（外文电子版资料）Robert Reed - Birdy Girl.pdf

Birdy Girl by Robert Reed UPS is at the door. A package for my wife, as usual. The womans one helluva shopper. I sign on the slot. Its a box, maybe twenty inches at the longest. Not heavy, either. I bring it inside, and the box says, Let me out, why dont you? So I look at the return address. Oh, Christ. But the UPS drone has already rolled away, no time to waste. What can I do? Put the thing in the closet, I decide. Go back to my life, what there is of it. And pretend that Im not hearing a voice calling to me from under the winter coats. My wife gets home from work, and I tell her, Look in the closet. She gives this little hoot and says, Wheres your knife? Ive got this old hunting knife that we use for packages. Like shes dressing a deer, she cuts the tape and opens the flaps and unwraps the aerogel, and she pulls out her doll and says, Genevieve, with an instant fondness. Thats my name, the doll replies, looking at both of us. Its got big, big eyes. Green eyes, I notice. And Im not someone who usually notices the colors of things. Those eyes are stuck in an oversized head riding on top of an immature body, reminding me of a child. But the hair is huge. Its the hair that every woman wants, rich and flowing with just enough curls. Brown hair, I notice. And the plastic skin looks heavily tanned. And theres something adult about the voice, even if it comes rumbling from a body that isnt quite eighteen inches tall. I have clothes, the dolls says. Wonderful little clothes! So of course my wife spends the next hour playing with her new toy and its fancy wardrobe. She calls her friends in the craft club. Everyone drops over, holo-style. Our living room is jammed with grown women and their Birdy Girls. Ill pass through, just to watch. Just to spy. What happened to the quilting? I ask. Last week, the group was making quilts with old-fashioned fabrics. Quasicrystal patterns. Kind of neat. But one of the projected women snorts and looks up from her