Mauve’Bib said: “Show me your civilization’s most precious values, and I’ll show you mine. Go on, show me. Please. Just a peek. Just one precious value. All right, be that way. Don’t show me.”

—from “A Time for Pompous Titles: Memories of Mauve’Bib,” by the Princess Serutan

“Get their entrees, Spilgard, and let’s move it,” said the voice.

The apparent leader of the troop, standing in shadow before Jazzica, turned to address the speaker. “Let’s move what, Janis?”

The other man grumbled, then said, “It. It’s an expression—’let’s move it.’ I don’t know. It. You know.”

“I command here,” said the leader sternly. “And I shall decide when it is to be moved, and what it is.”

Spilgard! Jazzica thought. The nabe I met back in Arrucksack.

Spilgard stepped toward her into the light. From his vantage point six inches away, Pall tensed, right hand relaxed and ready to whiplashsnap for his wallet.

“I know you, woman,” the nabe said. His eyes, depthless red-on-red, narrowed as he examined Jazzica. “We have met.”

“At the Governor’s Palace at Arrucksack,” she replied. “There did Spilgard and I join meat.”

Spilgard turned to examine Pall. “And this is your bunky, your son,” he said. “Word has spread among our volksritr, our people, that he is the Laserium al-Dilah’, the Bright Light of the Italian Love Song. When such news first reached my gnocchis, my ears, I was klauskinski—skeptical as to the veracity of a religious-based rumor. But much of the prophecy has already been lyfah-ryli, fulfilled (usually with reference to apocryphal or legendary assertions). Still, it would not do to declare the Mahi-mahi, the day of arrival of the messiah, prematurely. More engleberthumperdinck, proof, is needed.”

“We waste time, Spil,” called the one named Janis. “Do we obey the sacred injunction to assure foremost the strength of the tribe by taking their entrees, or what?”

“Let the boy-man and his mother-woman join my group,” Spilgard announced. “Let them accompany us to hootch, that we might see if the lad is truly the Laserium al-Dilah’.”

“They are meat-lean, two off-worlders,” Janis snarled. “Like as mayhap not they spy for the Hardchargin devil, or work in the Guild’s employ. Or perhaps they serve the Emperor—scouts for another cursed documentary about us for the Pahdedbrah Broadcasting System.” He said mimickingly, “They are a simple people, yet with a rich cultural heritage all their own.’ Pah!” He spat in disgust.

“We serve neither Hardchargin nor PBS,” Pall said forcefully. “Who claims we do, lies.”

“Easy, my young wally,” Spilgard soothed. Turning to Janis, he said with an edge, “Do you challenge my rule in this matter?”

“Spilgard has been known to make mistakes,” Janis said, stubborn.

I could silence this Janis by telling him to get out of the kitchen, Jazzica thought.

But before she could speak, Spilgard roared, “I tell you, Janis, they have my countenance!”

An agitated murmur arose from the crowd. Pall heard one man ask another, “They have his countenance—does that mean they have his face?”

Hearing this, another cried, “Spilgard gives them his face! He gives meat to the off-worlders!”

“He gives them the meat of his face!”

“No, no!” called the nabe. “It means…”

But the air was rent by a gabble of cheering, making futile further reply.

A-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h, they are an excitable people, thought Jazzica. A people who could be whipped into a frenzy at the drop of a hat. How useful that could be to us. A-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h.

“Come,” Spilgard said. “We must return to Hootch Grabr.”

They fell into marching order, their sweatsuit hoods up and covering their heads. Pall marked with what stealth and precision they moved. As he took his place in procession, he noticed a figure beside him. It was a girl-child, with elfin face and a generous mouth.

“You must not lose step,” the girl said. Her voice was laughfilled with liltsong, her newspeak bigmouth smile-faced with happytalk.

“You took… familiar…” Pall said. “Haven’t we… met?”

“I am Loni, daughter of Bob,” she said.

“I am Pall, son of Duke Lotto Agamemnides.”

Shyly, dimpling a smile, she said, “You have not the eye of the Egad.”

He looked puzzled, then noticed she was pointing to his own brown eyes, their whites normal and clear. Her eyes were the typical red-on-red of her people.

Even their girls-children drink the beer, Pall thought. It is a France-like thing.

They marched for several hours until they came to a series of caves walled ‘round by rock-candy hazy white and opaque in the waning sunlight. Spilgard assigned sentries to keep watch as they made camp. Many Freedmenmen removed their sweatshirts, revealing a variety of plain shirts and blouses underneath. Worn on each, tied around the neck, was a purple napkin.

Jazzica watched in awe as the Freedmenmen silently went about their efficient routines, mounting westinglobes for light, preparing cookfires for carmelbrew, distributing mugs of a frothing golden liquid. Beer, she thought. This will be our first true exposure to it. I hope Pall knows of the risks, and that he will drink it responsibly and in moderation. She felt an abrupt fear, shuddered. Surely he will not be so foolish as to try to operate any heavy machinery…

She looked up as Spilgard approached. “Your young wally and our beaver have made linkage,” he said, gesturing.

Jazzica looked, saw that, across an open space, against a wall, Pall sat with the girl-child Loni, deep in conversation. The implications disturbed her.

