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

imaginary bottle into an imaginary shot glass.
And so the afternoon passed in a haze of imaginary whiskey and bona fide good spirits. Bill felt


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 Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains

considerably better after talking with the Squoll. He determined not to give in to his circumstances. The
next day, when his work in the fields began, Bill set the sprinklers for automatic operation, asked the
Squoll to keep an eye on things for him and let him know via neuronic telegram if anything went amiss.
And then he went exploring.
It was wonderful to soar with the assistance of the battery pack through the world of Tsuris. It was a good-
looking planet, once you got under the unpromising-looking layer of clouds. There were villages
scattered here and there as he hurried across the mainland. There were steep mountains to duck and dodge
among. There were rivers whose courses he could follow. And from time to time Bill met other members
of the computer's semi-autonomous family.
One of these was Scalsior, a semi-autonomous tri-pedal creature from Argone IV, who had been passing
this way some years ago while on his way to a reunion of his kith in Accesor, foremost of the Cepheid
worlds. He had never gotten there. The Tsuris computer, which was able to extend its power far beyond
its biosphere, like a globular creature extending a long ghostly but effective pseudopod, extended its
influence and plucked the Scalsian ship out of space and dragged it down to the level of the planet.
Scalsior had been enslaved as had so many other sentient creatures, who had been for the most part just
passing by and minding their own business.
Scalsior had also met the Squoll, and the two had become close friends.
"Si," Scalsior said, "eez a very good fellow, eez our Squoll. I give great envy to him his merry state. Look
closely and give beeg sneer at the most stupid job that cabron computer has given me."
Scalsior's job was to open and close the locks on a small irrigation ditch deep in the vegetable fields. The
work in itself was valuable, since plants on Tsuris, as everywhere, require their moisture or they are apt to
scream in pain, turn brown or black, fold up their petals across their stems and die. At least some plants
somewhere did that. But although the work was useful, it didn't require the daily full attention of a grown-
up like Scalsior; especially since there was an automatic opening and closing mechanism on the lock
valves which functioned pretty well most of the time.
"Merda eet has been most bloody unpleasant to me," Scalsior said, "to at last finally achieve celestial
harmony of a bodiless state while still living, a state in which I am mind, all mind, and find that this mind
of mine eez being used for something damned trivial and superfluous. Cargota!"
"Why don't you just go off and do what you please?" Bill asked.
"Would that was the way eet worked! Chinger! That, desirable though eet would seem, eez simply not in
the deck of cards."
"Why not?" Bill wanted to know.
"You ask, I tell, because eet's not correct, not kosher, as they say in the ancient tongue. Not Pukka.
Extremely un-SOP. Do I make myself clear?"
"Clear enough, I guess," Bill said, "but it's all a lot of nonsense. That's what the computer told me, too.
But I just walked away. You could do the same thing."
"I suppose I could," Scalsior said. "But I got this horrible feeling deep down in my imaginary
subconscious that we'll catch holy sheet when the computer catches up with us."
"I don't see how," Bill said. "I mean, we don't have any bodies for it to punish."
Scalsior thought about it for a while. "Sonamabeech! Eet's true! Of course, eet could punish our minds.
Mental barbed-wire whips or sometheeng."
"As long as it doesn't hurt. And how could it," Bill said, then thought awhile. "It can do what it likes to
my mind, as long as it leaves my body alone."