeral. He hadn’t written the message. The pen strokes wasn’t bold enough to be his. She patted her apron pocket and opened the library door. What was the nine the message mentioned? The hour of nine?

“It’s safe to enter,” Master Harte called from across the room.

“Yes, sir.” How could he be so blooming sure? Regardless, she wouldn’t step anywhere near that stain on the carpet.

Inside the wood-paneled library, a variety of brass and wooden instruments rested upon the drafting table. Compass. Level. Only an inventor could know what all them other items was. Master Harte motioned her toward the desk, which held a typewriter.

Brenton Parker—the most accomplished gentleman’s gentleman in Brighton—usually served as his scribe. Parker was attending to an errand up in London, but he’d taught her a little shorthand so she could fill in when necessary. She hadn’t mastered the letter clacker, though. Her fingers was so slow.

Master Harte picked up a stick with a wheel on one end. He paced this way and that, the wheel of the upright stick clicking as it rolled across the floor.

“Bookcase to desk,” he said, “three feet seven inches.”

Oh, the thing was a measuring device. Now Master Harte called out the size of several angles. He stepped on the stain and gave her another reading. An estimation of where half his arm had gone the night before?

Beware the nine. A shiver crossed the back of Eleanor’s shoulders. Might the number of feet, inches and degrees add up to a multiple of nine? How could any sum of numbers make a body part appear to vanish? How could spilled stout set things right?

“That’s enough, I think.” Master Harte rested his clickstick against a bookcase.

Eleanor translated her shorthand, her two index fingers typing on a sheet of paper. She removed the sheet from the clacking machine and laid it on the drafting table. Master Harte cupped his palm around his chin. Over and over, he mumbled what she’d recorded. The first finger on his other hand traced imaginary lines on the table’s surface.

“Just as I thought,” he said. “No theme of nine in my measurements. Wasn’t in the other place either.”

In the other place that tried to get him?

“In what place, sir,” she said, “would that be?”

“Our London house,” he said. “In my bed chamber.”

“Oh.” A blush warmed her face. A good thing he’d not asked her to take notes there.

“Holes, that’s what caused it,” the Master said. “Rare cavities in the air around us. Something like painted-shut windows suddenly opened.” His finger tapped the typed paper on the table. “The holes can be closed when nothing blocks the way. Stout seems to have the right combination of alcohol and organics to do the job.” He frowned. “Trouble is, I don’t know if those openings lead to individual little pockets or to a huge foreign world in a separate dimension.”

Such talk of a separate dimension. More likely, the matter involved malevolent spirits or a passageway to the devil’s den. May heaven protect all the folks at Brighton House—even Mrs. Blake, whose scolding voice reminded Eleanor of crows.

“Mrs. Blake knows a medium, sir.” Actually, the cook knew a variety of odd folks who might prove helpful. A strange one, that woman was.

“We’re dealing with science.” Master Harte scratched his mutton chop. “Not the supernatural.”

“Science, sir?”

“Chemistry and physics.” He gestured toward his instrument table. “I suspect someone plots against me, but I don’t have the foggiest notion why. Unless they think I’ve stolen one of their inventions.”

A plot to do him in? A mystery, this was. Eleanor straightened her apron. At the market square, she’d overheard talk about Scotland Yard. Inspectors solved mysteries by asking questions. If she came up with clever questions to help Master Harte, maybe he’d reward her with important responsibilities.

“That warning about the nine,” she said. “Where did it come from, sir?”

“A stranger,” he replied. “One of the temperance ladies outside the liquor shop up the street from my club. About your age.”

“Do any of the other servants know about all this?”

“I doubt they know much.” He winked. “We ought to keep things that way.”

A bell clanged. The front door. The noise gave Eleanor a start. Master Harte hadn’t mentioned expecting visitors. Her fingers inspected her bun. Her hair seemed in place. Footsteps and voices grew louder.

“I’m relieved to see you, Jeremy,” the gentleman in the library doorway said.

The stocky toff—still wearing his elegant woolen greatcoat and leather gloves—brushed past the household footman and entered the library. Pallor covered the stranger’s face, as if he’d seen his own specter in the hallway mirror.

“I’m sorry about barging in this way,” the visitor said, his voice shaky. “But I’ve some rather untidy tidings to report.”

“My God,” Master Harte said. “You look appalling.” He ushered his visitor to a leather chair, then turned toward Eleanor. “Fetch a shot of brandy.”

Eleanor hurried over to the liquor cabinet, all the while straining her ears to catch tidbits of conversation. Had someone else misplaced an arm?

“Your valet,” the visitor continued, “brought those drawings of yours to the club yesterday evening. We were all quite eager to study your proposals for protecting the city water supply from cholera contamination. I fear the epidemic spreads beyond Whitechapel already.”

So that’s what Parker was up to. Eleanor carried the snifter of brandy to the distressed gent, careful to avoid the untrustworthy patch of space near the main bookcase. She set the tray on the table beside him. He had two hands visible and could jolly well pick up his own glass.

“Get to the point,” Master Harte said. His hands, tensed as wound-up clockwork, clutched the lapels of his suit.

“Parker,” the gentleman said, “set your document case down on a table. He poured himself a pint of stout.”

The toff raised the brandy toward his mouth. He drank not a drop and returned the glass to the tray.

“And?” Master Harte said, his voice pinched.

“Parker vanished,” the visitor said, “as the clock struck ten.” His palms pressed against his lowered face. “‘Twas like the poor chap was never there.”

Parker gone? Not just half his arm but all of him? Done in forever? Eleanor let out a wail. Blimey. She was loud enough to jelly live eels.

A live eel was the last thing Eleanor wished to drag about London today, but that was the way it worked out. Mrs. Blake had a favorite market and a mouthful of reasons for her to buy an eel there. Master Harte, off to investigate Parker’s disappearance, had ridden with her on the train into the city. Thus Eleanor now stumbled along cobblestones while cart vendors in her path hawked their wares. Her burlap sack wiggled. She sighed. Poor Parker. Most likely dead, he was. How could the cook care about stewing an eel?

Flies buzzed everywhere. The stench from rotting fish in passing carts overpowered even the stink of manure. Eleanor’s head and feet throbbed. Would be nice to visit Master Harte’s inventors’ club and rest in an overstuffed chair. A pity the place didn’t welcome women, except to do the cleaning. You’d think the wallpaper would peel from floor to ceiling if a lady crossed the bleeding threshold and sat down to sip a cuppa tea. Rules was rules, though. Nothing to do but wrestle with this eel while the Master sought clues about Parker.

Parker was—or had been—a clever sort. Well, not clever enough. Had whoever nabbed him expected Master Harte instead? Then raced down to the Brighton coast upon discovering the mistake? That was over forty miles. Nobody could have traveled from the club to Brighton House in an hour. And no God-fearing magician would make a man vanish into another world. The blame had to rest upon devilry or evil spirits, no matter what the Master claimed. No wonder he hadn’t brought the bizarre details straight to Scotland Yard.

Eleanor reached the train station, the eel in her sack still thrashing about like a cat in the wash. Some eels could live for days out of water. At least she’d picked out a right fresh one.

“Ticket to Kensington Station,” she told the station clerk.

She set down her sack on the floor and fumbled in her purse for money, giving the man in line behind her—a fellow with a greasy black beard—a wary glance. His shabby houndstooth greatcoat fit like it belonged to a shorter bloke. Stolen? A good thing she’d sewn that secret money pocket into the lining of her coat. She paid the clerk. Her purse was empty now, except for her handkerchief. She tucked her ticket inside.

Time to pick up her sack and board the train. Her hand reached for the drawstrings. Spiny teeth snapped at her. They missed. Almighty Lord of Heaven. The eel’s slimy head protruded from the top of the burlap bag, the beast’s lower jaw longer than the upper one. Them drawstrings had come loose.

“Need ’elp, Miss?” the houndstooth man said. He reached toward the sack without waiting for a reply.

“Do take care,” Eleanor said. The swollen cut on his brow suggested a recent scrap. He’d better not make a grab for her purse.

Something about this bloke was familiar. Had she seen him in the fish market? Had he followed her? God, she was jumpy as the eel. The business about disappearing arms and people unsettled her senses.

“Ye just got teh know,” the stranger said, “how teh ’andle a wiggler righ’ and proper.”

His meaty hands grabbed the sides of the bag and shook the eel back into place. He pulled the drawstrings tight and knotted them. His dark complexion made him look part gypsy. Was he in this for a tip?

“I don’t have money to spare,” Eleanor said, accepting the bagged eel from the man. She smiled even as tension clenched her innards. “But thank ye, nonetheless.”

“Oh, I got me reward enough,” he said, and stepped up to the ticket window.

What an unexpected reply. Eleanor lifted her squirming charge and boarded the train to Kensington. A faint ticking sound puzzled her. A fellow passenger’s pocket watch? Now something whirred. She glanced behind her. No one followed.

The underground train rumbled toward Kensington Station. Only a couple stops left to go. Eleanor would meet Master Harte on the front steps of his inventors’ club. They’d return to Brighton by carriage, as planned.

On the seat beside her, the eel sack wiggled. That stranger in the ill-fitting greatcoat still unsettled her. All manner of evil characters roamed London. Whatever took Parker likely had wanted Master Harte instead. Could the houndstooth man have bewitched this eel-in-a-sack in order to do the Master in? She should jolly well leave the bleeding thing on the train when she got off. Then tell Mrs. Blake to buy eels only in Brighton.

“Ye got no righ’,” a woman’s brash voice said, “teh take up two seats when a lady needs one of ’em.”

Eleanor looked up. A pair of round blue-gray eyes separated by a thick nose glared down at her. Two painted lips, redder than holly-berries, pinched together. The thick powder on the woman’s face crinkled. A tart. Despite her fashionable ostrich-plume hat and fur-trimmed coat, this woman wasn’t no lady. Not at all.

“Ye best take the window seat then,” Eleanor said. “I’m getting off soon.”

She stood and moved to the aisle. The tart claimed the seat by the window and hoisted a small valise onto her lap. Did Eleanor really want to hold the eel or have it dance atop her feet on the floor? The train rocked. Maybe she ought to sit down before she fell down.

“Ain’t I good enough,” the tart said, “teh sit next teh the likes a ye?”

“‘Tis nothing to do with ye,” Eleanor said. “The eel’s the problem. He popped out in the station and nearly bit me.”

“Oh, is that all?” The tart reached for the eel sack and shoved it under her side of the seat. “Me and eels, we get along fine, we do.”

Eleanor nodded. She gathered her skirt and sat down. The tart opened her valise and removed a silver hip flask. Her gloved hands unscrewed the lid, producing a yeasty aroma but no spurt of foam. Flat beer. This woman prepared to tipple on a public train? How ill mannered.

“Well, ye don’t expect me teh drink water, now do ye?” The tart tossed back her head and took a swallow. “Water in London ain’t fit teh drink these days, if ye ask me. Will be the end of the empire if somebody don’t stop this bloody epidemic.”

“London’s seen cholera before,” Eleanor said. That had been in the 1850’s, hadn’t it? When London’s drinking water had mingled with its sewage. She’d heard about Master Harte taking sick back then. Luckily, she’d not been born until 1864.

“This cholera ain’t nothin’ like the old one, mark me words.” The tart took another swallow. “Everybody down in the East End’s sayin’ anarchists started it. Them blokes got a secret way of spreadin’ it, ye see. Tis the beginnin’ of the end of our world, I’m afeared.”

End of the world? Cholera wasn’t the plague. Not anyhow. Eleanor’s muscles tensed. There was that wretched odor of sulfur and bogwood again. Like in Master Harte’s library last night. She bolted to standing and surveyed the surrounding passengers. The ladies across the aisle pinched their noses. Where did the stink come from?

Eleanor moved into the aisle, clutching a seat back as the train swayed. Several high-pitched voices shrieked from behind her. She spun half-way around to face the tart. Only an empty window seat was there now. No tart. No eel. No valise. All three was blooming gone.

Men in Eleanor’s train car barked conflicting orders. Ladies wailed. A young woman swooned. Only minutes had passed since the tart had dissolved in mere air. The panic around Eleanor spread faster than cholera ever could.

Now a whistle blast sounded. The underground train rolled into the Hyde Park station.

“Ladies and children out the door first,” a man shouted.

Several women carrying closed parasols jostled Eleanor and pushed their way around her toward the train’s exit. Did they think she was a blasted turnstile? She wanted off this train, too, even if this wasn’t Kensington Station.

“Excuse me,” Eleanor said. “A bit of order is in order.”

Her ears caught a muffled noise. She glanced behind her, where the tart had been. A round trinket lay on the seat. The color of gold, it was. Had the woman worn a lapel pin?

The thing moved, walking on tiny metal limbs. This was some sort of miniature clockwork toy: a beetle automaton with ruby eyes. Expensive looking. She grasped the bejeweled beetle and turned it over in her palm. No engraving. Just a tiny clockface rimmed by several pairs of limbs and an unmatched extra. Insect limbs always came in even numbers. One limb must have broken off. Master Harte sometimes built small automatons. This would interest him. She slid the trinket into her purse and followed the other passengers.

Eleanor climbed down from the coach car. The station clock chimed the hour of five. A memory bubbled up but she couldn’t yet grasp it. She headed down the platform. A crowd of passengers yammered at the conductor. She skirted around them. A shudder shot through her, the same as when entering Master Harte’s library the night before. The houndstooth coat man. She’d caught a glimpse of him on the train up from Brighton today. The bleeding rogue had followed her most of the afternoon.

Why hadn’t he followed Master Harte? Maybe the knave figured the Master would notice him. Too bad the eel and its secret was gone. One thing for sure, the rogue’s magic could pry windows in the air open. The tart’s beer must have closed the cavity. Why had the woman and Parker vanished when Master Harte had not? Where had their bodies gone? A passageway to Hell wouldn’t have swallowed up Parker, a good chap. Eleanor climbed the staircase toward the street. Nothing made sense.

A staircase was like a passageway. Could the world have secret passageways? Only a spirit or a devil would do well in using them, all stinking of sulfur and bogwood. Crikey. Master Harte could be in danger right now. Eleanor reached the street. At least them anarchists today’s newspaper reported about had left. She set off in the direction of Kensington.

A hansom cab waited beside the lamppost ahead. A cab was a luxury for her. Brighton House money sat in her hidden pocket. Eleanor hailed the driver. He passed her an odd look as she prepared to climb inside.

“Ye haven’t been over near Whitechapel,” he said, “now have ye?”

“No,” she replied. No doubt the epidemic of cholera concerned him. She gave him the address of the inventors’ club. “Please hurry.”

Once inside the cab, Eleanor leaned back in her seat. The horse trotted, shod hooves clicking against cobblestones. It would be best to transfer cab money to her purse. She unbuttoned her coat and slid her hand into her hidden pocket. Next, her fingers loosened the drawstrings on her bag. Something tickled the side of her finger.

Her fingers plucked up the clockwork beetle. The trinket had a soft tick and whirr. A murky memory ruminated in the back of her mind. Fading daylight filtered in through the window. She turned the beetle on its back and counted its moving limbs. Well, this was no proper beetle. The bejeweled bug would have had ten limbs if one hadn’t broken off. A beetle with nine limbs, indeed!

Nine legs? Wait a bleeding minute. Eleanor sucked in a quick breath of air. The message Master Harte had given her had said to beware the nine. This was a “nine.” Plus she’d heard the same faint whirr and ticking after she’d purchased her train ticket. Eleanor swallowed hard. The houndstooth bloke must have planted this beetle in her eel sack. What evil was the automaton designed to do? Could the thing open windows in the air? Did the clock mechanism determine when? Holy saints and Trinity! Eleanor’s heartbeat sounded in her ears.

The hansom cab lurched one way and then the other. Eleanor thrust the beetle back into her purse and pulled the drawstrings tight. She’d heard no whirring in Master Harte’s library last night. Still, the cavity could have opened earlier in the evening before Parker unknowingly carried the beetle to London. No, someone would have noticed the offensive odor.

Maybe the beetle only unlocked the air’s window. A person might have to step in the proper place to vanish. Yet why had a fermented beverage helped Master Harte but not Parker or the tart? Eleanor clasped her hands together. Did the closeness of the beetle to the beer trigger the violent swallowing action? After taking Parker, had the beetle returned to the houndstooth knave through a secret passageway in air?

The cab slowed. It would be time to pay the driver soon. Secret passageway—them words wouldn’t leave her mind alone. A clockwork beetle… a cholera epidemic. The tart had claimed anarchists had a secret way of making cholera spread. What could be more secret than invisible holes in the air?

Earlier, Eleanor had wanted important responsibilities. Now one had crawled her way. Something was wrong in more than the Master’s library. Even the Queen wasn’t safe. For the sake of Her Majesty and the Master, Eleanor must turn wrong into right.

Master Harte wasn’t waiting on the pavement in front of the inventors’ club when Eleanor arrived. Stern-faced temperance ladies was, clad in starched black dresses. Nary a one of the old shrews looked Eleanor’s age. The woman who had warned the Master wasn’t here, probably got found out. A shiver cut between Eleanor’s shoulder blades.

