Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

natural. On the way to Idlewild I stopped off at the Germany Information Offices for some tourist literature.

It takes roughly three and a half hours to get to Gander from Idlewild. I spent the time planning the fun I was going to have.

It takes roughly seven and a half hours from Gander to Shannon and I spent that time dreaming up material I could put into my reports to Mr. Oyster. I was going to have to give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a laugh!

Between Shannon and Munich a faint suspicion began to simmer in my mind. These statistics I read on the Oktoberfest in the Munich tourist pamphlets. Five million people attended annually.

Where did five million people come from to attend an overgrown festival in comparatively remote Southern Germany? The tourist season is over before September 21st, first day of the gigantic beer bust. Nor could the Germans account for any such number. Munich itself has a population of less than a million, counting children.

And those millions of gallons of beer, the hundreds of thousands of chickens, the herds of oxen. Who ponied up all the money for such expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary?

In Munich there was no hotel space available. I went to the Bahnhof where they have a hotel service and applied. They put my name down, pocketed the husky bribe, showed me where I could check my bag, told me they’d do what they could, and to report back in a few hours.

I had another suspicious twinge. If five million people attended this beer bout, how were they accommodated?

The Theresienwiese, the fair ground, was only a few blocks away. I was stiff from the plane ride so I walked.

There are seven major brewers in the Munich area, each of them represented by one of the circuslike tents that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent contained benches and tables for about five thousand persons and from six to ten thousands pack themselves in, competing for room. In the center is a tremendous bandstand, the musicians all lederhosen clad, the music as Bavarian as any to be found in a Bavarian beer hall. Hundreds of peasant garbed fräuleins darted about the tables with quart sized earthenware mugs, platters of chicken, sausage, kraut and pretzels.

I found a place finally at a table which had space for twenty-odd beer bibbers. Odd is right. As weird an assortment of Germans and foreign tourists as could have been dreamed up, ranging from a seventy- or eighty-year-old couple in Bavarian costume, to the bald-headed drunk across the table from me.

A desperate waitress bearing six mugs of beer in each hand scurried past. They call them masses, by the way, not mugs. The bald-headed character and I both held up a finger and she slid two of the masses over to us and then hustled on.

“Down the hatch,” the other said, holding up his mass in toast.

“To the ladies,” I told him. Before sipping, I said, “You know, the tourist pamphlets say this stuff is eighteen percent. That’s nonsense. No beer is that strong.” I took a long pull.

He looked at me, waiting.

I came up. “Mistaken,” I admitted.

A mass or two apiece later he looked carefully at the name engraved on his earthenware mug. “Löwenbräu,” he said. He took a small notebook from his pocket and a pencil, noted down the word and returned the things.

“That’s a queer looking pencil you have there,” I told him. “German?”

“Venusian,” he said. “Oops, sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.”

I had never heard of the brand so I skipped it.

“Next is the Hofbräu,” he said.

“Next what?” Baldy’s conversation didn’t seem to hang together very well.

“My pilgrimage,” he told me. “All my life I’ve been wanting to go back to an Oktoberfest and sample every one of the seven brands of the best beer the world has ever known. I’m only as far as Löwenbräu. I’m afraid I’ll never make it.”

I finished my mass. “I’ll help you,” I told him. “Very noble endeavor. Name is Simon.”

“Arth,” he said. “How could you help?”

“I’m still fresh⁠—comparatively. I’ll navigate you around. There are seven beer tents. How many have you got through, so far?”

“Two, counting this one,” Arth said.

I looked at him. “It’s going to be a chore,” I said. “You’ve already got a nice edge on.”

Outside, as we made our way to the next tent, the fair looked like every big State Fair ever seen, except it was bigger. Games, souvenir stands, sausage stands, rides, side shows, and people, people, people.

The Hofbräu tent was as overflowing as the last but we managed to find two seats.

The band was blaring, and five thousand half-swacked voices were roaring accompaniment.

In Muenchen steht ein Hofbräuhaus!
Eins, Zwei, G’sufa!

At the G’sufa everybody upped with the mugs and drank each other’s health.

“This is what I call a real beer bust,” I said approvingly.

Arth was waving to a waitress. As in the Löwenbräu tent, a full quart was the smallest amount obtainable.

A beer later I said, “I don’t know if you’ll make it or not, Arth.”

“Make what?”

“All seven tents.”

“Oh.”

A waitress was on her way by, mugs foaming over their rims. I gestured to her for refills.

“Where are you from, Arth?” I asked him, in the way of making conversation.

“2183.”

“2183 where?”

He looked at me, closing one eye to focus better. “Oh,” he said. “Well, 2183 South Street, ah, New Albuquerque.”

“New Albuquerque? Where’s that?”

Arth thought about it. Took another long pull at the beer. “Right across the way from old Albuquerque,” he said finally. “Maybe we ought to be getting on to the Pschorrbräu tent.”

“Maybe we ought to eat something first,” I said. “I’m beginning to feel this. We could get some of that barbecued ox.”

Arth closed his eyes in pain. “Vegetarian,” he said. “Couldn’t possibly eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.”

“Well, we need some nourishment,” I said.

“There’s supposed to be considerable nourishment in beer.”

That made sense. I yelled, “