Picnic On Nearside

by John Varley

  "Yes. We've adhered to the agreement."

  "I don't doubt it. Most people are barely aware you exist out here. But now we've got this. One barbie kills another barbie, and under a television camera..." Bach stopped, and looked thoughtful. "Say, it occurs to me... wait a minute. Wait a minute." She didn't like the look of it.

  "I wonder. This murder took place in the tube station. It's the only place in Anytown that's scanned by the municipal security system. And fifty years is a long time between murders, even in a town as small as... how many people did you say live here, Jorge?"

  "About seven thousand. I feel I know them all intimately." Weil had spent the day sorting barbies. According to measurements made from the tape, the killer was at the top end of permissible height.

  "How about it?" Bach said to the barbie. "Is there anything I ought to know?"

  The woman bit her lip, looked uncertain.

  "Come on, you said you were going to help me."

  "Very well. There have been three other killings in the last month. You would not have heard of this one except it took place with outsiders present. Purchasing agents were there on the loading platform. They made the initial report. There was nothing we could do to hush it up."

  "But why would you want to?"

  "Isn't it obvious? We exist with the possibility of persecution always with us. We don't wish to appear a threat to others. We wish to appear peaceful—which we are—and prefer to handle the problems of the group within the group itself. By divine consensus."

  Bach knew she would get nowhere pursuing that line of reasoning. She decided to take the conversation back to the previous murders.

  "Tell me what you know. Who was killed, and do you have any idea why? Or should I be talking to someone else?" Something occurred to her then, and she wondered why she hadn't asked it before. "You are the person I was speaking to yesterday, aren't you? Let me rephrase that. You're the body... that is, this body before me..."

  "We know what you're talking about," the barbie said. "Uh, yes, you are correct. We are... I am the one you spoke to." She had to choke the word out, blushing furiously. "We have been... I have been selected as the component to deal with you, since it was perceived at equalization that this matter must be dealt with. This one was chosen as... I was chosen as punishment."

  "You don't have to say 'I' if you don't want to."

  "Oh, thank you."

  "Punishment for what?"

  "For... for individualistic tendencies. We spoke up too personally at equalization, in favor of cooperation with you. As a political necessity. The conservatives wish to stick to our sacred principles no matter what the cost. We are divided; this makes for bad feelings within the organism, for sickness. This one spoke out, and was punished by having her own way, by being appointed... individually... to deal with you." The woman could not meet Bach's eyes. Her face burned with shame.

  "This one has been instructed to reveal her serial number to you. In the future, when you come here you are to ask for 23900."

  Bach made a note of it.

  "All right. What can you tell me about a possible motive? Do you think all the killings were done by the same... component?"

  "We do not know. We are no more equipped to select an... individual from the group than you are. But there is great consternation. We are fearful."

  "I would think so. Do you have reason to believe that the victims were... does this make sense?... known to the killer? Or were they random killings?" Bach hoped not. Random killers were the hardest to catch; without motive, it was hard to tie killer to victim, or to sift one person out of thousands with the opportunity. With the barbies, the problem would be squared and cubed.

  "Again, we don't know."

  Bach sighed. "I want to see the witnesses to the crime. I might as well start interviewing them."

  In short order, thirteen barbies were brought. Bach intended to question them thoroughly to see if their stories were consistent, and if they had changed.

  She sat them down and took them one at a time, and almost immediately ran into a stone wall. It took her several minutes to see the problem, frustrating minutes spent trying to establish which of the barbies had spoken to the officer first, which second, and so forth.

  "Hold it. Listen carefully. Was this body physically present at the time of the crime? Did these eyes see it happen?"

  The barbie's brow furrowed. "Why, no. But does it matter?"

  "It does to me, babe. Hey, twenty-three thousand!"

  The barbie stuck her head in the door. Bach looked pained.

  "I need the actual people who were there. Not thirteen picked at random."

  "The story is known to all."