“Down with daemon beer,” the shrew ladies shouted to the beat of their leader’s drum. “‘Tis as evil as rum.”

In other words, down with whatever might seal up them holes in the air and keep good folks from disappearing. At least when clockwork beetles wasn’t around. Had Master Harte been targeted because he knew so much about science and inventions?

Eleanor pushed her way through the temperance throng. A matron with a beak nose and black eye moved in front of her and blocked her way to the front door.

“Go home,” the shrew said with a thick accent Eleanor couldn’t identify. “While you still can.”

Eleanor’s reply caught in her throat. This menacing matron couldn’t know about the automaton in Eleanor’s purse. Still, Eleanor clutched the drawstrings tighter.

“Go home yerself,” Eleanor said.

Eleanor dodged to one side. The shrew reached for her but missed. A forward lunge brought Eleanor to the club’s front door. It was locked. Her fist pounded against the wooden barrier.

“Master Jeremy Harte,” she cried. “Help!”

Two hands grabbed Eleanor’s shoulders from behind. She hurled herself at the door with all the might she could muster. The front door to the inventors’ club opened. Freed from her pursuer, she lunged into the dim entryway. Her toe stubbed against something firm. She flew in the direction of a gray-haired gentleman. She thrust her arms in front of her. Her body collided with his. The monocle popped out of his eye. Blimey.

“Excuse me, sir,” Eleanor said.

The front door slammed behind her. She turned. The doorman shoved a wide wooden bolt in place. He must have opened the door. At least the temperance shrew couldn’t get her now.

“Please direct me to Master Jeremy Harte,” Eleanor said to the doorman. “It’s urgent, it is.”

“This is most irregular,” a man said behind her.

Eleanor wheeled around. A clerk in a blue uniform dashed from behind the registration desk, then planted himself in front of her.

“Highly irregular,” the clerk added.

“Indeed it is,” Eleanor said to him. “Some rogues are trying to do the Master in.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait here,” the clerk said. “Women aren’t allowed beyond this point.”

This chap worried about some stuffy rule? She could bleeding well vanish any moment. The world could start to end. She needed to tell Master Harte what had happened to her today, at a bit of a distance, that is. She thrust her hand into her purse and pulled out the clockwork beetle.

“Beware the Nine.” Eleanor brandished the beetle like she held a dagger. “Let me by or I’ll make the likes of ye join Mr. Parker.” She’d better not be near a pint of beer.

Eleanor pushed her way by the clerk and ran down a dim corridor with a musty odor. Master Harte and the others could be in the gentlemen’s smoking room. Was that room on the main floor or one level above?

“Master Harte,” she shouted. The thud of footsteps behind her grew louder.

“Eleanor,” the Master’s voice called. “What on—”

Up ahead, he stood just outside the doorway to a side room. She raced toward him.

“Don’t step near me,” she said. “No time to explain.”

He motioned her into a large mahogany-paneled parlor. A cluster of gentlemen wearing tweed suits gave her disapproving glares. A silver-haired toff in black set his tall glass on the book table next to a high-backed leather chair. The rich amber color of the liquid—the foam on top. The glass contained beer. Would the nearness of the beetle trigger instant disappearance? What could she do to make sure she stayed in this world and the beetle didn’t?

“Move back,” Eleanor said, “the lot of ye.”

Several steps brought her to the book table. She dropped the beetle into the beer. She dove in the opposite direction, knocking a gentleman off balance. ‘Twas the fellow with the monocle again. This time he crashed into the seat of an overstuffed chair. Eleanor landed on top of him. He groaned.

The stink of bogwood and sulfur flashed out of nowhere, so strong her stomach retched. Eleanor belched. She’d blooming never hear the end of all this embarrassment. Not anyhow.

“Excuse me, sir,” she whispered, her chest still flopped against his. “So sorry.”

“By God,” the voice of Master Harte boomed. “It’s gone.”

“Extraordinary,” another man exclaimed.

Mumbles sped through the room. The men was saying it’s gone, wasn’t they? Not he’s gone or she’s gone. Eleanor sat up in the pudgy gentleman’s lap. Her hands touched her nose and shoulders, her upper arms, waist and knees. She seemed all here. Facing Master Harte’s back, she pulled herself to her feet. The Master and another gentleman blocked her view.

“What’s gone, sir?”

“The side table,” Master Harte said. He turned to face her, his brown eyes wide. “The table. The pint. And whatever you tossed into it.”

The men stepped aside. Four ruts in the blue-and-gold Oriental carpet marked where table limbs had pressed. The table wasn’t there, though. A deep breath of air filled her lungs. The odor of bogwood and sulfur had subsided. The window in the air must have closed. For now?

“Are you,” Master Harte said with an uneven voice, “all right, Eleanor?”

He took a few steps toward her, then stopped. He motioned for the other inventors to see to their colleague, the poor fellow still wedged in the overstuffed chair.

“I think I’m all right,” Eleanor said.

“What about other things?” Master Harte added.

No doubt that temperance shrew and houndstooth bloke still mucked about, up to no good. Was they anarchists, bruised from yesterday’s riot in Hyde Park? Did they want the cholera epidemic to spread beyond control? Regardless, they could cause a lot of mischief smashing beer kegs and setting loose an army of clockwork beetles. All sorts of important people who might oppose them would disappear.

A spell of dizziness came on. Eleanor clutched the side of a leather chair. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She glanced toward the floral wallpaper. Firmly anchored, it was. Not the slightest hint of peeling from the shock of what she planned to say next.

“I’d be most grateful, sir.” Eleanor smiled. “If someone would please fetch me a cuppa tea and a crumpet.” She curtsied, then sat down on the leather chair. “Before ye—you—get back to stopping the cholera, I’ve some knowledge about other things you’d best consider.”

The gaslights in the room flickered. Master Harte folded his arms against his chest. One of his eyelids twitched.

“I suppose you’d fancy both sugar and cream,” the Master said.

“And lemon curd for the crumpet,” Eleanor replied. “If you please, sir.”

Master Harte grinned, although something remained wrong in England—and still would after he filed their report with Scotland Yard. Beer could save the world or destroy it. To stay on the saving side, she and the Master had best tote a pint about, even to church.

A teacup rattled in a saucer. Master Harte himself served her a cuppa.

“Thank you, sir.” She sipped her tea.

She ought to begin her story with what had happened at the fish market. Odd, how the houndstooth knave had known she’d shop in London today, then meet up with the Master. It was almost like someone— The backs of Eleanor’s hands tingled. When Parker’s death had shocked all of Brighton House, Mrs. Blake had insisted Eleanor travel with the Master and go buy a blasted eel. May Britannia rule forever! Mrs. Blake must have let the knave know. That shrew might even have handed him the reward he’d referred to.

“I think, sir,” Eleanor said, “you’ll need a new cook by sunrise.”

No doubt Master Harte would soon agree.

Jack couldn’t help falling in love every time he looked at her, this thing of absolute beauty. She had nice curves, sleek design and he even liked the color, a luscious cherry red. Better still, she was almost paid off.

He had borrowed thousands of credits and pawned everything he owned to buy the Sundancer, a Valkyrie Class light star freighter. He’d gotten her second hand, at one of the Confederation Customs Agency’s auctions of confiscated craft. She’d gone up for auction just as he was walking away from the Navy; fifteen years of fighting other people’s wars and he’d been ready to look out for himself for a while. This made the Sundancer a kind of ‘rebound’ relationship for him, and it was love at first flight.

He climbed up the gangway on a bright sunny morning, and felt the warmth of her exhaust vents mixing with the spice-scented air of the planet Tortuga. The hatch recognized him instantly, sliding open as he approached.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called, as he stepped aboard. Of course, the empty ship gave him no reply.

Captain Jack Galloway liked being his own boss. He made his own plans and minded his own business. He could fly the ship in his bathrobe if he pleased; but he preferred his old, black leather jacket with the logo of a New Vegas bordello on the back. Jack didn’t recall exactly how he acquired the jacket; much of that night would always be a blur to him. He did seem to recall seeing the bordello’s bouncer wearing it as he entered the place. However, he wasn’t so sure about when or how he left. It could have been through the door or the window? Anyway, the Sundancer didn’t have a crew to comment on his fashion sense. The ship’s numerous automated features made her a one-man starship. Just the way he liked it.

Striding through the curved, modern passageways, he felt the cool air circulating through her internal vents. He took his seat behind the controls. With Sundancer’s state of the art console; he only had to look at the access control for a moment for the software to scan his eye and automatically pull up the gangway. He never installed the autopilot protocols however; he enjoyed flying. Lovingly, he took hold of the control stick and focused his eyes on the commo unit. The ‘transmit’ light came on a half second later.

In a clear voice he announced, “This is MJS Sundancer to Tortuga Control, request permission to depart.”

“Sundancer, you free to go, mon. Have a safe trip and be back soon,” came the usual response.

“Tortuga Control, you know I can’t stay away,” he smiled. “See you in two weeks.” Jack loved Tortuga, a warm and pleasant world with manners as relaxed as its laws. Of course, it was a sharp contrast to the planet he was going to, but them’s the breaks.

The Sundancer’s thrusters flared, as Jack gave her full power. Like an angel ascending on wings of fire, she swiftly reached escape velocity and broke free of the planet’s gravity well. The auto-nav plotted the fastest course possible to the planet Isis, in the Alpha System. In the ship’s hold she carried 20,000 stuffed panda toys. In her plumbing she carried 10,000 liters of very fine beer. The toys were legal, the beer… not so much.

Having pipes filled with beer had certain disadvantages. Sure, all he needed to do was turn on a facet to pour himself a cold one, but taking a shower in beer is not a good idea, and using the toilet would just flush away profits. So, for the next six days, Jack drank and bathed with bottled water. The empty bottles also had a use, and relieved him of the need to use the ship’s toilet for the most part. Unfortunately, this uncomfortable arrangement was completely necessary to get his illicit cargo past the Isis Public Protectors.

Beer wasn’t exactly illegal on Isis. The planet even operated a small, state run, brewery. Unfortunately, that brewery produced some of the most God-awful, crap-tastic beer in the known universe. The label on this vile brew called it ‘Isis Nectar.’ Everybody who tried it called it ‘Isis Piss.’ Jack tried a sip of it once, and it instantly reminded him of the time he passed by a bad ammonia leak from a recycling system. Still, the state that produced this sudsy abomination intended to sell it. So, how did they get folks to choose their crap beer over the competition? Simple, they taxed the living hell out of all imported brews, until most folks had little choice but to choke it down or go through life sober… and who would want to do that?

Sundancer’s pipes contained nothing but the best, a brand called “Rocket Fuel Beer”. Once it got past the state’s customs goons, it sold for a reasonable price in taverns planet-wide. Jack felt a prick of pride for giving the common man his due. And by going ’round the taxman Jack made himself one hell of a profit. At this rate, he figured, the Sundancer would be paid off in only three more years.

Approaching Isis’s orbit, Jack’s scanners picked up an outgoing blip. Automatically, the I screens flashed the ident’; the MJS Vagabond, an old tub of a medium freighter, home-ported on a nowhere planet called Tarkan. He just shook his head, amazed that something that ugly could actually fly. Still, no reason to be unfriendly, he glanced once again at his commo unit.

“This is MJS Sundancer to MJS Vagabond. Lulu, how the hell are you?”

The Vagabond’s captain replied in her thick Russian accent, “Jack, you son of bitch, long time, no see. We hear you not making Earth to Rama run anymore.”

“No, I got tired of doing military cargoes. Made me feel like I was still back in the service; and you know how I love taking orders. What are you guys up to now-days?” Jack asked.

“We do run from Tortuga to Isis, mostly.”

“No shit? Me too. Next time we’re on the same ball of dirt, we’ve got to have a drink together.”

“Is deal, we buy you first round, you buy every round after.”

“Ha!” Jack laughed. “Well, I got Isis Control on the other channel. Suppose I better get my approach vector before they start shooting. Safe voyage, Vagabond.”

“Catch you on flip side, Sundancer. Lulu, out.” And with that, Jack switched to the other channel to get his landing instructions. He followed them to the letter all the way to a docking pad at the main starport.

“Captain Galloway, I am Protector Johnson. May I see your manifest?” said the man in the steel-blue uniform with the standard issue, bureaucratic face.

“Yes, Sir,” Jack replied, as he handed the man his printout.

The official studied the manifest much longer than Jack thought necessary. “Captain, I see you are transporting toys again. Is it to the same buyer as before?”

“Yes, Sir.” Jack felt that when dealing with uncompromising and efficient public officials, it’s best to keep answers short. Calling them ‘Sir’ didn’t hurt either.

“I see. Well, there should be no problem then. Unless, you have something else to tell me?” The cop let the question linger menacingly in the air.

“No, Sir.”

“Very well. Please proceed to the clinic for your mandatory health check while we perform a routine search of your ship.” Over his shoulder, Jack saw a squad of IPP cops advancing toward the Sundancer, scanners in hand. This was the part that always made Jack nervous. If just one of them decided to wash his hands the gig was up. Still, he had no choice. He walked to the clinic for the usual off-worlder’s med exam.

Of all the planets of the Confederation, Isis had the strictest health laws. Jack didn’t really blame them for that. After all, a plague almost wiped out the planet’s population within the first ten years of human colonization about a century ago. The medical and scientific types sealed themselves in quarantine and developed a cure, while the rest of the colonists died of the disease… or were changed by it. Those who caught it and lived mutated, and so too their descendants. Many folks said that mutants were filthy, crazy, and downright unstable. But Jack knew different. To his experience, mutants were just folk with no hair and jaguar spots on their skin. Still, that didn’t keep the Regime of Isis from exploiting and abusing them every chance it got. Damn shame, really.

Two hours later, Jack finished with his exam and the Sundancer’s search was over. Fortunately none of the Public Protectors needed to use the ship’s can. As the old lift-trucks arrived to unload the stuffed pandas, Jack decided to take his shore leave. Time to visit Chad.

Jack knew Chad from his Navy days. They served together on the CJS Olympus during the Tau-Ceti Crisis. Old Chad was one of those ‘spooks’ from Fleet Command who needed a closer look of the bad guys, and Jack had been just crazy enough to fly him there. The fact that Chad was of the bald and spotted set didn’t bother Jack a damn bit. A friend was a friend.

Jack knew the way to Chad’s house by heart. Just take the public tubes from the starport to the Dumpberg Station, and then walk six blocks to the old shantytown by the river.

As Jack approached the house, he noticed some things had changed a bit. For one thing Chad had fewer neighbors. A couple of lots were newly vacant and the char of fire stained the rubble-strewn ground. Chad’s house was perfectly intact but had a new steel door and a trip-wire fence. Otherwise, the outside looked like the same mud/brick/sheet-metal disaster Jack knew so well.

Chad must have seen Jack coming as he opened his front door wide. “Jack, you old nutcase! How ya’ doing?”

Jack regarded Chad’s stained, gray coveralls. “A lot better than you, shipmate! Where’s the suit and tie?” Work clothes were not Chad’s style. He had the noble bearing of a king among the peasants of the space-lanes, and usually dressed the part.

“Well, these days a mutie’ who puts on airs is asking for too much attention,” Chad said with a shake of his head. “You look like shit yourself. Come on in and take a load off.”

Jack walked past the battered porch and into the opulent living room. Chad’s missus was a fine lady from Central City. Her folks worked in the manor houses of Isis’s sovereign citizens, and she knew how to decorate. As Jack took off his old black leather jacket and draped it over a couch, he saw her enter the room with twin rug rats playing around her knees.

He could never keep them straight. There names were Ader and Adora, both cute as hell at eight years old. Nothing disarmed Jack faster than their dimples. He kept that to himself, however. Jack didn’t think he would make a very good father, not after his dad’s example anyway.

“Hello, Emma, those kids overrun you yet?” Jack said with a smile.

“Mr. Galloway, you know some people actually like raising children. A few of us even do it on purpose,” she said. Her regal smile and warm eyes beamed to him through her tan and cream spotted face. Turning to her kids, she said, “Now, go outside. It’s too nice of a day to play indoors.”

“But Mom…” the kids said in unison.

“No buts, out!” she said as she pointed at the door.

The girls turned to smile and wave to the visitor before scampering out of the house.

Jack returned the grin and waved ‘bye-bye.’ Then, the three friends sat down for some coffee and conversation on the soft couches that circled the living room.

“So, Jack, when are we going to hear the news that you’re settled down and raising children?’ Emma asked.

Jack’s eyes went wide as he turned and silently pleaded to Chad for help.

“Honey, Mr. Jack Galloway is definitely not the child raising type. He has one big kid that he looks out for, and that’s himself, and sometimes he’s not so good at that either. Like the time he got thirty days in the brig for hitting an officer,” Chad said with a roguish wink.

Emma smiled as she poured the coffee. “Smart man like you, Jack? Say it wasn’t so?”

