Bill, the Galactic Hero btgh-1

by Harry Harrison

  Bill stopped, frozen, immobile, shocked, rigid, horrified, dismayed, and had to fight for control of his suddenly contracted bladder.

  He knew that boot. He would never forget that boot until the day he died, just as he would never forget his serial number and could say it frontward or backward or from the inside out. Every detail of that terrible boot was clear in his memory, from the snakelike laces in the repulsive leather of the uppers-said to be made of human skin-to the corrugated stamping-soles tinged with red that could only have been human blood. That boot belonged to Deathwish Drang.

  The boot was attached to a leg, and paralyzed with terror, as unable to control himself as a bird before a snake, he found himself leaning further and further into the compact ment as his eyes traced up the leg past the belt to the shirt to the neck upon which rested the face that had featured largely in his nightmares since he had enlisted. The lips moved.

  “Is that you, Bill? C'mon in and rest it.” Bill stumbled in.

  “Have a hunk of candy,” Deathwish said, and smiled.

  Reflex drove Bill's fingers into the offered box and set his jaw chewing on the first solid food that had passed his lips in weeks. Saliva spouted from dusty orifices, and his stomach gave a preliminary rumble, while his thoughts drove maddingly in circles as he tried to figure out what that expression was on Deathwish's face. Lips curved up at the corners behind the tusks, little crinkles on the cheeks. It was hopeless. He could not recognize it.

  “I hear Eager Beager turned out to be a Chinger spy,” Deathwish said, closing the box of candy and sliding it under the pillow. “I should have figured that one out myself. I knew there was something very wrong with him, doing his buddies' boots and that crap, but I thought he was just nuts. Should have known better…” “Deathwish,” Bill said hoarsely, “it can't be, I know-but you are acting like a human being!” Deathwish chuckled, not his ripsaw-slicing-human-bone chuckle, but an almost normal one.

  Bill stammered. “But you are a sadist, a pervert, a beast, a creature, a thing, a murderer…” “Why, thanks, Bill. That's very nice to hear. I try to do my job to the best of my abilities, but I'm human enough to enjoy a word of praise now and then.

  Being a murderer is hard to project, but I'm glad it got across, even to a recruit as stupid as you were.” “B-but… aren't you really a…” “Easy now!” Deathwish snapped, and there was enough of the old venom and vileness to lower Bill's body temperature six degrees. Then Deathwish smiled again. “Can't blame you, son, for carrying on this way, you being kind of stupid and from a rube planet and having your education retarded by the troopers and all that. But wake up, boyl Military education is far too important a thing to be wasted by allowing amateurs to get involved. If you read some of the things in our college textbooks it would make your blood run cold, yes indeed. Do you realize that in prehistoric times the drill sergeants, or whatever it was they called them, were real sadists! The armed forces would let these people with no real knowledge absolutely destroy recruits. Let them learn to hate the service before they learned to fear it, which plays hell with discipline. And talk about wasteful! They were always marching someone to death by accident or drowning a squad or nonsense like that. The waste alone would make you cry.” “Could I ask what you majored in in college?” Bill asked in a very tiny and humble voice.

  “Military Discipline, Spirit breaking, and Method Acting. A rough course, four years, but I graduated sigma cum, which is not bad for a boy from a working-class family. I've made a career of the service, and that's why I can't understand why the ungrateful bastards went and shipped me out on this crummy can!” He lifted his gold-rimmed glasses to flick away a developing tear.

  “You expect gratitude from the service?” Bill asked humbly.

  “No, of, course not, how foolish of me. Thanks for jerking me back into line, Bill, -you'll make a good trooper. All I expect is criminal indifference which I can take advantage of by working through the Old Boys Network, bribery, cutting false orders, black-marketing, and the other usual things. It's just that I had been doing a good job on you slobs in Camp Leon Trotsky, and the l east I expected was to be left alone to keep doing it, which was pretty damn stupid of me. I had better get cracking on my transfer now.” He slid to his feet and stowed the candy and gold-rimmed glasses away in a locked footlocker.

