Bill 4 - on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure by Harry Harrison Read Free Book Online Page B

blowing the smoke into my ear. “There are these Three Weird Sisters, you see —”
    “Hullo!”
    The voice sounded like it came from a great distance and had been amplified by a wonky klaxon-speaker.
    Bill blinked. He came out of his book-induced fugue. He willed the words to disappear from his vision, and they did, but only after the second try. He realized that he had stopped climbing. He was standing on a level plateau with marble-columned temples in the near distance. In the forefront of this scene, on the stone agora — that is, Greek marketplace, or meeting place or assembly or, you know, something like that — stood a thirty-meter-high gleaming-silver starship with a needle nose and fins that looked as though it would have been more at home on top of a trophy for bad pulp fiction awards than here on Olympus. In big lustrous curlicued letters on its side was a name: DESIRE. The entire scene had an amazing luster and sheen to it, like a movie matte: in the background, a magnificent silver moon was rising up over acrylic-blue and white mountains. The creatures and citizens in the background looked like cartoons and tended to wear ruffles at their arms and throats. In short, not very Greek at all. And Zoroaster! In the skies, the stars looked like stylized twinkles on Christmas trees!
    Bill was flabbergasted, stunned. Unbelievingly, he felt his flabber — and it really was gasted!
    The whole panorama looked like an animated poster done by the Kelly Freebees school of Art at the L. Ron Hubris University, the boys who did the artwork for Trooper recruiting posters!
    He drifted toward it, so dazzled by the bravura colors and airbrush work that he barely noticed the stink of the dead dove that hung about his neck.
    Bill was approaching the starship cautiously when suddenly a pneumatic door opened in its belly, and a rope ladder unwound down to the marble floor. By the time he'd reached the base, a figure had exited the starship and was descending the rope with reckless ease. He was a tall, handsome man, wearing a rhinestone eye-patch, bright orange epaulets, tastefully decorated with shining tinsel, and long shiny black boots. A metallic-orange sash was tied around his slender midsection and from this dangled a holstered hand-blaster on one side, and a menacing cutlass on the other. This highly impressive, not to say ferociously gaudy, figure dropped down the last eight feet, tripping and falling with a clatter onto his butt. Bill caught a decided whiff of lavender and rum. The man looked up, bemused, at Bill with one startling blue eye. The other was startlingly rhinestone.
    “Arrrrrrrr,” he said in a voice like Blackbeard's after Remedial English Lessons. “Hyperboreals, me fellow bucko! Does life remind you of the junk that floats onto the beach in Tokyo Bay?”
    “No. I don't think that I ever heard of Tokyo Bay.”
    “Me neither. Hudson Bay, more like. Right by Nyark City on Earth. I did a quick read once on fabled Earth, historical home of all mankind, now riven by the blasts of atomic war. Where was I?”
    “In the middle of Hudson Bay, I think.”
    “Of course, dear boy. How bright you are! Anyway, medical detritus, junkie needles, old Charlie Parker records. Never mind. Name's Rick. Rick the Supernal Hero.” He held up his hand to shake, which Bill promptly did, introducing himself.
    “Hullo, I'm Bill. Spelled with two L's. Was that you who hailed me a moment ago?”
    “Certainly was. Saw you coming up over the horizon with that dead dove around your neck, knew at once that you must be a mariner in the ocean of Life like your obedient servant!” He looked on his shoulder. “Arrrrr! Now where's me own little bird! Archimedes!” He yelled back to the door in the side of the splendiferous starship. “Archimedes, come down and meet another bird-fancier.”
    “Awwwwwwwwwwwk!” squawked a voice from above. “Pieces of shayte! Pieces of shayte!”
    “Watch it, Bill. Archy's had the trots lately,”