Signs of Katje, and doubles too. One night he sat in a children’s play house on an abandoned estate, feeding a fire from the hair of a blonde doll with lapis lazuli eyes. He kept those eyes. A few days later he traded them for a ride and half a boiled potato. Dogs barked far away, summerwind blew in the birches. He was on one of the main arterials of the spring’s last dissolution and retreat. Somewhere nearby, one of Major-General Kammler’s rocket units had together found corporate death, leaving in their crippled military rage pieces, modules, airframe sections, batteries rotting, paper secrets rained back into slurry. Slothrop follows. Any clue’s good enough to hop a train for….

The doll’s hair was human. The smell of it burning is horrible. Slothrop hears movement from the other side of the fire. A ratcheting noise—he grabs his blanket, ready to vault away out the empty window frame, expecting a grenade. Instead one of these little brightly painted German toys, an orangutan on wheels comes ki-ki-ki-ing into the firelight, spastic, head lolling, face in an idiot’s grin, steel knuckles scraping the floor. It rolls nearly into the fire before the clockwork runs down, the wagging head coming to dead center to stare at Slothrop.

He feeds the fire another tuft of golden hair. “Evening.”

Laughter, somewhere. A child. But old laughter.

“Come on out, I’m harmless.”

The ape is followed by a tiny black crow with a red beak, also on wheels, hopping, cawing, flapping metal wings.

“Why are you burning my doll’s hair?”

“Well, it’s not her own hair, you know.”

“Father said it belonged to a Russian Jewess.”

“Why don’t you come in to the fire?”

“Hurts my eyes.” Winding again. Nothing moves. But a music box begins to play. The tune is minor and precise. “Dance with me.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Here.” Out of the fire’s pale, a tiny frost-flower. He reaches and just manages to find her hand, to grasp her little waist. They begin their stately dance. He can’t even tell if he’s leading.

He never saw her face. She felt like voile and organdy.

“Nice dress.”