Barr shook his head. “It’s all wrong,” he complained. “No banded agate ever ran this big. No agate’s ever hollow. And you don’t know where this one came from.”
I didn’t answer him. There was no reason for me to.
“Look here,” he said, after a while. “There’s a hole in it. Down here near the bottom.”
I squatted down to look where his finger pointed. There was a neat, round hole, no more than half an inch in diameter; no haphazard hole, but round and sharply cut, as if someone might have drilled it.
Barr hunted around and found a heavy weed stalk and stripped off the leaves. The stalk, some two feet of it, slid into the hole.
Barr squatted back and stared, frowning, at the boulder.
“She’s hollow, sure as hell,” he said.
I didn’t pay too much attention to him. I was beginning to sweat a little. For another crazy thought had come bumbling along and fastened onto me:
That hole would be just big enough for one of those bugs to get through!
“Tell you what,” said Barr. “I’ll raise that offer to two thousand and take it off your hands.”
I shook my head. I was going off my rocker linking up the bugs and boulder—even if there were a bug-size hole drilled into the boulder. I remembered that I likewise had linked the bugs with the refrigerator—and it must be perfectly obvious to anyone that the bugs could not have anything to do with either the refrigerator or the boulder.
They were just ordinary bugs—well, maybe not just ordinary bugs, but, anyhow, just bugs. Dobby had been puzzled by them, but Dobby would be the first, I knew, to tell you that there were many insects unclassified as yet. This might be a species which suddenly had flared into prominence, favored by some strange quirk of ecology, after years of keeping strictly undercover.
“You mean to say,” asked Barr, astonished, “that you won’t take two thousand?”
“Huh?” I asked, coming back to earth.
“I just offered you two thousand for the boulder.”
I took a good hard look at him. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d spend two thousand for a hobby. More than likely, I told myself, he knew a good thing when he saw it and was out to make a killing. He wanted to snap this boulder up before I knew what it was worth.
“I’d like to think it over,” I told him, warily. “If I decide to take the offer, where can I get in touch with you?”
He told me curtly and gruffly said good-bye. He was sore about me not taking his two thousand. He went stumping around the garage and a moment later I heard him start his car and drive away.
I squatted there and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have taken that two thousand. Two thousand was a lot of money and I could have used it. But the man had been too anxious and he’d had a greedy look.
Now, however, there was one thing certain. I couldn’t leave the boulder out here in the garden. It was much too valuable to be left unguarded. Somehow or other I’d have to get it into the garage where I could lock it up. George Montgomery had a block and tackle and maybe I could borrow it and use it to move the boulder.
I started for the house to tell Helen the good news, although I was pretty sure she’d read me a lecture for not selling for two thousand.
She met me at the kitchen door and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.
“Randall,” she caroled, happily, “it’s just too wonderful.”
“I think so, too,” I said, wondering how in the world she could have known about it.
“Just come and look at them,” she cried. “The bugs are cleaning up the house!”
“They’re what!” I yelled.
“Come and look,” she urged, tugging at my arm. “Did you ever see the like of it? Everything’s just shining!”
I stumbled after her into the living room and stared in disbelief that bordered close on horror.
They were working in battalions and they were purposeful about it. One gang of them was going over a chair back, four rows of them in line creeping up the chair back, and it was like one of those before-and-after pictures. The lower half of the chair back was so clean it looked like new, while the upper half was dingy.
Another gang was dusting an end table and a squad of others was working on the baseboard in the corner and a small army of them was polishing up the television set.
“They’ve got the carpeting all done!” squealed Helen. “And this end of the room is dusted and there are some of them starting on the fireplace. I never could get Nora to even touch the fireplace. And now I won’t need Nora. Randall, do you realize that these bugs will save us the twenty dollars a week that we’ve been paying Nora? I wonder if you’ll let me have that twenty dollars for my very own. There are so many things I need. I haven’t had a new dress for ages and I should have another hat and I saw the cutest pair of shoes the other day …”
“But bugs!” I yelled. “You are afraid of bugs. You detest the things. And bugs don’t clean carpeting. All they do is eat it.”
“These bugs are cute,” protested Helen, happily, “and I’m not afraid of them. They’re not like ants and spiders. They don’t give you a crawly feeling. They are so clean themselves and they are so friendly and so cheerful. They are even pretty. And I just love to watch them work. Isn’t it cunning, the way they get together in a bunch to work. They’re just like a vacuum cleaner. They just move over something and the dust and dirt are gone.”
I stood there, looking at them hard at work, and I felt an icy finger moving up my spine, for no matter how it might violate common sense, now I knew that the things I had been thinking, about the refrigerator and the boulder, had not been half as crazy as they might have seemed.
“I’m going to phone Amy,” said Helen, starting for the kitchen. “This is just too wonderful to keep. Maybe we could give her some of the bugs. What do you think, Randall? Just enough of them to give her house a start.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I hollered at her. “These things aren’t bugs.”
“I don’t care what they are,” said Helen, airily, already dialing Amy’s number, “just so they clean the house.”