  Bill, who in moments of shock found it hard to adjust instantly, was still bobbing his head and occasionally banging it with the heel of his hand. “Lucky thing,” he said, “for your chosen career that you were born deformed-I mean you have such nice teeth.” “Luck nothing,” Deathwish said, plunking one of his projecting tusks, “expensive as hell. Do you know what a genemutated, vat-grown, surgically-implanted set of two-inch tusks cost? I bet you don't know! I worked the summer vac for three years to earn enough to buy these-but I tell you they were worth it. The image, that's everything. I studied the old tapes of prehistoric spirit-breakers, and in their own crude way they were good.

  Selected by physical type and low I. Q. of course, but they knew their roles.

  Bulletheads, shaved clean, with scars, thick jaws, repulsive manners, hot pants, everything. I figured a small investment in the beginning would pay rich dividends in the end. And it was a sacrifice, believe me, you won't see many implanted tusks around! For a lot of reasons. Oh, maybe they are good for eating tough meat, but what the hell else? Wait until you try kissing your first girl… Now, get lost, Bill, I got things to do. See you around…” His last words faded in the distance, since Bill's well-conditioned reflexes had carried him down the corridor the instant he had been dismissed. When the spontaneous terror faded, he began to walk with a crafty roll, like a duck with a sprung kneecap, that he thought looked like an old spacesailor's gait. He was beginning to feel a seasoned hand and momentarily labored under the delusion that he knew more about the troopers than they knew about him. This pathetic misconception was dispelled instantly by the speakers on the ceiling, which belched and then grated their nasal voices throughout the ship.

  “Now hear this, the orders direct from the Old Man himself, Captain Zekial, that you all have been waiting to hear. We're heading into action, so we are going to have a clean buckle-down fore and aft, stow all loose gear.” A low, heartfelt groan of pain echoed from every compartment of the immense ship.

  Chapter 6

  There was plenty of latrine rumor and scuttlebutt about this first flight of the Chris Keeler, but none of it was true. The rumors were planted by undercover MPs and were valueless. About the only thing they could be sure of was that they might be going someplace because they seemed to be getting ready to go someplace. Even Tembo admitted to that as they lashed down fuses in the storeroom.

  “Then again,” he added, “we might be doing all this just to fool any spies into thinking we are going someplace, when really some other ships are going there.” “Where?” Bill asked irritably, tying his forefinger into a knot and removing part of the nail when he pulled it free.

  “Why anyplace at all, it doesn't matter.” Tembo was undisturbed by anything that did not bear on his faith. “But I do know where you are going, Bill.” “Where?” Eagerly. A perennial sucker for a rumor.

  “Straight to hell unless you are saved.” “Not again…” Bill pleaded.

  “Look there,” Tembo said temptingly, and projected a heavenly scene with golden gates, clouds, and a soft tom-tom beat in the background.

  “Knock off that salvation-crap!” First Class Spleen shouted, and the scene vanished.

  Something tugged slightly at Bill's stomach, but he ignored it as being just another of the symptoms sent up continually by his panic-stricken gut, which thought it was starving to death and hadn't yet realized that all its marvelous grinding and dissolving machinery had been condemned to a liquid diet. But Tembo stopped work and cocked his head to one side, then poked himself experimentally in the stomach.

