The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [241]
My course of direction somehow took shape: at first subconsciously, and then consciously.
I walked down Fifty-third until I turned south on University, then walked another three blocks, across the wide bustling expanse of Fifty-fifth, past the soccer field, block by block, the university buildings looking more and more like medieval fortresses, all buttressed and turreted and bulwarked and with gargoyles squatting bat-winged and freakish at the corners of the sills, vomiting rainwater from their open mouths, now a right on Fifty-seventh, now passing through the tabernacular gatehouse, then across the main quad to the Erman Biology Center at the University of Chicago.
The door was locked. I stood on tiptoes to look through the narrow window in the door. I rattled the door handle. I punched the door and hurt my hand. I stood there in front of the door for an hour. Eventually, a young man—what looked like a student, working late at a lab—walked out the door. My coat soaked through, rainwater dribbling from the brim of my hat, I pushed past him when he opened the door. He held it open for me as he was going out. Then I watched a spasm of doubt play across his features: his unthinking politeness at holding the door open for me was interrupted by caution. He realized that I might not be allowed into the building. I shoved my way past him. My hat passed just beneath his arm as I angrily banged my suitcase through the narrow passageway. Once inside the hall I turned back and saw his face in the window, giving me a quizzical and offended look through the narrow window in the door as it was sighing shut and the lock clunking. Then he rolled his eyes and went away. I ignored him. I waddled down the hallway. My wet shoes squawked and crunched on the salmon-pink vinyl floor. I passed under fluorescent lights that reflected white rectangles on the floor. I pressed the arrow-shaped Up button beside the elevator. The elevator happened to be resting on the ground floor, and so the doors rolled immediately open for me. I stepped inside, and with a long purple finger depressed the button labeled 3. The elevator bore me whooshing upward two floors, stopped, and opened, and I stepped out. The hallway was in darkness, but when I stepped out of the elevator my presence triggered the energy-saving fluorescent lights, which began to buzz and flicker on above me as my shoes squawked and crunched on the floor. The lights roused on one by one in my wake, illuminating the white walls and pink floors with the cold fluorescent glow of science. The flickering lights illuminated the doors to rooms 302, 304, and 306, and at the next door, I stopped:
308: BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY LABORATORY
I could see through the smoked-glass panel in the door, across which that number and those words were written in bold black capital block letters, that the lights were on. I could also see a shadow moving around in the room. I could see that there was something going on inside, that science was progressing in there. I took the door handle in my long purple hand, pushed it down, heard it click, found it open. I pulled the door open and stepped inside the room.
Dr. Norman Plumlee looked up from his work. He was alone in the lab. Norman Plumlee was alone, that is, except for the creature who lay restrained facedown to a bed by straps. The creature’s arms were strapped tightly to her sides. Her stumpy legs were spread-eagled and strapped down in place. A plump pink ball of flesh behind her advertised her fecundity. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered and buzzed.
The lab was somewhat