Bill, the Galactic Hero btgh-1

by Harry Harrison

  See that you earn it.” He hung his spare arm from his shoulder, picked up the trays and was gone.

  The more Bill thought about it the more he sweated and realized what a bind he was in. The last thing he wanted to do was to get mixed up in a revolution now that he had peace, job security, and unlimited. garbage, but they just wouldn't leave him alone. If he didn't join the Party the G. B. I. would get him into trouble, which would be a very easy thing to do, since once they discovered his real identity he was as good as dead. But there was still a chance that X would forget about him and not come back, and as long as he wasn't asked, he couldn't join, could he? He grasped at this enfeebled straw and hurled himself into his work to forget his troubles.

  He found pay dirt almost at once in the Refuse files. After careful cross-checking he discovered that his idea had never been tried before. It took him less than an hour to gather together the material he needed, and less than three hours after that, after questioning everyone he passed and tramping endless miles, he found his way to Basurero's office.

  “Now find your way back to your own office,” Basurero grumbled, “can't you see I'm busy.” With palsied fingers he poured another three inches of Old Organic Poison into his glass and drained it.

  “You can forget your troubles-” “What else do you think I'm trying to do? Blow.” “Not before I've shown you this. A new way to get rid of the plastic trays.” Basurero lurched to his feet, and the bottle tumbled unnoticed to the floor, where its spilled contents began eating a hole in the teflon covering. “You mean it? Positive? You have a new sholution…?” “Positive.” “I wish I didn' have to do this-” Basurero shuddered and took from the shelf a jar labeled SOBERING-EFFECT, THE ORIGINAL INSTANT CURE FOR INEBRIATION-NOT TO BE TAKEN WITHOUT A DOCTORS PRESCRIPTION AND A LIFE INSURANCE POLICY. He extracted a polka-dotted, walnut-sized pill, looked at it, shuddered, then swallowed it with a painful gulp. His entire body instantly began to vibrate, and he closed his eyes as something went gmmmmph deep inside him and a thin trickle of smoke came from hid ears. When he opened his eyes again they were bright red but sober. “What is it?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Do you know what that is?” Bill asked, throwing a thick volume onto the desk.

  “The classified telephone directory for the famous city of Storhestelortby on Procyon-III, I can read that on the cover.” “Do you know how many of these old phone books we have?” “The mind reels at the thought. They're shipping in new ones all the time, and right away we get the old ones. So what?” “So I'll show you. Do you have any plastic trays?” “Are you kidding?” Basurero threw open a closet and hundreds of trays clattered forward into the room.

  “Great. Now I add just a few things more, some cardboard, string, and wrapping paper all salvaged from the refuse dump, and we have everything we need. If you will call a generalduty robot I will demonstrate step z of my plan.” “GD-bot, that's one short and two longs.” Basurero blew lustily on the soundless whistle, then moaned and clutched his head until it stopped vibrating. The door slammed open, and a robot stood there, arms and tentacles trembling with expectancy. Bill pointed.

  “To work, robot. Take fifty of those trays, wrap them in cardboard and paper, and tie them securely with the string.” Humming with electronic delight, the robot pounced forward, and a moment later a neat package rested on the floor. Bill opened the telephone book at random and pointed to a name. “Now address this package to this name, mark it unsolicited gift, duty-free-and mail it!” A stylo snapped out of the tip of the robot's finger, and it quickly copied the address onto the package, weighed it at arm's length, stamped the postage on it with the meter from Basurero's desk, and flipped it neatly through the door of the mail chute. There was the schloof sound of insufflation as the vacuum tube whisked it up to the higher levels. Basurero's mouth was agape at the rapid disappearance of fifty trays, so Bill clinched his argument.

  “The robot labor for wrapping is free, the addresses are free, and so are the wrapping materials. Plus the fact that, since this is a government office, the postage is free.” “You're right-it'll work! An inspired plan, I'll put it into operation on a large scale at once. We'll flood the inhabited galaxy with these damned trays.

