Harry Harrison & David Bischoff - Bill, The Galactic Hero 4

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Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure
HARRY HARRISON & DAVID BISCHOFF
Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure
A Byron Preiss Book
VGSF
Special thanks to Nat Sobel, Henry Morrison, John Douglas, Shelley Frier, David Keller, and Alice
Alfonsi
VGSF is an imprint of Victor Gollancz Ltd
14 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8QJ
First published in Great Britain 1991
by Victor Gollancz Ltd
First VGSF edition 1992
Copyright © 1991 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Book design by Alex Jay
Jacket art by Michael Kaluta and Steve Fastner
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-575-05248-1
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold,
hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
To Joe and Ellen Donohue —
With Thanks
CHAPTER 1
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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 — 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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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
bottle of Old Granbowb.
"Damn, Doc. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Drink. How else can a Trooper stay sane in this
criminally insane outfit? And a man needs the comforts that only a woman can bring!" Bill sniveled with
self pity, then sighed passionately as he thought about all his old girlfriends. And the young ones as well.
His battle-hardened musculature tensed as he thought about Meta, shipped out now to some godforsaken
strife-torn planet, fighting in this hellish but glorious Chinger conflict. Meta! Now there was a woman!
Those eyes! That chest! That tight, rounded rear end that put Inga-Maria Calyphigia's, back on
Phigerinadon II, to shame! But then, Meta was hardly the type of woman who would plant bare feet in a
kitchen and produce babies for the rest of her life. Meta was the kind of gal Bill's mother had warned him
about — mentally, physically, emotionally his superior, with a sex drive that could power a starship, once
she got it in gear. And just as they'd gotten their relationship over the first hump, so to speak, the bowbing
Troopers had to detail her somewhere else. Bowb and double bowb!
Bill wondered if there was something going wrong with him. Had the Troopers left a shred of dignity and
humanity in his body? It didn't seem possible. Was he capable of love? Did he even know how to spell the
word? Was that what he was looking for? Was that why he was so restless of late? Was that why he'd
started smuggling TRUE SLUSHY SPACE ROMANCE comix inside the copies of BLOOD PORN
SPLATTER TALES that the recruits saw him reading?
Naw. What good was a regular woman, anyway? Like the Troopers said, a woman would make him stop
smoking, drinking to excess, swearing incontinently while lusting after anything female that strolled by
— and weren't those the vital ingredients that life was really all about?
Dr. Latex Delazny looked down again at the readout from the computer. "Fascinating. Tell me Bill, do
you know anything about the endocrine system?"
"Isn't that the swamp and poison ocean worlds over by the Cassiopeian system?"
Doctor Delazny scratched angrily at the scruff on his balding head. He looked to be a man in his late
thirties, fine spiderwebs of wrinkles, as well as fine spiders, just starting to radiate from his eyes. He was
thin and distracted-seeming, as though his mind operated like a three ring circus, and he was far more
interested in the acrobatic act in the center than this clown act before him.
"No, you military moron. I'm talking about human physiology. The endocrine system, the pituitary, the
thyroid, the adrenals ... etcetera, etcetera. And of course, the sex glands. Human anatomy, sod-head! Don't
they teach you that in the Troopers?"
Bill shook his head in humble contrition.
"Important bodily functions, Bill. Particularly the sex glands. Did you know I have a PhD in
endocrinology? But do you think the Empire has any use for that? Bah. Feet and sphincters, sphincters
and feet. That's all they want me to work on. What a dreadful waste."
He was a tall, gangling scarecrow, looking as though he slept in his lab coat, which happened pretty often
anyway. But he still had certain strengths. Bill was particularly impressed by the way the doctor had been
able to put away Antarean Alkpee in the bar the other night.
Doctor Delazny mused boredly over the readouts on the table. "My goodness, Bill, talking about
secretion, your lower ductless glands seem particularly active. Most interesting, Trooper — you seem to
have enough testosterone in your body to grow a beard on an elephant!"