“But, Helen, if you’d only listen to me …”
“Shush,” she said, playfully. “How can I talk to Amy if you keep—Oh, hello, Amy, is that you …”
I saw that it was hopeless. I retreated in complete defeat.
I went around the house to the garage, intending to move some stuff to make room for the boulder at the back.
The door was open. Inside was Billy, busy at the work bench.
“Hello, son,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. “What’s going on?”
“I’m making some bug traps, Dad. To catch some of the bugs that are cleaning up the house. Tommy’s partners with me. He went home to get some bait.”
“Bait?”
“Sure. We found out that they like agates.”
I reached out and grabbed a studding to hold myself erect. Things were going just a bit too fast to take.
“We tried out the traps down in the basement,” Billy told me. “There are a lot of the bugs down there. We tried everything for bait. We tried cheese and apples and dead flies and a lot of other things, but the bugs weren’t having any. Tommy had an agate in his pocket, just a little gravel agate that he had picked up. So we tried that …”
“But why an agate, son? I can’t think of anything less likely …”
“Well, you see, it was this way, Dad. We tried everything …”
“Yes,” I said, “I can see the logic of it.”
“Trouble is,” Billy went on, “we have to use plastic for the traps. It’s the only thing that will hold the bugs. They burst right out of a trap made of anything but plastic …”
“Now, just a minute there,” I warned him. “Once you catch these bugs, what do you intend to do with them?”
“Sell them, naturally,” said Billy. “Tommy and me figured everyone would want them. Once the people around here find out how the
y’ll clean a house, everyone will want them. We’ll charge five dollars for half a dozen of them. That’s a whole lot cheaper than a vacuum cleaner.”
“But just six bugs …”
“They multiply,” said Billy. “They must multiply real fast. A day or two ago we had just a few of them and now the house is swarming.”
Billy went on working on the trap.
Finally he said: “Maybe, Dad, you’d like to come in with us on the deal. We need some capital. We have to buy some plastic to make more and better traps. We might be able to make a big thing out of it.”
“Look, son. Have you sold any of the bugs?”
“Well, we tried to, but no one would believe us. So we thought we’d wait until Mom noised it around a bit.”
“What did you do with the bugs you caught?”
“We took them over to Dr. Wells. I remembered that he wanted some. We gave them to him free.”
“Billy, I wish you’d do something for me.”
“Sure, Dad. What is it?”
“Don’t sell any of the bugs. Not right away at least. Not until I say that it’s O.K.”
“But, gee, Dad …”
“Son, I have a hunch. I think the bugs are alien.”
“Me and Tommy figured that they might be.”
“You what!”
“It was this way, Dad. At first we figured we’d sell them just as curiosities. That was before we knew how they would clean a house. We thought some folks might want them because they looked so different, and we tried to figure out a sales pitch. And Tommy said why don’t we call them alien bugs, like the bugs from Mars or something. And that started us to thinking and the more we thought about it the more we thought they might be really bugs from Mars. They aren’t insects, nor nothing else so far as we could find. They’re not like anything on Earth …”
“All right,” I said. “All right!”
That’s the way kids are these days. You can’t keep up with them. You think you have something all nailed down and neat and here they’ve beat you to it. It happens all the time.
I tell you, honestly, it does nothing for a man.
“I suppose,” I said, “that while you were figuring all this out, you also got it doped how they might have got here.”
“We can’t be really sure,” said Billy, “but we have a theory. That boulder out in back—we found a hole in it just the right size for these bugs. So we sort of thought they used that.”
“You won’t believe me, son,” I told him, “but I was thinking the same thing. But the part that’s got me stumped is what they used for power. What made the boulder move through space?”
“Well, gee, Dad, we don’t know that. But there is something else. They could have used the boulder for their food all the time they traveled. There’d be just a few of them, most likely, and they’d get inside the boulder and there’d be all that food, maybe enough of it to last them years and years. So they’d eat the agate, hollowing out the boulder and making it lighter so it could travel faster—well, if not faster, at least a little easier. But they’d be very careful not to chew any holes in it until they’d landed and it was time to leave.”
“But agate is just rock …”
“You weren’t listening, Dad,” said Billy, patiently. “I told you that agate was the only bait they’d go for.”
“Randall,” said Helen, coming down the driveway, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to use the car to go over and see Amy. She wants me to tell her all about the bugs.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Any way you look at it, my day is shot. I may as well stay home.”
She went tripping back down the driveway and I said to Billy: “You just lay off everything until I get back.”
“Where you going, Dad?”
“Over to see Dobby.”
I found Dobby roosting on a bench beneath an apple tree, his face all screwed up with worry. But it didn’t stop him talking.
“Randall,” he said, beginning to talk as soon as I hove in sight, “this is a sad day for me. All my life I’ve been vastly proud of my professional exactitude in my chosen calling. But this day I violated, willingly and knowingly and in a fit of temper, every precept of experimental observation and laboratory technique.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, wondering what he was talking about. Which was not unusual. One often had to wonder what he was getting at.