  Bach spent five minutes explaining that it made a difference to her, then waited an hour as 23900 located the people who were actual witnesses.

  And again she hit a stone wall. The stories were absolutely identical, which she knew to be impossible. Observers always report events differently. They make themselves the hero, invent things before and after they first began observing, rearrange and edit and interpret. But not the barbies. Bach struggled for an hour, trying to shake one of them, and got nowhere. She was facing a consensus, something that had been discussed among the barbies until an account of the event had emerged and then been accepted as truth. It was probably a close approximation, but it did Bach no good. She needed discrepancies to gnaw at, and there were none.

  Worst of all, she was convinced no one was lying to her. Had she questioned the thirteen random choices she would have gotten the same answers. They would have thought of themselves as having been there, since some of them had been and they had been told about it. What happened to one, happened to all.

  Her options were evaporating fast. She dismissed the witnesses, called 23900 back in, and sat her down. Bach ticked off points on her fingers.

  "One. Do you have the personal effects of the deceased?"

  "We have no private property."

  Bach nodded. "Two. Can you take me to her room?"

  "We each sleep in any room we find available at night. There is no—"

  "Right. Three. Any friends or co-workers I might..." Bach rubbed her forehead with one hand. "Right. Skip it. Four. What was her job? Where did she work?"

  "All jobs are interchangeable here. We work at what needs—"

  "Right!" Bach exploded. She got up and paced the floor. "What the hell do you expect me to do with a situation like this? I don't have anything to work with, not one snuffin' thing. No way of telling why she was killed, no way to pick out the killer, no way... ah, shit. What do you expect me to do?"

  "We don't expect you to do anything," the barbie said, quietly. "We didn't ask you to come here. We'd like it very much if you just went away."

  In her anger Bach had forgotten that. She was stopped, unable to move in any direction. Finally, she caught Weil's eye and jerked her head toward the door.

  "Let's get out of here." Weil said nothing. He followed Bach out the door and hurried to catch up.

  They reached the tube station, and Bach stopped outside their waiting capsule. She sat down heavily on a bench, put her chin on her palm, and watched the ant-like mass of barbies working at the loading dock. "Any ideas?"

  Weil shook his head, sitting beside her and removing his cap to wipe sweat from his forehead.

  "They keep it too hot in here," he said. Bach nodded, not really hearing him. She watched the group of barbies as two separated themselves from the crowd and came a few steps in her direction. Both were laughing, as if at some private joke, looking right at Bach. One of them reached under her blouse and withdrew a long, gleaming steel knife. In one smooth motion she plunged it into the other barbie's stomach and lifted, bringing her up on the balls of her feet. The one who had been stabbed looked surprised for a moment, staring down at herself, her mouth open as the knife gutted her like a fish. Then her eyes widened and she stared horror-stricken at her companion, and slowly went to her knees, holding the knife t
o her as blood gushed out and soaked her white uniform.

  "Stop her!" Bach shouted. She was on her feet and running, after a moment of horrified paralysis. It had looked so much like the tape.

  She was about forty meters from the killer, who moved with deliberate speed, jogging rather than running. She passed the barbie who had been attacked—and who was now on her side, still holding the knife hilt almost tenderly to herself, wrapping her body around the pain. Bach thumbed the panic button on her communicator, glanced over her shoulder to see Weil kneeling beside the stricken barbie, then looked back—

  —to a confusion of running figures. Which one was it? Which one?

  She grabbed the one that seemed to be in the same place and moving in the same direction as the killer had been before she looked away. She swung the barbie around and hit her hard on the side of the neck with the edge of her palm, watched her fall while trying to look at all the other barbies at the same time. They were running in both directions, some trying to get away, others entering the loading dock to see what was going on. It was a madhouse scene with shrieks and shouts and baffling movement.

  Bach spotted something bloody lying on the floor, then knelt by the inert figure and clapped the handcuffs on her.

  She looked up into a sea of faces, all alike.

