Bill 7 - the Galactic Hero (11 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

“My feet,” Bill explained, lifting the Swiss Army Foot onto Grotsky's desk. “This is the only one I have with me, but I have a whole collection of them back at my base. You wouldn't happen to have any spare right feet lying around in the morgue or something, would you? Much as I like my snap-ons, a real human foot would be nice.”

The mildly maladjusted Grotsky started playing with his computer. Bill kept sipping at his beer. Bill made better progress.

“Gee, I'm sorry, Bill, but we haven't had enough people blown apart to have a ready supply of feet. Maybe in a few more days.”

“That's OK,” Bill said generously. “I'm pretty much used to it by now.” But something niggled at the most distant recess of his mind — a recess that was getting more distant with each swig of beer.

“I'll tell you what,” Grotsky said, “I'll put you on the priority list for feet. Gee, that's your right foot, isn't it?”

“THAT'S IT!” Bill cried. He looked carefully at his pal Grotsky, checking for seams around the hairline. “You keep saying 'Gee'!”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do!”

Grotsky thought about it, then nodded. “I guess I do. I must have picked it up from a friend of mine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Gee. I mean, yeah, pretty sure.”

Bill considered the devious Grotsky. “I used to know someone else who said 'Gee' a lot. My old buddy Eager Beager said 'Gee' all the time.” Absence, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder. Bill and all the other troopers had hated Eager Beager with a passion normally reserved only for officers, but the memory of all those boots that Beager shined so beautifully lingered long after the man's smarmy personality had been obliterated. “And Beager turned out to be a Chinger spy.” He glared at the misguided and evil Grotsky.

“Well, I'm not a Chinger spy. For one thing, I'm not nearly tall enough. Chingers are seven feet tall, and green, and lizards with tails, and none of those apply to me.” Grotsky stood up and turned around. He was right.

Grotsky handed Bill another beer and looked him straight in the eye. "I couldn't be a Chinger spy. I couldn't even know a Chinger spy. I'm a real human, after all.

“Trust me.”

Bill tried to remember where he'd heard that phrase before.

Two of the bodyguards held Bill up during the photo opportunity with President Grotsky. His legs were pretty much OK by then, but Bill's residual blood alcohol level had gotten quite low by then — down to nothing, really — and that fourteenth beer hit him hard. It was a good thing they had brought the wheelchair.

Bill was essentially unconscious through the trip to the ENN studios, and only slightly conscious through his interview. Fortunately, the reporter was ENN's expert on political and military affairs, so she was used to that. In fact, Bill did a lot better than some of the interviews she'd done before the war.

ENN's Vice President for Patriotic Drum-Beating was so impressed with Bill's on-camera presence — and he was indisputably present, if not coherent — that he ordered the interview shown at least once an hour.

Suddenly, Bill was a star.

The Eyerackians having very little experience with war, and Bill being, as far as they could tell, their only prisoner of war, they had to ask him about the proper treatment of prisoners. He was more than willing to oblige.

“Luxury hotels, usually. With well-stocked bars in the rooms. That part is important: Maid service — yeah, maid service has to be included. Zoftig maids. Everybody ought to have a maid. Room service. Real food.” Bill drifted off into a reverie of physical pleasures.

“Gee,” said Sam or Sid. Now that Bill was a celebrity and a friend of the president, he had two bodyguards assigned to him. “That doesn't sound much like being a prisoner to me. Are you sure about this?”

“Absolutely.” Bill nodded his head up and down vigorously. “I've been a prisoner lots of times, and this is how it's supposed to be done. According to the Ginever Convention. Uh-huh, uh-huh. This is it.”

Sam looked at Sid, and vice versa. Or the other way around. “I'm not sure we can do that,” Sid or Sam said.

“Gee, that sounds awfully expensive,” the other one said.

“Besides,” the first bodyguard said, “there's your publicity tour. Not every place we're going has a luxury hotel. And most of the good hotels are full of reporters anyway. There aren't many rooms left.”

“Well,” Bill said, “you wouldn't want it to get back to the Empire that you're mistreating prisoners. Then they'd really get teed off at you.”

Sid and Sam looked at each other. “You mean they're doing this to us without being mad at us?”

