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

He could feel the device slide around inside his sinuses as it attached its electronic appendages. There was a muffled whirring sound as it did its work and a shuddering frisson as it attached itself to his brain.
A "mind's eye" screen appeared in his frontal lobes which he could read wonderfully well, as it superimposed orange words over his field of vision.
First up was a short catalog of the Read-a-Book's contents.
He selected an appropriate condensed novel and dug into the craggy prose even as his hands found holds in the craggy mountainside.

CRITTERS OF MYST AND MEMORY
by
Michael Huge-Jackson

Call me Conrad Hilton.
No, strike that. Call me Gunga Din.
Naw, just go ahead and call me Gus.
When I'm a professional wrestler, they call me Grandiose Gus, the Eternal Victor or some other such swill. They say I saved Earth from the swarms of Harpy creatures from Greekus Planetus, but hell, I was drinking lots of ouzo that week and it's all a blackout to me, so what the hay! All I know is that I woke up in the Parthenon with a hot blaster in my hands and the landscape looking like catharsis time in a Sophoclean tragedy. Phew, dead mythological critters everywhere!
Then again, maybe I'm making all this up.
That's what myths are, you know. Made-up stories with heroes and gods and things. Some of my critics say that I just make up all these stories and whisper them into the ears of my lovers, who promptly spread them all around Earth. Others say they've seen me furtively sneaking from the Library of New Alexandria with stolen copies of the Secret Writings of Joseph Campbell tucked under, my trench coat.
Stuff and nonsense, of course. Truth is, while I generally keep a paperback copy of Edith Hamilton tucked into my chinos' back pocket to while away the boring bits of adventures, my real name is Philip Chandler from the mysterious world of Camelot. This Earth business started a few years ago when I was a private dick in Old LA, and the following narrative means to set the record straight.
It was a sunny day in the City of Angels, and I was lubricating the bore of my .38 with oil and the back of my throat with some Jack Daniels, when the babe strolled into my office.
"My name is Frigga Athena," she sang, her mammoth gazongas hammocked in a steel bra that shone like a healthy Double Sun system. "Are you Philip Chandler, Private Third Eye from the Secret World of Camelot?"
"That's right, sweetheart," I snarled in my best Humphrey Bogart lisp. "Exiled here on Earth by Merlin himself after I trumped out in a Dimensional Bridge game."
She heaved those magnificent breasts at me like calling cards. "I'm in dreadful trouble, Mr. Chandler." She was batting a pair of baby blues at me from a moviestar face, and was already batting a thousand with my pulse.
"Trouble is my business, ma'am," I told her. "'Specially trouble involving Beautiful Mythologically Proportioned Blondes. So what the scoop? Lost your unicorn? Husband cheating on you with that slut Aphrodite?"
I offered her a glass of whiskey and she knocked it back like her tonsils were on fire. She sat down and I got a blast of Lotus Eaters Perfume like Bargain Night at Nero Wolfe's hothouse. "It's my husband, you see. Loki Agonistes. He's being blackmailed for running guns to semi-magical Third World Revolutionary countries."
Loki Agonistes! Buddha on Crutches! My eyes rolled like catseye marbles at the very name! I managed to get my eyes back in their orbits after some blind groping on my desk, and made appropriate gasping noises.
"Christ, lady. I still got a couple thousand years left in this old bod! I fool around with people after Loki Agonistes and my karma will be in Hades' sling, and this section of my life will be included in the Egyptian BOOK OF THE DEAD, in the Dumb Dicks section!" I got up to show her out. "Why don't you try this buddy of mine. Lives in Sausalito on a houseboat called the Screwed Straight, name of Travis Watts. He handles the Metaphysical Detection. Me, I stick to pure Mythological stuff."
The broad's hopeful smile flip-flopped into a frown that almost touched her toes. "But Mr. Chandler, I want you!" Suddenly, those arms were around me, and I had a face full of galvanized mammaries and a snootful of pheromones that would have steamed up the testosterone of an Ice Giant in mid-winter. She started to grind against me. I supplied the bumps.
By the time a half-hour passed and I came up for air from some serious couch Olympics, I was on the case.
Little did I realize that if this was a cosmic card game I was just entering, I'd just pulled the Trump of Jerkoffs to play with.
"It's like this," she said breathily, smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke into my ear. "There are these Three Weird Sisters, you see -"