Jack winced at the memory. “Stupid of me. The lieutenant was talking about a classified operation on the mess decks. Chad and I were doing a lot of recon flights over missile batteries back then. We found most of them through contacts Chad made on the ground.”

Chad nodded. “A lot of good people were taking big risks talking to me. If the Populists found out who tipped us off, they would’ve been happy to shoot ‘em. Jack met a few of my sources when he flew me to meets.”

“Yea, and there was this real good guy—Voss. I think you called him Voss?”

“That was one of his names,” Chad nodded as he smiled a Cheshire cat smile.

“Yea, anyway, Voss, real nice fellow. Always brought us a pie when we met him. Can you believe it? We’re meeting in a burnt out shack in the jungle and this guy brings a pie!”

“Quite a character,” Chad agreed with a chuckle. “The only people who knew that Voss was a source of mine were Jack, myself, and Lieutenant Hendri, the intelligence officer who read my reports.”

“And what a dumb-ass,” Jack chimed in. “One day I’m’ having my lunch on the Olympia’s mess deck, when this moron starts talking about our missions. Hendri wanted to impress some pretty ensign, I guess. Might have been trying to compensate for his size XL schnoze. Anyway, I tried to get him to shut up polite like, ‘Excuse me, sir. But do you really mean to be talking about that?’ I said. But this idiot was just too full of himself. Hendri says ‘Spacer, mind your damn place.’ So, I reached across the table and put my fist into his honker. It was too big a target to miss. The guy fell back in his chair with this ‘what the hell’ look on his face. Funniest thing I ever saw. Next thing I know, five marines are piling on top of me, and I’m off to the brig. God, I learned my lesson. There ain’t no beer in jail.”

“I got word from counterintelligence that there was a Populist sympathizer on the ship,” Chad said. “Jack, maybe if you hadn’t hit that little creep, Voss might not have made it to Earth. Last I heard he’s working at some restaurant and doing well for himself.”

“Selling pies?” Jack asked.

“Probably,” Chad answered.

Jack mulled it over. “Maybe, maybe not, Chad. I just wish I hadn’t had to share a cell with Petty Officer Kent. God what a whiner! But hey, thanks for the party when I got out.”

Chad smiled, “Least I could do.”

“Tell me about the party,” said Emma.

Jack and Chad just looked at each other and smiled. Both glanced at the souvenir jacket draped over the couch.

“Best I not say, Honey. Military secret,” Chad replied.

Emma began to glare at Chad, so Jack switched subjects by commenting on the neighborhood’s new look. The mood in the room took a nosedive as Chad heaved a sigh.

“Riot,” his friend answered, “About a month ago. The rebels scored a big victory in the swampland south of Central City. Scared the living crap out of the Regime. Next thing you know the news is full of anti-mutant hysteria. You know, the usual bigoted bullshit. Anyway… a gang of sovereign citizens came ’round here with firebombs, and a lot of hate. I used a sonic-screamer that the government didn’t know about, and they kept away from my house, but it was still awful. Our kids still wake up crying every now and again.”

Jack heard that the mutant rebellion had gained speed, but he had no idea how close to the starport the fighting had gotten. “Chad, you’re staying out of this right? I know you got that secret squirrel training, but it won’t do you any good if things get real bad. The Regime shoots spies. This is the perfect time to just mind your own damn business.”

Chad gave Jack that half-twist of a smile he always gave before he lied. “No problem, shipmate. I’ve got no business getting mixed up in the movement. That would just put my whole family in danger, and where would we run to if that happened?”

With the coffee finished, Jack made his goodbyes and headed back to the starport. After all, he had a schedule to keep.

Back at the starport, Jack walked past the customs cops and onto the Sundancer’s docking pad. He took a moment to let his gaze sweep over her as the sun of Isis set below the horizon, its dying rays twinkling off her red hull. Man, such a beautiful ship.

When he took his eyes from her, he turned his head to the sound of a maintainer truck approaching the pad. The driver, an old lady Jack had met before, gave him a quizzical look and Jack replied with a thumbs-up. She smiled as she dismounted the vehicle, lunch box in hand, and unraveled the hose from the back of her rig. The side of the truck read ‘water,’ but Jack knew its tank was empty. He watched as the driver screwed the hose into the portside access of the Sundancer’s life-support panel. She pulled the release handle and the beer flowed secretly into the truck.

Jack and the driver sat by the pad and chitchatted about nothing in particular for a few minutes. When the tank filled up, she disconnected the hose and drove away. Funny thing, she left her lunch box on the docking pad. Jack wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, so he picked it up and took it aboard his ship. Sure enough, it contained cash for 10,000 liters of beer, a very nice sum indeed.

In another week’s time Jack found himself back on Tortuga, and what should be parked next to the Sundancer but that old rust bucket, the Vagabond. Well, this was just too good a chance to pass up. He went to his pantry and got his best bottle of whiskey and marched right over to the next docking pad to pay his neighbors-of-the-moment a visit.

“I buy the first drink, and YOU buy every one after. Is that the deal I recall you making, comrade?” Jack said.

Captain Lulu looked down from the top of the Vagabond’s gangway at the black leather clad space bum and smiled. “Da, something like that. You get ass aboard. I find some glasses.”

The Vagabond’s common room showed real old school space travel design. Back when she was new, couches that doubled as acceleration safeties and cupboards that secured shot glasses in dura-foam probably seemed trendy as well as practical. Now the whole thing just looked obsolete. Still, Jack knew the difference between heaven and hell is the people you meet. The Vagabond’s spacers were all-right guys by him. He threw his jacket onto a chair and took a seat.

Lulu handed him a glass while she undid the bottle’s cap. Short Stack Mack, the Vagabond’s diminutive navigator, went to get a deck of cards as soon as he saw Jack enter. Deirdre, the ship’s pilot, jumped in Jack’s lap and gave him a big sloppy kiss on the forehead. “Good to see you too, kiddo,” he said to the cute mutant girl.

Drinks were poured and cards dealt. This was Jack Galloway in his natural environment, hanging out with a bunch of spacer bums without a care in the galaxy. After all, what’s freedom if you can’t enjoy it? The whiskey bottle soon emptied.

“So, what’re you guys hauling to Isis these days?” Jack asked as Short Stack opened a bottle of vodka. “Can’t be making too much money. We’re betting less than ten credits a hand here.”

“Nothing,” Deirdre answered. Lulu and Short Stack shot a look at their pilot that said ‘shut-up’, and the room got quiet.

Jack looked at his hand, a king, a queen, a pair, and a jack of the wrong suit. Nobody flies from star to star for nothing. He ante’d-up one credit. “Well that would explain your obvious affluence. Tell you guys what. I got a real sweet set up. I run beer past the customs goons. Make a forty-five percent profit every time. Don’t mind expanding the franchise if you’re interested?”

The Vagabond’s crew eyed each other for a moment. Lulu spoke up, “Thanks Jack, we know you all-right-guy. We don’t need any more risk. We okay for now.”

Jack thought about that. Risk is part of life. Sure, you didn’t go into a vacuum without a space suit on, but risk came to everyone, whether they faced it or not. The only question was, which risks were worth taking and which weren’t. He poured a shot and took a sip of the vodka. He preferred the whiskey, but it hadn’t lasted long.

“Yea, sure… it’s a risk. I get caught and I lose my ship. Customs takes the Sundancer, and I spend maybe thirty days in the slammer for tax evasion. But at the rate I’m pulling in the dough, I can have the ship free and clear in just a few more years. Look at this crate,” he waved his arm about the Vagabond’s common room. “I bet the first spacer to fly in a ship like this has been dead for seventy years or more! It’s held together with spit and chewing gum for Christ’s sake. You flat out need the cash, and I’m just trying to help.”

Lulu looked at her crew as they each gave their silent answer with a shake of their heads. “No. You trying to help folks so are we. We can’t afford to have Vagabond found with cargo of beer when we already carrying so much.”

“What is it? Drugs? Weapons for the resistance? What the hell can you be carrying that is so damn risky but pays so damn bad?”

“People,” Deirdre spoke out as her shipmates glared at her with exasperation. Lulu turned to Jack with an alarmed look and a steel gaze.

“You keep this quiet, yes? You not let this get out,” Lulu pleaded.

Jack’s jaw had dropped. “People? You’re trafficking in humans?”

Short Stack spoke up. “Not humans… mutants.”

Then it all made sense. Mutant refugees would pay to escape Isis, but few had any real money. Most smugglers wouldn’t touch a job like that. But Lulu always had a soft spot in her center. It would take a lot of refugees to make the trip worthwhile, and you could probably make just as much with a legit cargo.

“You stupid sons of bitches,” Jack exhaled. “Do you know what the Isis Regime will do WHEN they catch you? The Confederation doesn’t give a damn what happens on Isis, they got fifty worlds to worry about! The Public Protectors will take your ship, yes, but that ain’t the worst of it. You’ll be treated like enemies of the state, political prisoners, not common criminals. They’ll send you to some damn penal colony for life, and that’s IF you’re not summarily executed.” Jack looked at Deirdre, “It’ll be worse for you, kiddo. You know that.”

The mutant girl just nodded.

Lulu spoke for her crew. “Is all right, Jack. You just be sure you tell no one, okay?”

“Damn straight!” Jack said as he picked up his black jacket. “The Navy screwed me over plenty, fighting for causes, risking my ass for other people’s freedom. Well, I got some freedom of my own now, and I’m gonna’ keep it! People should mind their own business, and that’s what I intend to do.”

With that, he put on his jacket and walked down the gangway.

“This is Isis Traffic Control to MJS Sundancer, sending approved flight plan now. Please maintain present course and speed until you reach the outer marker.”

“I copy, Isis Control,” Jack answered. It’d been an especially long flight, and he was out of bottled water. But, in less than six hours, he would be checking into a starport hotel and taking a nice long bath. He would have loved to pay Chad another visit, but Jack hadn’t heard from him in months. Apparently, Chad and his family moved and left no forwarding address. Jack worried about his friend, but without any more information, that was all he could do. He checked over the flight plan on the heads-up display.

Control’s course put him down on a pad near the starport’s warehouses, a little out of the way but no big deal. He did a cursory check and found that, once again, he would be parking next to the Vagabond.

Jack considered paying them another visit, like he did on Tortuga a while back, but no. Vagabond and Sundancer had been avoiding each other lately. Best not to stir anything up, especially on Isis. A few more maneuvers and Sundancer fired its retros for a nice, soft landing on the docking pad. When all lights read green, he looked at the access control and stretched his arms. He heard the groan of the gangway’s release, and soon his feet walked down the ramp on a beautiful, sunny, Isis day.

He looked across the field. Yep, that was the Vagabond all right. The old piece of junk looked as decrepit as ever. Why didn’t Lulu just trade it in for a newer ship? A few years, a few payments, and it would be theirs. Then he remembered it would probably take Lulu’s crew a lot longer than that to pay off a new ship. After all, they weren’t smuggling beer.

Jack saw Public Protectors marching toward the ships, steel-blue uniforms looking snappy with their scanners at the ready. Jack reached into his jacket pocket for his manifest. Another inspection and another medical exam were all that stood between him and that bath. Then he saw the old maintainer truck.

It just passed the Sundancer when smoke suddenly burst out of its engine compartment. The driver got out and checked under the hood. From where Jack stood, it looked like a ruptured coil… no big deal. But the driver looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Old trucks like that are bound to have some breakdowns so Jack wondered what the guy was stressing about. Hell, only one or two of the Public Protectors even paid much attention to it. Then Jack noticed how the driver’s eyes kept darting to the Vagabond.

Lulu stood by Vagabond’s gangway watching the whole affair, trying to be cool, but Jack knew her better than that. She was shaking. Then, Jack saw people crawling out of the near side of the truck. Not people, exactly, mutants, four of them, two adults and two children. Their clothes were ragged and their bodies malnourished. A king, a queen and two of a kind; Jack knew he was in the wrong suit. Chad, his wife Emma and their two kids were hiding behind the busted down truck. Shit, Jack thought, this wasn’t going to end well.

They were less than twenty meters from freedom, but the Public Protectors were getting closer. Jack looked toward the customs men as they approached and made up his mind. No, not well at all.

Captain Jack Galloway strode to the Sundancer’s port side access life-support panel. Whispering softly, he said, “I’m gonna’ miss you, honey. I’m gonna’ miss you a lot.”

Risk is part of life. The only question is which risks are worth taking and which aren’t. A lump rose in his throat.

Grabbing the release handle firmly, he gave it a sharp pull and his contraband flowed all over the docking pad in a waterfall of golden suds. “Rocket Fuel Beer,” the best brew in the entire galaxy, flowing over Jack’s shoes and lapping against the Sundancer’s landing gear. Protector Johnson stopped in his tracks, and his eyes grew as wide as shot glasses as the precious brew cascaded on the ground.

Jack didn’t dare look at the broken down truck. His eyes focused on the men in the steel-blue uniforms. Waving as the lawmen approached, he mumbled, “That’s right you bastards, just keep looking at me and my pretty beer. Keep looking over here.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of light as the sun shone briefly on the Vagabond’s rising gangway. A minute later he heard the engines of the old freighter roar. Then, strong arms pushed him to the ground and he fell with a splash. Bathing in a puddle of beer, he felt it soaking into his pants and his jacket as his hands were bound behind his back.

As the Vagabond ascended to the sky, it cast a shadow over Prisoner Jack Galloway. He felt the momentary cool shade touch his face while Protector Johnson’s voice commanded, “You are under arrest! Do not resist. Obey all commands. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand. I sure hope you enjoy drinking Isis Piss from now on, ass-hole.”

Mind your own business, stop fighting other people’s wars. Some things Jack would never learn. Pursing his lips, he took a deep sip of the foaming beer from the puddle around him. He figured he might as well enjoy it now, there ain’t no beer in jail. At least it was the good stuff.

“To veffen! Beer by any other name!” Betsy Carroll, the Terran Ambassador to N’Ferra, cried.

Vkandwe Asayana—or Scholar Asa as Betsy liked to call him—smiled, pushed his mug against hers, and took a sip. “Refreshing, isn’t it? A cool, dark beer on a warm day… what could be better?” He settled his great mottled wings on his back, adjusted his brown half-cape decorously, and leaned forward over the wooden bench. “Would you like to see how veffen is made?” His dark eyes, usually so luminous, were grave.

But Betsy took no notice of this. “Would I!” No human had ever seen how veffen was made. The N’Ferrans considered it sacred.

Yet, fortunately for the humans, the N’Ferrans did share their veffen, even exporting a small amount for a ridiculously high price. Most humans believed veffen to be akin to a rich Irish stout, even though it had a taste all its own that was rich, nutty, and bitter as all dark beer, yet with a hint of entrancing sweetness.

“I have an invitation to the next veffen—making ceremony.” Asayana’s lips twitched with something that wasn’t a smile. His four-fingered hands stayed folded and his wings were quiescent, which was never a good sign. “You might say I’m ‘requested and required’ to be there. My people say it’s time.”

“I don’t understand,” Betsy said. “Does the making of veffen require a specific time?”

“Not exactly,” Asayana said. “But you’ll find out more at the ceremony. I’ve been told I can only share so much information with you prior to that time.” He looked away, as if in embarrassment. “I’m truly sorry.”

“Your people are that stiff regarding the making of veffen?” Betsy looked closely at her friend, the first N’Ferran who’d ever shown interest in learning more about the humans and their ways. But Vkandwe–Scholars–were legendary in their fearlessness, at least on this world. “Why should the making of veffen be so shrouded in secrecy, anyway?”

Something wasn’t right about all this.

“As a Fearless One, Betsy–” his voice trilled up on the “y” but otherwise pronounced her name flawlessly, unlike most other N’Ferrans, scholars or no “—I truly hate not being able to give you this knowledge in advance.”

Ah. Now Betsy understood his look away. Asa was angry. And anger was rarely shown in N’Ferran society, because it was seen as a loss of face.

She wondered how the N’Ferrans were able to deal with humans, as even the calmest humans had difficulty in keeping their feelings off their faces unless they’d had specific religious training. But the N’Ferrans refused to allow anyone deeply religious to step foot on their world, claiming a privacy violation.

And most humans weren’t all that religious anyway. So the monks went elsewhere, while the “great lumpen unwashed,” as Betsy had once delightfully told Asa, came to partake in the veffen.

Asa held up his clear mug and studied the contents. Then, thoughtfully, he took another sip. “No wonder the humans line up for this at their festival of beers–what did you call it again?”

“Oktoberfest,” Betsy said. “Though our beers are not a patch on N’Ferra’s own veffen, truly.”

Asa shrugged. “I’ve enjoyed trying the various beers over the past six boryani as we’ve wrestled with the cosmos. My favorite is the Guinness stout–but don’t tell anyone.”

“I promise,” Betsy said. She clinked her mug again with Asa’s, and took another sip. “Your secret is safe with me.”

She didn’t realize this was the last time she’d ever see her friend alive.