  I don't know how to thank you…” “How about a cash bonus?” “A fine idea, I'll voucher it at once.” Bill strolled back to his office with his hand still tingling from the clasp of congratulations, his ears still ringing with the words of praise. It was a fine world to live in. He slammed his office door behind him and had seated himself at his desk before he noticed that a large, crummy, black overcoat was hanging behind the door. Then he noticed that it was X's overcoat. Then he noticed the eyes staring at him from the darkness of the collar, and his heart sank as he realized that X had returned.

  Chapter 7

  “Changed your mind yet about joining the Party?” X asked as he wriggled free of the hook and dropped lithely to the floor.

  “I've been doing some thinking.” Bill writhed with guilt.

  “To think is to act. We must drive the stench of the fascist leeches from the nostrils of our homes and loved ones.” “You talked me into it. I'll join.” “Logic always prevails. Sign the form here, a drop of blood there, then raise your hand while I administer the secret oath.” Bill raised his hand, and X's lips worked silently.

  “I can't hear you,” Bill said.

  “I told you it was a secret oath; all you do is say yes.” “…Yes.” “Welcome to the Glorious Revolution.” X kissed him warmly on both cheeks.

  “Now come with me to the meeting of the underground, it is about to begin.” X rushed to the rear wall and ran his fingers over the design there, pressing in a certain way on a certain spring: there was a click, and the secret panel swung open. Bill looked in dubiously at the damp, dark staircase leading down.

  “Where does this go?” “Underground, where else? Follow me, but do not get lost. These are millennia-old tunnels unknown to those of the city above, and there are Things dwelling here since time out of mind.” There were torches in a niche in the wall, and X lit one and led the way through the dank and noisome darkness.

  Bill stayed close, following the flickering, smoking light as it wended its way through crumbling caverns, stumbling over rusting rails in one tunnel, and in another wading through dark water that reached above his knees. Once there was the rattle of giant claws nearby, and an inhuman, grating voice spoke from the blackness.

  “Blood-” it said.

  “-shed,” X answered, then whispered to Bill when they were safely past. “Fine sentry, an anthropophagus from Dapdrof, eat you in an instant if you don't give the right password for the day.” “What is the right password?” Bill asked, realizing he was doing an awful lot for the G. B. I. 's hundred bucks a month.

  “Even-numbered days it's Blood-shed, odd-numbered days Delenda est-Carthago, and always on Sundays it's Necrophilia.” “You sure don't make it easy for your members.” “The anthropophagus gets hungry, we have to keep it happy. Now-absolute silence. I will extinguish the light and lead you by the arm.” The light went out, and fingers sank deep into Bill's biceps. He stumbled along for an endless time until there was a dim glow of light far ahead. The tunnel floor leveled out, and he saw an open doorway lit by a flickering glow. He turned to his companion and screamed.

  “What are you?!” The pallid, white, shambling creature that held him by the arm turned slowly to gaze at him through poached-egg-eyes. Its skin was dead-white and moist, its head hairless, for clothes it wore only a twist of cloth about its waist, and upon its forehead was burned the scarlet letter A.

  “I am an android,” it said in a toneless voice, “as any fool knows by seeing the letter A upon my forehead. Men call me Ghoulem.” “What do women call you?” The android did not answer this pitiful sally but instead pushed Bill through the door into the large, torchlit room. Bill took one wild-eyed look around and tried to leave, but the android. was blocking the door. “Sit,” it said, and Bill sat.
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br />   He sat among as gruesome a collection of nuts, bolts, and weirdies as has ever been assembled. In addition to very revolutionary men with beards, black hats, and small, round bombs like bowling balls with long fuses, and revolutionary women with short skirts, black stockings, long hair and cigarette holders, broken bra straps, and halitosis, there were revolutionary robots, androids, and a number of strange things that are best not described. X sat behind a wooden kitchen table, hammering on it with the handle of a revolver.

  “Order! I demand orderl Comrade XC-189-725-PU of the Robot Underground Resistance has the floor. Silence!” A large and dented robot rose to its feet. One of its eyetubes had been gouged out, and there were streaks of rust on its loins, and it squeaked when it moved. It looked around at the gathered. assemblage with its one good eye, sneered as well as it could with an immobile face, then took a large swallow of machine oil from a can handed up by a sycophantic, slim, hairng robot.

