"Harrison, Harry - Bill, the Galactic Hero 5 - on the Planet of Zombie Vampires" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

HARRY HARRISON & JACK C. HALDEMAN II

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires

For Lori,
a true fan of aliens everywhere, especially those slimy ones.

In space, no one can hear you dream

CHAPTER 1

Bill kicked the bucket. Then he kicked a chair, reducing it to splinters. It wasn't that he was angry - though he had good reason to be teed-off and touchy. Stuck here on this puny supply station in the middle of nowhere. He, a Galactic Hero, now reduced to the most menial of menial labor. He sniveled self-pityingly at the faded memories of past glories, for he had been reduced to driving a forklift, loading giant boxes of multipurpose paper onto outgoing spacers. It was sandpaper on one side, toilet paper on the other, and woe befall he who did not read the instructions on the box. No, crappy as this job was, his real concern was a physical problem of a most personal nature. His right foot was turning to stone, and he was losing control over it. He sniveled again, stamped with sudden, bitter anger, then pulled his foot out of the hole in the floor.
It had started out as a real nice foot. Bill even got used to all the extra toes, but this turning-to-stone business was getting out of hand. Or rather out of foot. It currently weighed in at thirty-five pounds and was gaining weight fast. Bill felt like he was dragging a cinder block around with him, and once he got it moving it was hard to stop, short of crashing it into something. The crew aboard the supply station gave him plenty of room, and repair robots followed him around like mechanical puppy dogs.
Bill realized that he had a bad habit of losing body parts. The thought depressed him greatly, and he flicked a tear from one moist eye. He had lost what used to be his left arm through no fault of his own while becoming a Galactic Hero. That's what war is all about. That it had been replaced with a right arm, a nice black one that had belonged to a friend of his - it gave Bill something to remember him by - was something he had grown quite used to, even fond of. He was attached to his new arm, and was always inventing new fun things to do with it.
The foot, however, was another matter. Bill had blown his original foot away himself in a flash of self-preservation designed to keep all of his body parts from being even more disastrously blown away in a hopeless battle against the dreaded Chingers.
The official military line was that the crazed Chingers were the cause of almost every horrible thing that had ever happened in the universe. Reptilian in nature and bad to the bone, it was said they stood seven feet tall and ate human babies for breakfast. With Tabasco.
Bill knew better.
Seven inches was more like their physical size, and before the Space Troopers had started blasting them away, the Chingers hadn't even had a word for violence. Although they were peace-loving and friendly, they were not stupid. They were also quick learners. And hated Tabasco. So the Emperor had an intergalactic war to keep his troops busy, and Bill had two right arms, a cinder block for a foot, and an enlistment contract with an automatic extension clause.
This was not the first foot transplant Bill had ever had. All of them had been disastrous. Though maybe not the first one, a giant chicken foot. He had become attached to that foot, and vice versa of course. But while it was handy for scratching in the sand for bugs, it wouldn't fit in his boot and hurt all the time. The fact that his new foot was turning into solid rock probably wasn't anyone's fault. Sometimes bad things just seemed to happen.
Bill kicked open Doctor Hackenslash's door and followed his careening foot into the office.
"You could have knocked, Trooper," squealed the doctor from underneath the desk. "I thought we were under attack."
"No Chinger in its right mind would give this bowby little post a second glance," said Bill, skidding his foot along the floor to stop its momentum. "I've got a more serious problem."
"Possibly your nose this time?" said the doctor hopefully, crawling out from under the desk and brushing chunks of the splintered door off his chair. "Nose problems are my speciality."
Perhaps this was because the good doctor possessed a hooter like an anteater, a great flaring, projecting nose with cavernous nostrils, gloomy hair-filled canyons. He pointed this impressive proboscis at Bill and sniffed.