Three days later, Betsy received a large, elegant scroll through diplomatic channels at the Embassy addressed to “Elizabeth Carroll.” The handwriting was obviously not human and the ink was not stock.

Because of this, she walked into her back office—the one with all the safeguards. The one so rarely used, as the N’Ferrans, aside from Scholar Asa and a few others among that fearless caste, seemingly didn’t care if the humans lived or died—so long as they kept drinking their veffen.

Betsy frowned. The only N’Ferran who knew her full name was Scholar Asa, but as he couldn’t pronounce Elizabeth, he’d dispensed with writing out her full name after the equivalent of a few months. But he’d told her once when deep in his cups that if he ever had need of her, he’d write to her formally—and through diplomatic channels, as he obviously knew how to reach her at home.

She opened the scroll, written out in the N’Ferran script only she among her staff of six had truly mastered. “Asylum?” she wondered as she read. “Why does Asa want that?”

Betsy checked the various places Asa usually used to leave her a message—while the N’Ferrans didn’t use much technology as a whole, the Fearless Ones had become adept at the use of voicemail and various computer-aided devices (providing they’d been adapted for the N’Ferran four-fingered hand)—and found… nothing.

Worse yet, a quick check of Asa’s lodgings found that he’d not been there since Betsy had last seen him, even though he’d lived there for the better part of forty years. And no one knew where he had gone, either.

None of this was customary for a Fearless One, much less someone with the high status of Vkandwe Asayana. Someone who was openly a friend to the Terran Ambassador—someone who saw the benefit of peaceful commerce, trade and knowledge, even though the trade-off for the N’Ferrans was that a human spaceport had been built on N’Ferra’s outsized moon.

And not everyone on the N’Ferran Ruling Council had liked that, Betsy remembered. Even though with the spaceport, she and the other Terrans had pledged to defend N’Ferra with their lives if pirates ever attempted to attack… which was a realistic possibility considering the popularity of veffen.

She called Charlie Simmons, whom the N’Ferrans believed to be her cultural attaché, into the office and motioned him to a chair next to her desk. He actually was her spymaster, though he’d had little to do over the past five years he’d been stationed here. “What do you make of this?”

He read over the document, questioned her over the words, and then sighed. “I’ve heard that Scholar Asayana has angered the N’Ferrans in some way,” he said. “This communiqué would seem to indicate what I heard is the truth.”

“What else have you heard?” Betsy asked intently.

“Asayana’s life is said to be forfeit unless he bows down to the Ruling Council… and then shreds his wings.”

“What?” Betsy asked in astonishment. “Why would the Ruling Council want him to do that?”

“They wish to humble the Fearless Ones is my guess,” Charlie said. “And they may wish to humble us as well through his friendship with you.”

“But… you’re friends with several N’Ferrans—”

“Not with a Fearless One, though,” Charlie interrupted. “Don’t you know what they are? What they give up to obtain the knowledge they seek?”

“They’re… like monks, I thought,” Betsy said. “With a thirst for knowledge, even knowledge that would seem to be useless to them—thus the low-tech. A N’Ferran Fearless One becomes friendly with me, a spacegoing human from an obviously high-tech culture—”

“That’s not entirely it.” Charlie’s voice dropped. “You know they sever all family ties, and while they do allow friendships—especially in a situation like this one, where there’s much potential benefit for all involved—a Fearless One is expected to give up his life on a moment’s notice if it will give him, or the N’Ferrans as a whole, knowledge they’d not otherwise have.”

“But Asa has asked for asylum, Charlie! He’s done so formally, so I can’t refuse to admit that he’s done so… he must need me, or he’d not do this.”

“I’ll see what I can find out, Betsy, but I hold out no promises.” Charlie’s eyes were grave. “But you have to know that if Asayana truly wanted asylum, he’d have walked through the Embassy doors himself and told you. So this message can’t be all that it seems.”

“I agree.” Betsy threw up her hands. “This whole thing makes no sense. Especially the business with the wings. To N’Ferrans, their wings are everything! They’re for status, display, to keep the rain off—even if they’re too old to fly any more, like Asa. Why would the Ruling Council want to take Asa’s wings?”

“To humble him,” Charlie said bluntly. “But as important as Scholar Asayana is to you, Betsy, it’s more important that the N’Ferran Ruling Council would openly attempt to shame him in this fashion. As it stands, I’m sure that the veffen-making ceremony, and your open invitation to it through Asayana, is not what it seems. I’m betting that all of Asayana’s current problems have something to do with this ceremony, too.”

“Isn’t that a bit of a reach?” Betsy asked. “Asa’s in trouble, yes, and they’re about to have a veffen-making ceremony, yes… and they’ve invited me, yes… but—”

“There’s too many coincidences here to suit me,” Charlie said. “Please, for the love of God and little green applies, don’t go!”

“I have to,” she said quietly. “It’s a diplomatic function. Plus, Scholar Asa invited me. Why would he invite me to something that might be dangerous?”

“And he’d request asylum if he wasn’t in danger himself?” Charlie pointed out with remorseless logic. “Come on! You know Asayana. He’s never evinced a wish to travel off-planet. So why would he request asylum now, knowing the only way to grant his wish, providing we can even find him to do so, is to put him on a ship bound for Earth… which might kill him at his age!”

“He’s only seventy, or thereabouts,” Betsy argued.

“And none of his people—not one of them—have ever traveled off-planet. No one has any idea if the drugs we use to endure deep space will work on a N’Ferran, much less one of his advanced age. Much less the fact that he may not be able to tolerate the additional gravity to break for space… Asayana has to know this.”

“He should, yes,” she agreed. “He’s a scholar, and they collect what we might call ‘useless knowledge.’ You know they stay exempt from politics, which is why this is so bizarre… Asa sees me as being like him.”

“Someone who’s getting to know the N’Ferran culture for its own sake definitely would be viewed as a scholar.” Charlie stated the obvious, but his eyes told her something else. “Tell me everything he said at your last meeting.”

So Betsy went over it all. Again.

Charlie listened impassively. “Let’s assume we do find Asayana. Can you grant him asylum?”

“I think so.” She frowned. “It will anger the N’Ferran Ruling Council, but when we landed here, we insisted that if anyone ever wished for asylum, we must grant it. That’s the main reason we are only allowed to have six Terrans at the Embassy at any given time.”

“Yes, and we’re all supposedly scholars, too.” Charlie snorted. “Though what we’re studying is definitely up for debate.”

“We’re studying the N’Ferrans. They’re studying us, or at least the Fearless Ones are… I’ve never really believed the Ruling Council cared one way or the other about us, aside from drinking their veffen and making some hefty profits. So why start now?”

Charlie’s blue eyes bored into hers. “What do you know about veffen?”

“Other than it’s a really good drink?” Betsy asked. “It’s high in certain trace elements, along with folate and some flavonoids—”

Charlie interrupted. “And small N’Ferrans—egglings, even—need to drink at least a little veffen in order to survive.”

“I didn’t know that,” she admitted. “Asa said that veffen saved N’Ferra once, when I asked him. But he couldn’t tell me why.”

Charlie drummed his hands against the wooden desk. “My hunch is that veffen, like human dark beers, allows calcium to better bind to bones. And that it works even better for the N’Ferrans than it does for us.”

Betsy frowned, a twitch of her lips. “Maybe… maybe we need to think about how the veffen is fertilized. They seem to do it only as a ceremony with many honored guests among the N’Ferran elite–”

“—And there must be a reason for that,” Charlie finished. “We’ve never been told what it is. Yet now, after how many years of secrecy, they’re willing to show us? There’s something wrong with that, Betsy!”

“I’ve been here ten years,” Betsy said quietly. She’d been on N’Ferra twice as long as Charlie, who’d been among the second batch of humans to make the nascent Terran Embassy a going concern. “And they continually rebuffed me—even Asa, who has said he’d be glad to tell if it were allowed. But I think he’d lose his status as a Fearless One—”

“Which he’s about to lose anyway if my sources are correct,” Charlie put in.

“They’ve always been willing to share their veffen, at least in small amounts,” Betsy said, thinking aloud. “If it’s as necessary to their culture as you think it is—”

“I’ll put out some more feelers,” Charlie promised. “When, exactly, is this ceremony?”

“The second of Dalgarsh, which is… eight days from now?”

“Eight 14.8 hour days… that doesn’t give us much time. I’ll ask Stan if he’s willing to do some legwork.”

Betsy knew Stanley Driscoll, the Terran Embassy’s science specialist, quite well. An older Terran, he was passionately interested in everything concerned with avian biology and had actually come out of retirement to study the N’Ferrans. So if anyone could find out what the N’Ferrans actually needed the veffen to do for them, Stan would be the man.

“He’ll have to get over the N’Ferrans use of his full first name, too,” Betsy said dryly. “I know Stanley sounds strange—”

“But they like it, and that’s what they’re going to call him, nyah!”

They laughed, but without humor.

“For now, I’m going to pretend that Scholar Asa did not request asylum and continue to try to find him,” Betsy murmured. “I’ll be the misdirection, while you and Stan try to figure out what’s going on.”

Another four days passed before Stan Driscoll walked into Betsy’s public office. He waved triumphantly, then walked upstairs to her inner sanctum. She quickly disengaged from a few Terran tourists (visiting the embassy for the locations of bars that catered to human stomachs along with the ubiquitous veffen) and followed.

Stan wasted no time. “At the veffen-making ceremony, I’ve heard that the N’Ferrans give chapter and verse as to how, exactly, veffen is so important to them.”

“Did you find someone willing to talk with you right now, though?” Betsy asked as she took her seat behind her desk. “And should we wait for Charlie?”

“He’s got a lead as to where Asayana is, so I’d guess not,” Stan said. “And no, I couldn’t get anyone to talk directly. But I did confirm your hunch that veffen helps the N’Ferrans, biologically—did you know that N’Ferran bones are abnormally brittle due to past radioactivity?”

“The crust of N’Ferra has some abnormalities, I’d read—”

“Exactly, and that’s why the Ruling Council distrusts our technology, as they equate it, I’m sorry, with radiation.” Stan shook his white-haired head.

A deep bong rang out, which meant one of the other Embassy staffers had need of her, immediately. Betsy went to the glass plate and saw Charlie… alone. Something about his expression made her stomach drop.

She quickly opened the door. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”

He stepped inside, closed the door, and said. “Asayana’s been taken by the Ruling Council. We can’t get at him, though supposedly he will be available to you, and to you alone, directly before the veffen-making ceremony.” His eyes darkened to a near-black, something Betsy had never seen in the five years she’d known him. “The Ruling Council said everything will be explained at that time.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“I don’t believe it, either,” Stan said. “I’ve heard rumors of ghastly things done to elderly N’Ferrans such as Asayana at veffen-making ceremonies—”

“Such as what?” Betsy demanded.

“Ritual murder…” said Stan.

“Blood sacrifice…” said Charlie.

Stan and Charlie looked at one another, then by unspoken accord Stan went on. “Blood, you see, also appears to be needed in order to fertilize the various plants that make up veffen. And the N’Ferrans often make a spectacle of it, from what I’ve been told—”

“And I,” Charlie agreed.

“Even though voluntary transfusions are possible and would not harm the N’Ferrans if done in small quantities—which appears to be what is usually done to fertilize the veffen, from what I could tell—the Ruling Council likes to make an example out of certain notorious N’Ferrans.”

“Thanks, Stan, for this information.” Betsy knew she needed to talk with Charlie alone, as there was something else he hadn’t yet said. “If the N’Ferrans would allow it, I’d like to bring you to the veffen-making ceremony.”

“I appreciate the offer, but if what I think is going to happen actually does, I don’t want to be there,” Stan said. “I’m just sorry that you have to go. Because I don’t think anyone should have to witness something like that.” He then bowed, formally—an unexpected touch—turned on his heel, and left.

“Betsy, there’s no good way to say this… Scholar Asayana’s wings have already been shredded,” Charlie said quietly. “If that would’ve been enough for the Ruling Council, we’d have seen him here days ago. So I’m certain they have more in store for him—please, please don’t go to the ceremony.”

Charlie caught her before she hit the floor.

Betsy dressed in her best Ambassadorial outfit—a deep, rich black jumpsuit with a black cape lined in gold silk along with gold boots without too much of a heel—and waited for Charlie to bring the aircar around. He made a nifty three-point landing, came up to receive her formally—Betsy assumed this was done for the sake of any N’Ferrans that might be watching—and walked her to the aircar. Charlie fussed over her until she was completely belted in. Then they headed to the agricultural city of Debreay.

The place where Asa was scheduled to die.

“You can take a blaster, you know,” Charlie’s voice said over the ’com. “For self defense—the charter allows it.”

“If it was going to be that easy to get Asa away, I’d do it—but you know it’s not going to be that easy, if it’s even possible.”

“Is that why you’re going?”

“I know it doesn’t seem likely that anyone can help Asa now, but he’s my friend. He’s been my friend for ten years. And if there’s one good N’Ferran like him, who’s willing to get to know us on our own terms, I have to be there to honor him no matter what else happens.”

“Better you than me,” he said quietly.

Then, before she knew it, they were at the right coordinates. “I don’t see Scholar Asayana anywhere,” he murmured. “And there are no N’Ferran life signs for five klicks in any direction save for those six.”

She nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t see her, and waited as he landed the aircar. He opened up the door with a ceremonial flair, helped her down, and brought her over to the six high-ranking members of the N’Ferran Ruling Council. After bowing to them each in turn, Charlie said quietly, “Let me know when this farce is over.”

She waved him off, then watched as he flew away. And did her best not to slump, as all of the N’Ferrans were less than four feet high… typical of their species, even though Asayana had been quite a bit taller at nearly five feet. She thought, I wonder if that’s one of the reasons he became a Fearless One? He already was quite a bit different, just being so tall in this society.

“Strange, how you Terrans need artificial wings in order to fly,” said an artificial human voice through a machine—a voder—at the level of Betsy’s belt. She looked down, and saw one of the older Council members, one she knew could easily speak Terran, if he wished.

They must want to insult me, she thought. Why?

“We do our best, sirs and madams,” she said aloud with all due ceremony. Then, after bowing to each of the six delegates, she allowed herself to be guided by one of the Councilors to a nearby chair. Oddly enough, this one was properly sized for a human being… if they wanted to insult her, why give her a chair that actually fit rather than one sized for one of their own?

Tired already of the formal diplomatic dance, she decided to get down to brass tacks. “You invited me here for a veffen-making ceremony. Where is it?”

“There must have been an error in translation,” said the Councilman’s voder. “The veffen has been made. We just want you to drink some.”

“Where is Vkandwe Asayana?” she asked instead.

“He has completed his life’s work,” was the unsettling response. “He has fed the veffen.”

“What do you mean by that?” Betsy asked sharply.

“Blood seals the crop, and only blood,” the Councilman said in Terran. “We don’t care if the blood comes from criminals, or human-lovers like Vkandwe Asayana.”

Oh, great, thought Betsy. Xenophobia rearing its ugly head again. I really thought we’d gotten past this on N’Ferra.

“Asayana associated with you,” the Councilman continued. “He was getting old, couldn’t fly, and we needed his blood. So we took it from him… but at a price.”

“What price?” Betsy demanded. They killed him for his blood? Charlie and Stan were absolutely right.

“We’ll tell you, but you must drink—”

“Why?”

Another member of the Council, this one a blue-feathered female limned by her gold half-cape, spoke by voder. “We all must drink veffen every day, or we can’t walk, much less fly. And without our blood, the crops do not flourish.”

“Such was our surmise,” Betsy said quietly. “But why must I drink this particular veffen, knowing what I now do about its manufacture?”

“You will do so, or we will expel you—” said the first Councilman.

“And lose all our commerce?” Betsy laughed bitterly. “I don’t think so.”

“It is considered an honor to be at an end-of-life ceremony,” said a third member of the Council, this one feathered pure black and wearing a black and silver half-cape. “You’re the first Terran to ever see it.”

Lucky me, she thought.

“We toast our fallen comrades as a way to say… thanks?” the voder sputtered. “As a way to bring them… immortality, of a sort.”

“Asayana’s a Fearless One,” Betsy said. “My hunch is that Fearless Ones do not normally do this. So again, why must I, as I am a Fearless One of my own species?”

“We were divided,” a fourth voder spoke. This one was from a gold-feathered female wearing a navy half-cape. “We knew Vkandwe Asayana had asked for asylum. I, myself, wished to allow him to leave N’Ferra… if he could. And I saw no point to shredding his wings, either.”

“Why tell me this?” Betsy demanded.

“Veffen saved our lives, which is something we promised Asayana we’d tell you in exchange for his blood,” the fourth Council member said. “Our world was nearly destroyed three hundred years ago by fire.”

Radioactivity, Betsy knew. Not a normal fire, no matter what the voder said.

“—and only the veffen crops survived. But they did something strange…”

Crop mutation. Not unknown in the annals of history.

“—and after that, the only way we could get the crops to bloom properly was to give them the blood, first of our animals, then of ourselves…”

The first Council member threw up his hands. “She doesn’t need to know all this!”

