"John Varley - The Barbie Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

She skimmed through the dogma, taking notes. The Stan-dardists preached the commonality of humanity,
denigrated free will, and elevated the group and the consensus to demigod status. Nothing too unusual in
the theory; it was the practice of it that made people queasy.

There was a creation theory and a godhead, who was not worshipped but contemplated. Creation
happened when the Goddess-a prototypical earth-mother who had no name- gave birth to the universe.
She put people in it, all alike, stamped from the same universal mold.

Sin entered the picture. One of the people began to wonder. This person had a name, given to him or her
after the original sin as part of the punishment, but Bach could not find it written down anywhere. She
decided that it was a dirty word which Standardists never told an outsider.

This person asked Goddess what it was all for. What had been wrong with the void, that Goddess had
seen fit to fill it with people who didn't seem to have a reason for existing?

That was too much. For reasons unexplained-and impolite to even ask about-Goddess had punished
humans by introducing differentness into the world. Warts, big noses, kinky hair, white skin, tall people
and fat people and deformed people, blue eyes, body hair, freckles, testicles, and labia. A billion faces
and fingerprints, each soul trapped in a body distinct from all others, with the heavy burden of trying to

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 The Barbie Murders

establish an identity in a perpetual shouting match.

But the faith held that peace was achieved in striving to regain that lost Eden. When all humans were
again the same person, Goddess would welcome them back. Life was a testing, a trial.

Bach certainly agreed with that. She gathered her notes and shuffled them together, then picked up the
book she had brought back from Anytown. The barbie had given it to her when Bach asked for a picture
of the murdered woman.

It was a blueprint for a human being.

The title was The Book of Specifications. The Specs, for short. Each barbie carried one, tied to her waist
with a tape measure. It gave tolerances in engineering terms, defining what a barbie could look like. It
was profusely illustrated with drawings of parts of the body in minute detail, giving measurements in
millimeters.

She closed the book and sat up, propping her head on a pillow. She reached for her viewpad and propped
it on her knees, punched the retrieval code for the murder tape. For the twentieth time that night, she
watched a figure spring forward from a crowd of identical figures in the tube station, slash at Leah
Ingraham, and melt back into the crowd as her victim lay bleeding and eviscerated on the floor.

She slowed it down, concentrating on the killer, trying to spot something different about her. Anything at
all would do. The knife struck. Blood spurted. Barbies milled about in consternation. A few belatedly ran
after the killer, not reacting fast enough. People seldom reacted quickly enough. But the killer had blood
on her hand. Make a note to ask about that.