Free Slant by Greg Bear Page A

top of the arbeiter. The little machine affirms his identity and the door opens. Frigid air pours out. Within is another tent, and beyond, milky fabric contains the deepest cold within the house. The suits warm instantly. They push through the second flap. No spiders have yet been mounted on the ceiling to survey. Small lights dot the rug every few feet, guiding them on paths that will not disturb important evidence. The suit feet are antistatic and clingfree, exerting pressure on the frosted the floor, but no more. Mary looks up at the atrium. Compared to her apt, this place is a cathedral, a church of nineties ostentation. "Five thousand square feet, thirteen rooms, four bathrooms," Nussbaum says, as if chanting a prayer to the gods of the place. "Made for one family, plus guests. Don't tell anybody, Choy, but I'm a temp man through and through. I hate corp side." He distinctly pronounces it "corpse side." "But the accused--they didn't own this place, didn't even rent it, right? Someone got illegal squat through the caretaker?" "That's the allegation. No traffic up here, quiet and well-protected, they can do whatever they want." The atrium leads into a grand dining hall, with balconies overlooking a huge frost-covered oak table. Real wood, and probably wild not farm. To the left, a hall leads to the first-floor rooms, including the entertainment and dataflow center and master bedroom. To th*e right, the kitchen, arbeiter storage, and then, in its own smaller glassed atrium, a three-level greenhouse. "It's opulent, all right," Mary says. Behind the dining room, hidden by a wall, stairs and a lift lead to the upper floors. "(3," Nussbaum murmurs. He precedes her up the stairs.
    / SLANT 49
    "Ops, goddess of wealth. Prurient opulence." The lights point the way to the back of the house. Another master suite opens, and it is here the-- Mary halts, her eyes taking it in with human reluctance-- Here the bodies are. She remembers the scattered butchered bodies of Emanuel Goldsmith's victims in a comb apt in LA, frosted like these, but at least--Nussbaum takes her suited arm----they were human, even in disarray. Closest to her, at the foot of where a bed should have been, where now stand four surgical tables sided by fixed surgery arbeiters, lies what was once--she guesses--a woman. Now she is a Boschian collage, wasp-waisted and Diana-breasted, vaginas on each thigh and some unidentifiable set of genitalia where the legs meet, her head elongated, the melon baldness shaved but for long stripes of mink fur, her eyes staring and fogged with death and cold, but clearly slanted and serpentine. Mary feels a tug of wretchedness at every eye-drawing detail. Nussbaum has advanced to the tables, stands between them. On the second table rests a small body, no larger than a child but fully mature in features, also sporting custom sexual characteristics. Mary's gaze returns to the body nearest her, with which she forces herself to become familiar, disengaging all of her revulsion. She asks, Why is this a victim? and is not even sure what her question means. "They can have it all," Nussbaum says. "Whatever they want can be shaped for them out of electrons or fitted up on prosthetutes. But that's not enough. They demand more. They suck in the untherapied down-and-outers, fill them with cheap nano, shape them like lumps of clay..." Mary bends beside the first body. There are orchid-enfolded bumps on the corpse's cheeks. Extra clitorises, waiting to be licked. Mary closes her eyes and steadies herself with an out-thrust hand. There is something unaesthetic and unintentional about the hands and feet. The limbs in general seem distorted, if she can separate the deliberate sexual distortion of a psynthe from what might be pathological. The fingers are swollen. On closer inspection, she sees that the eyes bulge. A pool of beige fluid has formed behind the elongated head, now frozen. The skin appears purplish. "She's been cooked," Mary says softly.