"Hullo!"
The voice sounded like it came from a great distance and had been amplified by a wonky klaxon-speaker.
Bill blinked. He came out of his book-induced fugue. He willed the words to disappear from his vision, and they did, but only after the second try. He realized that he had stopped climbing. He was standing on a level plateau with marble-columned temples in the near distance. In the forefront of this scene, on the stone agora - that is, Greek marketplace, or meeting place or assembly or, you know, something like that - stood a thirty-meter-high gleaming-silver starship with a needle nose and fins that looked as though it would have been more at home on top of a trophy for bad pulp fiction awards than here on Olympus. In big lustrous curlicued letters on its side was a name: DESIRE. The entire scene had an amazing luster and sheen to it, like a movie matte: in the background, a magnificent silver moon was rising up over acrylic-blue and white mountains. The creatures and citizens in the background looked like cartoons and tended to wear ruffles at their arms and throats. In short, not very Greek at all. And Zoroaster! In the skies, the stars looked like stylized twinkles on Christmas trees!
Bill was flabbergasted, stunned. Unbelievingly, he felt his flabber - and it really was gasted!
The whole panorama looked like an animated poster done by the Kelly Freebees school of Art at the L. Ron Hubris University, the boys who did the artwork for Trooper recruiting posters!
He drifted toward it, so dazzled by the bravura colors and airbrush work that he barely noticed the stink of the dead dove that hung about his neck.
Bill was approaching the starship cautiously when suddenly a pneumatic door opened in its belly, and a rope ladder unwound down to the marble floor. By the time he'd reached the base, a figure had exited the starship and was descending the rope with reckless ease. He was a tall, handsome man, wearing a rhinestone eye-patch, bright orange epaulets, tastefully decorated with shining tinsel, and long shiny black boots. A metallic-orange sash was tied around his slender midsection and from this dangled a holstered hand-blaster on one side, and a menacing cutlass on the other. This highly impressive, not to say ferociously gaudy, figure dropped down the last eight feet, tripping and falling with a clatter onto his butt. Bill caught a decided whiff of lavender and rum. The man looked up, bemused, at Bill with one startling blue eye. The other was startlingly rhinestone.
"Arrrrrrrr," he said in a voice like Blackbeard's after Remedial English Lessons. "Hyperboreals, me fellow bucko! Does life remind you of the junk that floats onto the beach in Tokyo Bay?"
"No. I don't think that I ever heard of Tokyo Bay."
"Me neither. Hudson Bay, more like. Right by Nyark City on Earth. I did a quick read once on fabled Earth, historical home of all mankind, now riven by the blasts of atomic war. Where was I?"
"In the middle of Hudson Bay, I think."
"Of course, dear boy. How bright you are! Anyway, medical detritus, junkie needles, old Charlie Parker records. Never mind. Name's Rick. Rick the Supernal Hero." He held up his hand to shake, which Bill promptly did, introducing himself.
"Hullo, I'm Bill. Spelled with two L's. Was that you who hailed me a moment ago?"
"Certainly was. Saw you coming up over the horizon with that dead dove around your neck, knew at once that you must be a mariner in the ocean of Life like your obedient servant!" He looked on his shoulder. "Arrrrr! Now where's me own little bird! Archimedes!" He yelled back to the door in the side of the splendiferous starship. "Archimedes, come down and meet another bird-fancier."
"Awwwwwwwwwwwk!" squawked a voice from above. "Pieces of shayte! Pieces of shayte!"
"Watch it, Bill. Archy's had the trots lately," warned Rick. "He will eat prunes, prunes, no stopping him. Literally."
A brilliant blue and green parrot suddenly hurtled through the hatchway, screeching like a banshee on fire, letting fly at the same time with a cloacal catapult. There was a spattering on all sides. Bill did a quick Aztec twostep and nimbly skipped aside. But Rick (the Supernal Hero) was a little slow on the uptake, or bombed out on dope or something, and he caught a portion of the stuff on his forehead. He cursed mellifluously as he pulled out a spare scarf and wiped his forehead. Then he put the scarf on his shoulder and waved the parrot down. In a dazzling flutter of cobalt and emerald Archimedes landed, farted psittacinely, and promptly turned his head sideways, suspiciously eyeing Bill.
"Awwwkkkk! Bird killer! Awwk! Avicide!"
"I was hungry," Bill whined apologetically. "I didn't know that this beaky bastard was sacred. And, anyway, what's it to you, bowb-bird?"
Bill had had enough of avian trouble by this time and he jabbed out a threatening forefinger at the parrot - which squawked angrily and promptly bit it. "Yeow," Bill howled and sucked the throbbing digit.
"Archimedes - do be nice to our guest. You know I can clone you in a blink of a bird's eye and get meself a better parrot. With better cloacal control. So you had better be good."