“It’s those damn bugs of yours,” Dobby accused me explosively.
“But you said you wanted some more bugs. Billy remembered that and he brought some over.”
“And so I did. I wanted to carry forward my examination of them. I wanted to dissect one and see what made him go. Perhaps you recall my telling you about the hardness of the exoskeletons.”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Randall,” said Dobby, sadly, “would you believe me if I told you that exoskeleton was so hard I could do nothing with it. I couldn’t cut it and I couldn’t peel it off. So you know what I did?”
“I have no idea,” I declared, somewhat exasperated. I hoped that he’d soon get to the point, but there was no use in hurrying him. He always took his time.
“Well, I’ll tell you, then,” said Dobby, seething. “I took one of those little so-and-sos and I put him on an anvil. Then I picked up a hammer and I let him have it. And I tell you frankly that I am not proud of it. It constituted, in every respect, a most improper laboratory technique.”
“I wouldn’t let that worry me at all,” I told him. “You’ll have to simply put this down as an unusual circumstance. The important thing, it seems to me, is what you learned about the bug …”
And then I had a terrible thought. “Don’t tell me the hammer failed!”
“Not at all,” said Dobby, with some satisfaction. “It did a job on him. He was smashed to smithereens.”
I sat down on the bench beside him and settled down to wait. I knew that in due time he’d tell me.
“An amazing thing,” said Dobby. “Yes, a most amazing thing. That bug was made of crystals—of something that looked like the finest quartz. There was no protoplasm in him. Or, at least,” he qualified, judiciously, “none I could detect.”
“But a crystal bug! That’s impossible!”
“Impossible,” said Dobby. “Yes, of course, by any earthly standard. It runs counter to everything we’ve ever known or thought. But the question rises: Can our earthly standards, even remotely, be universal?”
I sat there, without saying anything, but somehow I felt a great relief that someone else was thinking the same thing I had thought. It went to prove, just slightly, that I wasn’t crazy.
“Of course,” said Dobby, “it had to happen sometime. Soon or late, it should be almost inevitable that some alien intelligence would finally seek us out. And knowing this, we speculated on monsters and monstrosities, but we fell far short of the actual mark of horr…”
“There’s no reason at the moment,” I told him, hastily, “that we should fear the bugs. They might, in fact, become a useful ally. Even now they are co-operating. They’ve seemed to strike up some sort of deal. We furnish them a place to live and they, in turn …”
“You’re mistaken, Randall,” Dobby warned me solemnly. “These things are alien beings. Don’t imagine for a moment that they and the human race might have a common purpose or a single common concept. Their life process, whatever it may be, is entirely alien to us. So must be their viewpoints. A spider is blood-brother to you as compared with these.”
“But we had ants and wasps and they cleaned out the ants and wasps.”
“They may have cleaned out the ants and wasps, but it was no part, I am sure, of a co-operative effort. It was no attempt on their part to butter up the human in whose dwelling place they happened to take refuge, or set up their camp, or carve out their beachhead, however you may put it. I have grave doubt that they are aware of you at all except as some mysterious and rather shadowy monstrosity they can’t bother with as yet. Sure the
y killed your insects, but in this they did no more than operate on a level common with their own existence. The insects might have been in their way or they may have recognized in them some potential threat or hindrance.”
“But even so, we can use them,” I told him impatiently, “to control our insect pests, or carriers of disease.”
“Can we?” Dobby asked. “What makes you think we can? And it would not be insect pests alone, but rather all insects. Would you, then, deprive our plant life of its pollination agents—to mention just one example of thousands?”
“You may be right,” I said, “but you can’t tell me that we must be afraid of bugs, of even crystal bugs. Even if they should turn out to be a menace, we could find a way in which to cope with them.”
“I have been sitting here and thinking, trying to get it straight within my mind,” said Dobby, “and one thing that has occurred to me is that here we may be dealing with a social concept we’ve never met with on this planet. I’m convinced that these aliens must necessarily operate on the hive-mind principle. We face not one of them alone nor the total number of them, but we face the sum total of them as a single unit, as a single mind and a single expression of purpose and performance.”
“If you really think they’re dangerous, what would you have us do?”
“I still have my anvil and my hammer.”
“Cut out the kidding, Dobby.”
“You are right,” said Dobby. “This is no joking matter, nor is it one for an anvil and a hammer. My best suggestion is that the area be evacuated and an atom bomb be dropped.”
Billy came tearing down the path.
“Dad!” he was yelling. “Dad!”
“Hold up there,” I said, catching at his arm. “What is going on?”
“Someone is ripping up our furniture,” yelled Billy, “and then throwing it outdoors.”
“Now, wait a minute—are you sure?”
“I saw them doing it,” yelled Billy. “Gosh, will Mom be sore!”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. I started for the house as fast as I could go. Billy followed close behind me and Dobby brought up the rear, white whiskers bristling like an excited billy goat.
Seven Come Infinity Page 3