"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

worlds will possess the ultimate treasure of the worlds. Without this
promise, the worlds would be out of balance forever.

The meanest man of all the worlds was Peter Feeney -- a low-down sniveler, a
weak man. In one thing only he was exceptional -- he had the finest eye for
beauty in a woman of any man anywhere: this, though of all men he was the
least successful with women. His purity of appraisal was not dulled by close
contact or possession. His judgments of beauty were sound and uncompromised,
though sometimes bitter.
And really, how many beautiful women are there in the Universe?
Six.
Only six? Are you sure? All that noise has been about only six of
them?

Pete Feeney was sure. His rapid eyes -- the only rapid things about
him -- had scanned millions of women in his random travels. And only six of
the women could be called beautiful.
There was the lady on Mellionella, seen only once in a crowd,
followed and lost, and never seen again in a year's search.
There was the girl in a small town on East Continent of Hokey
Planet. And this girl there was something that caused agony to Peter: he
had heard her speak; she spoke like a girl in a small town on East Continent
of Hokey Planet. He prayed that she might be struck dumb; knowing that it
was an evil prayer, knowing that she was one of the really beautiful ones,
whatever the sound of her.
There was the girl of shallow virtue on Leucite. She was perfect.
What else can you say after that?
There was the mother of six on Camiroi -- no longer young, of no
particular repose or station or ease, hurried, impatient, and quite likely
the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
 On Trader Planet there was a young Jewess of bewildering kindness
and frankness and of inextricably entangled life.
In San Juan, on old Earth, there was a fine creature who conbined
the three main ethnic strains of old mankind. Peter made a second journey
there to see her; after first vision and departure he had not been able to
believe what he had seen.
Six in all the worlds? Somehow there should have been more beautiful
women than that.
Then Peter saw Teresa.
And she made the seventh?
No. She made the first. The six faded. There was only one. The most
beautiful woman ever, in the farthest arm of the Galaxy -- the Ultimate
Creature.

II

This was on Groll's Planet. To get there, said the agent in
Electrum, you go to the end of the Galaxy, and turn left. It was a shabby
little world in the boondocks that are beyond the boondocks, and only shabby
people came there.