"Jack Vance - Meet Miss Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

private assistant and trouble-shooter.
Tony had made himself invalu-able. Clydell found that some of his most
ingenious ideas occurred during talks with Tony . . . The Galactic Beauty
Contest for in-stance. From the germ of an ideaтАФ who had voiced it first,
himself or Tony? тАФClydell had organized a scheme that would make talk for
years to come!
With the grand design sketched in, Clydell allowed Tony to man-age the
morass of petty detail. When Tony ran into something he couldn't handle, he
came to Clydell for advice. By and large he seemed to be doing a good
workman-like job.
After considering the extensive list of worlds known to be inhabit-ed by
intelligent or quasi-intelligent races, Tony, with Clydell's counsel,
eliminated all but thirty-three. The criteria which they applied were:

1. Is the race socially organized?
(Races living without social structure, in a state of intense
competition, or anarchy, might not comprehend the theory of the contest,
and so might prove uncooperative, perhaps make trouble if they failed to
win.)
2. Can we adequately commu-nicate?
Are interpreters available? (The Merak tribes used clair-voyance to read
another in-dividual's internal flagella. The Gongs of Fomalhaut
transmitted information through the medium of com-plex odors,
impregnated into wads of hair and spit. The air-swimming Carboids of
Cepheus 9621 communicated by a system susceptible to no ex-planation
whatever. None of these races were considered.)
3. Is the race's environment easily duplicable on Earth?
 (The weirdly beautiful Pavos d'Oro lived at a temperature of 2,000┬░ K.
The complex molecules of the Sabik Betans exploded in pressures less
than 30,000 Earth atmospheres. The viability of the Chastainian Grays
depended on their fluid-gaseous helium blood-stream, a state which could
be maintained only at or near 0┬░ K.)
4. Is there an element of the race which reasonably can be spoken of as
female?
(Styles of reproduction among the life forms of the universe admitted of
the most extreme variation. The Giant Annelids of Mauvaise collapsed
into two hundred segments, each of which might become an adult organism.
Among the Grus Gammans not two but five different sexes participated
in the procreative act. The humanoid Churo of Gondwana were
mono-sexual.)
5. Is the race notoriously short-tempered, vicious or truculent? Are they
able to check any habits or instincts which might prove of-fensive or
dangerous to visitors at the Exposition?

When the five criteria had been applied to the life-forms which peopled the
worlds of the galaxy, all were eliminated but thirty-three, eight of which
were humanoid, classes A to D. (Class A comprised true men and close variants;
any-thing less man-like than Class D was no longer really man-like.)
Hardeman Clydell made a quick check of Tony's research, pointing out a flaw
here, a miscalculation there; adding a race or two, finding others unsuitable