"Harrison, Harry - Bill, the Galactic Hero 4 - on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"Oh! Up yonder, onto the top of Mt. Olympus. That's where the Palace of the Gods is!" Bruce noticed the lump in Bill's jumpsuit. "Hey, pal. Is that your lute, or are you just happy to see me?"
"Huh? Oh, it's a dove I found a little while ago. Kept it in case I needed a little snack."
Bill took the dove out and was not pleased to see that it had suffocated during its incarceration. He looked unhappily at its limp, dead corpse, feathers fluttering down to the ground.
Bruce gasped and staggered back. "Gurgle!" he gurgled. "You didn't...."
"Didn't what...?"
"You are really in the merda now, bub!" His little eyes bugged out like Greek olives amidst his wilting saladlike hair. "That there's one of the Doves Above! You kill one of those and..."
A trembling whir of wind. A harsh rattle of thunder.
"And here they come! Not only that - I just happened to remember that they still want me for putting the blocks to their changeling!"
"Who?" asked Bill.
"The Furries, man. The Furry Eumensuckadees!"
With no further adieu, the beast man started to run gallop toward the olive groves. But he'd gotten no further than ten yards away when a dazzling sizzle of lightning split the air like the crack of Doom. A bright bolt seared down, striking the satyr directly in the keester, frying him on the spot. When the smoke cleared, all that was left was a rotary spit of roasted gyro meat.
Stunned, Bill turned around to see who had hurled this incredible bolt of fire, and was immediately confronted by the third most astonishing thing he had ever seen. (What numbers two and one are will be revealed later on.)
Riding an island of moiling, electricity-shot clouds, were three stern-looking lasses in Bill Blass business suits, carrying briefcases in one hand, and copies of INTERSTELLAR MS. and GALACTIC SAVVY in the other.
"You!" bellowed one, and a stream of lightning shot down, hurtling between his legs and blasting the ground not a yard from Bill's butt. "Move further and kiss the family jewels goodbye!"
This sounded anatomically improbable, but Bill nonetheless decided it would be best to heed the command, since the smell of charred lamb and garlic in the air was a heavy reminder of Bruce's fate. "I'm convinced!" he shrieked. "I'm not moving! Don't zap me!"
The ladies murmured amongst themselves, then one leaned down off the cloud, scrutinizing Bill, distaste edging suspicious anger. "My name is Hymenestra, leader of the Furries. Guardians of the Doves Above! Our mystical needles have hopped off their moorings! We have reason to believe that one of our sacred charges hast been stricken down, yea, unto Death! Knowest thou ought of this, mortal?"
Bill grimaced, trying to keep the dead dove hidden behind his back. "No, gee. Absolutely nothing!"
One of the other ladies leaned over the edge of the clouds, peering down upon the ground. "My name is Vulvania. Whyest do I seest bird feathers strewnest about yon area?"
"Uhm," said Bill. "Bruce and I, er, uhm.... We were having a pillow fight. Yeah! That's what was happening!"
The third lady leaned over and pointed a stiff finger. "My name is G-spotstra. Whatest is that you are obscuring behindest thy posterior, mortal?"
"Hmm? Oh, this? What's that doing here?" Bill took out the dove. Its wings and head hung down pathetically; somehow the letter X had appeared over both of its eyes. "Oh! Yes, Bruce.... Remember? The satyr you cooked over there. Yes. He asked me to hold on to it. Old Bruce smells pretty good. You ladies wouldn't have some pita bread and some lemon on you, would you?"
The ground seemed to shake with thunder as Hymenestra roared. "Lying male abomination! Of coursest, that isest the general description of thy breed! Thou hastest killed one of our Doves! Oh woest uponest thou head!"
More thunder crashed, more lightning flashed. The ladies conferred amongst one another, muttering vile imprecations. Bill decided that the heat of a pulsar beam battle between Chinger dreadnoughts and Empire cruisers was a far preferable place to be.
"Very wellest!" cried Hymenestra after the lengthy conference. "We chargest thou with guilt, pure and simplest! Thou hast killed a sacred Dove! We perceive that you are a man of war! How like all men! So eager to perpetrate death and destruction upon thyest neighbor at the slightest provocation! Very well, you have brought our curse down upon you, insect! Be-est thou visited with the Grime of the Aging Marinator!"