“Yes, she does,” the fourth member said. “It was our bargain with Asayana. He said if we told you what had happened, you’d be able to tell your people… and maybe you could help us. Our people will die without your help, because the blood we have is not enough.”

Betsy stared at her.

“Moreover,” the fourth member continued in Terran, “Asayana has been telling us this very same thing for the past four boryani. But not all of us wanted to listen.”

Betsy bowed to her, and thought hard. That last reason—that Scholar Asa had seen no viable way to continue fertilizing the veffen by blood—must be why Asayana went to his death. As a Fearless One, he had celebrated knowledge and went wherever his knowledge took him. This time, his fearless nature had led him to allow himself to be sacrificed in order to attempt to save his world, because that was the only way the Council would agree to ask the Terrans—ask her—for help.

“We’d need more than six scientists working on this, so we’d have to expand the Embassy,” Betsy said. Her heart was breaking, but Asa had died to give her this knowledge. She couldn’t help but use it.

Which is what she knew he’d expect.

Quickly, the N’Ferrans agreed. But then, they insisted that she drink the veffen in order to seal the deal. And she knew she’d have to do it, even though after this she knew she’d never drink veffen again.

She remembered Asa, his calm certainty, his intelligence, his strength, and his final, ironic toast. This gave her the courage to take up the mug and take one, ritual swallow. “To Vkandwe Asayana! The finest Fearless One I’ve ever known, who gave his life in the pursuit of knowledge.”

“To Vkandwe Asayana!” the Councillors echoed.

And the deal was done.

Betsy hoped that somewhere, wherever Asa was now in his pursuit of knowledge, that he was smiling. Because she knew she wasn’t.

Berd followed behind the caravan’s magician. They both checked the cords and bindings of the precious cargo loaded onto sledges. The casks of beer gave off small whiffs of yeast and malt and hops. More hops than usual. It had been a good year for hops. The heady aroma eased his mind and soothed his posture.

But not his concerns. He still double checked everything the magician touched. The magician had appeared out of the dark surrounding the campfire last night, just as the men wandered off to their bed rolls. He had papers assigning him to this caravan. Berd couldn’t read the words on the paper but he recognized the wax seal of the mayor of Brewtown.

The mayor’s approval didn’t mean Berd trusted the magician.

One loose strap and fifteen casks would roll back off the sledge, break apart and spill the rich amber liquid into the thirsty plains of Coronnan.

The caravan hadn’t had a magician along their route in nigh on twenty years. Every power-mad one of them had signed on with one lord or another as battlemages, neglecting their normal duties. Berd had been loading and lashing cargo so long on his own, he didn’t didn’t see a need for the man wearing a faded blue tunic and trews, carrying a twisted staff.

Stargods only knew the central plains needed moisture. All the beer in this entire caravan wouldn’t raise a clump of mud. But there were a lot of thirsty people at the end of the journey. Three cities hadn’t yet managed to clear their wells once the peace treaty had been signed. Poisoning and clearing wells was a specialty of battlemages. Maybe this magician could finish the cleansing. In the meantime, Berd had the responsibility of transporting beer safe for drinking from the springs of sweet water in the foothills across the wide plains of plentiful grains to the coast, where even clean wells were brackish with bay and tides and unfit for brewing. And he had to get these casks to the city intact.

This magician wasn’t exactly young, more like an old geezer past his prime. No longer strong enough or keen enough to stand up to a battlemage. Chances were, his eyesight had faded along with the dye on his journey clothes.

“You needn’t double check everything I do,” the man in blue said, with his back to Berd, a full sledge ahead of him. “I know how to stabilize a load.”

Berd grumbled something rude into his beard rather than reply.

“I understand that the caravans, indeed all of Coronnan, has been missing magicians for too long, but the wars are over and we are back, with royal sanction. We actually have a king with authority now too. And the blessing of the dragons. I intend to do my job of easing the journey. Do you still have problems with steeds stepping into overly deep ruts and upsetting the cargo?”

Berd had to nod at that. As the seasons changed weather played havoc with the trails, filling in some holes, deepening and widening others.

“And do your steeds still bog down in mud?” the magician asked.

Berd allowed a wry grin to crease his face. “Not this year. Ain’t had morn’n a trace a rain in six moons. No mud to slow us down.”

“Fewer creeks and ponds on the route to ease the thirst of the animals who do most of the work,” the magician reminded him. “And what few water sources remain, you can’t be sure are safe until someone drinks from them and sickens… or survives.”

“Um…” Berd didn’t have an answer to that. The caravans had gotten so used to fending for themselves, they hadn’t thought a magician could actually help. They were running out of caged rats to test the purity of water on.

The war had killed more than people.

“My name’s Lyman,” the magician said, pulling on a strap and retying a knot that had come loose.

“Berd,” the drover replied, chagrined. He recognized the knot as one of his own. It shouldn’t have loosened this quickly. Young Jyson, now, he couldn’t tie a knot in a neck scarf, let alone on cargo. He learned, but slowly. At the moment he was better suited to feeding the steeds.

He looked over his should to make sure Jyson and the seven other drovers completed their duties of cleaning up their camp and loading personal items on the last sledge in line.

“I am satisfied,” Lyman said. He looked back along the line of sledges with one hand shading his eyes from sun-glare.

“Yes, we are late in starting,” Berd confirmed. He held a hand out measuring how far above the horizon the light had risen. “We should have been on the road an hour ago.”

“No. We are right on time. We will pass the first watering hole before noon. Before it evaporates in the sun.”

“If no one has poisoned it.”

“It was clear the last time you passed?” Lyman turned his penetrating gaze on the drover.

Berd noticed for the first time that the magician’s eyes were purple. The deep color of the Southern Mountains in the afterglow of sunset. Unusual.

The butt end of the magician’s staff in the small of his back ceased his musing. He reached high to grab the cheek strap of the lead steed and bring the long head down to his own eye level. He whispered a few words into the stallion’s ear. Abruptly the beast lurched, straining against its padded collar and harness. Head down he plodded his massive feet forward beginning the long journey.

“You have a magic of your own,” Lyman said, walking beside Berd. “The steed responds to your wishes. Most of the caravan animals I have encountered are stubborn about their laziness, putting more energy into resisting their masters than it would take to just comply.”

Berd threw back his head in laughter. Something moved in the deep blue sky still shedding the last traces of night to the West. Must be dust swarming on the slight morning breeze. Too early and chill for a heat haze. “Ah, I know those headstrong steeds well. I do not employ them on my caravan.”

“This one looks like a herd leader. I’m surprised he agrees to follow your lead.”

“Champion and me, we have an agreement.” Berd said nothing more, keeping to himself the knowledge that this lead stallion was the only intact male in this particular herd. And the majority were mares. No other steed challenged his authority or breeding rights, and for that favor he didn’t challenge Berd.

Until now. Twenty steps into the journey the steed shifted his feet without moving forward. He jerked his head away from Berd’s grip and bellowed in challenge.

“What?” Berd demanded.

Champion sidled, snorting, nostrils flared and eyes rolling. The other steeds picked up their leader’s distress and began stamping and trumpeting. The previously straight line lost cohesion.

Now alarm spread upward from Berd’s gut to his head and down to his feet. An instinct in the back of his mind told him to run. Run far. Run fast. Anywhere but here.

Berd forced himself to anchor his feet and search for the source of the steed’s alarm.

Something screeched louder and deeper than a steed’s bellow. The booming sound rippled up and down half a dozen scales totally absent of harmony and sent flusterbumps up and down his spine.

The stamping of frightened steeds could not drown out the noise.

Lyman appeared on the other side of the lead steed. Together they held his harness. Berd threw a blanket over the beast’s eyes to calm him.

Then a new odor swarmed up from the dry grassland half a mile a way.

Smoke.

Strong, semi-sweet, gray-brown and headed this way.

Without a word he and Lyman steered the stallion across the small creek they’d camped next to. Not much of a barrier. Was the fire strong enough and hot enough jump it?

Berd hastened the steed across with a firm slap on his rump. “Smell the water,” he commanded, holding a cupped handful of liquid beneath the beast’s nose. “Keep the water in your mind and smell its sweetness. Water good. Water safe,” he reminded his beast. Over and over he chanted the litany of safety.

Champion kept moving, thank the Stargods. He didn’t like the idea of stepping out of the creek onto dry land again, but he could still smell the water, and without sight, he trusted Berd. He had to trust Berd.

With a flip of his finger, Lyman lifted the end poles of the sledge so that it cleared the creek and all the rocks water rippled around. He did the same for the next sledge and the next as drovers urged each animal away from the fire in an orderly manner—as orderly as frightened steeds could manage. If the men relaxed their vigilance, the horses would stampede, dragging their cargo with them until they broke free. As long as the smoke stayed behind Champion his instinct to flee was satisfied.

And then Berd saw it. His bowels turned to water and his mouth went dry; drier than the dusty road and the rain-starved grasslands.

A dragon! A great yellow-tip. Its massive body reflected sunlight, forcing Berd’s eye to look anywhere but at it, and yet drawing it irrevocably, directly to it. Only the yellow wing veins and spinal horns outlined the monster and gave it definition. And in the morning light the yellow rapidly faded in the sky’s background. It flapped its mighty wings and belched flame. A new patch of grass erupted into a conflagration.

The thing was huge. Monstrously huge. As wide as two sledge steeds and as tall as two more. Any one of Berd’s precious beasts would make a nice meal for the dragon. He couldn’t afford to lose any of his herd. Six spare beasts marched at the rear of the group. Still…

A wall of heat hit him, driving him back and back again.

He still had two sledges and the six spare steeds to get across the creek to safety. Safe from the fire, not from the ravening appetite of the dragon.

“I thought you said we had the blessing of the dragons!” Berd yelled toward the magician.

Lyman continued to levitate the guide poles of the sledges as they crossed the creek. But stood a little apart from the group, closer to the fire, closer to the dragon. He anchored his staff against the ground and stared at the oncoming fire that rose as high as the tucked in paws of the dragon. Smoke swirled and raged, giving the dragon more definition than clean air.

Berd gulped. Then his fear drove his sense of responsibility. “Keep those steeds moving. One at a time. Cover their eyes, make sure they smell the water and not the smoke,” he commanded, not letting his men sense his knocking knees and trembling hands. The steeds could smell his sweat and know what drove them. He had to make sure they smelled more water than fear. He began splashing their faces with handfuls of water.

“Lyman, we could use a little help here!”

The magician remained firm, facing the dragon with a stern scowl on his face.

“Useless, trumped up piece of…”

And then a miracle happened. The dragon ceased its agonized roaring, gulped back his sheets of flame and turned a wide circle. He flew the perimeter of his fire again and again, creating a wind that contained the flames and forced them to eat themselves rather than seek out new fuel in the grassland.

The last embers winked out just as the final steed cleared the safe boundary of the creek.

Only when the dragon disappeared toward the South did Lyman turn and accompany the last of the herd through the water. He wore a rather smug smile.

“What was that about?” Berd demanded, shoving a skittish mare into line with his burly shoulder.

“An old and cranky dragon, displeased with himself and the world,” Lyman dismissed the beast with a wave of his hand as he moved into line checking straps and knots again as Champion led the caravan East toward the cities. “Of course compared to me, Chrysum’s still a youngster. Sulfur would be a better name for him considering the stench of his breath.”

Berd shook his head, trying to clear his ears. He wasn’t sure he’d heard the last bit or imagined it.

They traveled without further incident all day. The watering hole they passed at noon was clean. The well they found by an abandoned farmstead was not. Berd’s firm control of Champion and therefore the herd was all that kept the thirsty animals from stampeding to the water. “Keep moving!” Berd yelled at all the drovers. He slapped the steed’s rump sharply.

Champion snorted and rolled his eyes, but he kept moving forward, even though he looked back to where Lyman stood beside the circle of stones around a natural spring.

“Keep them away until I finish,” the magician said calmly. Then he thrust the butt of his staff sharply into the water, all the while chanting nonsense syllables under his breath. One short stanza of his almost rhyming words was followed by a wide circling of the staff still in the water. Ripples of slimy liquid worked outward and slopped against the stones. He repeated the process four times more. With each repetition the staff came a little further out of the water revealing more and more green muck clinging to it.

Berd watched him closely while his men moved the caravan further along the deeply rutted road, each of the steeds straining to get to the water they could smell, but were forbidden to drink.

Lyman’s knees began to sag and his back slumped as he pushed harder on the fifth time through. He acted as if he pushed the staff through thick and rapidly solidifying mud. Berd slapped the haunches of the final steed as it passed him and hurried back to the magician. He might not like having a magician assign himself to the caravan, but once with him, he was now Berd’s responsibility. He shoved a shoulder beneath Lyman’s arm as the old man slammed the tip of his staff into the solid ground five times. The muck slid off it into a stagnant pool at his feet. It flattened out but remained semi solid, neither seeping into the dirt nor sliding back toward the ring of stones.

“The water should be clean now,” Lyman said weakly. “You’d best test it on a rat before allowing the steeds near. But I can smell that it is clean once more. The farmer can return to work the land again.”

“And what of you, old man? What do you need?”

“Food and rest. By morn I’ll be strong as your Champion.” He dropped abruptly to his knees, slithering out of Berd’s grasp.

That night Berd fed the old man an extra portion of journey rations. Lyman smiled as he wolfed down the jerked meat in two huge gulps, barely bothering to taste the salt. Then he drank deeply of the newly cleaned well water.

“Oh dear,” he groaned, clutching his belly and rolling back and forth on the ground.

“What is it? Is there still a taint in the water?” Berd helped the magician sit up.

“Nothing quite so dramatic. I ate too much too fast. My belly is not used to such abuse and protests most heartily.”

Berd searched his memory for some remedy he might have in his kit, or possibly seen growing near by. All he could think of…

“What you really need is a stout mug of beer,” the master drover muttered into his beard.

“You cannot tap a cask for me, young man,” Lyman said. “Though it would taste good right now, the pain will pass as all sour bellies do. If they don’t burn your throat out first.” His half-smile turned into a grimace as he clutched his belly and groaned again.

“Water is good for some things. Beer is better for others.” He hoisted the small cask he kept hidden on the last supply sledge to his shoulder. He and his man had been on the road long enough that they all craved beer. But they’d not get more until they reached the city, five days hence. The small cask would only last one night with eight thirsty men and a bone-weary magician. To shouts of joy from his men, he tapped the cask.

The first mug went to Lyman. He sipped gingerly at first, then drank more deeply. Before the other men had managed to down half a mug each, Lymen loosed a belch that started in his toes and worked upward, long and low and…

“That smells of sulfur worse than the dragon,” Berd said from across the farmyard. A second belch, just as loud and odiferous brought a smile of relief to Lyman’s lined face. Then with a sigh he sought his bedroll and slept deeply.

Before the first bird cheeped a meager query of the not yet visible sun, amongst groans of sore heads and moans of eyes that winced in the pre-dawn light, Berd ordered the caravan up and on the road. Berd himself felt much calmer and full of energy to face the next leg of the journey. Lyman looked restored and eager to move as well. The road quickly opened up into grasslands again, leaving behind the copse that shaded the farmstead. Berd wondered if anyone alive could legally claim the land. A pretty place, fertile, with sweet water again. Might be a comfortable living for a retired caravan drover. When he was done with following roads, wondering what lay over the next hill, what cargo awaited him to carry back toward the foothills.

He settled into a rhythm of steps matching Champion stride for stride, head bob for head bob, looping thoughts bouncing back and forth between enjoyment of his life and longing for a more settled future, perhaps with a wife and if they were lucky, children. He’d make provisions for caravans to camp on his property and use the well…

A long rumble echoed around the heavens. Berd immediately searched for the dark clouds that would produce a thunder storm.

Nothing. A vast expanse of clear blue stretched from horizon to horizon, barely punctuated by a copse or a higher hill. A whiff of sulfur preceded a blast of smoke.

“Lyman! Your dragon is back,” he yelled. “Get the steeds to water,” he followed through with his primary concern.

The crackle of flames on dry grass turned his knees liquid. Half the southern horizon glowed fire green with a wall of black smoke rising up as it swelled toward them. Steeds screeched their distress, half-rearing in their traces. The sledges rocked and tilted.

The dragon came at them low and fast, flame dribbling from his mouth.

“Chrysum, stand down!” Lyman shouted, waving his staff at the winged monster. “Swallow your anger and go back to the lair where you belong.”

The dragon ignored him.

Lyman lifted his staff high, holding it by the tip and circled it in the air. He chanted strange words in the same fluid language he’d used the previous night in cleansing the well.

Backlit smoke showed the dragon’s outline of the rounded body tipped with golden yellow along the wing veins, tips and spinal horns. The rest of him sparkled with iridescent fur that pushed the eye to look anywhere else yet demanded all of Berd’s attention.

He didn’t have time to stop and admire the apex predator. He needed to get his steeds and his cargo away from here, toward water that he couldn’t find anywhere by sight or smell.