"You want your nose examined?"
"Only if you have to get to my foot that way. Look at it, doc! It's getting heavier."
"Feet are so boring," sniffed Hackenslash, tapping his own nose with his finger so that it flapped in a most interesting manner. "All those little pink toes wiggling all the time. Give me a nose any day. Deviated septums! Sinus cavities! Postnasal drip! Nobody knows the nose better than those who know the nose know."
"My toes aren't pink anymore, and they sure aren't wiggling. They're more like granite. We got to do something."
"How about we wait?" said the doctor, breaking into a sneezing fit on account of all the door dust floating around the room. Bill was knocked back three feet by the force of this nasal blast.
"Wait?" yelled Bill. "I'm dragging a boulder around, and you want to wait?"
"Think of it as a scientific experiment - be brave," said Hackenslash, grabbing a handful of tissue from one of the five boxes on his desk and blowing his nose. Bill cowered under the white blast of shredded Kleenex. "Maybe if we wait it'll spread. Next your knee could turn to stone. Then your whole leg. Maybe even your you-know-what - interesting possibilities there! Perhaps even those two right arms you're so proud of. It might even spread to your nose. As a scientist I would be remiss to pass up this opportunity to study such an unusual occurrence."
Bill watched the doctor double over with a seemingly endless attack of the sneezes, and as the physician gobbled up a bunch of antihistamines Bill decided enough was enough. He'd take the hard line.
"As a Trooper with a stone foot I am unfit for battle," said Bill, choking on the word "battle." "As the base doctor it is your sworn and solemn duty to make every soldier in this command shipshape, sturdy, and ready for"- gulp -"warfare. How can I jump into action dragging this boulder around?"
"I like your tusks," said Dr. Hackenslash. "Some elephants have tusks, you know. And nothing beats an elephant when it comes to noses."
The end run from scientific curiosity to flattery didn't work, although Bill was quite fond of his three-inch-long tusks, which he had inherited from the sadistic Deathwish Drang. He felt they gave him a fearsome appearance when he snarled.
"I want a new foot," Bill snarled. "I want to be ready to leap into battle," he lied.
Impressed by the gnashing fangs, the doctor nodded reluctantly.
"As you yourself pointed out, this isn't exactly a sizzling war zone." Dr. Hackenslash pulled out a giant-economy, coffin-sized box of tissue. "Consequently, we have a regrettable lack of replacement parts. In my last assignment we had arms and legs all over the place, boxes of pippicks, bales of ears. But not here. And noses! You should have seen my collection; all kinds, shapes, sizes. I even had one -"
"Wait!" Bill whipped up an especially ferocious snarl. "Does this mean I'm stuck with this rock?"
"Don't do that!" shouted the doctor. "You're making me awfully nervous, and I might botch the surgery. It is quite a delicate procedure. Took years of training."
"So I do get a new foot?"
"In a manner of speaking. Medical supply made a clerical error and sent me eighty-three cases of regenerative foot-buds. I've got thousands of the little suckers, so I suppose I can spare you one. Though I really would like to see if your nose turns to stone."
"Let's get with it," growled Bill, tired of dragging the albatross of a stone foot around with him. "Which way's the operating room? Will I have to be prepped? What kind of anesthetic are you going to use? Will it hurt?"
The doctor put a box on the floor and pressed a red button marked WARM UP.
"When the green light comes on, put your foot in the hole on top. I'll give you a hand."
"It's a foot I want!" screamed Bill as the light flashed green and Hackenslash grappled up his foot and dropped it down the hole.
"Just a little professional joke," chuckled the doctor. "We physicians do have a sense of humor beneath our always coolly confident and skillful exteriors."
With exasperating illogic Bill was already getting ready to miss his old foot. The extra toes had been nice. And after it had turned to stone, it had been real handy for propping doors open and kicking things out of his way.
"When will you start the operation?" asked Bill, gritting his teeth in anticipation of the long and involved and certain-to-be-excruciatingly-painful procedure.
"All finished," said Hackenslash proudly. "Take a look."