Bill, the Galactic Hero
On the Planet of
Tasteless Pleasure
HARRY HARRISON & DAVID BISCHOFF
Copyright © 1991
Book design by Alex Jay
Jacket art by Michael Kaluta and Steve Fastner
ISBN 0-575-05248-1
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter 1:
Doctor D. Prescribes!
Chapter 2:
Reading Matter
Chapter 3:
The Hazards Of Beachcombing
Chapter 4:
The Mything Link
Chapter 5:
The Rape Of Irma
Chapter 6:
A Starship Named "Desire"
Chapter 7:
First Mate Bill
Chapter 8:
Last Call At The Holy Bar And Grill
Chapter 9:
Mind-Masters Of The Over-Gland
Chapter 10:
A Role Of The Dice!
Chapter 11:
Bill Craps Out
Chapter 12:
Alone And Limply Loitering
Chapter 13:
In Low Dungeon
Chapter 14:
The Crippled King
Chapter 15:
The Pepto Abysmal Nightmare!
Chapter 16:
Into The Male-Female-Strom
Chapter 17:
Old Troopers Never Die; They Just Smell That Way
Chapter 18:
The Ballad Of Billy The Kidney
Chapter 19:
Shootout At The No-Go Corral
Chapter 20:
Bill's Big Bang Theory
Epilogue:
Back Off The Saddle Again
DEDICATION
Special thanks to Nat Sobel, Henry Morrison, John Douglas, Shelley Frier, David Keller, and Alice Alfonsi.
To Joe and Ellen Donohue —With Thanks
CHAPTER 1
DOCTOR D. PRESCRIBES!
True, Bill never realized that sex was the cause of it all. But from time to time he had his suspicions.
"It's a satire's foot!" he roared at the doctor. "Well, bowb-brains, it don't look so funny to me!"
Fortunately, Doctor Delazny was a civilian, or Bill's military butt would have been Rotorootered. The doctor staggered back at the power of the Trooper's oratory (and the onions he'd had for lunch), his eyes blinking behind the bottle-bottom thick Exam-o glasses. "No, Trooper. A satyr's foot. It's a creature of Greek mythology, a man-beast of rampant lusts who would copulate from dawn to dusk, and all night too as well."
Bill could sympathize. He was feeling pretty hard up himself. When they sent him here to the Army Hospital on Colostomy IV they mentioned R and R. To any Trooper, R and R meant Rutting and Rotgut. Which of course implied the presence of a: human females, and b: large volumes of alcoholic beverages. Since the hospital had a nicely stocked bar down by its morgue, the latter was taken care of nicely. Unfortunately, though, all the nurses in this medical madhouse were steel robots. When he had groped back to life after his first heroic boozeup he had found himself groping one of them, which was a most unsatisfying, as well as rusty, occasion.
So now, here in the examination room, Bill was scratching his thinning hair with one of his two right hands, and staring down at his foot. It looked pretty repulsive.
"What is happening to it?" he whined.
"A good question," said Dr. Delazny. "I'm going to have to take a cell sample to confirm my suspicions.... But Trooper, what I think you have obtained is a hideous outer space infection which is a psychomutating plasmoid assemblage."
"Huh?"
"A mood foot."
"It's his fault, his fault, that bowbing Chinger spy, Eager Beager. Ever since he did me the big favor of replacing my giant chicken foot I have had nothing but foot trouble."
Bill clamped his mouth shut, knowing that no good could come of talking about his Chinger encounter. The Chinger spy was nothing but trouble, trying to make him promise to give up war! Betray the Empire! Sow dissension and peace-talk. Plant propaganda. Work toward disarmament and a treaty between Humans and Chingers. Of course, Bill could never betray his fierce loyalty to the Imperial Troopers, as much as he would like to, since his brain was far too sodden with conditioning drugs and behavioral neuro-plants for that. As soon as he'd gotten back to headquarters, he'd squawked. The Brass was so grateful for the poop on Chinger mentality after he'd been debriefed, when his foot started getting weird, they sent him out to this planet for treatment by a specialist in procto-podiatry, Dr. Latex Delazny.