Delazny peered at Bill appraisingly, and the Trooper felt suddenly uncomfortable at being moved to
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center stage.
"What about my foot, Doc? Remember, that's what I came in about."
Doctor Delazny cleared his throat, puffed out his chest and spoke out authoritatively.
"Trooper, what I'm prescribing for the time being is that you spend your sacktime and rectime here at the
hospital. Walk on the polluted beach, visit the garbage dump, tour the factory down the road.... Rest!
Relax! Avail yourself of the recreational facilities we have here at Grin N' Clinic! This will give me the
opportunity to examine the cellular composition of your foot."
"You're not going to give me a new one?"
"I would love to, Bill, but haven't you got it through that thick farm-bred and alcohol-preserved skull of
yours? This army has a foot shortage!"
"Shoulda never gone on the metric system!" grumbled Bill. The latrine rumor mill had leaked the story.
Used to be, Army Medics had lots of feet in freezers, but when the order came down from Helior for the
Army to go metric, the noncoms hadn't understood. "Get rid of the feet!" the officers had yowled. And so
the noncoms had dumped the frozen feet.
Bill pulled on a sweatsock over his cloven hoof, then covered that with a boot. He looked down
nostalgically at the scuffed footwear, remembering the shine that Eager Beager used to be able to raise on
his issue Trooper boots, back when Bgr the Chinger was hiding out in a robot disguised as a recruit
slogging through training camp. He'd never had such good-looking boots since.
"Maybe you're right, Doc. Maybe I could use some rest. Drink less, plenty of fresh air and raw fruit." It
sounded positively repulsive. But he let this decaying sawbones think he was going along with the plan
until he came up with a plan to find a way out of here.
Ahh, how little did Trooper Bill realize it, but "rest" was not precisely a commodity penciled into his
particular cosmic itinerary for the next week. If only the Doctor had not suggested a walk along the beach,
then perhaps Bill's mind-blowing, super-exciting and absolutely page-turning adventure amongst the
myths and Gods, to say nothing of the incredible Over-Gland, would never have occurred.
"Oh, and Bill — about those hemorrhoids that we don't have the right medicine for?" said Doc Delazny as
Bill started walking away through the maze of hi-tech medical machinery.
"Yeah?" said Bill turning around, his posterior tingling hopefully.
"Dear fellow, I'm afraid that you are just going to have to sit this batch out!"
Bill called the quack something so revolting that it instantly cheered him up, then stalked back to the bar.
It was Happy Hour and it was a Monday, which meant that they were giving out free pickled porkuswine
feet hors d'oeuvres, one of Bill's favorites.
He just hoped they didn't give his "mood foot" the wrong idea.
CHAPTER 2
READING MATTER
Bill dreamed.
He dreamed that he was a farmer again, sweating behind a robo-mule. He dreamed that his prime
ambition, his only ambition, in life was to become a Technical Fertilizer Operator. Some said that it was a
crappy job — but not he! Smiling in his sleep he dreamed of going forth and spreading mounds of
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fragrant manure upon the gentle plains of the planets of the galaxy, rising up high and noisome, the
fragrant delight of the magic scent tingling the nascent nostrils of a billion happy farmers.
Then the dream changed and Deathwish Drang came to him, fluttering gently on gossamer angel's wings.
"Trideo Games, Bill!" he chuckled and twanged a fang. "Your future is Trideo Games!"
Now Bill was very young in his dream, for as a little boy he had always yearned to play Trideo in town
with the other kids, and he always beat them, yes he did, but only in his fevered imagination. For of
course he never went to town, had no money either: Trideo was just the stuff of dreams. So when
Deathwish Drang's proclamation filtered through those magnificent fangs of his, Bill thought, Yes! It's
true! When Drang unfurled the sparkling contract in front of his eyes, the contract to become a hot-shot
Trideo game contestant amongst the myriad civilized worlds of the galaxy, Bill signed without hesitation.