I must warn Pall about time-making with that girl-child, Jazzica thought. We must win the respect of these people, yes—but to hire them, not join them. It would prove fatal to our purpose were Pall to any of their women lovemake to!

And possibly upknock!

Pall saw his mother regarding him from the distance. She plays a dangerous game, he thought.

Then he smiled at Loni. She said, “Here, drink this,” and handed him a small beermug in which a cool golden liquid foamed. She held up her own mug. “Let us elbow-bend the cold ‘n’ frosty,” she murmured. “Steak for dinner sometime soon.”

He nodded and sipped.

The taste was sharp to his tongue. Waftings of yeastscent made his nose flicker with their bite. Concealed in the liquid was a profusion of evanescent pinpricks, and these seemed to explode in an abrasive fusillade as he swallowed, grating down his throat. His body felt injected with air. An afterdreg of sudsfoam remained on his upper lip; Loni laughed and wiped it off with the purple napkin she wore around her neck.

“You like?” she said.

“Hell, yes,” he replied.

Suddenly a thing within him reared up, sought escape. In an abrupt burst it flew out of his mouth, invisible but rending the air with a sharp, guttural bark.

“What have you done to me!” Pall raged. “There’re demons in my stomach!”

Loni stared, laughed.

“Oh, Pall Agamemnides, that’s just beerburp,” she gasped with mirth. “The breath of Schmai-gunug gathers in the brew. We release it when we drink. Thus do we free it to be breathed again, that Schmai-gunug may live and the tribe prosper.”

A male voice nearby said, “It’s basic ecology, Pall Agamemnides.”

“Let’s have another one,” Loni said.

She removed from her pack a canister, and applied to its top a swysknife, using one of its attachments to puncture the top. Then she solemnly poured the liquid into the beermug, down its center. A roiling white head rose up from the bottom of the mug, concealing most of the golden clarity.

“Now we must wait for foamfall,” she said, watching the cloud of bubbles slowly disperse. “Not before then may we drink.”

Pall suddenly said, “Try this.”

Taking the canister from her, he poured its remnants into another beermug, this time tilting the vessel and letting the beerflow land halfway up its side. The beer collected placidly in the mug, rising to fullness without a head of white froth.

Loni stared, amazed.

“You pour without foam!” she whispered. “Your head is small!”

“Just an idea I had—” he began.

But she had risen and held up his mug for all to see. “Behold!” she cried. “Pall Agamemnides pours without foam!”

All activity ceased. From all over the camp Freedmenmen stopped and looked at the girl, at the mug in her held-aloft hand, at the beer and its headless top.

” ‘And he shall be wise, yet he shall have no head,’ ” someone quoted softly.

“He is the Laserium al-Dilah’!” Loni cried joyfully.

Pall was aware of all eyes on him, of expressions of awe and wonder in those eyes.

Have a caution, he thought. My status as holy man could at this juncture gain significant reinforcement—or suffer direst setback. This’s a crucial possibility-nexus.

“Behold the beer without head,” Pall intoned. “I pour it into my own head.” He held up high the mug, drank deep. Then he held up the drained vessel. “Thus does the… the head of…” He paused, allowed for beerburp, continued, “My head… I am the head! Of the beer!” He nodded. Got it. “I am the Beer Head of Doon!”

The Freedmenmen broke into cheers, upholding their own mugs and drinking in salute.

Yet Pall heard it indistinctly, for the narcotic effects of the beer had begun to work on him. A vaporous plume rose from his stomach into his head. He felt a pleasing lightness, as though his brain were newly-supported by a gossamer cloud of well-being. He felt lulled, expansive.

Then the full force of the drug took hold of him, as his normal balance of emotion-states suddenly tipped wildly. Now, rather than experiencing a positive reaction of feelgood uplift in response to external events, he felt himself generating his own exhilaration-response. Veils of social conditioning and learned-restraint patterns were ripped away. Revealed now were raw, explosive sources of self-generated life-pleasure, good-mood, and wanting-to-go-berserk.

“Hey,” he said, extending a limp hand in loose pawflop to the girl-child Loni. “You’re pretty.”

Yet there was a distant calculating part of him that noted with detachment the effects of the beer, feeding into merciless mental computation the cold data of numerous possible futures. He slumped against the rock-candy wall and leaned back, his field of vision taking in a section of the cave in which people now saluted each other and downed foaming beermugs of the golden drink.

This, he realized, was the Freedmenmen path. The Golden Path of Beer!

And his inner vision at that moment glimpsed a series of possible futures. Many of them reached only partway into the future, depicting a variety of possible-series-of-events that might unfold over the next thirty seconds.

In each, he saw himself approaching the girl-child Loni and requesting another mugful. The variations were manifold: in some he walked, in others crawled, in still others sort of slid-lurched.

But beyond these lay one particular vision—indeed, was the focal point of all the disparate crawlings-forward and beer-swillings, the one toward which they all tended, seemed to lead inexorably.

And he knew it was the one possible future he must avoid.

It was a vision of himself, drinking vaster and vaster draughts of the brew until, half mad, he leaped up in drunken beerfrenzy, attempting to sing “Girl-Childs Just Want to Have Fun-Pleasure” in harmony with himself, and began taking off his clothes and dancing about, until finally upthrowing and outpassing, cold.