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

coming progeny, waxed (by former standards) in wealth, and were no longer
mean and inconsequential. Only one man can be married to the most beautiful
woman in the universe, and it passes all understanding that that one man
should be Peter feeney.
This was perfection. It wasn't just that Teresa had regained her
"former beauty" and now weighed well over two hundred pounds. Peter liked
that part of it.
But is it possible for perfection to become too perfect?
 III

For this was perfection. They lived on a kindred but larger and
better world, one of richer resources and even more varied biology. They had
a love so many-sided and deep that there is no accounting for it, and
children so rare and different!
Floating Justice had been achieved. The least man in all the worlds
did possess the Ultimate Creature. The balance was consummated. But Floating
Justice had a grin on his face; there is something a little fishy about
anything, even justice, that floats. You understand that there wasn't really
a catch to this, nor any deficiency. It was rather a richness almost beyond
handling. It was still better for Peter Feeney than for anyone else
anywhere. That must be understood.

But, for all that, there was a small adjustment after the great
compensation; a proportion must be re-established in all things, even
happiness. It was the joke that the old Interior Ocean always cast up, and
it must be taken in the salty humor that is intended.
Children so rare and so different -- and so many of them! No couple
was ever so blessed as were Peter and Teresa with a rich variety of
children. Some of them were playing and leaping in the hills and rocks
behind Peter, and some of them were sporting in the Ocean before him.
Peter whistled some of these sea children up now as he pondered
things in the marina. Some of them broke water, splashed, and waved to him.
So many of the kids there were, and such good ones!
"Whistle about four of them to come in for dinner!" Teresa called,
and Peter did so. It had been an odd business about the children, not
unpleasant certainly, but not what he had expected either. And even yet,
every possibility was still open to them.
"I'd like to have a people-kid sometime," Teresa said. "After all,
mama had me. A people kid have fun playing with the fish kids, and they like
him, too. And he could climb in the rocks with the Groll's Trolls. He would
sort of knit our family together. You think about it, Peter, and I think
about it too, and we see what we come up with at the next milting time."

Peter Feeny gazed out at his children in the pools of the sea, and
at his other sort of children climbing in the rocks, and he felt an uneasy
pride in them all. One comes quickly to love Fish Kids and Groll's Trolls
when they are the product of one's own loins. There was ever hope, there
would ever be hope to the last, of children of Peter's own kind. But he
loved his present progeny not the less for it. The four kids that he had
whistled in came now.