Trideo Games involved not only hand-eye reflexes and keen nerves, but mental coordination as well. The
player was strapped securely into a machine that was a tin and plastic imitation of a spaceship, complete
with fake lasers and ersatz pulsar torpedoes, etiolated tractor and pulsar beams, and all that good old
docsmith stuff. Then, using a tridee screen, the contestant fought the chicken Chingers in their horrible
dreadful Deathships from Sewer-Hell.
In his dream, the Chingers were again seven-foot monsters with razor-sharp teeth, rumored to snack on
toasted human babies while watching television from their Slime-Couches. "Death to the Chingers," he
howled as he arced through their armadas, defying the laws of physics as he nailed Chinger hate-ships
with noble zaps of his powerful beamers.
But then, in his dream, a Chinger destroyer-boat caught him broadside and tore a hole through the side of
the Trideo machine. Bill was stunned. This was just a game! How could.... Then he realized. He'd been a
patsy! The Empire had tricked him. He really was fighting a real war!
It wasn't just a game.
Then hundreds of seven-inch tall Chingers swarmed through the rent, each of them armed with a seven-
foot tall cutlass. Which seemed kind of impossible — but who asks questions in dreams?
He was doomed!
Bill woke up. His head felt like it was splitting open and his sinuses were on fire.
Damned book!
Goddamn cheap stripped hospital book!
His throbbing nasal passages felt as though mad scientists had filled them full with acid. He stumbled out
of bed to the sink, held his head and moaned and tried to blow his nose at the same time. The pain
increased, that was all. Groaning, he tried once again. Taking a deep breath sounding his horn.
"Kaaa-CHOO!" said Bill, clutching the pseudo-porcelain rim.
With an elephantine blast of his nose bugle an inch-long lozenge shot out, fitted with rubber appendages
whose metal tips sparked fitfully as it bounced into the sink and hopped and fizzled about until he turned
on the water and the thing spattered into extinction.
The book.
It was labeled, in raised letters, FENDER BENDER by Orson Bean Curd. Bill remembered faintly that it
was about an idiot-savant servo-mechanic hijacked by Chingers and fiendishly used against the noble
Empire, but nothing much more, since he'd only managed to get the book halfway up his nose. "Don't
forget to sniff out the exciting sequel, MACARONI OF THE MORONS, coming soon from Mace
Books!" read another smaller label, only slightly smeared with nose gunk.
With the high rate of illiteracy amongst the pioneer worlds, book companies had begun to market these
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"Stick-a-Books" with great success. They came with their own automatic "lit-pack": engrams that
tendrilled into the user's brain and programmed the unhappy reader with the words and concepts
necessary to understand the book. Then, when the victim had finished "reading" the little machine's
contents, it would puff out sneezing powder. The theory was that a quick blast of sneezing would shoot
the infernal gadget out. After a quick rinse, it was ready for another consumer! However, due to the
capitalistic process of distribution, and the infamous Rack-Space Wars (a space conflict that even chilled
Bill's veteran bones) the practice of "stripping" was used on these books, rather than going to the expense
of shipping the full product back to the publisher. This involved tearing out a tab of circuitry imbued with
identification properties which gave retailers credit for the product. Retailers then sold the remainder at
reduced rates to the military and planets for the mentally retarded. Unfortunately, much of the guts of the
book itself was also stripped in the process, so that chances were if you were a hospital patient and you
tried to read one of these "special editions" as they were euphemistically labeled, you only got part of the
book.
Such was the case, clearly, with the one that Bill had stuffed up his nostril last night, meaning to read for
a while before turning in. Not only that, but apparently the bowby thing hadn't been properly cleaned after
it had last been used and had the definite sniff of someone else's sinus!