The ladies suddenly heaved up great masses of glop from the bottom of their cloud and chucked these at Bill. His Trooper reflexes jerked his body away from the first splash of glop, but the second caught him full in the face, and he could feel the third striking him in the midsection. The stuff had the consistency of pureed roc guano and had the astringent stench of bilge water at the bottom of a sea-cruiser after a week-long rum party below-decks. Bill felt himself being hurled about willy-nilly by forces of which he had no conception.
When the shaking had ceased, he found himself face first staring at trampled grass, quite dirty and quite confused. He heaved himself up off the ground, and wiped the odorous stuff from his face and body. In doing so, his hands hit upon something that hung from his neck. Very quickly, he determined that it was the dead dove, its breast pierced by a leather thong, which in turn was tied around his neck.
Moreover, the dove was beginning to stink.
Bill, of course, made to take this off. However, the knot in the leather thongs seemed to have defied his mud-slippery fingers.
"Beholdest thou the Curse of the Grime of the Aging Marinator!" bellowed the voice of Hymenestra from On High. "Thou canst not remove the dead avian until thou satisfiest two conditions. Onest:
"Thou must rescue she whom ist the love of thy life and give voice to thy tendermost feelings.
"Twoest A: Thou must seek the answer to the age-old question: How canst personskind achieve peace in our time, obtain a truce withest the Chingers, and live happily ever after.
"Twoest B: (It's a corollary) Verily, whyest dost thou hairy monstrosities called 'men' rejoice in war, mindless lust, strong drink and Sunday afternoon anti-gravball."
"Gosh," snarled Bill. "Why don't you ask me to find the Meaning of Life as well."
"Oh, we women know that, silly," said one of the Furries slyly. "Now be-est off with you and heed the curse and solve our request, for sure as the dove that you have murdered rots, so rottest thy soul, and perhaps eventually the root-spot of thy short and curlies!"
With a thunderclap and a blast of fire, the Furries were suddenly gone, leaving behind only the smell of sulfur, brimstone and the toiletries section of Galactic Harrods-Bloomingdales.
Bill clutched his crotch reflexively at the very thought of the last threat. The thought of a groin transplant was enough to chill his very marrow. He'd had enough problems with his foot! Imagine if he got stuck with a mood pe-
"No!" he cried out, shutting out the very idea. "I'll get out of this. Somehow!"
First, the true love bit. Well, clearly in this case, the Furries meant Irma. He'd have to traipse after her and save her from Zeus, up there on Mount Olympus.
Fine. But then that other bit - peace with the Chingers? This sounded awfully suspicious, but what could he do? He didn't want to go around his entire life with a dead and moldering dove around his neck. It would make a big impression back in the barracks. His recruits would laugh him right off the drill field! He tried again to take the thing off, but could not.
First, though, he went down to the bubbling brook he'd hoped to take Irma skinny-dipping in, and washed off some of the Grime.
Then, he went over to the roasted spit of Bruce meat, cut off a few hunks for the trip, and set out for the celestial home of the Home of the Gods, and a mano a mano with Zeus himself.
All in all, thought Bill, he'd rather be back in boot camp.

CHAPTER 6

A STARSHIP NAMED "DESIRE"

Bill climbed the mountain.
Since his home planet of Phigerinadon II was a very flat world, and he'd yet to be assigned for battle duty or so-called rest upon a mountainous world, Bill had absolutely nil experience with climbing mountains.
However, his Trooper training, to say nothing of his rock-hard Trooper ex-farmer muscles, now served him in good stead. His legs worked like rusty pistons as he climbed up the narrow crevices and steep goat trails of Mount Olympus. For fuel, he ate the pieces of Bruce the Transvestite Satyr he had taken along which, while certainly being a novel diet to say the least, sustained capric-satyric life. Actually, they were very tasty, though for Bill's taste the garlic could have been a bit less pronounced, and some Chingerra sauce would be nice. Halfway up though he reached a kind of plateau and the climbing got easier and even a little boring, so he stuck his copy of BLEEDER'S DIGEST up his nose so that he could read as he climbed.