Bill 7 - the Galactic Hero (12 page)

Something deep inside Bill screamed in anguish. He'd been pretty sure that was what was going on, but you can never be absolutely certain of these things. Not in Bill's experience, anyway.

“Oh, goody!” Misty squealed. “Can I join you?” She touched a fastener somewhere and her dress fell apart and fluttered to the floor.

Bill was still paralyzed, but much happier now. He managed to get himself turned toward Kitty. “Please, please, uh-huh, uh-huh, please?”

But the redhead was already undoing the last of her buttons. Her dress didn't flutter to the floor; it was more of a slither. And unlike Misty, Kitty was wearing underwear, but it was all lace and frills, and in some ways even better than nothing.

Bill remembered a little more of that prayer.

In an instant he had a girl wrapped in each arm, nibbling at his exposed skin and working to expose more of it.

Kitty was pulling off his shirt, and Misty was working on the buckle of his trousers, when there was a tapping at the door.

Bill groaned.

The two women renewed and deepened their relationship while Bill put his shirt back on and answered the door.

“It's a bust!” A petite but voluptuous woman, with long straight black hair, opened her blouse. She was absolutely right.

“It's two busts!” An Amazonian blonde jumped into the doorway and lifted her straining t-shirt.

Bill goggled, recovered, and led the two newcomers by their nipples into the room.

“Sue! Debbie!”

Bill looked from one pair of women to the other. “You all know each other?”

“Of course. Auto-show modeling is a small world,” Misty explained. “Come on, girls, there's enough of this hunk to go around!”

Bill wasn't chancing any more interruptions. In a moment his clothes were scattered around the room, and he was so involved in nuzzling and nibbling and licking and groping and ... well, and so on, that he didn't even hear the next knock on the door. Sam and Sid had to answer it.

There was only one woman there, but by the time Sid and Sam figured out what was going on and let her in, two more had shown up.

“Bill, could we talk to you for just a moment, please?”

“Can't it wait,” — he looked carefully and thought for a moment — “Sam?”

“No, it can't.”

Sid picked up his left arm, Sam his right, and the bodyguards carried Bill women dripping off him, into the other bedroom.

“Gee, Bill, we're worried about you,” Sid said.

“Absolutely,” Sam said. “We have only your best interests at heart.”

They set him down on the bed and crossed to a pair of chairs. Now the one that had been Sam became Sid, and vice versa.

“We understand that we can't intervene here,” Sam said, “because of that Ginebra Convention you told us about.”

“But we're worried about your health.”

“Absolutely. It's your health that concerns us.”

“We're afraid you might put too much of a strain on —”

“Your heart, that's it, your heart. All those women may be too much for you.”

“That's OK, guys,” Bill said. “I'm used to taking risks. I'm a galactic hero, after all.”

(NOTE: The following scene has been revised in accordance with an order from the Political Correctness Bureau. In the original version, Bill, Sam, and Sid revealed themselves to be self-centered, sexist pigs, and inappropriate role models. Bill offered his friends three of the women to use as sexual playthings, with no regard to the women's own desires and hopes for personal fulfillment as individuals.)

“But Bill,” Sid said, “it will probably not be possible for you to completely satisfy seven women in one night.”

“Correct,” Sam said. “Particularly as we are sure you want to develop a deep and lasting personal relationship with each and every one of them.”

“Yow!” said Bill. “You have prevented me from making a terrible mistake, in which I would be responsible for the base exploitation of my chance fame to degrade women for the satisfaction of my animal passions!” Bill wept manly tears.

When he thought about it (which wasn't for some time, considering that his brain power had been severely reduced by alcohol and they were still on the leg of the trip that included bars in the hotels), Bill did think it was funny that he hadn't been outside since he got into the ambulance back at the lake.

He also still hadn't figured out what the S-men had meant when they said “Uh-oh” to him some days earlier, because he hadn't seen much in the way of terrible destruction, or even anything to get seriously upset about.

But right now his main concern was, had he had a swinging time and plenty of booze the night before?

Because Bill had no memory of anything between when he walked into the room and when Sid and Sam shook him awake the next morning.

“Gee, Bill, it's time to get up. We've got another busy day ahead of us.”