  The commissioner dimmed the lights, and he, Bach, and Weil faced the big screen at the end of the room. Beside the screen was a department photoanalyst with a pointer in her hand. The tape began to run.

  "Here they are," the woman said, indicating two barbies with the tip of the long stick. They were just faces on the edge of the crowd, beginning to move. "Victim right here, the suspect to her right." Everyone watched as the stabbing was re-created. Bach winced when she saw how long she had taken to react. In her favor, it had taken Weil a fraction of a second longer.

  "Lieutenant Bach begins to move here. The suspect moves back toward the crowd. If you'll notice, she is watching Bach over her shoulder. Now. Here." She froze a frame. "Bach loses eye contact. The suspect peels off the plastic glove which prevented blood from staining her hand. She drops it, moves laterally. By the time Bach looks back, we can see she is after the wrong suspect."

  Bach watched in sick fascination as her image assaulted the wrong barbie, the actual killer only a meter to her left. The tape resumed normal speed, and Bach watched the killer until her eyes began to hurt from not blinking. She would not lose her this time. "She's incredibly brazen. She does not leave the room for another twenty minutes." Bach saw herself kneel and help the medical team load the wounded barbie into the capsule. The killer had been at her elbow, almost touching her. She felt her arm break out in goose pimples.

  She remembered the sick fear that had come over her as she knelt by the injured woman. It could be any of them. The one behind me, for instance...

  She had drawn her weapon then, backed against the wall, and not moved until the reinforcements arrived a few minutes later. At a motion from the commissioner, the lights came back on. "Let's hear what you have," he said.

  Bach glanced at Weil, then read from her notebook. " 'Sergeant Weil was able to communicate with the victim shortly before medical help arrived. He asked her if she knew anything pertinent as to the identity of her assailant. She answered no, saying only that it was "the wrath." She could not elaborate.' I quote now from the account Sergeant Weil wrote down immediately after the interview. ' "It hurts, it hurts." "I'm dying, I'm dying." I told her help was on the way. She responded: "I'm dying." Victim became incoherent, and I attempted to get a shirt from the onlookers to stop the flow of blood. No cooperation was forthcoming.' "

  "It was the word 'I'," Weil supplied. "When she said that, they all started to drift away."

  " 'She became rational once more,' " Bach resumed, " 'long enough to whisper a number to me. The number was twelve-fifteen, which I wrote down as one-two-one-five. She roused herself once more, said "I'm dying." ' " Bach closed the notebook and looked up. "Of course, she was right." She coughed nervously.

  "We invoked section 35b of the New Dresden Unified Code, 'Hot Pursuit,' suspending civil liberties locally for the duration of the search. We located component 1215 by the simple expedient of lining up all the barbies and having them pull their pants down. Each has a serial number in the small of her back. Component 1215, one Sylvester J. Cronhausen, is in custody at this moment.

  "While the search was going on, we went to sleeping cubicle 1215 with a team of criminologists. In a concealed compartment beneath the bunk we found these items." Bach got up, opened the evidence bag, and spread the items on the table.

  There was a carved wooden mask. It had a huge nose with a hooked end, a mustache, and a fringe of black hair around it. Beside the mask were several jars of powders and creams, greasepaint and cologne. One black nylon sweater, one pair black trousers, one pair black sneakers. A stack of pictures clipped from magazines, showing ordinary people, many of them wearing more clothes than was normal in Luna. There was a black wig and a merkin of the same color.

  "What was that last?" the commissioner asked.

  "A merkin, sir," Bach supplied. "A pubic wig."

  "Ah." He contemplated the assortment, leaned back in his chair. "Somebody liked to dress up."

  "Evidently, sir." Bach stood at ease with her hands clasped behind her back, her face passive. She felt an acute sense of failure, and a cold determination to get the woman with the gall to stand at her elbow after committing murder before her eyes. She was sure the time and place had been chosen deliberately, that the barbie had been executed for Bach's benefit.

  "Do you think these items belonged to the deceased?"