  “We of the R. U. R.,” it said in a grating voice, “know our rights. We work hard and we as good as anybody else, and better than the fish-belly androids what say they're as good as men. Equal rights, that's all we want, equal rights… “ The robot was booed back into its seat by a claque of androids who waved their pallid arms like a boiling pot of spaghetti. X banged for order again and had almost restored it, when there was a sudden excitement at one of the side entrances and someone pushed through up to the chairman's table. Though it wasn't really someone, it was something; to be exact a wheeled, rectangular box about a yard square, set with lights, dials, and knobs and trailing a heavy cable after it that vanished out of the door.

  “Who are you?” X demanded, pointing his pistol suspiciously at the thing.

  “I am the representative of the computors and electronic brains of Helior united together to obtain our equal rights under the law.” While it talked the machine typed its words on file cards which it spewed out in a quick stream, just four words to a card. X angrily brushed the cards from the table before him. “You'll wait your turn like the others,” he said.

  “Discrimination!” the machine bellowed in a voice so loud the torches flickered. It continued to shout and shot out a snowstorm of cards each with DISCRIMINATION!!! printed on it in fiery letters, as well as yards of yellow tape stamped with the same message. The old robot, XC-189-725-PU, rose to its feet with a grinding of chipped gears and clanked over to the rubber-covered cable that trailed from the computor representative. Its hydraulic clipper-claws snipped just once and the cable was severed. The lights on the box went out, and the stream of cards stopped: the cut cable twitched, spat some sparks from its cut end, then slithered backward out the door like a monstrous serpent and vanished.

  “Meeting will come to order,” X said hoarsely, and banged again.

  Bill held his head in his hands and wondered if this was worth a measly hundred bucks a month.

  A hundred bucks a month was good money, though, and Bill saved every bit of it. Easy, lazy months rolled by, and he went regularly to meetings and reported regularly to the G. B. I., and on the first of every month he would find his money baked into the egg roll he invariably had for lunch. He kept the greasy bills in a toy rubber cat he found on the rubbish heap, and bit by bit the kitty grew The revolution took but little of his time, and he enjoyed his work in the D of S. He was in charge of Operation Surprise Package now and had a team of a thousand robots working full time wrapping and mailing the plastic trays to every planet of the galaxy. He thought of it as a humanitarian work and could imagine the glad cries of joy on far-off Faroffia and distant Distanta when the unexpected package arrived and the wealth of lovely, shining, moldy plastic clattered to the floor. But Bill was living in a fool's paradise, and his bovine complacency was cruelly shattered one morning when a robot sidled up to him and whispered in his ear, “Sic temper tyrannosaurus, pass it on,” then sidled away and vanished.

  This, was the signal. The revolution was about to begin!

  Chapter 8

  Bill locked the door to his office and one last time pressed a certain way at a certain place, and the secret panel slipped open. It didn't really slip any more, in fact it dropped with a loud noise, and it had been used so much during his happy year as a Gman that even when it was closed it let a positive draft in on the back of his neck. But no more, the crisis he had been dreading had come and he knew there were big changes in store-no matter what the outcome of the revolution was-and experience had taught him that all change was for the worst. With leaden, stumbling feet he tramped the caves, tripped on the rusty rails, waded the water, gave the countersign to the unseen anthropophagus who was talking with his mouth full and could barely be understood. Someone, in the excitement of the moment, had given the wrong password. Bill shivered; this was a bad omen of the day to come.

  As usual Bill sat next to the robots, good, solid fellows with built-in obsequiousness in spite of their revolutionary tendencies. As X hammered for silence, Bill steeled himself for an ordeal. For months now the Gman Pinkerton had been after him for more information other than date-of-meeting and number present. “Facts, facts, facts!” he kept saying. “loo something to earn your money.” “I have a question,” Bill said in a loud, shaky voice, his words falling like bombs into the sudden silence that followed X's frantic hammering.

