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

lacks.”
    “That doesn't leave very much.”
    “Shut up.”
    “Sorry. Don't other creatures find your lair, too? I mean, that stripe is really very visible.”
    The Squoll gave a little chuckle. “They can't see it,” the Squoll said. “The predators here have white-black blindness. It's a hereditary birth factor, and of great importance to us Squolls, as you might imagine.”
    The opening to the Squoll nest was small, but Bill, being ineffable, was able to slide in easily. The Squoll had counted on this, evidently, because he seemed to assume that Bill could go anywhere that he could go.
    “Now I'll just put up the tea,” the Squoll said. “I'd like you to meet my wife, Mrs Squoll, but she's working today with the ladies' auxiliary. And the children are in school, of course. Tea's just about ready. Lemon or milk?”
    “I told you,” Bill said. “I can't drink without a body.”
    “But you can pretend, can't you?”
    “All right, I suppose that I can,” Bill said. “Make it tea with lemon, please, one teaspoon of sugar, and a mug of Altarian rum on the side.”
    “I'm clean out of rum,” the Squoll said. “Would Olde Sink Cleaner whiskey do?”
    “Sure it will,” Bill said, and he nodded approvingly as the Squoll poured an imaginary drink from an imaginary bottle into an imaginary shot glass.
    And so the afternoon passed in a haze of imaginary whiskey and bona fide good spirits. Bill felt considerably better after talking with the Squoll. He determined not to give in to his circumstances. The next day, when his work in the fields began, Bill set the sprinklers for automatic operation, asked the Squoll to keep an eye on things for him and let him know via neuronic telegram if anything went amiss. And then he went exploring.
    It was wonderful to soar with the assistance of the battery pack through the world of Tsuris. It was a good-looking planet, once you got under the unpromising-looking layer of clouds. There were villages scattered here and there as he hurried across the mainland. There were steep mountains to duck and dodge among. There were rivers whose courses he could follow. And from time to time Bill met other members of the computer's semi-autonomous family.
    One of these was Scalsior, a semi-autonomous tri-pedal creature from Argone IV, who had been passing this way some years ago while on his way to a reunion of his kith in Accesor, foremost of the Cepheid worlds. He had never gotten there. The Tsuris computer, which was able to extend its power far beyond its biosphere, like a globular creature extending a long ghostly but effective pseudopod, extended its influence and plucked the Scalsian ship out of space and dragged it down to the level of the planet. Scalsior had been enslaved as had so many other sentient creatures, who had been for the most part just passing by and minding their own business.
    Scalsior had also met the Squoll, and the two had become close friends.
    “Si,” Scalsior said, “eez a very good fellow, eez our Squoll. I give great envy to him his merry state. Look closely and give beeg sneer at the most stupid job that cabron computer has given me.”
    Scalsior's job was to open and close the locks on a small irrigation ditch deep in the vegetable fields. The work in itself was valuable, since plants on Tsuris, as everywhere, require their moisture or they are apt to scream in pain, turn brown or black, fold up their petals across their stems and die. At least some plants somewhere did that. But although the work was useful, it didn't require the daily full attention of a grown-up like Scalsior; especially since there was an automatic opening and closing mechanism on the lock valves which functioned pretty well most of the time.
    “Merda eet has been most bloody unpleasant to me,” Scalsior said, “to at last finally achieve celestial harmony of a bodiless state while still living, a state in which I am mind, all mind, and find that this mind of mine eez being used for