"Do us a kindness not to make noise," said Ivan, removing his palm. "My brother Vasily will now explain." He went away.
Curiosity as much as shock kept Simon in his chair. Vasily, bobbing his head and smiling, sat down tailor-fashion on the roof in front of him. "First I must tell you, Mr. Gru-ay, that I am specialist in biological sciences. Here you see results of my most successful experiment." He withdrew a round clear-glass bottle from his pocket and unscrewed the top.
"Ah?" said Simon tentatively.
"Indeed yes. In my researches, Mr. Gru-ay, I discovered a chemical which will inhibit growth at any level of embryonic development, producing a viable organism at that point. The basic effect of this chemical is always toward survival at whatever level of development—one cell, a blastula, a worm, a fish, a four-legger. This research, which Lysenko scoffed at when I told him of it, I had no trouble in keeping secret, though at the time I was working as the unhappy collaborator of the godless soviets. But perhaps I am being too technical?"
"Not at all," Simon assured him.
"Good," Vasily said with simple satisfaction and gulped at his bottle. "Meanwhile my brother Mikhail was a religious brother at a monastery near Mount Athos, my Nihilist brother Ivan was in central Europe, while my third brother Lev, who is of commercial talents, had preceded us to the New World, where we always felt it would some day be our destiny to join one another.
"With the aid of brother Ivan, I and my sister Grushenka escaped from Russia. We picked up Mikhail from his monastery and proceeded here, where Lev had become a capitalist business magnate.
"My brothers, Ivan especially, were interested in my research. He had a theory that we could eventually produce hosts of men in this way, whole armies and political parties, all Nihilist and all of them Stulnikov-Gureviches. I assured him that this was impossible, that I could not play Cadmus, for free-swimming forms are one thing, we have the way to feed them in the aqueous medium; but to make fully developed mammals placental nourishment is necessary—that I cannot provide. Yet to please him I begin with (pardon me!) the egg of my sister, that was as good a beginning as any and perhaps it intrigued my vanity. Ivan dreamed his dreams of a Nihilist Stulnikov-Gurevich humanity—it was harmless, as I told myself."