"Bill, the galactic hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

machine over the underweight planes of his jaw. It took more than a minute
for the meaning of the question to penetrate his fatigue-drugged brain.
"I haven't got a sister," he grumbled peevishly, "and if I did, why should
she want to marry a lizard anyway?" It was a rhetorical question, but it
brought an answer from the far end of the room, from the last shot tower
in the second row.
"It doesn't mean exactly what it says-it's just there to make us hate
the dirty enemy more." .
Bill jumped, he had thought he was alone in the latrine, and the razor
buzzed spitefully and gouged a bit of flesh from his lip.
"Who's there? Why are you hiding?" he snarled, then recognized the huddled
dark figure and the many pairs of boots. "Oh, it's only you, Eager."
His anger drained away, and he turned back to the mirror.
Eager Beager was so much a part of the latrine that you forgot he was there.
A moon-faced, eternally smiling youth, whose apple-red cheeks never lost their
glow and whose smile looked so much out of place here in Camp Leon Trotsky
that everyone wanted to kill him until they remembered that he was mad. He had
to be mad because he was always eager to help his buddies and had volunteered
as permanent latrine orderly. Not only that, but he liked to polish boots and
had offered to do those of one after another of his buddies until now he did
the boots for every man in the squad every night. Whenever they were in the
barracks Eager Beager could be found crouched at the end of the thrones that
were his personal domain, surrounded by the heaps of shoes and polishing
industriously, his face wreathed in smiles. He would still be there after
lights-out, working by the light of a burning wick stuck in a can of polish,
and was usually up before the others in the morning, finishing his voluntary
job and still smiling. Sometimes, when the boots were very dirty, he worked
right through the night. The kid was obviously insane, but no- one turned him
in because he did such a good job on the boots, and they all prayed that he
wouldn't die of exhaustion until recruit training was finished.
"Well if that's what they want to say, why don't they just say,
`Hate the dirty enemy more,"' Bill complained. He jerked his thumb at the
far wall, where there was a poster labeled KNOW THE ENEMY. It featured a
life-sized illustration of a Chinger, a seven-foot-high saurian that looked
very much like a scale-covered, four-armed, green kangaroo with an alligator's
head. "Whose sister would want to marry a thing like that anyway? And what
would a thing like that want to do with a sister, except maybe eat her?"
Eager put a last buff on a purple toe and picked up another boot. He frowned
for a brief instant to show what a serious thought this was. "Well you see,
gee-it doesn't mean a real sister. It's just part of psychological warfare.
We have to win the war. To win the war we have to fight hard. In order to fight
hard we have to have good soldiers. Good soldiers have to hate the enemy.
That's the way it goes. The Chingers are the only non-human race that has been
discovered in the galaxy that has gone beyond the aboriginal level, so
naturally we have to wipe them out."
"What the hell do you mean, naturally? I don't want to wipe anyone out.
I just want to go home and be a Technical Fertilizer Operator."
"Well, I don't mean you personally, of course-gee!" Eager opened a fresh
can of polish with purple-stained hands and dug his fingers into it. "I mean
the human race, that's just the way we do things. If we don't wipe them out