Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

Somewhere along in here the fog rolled in. When it rolled out again, I found myself closing one eye the better to read the lettering on my earthenware mug. It read Augustinerbräu. Somehow we’d evidently navigated from one tent to another.

Arth was saying, “Where’s your hotel?”

That seemed like a good question. I thought about it for a while. Finally I said, “Haven’t got one. Town’s jam packed. Left my bag at the Bahnhof. I don’t think we’ll ever make it, Arth. How many we got to go?”

“Lost track,” Arth said. “You can come home with me.”

We drank to that and the fog rolled in again.

When the fog rolled out, it was daylight. Bright, glaring, awful daylight. I was sprawled, complete with clothes, on one of twin beds. On the other bed, also completely clothed, was Arth.

That sun was too much. I stumbled up from the bed, staggered to the window and fumbled around for a blind or curtain. There was none.

Behind me a voice said in horror, “Who⁠ ⁠… how⁠ ⁠… oh, Wodo, where’d you come from?”

I got a quick impression, looking out the window, that the Germans were certainly the most modern, futuristic people in the world. But I couldn’t stand the light. “Where’s the shade,” I moaned.

Arth did something and the window went opaque.

“That’s quite a gadget,” I groaned. “If I didn’t feel so lousy, I’d appreciate it.”

Arth was sitting on the edge of the bed holding his bald head in his hands. “I remember now,” he sorrowed. “You didn’t have a hotel. What a stupidity. I’ll be phased. Phased all the way down.”

“You haven’t got a handful of aspirin, have you?” I asked him.

“Just a minute,” Arth said, staggering erect and heading for what undoubtedly was a bathroom. “Stay where you are. Don’t move. Don’t touch anything.”

“All right,” I told him plaintively. “I’m clean. I won’t mess up the place. All I’ve got is a hangover, not lice.”

Arth was gone. He came back in two or three minutes, box of pills in hand. “Here, take one of these.”

I took the pill, followed it with a glass of water.

And went out like a light.

Arth was shaking my arm. “Want another mass?”

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 their king-size mugs and drank each other’s health.

My head was killing me. “This is where I came in, or something,” I groaned.

Arth said, “That was last night.” He looked at me over the rim of his beer mug.

Something, somewhere, was wrong. But I didn’t care. I finished my mass and then remembered. “I’ve got to get my bag. Oh, my head. Where did we spend last night?”

Arth said, and his voice sounded cautious, “At my hotel, don’t you remember?”

“Not very well,” I admitted. “I feel lousy. I must have dimmed out. I’ve got to go to the Bahnhof and get my luggage.”

Arth didn’t put up an argument on that. We said goodbye and I could feel him watching after me as I pushed through the tables on the way out.

At the Bahnhof they could do me no good. There were no hotel rooms available in Munich. The head was getting worse by the minute. The fact that they’d somehow managed to lose my bag didn’t help. I worked on that project for at least a couple of hours. Not only wasn’t the bag at the luggage checking station, but the attendant there evidently couldn’t make heads nor tails of the check receipt. He didn’t speak English and my high school German was inadequate, especially accompanied by a blockbusting hangover.

I didn’t get anywhere tearing my hair and complaining from one end of the Bahnhof to the other. I drew a blank on the bag.

And the head was getting worse by the minute. I was bleeding to death through the eyes and instead of butterflies I had bats in my stomach. Believe me, nobody should drink a gallon or more of Marzenbräu.

I decided the hell with it. I took a cab to the airport, presented my return ticket, told them I wanted to leave on the first obtainable plane to New York. I’d spent two days at the Oktoberfest, and I’d had it.

I got more guff there. Something was wrong with the ticket, wrong date or some such. But they fixed that up. I never was clear on what was fouled up, some clerk’s error, evidently.

The trip back was as uninteresting as the one over. As the hangover began to wear off⁠—a little⁠—I was almost sorry I hadn’t been able to stay. If I’d only been able to get a room I would have stayed, I told myself.

From Idlewild, I came directly to the office rather than going to my apartment. I figured I might as well check in with Betty.

I opened the door and there I found Mr. Oyster sitting in the chair he had been occupying four⁠—or was it five⁠—days before when I’d left. I’d lost track of the time.

I said to him, “Glad you’re here, sir. I can report. Ah, what was it you came for? Impatient to hear if I’d had any results?” My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a revolving door. I’d spent a wad of his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it; nothing but the last stages of a granddaddy hangover.

“Came for?” Mr. Oyster snorted. “I’m merely waiting for your girl to make out my receipt. I thought you had already left.”

“You’ll miss your plane,” Betty said.

There was suddenly a double dip of ice cream in my stomach. I walked over to my desk and looked down at the calendar.

Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn’t leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn’t ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed his way out