Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains by Harry Harrison Read Free Book Online

computer had arranged it so that Bill could feel an analog of heat and cold, as well as kinesthetic analogs and others for the other senses. He knew that he wasn't experiencing the real thing, but it was a lot better than nothing at all. Some afternoons he would lay his metaphoric body down on a grassy knoll on the edge of one of the Tsotska fields. By adjustment of his analog receptors he could get the heavenly odor of red clover and sassweed. The computer even put in a musical analog for him. Bill wasn't much on classics, but the computer explained that the plants grew best when they listened to a lot of Mozart. Bill didn't complain, even though he usually liked music with a beat to it so he could tap his foot.
    After a while he got bored with the Tsotska fields and started to wander around. The computer was wired to all parts of the planet, so Bill could make use of the best transportation system he had ever seen. It did require the expenditure of energy to move along the transmission lines. But Bill soon discovered the analog of a battery pack, and so he was able to move himself around effortlessly, the way it was always meant be.
    The power pack analog came about when he met the Squoll. This was a small rodent-like creature that lived in the fields and woods of Tsuris and was able to communicate with autonomous computer projections such as Bill. The Squoll wasn't very intelligent — about the equal to a young and retarded sheepdog — but it made nice company. It was about the size of a terrestrial squirrel, and it had a large bushy tail at either end. This remarkable example of natural mimicry saved it from the many predators who liked to eat Squoll, since seeing two tails confused them just long enough for the Squoll to make his escape. Bill followed the Squoll back to its nest. The Squolls lived in the limbs of cardifer trees, those giants of the open woodlands and glades. It was difficult for the Squolls, since they hadn't been designed by nature to climb trees. Nature evidently had had something else in mind for them, since they had fins and gills and small rudimentary wings. It looked in fact as if nature hadn't quite made up its mind about Squolls. Bill met the Squoll one day when he was lying analogically on the pleasant green grass of the knoll and wishing he had a dirty comic book and a dobbinburger.
    “Good afternoon,” squeaked the Squoll. “You're new around here, aren't you?”
    “Yes, I suppose I am,” said Bill.
    “Semi-autonomous?”
    “Yes, exactly.”
    “Thought so,” said the Squoll. “You have that look of limited competence about you. Don't you get tired of watering these fields?”
    “I do,” Bill said, “but it's my job, you know.”
    “Oh, of course, I know that,” the Squoll said. “I could tell at once that you were one of the computer's extensions.”
    “I don't like to think of myself that way,” Bill said with some indignation. “But I guess you're right. I sure wish I had my body back.”
    “Yes,” the Squoll said, “bodies are nice. Especially ones like mine, with two tails. Would you like to come back to my roost and have some tea?”
    “I'd love to,” Bill said, “but I don't seem to have a body with which to drink it.”
    “Never mind,” the Squoll said. “We'll pretend. And you'll have a chance to meet the family.”
    The Squoll hopped along, and Bill drifted along in that bouncy way that computer simulations have. They soon reached the grassy knoll where the Squoll made his nest. It was a large hole in the hillside which was easy to find because the Squoll had outlined it with a broad stripe of white.
    “What's that for?” Bill asked.
    “The stripe is so that we Squolls can find our way back to our nests,” the Squoll told him. “Mother Nature has shortchanged our species a bit by equipping us with poor eyesight, hearing, taste, spatial cognition and smell. The rest of our senses are super-acute, however, to make up for these apparent