"Yes, it conforms with neural-image forms generated by the synthesis of neo-cortex and F-complex: relationships. In other words, Trooper, your foot thinks it's stuck on the body of a creature who thinks about nothing but sex and drinking." He smiled grimly and shook his head. "Now, does that bear a resemblance to anyone you're familiar with?"
Dr. Delazny had a highly specialized medical education with higher degrees in eye-ear-nose-and-throat plus a much lower degree in proctology. In other words, he was a specialist in mouths and arseholes, which meant that he treated a lot of lawyers — doing an excellent business in transplants since with lawyers the two were interchangeable. However, when the Emperor, in a sudden mood of sadistic philanthropy, had executed all of the lawyers in the Known Universe, Dr. Delazny found his practice extinguished and had to find work elsewhere. He'd confided all this to Bill the other night in the bar over a bottle of Old Granbowb.
"Damn, Doc. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Drink. How else can a Trooper stay sane in this criminally insane outfit? And a man needs the comforts that only a woman can bring!" Bill sniveled with self pity, then sighed passionately as he thought about all his old girlfriends. And the young ones as well. His battle-hardened musculature tensed as he thought about Meta, shipped out now to some godforsaken strife-torn planet, fighting in this hellish but glorious Chinger conflict. Meta! Now there was a woman! Those eyes! That chest! That tight, rounded rear end that put Inga-Maria Calyphigia's, back on Phigerinadon II, to shame! But then, Meta was hardly the type of woman who would plant bare feet in a kitchen and produce babies for the rest of her life. Meta was the kind of gal Bill's mother had warned him about — mentally, physically, emotionally his superior, with a sex drive that could power a starship, once she got it in gear. And just as they'd gotten their relationship over the first hump, so to speak, the bowbing Troopers had to detail her somewhere else. Bowb and double bowb!
Bill wondered if there was something going wrong with him. Had the Troopers left a shred of dignity and humanity in his body? It didn't seem possible. Was he capable of love? Did he even know how to spell the word? Was that what he was looking for? Was that why he was so restless of late? Was that why he'd started smuggling TRUE SLUSHY SPACE ROMANCE comix inside the copies of BLOOD PORN SPLATTER TALES that the recruits saw him reading?
Naw. What good was a regular woman, anyway? Like the Troopers said, a woman would make him stop smoking, drinking to excess, swearing incontinently while lusting after anything female that strolled by — and weren't those the vital ingredients that life was really all about?
Dr. Latex Delazny looked down again at the readout from the computer. "Fascinating. Tell me Bill, do you know anything about the endocrine system?"
"Isn't that the swamp and poison ocean worlds over by the Cassiopeian system?"
Doctor Delazny scratched angrily at the scruff on his balding head. He looked to be a man in his late thirties, fine spiderwebs of wrinkles, as well as fine spiders, just starting to radiate from his eyes. He was thin and distracted-seeming, as though his mind operated like a thre
e ring circus, and he was far more interested in the acrobatic act in the center than this clown act before him.
"No, you military moron. I'm talking about human physiology. The endocrine system, the pituitary, the thyroid, the adrenals ... etcetera, etcetera. And of course, the sex glands. Human anatomy, sod-head! Don't they teach you that in the Troopers?"
Bill shook his head in humble contrition.
"Important bodily functions, Bill. Particularly the sex glands. Did you know I have a PhD in endocrinology? But do you think the Empire has any use for that? Bah. Feet and sphincters, sphincters and feet. That's all they want me to work on. What a dreadful waste."
He was a tall, gangling scarecrow, looking as though he slept in his lab coat, which happened pretty often anyway. But he still had certain strengths. Bill was particularly impressed by the way the doctor had been able to put away Antarean Alkpee in the bar the other night.
Doctor Delazny mused boredly over the readouts on the table. "My goodness, Bill, talking about secretion, your lower ductless glands seem particularly active. Most interesting, Trooper — you seem to have enough testosterone in your body to grow a beard on an elephant!"
Delazny peered at Bill appraisingly, and the Trooper felt suddenly uncomfortable at being moved to center stage.
"What about my foot, Doc? Remember, that's what I came in about."
Doctor Delazny cleared his throat, puffed out his chest and spoke out authoritatively.
