“Damn it,” I said as I slipped off the tank, “don’t call me Pops! My name is Daniel Temper, and I’m not so old that I could be…”

I stopped. I was old enough to be her father. In the Kentucky mountains, at any rate.

Knowing what I was thinking, she smiled and held out the little cup she had taken from the clip on the tank’s side. I growled, “A man’s only as old as he feels, and I don’t feel over thirty.”

At that moment I caught the flicker of moonlight on a form coming down the path. “Duck!” I said to Alice.

She just had time to dive into the grass. As for me, the tank got in my way, so I decided to stay there and brazen things out.

When I saw what was coming down the path, I wished I had taken off the tank. Weren’t there any human beings in this Godforsaken land? First it was the Allegory. Now it was the Ass.

He said, “Hello, brother,” and before I could think of a good comeback, he threw his strange head back and loosed tremendous laughter that was half ha-ha! and half hee-haw!

I didn’t think it was funny. I was far too tense to pretend amusement. Moreover, his breath stank of Brew. I was half-sick before I could back up to escape it.

He was tall and covered with short blond hair, unlike most asses, and he stood upon two manlike legs that ended in broad hoofs. He had two long hairy ears, but, otherwise, he was as human as anybody else you might meet in the woods—or on the street. And his name, as he wasn’t backward in telling me, was Polivinosel.

He said, “Why are you carrying that tank?”

“I’ve been smuggling the Brew to the outside.”

His grin revealed long yellow horselike teeth. “Bootlegging, eh? But what do they pay you with? Moneys no good to a worshiper of the All-Bull.”

He held up his right hand. The thumb and two middle fingers were bent. The index finger and little finger were held straight out. I didn’t respond immediately, and he looked hard. I imitated his gesture, and he relaxed a little.

“I’m bootlegging for the love of it,” I said. “And also to spread the gospel.”

Where that last phrase came from, I had no notion. Perhaps from the reference to “worshiper” and the vaguely religious-looking sign that Polivinosel had made.

He reached out a big hairy hand and turned the spigot on my tank. Before I could move, he had poured out enough to fill his cupped palm. He raised his hand to his lips and slurped loudly. He blew the liquid out so it sprayed all over me. “Whee-oo! That’s water!” “()f course,” I said. “After I get rid of my load of Brew, I fill the tank with ordinary water. If I’m caught by the border patrol, I tell them I’m smuggling pure water into our area.”

“That’s not all,” I said. “I even have an agreement with some of the higher officers. They allow me to slip through if I bring them back some Brew.”

He winked and brayed and slapped his thigh again. “Corruption, eh, brother? Even brass will rust. I tell you, it won’t be long until the Brew of the Bull spreads everywhere.”

Again he made that sign, and I did so almost at the same time.

He said, “I’ll walk with you a mile or so. My worshipers—the local Cult of the Ass—are holding a fertility ceremony down the path a way. Care to join us?”

I shuddered. “No, thank you,” I said fervently.

I had witnessed one of those orgies through a pair of fieldglasses one night. The huge bonfire had been about two hundred yards inside the forbidden boundary. Against its hellish flame, I could see the white and capering bodies of absolutely uninhibited men and women. It was a long time before I could get that scene out of my mind. I used to dream about it.

When I declined the invitation, Polivinosel brayed again and slapped me on the back, or where my back would have been if my tank hadn’t been in the way. As it was, I fell on my hands and knees in a patch of tall grass. I was furious. I not only resented his too-high spirits, I was afraid he had bent the thin-walled tank and sprung a leak in its seams.

But that wasn’t the main reason I didn’t get up at once. I couldn’t move because I was staring into Alice’s big blue eyes.

Polivinosel gave a loud whoop and leaped through the air and landed beside me. He got down on his hands and knees and stuck his big ugly mule-eared face into Alice’s and bellowed, “How now, white cow! How high browse thou?”

He grabbed Alice by the waist and lifted her up high, getting up himself at the same time. There he held her in the moonlight and turned her around and over and over, as if she were a strange-looking bug he had caught crawling in the weeds.

She squealed and gasped, “Damn you, you big jackass, take your filthy paws off me!”

“I’m Polivinosel, the local god of fertility!” he brayed. “It’s my duty—and privilege—to inspect your qualifications. Tell me, daughter, have you prayed recently for a son or daughter? Are your crops coming along? How are your cabbages growing? What about your onions and your parsnips? Are your hens laying enough eggs?”

Instead of being frightened, Alice got angry. “All right, Your Asininity, would you please let me down? And quit looking at me with those big lecherous eyes. If you want what I think you do, hurry along to your own orgy. Your worshipers are waiting for you.”

He opened his hands so she fell to the ground. Fortunately, she was quick and lithe and landed on her feet. She started to walk away, but he reached out and grabbed her by the wrist.

“You’re going the wrong way, my pretty little daughter. The infidels are patrolling the border only a few hundred yards away.

“I’ll take care of myself, thank you,” she said huskily. “Just leave me alone. It’s getting so a girl can’t take a snooze by herself in the grass without some minor deity or other wanting to wrestle!”

Alice was picking up the local lingo fast.

“Well, now, daughter, you can’t blame us godlings for that. Not when you’re built like a goddess yourself.”

He gave that titanic bray that should have knocked us down, then grabbed both of us by the wrists and dragged us along the path.

“Come along, little ones. I’ll introduce you around. And we’ll all have a ball at the Feast of the Ass.” Again, the loud offensive bray. I could see why Durham had metamorphosed this fellow into his present form.

That thought brought me up short. The question was, how had he done it? I didn’t believe in supernatural powers, of course. If there were any, they weren’t possessed by man. And anything that went on in this physical universe had to obey physical laws.

Take Polivinosel’s ears and hoofs. I had a good chance to study them more closely as I walked with him. His ears may have been changed, like Bottoms, into a donkey’s, but whoever had done it had not had an accurate picture in his mind. They were essentially human ears, elongated and covered over with tiny hairs.

As for the legs, they were human, not equine. It was true he had no feet. But his pale, shiny hoofs, though cast into a good likeness of a horse’s, were evidently made of the same stuff as toenails. And there was still the faintest outline and curve of five toes.

It was evident that some biological sculptor had had to rechisel and then regrow the basic human form.

I looked at Alice to see what she thought of him. She was magnificent in her anger. As Polivinosel had been uncouth enough to mention, she had a superb figure. She was the sort of girl who is always president of her college sorority, queen of the Senior Prom, and engaged to a Senators son. The type I had never had a chance with when I was working my way through Traybell University.

Polivinosel suddenly stopped and roared, “Look, you, what’s your name?”

“Daniel Temper,” I said.

“Daniel Temper? D.T.? Ah, hah, hoo, hah, hah! Listen, Old D.T., throw that tank away. It burdens you down, and you look like an ass, a veritable beast of burden, with it on your back. And I won’t have anybody going around imitating me, see? Hoohah-heehaw! Get it?”