"Harry Harrison & David Bischoff - Bill, The Galactic Hero 4 " - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

DOCTOR D. PRESCRIBES!
True, Bill never realized that sex was the cause of it all. But from time to time he had his suspicions.
"It's a satire's foot!" he roared at the doctor. "Well, bowb-brains, it don't look so funny to me!"
Fortunately, Doctor Delazny was a civilian, or Bill's military butt would have been Rotorootered. The
doctor staggered back at the power of the Trooper's oratory (and the onions he'd had for lunch), his eyes
blinking behind the bottle-bottom thick Exam-o glasses. "No, Trooper. A satyr's foot. It's a creature of
Greek mythology, a man-beast of rampant lusts who would copulate from dawn to dusk, and all night too
as well."
Bill could sympathize. He was feeling pretty hard up himself. When they sent him here to the Army
Hospital on Colostomy IV they mentioned R and R. To any Trooper, R and R meant Rutting and Rotgut.
Which of course implied the presence of a: human females, and b: large volumes of alcoholic beverages.
Since the hospital had a nicely stocked bar down by its morgue, the latter was taken care of nicely.
Unfortunately, though, all the nurses in this medical madhouse were steel robots. When he had groped
back to life after his first heroic boozeup he had found himself groping one of them, which was a most
unsatisfying, as well as rusty, occasion.
So now, here in the examination room, Bill was scratching his thinning hair with one of his two right
hands, and staring down at his foot. It looked pretty repulsive.
"What is happening to it?" he whined.
"A good question," said Dr. Delazny. "I'm going to have to take a cell sample to confirm my suspicions....
But Trooper, what I think you have obtained is a hideous outer space infection which is a psychomutating
plasmoid assemblage."
"Huh?"
"A mood foot."
"It's his fault, his fault, that bowbing Chinger spy, Eager Beager. Ever since he did me the big favor of
replacing my giant chicken foot I have had nothing but foot trouble."
Bill clamped his mouth shut, knowing that no good could come of talking about his Chinger encounter.
The Chinger spy was nothing but trouble, trying to make him promise to give up war! Betray the Empire!
Sow dissension and peace-talk. Plant propaganda. Work toward disarmament and a treaty between
Humans and Chingers. Of course, Bill could never betray his fierce loyalty to the Imperial Troopers, as
much as he would like to, since his brain was far too sodden with conditioning drugs and behavioral neuro-
plants for that. As soon as he'd gotten back to headquarters, he'd squawked. The Brass was so grateful for
the poop on Chinger mentality after he'd been debriefed, when his foot started getting weird, they sent
him out to this planet for treatment by a specialist in procto-podiatry, Dr. Latex Delazny.
"Yes, it conforms with neural-image forms generated by the synthesis of neo-cortex and F-complex:
relationships. In other words, Trooper, your foot thinks it's stuck on the body of a creature who thinks
about nothing but sex and drinking." He smiled grimly and shook his head. "Now, does that bear a
resemblance to anyone you're familiar with?"
Dr. Delazny had a highly specialized medical education with higher degrees in eye-ear-nose-and-throat
plus a much lower degree in proctology. In other words, he was a specialist in mouths and arseholes,
which meant that he treated a lot of lawyers тАФ doing an excellent business in transplants since with
lawyers the two were interchangeable. However, when the Emperor, in a sudden mood of sadistic

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 Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure

philanthropy, had executed all of the lawyers in the Known Universe, Dr. Delazny found his practice
extinguished and had to find work elsewhere. He'd confided all this to Bill the other night in the bar over a