"Trooper, what I'm prescribing for the time being is that you spend your sacktime and rectime here at the hospital. Walk on the polluted beach, visit the garbage dump, tour the factory down the road.... Rest! Relax! Avail yourself of the recreational facilities we have here at Grin N' Clinic! This will give me the opportunity to examine the cellular composition of your foot."
"You're not going to give me a new one?"
"I would love to, Bill, but haven't you got it through that thick farm-bred and alcohol-preserved skull of yours? This army has a foot shortage!"
"Shoulda never gone on the metric system!" grumbled Bill. The latrine rumor mill had leaked the story. Used to be, Army Medics had lots of feet in freezers, but when the order came down from Helior for the Army to go metric, the noncoms hadn't understood. "Get rid of the feet!" the officers had yowled. And so the noncoms had dumped the frozen feet.
Bill pulled on a sweatsock over his cloven hoof, then covered that with a boot. He looked down nostalgically at the scuffed footwear, remembering the shine that Eager Beager used to be able to raise on his issue Trooper boots, back when Bgr the Chinger was hiding out in a robot disguised as a recruit slogging through training camp. He'd never had such good-looking boots since.
"Maybe you're right, Doc. Maybe I could use some rest. Drink less, plenty of fresh air and raw fruit." It sounded positively repulsive. But he let this decaying sawbones think he was going along with the plan until he came up with a plan to find a way out of here.
Ahh, how little did Trooper Bill realize it, but "rest" was not precisely a commodity penciled into his particular cosmic itinerary for the next week. If only the Doctor had not suggested a walk along the beach, then perhaps Bill's mind-blowing, super-exciting and absolutely page-turning adventure amongst the myths and Gods, to say nothing of the incredible Over-Gland, would never have occurred.
"Oh, and Bill — about those hemorrhoids that we don't have the right medicine for?" said Doc Delazny as Bill started walking away through the maze of hi-tech medical machinery.
"Yeah?" said Bill turning around, his posterior tingling hopefully.
"Dear fellow, I'm afraid that you are just going to have to sit this batch out!"
Bill called the quack something so revolting that it instantly cheered him up, then stalked back to the bar. It was Happy Hour and it was a Monday, which meant that they were giving out free pickled porkuswine feet hors d'oeuvres, one of Bill's favorites.
He just hoped they didn't give his "mood foot" the wrong idea.
CHAPTER 2
READING MATTER
Bill dreamed.
He dreamed that he was a farmer again, sweating behind a robo-mule. He dreamed that his prime ambition, his only ambition, in life was to become a Technical Fertilizer Operator. Some said that it was a crappy job — but not he! Smiling in his sleep he dreamed of going forth and spreading mounds of fragrant manure upon the gentle plains of the planets of the galaxy, rising up high and noisome, the fragrant delight of the magic scent tingling the nascent nostrils of a billion happy farmers.
Then the dream changed and Deathwish Drang came to him, fluttering gently on gossamer angel's wings.
"Trideo Games, Bill!" he chuckled and twanged a fang. "Your future is Trideo Games!"
Now Bill was very young in his dream, for as a little boy he had always yearned to play Trideo in town with the other kids, and he always beat them, yes he did, but only in his fevered imagination. For of course he never went to town, had no money either: Trideo was just the stuff of dreams. So when Deathwish Drang's proclamation filtered through those magnificent fangs of his, Bill thought, Yes! It's true! When Drang unfurled the sparkling contract in front of his eyes, the contract to become a hot-shot Trideo game contestant amongst the myriad civilized worlds of the galaxy, Bill signed without hesitation.
Trideo Games involved not only hand-eye reflexes and keen nerves, but mental coordination as well. The player was strapped securely into a machine that was a tin and plastic imitation of a spaceship, complete with fake lasers and ersatz pulsar torpedoes, etiolated tractor and pulsar beams, and all that good old docsmith stuff. Then, using a tridee screen, the contestant fought the chicken Chingers in their horrible dreadful Deathships from Sewer-Hell.
In his dream, the Chingers were again seven-foot monsters with razor-sharp teeth, rumored to snack on toasted human babies while watching television from their Slime-Couches. "Death to the Chingers," he howled as he arced through their armadas, defying the laws of physics as he nailed Chinger hate-ships with noble zaps of his powerful beamers.