Bill finished blowing his tortured nose while his eyes streamed with tears, and then went to the side of his
bed for a swig of Pepto Abysmal — The Calming Internal Antiseptic and Nose Purifier! This cheap,
rotten, godforsaken hospital was getting on his nerves. Not only were the beginnings or ends of their
books lopped off, but the sanitary conditions weren't much better than back at Camp Leon Trotsky where
he'd done his boot training. Colostomy IV was a planet only recently discovered. Though it had a
reasonable oxygen content to its atmosphere soup (along with curious trace amounts of incense and
airborne alkaloids; scientific speculation posited a dead, lost race of either Buddhists, Hindus or hippies)
and it swung around a GO-GO star (very close to Sol in type), absolutely no living intelligent beings had
been discovered upon its surface. Just lots of floral land undergoing the usual geological hiccups — and
lots of mysterious dark ocean. Since the planet happened to be somewhere between somewhere and
somewhere else, both somewheres being equally repulsive, the Troopers had naturally chosen to build a
transient camp, reppel depple, Senior Officers Whorehouse and this hospital here, on the shores of the
great black ocean, tideless and ominous. They also built a water dehydration plant on the shore to ship out
powdered water for the troopers (just add water ... voila! Water!)
Bill chased the chalky medicine with a glass of foul-tasting water and went back to bed. He dozed
intermittently, but as rosy-fingered dawn fingered the window sill while pain fingered his frontal lobes he
was still feeling relatively sleepless. His headache had abated somewhat, but his mood foot felt weird. It
was all tingly, like it was just waking out of leg-sleep. Maybe, he thought, he should go to see Dr.
Delazny about this immediately. It felt like Tinkerbell had just jammed her wand up his cloven hoof, and
all kinds of aerie fairie nonsense was happening inside!
Bill put on his torn, five-ply paper robe and moaned his way out of the ward, hoping to wake up the four
doped-to-the-gills Troopers he shared it with. No such luck. The sick bowbs were sleeping, if not the
sleep of the innocent, then at least the sleep of the narcoleptic.
He went down to the Doc's office, in the basement, conveniently situated by the bar and the morgue
(many of Doctor Delazny's patients were victims of the dreaded Pedosphincter Rot, a wildly metastasizing
mutant xenocancer killing Troopers by the platoon, whose distant ancestor was athlete's foot, and that
struck the nether regions of the human body. Hence his dual specialty. And also hence his proximity to
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the morgue.) By now Bill's foot felt as though sparklers were pixilating in his heel!
As the lift banged to an abrupt halt on Level Zero and the doors wheezed open, Bill thought he caught a
sight of Doctor Delazny's balding dome disappearing into the laundry room, followed by the flapping tails
of his lab coat.
What was he in such a hurry for?
And why was he running into the laundry room?
"Hey Doc!" he cried, limping along, cringing with the odd sensations that kept shooting up his leg. "Wait
up! I got to talk to you!"
He pushed open the swinging doors marked "Laundry." The room was lined with shelves of linens,
amongst which scurried ratfinks — native rodent-like creatures who swarmed the Trooper installations
and appeared to feed on linoleum wax and toenail parings. In the middle of the room, a laundry chute
depended from the ceiling, beneath which a small basket of soiled towels, garments and sheets breathed
up stale human body odors.
"Doc! Doc Delazny?" Bill stepped in, looking around. A pair of filthy trousers zoomed down the chute
and landed atop his head. He snarled and threw it at a dump of copulating ratfinks, who proceeded to
devour it.
No sign of the Doctor. But Bill could have sworn —
Oh well. Bill left and checked Doc Delazny's examination room. Nobody.
A bright orange and blue neon sign blasted out the letters HOSPITAL BAR just as brightly as ever, but
the door was locked. It was closed. It didn't open till 0630 hours. The authorities here were vaguely
considering keeping a 24-hour bartender, but hadn't got around to it yet. The morgue was deserted —
except of course for the dead people. There was only one other room that Doctor Delazny could have
gone down here, though Bill was loath to venture there. It was a gilt door set with fake diamonds and
labeled proudly "Heroes' Haven — Only the Best Damn Troopers in the Galaxy Enter Here." He cringed
back, the last thing he wanted to do was go in here. But his foot needed attention, so he opened the door.