Lyman shouted his commands again.

In response, the dragon belched a sheet of flame. The stench of rotten meat laced with sulfur and a neglected latrine nearly felled Berd and his herd. And yet…

It smelled the same as Lyman’s upset stomach from the night before.

Hastily Berd grabbed the lashing holding six kegs of beer tight on the jostling sledge. “Cut the traces!” he yelled at the nearest man trying to calm the steeds and lead them North toward a depression that he hoped contained a stream wide enough to stop the fire.

“Champion will run,” the young drover warned.

“Let him. He’ll lead the others toward water and he’ll find it before you do. Cut the traces.” Berd obeyed his own orders and gave up on loosening knots and buckles. He cut the straps with a slash from his utility knife and let the barrels roll off the conveyance. Some deep core of him shuddered in dread. What was he doing?

Saving his world.

As soon as the first barrel cleared the guide poles, Berd flipped it upright and began leveraging the lid free with his knife. He had to close his eyes before he regretted the sacrifice of one of the finest brews of the year.

“Lyman, how much can a dragon drink?” he asked as the smell of yeast and hops and barley swamped his senses.

“The alcohol will fuel the flames,” Lyman called back even as he ran from the path of the dragon. Yesterday he’d faced the beast and subdued it by will and magic alone.

Maybe the old man had used up all his reserves of magic. Maybe the dragon’s stomach was more upset than yesterday. He knew old men who couldn’t sleep because every meal burned back up the throat.

Berd turned his attention to a second barrel. Lyman worked on a third barrel, and the youngest drover righted a fourth.

The dragon kept coming.

“This has to be enough,” Lyman called. He gestured with his staff for them to retreat, across the road and down a shallow decline.

They ducked and ran.

Chrysum roared again. More flames tickled the running men’s feet. Then the fire stopped as the dragon back-winged and dropped to the ground beside the open barrels. He slurped up the liquid as rapidly as a child with a reed straw with a glass of milk. Then he sucked on the second barrel, draining it before Berd could blink twice.

Chrysum paused and sank back on his haunches. He opened his mouth. Only a slender trickle of dying flames dribbled from his mouth, through the froth of beer foam that rimmed his lips.

A look of almost surprise pushed the dragon’s eyes open wide. All the colors of the rainbow, dominated by shining gold and fire green, swirled together. He bent his head to start on the third barrel and paused again. Then a deep rumble grew from the tip of his tail, rolling up and out on a belch. Berd clapped his hands over his ears before the sound deafened him. He couldn’t cover his nose as well. The sulfurous miasma nearly felled him.

Chrysum lifted his head and bellowed in triumphant relief.

(Thank you.)

“Did I just hear that?” Berd asked in wonder.

“Aye, you did. You are honored. The dragons do not often deign to speak to mere humans. They haven’t learned to trust you yet.”

“He spoke to you…”

“I’m not an ordinary human.”

(One more drink. Come share,) Chrysum suggested.

“Um…” Berd eyed the two empty barrels the dragon had tipped over in order to drink the last of the dregs, and the half empty barrel he currently sucked the liquid out of. “We don’t want to deprive you,” he said hesitantly.

“Don’t insult him by declining the invitation. Besides, you deserve the reward of a good long drink. You saved the plains from this dragon’s upset stomach.” Lyman slapped Berd’s back, urging him back to the road.

“Not quite, that fire is still growing!” Berd backed away from the blaze.

Chrysum backwinged. The fire kept coming.

“We need water!” Berd called.

(Then make water,) the dragon called. He sounded almost drunk. Were two barrels enough to make a dragon tipsy?

Then the dragons’ words penetrated Berd’s mind, reminding him that he’d barely taken time to take a leak this morning. After last night’s beer he really needed to take a leak.

He approached the edge of the fire, opened his trews and loosed a stream. A bit of fire retreated. He spread his aim. More fire retreated. Lyman joined him with a really impressive stream. Someone handed Berd a mug of beer and he replenished his load. Within seconds all of his men had a full tankard and a weapon against the fire.

Berd drank deeply, as much as he craved, and then some. “Good thing there aren’t any women with us. They’d line up judging accuracy and duration.”

“And awarding prizes,” Lyman chuckled.

The fire tried valiantly to hold its own.

Chrysum joined the party drowning half an acre.

Berd looked over his shoulder at the milling steeds still attached to their sledges some distance off. They were safe for now.

Just then the dragon belched again. Not a hint of flame left his mouth and his recycled air smelled of hops and yeast and barley. He eyed the fifth barrel longingly.

“Thanks, master dragon, aye, I’ll drink with you. But then I’ve got a cargo to deliver and a farm to buy. You come to me when your dinner doesn’t sit well and I’ll give you new beer to damp your flames.”

Master Sergeant Ernest Kravitz stood at attention on the specially constructed platform, staring off at the cloudless, teal sky, a bead of sweat hanging on his eyebrow. Beside him, his crewmate Technical Sergeant Ranolph Urquell dug a finger under the starched collar of his dress uniform and tugged.

“I’ve never even seen an actual hero before now, and here we both are, heroes ourselves,” Urquell whispered. Ernie just stared at his crewmate, his lip curled in distain before his smile broke through.

“If they ever let us off this waterlogged hell,” Kravitz muttered before he noticed the Nimrazzian First Counselor loping sideways toward them. The FC turned to face them and bowed, bending from his lower knees, back curled and eyestalks stretching to look both of the emissaries in the face at once. His thorax flaps jiggled and emitted a long, modulated shriek that the exos described as a sign of respect and awe.

Personally, Ernie couldn’t see how they distinguished the Nimrazzian’s gender, if Nims even came in different genders. All he could say for sure was that they’d probably taste delicious poached in apricot ale. Or they smelled like they would.

Col. Hazelshen moved in Kravitz’s direction, stepping right through the Nim’s First Counselor in the process. Her holographic image shimmered like a mirage overlaying the FC’s iridescent shell until she realized the faux pas and quickly stepped back. A low, fluttering noise came out of the speaker, a sound of contrition the exos had recorded in their sessions with their Nimrazzian counterparts. All the Nimrazzians on the platform curled themselves in concave gestures of confusion—acknowledging such a social misstep would have obliged them to break off contact for at least a dark-light cycle, which lasted for 87 hours on Nimra.

Twelve Earth-standard days out from Hyperion, just about the whole crew had gone down for the Big Sleep. Thanks to time-contraction, at .89c, the 24-year trip to HD 40307g would take just about thirty-seven days, as they counted them aboard ship. Even so, the sociopsychs had determined that more than 16 days of idleness led to a breakdown of morale and decreased fighting effectiveness.

Urquell’d had first anti-collision watch, two relative weeks on his own except for the ulitibots. Ernie had taught about half of the general utility robots to render a fair approximation of small talk to keep Randy from going insane on his own like that. The ‘bots’ basic SDK included a vocabulary of around 200 words, a dozen grammar elements, and a heuristic rule generator. But they also had a five-branch limiter to their logic tree to keep them from getting too independent or creative in their work, so they didn’t make what you’d call stimulating conversationalists.

Kravitz just wanted to finish giving his final instructions so he could crawl into his Sleep chamber and meditate his way into a few weeks’ oblivion. He had tired of listening to his friend go on about being alone and bored. Randy never seemed to run out of energy to bitch about things he couldn’t change and Ernie had never had the heart to just order him to shut up.

“Why don’t you make some of that rice ale of yours? That ought to keep you occupied between the proximity detector checks.” As a mess sergeant in the Terran Expeditionary Marines he specialized in making the crew delicious meals from whatever came to hand. It was a gift. One Urquell had never shown even a glimmer of talent for. Still, Randy had turned out to be a better sous chef than most technical sergeants he’d had under his command. And the man had a knack for making home brew out of just about anything. “You can set up the fermenter and train the ‘bots to monitor it until they rouse us.”

Famous last words. Utilibots were idiot savants by design. They learned routine tasks by example but they were less than worthless when it came to handling the unexpected. And, truth to tell, Randy wasn’t much better in an emergency.

Kravitz had known he was in trouble as soon as his eyes popped open. For one thing, he hadn’t been due to be roused from the Big Sleep for at least another week. For another, Randy was standing there, frozen at attention, a stricken expression on his face and Field Lt. Bengessert firmly clutching his arm. Ernie could read the animus in the lieutenant’s eyes. Son of a flag admiral, Bengessert was a stickler for regulations: first a courts martial, then throw them out the airlock.

Kravitz could almost feel Bengessert’s cold, hard hatred as the junior officer escorted them from the Sleep Chamber. Led into the mess, Kravitz was nearly bowled over by an overpowering smell of yeast. Then he saw the gaping holes it had eaten in the walls and he understood his buddy’s panic stricken face. No one said a word. Bengessert pulled them roughly by the arms and marched the pair out of the galley, describing their fates in graphic detail as they went.

The brig occupied an all but unused section of the ship—a half dozen standard Sleep chambers and a single large, caged space with three bunk beds. Built-in toilets and sinks grew out of the far wall and a noisy ten-gallon recycling plant in the corner supplied them with all their water needs.

Ernie could not recall even hearing of a Marine being confined in a ship’s brig. Major breaches of protocol or onboard rules were exceedingly rare. When transgressions did occur, they usually resulted in a double or triple shift on some scut detail, or maybe a day or two confined to quarters, isolated and awake. Then again, he’d never heard of anyone who had disabled a major component of an Expeditionary Battle Cruiser before.

“What do you think they’re going to do to us?” Randy whispered once the lieutenant had moved out of earshot.

“Maybe they’ll just send us back to Hyperion,” Kravitz said, hoping to wipe the fear off his friend’s face. He did not believe it himself. But dwelling on worst case scenarios did him no good—that was Urquell’s specialty and Ernie had no intention of being sucked into it.

Ernie could hear the lieutenant reading a set of instructions to one of the utilitbots—a basic program in the care and guarding of live, awake prisoners. Bengessert had evidently tired of tormenting them, though Ernie would have bet a reduction in rank that mercy had nothing to do with it. Once the utilibot had been trained, he figured they would probably not hear another human voice until their Article 32 hearing.

He turned out to be half right. Three days (by his best estimation, considering there were no light/dark cycles in the brig) the ‘bot rolled in a holoprojector and the top half of one Col. Verna Hazelshen, a no-nonsense desk officer from the look on her face, popped into the empty space.

“So,” Kravitz whispered to his cellmate, “at least they’ve got the Quantangle up and functioning.”

Randy answered with a look of mild contempt and Ernie felt foolish for stating the obvious. Still, it had to be the most hopeful news either of them had gotten since being thrown into this hole.

“Just tell me your whole story,” Col. Hazelshen said in a caramel-smooth voice, her eyes shining with sincere concern. “Of course Lt. Bengessert has reminded you that all your utterances will become part of the official record.” She purred the admonition so reassuringly that Ernie felt like she was the last person in the inhabited worlds who would consider using something he said to his detriment.

“What are we charged with?” Sgt. Urquell broke in, unbidden. His question snapped Ernie out of his reverie, a slap across his cortex to remind him they faced serious charges this time.

“Theft of federal property. Unauthorized use of Marine facilities. Destruction of military property, sabotage, public intoxication.” The colonel read off something she was holding below the reach of the holocam.

“Public intoxication!” Randy struck a pose of genuine offense. “Sgt. Kravitz had to be dragged out of Deep Sleep just to be put in the brig. Even if there’d been anything to drink, when would we’ve had a chance to sample it, much less get schnockered?” Ernie tried to shush him three or four times but the junior spacer was on a tear.

Col. Hazelshen smiled slyly, like a mongoose that realized she had the cobra tied in a knot.

“Then you admit the rest?” the colonel said in an uninterested monotone.

“We don’t admit anything,” Kravitz said quickly. “As senior mess officer it’s my duty to allocate edible resources.”

“And this was an authorized provisioning of how may kilos of water, Master Sergeant?”

“Was not authorized,” Kravitz mumbled.

“What was that, Sergeant?”

“It was not an authorized allocation, M’am,” he said, straightening his back as he did.

“And the grain?”

“No’m”

“The yeast.”

“Well…”

“That was mine,” Randy spoke up. “It’s what you might call a family heirloom.” The colonel did not look well-pleased by being contradicted. “M’am,” he added when Ernie reminded him with a kick in the shins. Ernie couldn’t see how whose yeast it had been made any material difference. Still, he was grateful to his friend for getting him out of the firing line.

She nodded, consulted her invisible notes again. “Then what took place, Sgt. Urquell? In your own words. To the best of your understanding, of course.” The caramel tap was open again.

Ernie drew air deep into his lungs. The cold air stung the back of his throat and the pressed on his ribs from the inside ached but he held back, letting it go out in a slow, silent leak through his nose. Mentally he tugged on Randy’s collar, shook him by the shoulders—say as little as you can. Tell just what you need to, no more. Don’t explain ANYTHING! But he stood ramrod straight, unmoving, knowing he had no good options.

“Well, first I had to malt the rice, and that’s no easy thing. You know, a lot of people think rice can’t be malted because that’s not how they make sake. They inject the grain with a special kind of mold instead. But you can malt rice, if you know what you’re doing.” Randy had clearly warmed to his subject. Col. Hazelshen just as clearly had not. The impatience blossomed on her face like a moon flower but she remained close-mouthed.

“Then, I decided on a single temperature infusion of the mash. It’s really the simplest way to do it, so I brought the water up to about 97 degrees and poured it all onto the malt, after I’d ground it up, of course. You need to keep the mash temperature down to about 92 or 93 degrees. You know, how you treat the mash and the temp you use is critical. It determines what kind of beer you’re going to end up with.”

When he began explaining the lautering process in detail the colonel had finally had enough.

“Just skip over to the accident itself, Sgt. Urquell,” she said, struggling to keep her irritation in check. Ernie recognized the effort—he’d felt the same way himself, listening to his friend carry on about the difference between brewing a good dark ale and a light pilsner. The Urquell family had been making beer since the 19th or 20th century. Randy said that stout ran through his veins instead of blood. Ernie had been tempted more than once to see if it were true.

“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. After I’d gotten the wort into the fermenter I trained the utilibot to monitor it while I went to nap for a week or so. When the ‘bot got me up ahead of schedule I knew something was up. I came down to the mess, and you know what a mess I found.” He waited for someone to appreciate his pun, futilely. “There was beer everywhere. The fermenter was still intact but the plug that measures CO2 was clear on the other side of the room, and there was this white crust around the rim. Somehow the airlock must’ve got clogged up. I guess I hadn’t covered that eventuality when I was programming the ‘bot. I didn’t even think about something like that happening.

“Of course, there are lots of variables you have to take into account when you’re making beer and you know, you can’t always teach these utilibots what to do in all the eventualities. So I just told it to get me if anything out of the ordinary happened. Maybe I should have planned that better.”

The colonel smiled sweetly and Ernie felt his stomach fall through the floor.

“Well, there was beer everywhere. All over the place, up the sides of the walls and even coating the ceiling. I didn’t know what to do about it. I got the ‘bot to start cleaning up the mess and I went and woke up Ern… Sgt. Kravitz. And by the time we got back there, the walls were getting kind of melty and there were holes up near the corner.”

“I could see right away what had happened,” Ernie picked up the story before Randy could get the colonel even hotter than she already was. “I sent the ‘bots down to Supply to get some wall sheeting from the Culturing Chamber, and we proceeded to patch things up as best we could.”

“And you never noticed any damage other than to the walls themselves?” Hazelshen asked, referring to her case file again.

“No, M’am,” both men said in unison.

“And when did you become aware of the damage you’d caused?”

Ernie did not like the sound of that at all. The colonel had evidently made her mind up that they were going to be held responsible for damaging the conduits shielding the wiring for all the ship’s weapons and navigation controls. He was just lucky the environmental controls had been routed elsewhere or they’d have been another Flying Dutchman cruising the outer edges of the spiral arm.

“We didn’t see any damage other than to wall, M’am. I didn’t realize that the nav system conduits were even made from soyaplastic too, let alone the yeast would’ve eaten through it and the fiber optics.” It sounded so stupid coming out of his mouth that Ernie blanched. Everything on an expeditionary ship had to be made of materials they could produce on board. “I suppose I really ought to have looked closer.”

“Do you think, Sergeant? That’s why your ship’s abeam, coasting in toward HD 40307g.”

Before he had time to answer, or even think things through enough to know not to, the room quaked violently. Col. Hazelshen blanked out and the two prisoners were left alone in their cell to wonder what had just happened.

No one bothered them for three or four sleep-wake cycles. The ‘bots delivered their meals on time but no humans appeared to tell them whether their fate had been decided, or even what had disrupted the interrogation. So, when the utilibot appeared without their breakfast, Ernie felt certain they were on their way to a summary court martial. But the ‘bot simply opened the cell and rolled out again.

“Are we free to go?” Randy asked.

“You can, if you want,” Kravitz said. “But this place was my last duty assignment and I’m not going anyplace until I get another order.” So the two of them settled back down on their cots and resumed the game of “I Spy” they’d been playing to pass the time until Lt. Bengessert arrived.