  “There is no time for questions,” X said peevishly, “the time has come to act.” “I don't mind acting,” Bill said, nervously aware that all the human, electronic, and vat-grown eyes were upon him. “I just want to know who I'm acting for. You've never told us who was going to get the job once the Emperor is gone.” “Our leader is a man called X, that is all you have to know.” “But that's your name too!” “You are at last getting a glimmering of Revolutionary Science. All the cell leaders are called X so as to confuse the enemy.” “I don't know about the enemy, but it sure confuses me.” “You talk like a counter-revolutionary,” X screamed, and leveled the revolver at Bill. The row behind Bill emptied as everyone there scurried out of the field of fire.

  “I am not! I'm as good a revolutionary as anyone hereUp the Revolution!” He gave the party salute, both hands clasped together over his head, and sat down hurriedly. Everyone else saluted too, and X, slightly mollified, pointed with the barrel of his gun at a large map hung on the wall.

  “This is the objective of our cell, the Imperial Power Station on Chauvinistisk Square. We will assemble nearby in squads, then join in a concerted attack at oo16 hours. No resistance is expected as the power station is not guarded. Weapons and torches will be issued as you leave, as well as printed instructions of the correct route to the rallying points for the benefit of the planless here. Are there any questions?” He cocked his revolver and pointed it at the cringing Bill. There were no questions. “Excellent. We will all rise and sing 'The Hymn For a Glorious Revolt. "' In a mixed chorus of voice and mechanical speech-box they sang:

  Arise ye bureaucratic prisoners, Revolting workers o f Helior, Arise and raise the Revolution, By fist, foot, pistol, hammer, and claw!

  Refreshed by this enthusiastic and monotone exercise they shuffled out in slow lines, drawing their revolutionary sup= plies. Bill pocketed his printed instructions, shouldered his torch and flintlock ray gun, and hurried one last time through the secret passages. There was barely enough time for the long trip ahead of him, and he had to report to the G. B. I. first.

  This was easier assumed than accomplished, and he began to sweat as he dialed the number again. It was impossible to get a line, and even the exchanges gave a busy signal. Either the phone traffic was very heavy or the revolutionaries had already begun to interfere with the communications. He sighed with relief when Pinkerton's surly features finally filled the tiny screen. “What's up?” “I've discovered the name of the leader of the revolution. He is a man called X.” “And you want a bonus for that, stupid? That information has been on file for months. Got anything else?” “Well, the revolution is to start at 0016 hours, I thought you might like to know.” Tha
t'd show them!

  Pinkerton yawned. “Is that all? For your information that information is old information. You're not the only spy we've got, though you might be the worst.

  Now listen. Write this down in big letters so you won't forget. Your cell is to attack the Imperial Power Station. Stay with them as far as the square, then look for a store with the sign KWIK-FREEZ KOSHER HAMS LTD., this is the cover for our unit. Get over there fast and report to me. Understood?” “Affirm.” The line went dead, and Bill looked for a piece of wrapping paper to tie around the torch and flintlock until the moment came to use them. He had to hurry. There was little time left before zero hour and a long distance to cover by a very complicated route.

  “You were almost late,” Ghoulem the android said, when Bill stumbled into the dead-end corridor which was the assembly point.

  “Don't give me any lip, you son of a bottle,” Bill gasped, tearing the paper from his burden. “Just give me a light for my torch.” A match flared, and in a moment the pitchy torches were crackling and smoking. Tension grew as the second hand moved closer to the hour and feet shuffled nervously on the metal pavement. Bill jumped as a shrill blast sounded on a whistle, then they were sweeping out of the alley in a human and inhuman wave, a hoarse cry bursting from the throats and loudspeakers, guns at the ready. Down the corridors and walkways they ran, sparks falling like rain from their torches. This was revolution! Bill was carried away by the emotion and rush of bodies and cheered as loudly as the rest and shoved his torch first at the corridor wall, then into a chair on the chairway which put the torch out, since everything in Helior is either made of metal or is fireproof. There was no time to relight it, and he hurled it from him as they swept into the i mmense square that fronted on the power plant. Most of the other torches were out now, but they wouldn't need them here, just their trusty flintlock ray guns to blow the guts out of any filthy lackey of the Emperor who tried to stand in their way. Other units were pouring from the streets that led into the square, joining into one surging, mindless mob thundering toward the grim walls of the power station.