"Robert Sheckley. The Day The Aliens Came (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

acquiescent, good companions for a hike through the hills or a swim in the
brook, staunch mates for life. But romantic - never! There was good fun to be
had on Kazanga, in a cheerful open manner. But there was no more than fun.
Simon felt that something was missing in this bland existence. One day, he
discovered what it was.
A vendor came to Kazanga in a battered spaceship loaded with books. He was
gaunt, white-haired, and a little mad. A celebration was held for him, for
novelty was appreciated on the outer worlds.
The vendor told them all the latest gossip, of the price war between Detroit II
and III, and how fishing fared on Alana, and what the president's wife on
Moracia wore, and how oddly the men of Doran V talked. And at last someone said,
"Tell us of Earth."
"Ah!" said the vendor, raising his eyebrows. "You want to hear of the old mother
planet? Well, friends, there's no place like old Earth, no place at all. On
Earth, friends, everything is possible, and nothing is denied."
"Nothing?" Simon asked.
"They've got a law against denial," the vendor explained, grinning. "No one has
ever been know to break it. Earth is different, friends. You folks specialize in
farming? Well Earth specializes in impracticalities such as madness, beauty,
war, intoxication, purity, horror, and the like, and people come from light-
years away to sample these wares."
"And love?" a woman asked.
"Why girl," the vendor said gently, "Earth is the only place in the galaxy that
still has love! Detroit II and II tried it and found it too expensive, you know,
and Alana decided it was too unsettling, and there was no time to import it on
Moracia or Doran V. But as I said, Earth specializes in the impractical, and
makes it pay."
"Pay?" a bulky farmer asked.
"Of course! Earth is old, her minerals are gone and her fields are barren. Her
colonies are independent now, and filled with sober folk such as yourselves, who
want value for their goods. So what else can old Earth deal in, except the
non-essentials that make life worth living?"
"Were you in love on Earth?" Simon asked.
"That I was," the vendor answered, with a certain grimness. "I was in love, and
now I travel. Friends, these books..."
For an exorbitant price, Simon bought an ancient poetry book, and reading,
dreamed of passion beneath the lunatic moon, of dawn glimmering whitely upon
lovers' parched lips, of locked bodies on a dark sea-beach, desperate with love
and deafened by the booming surf.
And only on Earth was this possible! For, as the vendor told, Earth's scattered
children were too hard at work wrestling a living from alien soil. The wheat and
corn grew on Kazanga, and the factories increased on Detroit II and III. The
fisheries of Alana were the talk of the Southern start belt, and there were
dangerous beasts on Moraica, and a whole wilderness to be won on Doran V. And
this was well, and exactly as it should be.
But the new worlds were austere, carefully planned, sterile in their
perfections. Something had been lost in the dead reaches of space, and only
Earth knew love.
Therefore, Simon worked and saved and dreamed. And in his twenty-ninth year he
sold his farm, packed all his clean shirts into a serviceable handbag, put on