Free The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell by Harry Harrison Page A

smacking her lips.
    â€œNever! They’re friends.” My stomach rumbled enticingly. “Well maybe later, much later. And only if we can’t find another source of food. I think a little exploring is in order. This is—or was—a settled world. Mankind took the mutated porcuswine and storoak to the stars. There should be farms here.”
    â€œI wouldn’t even know what one looked like. I was a city girl, or rather a small-town girl. Food was something that you bought in the shop. My mother and father—everyone there—worked at teleconferencing or programming or computing or whatever. No factories, no pollution, that sort of thing was confined to the distant robot construction sites. Our town was just low and ordinary, just a lot of landscaped buildings and green parks. Utterly and totally boring.”
    I squinted across the lake where the mist appeared to be clearing. I pointed.
    â€œLike that place over there?”

CHAPTER 6
    â€œWHAT PLACE?” SHE ASKED, STANDING and shielding her eyes with her hand. I pointed in silence.
    â€œSeen one, you’ve seen them all,” she muttered, frowning. “They must be factory-produced, stamped out like cereal packages. Fold the thing and glue it and plop it down, hook up the electricity and it starts to work. I couldn’t even bear to go to school in Hometown—that is really what it was really called, would you believe it? I graduated first place in my kiddy class, got a scholarship, went away to school and never came back. Knocked around a bit, got involved with police work, liked it. Then I was recruited by the Special Corps and the rest is history.”
    â€œDo you want to take a look at this hometown?”
    â€œNo, I do not.”
    â€œIt might be fun—and there should be food there. Unless you want a pork roast so badly that you want to kill a porcuswine with your bare hands?”
    â€œNo jokes, please. We’ll take a look.”
    It was not a large lake and the walk was a short one. Sybil, who had started out in good spirits, grew quieter and quieter as we approached the low buildings. She finally stopped.

    â€œNo,” she said firmly.
    â€œNo, what?”
    â€œNo it’s not a place I really want to visit. They all look exactly alike, I told you, central design, central manufacture. Plug the thing in and watch it go to work. I hated my childhood.”
    â€œDidn’t we all? But the porcuswine, they were the best part of it. Probably the only part that I remember with any feeling. Now let’s go see if we can find a McSwineys and get a sandwich in this bijou townlet.”
    There was nothing moving in the streets or the buildings ahead. A single road came out of the hamlet and ended abruptly in the grass. There was a billboard sign of some kind beside it, but it was end on and we couldn’t read it until we got closer. We walked at an angle as we approached so we could see what it said. Sybil stopped suddenly and clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were closed.
    â€œRead it,” she said.
    â€œI did.”
    â€œWhat does it say?”
    â€œJust a coincidence …”
    Her eyes snapped open and she bit out the words. “Do you believe that? What does it say?”
    â€œIt reads, in serifed uppercase red letters on a white foreground, it reads …”
    â€œâ€˜Welcome to Hometown.’ Are we mad or is this whole planet mad?”
    â€œNeither.” I sat down and pulled a blade of grass free, chewed on it. “Something is happening here. Just what we have yet to discover.”
    â€œAnd we are going to discover what by sitting on our chunks and chewing grass.”
    She was angry now—which was much better than being frightened or depressed. I smiled sweetly and patted the grass beside me. “To action, then. You sit and chew the grass while I scout out the scene. Sit!”
    She sat. Because of the