“Lemmallon,” Bill mumbled into the pillow.

“No, Bill, we have to get going soon. One early stop today, and then we start your USO tour of military bases and defense plants. Beauty queens, Bill. Chorus girls. The adulation of your fellow soldiers.”

“Inawanna.”

Sid lifted Bill's head from the pillow. “I can't believe I heard that correctly. Chorus girls, Bill.”

Something small and atrophied stirred in the back of Bill's brain. It was his conscious mind, and it was gradually becoming aware that it didn't know what happened last night.

Under normal circumstances, this was no problem. The chief reason Bill had developed a taste for alcohol in the Troopers was so he could forget what he was doing, and had done, and was — namely, a Trooper. But normal circumstances had never before included the possible fulfillment of Bill's primary hormonal fantasy.

“Chorus girls,” Bill croaked.

Sam slipped a straw between Bill's lips. Bill took a long pull, and screamed, “Eeyaughhhhhh!”

“Gee, Bill,” Sam said apologetically, “I thought you liked boiling hot coffee in the morning.”

“No' tha' ho'.” But Bill was awake and upright now. He sucked cool air over his tongue and tried to speak again. “Last night ... can't remember...”

Sid and Sam looked at each other. “You mean you don't recall a thing that happened?”

Bill shook his head morosely.

Sid looked at Sam and shrugged. “In that case, you had a wonderful time. You made love with many beautiful women in many interesting ways. Many times.”

That had been Bill's dream, and he supposed he couldn't really complain if it had come true, but he made a small mental note that the next time it happened he wanted to be there. It wasn't quite as good, hearing about it secondhand.

Bill pumped his bodyguards and pals for all the details of the previous night's festivities while they hoisted him out of bed, into the sonic shower, and on through the whole morning routine that ended when they stuffed him into their hoverlimo. They earned their money, too, because not only was Bill utterly incapable of normal functioning this morning, so they even had to fork his food into his gaping mouth and brush his teeth for him, but they also had to make up the whole story.

They did such a wonderful job of inventing the story, in fact, that Bill had them tell it over and over again, in more and more detail. It kept getting better and better, until he could almost believe he remembered it himself. It was almost as good as if it had really happened.

It also kept Bill from noticing where they were going. Which was, among other things, outside.

He couldn't have seen much if he was looking, because the windows of the limo were tinted almost totally black, and what feeble bits of consciousness he possessed were far too devoted to learning about his exploits to care what they were passing.

Sam, on the other hand, had gotten totally bored with the story. He turned on the small holovideo set, hooked up an ear plug, and tuned in ENN. Bill paid no attention until he saw the little image of General Weissearse floating next to him.

“What's he got to say?”

“The same old crapola. The glorious forces of your glorious empire are fighting the glorious battle, gloriously. Bombing only military targets, no civilian casualties, no accidents, no imperial ships shot down. You want to hear it?”

Sam reached to switch the sound on, but Bill stopped him. “No, I've heard it before. In person, too. Wait — he means no more imperial ships shot down, right? Has he said anything about me?”

“No, of course not. If he admitted you exist, then he'd have to admit that we shot down your ship, and that would be admitting failure. So it didn't happen.”

Bill brightened considerably at this news. “Does that mean I'm not a Trooper any more? I mean, if I don't exist, I can't be a Trooper. Is that like a discharge?” Since no one was ever discharged from the Troopers, Bill was unfamiliar with the procedure.

“Gee, Bill, I doubt it.”

“And why do you guys keep saying 'gee'? I used to know someone else who said that all the time, and he was a Chinger spy.”

Sid laughed. “Gee, Bill, since I'm not a seven-foot-tall green lizard, I don't think I could be a Chinger. Anyway, we must have picked it up from President Grotsky. He uses it a lot, and we spend most of the time guarding him.”

“I guess that could be it,” Bill muttered, only half convinced. “What's that?”

The floating image of General Weissearse had been replaced by a picture of an Eyerackian airfield, shot from very high up. The camera was zooming toward the airfield at an incredible speed.

Sam pulled out the ear plug jack and the sound came back on.