“I guess you boys are heroes, after all,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Come on. You’ve got places to go.” His smile made Ernie feel like a rabbit with a fox between him and his warren. They marched to their quarters in silence, and Bengessert ordered them to put on their dress uniforms and report to the shuttle pod.

On the way down to the planet’s surface one of the other junior officers filled them in.

“Puta que pariu! A wasrship, twice our size just popped into empty space a few hundred klics from our starboard side. The shockwave nearly spun us around.” While the Terran forces relied on quantum entanglement for instantaneous contact with their home base and other ships in the fleet, their aquatic hosts had leapfrogged that technology entirely and used a version of the Quantangle for instantaneous matter transfers. “If we hadn’t made that maneuver, a ‘respectful shift sideways,’ the exos called it, they might’ve just vaporized us on the spot.” How the exoethnologists we had learned so much in the short time they’d been in orbit was beyond his pay grade, but Ernie’d been in trouble enough to know not to ask embarrassing questions.

The colonel checked twice to make sure there were no other obstructions and took her place on the platform beside the two Expeditionary Marines as the First Counselor scuttled aside. She uncurled a scroll and began reading, stopping every five words or so to allow the translators to render the statement into a semblance of the Nimrazzian dialect.

“The Caudillo of Galactic Expeditionary Forces of the Terran People takes pleasure in presenting the Marine Commendation Medal to Master Sergeant Ernest Kravitz for valorous achievement as a combat mess sergeant in support of Operation Outward Bound on the Ninth Terran Standard Day of Tamuz, 2356 M.E. While in transit from their successful campaign on Gliese 581g, now known as the Hyperion Colony to Nimra, formerly designated as HD 40307g…”

Mention of the astronomical designation drew sustained belches of amusement from the Nimrazzian luminaries on the reviewing stand, interrupting the reading of the citation. Following their hosts’ example, Hazelshen pretended not to notice.

“MSgt. Kravitz performed tasks above and beyond the normal duties of his post that proved instrumental in the successful initiation of peaceful contact between the Terran and Nimrazzian…” Col. Hazelshen hesitated as half a head appeared, floating just behind her ear. The colonel cocked her head closer to the hovering face, forehead wrinkled and a pained expression on her face. Then a thin smile broke though. “…between the Terran people and the Nimrazzian solifugians.

“In the process of creating a special treat for the crew of the TPS Intrepid, Msgt. Kravitz, with the material assistance of Tsgt. 1Randolph Urquell, caused their vessel to approach the planet Nimra in a uniquely unthreatening manner, allowing the solifugians to recognize the peaceful intent and desire for mutually beneficial relations prior to actual First Contact. By doing so, Sgts. Kravitz and Urquell acted in keeping with the highest traditions of the Expeditionary Marine Forces and the United Terran Uniformed Service.” Ernie heard Randy swallow a laugh, making a noise in his throat that sounded distinctly like the Nimrazzians’ chortling. Ernie wanted to bust a gut, too but he did a better job of restraining himself.

The colonel then repeated essentially the same speech, substituting Randy’s name and rank where appropriate. Finally, the colonel draped phantom ribbons over their heads and saluted, before turning on her heels and marching into oblivion.

As soon as the Quantangle shut down the medals disappeared from their chests. As if on cue, the entire Nimrazzian delegation clacked, slid and dove for the water, their endurance on land stretched by the length of the ceremony. The officers making up the ship’s official delegation to the ceremony broke ranks, mingling easily with one another. Now that no one was monitoring their behavior, they left a wide half-circle between themselves and the two noncom heroes.

Given the gap in fundamental science, the ship’s commander had made an executive decision and greeted the Nims as if they were simply explorers on a peaceful mission of discovery. But that didn’t mean that he and his tech sergeant were off the hook as far as the crew was concerned.

Senior officers, from the captain on down, had found that the ship’s repairs could not proceed without their immediate attention. That left the junior officers to attend the humiliating ceremony, cozying up to a bunch of giant water scorpions. By rights they should be blasting the Nims to their liquid Hell, prepping the planet to be another outpost of the Terran Imperium.

Lt. Bengessert cast a look of cold disdain in Kravitz’s direction. No one had volunteered for this detail, even if it came with being the first to see the New Land—not that there was any land to speak of: a few rocky outcrops stuck their heads far enough out of the water to dry off in midday.

With the Nims gone, he abandoned any pretense of respect for the pair of fubars. From the expression he wore now, Ernie guessed Bengessert wanted nothing more than to frog march them back to the orbiting ship and shoot them out the nearest missile tube. Right now he was probably picturing himself pushing the fire button.

Standing apart from their escort detail, Randy Urquell paced the floating platform, waiting to load back onto the shuttle for the trip back into orbit. Ernie fingered the spot where the holographic medal reached on his chest, wondering where they would be sent next.

Having just been declared heroes, Ernie could be fairly certain they weren’t headed out an airlock as soon as they left for their next port of call but they’d probably be beached on the nearest colony world. He just hoped they’d have tasty local fauna for himself to work with. And some nice grains for Randy.

Take a seat. You beat the rush and I caught the bartender checking you out as soon as you walked in the door. Even if you don’t swing that way, it’s nice to be appreciated. The beer’s cold, the nuts fresh, and the bar clean. If you had anything better to do, you wouldn’t be here. Neither would I, and it just so happens that I have nothing on my schedule for the next long enough, so we might as well talk.

Isn’t it beautiful? No, not the microbrewery logo laser-engraved on the pilsner glass, but the dark amber ambrosia within. Fit for the gods themselves and gateway to the secrets of the universe. Not many people know that. Not many people know either that back when it was first invented, beer saved the world.

Oh, the naysayers might claim that alcohol is the third leading cause of death worldwide—like we all don’t have it coming anyway—but a drink like this deserves respect. Beer is as old as civilization. In some ways, beer is civilization.

Back in those hazy ancient days, when older than dirt was still too young to drive, when the kings of Ur, Babylon, Eshnunna, Lagash and the rest suffered hardcore obelisk envy for Kemet’s bright limestone sophistication, you don’t think they grew barley just to make bread, do you? Well, they used barley for money too, but what better place than beer for money to go?

And it’s true sanitation was more loosely defined back then and weak beer was safer than drinking any water—due to the amoebas that would crawl up your nose and turn your brain meat into a bad case of the Mexican shits—but that makes beer depressingly practical. And who drinks watered-down beer if they can help it?

Anyway, beer is even older than that. Older than the gates of Babylon, older than Stonehenge, older than Gobekli Tepe. If you can ever figure out how to pronounce that last little gem I’ll buy you a pint. Any time you get about twenty people together—and twenty isn’t enough to crown a hobo king, let alone make a decent run at proper civilization—there will be conflicts. What else can grease the wheels of society so well, or at least take the edge off of being the losing side of a debate argued at spear point?

But beer saved the world before even that, even if it took humanity a few millenia to remember how to turn grass into liquid courage. Unfortunately, that was so long ago—right around the time memory was invented—that reliable eyewitnesses are few and far between. Fortunately, the most brilliant and best kept secret of all history, but especially mythic history, is that it’s history. No one remembers it, nobody really cares, and that means we’re free to make up what’s actually true.

You seem like an insightful, educated, appreciative drinker, so I’m going to tell you how it happened. Cheers.

*drinks*

Everything has to have a beginning. That’s just common sense. But when some smartass asks, “If you’re so smart, where did the beginning come from, genius?” you punch them because everyone knows the answers to that one: the gods. And not just any gods. The old gods.

Back before the world was made, they gathered in a not-yet-Irish not-quite-pub to plan the creation of existence, of pints of Guinness, and shepherd’s pie. Better yet, unlike city planners, who to this day can’t find a sewer line unless it’s hooked directly into their overworked sphincters, they had at least a dash of competence to them. It was a nice not-quite-pub, not very crowded because no one else existed and within stumbling distance of free parking. Let’s call it Mikey MacGuire’s. It’s not like it matters.

As you already know, the old gods, those booming apocryphal whispers from beyond Beyond that grab you by the hindbrain and shake, have never disappeared or truly been forgotten. Every culture names them different names. Every era clothes them in different clothes. Scholars and the intricately unhinged sink lifetimes into exploring the niceties of prehistoric idols, sacred geometry, human development and how the Ancient Aliens guy from the History Channel gets his hair to do that, but that’s complicated so fuck it. I’ll just call them what they are and if they have a problem with that… they don’t know where I am right now.

Their work was nearly finished—the majestic glaciers of Argentina, breathtaking Alpine vistas, the multicolored sands of frigid Thule, the intricate fjords of Norway and whatever the hell Australia is supposed to be—all of its bits and pieces arranged on the un-table before them. The most important of what was yet undone was the keystone, the linchpin that would bind the world complete.

“This shall be our greatest creation of them all,” Big Daddy Rainmaker pronounced. “Humanity.” If there had been a non-godly audience, the cheers would have been deafening. Even the other gods, properly awed by the magnitude of the task before them, nodded in sage agreement and understanding.

“And what shall these humans look like?” Big Daddy’s wife and sister, Oceania, asked reverently.

(Lay off. They’re gods, it was a different time back then and Arkansas had to come from somewhere.)

“Nothing but the grandest visage is worthy,” Big Daddy Rainmaker replied.

Thunderdome, excitable as usual, slammed his fist into the un-table. “Then it is agreed they shall look like us! What better reminder of the majesty and grandeur they will be heir to?”

“Look like you, you mean,” his sister, Sparkle Princess, replied. “Two heads, an extra nose and a shiny bald spot with what looks like fungus growing on it.” She could never pass up a chance to poke holes in his vanity.

Thunderdome sat straighter and fixed Sparkle Princess with his most regal, five-eyed glare. “My countenance will inspire epics and ballads for as long as this world exists! Descriptions of my magnificence will survive in literature forever!”

“And someone said inventing book burning was a bad idea,” beetle-headed Stinky Kid mumbled. Big Daddy Rainmaker shot him a warning glare filled with the promise of hurricanes, but he was otherwise ignored.

“Perhaps you have another idea to discuss, Sparkle Princess?” Oceania said.

Eminently pleased now that all attention was on her, Sparkle Princess primped and giggled. “Thank you, mother. They should be as radiant as the aurora, mighty as the tides and tender as the breeze which heralds spring in the east.”

Stinky Kid interrupted again. “We already have unicorns. Besides, we haven’t invented the aurora yet.”

She whirled on him with the disdain instinctive to older sisters everywhere. “I’m a goddess. I can see into the future.”

“That’s a bit hard when time also hasn’t been invented yet, don’t you think?”

They bickered as gods do, because despite near-infinite cosmic powers there wasn’t much else to do. It’s hard to be content when you’re too big to fit into the concept of being, and that’s why they decided to create creation in the first place. I don’t know. It made sense at the time.

The petty threats and insults caromed through the not-quite-room, gaining life of their own because they were, after all, divine proclamations. In a quiet booth a few tables away, Fate waited inscrutably.

*drinks*

Late, uninvited and just in the nick of time, Mr. Mojo Sex Machine crashed the party. At once the squabbling stopped. The gods turned to face their common nemesis.

“Why are you here?” Big Daddy Rainmaker demanded.

“Don’t you have something more important to do, like jam your head up your ass?” Sparkle Princess chimed in. More was said, but none were as eloquent as these two gems.

“Please, please.” Mr. Mojo raised his hands for silence. “I know my presence makes you all terribly insecure, but I was invited by our good friend Fate. This project needs me.”

As one, the assembled divinities swiveled to glare at Fate, who stared back over his pint of fine autumn lager. They weren’t pleased but said nothing. It’s hard to argue with someone who knows how and when you die, and does nothing but smirk when you ask if it will be embarrassing.

“Very well,” Big Daddy Rainmaker conceded. “You may stay.”

“All right!” Mr. Mojo Sex Machine pulled an almost-chair up to the un-table and rubbed his hands together in delight and anticipation. “Can we get some buffalo wings for brain food or did you already decide buffalo won’t get wings?”

Ignoring him, Big Daddy Rainmaker continued, “We were discussing what form humanity should take.”

“There is no better form than my—our own!” Thunderdome proclaimed, slamming his fist into the un-table once again, causing the cutlery to jump.

“You might want to be careful with that,” Mr. Mojo said. “You only have the one fist and it would be a shame to wear it out.”

“I am eternal, funny man,” Thunderdome replied. “As you should well—”

“Whereas I believe something more sophisticated and dignified is appropriate,” Sparkle Princess interrupted, trying to reclaim the center of attention.

Stinky Kid coughed into his crusty hand. “Unicorn whore.”

“Children,” Oceania warned, and the fighting started again.

*drinks*

Eventually, the argument calmed down enough for all assembled to remember their original purpose. Mr. Mojo Sex Machine took the opportunity to inject some wisdom into the discussion.

“It doesn’t matter what they look like,” he said.

“Impossible!” Big Daddy Rainmaker cried. “We are gods. Everything we do has meaning!”

Mr. Mojo farted, and thus new holy gospel was born.

Oceania wrinkled her nose in distaste. “This is our grandest creation ever,” she proclaimed, “for humans must see our glory in themselves and be moved to worship.”

“And possess such beauty they may glance at each other and never lose hope,” Sparkle Princess said.

“The strength to shape mountains and tame the skies!” Thunderdome added.

“And motivation to excel, driven by an irrational hatred of unicorns,” Stinky Kid mumbled.

Mr. Mojo Sex Machine pshawed that all away with a wave of his hand. “Just give them two sets of interlocking dangly bits and they’ll be too busy to worry about that other stuff.”

The gods paused. “…dangly bits?” they asked almost in unison, knowing full well they wouldn’t like the answer.

“You know, so they can make more of each other.”

“Why would they need to make more of each other when we will create the perfect amount?”

Mr. Mojo threw his hand up in despair and said a quick prayer to himself that their eyes might be opened to wisdom. Believing themselves eternal, the other gods could not conceive of creations that were not. They argued the point for eternities, and despite the opposition of every other god, Mr. Mojo would not surrender the point. Since the way of things before there were things required the opinion of everyone invited be taken into account, the universe stalled, almost tripping into oblivion before it had a chance to be.

Forgotten in his almost-booth, Fate watched and waited, ordered another drink. This was going to be a long night.

*drinks*

“Why don’t we move on then?” Big Daddy Rainmaker proposed, his voice dripping frustration, which he had just invented so everyone would know exactly how displeased he was with the lack of progress. Still, no headway appeared possible and everyone had tacitly turned politician, deciding the issue could wait until after they invented elections. “How shall humanity live?” he tried instead. “What will motivate them to the utmost heights of introspection and achievement? How shall they interact among themselves to bring glory to we gods?”

Again, Oceania was the first to answer, with passion that swelled like the tides. “They shall be wise in the ways of nature,” she proclaimed, “of wave and wind, storm and snow. They shall converse with animals and trees, be guided by the fertile earth, and all shall be better for it.”

“They shall accord each other firm dignity, be solemn when solemnity arises, and joyful when their hearts be free. All shall meet as equals under the unending sky!” Thunderdome added. He started to thump the not-table again, but an irritated look from Big Daddy Rainmaker stopped him in mid-exclamation.

“Though the world be beautiful, they shall shape it lovelier still and the forests and plains will ring with laughter and delight,” Sparkle Princess said.

“And every full moon they shall make burnt offerings of unicorn meat in the humble recognition that for all their glory, there are forces still more powerful than they.”

“Not if there is no moon.”

“Then how would anyone see unicorns at night?”

“Children!”

After that argument subsided, Mr. Mojo Sex Machine started another one.

“And what of those who cheat and steal, kill and maim? Who seek power not for progress, but for their own petty aims? What will be done with them?”

Again, the almost-room rang with offended incredulity. How could a creation of the gods be less than the gods themselves? It was inconceivable, an affront to the very dignity of space and time. Only a churl would speak such heresy.

In the shadows, Fate watched and said nothing. Time did not pass, because there was no time to pass.

*drinks*

Sighing, Big Daddy Rainmaker rubbed his temples. “Is everyone clear on what democracy is?” he asked, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain it again. He wasn’t sure he completely trusted democracy himself, but something had to be done or they’d never finish making the blasted world.

Stinky Kid was the first to answer. “It means that if enough of us don’t like unicorns, there won’t be unicorns.”

Big Daddy Rainmaker, not fully foreseeing how his invention of frustration would affect him, whirled on Stinky Kid. “What the hell is your problem with unicorns?” Lightning light-years wide flashed in his eyes. Everyone else backed away from the table a little, not that they’d admit if you asked them later.

“They’re not as cool as velociraptors,” was the sullen reply, “and you only let me make the bones for them.”

“We agreed they were too dangerous,” Sparkle Princess gloated.

“I didn’t.”

“Fine, fine, okay. We heard you,” Big Daddy said. “If we nix the unicorns, will you shut up and let us get to more important issues?”

“Husband…” Oceania remonstrated.

“Shouldn’t we vote on that first? You know, like in a democracy?”

