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

Bach viewed the film once more, saw nothing useful, and decided to call it a night.

The room was long and tall, brightly lit from strips high above. Bach followed the attendant down the
rows of square locker doors which lined one wall. The air was cool and humid, the floor wet from a
recent hosing.

The man consulted the card in his hand and pulled the metal handle on locker 659a, making a noise that
echoed through the bare room. He slid the drawer out and lifted the sheet from the corpse.

It was not the first mutilated corpse Bach had seen, but it was the first nude barbie. She immediately
noted the lack of nipples on the two hills of flesh that pretended to be breasts, and the smooth, unmarked
skin in the crotch. The attendant was frowning, consulting the card on the corpse's foot.

"Some mistake here," he muttered. "Geez, the headaches. What do you do with a thing like that?" He
scratched his head, then scribbled through the large letter "F" on the card, replacing it with a neat "N". He
looked at Bach and grinned sheepishly. "What do you do?" he repeated.

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 The Barbie Murders



Bach didn't much care what he did. She studied L. P. In-graham's remains, hoping that something on the
body would show her why a barbie had decided she must die.

There was little difficulty seeing how she had died. The knife had entered the abdomen, going deep, and
the wound extended upward from there in a slash that ended beneath the breastbone. Part of the bone was
cut through. The knife had been sharp, but it would have taken a powerful arm to slice through that much
meat.

The attendant watched curiously as Bach pulled the dead woman's legs apart and studied what she saw
there. She found the tiny slit of the urethra set far back around the curve, just anterior to the anus.

Bach opened her copy of The Specs, took out a tape measure, and started to work.

"Mr. Atlas, I got your name from the Morphology Guild's files as a practitioner who's had a lot of
dealings with the Standardist Church."

The man frowned, then shrugged. "So? You may not approve of them, but they're legal. And my records
are in order. I don't do any work on anybody until you people have checked for a criminal record." He sat
on the edge of the desk in the spacious consulting room, facing Bach. Mr. Rock Atlas-surely a nom de
metier-had shoulders carved from granite, teeth like flashing pearls, and the face of a young god. He was
a walking, flexing advertisement for his profession. Bach crossed her legs nervously. She had always had
a taste for beef.

"I'm not investigating you, Mr. Atlas. This is a murder case, and I'd appreciate your cooperation."

"Call me Rock," he said, with a winning smile.

"Must I? Very well. I came to ask you what you would do, how long the work would take, if I asked to be