“This bit of film was selected entirely at random, and has not been edited or altered in any way,” the General was saying. "As you can see, the camera is in the nose of one of our newest types of missiles, the Peacemaker Mark XXXVII. It has a computer that has been programmed to emulate the mind of a highly trained Trooper, with all the latest artificial stupidity techniques.

“Now, you see that red dot that just appeared in the middle of your picture? That marks the firing mechanism for an ASS battery. If we just blow up the firing mechanism, the missiles don't blow up and hardly anyone is killed; only the man at the trigger, if he doesn't get clear in time.”

The picture looked pretty familiar to Bill. Except for all the strangely flat spaces around the airfield, which looked like they had been drawn in with a crayon, it was just like the view from his turret on the Heavenly Peace. Bill waited for the little “50,” the score for an ASS battery, to come up, but it didn't.

“You can see how the red dot stays right in the middle of the picture,” General Weissearse continued. "There is no deviation from plan, no possibility of error.

“If you'll look closely at the end here, and we'll slow down the tape to make it easier, you can see that the ASS ground crew can see and hear the Peacemaker Mark XXXVII coming, and they have plenty of time to get clear of the blast.”

The picture did slow down, and the missile curved in and aimed for a door. A crudely hand-lettered sign on the door read “Eyerackian Space Defense Command: Legitimate Military Target.” There was a red and white bull's-eye below the sign.

Then the door flew open, and three men dashed out, loping like moon-walkers in the slow motion. There was an extreme close-up of the sign, and the tape was finished.

"As you can see, this randomly selected piece of tape, which is absolutely typical of the millions of missiles that we are launching against the atheistic warmongering Eyerackian military establishment, clearly demonstrates the precision of our attack, and the care we are taking not to harm any of the innocent and oppressed citizens of Eyerack, who are the emperor's beloved subjects.

“This should put to rest any doubts and rumors to the effect that there are any Eyerackian civilian casualties, other than a few people who have been disturbed by the noise.”

The tiny image of the General floated smugly inside the hoverlimo until Sam shut off the holovideo.

“You believe him?” he asked Bill.

“He's an officer,” Bill replied.

Sam looked puzzled. “I don't follow.”

“We don't have much experience with officers,” Sid explained.

“A rule of the Troopers is that anything an officer says is probably a lie at best; at worst he is out to kill you.”

“Ah,” said Sid and Sam.

“You guys have a lot to learn about being at war.”

“We're picking it up pretty fast,” Sam claimed.

“Not so much that we're picking it up,” Sid clarified, “as that it's falling on us.”

The hoverlimo slowed down and pulled over.

“We're here. No autographs at this one, Bill.”

“No autographs?”

“No, Bill.”

“No models?”

“No, Bill.”

“No chorus girls?”

“Not at this stop. Here you just have to lay a wreath.” Bill grinned. “No, that's not what I mean! A wreath, a big bunch of flowers. The local mayor will hand it to you when you get out. You take it and march up to the monument. You stop in front of the monument for a moment, as though you're feeling sad, and you say, 'In honor of the dead.' Then you place the wreath carefully at the base of the monument and walk slowly back here. Got it?”

Bill concentrated for a minute. “Sure. 'In honor of the dead.' No problem. I know a lot of people who are dead.”

There was a big crowd waiting, but not like the other crowds Bill had seen. This one was quiet, and it stayed behind the barricades without pushing forward or reaching out to touch Bill. A roundish man in a black suit came up, shook Bill's hand, and introduced himself as the mayor of the city. Bill didn't know what city it was, and the name wouldn't have meant anything to him in any case, so he just nodded politely and took the wreath.

Attached to the wreath was a big ribbon, and someone had thoughtfully inscribed Bill's line on it. He started to tuck it under one arm, but Sam whispered from behind him that he should hold it out at arm's length so everyone could see it. That was a little awkward, but the wreath wasn't too heavy.

The hard part was walking down that long, wide aisle through the silent crowd. Every one of the thousands of faces was turned toward Bill, watching and waiting. It was a lot harder on his nerves than the screaming throngs he'd seen before. Those were a little like combat, and he knew how to deal with it. This was more like the time before a battle, when you didn't really know what to expect, except that it wouldn't be good.