  “We're moving,” he said positively, “and going interstellar too. They've turned on the star-drive
.” “You mean we are breaking through into sub-space and will soon experience the terrible wrenching at every fiber of our being?” “No, they don't use the old sub-space drive any more, because though a lot of ships broke through into sub-space with a fiber-wrenching jerk, none of them have yet broke back out. I read in the Trooper's Times where some mathematician said that there had been a slight error in the equations and that time was different in sub-space, but it was different faster not different slower, so that it will be maybe forever before those ships come out.” “Then we're going into hyper-space?” “No such thing.” “Or we're being dissolved into our component atoms and recorded in the memory of a giant computor who thinks we are somewhere else so there we are?” “Wow!” Tembo said, his-eyebrows crawling up to his hairline. “For a Zoroastrian farm boy you have some strange ideas! Have you been smoking or drinking something I don't know about?” “Tell me!” Bill pleaded. “If it's not one of them-what is it? We're going to have to cross interstellar space to fight the Chingers. How are we going to do it?” “It's like this.” Tembo looked around to make sure that First Class Spleen was out of sight, then put his cupped hands together to form a ball. “You make believe that my hands are the ship, just floating in space. Then the Bloater Drive is turned on-” “The what?” “The Bloater Drive. It's called that because it bloats things up. You know, everything is made up of little bitty things called electrons, protons, neutrons, trontrons, things like that, sort of held together by a kind of binding energy. Now, if you weaken the energy that holds things together- I forgot to tell you that also they are spinning around all the time like crazy, or maybe you already knew-you weaken the energy, and because they are going around so fast all the little pieces start to move away from each other, and the weaker the energy the farther apart they move. Are you with me so far?” “I think I am, but I'm not sure that I like it.” “Keep cool. Now-see my hands? As the energy gets weaker the ship gets bigger,” he moved his hands further apart. “It gets bigger and bigger until it is as big as a planet, then as big as a sun then a whole stellar system. The Bloater Drive can make us just as big as we want to be, then it's turned the other way and we shrink back to our regular size and there we are.” “Where are we?” “Wherever we want to be,” Tembo answered patiently.

  Bill turned away and industriously rubbed shine-o onto a fuse as First Class Spleen sauntered by, a suspicious glint in his eye. As soon as he had turned the corner, Bill leaned over and hissed at Tembo.

  “How can we be anywhere else than where we started? Getting bigger, getting smaller doesn't get us anyplace.” “Well, they're pretty tricky with the old Bloater Drive. The way I heard it it's like you take a rubber band and hold one end in each hand. You don't move your left hand, but you stretch the band out as far as it will go with your right hand. When you let the band shrink back again you keep your right hand steady and let go with your left. See? You never moved the rubber band, just stretched it and let it snap-but it has moved over. Like our ship is doing now.

  It's getting bigger, but in one direction. When the nose reaches wherever we are going the stern will be wherever we were. Then we shrink, and bangol there we are. And you can get into heaven just that easily, my son, if only…” “Preaching on government time, Tembol” First Class Spleen howled from the other side of the fuse rack over which he was looking with a mirror tied to the end of a rod. “I'll have you polishing fuse clips for a year. You've been warned before.” They tied and polished in silence after that, until the little planet about as big as a tennis ball swam in through the bulkhead. A perfect little planet with tiny icecaps, cold fronts, cloud cover, oceans, and the works.

  “What's that?” Bill yiped.

  “Bad navigation,” Tembo scowled. “Backlash, the ship is slipping back a little on one end instead of going all the other way. No-no! Don't touch it, it can cause accidents sometimes. That's the planet we just left, Phigerinadon II.” “My home,” Bill sobbed, and felt the tears rise as the planet shrank to the size of a marble. “So long, Mom.” He waved as the marble shrank to a mote, then vanished.

  After this the journey was uneventful, particularly since they could not feel when they were moving, did not know when they stopped, and had no idea where they were. Though they were sure they had arrived somewhere when they were ordered to strip the lashings from the fuses. The inaction continued for three watches, and then the General Quarters alarm sounded. Bill ran with the others, happy for the first time since he had enlisted. All the sacrifices, the hardships would not be in vain. He was seeing action at last against the dirty Chingers.

  They stood in first position opposite the fuse racks, eyes intent on the red bands on the fuses that were called the fusebands. Through the soles of his boots Bill could feel a faint, distant tremor in the deck.

  “What's that?” he asked Tembo out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Main drive, not the Bloater Drive. Atomic engines. Means we must be maneuvering, doing something.” “But what?” “Watch them fusebandsl” First Class Spleen shouted.

  Bill was beginning to sweat-then suddenly realized that it was becoming excruciatingly hot. Tembo, without taking his eyes from the fuses, slipped out of his clothes and folded them neatly behind him.

