"Cordwainer Smith - The Planet Buyer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

Story, place and time—these are the essentials.
1
The story is simple. There was a boy who bought the planet Earth. We
know that, to our cost. It only happened once, and we have taken pains
that it will never happen again. He came to Earth, got what he wanted,
and got away alive, in a series of very remarkable adventures. That's the
story.

2
The place? That's Old North Australia. What other place could it be?
Where else do the farmers pay ten million credits for a handkerchief, five
for a bottle of beer? Where else do people lead peaceful lives, untouched by
militarism, on a world which is booby-trapped with death and things
worse than death? Old North Australia has stroon—the santaclara
drug—and more than a thousand other planets clamor for it. But you can
get stroon only from Norstrilia—that's what they call it, for short—because
it is a virus which grows on enormous, misshapen sheep. The sheep were
taken from Earth to start a pastoral system; they ended up as the greatest
of imaginable treasures. The simple farmers became simple billionaires,
but they kept their farming ways. They started tough and they got
tougher. People get pretty mean if you rob them and hurt them for almost
three thousand years. They get obstinate. They avoid strangers, except for
sending out spies and a very occasional tourist. They don't mess with
other people, and they're death, death inside out and turned over twice, if
you mess with them.
 Then one of their kids showed up on Earth and bought it. The whole
place, lock, stock and underpeople.

That was a real embarrassment for Earth.

And for Norstrilia, too.

If it had been the two governments, Norstrilia would have collected all
the eye-teeth on earth and sold them back at compound interest. That's
the way Norstrilians do business. Or they might have said, "Skip it,
cobber. You can keep your wet old ball. We've got a nice dry world of our
own." That's the temper they have. Unpredictable.

But a kid had bought Earth, and it was his.

Legally he had the right to pump up the Sunset Ocean, shoot it into
space, and sell water all over the inhabited galaxy.

He didn't.

He wanted something else.

The Earth authorities thought it was girls, so they tried to throw girls
at him of all shapes, sizes, smells and ages— all the way from young ladies
of good family down to dog-derived undergirls who smelled of romance all