"Harry Harrison & Robert Sheckley - Bill the Galactic Hero 3 " - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

giants of the open woodlands and glades. It was difficult for the Squolls, since they hadn't been designed
by nature to climb trees. Nature evidently had had something else in mind for them, since they had fins
and gills and small rudimentary wings. It looked in fact as if nature hadn't quite made up its mind about
Squolls. Bill met the Squoll one day when he was lying analogically on the pleasant green grass of the


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 Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains

knoll and wishing he had a dirty comic book and a dobbinburger.
"Good afternoon," squeaked the Squoll. "You're new around here, aren't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I am," said Bill.
"Semi-autonomous?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Thought so," said the Squoll. "You have that look of limited competence about you. Don't you get tired
of watering these fields?"
"I do," Bill said, "but it's my job, you know."
"Oh, of course, I know that," the Squoll said. "I could tell at once that you were one of the computer's
extensions."
"I don't like to think of myself that way," Bill said with some indignation. "But I guess you're right. I sure
wish I had my body back."
"Yes," the Squoll said, "bodies are nice. Especially ones like mine, with two tails. Would you like to
come back to my roost and have some tea?"
"I'd love to," Bill said, "but I don't seem to have a body with which to drink it."
"Never mind," the Squoll said. "We'll pretend. And you'll have a chance to meet the family."
The Squoll hopped along, and Bill drifted along in that bouncy way that computer simulations have. They
soon reached the grassy knoll where the Squoll made his nest. It was a large hole in the hillside which
was easy to find because the Squoll had outlined it with a broad stripe of white.
"What's that for?" Bill asked.
"The stripe is so that we Squolls can find our way back to our nests," the Squoll told him. "Mother Nature
has shortchanged our species a bit by equipping us with poor eyesight, hearing, taste, spatial cognition
and smell. The rest of our senses are super-acute, however, to make up for these apparent lacks."
"That doesn't leave very much."
"Shut up."
"Sorry. Don't other creatures find your lair, too? I mean, that stripe is really very visible."
The Squoll gave a little chuckle. "They can't see it," the Squoll said. "The predators here have white-
black blindness. It's a hereditary birth factor, and of great importance to us Squolls, as you might
imagine."
The opening to the Squoll nest was small, but Bill, being ineffable, was able to slide in easily. The Squoll
had counted on this, evidently, because he seemed to assume that Bill could go anywhere that he could
go.
"Now I'll just put up the tea," the Squoll said. "I'd like you to meet my wife, Mrs Squoll, but she's
working today with the ladies' auxiliary. And the children are in school, of course. Tea's just about ready.
Lemon or milk?"
"I told you," Bill said. "I can't drink without a body."
"But you can pretend, can't you?"
"All right, I suppose that I can," Bill said. "Make it tea with lemon, please, one teaspoon of sugar, and a
mug of Altarian rum on the side."
"I'm clean out of rum," the Squoll said. "Would Olde Sink Cleaner whiskey do?"
"Sure it will," Bill said, and he nodded approvingly as the Squoll poured an imaginary drink from an