“Not really mad.”

“Uh-oh,” Sam and Sid said in unison.

Bill's first stop was at a supermarket. There was a little platform set up, and the local mayor made a speech and introduced Bill, and then Bill lifted up his Swiss Army Foot and sliced through a big red ribbon with his laser torch. The crowd went wild.

Bill was a little surprised that the supermarket was underground, but his mother had taught him to be polite and not to ask too many peculiar questions when he was a guest.

Next they went to a mall, where Bill signed autographs and had his picture taken with local politicians, damp babies, and suchlike.

It wasn't quite what Bill had in mind when he thought of celebrity — he wasn't surrounded by hordes of pneumatic young women begging to warm his bed — but it wasn't too bad. He got fed regularly, and it was almost real food, not something that had been recycled and reconstituted. He got to sleep in a real bed without being in a hospital and in momentary danger of death. He had his good buddies Sam and Sid to hang around with, and they never tried to kill him even once (which was more than he could say of any of his other friends since joining the troopers).

People treated him in a very odd way, too, besides not trying to kill him. They called him “sir,” and said “thank you” when he signed his eight-by-ten glossy for them, even when he spelled their names wrong, and they asked him to do things instead of ordering him to in a loud voice.

It was very peculiar, but Bill was afraid to ask about it because then it might turn out to be a mistake, and he liked it.

At his third stop, where he got to introduce the West models of hovercars at the auto show, he came up with his brilliant idea.

The models who were demonstrating the latest models all wanted his autograph, of course. They were the first in line, in fact, because they had to get back to work standing next to the cars and pointing roughly in the direction of the theoretically new and incredibly desirable features.

Sam or Sid held Bill down in his seat and pushed a picture in front of him. Sid or Sam put a pen in Bill's hand.

“And what's your name, dear?” Sam or Sid asked the first model. They had learned very quickly just how bad an idea it was to let Bill talk to attractive women in public; the first time a good-looking girl asked for his autograph he had grabbed her and it took five minutes to pry him loose.

It didn't really fit the image President Grotsky wanted Bill to project. Since then the S-men had limited Bill's communication with such women to signing his name.

The statuesque redhead said, “Kitty.”

Sid or Sam leaned down to whisper in Bill's ear so he could spell the name correctly. “For my good friend _________________, Fight the good fight!” was already stamped on each glossy, in a fair imitation of Bill's handwriting, so he just had to fill in two names, and he already knew how to spell his own. But Bill was smarter than they thought: he could get most of the standard four-letter names on his own, and many of the five-letter ones. So he was already writing when the bodyguard said, “Big k, little i, little t, little i.”

And when he handed over the picture, with a big smile and a bigger wink, he had finished writing not only the two names, but also, under his autograph, “Room 318,” which he had carefully memorized when they checked into the hotel. By the crowds gathered to see him then, he figured Kitty and the other models would have no trouble figuring out which hotel it was.

And he was right.

That evening, after a sumptuous dinner in the hotel's bar, Sam and Sid and Bill were relaxing in their suite, belching and sucking their teeth and drinking beer.

“Uurrp,” said Sid or Sam.

“Uurrp,” said Sam or Sid.

“Uurrp,” said Bill.

This conversational brilliance went on for some time, until it was interrupted by a knock on the door. A gentle, delicate knock.

One of the S's was halfway to the door when Bill remembered that he was expecting someone, even if he didn't know quite who. He dropped his beer, hauled himself off the sofa, and motored across the room, bowling Sid or Sam over in his rush.

Bill got the door open on the second try, once he remembered that he had to turn the knob. He swung the door wide, and there she stood.

Tall and slim, with flame-red hair down to her wasp-like waist, she stood there in the spangled evening gown she had been wearing at the auto show. If Bill's hands together could go around her waist, they would be challenged to encompass her breasts. Her legs rose up from the floor, and rose, and rose, until they made an ass of themselves. Bill couldn't see that, but he remembered it from this morning, and in form and motion it was, indeed, memorable.

He didn't remember her name as well as her bottom, but he wouldn't have been able to speak even if he did. She was a vision of incredible loveliness, compounded by the fact that Bill hadn't had any direct physical contact with a woman, aside from the nurse in the hospital, since at least the preceding volume in the series.

