He climbed down the stepladder and stood for a moment weighing the tiny dead thing in his hand. It occurred to him that one of his friends at the university could dig up a zoologist to pass on his find.
But Simon's curiosity was more artistic than scientific. In the end he twisted a bit of cellophane around the thing, placed it on the ledge of his easel and went off to bed ... and to a series of disturbingly erotic dreams.
Next day he got up late and, after breakfasting on black coffee, gloomed around the studio for a while, picking things up and putting them down. He glanced frequently at the stepladder, but resisted the temptation to climb up and have another look next door. Sighing, he thumbtacked a sheet of paper to a drawing board and half-heartedly began blocking in a female figure. It was insipid and lifeless. Stabbing irritably at the heavy curve of the figure's hip, he broke his charcoal. "Damn!" he said, glaring around the room. Abandoning all pretense, he threw the charcoal on the floor and climbed the stepladder. He pressed his nose against the glass.
In daylight, the adjoining roof looked bare and grimy. There was a big transparent pipe running between the water tank and the shack, braced in two places by improvised-looking wooden scaffolding. Listening intently, Simon thought he could hear a motor going in the shack. The water looked sallow green. It reminded Simon of those futuristic algae farms where the stuff is supposed to be pumped through transparent pipes to expose it to sunlight. There seemed to be a transparent top on the water tank too—it was too high for Simon to see, but there was a gleam around the edge. Staring at the pipe again, Simon got the impression there were little things traveling in the water, but he couldn't make them out.
Climbing down in some excitement, Simon got the twist of cellophane from the ledge of the easel and stared at its contents. Wild thoughts were tumbling through his head as he got back up on the stepladder. Sunlight flashed on the greenish water pipe between the tank and the shack, but after the first glance he had no eyes for it. Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich had her face tragically pressed to the window of the shack. She was wearing the black dress with high neck and puffed shoulders. At that moment she looked straight at him. She lifted her hands and seemed to speak imploringly. Then she slowly sank from sight as if, it horridly occurred to Simon, into quicksand.
Simon sprang from his chair, heart beating wildly, and ran down the stairs to the street. Two or three passersby paused to study him as he alternately pounded the flaking green door of the Russians' house and leaned on the button. Also watching was the shirt-sleeved driver of a moving van, emblazoned "Stulnikov-Gurevich Enterprises," which almost filled the street in front of the house.
The door opened narrowly. A man with a square black beard frowned out of it. He topped Simon by almost a head.
"Yes?" Ivan the Bomber asked, in a deep, exasperated voice.
"I must see the lady of the house immediately," Simon cried. "Your sister, I believe. She's in danger." He surged forward.