Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains Read Online Free PDF

here?”
    “Must we talk about that?” Illyria said. “It's been such a nice day, why spoil it?”
    Illyria got transferred to nights. She and Bill would talk about many things. Bill learned that the Tsurisians had been living on this planet of Tsuris for much longer than anyone could remember. There was a theory that, when Tsuris was born out of the fiery explosions of Eeyore, its yellowish-red sun, all of the intelligences which now lived on the planet as Tsurisians were born with it. Bill didn't understand what she meant. Illyria had to explain that there were no real births or deaths on Tsuris. All of the intelligences who had ever lived here were still around, existing unconsciously in a psychovivant solution of natural electrolytes.
    “All of them?” Bill asked. “How many are there?”
    “Exactly one billion,” Illyria told him. “No more and no less. And they — we — have all been here since the beginning. Some day I must show you where those without bodies are waiting. Or resting as we call it. They are in bottles —”
    “A billion brains in bottles! That's an awful lot of bottles.”
    “Indeed it is and we had to scour the galaxy for them. We have wine bottles, beer bottles, soft drink bottles — just about every kind of bottle that you can name.”
    “Whee,” Bill oozed, depressed again. “And why should there be exactly one billion?”
    “The ways of the Deity are strange,” Illyria said. She was a religious woman — a practicing member of the Church of Very Little Charities. Despite that she was a pleasant companion, and more broad-minded than most Tsurisian females. Or so she told Bill.
    Bill wondered, naturally enough, what was to become of him. Illyria didn't seem to want to talk about it. She would grow somber, or indicate whatever passed for somber whenever Bill raised the topic. Her bluish-yellow eyes would cloud over. Her voice would grow husky.
    Bill was having a good time, all things considered. The only work required of him, if you wanted to call it that, was a two-hour session in the nutrient bath. Never had his skin been so soft. His fingernails were getting soft, too. Even the claws on his alligator foot, which had grown to respectable size now, were starting to soften up. Once he asked Illyria why they were giving him so many baths, but she said she'd rather not talk about it.
    Illyria was fascinated by Bill's foot. At first it had frightened her, and she had insisted that he wear a velvet sock over it. But after a while she became used to the green alligator's foot, and would ask to see it, and pull his talons gently with her fingerlike appendages, the way mother vultures play with the talons of baby vultures.
    Once Illyria had asked him how he was in math. “Not very good,” Bill said. “I needed two terms in special technical training school and that was no good. I had to get special math injection brain treatments before I could do simple addition on an electronic computer.”
    “We don't allow any of those here,” Illyria said. “Everybody does math in their heads.”
    “So if everyone else does math, why should I have to?”
    Illyria sighed and did not reply. The doctors came in next morning. There were three of them. They wore shapes different from the other ones. Bill learned that this was common on Tsuris.
    “But how come you have so many different shapes?” Bill asked.
    “The one thing that has always been lacking on our planet,” a doctor tells him, “is the normal function of birth and death. When our world came into existence, all of the intelligences were already here, in the form of water droplets inside large purplish clouds. It took a very long time before any physical forms came about here. Even then, they came from off planet. An expedition from some other world. We were able, with our superior intelligences, at least in regard to devices for taking things over, to incorporate them. Thus our life on Tsuris got a Physical basis. Unfortunately, none