“Daughter!”

“This is a ridiculous waste of time. It is clear that I, Thunderdome, should be in charge.” He slammed his fist again, this time punching all the way through the not-table. “I hereby cast as many votes so as I am able. Eighty-nine should suffice.”

“Son!”

“Unicorns would be so much cooler if they had horns everywhere, like armored spikes that shot acid-spitting crocodiles.”

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever agreed with Stinky Kid,” Mr. Mojo said.

“See? I’m not the only one after all.”

*drinks*

Fate, having long listened to the gods’ combined wishes for their finest creation, was ready to act. He slid his beer glass, still half full with autumn lager, to the side and unfolded like the first night engulfing an absolute horizon and left, seeping through the stitching that binds together dreams. Only Mr. Mojo Sex Machine noticed his exit—the others were still consumed by squabbling—and followed Fate to the yearning behind the stars.

There, he watched silently as the First Engineer faded into being.

“Oh. Is that all?” the First Engineer sniffed sarcastically after Fate told him the gods’ specifications. “Impossibly strong yet enduringly delicate. Wise and patient yet filled with innocent wonder and joy. Majestic to behold while looking like Thunderdome. It’s not just impossible, it’s insulting.”

“It has been proclaimed,” Fate said, though his voice was more a reverberation in the eddies of eternity than mere words.

The First Engineer shrugged eloquently. Their delusions weren’t his problem. “I do like the part about dangly bits, though. It makes them modular, redundant, and their genetic algorithms accept inputs from multiple vectors.”

Still thinking himself unseen, Mr. Mojo grinned. At least someone appreciated his brilliant idea.

“It should have already been done,” Fate not-quite-said, showing no sign that he considered impossibility a valid excuse.

“You’re serious?” When Fate nodded the First Engineer rolled his eyes. “Marketing. Always promising more than we can deliver. If I put all that in, all of creation would unravel. Explosively.”

No one says “So be it” quite like Fate, and while he had a half-earned reputation for causing more problems than he solved, Mr. Mojo was actually quite responsible at heart and couldn’t let the universe destroy itself without doing something.

He made his presence known. “I know how to make it work.”

The First Engineer eyed him, a non-engineer, skeptically but Fate nodded assent. “You have only bequeathed one gift,” Fate’s more-than-voice rumbled. “Another would not be remiss.”

Grinning impishly, Mr. Mojo Sex Machine saved the world.

*drinks*

As you might have guessed, that gift was beer. Unlike the other gods, Mr. Mojo knew that not even Fate was the force which turned the wheel of destiny. All of them, even mighty Thunderdome, were simply those who sat so close to the center they could not feel the motion. For all the gods’ grand ideas, light is balanced by darkness, a balance found in all things, even gods, and it is impossible to create something more perfect than yourself.

So when the pressure of living up to the godly, impossible ideals of dignity, productivity, accomplishment and sex appeal prove too much, there’s beer. When you know you need to do something but don’t know what, there’s beer. When you need to start a fire and the only sticks around are the ones up people’s asses, there’s beer.

The First Engineer did what he could, but you of all people should know the gods ask too much. When the world cracks under the weight of their demands, beer lubricates the slide from shining expectations to fuzzy reality. For every stuffed shirt there’s a string of people puking in the bathtub. Hubris dissolved in a warm, amber glow.

But that’s not why I gave you beer.

Light and darkness, darkness and light. I’ve walked many paths—including one which leads to a hermaphrodite named Raoulita absolutely owning it in the slums of Curacao, but that’s not important right now… or ever—and the darkness that isn’t seen devours. Better worlds than yours have blinked into oblivion, swallowed along with what they claimed as their wisdom. The darkness is hungry, remembers the infinite night before the dawn of all souls. More than that, it lurks in the shadows behind your eyes.

So. Humanity. The culminating pride of the gods’ creation. Drunken rage. Blackout sex. Loud, obnoxious not giving a shit. The million morning after embarrassments as what could have been is slowly pissed away in unisex bathrooms. What better tool than beer to lance the boils of self-delusion and numb the pain while the truth oozes free?

The gods made the world wrong and, as usual, I’m the one who has to clean up the mess. Know who you are, know what you are, and you and your dangly bits might yet survive. And if you happen to forget along the way, beer will always be there to remind you.

You’re welcome, and smile. The next drink’s on me.

Bob Brown lives, works, and writes with his two pugs, two cats, and several dozen chickens in Washington state. He is the author of numerous short stories and the recently released children’s book, The Damsel, the Dragon, and the Knight. He is currently working on several projects including a space opera techno thriller with Irene Radford. He is well known in the science fiction convention community as RadCon Bob, due in part to the nature of his work as a Health Physicist at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where he supports clean up of nuclear waste left over from the Cold War. Bob is an avid gardener and a teller of chicken jokes.

Barb Caffrey is a writer, editor and musician from the Midwest. Though “On the Making of Veffen” is her first-ever story about beer, she has written other things, including a novel, ELFY, that will be published late in 2013 by Twilight Times Books. Previous stories and poems have appeared in the BEDLAM’S EDGE anthology (with late husband Michael B. Caffrey), the BEARING NORTH anthology, the Written Word online magazine, Joyful Online, the Midwest Literary Magazine, and at e-Quill Publishing. Find her at Elfyverse (AKA “Barb Caffrey’s Blog”) for discussions of all and sundry, or at Shiny Book Review.

Clayton J. Callahan once got a job he really loved, Professional Story Teller. He was performing at renaissance festivals, civil war re-enactments, libraries, book stores and schools. “What a great job to have!” people would tell him after a performance. Then in the next breath they would ask, “Can you make a living at this?” The answer sadly… was no.

To make a living he has served US Navy on an anti-terrorist team, the US Army as a communications sergeant, worked as a public school teacher, deputy sheriff, and Federal Counterintelligence Special Agent. He has served three tours in the Middle East where people tried, rather unsuccessfully, to kill him.

Re-entering the world of storytelling, he has written articles for Knights Of The Dinner Table Magazine, Tournaments Illuminated, Tabletop Gaming News and written informational books for gamers. He is also the designer of two games; Star Run and Battlefields: From Broadswords to Bullets.

Brenda W. Clough is a meek, mild-mannered reporter at a major metropolitan publication. She has published seven novels, many short stories, nonfiction, and innumerable book reviews that revolve around death, misery and grief. She has traveled around the world under the aegis of the US government, and now lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest, surrounded by animals.

Her novel, Revise the World, is available in electronic format at Book View Café (www.bookviewcafe.com). A version of it was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Her latest electronic novel is Speak to Our Desires.

Mark J. Ferrari has been a professional fantasy illustrator since 1987, and a published novelist since 2007, when his first fantasy novel, The Book of Joby, was published by TOR. The Book of Joby has since sold nearly 30,000 copies, been honored as a Booksense Pick, made Booklist’s ‘Top Ten’ for science fiction/fantasy in 2008, was selected as a finalist for the Endeavor Award, and was re-released as a mass market paperback in January of 2012. Mark has completed a new novel called Twice, currently heading toward publication, and has published several short stories in various anthologies during the past year in collaboration with author Shannon Page. Mark currently resides in Seattle, Washington. More info on his art and writing can be found at www.markferrari.com.

Manny Frishberg was born just south of New York City and attended high school in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. He has made his home on the West Coast for more than 40 years.

His feature articles have appeared on the pages of numerous magazines and websites since 1976, and won four journalism awards. He is a freelance book editor and an associate editor and columnist for Dark Eclipse, an online horror magazine, and its quarterly print companion, Dark Moon Digest.

Having been writing science fiction and fantasy for half his life in which children and cats play a significant role, he has sold several short stories that involve neither.

For the past several years he and his partner have made their home in the shadow of SeaTac Airport, where they attend to their cats and wait for the children to call.

Laurel Anne Hill’s award-winning novel, Heroes Arise, was released by KOMENAR Publishing in 2007. Her shorter works of fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of publications, most recently (2012-2013) in the anthologies Horrible Disasters, Shanghai Steam, Fault Zone: Over the Edge, The Wickeds and Spells and Swashbucklers. The fans of HorrorAddicts.net voted Laurel “Most Wicked 2011” for her steampunk/horror podcast, “Flight of Destiny.” She lives in Northern California with her husband and their affectionate 100-pound werewolf. Laurel gives writing workshops to adults and young adults, serves as a writing contest judge, and loves to encourage young writers to follow their dreams. Visit Laurel’s website and podcast at http://www.laurelannehill.com.

Chris Wong Sick Hong writes stories. There doesn’t seem to be much more to say right now. If you’d like to read more, check out his near future urban fantasy, Dick Richards: Private Eye, at www.thedickrichards.com.

Frog and Esther Jones are a husband and wife writing team who live in Eastern Washington with their Flemish Giant rabbit, Oxeye, and their hedgehog, Cinnabun. When they aren’t writing, they work at a rural law firm which handles whatever emergencies walk through the door. Their previous short stories include The Curse of Khenti-Amentiu, published by Skywarrior Books in 2011.

The ebook edition of Nancy Jane Moore’s collection, Conscientious Inconsistencies, was released in May 2013 by Book View Café. Her other books include the novella Changeling, available in print from Aqueduct Press and in ebook form from Book View Café, and the flash fiction collection Flashes of Inspiration, also a Book View Café ebook. Her short fiction has appeared most recently in PS Publishing’s Postscripts, the military SF anthology Best Laid Plans, and the steampunk anthology Gear and Levers 3. In addition to writing fiction, Nancy holds a fourth degree black belt in the martial art of Aikido and is working on a self defense book.

G. David Nordley is an author and astronautical engineer. A retired Air Force officer, he has extensive experience in spacecraft systems operations, engineering, and testing as well as research in advanced spacecraft propulsion. As an author, he is a past Hugo and nebula award nominee as well as a four-time winner of the Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact annual “AnLab” reader’s poll. His latest novel is The Black Hole Project, with C. S. Lowe, from Variationspublishing.com. and his latest short fiction is “The Fountain” in the June 2013 Asimov’s. Including nonfiction, songs and poetry, “A Wartime Draught” will mark his 100th publication. He lives in Sunnyvale, CA, with his wife, a retired Apple Computer programmer. His website is www.gdnordley.com.

Shannon Page was born on Halloween night and spent her early years on a commune in northern California’s backwoods. A childhood without television gave her a great love of books and the worlds she found in them. She wrote her first book, an illustrated adventure starring her cat, at the age of seven. Sadly, that story is currently out of print, but her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Fantasy, Black Static, Tor.com, and a mighty number of anthologies, including Love and Rockets from DAW, Subterranean’s Tales of Dark Fantasy 2, Flying Pen Press’s Space Tramps: Full Throttle Space Tales #5, and the Australian Shadows Award-winning Grants Pass. She has two novels appearing in 2013: Eel River, a hippie horror tale, from Morrigan Books; and The Queen and The Tower, first book in The Nightcraft Quartet, from Per Aspera Press. Shannon is a longtime yoga practitioner, has no tattoos, and is an avid gardener at home in Portland, Oregon. Visit her at www.shannonpage.net.

Irene Radford has been writing stories ever since she figured out what a pencil was for. A member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian who lives in Oregon, she and her husband make their home in Welches, Oregon where deer, bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers feed regularly on their back deck.

A museum trained historian, Irene has spent many hours prowling pioneer cemeteries deepening her connections to the past. Raised in a military family she grew up all over the US and learned early on that books are friends that don’t get left behind with a move. Her interests and reading range from ancient history, to spiritual meditations, to space stations, and a whole lot in between.

In other lifetimes she writes urban fantasy as P.R. Frost and space opera as C.F. Bentley. You can follow Irene Radford on Live Journal, rambling_phyl or on FaceBook Phyllis Irene Radford

Bruce Taylor, aka. “Mr. Magic Realism”, writes magic realism. He has nine books published. A collection (“Alembical”) with his novella, “Thirteen Miles to Paradise”, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. “Kafka’s Uncle and other Strange Tales” was nominated for the &NOW Award for Innovative Writing (SUNY, NY). Other titles are, “Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity”, “Magic of Wild Places” and (with Brian Herbert) “Stormworld”. With Elton Elliott, he co-edited “Like Water for Quarks”, an anthology about the blending of magic realism and science fiction. New titles recently released are “Mr. Magic Realism”, “Metamorphosis Blues”. His first anthology, “The Final Trick of Funnyman and Other Stories” has just been re-released as an e-book from Baen Books. Another book, “Mountains of the Night” is slated for re-release as well as its companion book, “Magic of Wild Places”. The third book of the trilogy (“Majesty of the World”) is presently being written. Bruce is also working on other projects with Brian Herbert. Living in Seattle, he has a smashing view of Mt. Rainier. His website is: www.brucebtaylor.com.

Joyce Reynolds-Ward is a middle school learning specialist, horsewoman and skier living in Portland, Oregon. Besides earning a Semi-Finalist placement in Writers of the Future, she’s had short stories and essays published in Random Realities, M-Brane SF, The Fifth Di…, Nightbird Singing in the Dead of Night, Zombiefied, River, Gobshite Quarterly, and Gears and Levers 1. Her newest novel in The Netwalk Sequence, Netwalker Uprising, will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other sites in e-book form and trade paper in March, 2013. Examples of her professional education writing can be found at ChildsWork.com. When not teaching, she’s often thundering about on her intrepid reining mare Mocha, living la vida ski bum, and writing. Joyce is currently working on a certificate in Interpersonal Neurobiology through Portland State University and hopes to integrate her study of neuroscience in both her teaching and her writing. Follow her adventures through her blog, Peak Amygdala, at www.joycereynoldsward.com.

Alma Alexander

2012: Midnight at Spanish Gardens (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Embers of Heaven (E-book, Trade Paperback)

S. A. Bolich

Firedancer (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Windrider (E-Book, Trade Paperback)

M. H. Bonham

Prophecy of Swords (E-book)

Runestone of Teiwas (E-book)

Serpent Singer and Other Stories (E-book)

Bob Brown

The Dragon, The Damsel, and the Knight (YA E-book)

John Dalmas

Soldiers! Part 1(E-book)

Soldiers! Part 2 (E-book)

The Second Coming (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Deby Fredericks

Seven Exalted Orders (E-book)

Carol Hightshoe (Editor)

Zombiefied: An Anthology of All Things Zombie (E-book)

Gary Jonas

Acheron Highway (E-book)

Modern Sorcery (E-book, Trade Paperback)

One-Way Ticket to Midnight (E-book)

Quick Shots (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Frog and Esther Jones

Grace Under Fire (E-book)

Pat MacEwen

The Dragon’s Kiss (E-book)

Rough Magic (E-book)

Michael J. Parry

The Oaks Grove (E-book)

The Spiral Tattoo (E-book)

Phyllis Irene Radford

Healing Waves: A Charity Anthology for Japan (Editor) (E-book)

How Beer Saved the World (Editor) (E-book)

Gears and Levers 1: A Steampunk Anthology (Editor) (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Gears and Levers 2: A Steampunk Anthology (Editor) (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Lacing Up for Murder, A Whistling River Mystery (E-book)

So You Want to Commit Novel (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Dusty Rainbolt (Editor)

The Mystical Cat (E-book)

Deborah J. Ross (Editor)

The Feathered Edge (E-book, Trade Paperback)

Laura J. Underwood

Ard Magister (Book One of Ard Magister) (E-book)

Ard Magister: Demon in the Bones (Book Two of Ard Magister) (E-book)

Dragon’s Tongue (Book One of the Demon-Bound) (E-book)

The Hounds of Ardagh (E-book)

Steven E. Wedel (Editor)

Tails of the Pack (E-book)

Introduction, copyright © by Phyllis Irene Radford 2013

Below, Between, Above, copyright © by Brenda W. Clough 2013

The Band of Brewers, copyright © by Bob Brown 2013

Paco’s Home Brew, copyright © by Nancy Jane Moore 2013

End of the Long Haul, copyright © by Frog and Esther Jones 2013

Of Hops, Malt, and Pee, copyright © by Bruce Taylor 2013

Mad Gus Missteps, copyright © by Mark J. Ferrari and Shannon Page 2013

A Wartime Draught, copyright © by G. David Nordley 2013

Beer Goes to War, copyright © by Joyce Reynolds-Ward 2013

Beware the Nine, copyright © by Laurel Anne Hill 2013

Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow, copyright © by Clayton J. Callahan 2013

On the Making of Veffen, copyright © by Barb Caffrey 2013

One Burp to Save Them All, copyright © by Irene Radford 2013

Uncommon Valor, copyright © by Manny Frishberg 2013

Proof the Gods Love Us, copyright © by Chris Wong Sick Hong 2013

© 2013 by Sky Warrior Book Publishing, LLC.

Smashwords Edition

Published by Sky Warrior Book Publishing, LLC.

PO Box 99

Clinton, MT 59825

www.skywarriorbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.

Editor: Phyllis Irene Radford.

Cover art by Laura Givens.

Publisher: M. H. Bonham.

Printed in the United States of America

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