The Heroes' Haven was also called The Last Chance Saloon and never referred to by its real name, the
speaking of which brought bad luck. The Terminal Ward. The perfume projector inside could not quite
conceal the taint of living decomposition, the muted Muzak was penetrated by the gurgled groans of the
dying, the soft monotone squeals of telltale machines announcing the deaths of their hook-ups during the
evening. Bill looked wildly in all directions but there was no sign of Doctor Delazny!
"Bowb and damn!" Bill snarled, wheeling around to get the hell out of here. In mid-wheel, however, he
spotted something that caught him up short, gave him pause.
It was a shelf of lozenge-books! And they looked whole! Unstripped! Bill was very bored, and he could
use a whole book to read. The doomed at the hospital must get special privileges, he thought. Of course
the irony was they'd never finish reading the books anyway.
He examined the titles. E-I-E-I-O! by Greg Bore. PLANET OF THE ALIEN TRANSVESTITE PANTY
RAIDERS Vol. VI. THE WELL OF GENITALS by Jerk el Upchucker. NIGHT OF THE LIVING
CHINGERS by Stephen Thing. Boy! Classics!
Still, he couldn't take more than one, so Bill selected a shining lozenge labeled BLEEDER'S DIGEST.
This contained ten condensed books especially prepared for the consumption of people who didn't have
very long to live.
Good enough! This should keep him going for awhile, thought Bill as a death rattle in a nearby throat
spurred him on his away.
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Of course, he'd boil the damned thing first this time. His nose twanged in response for his nose knew
another nose nosed ahead by a nose.
But if Bill had been nosier he would have noticed the alien electronic eyeball at the end of its periscope,
scrutinizing his activities and transmitting them to tiny reptilian eyeballs, deep below the hospital.
CHAPTER 3
THE HAZARDS OF BEACHCOMBING
What a wonderfully mediocre day to be half-alive, thought Bill.
Tiny waves surged idly up the dun-colored beach. A greenish-orange sun sat over the horizon like a
bloated and festering fruit. A bank of leaden clouds was slowly drawing across the sky, thankfully
shuttering out the sickly light with torn, damp gray veils. The smell of rotting fish assaulted Bill's already
tortured nose as he walked along the deathly still sea. He sneezed hugely and wiped his nostrils with the
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 — 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 — 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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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 — 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
about!" He stumbled backward, but his foot (the moody one, natch) chose a particularly soft batch of sand
to step upon, and he lost his balance and fell.
The goat-lady continued walking toward Bill undeterred, licking her lips in a most lascivious manner.
This close she looked like a walking gynecological close-up from GALACTIC HUSTLERHOUSE
MAGAZINE.
"You're kind of ugly," she husked in a husky voice. "But you've got an okay bod — and just one heck of a
nice foot!"
Bill howled with horror and tried to get up and run away. With amazingly strong hands, the strange
woman grabbed Bill's belt and hauled him back.
"Really, ma'am — it's not my foot! I mean, if you really like it, take it!" Bill was only sorry that it was so
firmly attached. Perhaps if it hadn't been, though, it would have been long gone by now.
"Ah, c'mon, Trooper. Don't you want to play footsie with me?"
Bill didn't. He just wanted to get away. Unfortunately, for all his hard-packed, well-trained muscle, the
pretty but frightening goat-lady held him, unmoving in her grip. She seemed to have incredible power
stashed somewhere in those slender arms, that well-proportioned back. She hauled Bill back to the sea,
leaving behind two deep furrows where his scrabbling hands tried to find purchase in the sand.
"Noooooooooooo!" said Bill. The "No" turned into wild screaming as the lukewarm, foul water folded
over his legs.
