"Harry Harrison & David Bischoff - Bill the Galactic Hero 6 -" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"No sir! Do I look green and seven feet tall, sir?" Bill knew full well from far too many personal
experiences that far from being seven feet tall, Chingers were only seven inches tall. True, being from a
high gravity world they were powerful little bug-eyed buggers, dangerous and crafty and killer poker-
players. But he felt it best to play along with the Intergalactic propaganda crap, apparently even bought by
its purveyors.
"Damned close! Could be a makeup job along with a tailectomy. True, you did make it in here through the
cat-scan and failed the subliminal IQ exam. You're far too stupid to be a Chinger."
"Thank you. Sir!" Bill said, going into the usual Trooper barking mantra denoting respect, honor and the
traditional raw hatred for your superiors.
"Very well, Bill." The laser cannon drooped noticeably and Bill felt a lot more comfortable. The man rose
up from behind his armor shield, revealing features that looked like a cross between a warthog and a fire
plug. A cigar the size of a starship escape pod stuck out from the side of his face. "Are you or have you
ever been, in this life or a previous life, or have you ever even wanted to be or thought about being or
might you ever be, in some future life in another dimension, a card-carrying member of the Commupop
Party?"
Bill's thick eyebrows knitted. "Is this a trick question?"
The Commupop Party!
The Well-Read Menace!
There had been Commupops back on Phigerinadon II, Bill vaguely remembered, but they'd been wiped
out by a Trooper raid when he was a little boy. He remembered that well because suddenly his Mom
wouldn't give him cherry pop sickles any more, and because Mr. Leon Trotsky down the street was
discovered hanging by his thumbs in the Town Square. This made Bill sad, because it was Mr. Trotsky
who had given him the cherry pop sickles and had introduced him to Classix Comix Agitprop Bookskis
and the whole idea of Comix, period. The real irony, said Mrs. Bill, was that Mr. Trotsky's real name was
Fred Jones and he was just a fan of Russian history and literature, not a Commupop Party Member at all.
But, as Bill would find out in his adult life, Galactic Troopers were trained in Boot Camp, not Book
Camp, and they hung first and asked questions later. Bill's response was to ask his Mom if coprophilia
had anything to do with loving policemen. Mom had muttered something about "damned intellectuals"
and just let Bill go on reading his Comix after weeding out anything educational and threatening.
The Commupop Party, of course, was the abbreviation for the Community Popular Reading Party and had
absolutely nothing to do with the Intergalactic Communist Party, or Saint Karl Marx. In fact, politically
they were quite neutral and about as threatening to the Emperor's reign as, oh, his terminally backed-up
toilet in his Rec Room on Wreckworld. However, the Emperor's rule being totalitarian and all, and the
Communist Party being such a usual historical bugaboo, his Office of Paranoia and Disinformation fell
upon the hapless Community Popular Reading Party like depleted uranium.
Thousands of hapless readers were sent to prison for reading the wrong books. A special committee was
appointed to weed through the millions of books available to the general public and to ban the ones


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 Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of The Hippies From Hell

considered inappropriate to the general governmentally oppressed galactic citizen. To paraphrase the
philosopher Santayana, those who do not know history are doomed to regurgitate it. The Emperor would
have been better off just ignoring book readers. His persecution radicalized hundreds of thousands, who
immediately became the revolutionaries the authorities feared they would be (albeit revolutionaries who,
after a hard day of fire-bombing, went home to curl up with a nice thick book). Hence the creation of the
Well-Read Menace, the Commupop Party.
"Trick question? Of course it's not a trick question, you idiot." The cigar bobbed obscenely and the man
leaped up and hopped around, the fat on his squat body jiggling like warm Jell-O beneath his starched