"Harry Harrison - Bill, the Galactic Hero 7 - The Final Incoherent Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Feet. Feet of all sorts and shapes and sizes. A whole foot locker full of feet. There were feet that looked
like standard issue Trooper's boots and there were feet that looked like running shoes and there were feet
that looked like stainless steel wing-tips. There were even feet that looked like they came from all sorts
of repulsive animals, like bowb-beavers and regurgibirds. There was even one that looked like that of a
rusty robomule, just for sentiment's sake. Why there were even feet that looked like sports cars, and
space ships, and the feet of some of Bill's favorite holo-cartoon characters. The foot locker was really a
feetlocker, for it held every kind of foot you could think of, and some you couldn't, everything but real
feet. They were all artificial feet. Bill's feet.
Feet had been a problem for a long time for Bill — ever since he'd been stuck on Veniola, the death
planet, and had to shoot off his foot to get off that planet. In this man's war there was always a shortage
of replacement feet. In the fullness of time he'd wound up with an elephant foot, a satyr foot, a mood
foot — more feet than he could remember. Now he had even more feet than that, and all at once. He had
finally given up even trying to get a real human foot for a replacement: a shiny socket now sprang from
his truncated ankle.
Snap. He glared at the black lacquered one with the red and gold pagoda? No, not for tonight. He needed
something a lot snazzier if he was going to get anywhere near a woman on this pass. Snap. Bill
rummaged through the trunk for a foot with more sex appeal. Maybe the pink plush number with the
bright red curly plastic toenails? Snap. No. Not macho enough. Snap. Yes, here's the one! Snap. Bill
stepped back to admire his choice in the small mirror at the foot of his bunk.
This was a foot to reckon with, a foot that said "here strides a man of parts," even if he hadn't been born
with all the same parts he had now. It was big and hairy and wild, just like Bill imagined he was, and
very ape-like — really like Bill. This was the mother, if not the father, of all feet.
It was early evening at Camp Buboe, and Bill had, through a delicate combination of bribery, extortion,
and shaking the company clerk by the throat, acquired a pass from this same clerk. Considering that the
town outside the base to which this pass entitled him to go was distinguishable from the base principally
because it was on the other side of a fence, this might not be such a big deal. But there were rumored to
be women there, women who did not wear the olive drab of the Imperial Troopers, women who sat in
bars where alcoholic beverages were served in quantities, women who might be spoken to and touched
and — Bill began panting and had to restrain his fevered imagination.
Off in the distance, a commotion was stirring. Bill turned his combat-trained senses to the front of the
barracks, and heard the cry, "Officer coming!" His combat-honed reflexes had him instantly heading for
the back door and safety.
Too late. He stormed out the back door into a brick wall.
No, not exactly a brick wall. He was sure he would have remembered a wall just outside the door, and
even at Camp Buboe the walls didn't wear uniforms. But Sergeant Brickwall was even bigger than Bill,
and he knew a fleeing Trooper when he saw one.
Bill stopped cold, then bared his treasured fangs at the sergeant and growled deep in his throat.
Brickwall bared his own implanted, sharpened incisors and growled back, like a murderous vampire
bunny.
Bill roared, and shook drool from his fangs into the sergeant's face.
Brickwall roared back, and shook Bill's own drool back at him, with some of his own for interest.
Bill roared again, and pounded his chest.


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 Bill, the Galactic Hero — The Final Incoherent Adventure

Brickwall did the same, and flashed his fangs again.
Clearly, subtlety was getting Bill nowhere.