"Harry Harrison - Bill, The Galactic Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

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BILL The Galactic Hero




By


Harry Harrison
©1965




I

Bill never realized that sex was the cause of it all. If the sun that morning
had not been burning so warmly in the brassy sky of Phigerinadon II, and if
he had not glimpsed the sugar-white and wine-barrel-wide backside of
Inga-Maria Calyphigia, while she bathed in the stream, he might have paid more
attention to his plowing than to the burning pressures of heterosexuality and
would have driven his furrow to the far side of the hill before the seductive
music sounded along the road. He might never have heard it, and his life would
have been very, very different. But he did hear it and dropped the handles of
the plow that was plugged into the robomule, turned, and gaped.
It was indeed a fabulous sight. Leading the parade was a one-robot band,
twelve feet high and splendid in its great black busby that concealed the
hi-fi speakers. The golden pillars of its legs stamped forward as its thirty
articulated arms sawed, plucked, and fingered at a dazzling variety of
instruments. Martial music poured out in wave after inspiring wave, and even
Bill's thick peasant feet stirred in their clodhoppers as the shining boots of
the squad of soldiers crashed along the road in perfect unison. Medals jingled
on the manly swell of their scarlet-clad chests, and there could certainly be
no nobler sight in all the world. To their rear marched the sergeant, gorgeous
in his braid and brass, thickly clustered medals and ribbons, sword and gun,
girdled gut and steely eye 'which sought out Bill where he stood gawking over
the fence. The grizzled head nodded in his direction, the steel-trap mouth bent
into a friendly smile and there' was a conspiratorial wink. Then the little
legion was past, and hurrying behind in their wake came a huddle of
dust-covered ancillary robots, hopping and crawling or rippling along on
treads. As soon as these had gone by Bill climbed clumsily over the split-rail
fence and ran after them. There were no more than two interesting events every