"Bill, the galactic hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

discharged for the convenience of tire government as being too crippled for
active service. Or dead. The survivors, after losing every ounce of weight not
made up of bone or essential connective tissue, had put back the lost weight in
the form of muscle and were now completely adapted to the rigors of Camp Leon
Trotsky, though they still loathed it. Bill marveled at the efficiency of the
system. Civilians had to fool around with examinations, grades, retirement
benefits, seniority, and a thousand other factors that limited the efficiency
of the workers. But how easily the troopers did it! They simply killed off
the weaker ones and used the survivors. He respected the system. Though he
still loathed it.
"You know what I need, I need a woman," Ugly Ugglesway said.
"Don't talk dirty," Bill told him promptly, since he had been correctly
brought up.
"I'm not talking dirty!-" Ugly whined. "It's not like I said I wanted to
re-enlist or that I thought Deathwish was human or anything like that. I just
said I need a woman. Don't we all?"
"I need a drink," Bowb Brown said as he took a long swig from his glass of
dehydrated reconstituted beer, shuddered, then squirted it out through his
teeth in a long stream onto the concrete, where it instantly evaporated.
"Affirm, affirm," Ugly agreed, bobbing his mat haired, warty head up and
down. "I need a woman and a drink." His whine became almost plaintive. "After
all, what else is there to want in the troopers outside of out?"
They thought about that a long time, but could think of nothing else that
anyone really wanted. Eager Beager looked out from under the table, where he
was surreptitiously polishing a boot and said that he wanted more polish, but
they ignored him. Even Bill, now that he put his mind to it, could think of
nothing he really wanted other than this inextricably linked pair. He tried
hard to think of something else, since he had vague memories of wanting other
things when he had been a civilian, but nothing else came to mind.
"Gee, it's only seven weeks more until we get our first pass," Eager said
from under the table, then screamed a little as everyone kicked him at once.
But slow as subjective time crawled by, the objective clocks were still
operating, and the seven weeks did pass by and eliminate themselves one by one.
Busy weeks filled with all the essential recruit-training courses: bayonet
drill, smallarms training, short-arm inspection, greypfing, orientation
lectures, drill, communal singing and the Articles of War. These last were
read with dreadful regularity twice a week and were absolute torture because
of the intense somnolence they brought on. At the first rustle of the scratchy,
monotonous voice from the tape player heads would begin to nod. But every seat
in the auditorium was wired with an EEG that monitored the brain waves of the
captive troopers. As soon as the shape of the Alpha wave indicated transition
from consciousness to slumber a powerful jolt of current would be shot into the
dozing buttocks, jabbing the owners painfully awake. The musty auditorium was
a dimly lit torture chamber, filled with the droning, dull voice, punctuated by
the sharp screams of the electrified, the sea of nodding heads abob here and
there with painfully leaping figures.
No one ever listened to the terrible executions and sentences announced in
the Articles for the most innocent of crimes. Everyone knew that they had
signed away all human rights when they enlisted, and the itemizing of what
they had lost interested them not in the slightest. What they really were