"Take a deep breath, big guy. I can tell you're already in over your head about me!"
So saying, and cackling hoarsely with insane alien glee, the female satyr dragged the thrashing and
splashing and yowling Bill down into the mysterious, murky sea.
CHAPTER 4
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Harr...0the%20Planet%20of%20Tasteless%20Pleasures.htm (9 of 95) [10/14/2004 11:58:11 PM]
Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure
THE MYTHING LINK
Glug, thought Bill.
Glugity, bowby glug.
He seemed to be drifting now in a deep dark bowl of licorice-flavored gelatin, the kind that Eager Beager
used to scarf up so happily at Camp Leon Trotsky. Bill had always given that military nutcase his portion
of dessert, as did many of the recruits. Not out of generosity — that wasn't the Troopers' way! — but only
because it was completely inedible. Eager Beager didn't actually eat them all, only some. Most he used for
boot polish.
Down, down into the licorice gelatin went Bill.
Glug, gurgle, and glack.
His life flashed before his eyes.
Since it hadn't been much of a life, though, he had to go into repeats, and then syndication.
Finally, though, when the black stuff got immensely black and thick, and it looked like Bill was about to
cash in his credits, he suddenly found himself floundering and squishing on dry land, spouting out water
like a beached whale.
Then, just as oxygen restored his heartily heaving lungs to full capacity, somebody turned out the lights,
and he plunged yet again into total darkness.
"Rosebud!" was Bill's last thought as he began to drown.
Consciousness focused slowly, like a gently erotic cinematic fade-in.
Bill awoke to birdsong. Sweet zephyrs danced over his hair, and he heard the tinkle of laughter, the gentle
swirl of a gently plonking musical instrument. All these things were very nice, and Bill felt relaxed and
calm. He could have just lain there for languid hours, but for the sweet acrid smell that suddenly wafted to
his nostrils.
Boing! went his eyelids as they sprang wide open.
Wine!
In Bill's top ten list of favorite libations containing CO2HO2O, wine was maybe number nine, with Sterno
as number ten and good old brain-destroying grain alcohol with all its varied applications leading the
pack. But then, when did a Trooper get to dally with fancy stuff like el vino? Bill had gotten drunk on
dingleberry wine on Squat IV once in a particularly rancid cantina on leave from Latrine Attendant
Qualifying Training, and the hangover the next day was a memory that still disturbed him when he was
distressed. But this stuff he was smelling smelled real good, and hey! Alcohol was alcohol and the only
time that Bill was uninterested in alcohol was when he had to drive a starship. (Footnote: Free Public
Service Announcement from Galactic Troopers Against Drunk Driving.) But then, since Bill wasn't a
starship pilot, had no intention of being one, and was frightened bowbless at the thought, he very seldom
had to worry.
His eyes rolled about. His stomach clutch engaged, then ground into gear. Saliva gushed into his mouth,
drooling down and dripping off one of Deathwish Drang's fangs.
"Hi there, you-all!" he croaked. "Anybody got something to drink here?"
The sight that met his eyes, however, stopped all thoughts of gross guzzling.
He lay sprawled in an olive grove, lightly kissed by gentle lightbeams radiating warmly from a stylized
sun in the heavens. This same sky was bluer than a robin's egg in deep depression. In the distance mighty
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Har...the%20Planet%20of%20Tasteless%20Pleasures.htm (10 of 95) [10/14/2004 11:58:11 PM]
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Bill,theGalacticHeroonthePlanetofTastelessPleasureHARRYHARRISON&DAVIDBISCHOFFBill,theGalacticHeroonthePlanetofTastelessPleasureAByronPreissBookVGSFSpecialthankstoNatSobel,HenryMorrison,JohnDouglas,ShelleyFrier,DavidKeller,andAliceAlfonsiVGSFisanimprintofVictorGollanczLtd14HenriettaStreet,LondonWC2E...

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