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

back of his hand. His morale slumped to rock bottom and remained heavily there.
Ah, yes! What a wonderful place for R and R, thought Bill. Permission had been reluctantly granted to
him to go out for a morning stroll. Get some fresh air. Ha! What a bowby joke! He half-wished they'd
shipped him to Dental School World. At least they had nitrous oxide dispensers on every corner there,
guaranteeing a lift and quick high whenever you needed it. Which, of course, was all the time.
Still, a Trooper took what he could get, cursing and complaining the entire time. The bar was still closed,
all of his own booze long drunk and he couldn't find Dr. Delazny. In desperation he figured maybe a little
exercise might do him good before he settled down with a newly steamed-and-cooled BLEEDER'S
DIGEST.
Bill had taken off his shoes to walk on the beach. He turned back and contemplated the tracks he'd left in
the sand, being sluggishly lapped at by the now snotgreen sea. A regular human foot, along with a good-
sized cloven hoof! Wouldn't an exploring xenobiologist get a wrinkled brow and excited jollies over that!
Perhaps a little wade would cool his tootsies. He took a flat rock and skipped it over the surface of the
water. A fish hurtled up out of the sea, roaring angrily, caught it in a great gaping mouth, and flopped
back into the water, leaving the flash of sharp gleaming fangs on Bill's retina.
Bill stopped. Oh well. He didn't really feel like swimming anyway. He was a simple man, with simple
needs and even simpler pleasures. All of them involving the opposite sex. Or food. Or drink. Or dope. Or,
preferably all of them at the same time. Or best of all out of the Troopers тАФ but that would never be.
Unfortunately, walking along the beach barefoot, contemplating this good ole quixotic Motherbowber
Nature, did not involve any of these. He sighed mightily, sneezed explosively, then went back to get his
shoes, and head back for the hospital, where surely the bar would be open and he could make his simpler
pleasures even simpler.
Walking back, he got a good view of the water тАФ and the dehydrator plant past the hospital, belching
forth great black greasy gobs of smoke. What was in this seawater anyway? Bill wondered absently. Some
godawful gunge, no doubt. He went up a little closer to inspect the dark stuff.
It looked a little like treacly black beer, or the infamous Von Guinness Stout from the green sun-bathed
shores of Paddy's Planet, thought Bill. There was even a tan foam that flecked the wavelets. This made
Bill even thirstier for some good brew. Not that the hospital served anything near as good as Von

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 Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure

Guinness. Bill strongly suspected that the stuff on tap was closer to the blendered contents of the cloacus
magnus spiked with formaldehyde. But it got him drunk enough, and his accepted practice was never to
question an alcoholic drink too strongly.
He was just about to pull back from the edge of the sea, when about five yards out, a foamy eruption of
water geysered up. The spray splattered back down, but the subject that had caused it remained, dark and
dripping.
"Hi, big feller!"
For several moments, elation filled Bill. Standing in the water was a naked woman, her high-nippled
breasts rising triumphantly and expansively in the air, her oval and beautiful face animated by an
expression of rampant sensuousness.
By the Sacred Spirit of great Ahura Mazda, thought Bill hopefully. I'm going to be sexually attacked!
She began to walk toward him, rising up out of the foam тАФ and the few precious moments of elation
ended. From the waist down, the woman's flanks were covered by thick, goatish hair, the same dark
brown as the mane of long wet stuff dripping down her aquiline features. When she walked up to the
beach, Bill saw that the legs narrowed to two cloven hooves very much like his own, but much more
petite.
"Hello," said Bill. "Glad to make your acquaintance, if even so briefly but, well, I gotta be going. I have
an appointment to get a shot for a real virulent case of an unspeakable disease that I dare not speak