  “Are we allowed to do that?” Bill asked, pulling at his collar. “What's happening?” “It's against regulations, but you have to strip or cook. Peel, son, or you will die unblessed. We must be going into action because the shields are up.

  Seventeen force screens, one electromagnetic screen, a double-armored hull, and a thin layer of pseudo-living jelly that flows over and seals any openings.

  With all that stuff there is absolutely no energy loss from the ship, nor any way to get rid of energy. Or heat. With the engines running and everyone sweating it can get pretty hot. Even hotter when the guns fire.” The temperature stayed high, just at the boundary of tolerability for hours, while they stared at the fusebands. At one point there was a tiny plink that Bill felt through his bare feet on the hot metal rather than heard.

  “And what was that?” “Torpedoes being fired.” “At what?” Tembo just shrugged in answer and never let his vigilant gaze stray from the fusebands. Bill writhed with frustration, boredom, heat rash, and fatigue for another hour, until the all clear blew and a breath of cool air came in from the ventilators. By the time he had pulled his uniform back on Tembo was gone, and he trudged wearily back to his quarters.

  There was a new mimeographed notice pinned to the bulletin board in the corridor and he bent to read its blurred message.

  FROM: Captain Zekial TO: All Personnel RE: Recent engagement On 23/11-8956 this ship did participate in the destruction by atomic torpedo of the enemy installation 17KL-345 and did in concert with the other vessels of said flotilla Red Crutch accomplish its mission, it is thereby hereby authorized that all personnel of this vessel shall attach an Atomic Cluster to the ribbon denoting the Active Duty Unit Engagement Award, or however if this is their first mission of this type they will be authorized to wear the Unit Engagement Award.

  NOTE: Some personnel have been observed with their Atomic Clusters inverted and this is WRONG and a COURTS-MARTIAL OFFENSE that is punishable by DEATH.

  Chapter 7

  After the heroic razing of 17KL-345 there were weeks of training and drill to restore the battle-weary veterans to their usual fitness. But midway in these depressing months a new call sounded over the speakers, one Bill had never heard before, a clanging sound like steel bars being clashed together in a metal drum full of marbles. It meant nothing to him nor to the other new men, but it sent Tembo springing from his bunk to do a quick two-step Death Curse Dance with tom-tom accompaniment on his footlocker cover.

  “Are you around the bend?” Bill asked dully from where he sprawled and read a tattered copy, of Real Ghoul Sex Fiend Shocker Comics with Built-in Sound Effects. A ghastly moan was keening from the page he was looking at.

  “Don't you know?” Tembo asked. “Don't you KNOW That's mail ca
ll, my boy, the grandest sound in space.” The rest of the watch was spent in hurrying up and waiting standing in line, and all the rest. Maximum inefficiency was attached to the delivery of the mail, but finally, in spite of all barriers, the post was distributed and Bill had a precious spacial-postal from his mother. On one side of the card was a picture of the Noisome-Offal refinery just outside of his home town, and this alone was enough to raise a lump in his throat. Then, in the tiny square allowed for the message, his mother's pathetic scrawl had traced out: “Bad crop, in debt, robmule has packing glanders, hope you are the same-love, Maw.” Still, it was a message from home, and he read and reread it as they stood in line for chow. Tembo, just ahead of him, also had a card, all angels and churches, just what you would expect, and Bill was shocked when he saw Tembo read the card one last time then plunge it into his cup of dinner.

  “What are you doing that for?” he asked, shocked.

  “What else is mail good for?” Tembo hummed, and poked the card deeper.

  “You just watch this now.” Before Bill's startled gaze, and right in front of his eyes, the card was starting to swell. The white surface broke off and fell away in tiny flakes while the brown insides grew and grew until they filled the cup and were an inch thick. Tembo fished the dripping slab out and took a large bite from one corner.

  “Dehydrated chocolate,” he said indistinctly. “Good! Try yours.” Even before he spoke Bill had pushed his card down into the liquid and was fascinatedly watching it swell. The message fell away, but instead of brown a swelling white mass became visible.