"Harrison, Harry - Bill, The Galactic Hero 01 - Bill, The Galactic Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

with caring for their equipment. The seventh day was designated as a day of
rest, but they all had received punishments, like Bill's KP, and it was as
any other day. On this, the third Sunday of their imprisonment, they were
stumbling through the last hour of the day before the lights were extinguished
and they were finally permitted to crawl into their casehardened bunks. Bill
pushed against the weak force field that blocked the door, cunningly designed
to allow the desert flies to enter but not leave the barracks, and dragged
himself in. After fourteen hours of KP his legs vibrated with exhaustion, and
his arms were wrinkled and pallid as a corpse's from the soapy water. He
dropped his jacket to the floor, where it stood stiffly supported by its
burden of sweat, grease, and dust, and dragged his shaver from his footlocker.
In the latrine he bobbed his head around trying to find a clear space on one
of the mirrors. All of them had been heavily stenciled in large letters with
such inspiring messages as KEEP YOUR WUG SHUT-THE CHINGERS ARE LISTENING and
IF YOU TALK THIS MAN MAY DIE. He finally plugged the shaver in next to
WOULD YOU WANT YOUR SISTER TO MARRY ONE? and centered his face in the o in ONE.
Black-rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared back at him as he ran the buzzing
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