But then, in his dream, a Chinger destroyer-boat caught him broadside and tore a hole through the side of the Trideo machine. Bill was stunned. This was just a game! How could.... Then he realized. He'd been a patsy! The Empire had tricked him. He really was fighting a real war!
It wasn't just a game.
Then hundreds of seven-inch tall Chingers swarmed through the rent, each of them armed with a seven-foot tall cutlass. Which seemed kind of impossible — but who asks questions in dreams?
He was doomed!
Bill woke up. His head felt like it was splitting open and his sinuses were on fire.
Damned book!
Goddamn cheap stripped hospital book!
His throbbing nasal passages felt as though mad scientists had filled them full with acid. He stumbled out of bed to the sink, held his head and moaned and tried to blow his nose at the same time. The pain increased, that was all. Groaning, he tried once again. Taking a deep breath sounding his horn.
"Kaaa-CHOO!" said Bill, clutching the pseudo-porcelain rim.
With an elephantine blast of his nose bugle an inch-long lozenge shot out, fitted with rubber appendages whose metal tips sparked fitfully as it bounced into the sink and hopped and fizzled about until he turned on the water and the thing spattered into extinction.
The book.
It was labeled, in raised letters, FENDER BENDER by Orson Bean Curd. Bill remembered faintly that it was about an idiot-savant servo-mechanic hijacked by Chingers and fiendishly used against the noble Empire, but nothing much more, since he'd only managed to get the book halfway up his nose. "Don't forget to sniff out the exciting sequel, MACARONI OF THE MORONS, coming soon from Mace Books!" read another smaller label, only slightly smeared with nose gunk.
With the high rate of illiteracy amongst the pioneer worlds, book companies had begun to market these "Stick-a-Books" with great success. They came with their own automatic "lit-pack": engrams that tendrilled into the user's brain an
d programmed the unhappy reader with the words and concepts necessary to understand the book. Then, when the victim had finished "reading" the little machine's contents, it would puff out sneezing powder. The theory was that a quick blast of sneezing would shoot the infernal gadget out. After a quick rinse, it was ready for another consumer! However, due to the capitalistic process of distribution, and the infamous Rack-Space Wars (a space conflict that even chilled Bill's veteran bones) the practice of "stripping" was used on these books, rather than going to the expense of shipping the full product back to the publisher. This involved tearing out a tab of circuitry imbued with identification properties which gave retailers credit for the product. Retailers then sold the remainder at reduced rates to the military and planets for the mentally retarded. Unfortunately, much of the guts of the book itself was also stripped in the process, so that chances were if you were a hospital patient and you tried to read one of these "special editions" as they were euphemistically labeled, you only got part of the book.
Such was the case, clearly, with the one that Bill had stuffed up his nostril last night, meaning to read for a while before turning in. Not only that, but apparently the bowby thing hadn't been properly cleaned after it had last been used and had the definite sniff of someone else's sinus!
Bill finished blowing his tortured nose while his eyes streamed with tears, and then went to the side of his bed for a swig of Pepto Abysmal — The Calming Internal Antiseptic and Nose Purifier! This cheap, rotten, godforsaken hospital was getting on his nerves. Not only were the beginnings or ends of their books lopped off, but the sanitary conditions weren't much better than back at Camp Leon Trotsky where he'd done his boot training. Colostomy IV was a planet only recently discovered. Though it had a reasonable oxygen content to its atmosphere soup (along with curious trace amounts of incense and airborne alkaloids; scientific speculation posited a dead, lost race of either Buddhists, Hindus or hippies) and it swung around a GO-GO star (very close to Sol in type), absolutely no living intelligent beings had been discovered upon its surface. Just lots of floral land undergoing the usual geological hiccups — and lots of mysterious dark ocean. Since the planet happened to be somewhere between somewhere and somewhere else, both somewheres being equally repulsive, the Troopers had naturally chosen to build a transient camp, reppel depple, Senior Officers Whorehouse and this hospital here, on the shores of the great black ocean, tideless and ominous. They also built a water dehydration plant on the shore to ship out powdered water for the troopers (just add water ... voila! Water!)
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