  "We have no reason to state that, sir," Bach said. "However, the circumstances are suggestive."

  "Of what?"

  "I can't be sure. These things might have belonged to the victim. A random search of other cubicles turned up nothing like this. We showed the items to component 23900, our liaison. She professed not to know their purpose." She stopped, then added, "I believe she was lying. She looked quite disgusted."

  "Did you arrest her?"

  "No, sir. I didn't think it wise. She's the only connection we have, such as she is."

  The commissioner frowned, and laced his fingers together. "I'll leave it up to you, Lieutenant Bach. Frankly, we'd like to be shut of this mess as soon as possible."

  "I couldn't agree with you more, sir."

  "Perhaps you don't understand me. We have to have a warm body to indict. We have to have one soon."

  "Sir, I'm doing the best I can. Candidly, I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything I can do."

  "You still don't understand me." He looked around the office. The stenographer and photoanalyst had left. He was alone with Bach and Weil. He flipped a switch on his desk, turning a recorder off, Bach realized.

  "The news is picking up on this story. We're beginning to get some heat. On the one hand, people are afraid of these barbies. They're hearing about the murder fifty years ago, and the informal agreement. They don't like it much. On the other hand, there's the civil libertarians. They'll fight hard to prevent anything happening to the barbies, on principle. The government doesn't want to get into a mess like that. I can hardly blame them."

  Bach said nothing, and the commissioner looked pained.

  "I see I have to spell it out. We have a suspect in custody," he said.

  "Are you referring to component 1215, Sylvester Cronhausen?"

  "No. I'm speaking of the one you captured."

  "Sir, the tape clearly shows she is not the guilty party. She was an innocent bystander." She felt her face heat up as she said it. Damn it; she had tried her best.

  "Take a look at this." He pressed a button and the tape began to play again. But the quality was much impaired. There were bursts of snow, moments when the picture faded out entirely. It was a very good imitation of a camera failing. Bach watched herself running through the crowd—there was a flash of white— and she had hit the woman. The l
ights came back on in the room.

  "I've checked with the analyst. She'll go along. There's a bonus in this, for both of you." He looked from Weil to Bach.

  "I don't think I can go through with that, sir."

  He looked like he'd tasted a lemon. "I didn't say we were doing this today. It's an option. But I ask you to look at it this way, just look at it, and I'll say no more. This is the way they themselves want it. They offered you the same deal the first time you were there. Close the case with a confession, no mess. We've already got this prisoner. She just says she killed her, she killed all of them. I want you to ask yourself, is she wrong? By her own lights and moral values? She believes she shares responsibility for the murders, and society demands a culprit. What's wrong with accepting their compromise and letting this all blow over?"

  "Sir, it doesn't feel right to me. This is not in the oath I took. I'm supposed to protect the innocent, and she's innocent. She's the only barbie I know to be innocent."

  The commissioner sighed. "Bach, you've got four days. You give me an alternative by then."

  "Yes, sir. If I can't, I'll tell you now that I won't interfere with what you plan. But you'll have to accept my resignation."

  Anna-Louise Bach reclined in the bathtub with her head pillowed on a folded towel. Only her neck, nipples, and knees stuck out above the placid surface of the water, tinted purple with a generous helping of bath salts. She clenched a thin cheroot in her teeth. A ribbon of lavender smoke curled from the end of it, rising to join the cloud near the ceiling.

  She reached up with one foot and turned on the taps, letting out cooled water and refilling with hot until the sweat broke out on her brow. She had been in the tub for several hours. The tips of her fingers were like washboards.

  There seemed to be few alternatives. The barbies were foreign to her, and to anyone she could assign to interview them. They didn't want her help in solving the crimes. All the old rules and procedures were useless. Witnesses meant nothing; one could not tell one from the next, nor separate their stories. Opportunity? Several thousand individuals had it. Motive was a blank. She had a physical description in minute detail, even tapes of the actual murders. Both were useless.