Fortunately, she took the initiative. “Kitty,” she said. “We met this morning.” She held out a perfect, sensuous hand languorously.

“Bill,” he said. “With two L's.”

“Of course.” She looked into his eyes, and he felt something go soft deep inside. It was balanced by something else starting to go hard. “May I come in?”

“Bill,” he said.

“I'll take that as yes.”

Kitty moved Bill aside with a gentle touch of her hand and stepped into the room. “Are you busy with these gentlemen?” she asked.

“No, no, not at all. They were just leaving — right, guys?” Bill made subtle sweeping motions, waving both arms over his head to indicate to Sid and Sam that they should leave.

But this was not in their instructions.

“Gee. This isn't in our instructions,” one of them said. “We were told to keep you out of trouble, and to keep you from doing anything that might offend your public.”

Bill turned back to Kitty, pulled his tongue back into his mouth, and said, “You won't be offended, will you?” He shook his head vigorously back and forth.

“Not at all.” She reached out with that perfect hand and stopped Bill's head which was still wagging. “I'm here of my own free will, and I'm over the age of consent.”

Bill whispered what he could remember of a prayer of thanksgiving to Ahura-Mazda.

“Gee,” one of the bodyguards said. “I guess it's OK then. Come on, Sid, we'll go into the other bedroom.”

(Got it! Bill's subconscious said. Sid is the one on the left! Sam is the one on the right!)

Kitty undulated over to the sofa, sat down, and patted the cushion beside her. “Wouldn't you be more comfortable over here?”

“I'm not sure comfortable is exactly the right word,” Bill said, running back across the room. It was particularly not comfortable because he forgot to go around the coffee table and had to limp the last few steps.

He sank down onto the couch and she swept him down and across his lap. “I love celebrities,” she said.

Bill sighed. “I love being a celebrity.”

The statuesque redhead put one hand on Bill's thigh and curled the other around his head. She gently lifted his head up and lowered her lips to his.

Kissing wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind when he put the room number on the pictures, but it was a good starting point, and Kitty was an especially good kisser. It was a promising beginning, and Bill could hardly wait to redeem the promise.

They had thrashed around into a full grapple when there was another knock on the door.

Kitty pulled away. “Are you expecting anyone? Room service, maybe?”

Bill pulled her back down. “No. Probably a wrong number.”

Whoever it was knocked again, harder.

Bill tried to continue with the kissing, but Kitty's mouth was moving. “Are you sure that isn't for you?”

He shook his head. “No, not for me, no way, not a chance.”

There was a third knock.

Sid or Sam — Bill still had no way of telling them apart if there was only one of them — stuck his head in from the bedroom. “Gee, Bill, should I get the door?”

“Uh — no, I'll get it.” Resignedly, Bill disentangled his hand from the buttons on the back of Kitty's dress. Whoever it was, he'd just have to get rid of them quickly.

The door swung open to reveal a woman who was as beautiful as Kitty, but with short dark brown hair.

“Hello, Bill,” she murmured. “Remember me? Misty?”

“Oh, yes,” he sighed.

“You gave me an autographed picture this morning.” She gave an unnecessary but delightful shimmy to remind him.

“Oh, yes,” he sighed.

“May I come in?” Misty asked.

“Who's that, Bill?” Kitty asked.

“Oh, err, hmmm,” Bill sighed.

“Is that you, Kitty?” Misty asked. She kissed Bill lightly on the cheek and stepped into the room. “Oh — am I interrupting anything?”

“Well, yes,” Bill said. “I mean, actually, no.” He tried to clear his head. He'd been raised to be polite, and he just couldn't figure out what was the polite thing to say in this situation. He also couldn't figure out how to keep both women here. He couldn't figure out how to explain to Kitty and Misty how they had both been invited. He couldn't figure out how Misty's simple little wraparound dress stayed attached to her body, except maybe magnetism or static electricity. He was altogether beyond rational thought or willful action.

“To tell you the truth, Misty,” Kitty explained, “we were just about to get involved in strenuous heterosexuality.”