There was a strange creaking noise from somewhere and I glanced hurriedly around to find out what it was. I found out, all right.
Over on one corner, my favorite chair was slowly am deliberately and weirdly coming apart. The upholstery nails were rising smoothly from the edging of the fabric—rising from the wood—as if by their own accord—and dropping to the floor with tiny patterings. As I watched a bolt fell to the floor and one leg bent underneath the chair and the chair tipped over. The upholstery nails kept right on coming out.
And as I stood there watching this, I felt the anger draining out of me and a fear come dribbling in to take its place. I started to get cold all over and I could feel the gooseflesh rising.
I started sneaking out. I didn't dare to turn my back so I backed carefully away and I kept my club ready.
I bumped into something and let out a whoop and spun around and raised my club to strike.
It was Dobby. I just stopped the club in time. "Randall," said Dobby calmly, "it's those bugs of yours again."
He gestured toward the ceiling and I looked. The ceiling was a solid mass of golden-gleaming bugs.
I lost some of my fear at seeing them and started to get sore again. I pulled back my arm and aimed the club up at the ceiling. I was ready to let the little stinkers have it, when Dobby grabbed my arm.
"Don't go getting them stirred up," he yelled. "No telling what they'd do."
I tried to jerk my arm away from him, but he hung on to it.
"It is my considered opinion," he declared, even as he wrestled with me, "that the situation has evolved beyond the point where it can be handled by the private citizen."
I gave up. It was undignified trying to get my arm loose from Dobby's clutching paws and I likewise began to see that a club was no proper weapon to use against the bugs.
"You may be right," I said.
I saw that Billy was peering through the door.
"Get out of here," I yelled at him. "You're in the line of fire. They'll be throwing that chair out of here in another minute. They're almost through with it."
Billy ducked back out of sight.
I walked out to the kitchen and hunted through a cupboard drawer until I found the phone book. I looked up the number and dialed the police.
"This is Sergeant Andrews talking," said a voice.
"Now listen closely, Sergeant," I said. "I have some bugs out here…"
"Ain't we all?" the sergeant asked in a happy tone of voice.
"Sergeant," I told him, trying to sound as reasonable as I could, "I know that this sounds funny. But these are a different kind of bug. They're breaking up my furniture and throwing it outdoors."
"I tell you what," the sergeant said, still happy. "You better go on back to bed and try to sleep it off. If you don't, I'll have to run you in."
"Sergeant," I told him, "I am completely sober…"
A hollow click came from the other end and the phone went dead.
I dialed the number back.
"Sergeant Andrews," said the voice.
"You just hung up on me," I yelled. "What do you mean by that? I'm a sober, law-abiding, taxpaying citizen and I'm entitled to protection, and even if you don't think so, to some courtesy as well. And when I tell you I have bugs…"
"All right," said the sergeant wearily. "Since you are asking for it. What's your name and address?"
I gave them to him.
"And Mr. Marsden," said the sergeant.
"What is it now?"
"You better have those bugs. If you know what's good for you, there better be some bugs."
I slammed down the phone and turned around.
Dobby came tearing out of the living room.
"Look out! Here it comes!" he yelled.
My favorite chair, what was left of it, came swishing through the air. It hit the door and stuck. It jiggled violently and broke loose to drop on the pile outside.
"Amazing," Dobby panted. "Truly amazing. But it explains a lot."
"Tell me," I snapped at him, "what explains a lot?" I was getting tired of Dobby's ramblings.
"Telekinesis," said Dobby.
"Tele-what?"
"Well, maybe only teleportation," Dobby admitted sheepishly. "That's the ability to move things by the power of mind alone."
"And you think this teleportation business bears out your hive-mind theory?"
Dobby looked at me with some astonishment. "That's exactly what I meant," he said.
"What I can't figure out," I told him, "is why they're doing this."
"Of course you can't," said Dobby. "No one expects you to. No one can presume to understand an alien motive. On the surface of it, it would appear they are collecting metal, and that well may be exactly what they're doing. But the mere fact of their metal grabbing does not go nearly far enough. To truly understand their motive…"
A siren came screaming down the street.
"There they are," I said, racing for the door.
The police car pulled up to the curb and two officers vaulted out.
"You Marsden?" asked the first one.
I told him that I was.
"That's funny," said the second one. "Sarge said he was stinko."
"Say," said the first one, staring at the pile of wreckage outside the kitchen door, "what is going on here?"
Two chair legs came whistling out the door and thudded to the ground.
"Who is in there throwing out the stuff?" the second cop demanded.
"Just the bugs," I told them. "Just the bugs and Dobby. I guess Dobby's still in there."
"Let's go in and grab this Dobby character," said the first one, "before he wrecks the joint."
I stayed behind. There was no use of going in. All they'd do would be ask a lot of silly questions and there were enough of them I could ask myself without listening to the ones thought up by someone else.
A small crowd was beginning to gather. Billy had rounded up some of his pals and neighbor women were rushing from house to house, cackling like excited chickens. Several cars had stopped and their occupants sat gawping.
I walked out to the street and sat down on the curbing.
And now, I thought, it all had become just a little clearer. If Dobby was right about this teleportation business, and the evidence said he was, then the boulder could have been the ship the bugs had used to make their way to Earth. If they could use their power to tear up furniture and throw it out of the house, they could use that selfsame power to move anything through space. It needn't have been the boulder; it could have been anything at all.
Billy, in his uninhibited, boyish thinking, probably had struck close to the truth—they had used the boulder because it was their food.
The policemen came pounding back out of the house and stopped beside me.
"Say, mister," said one of them, "do you have the least idea what is going on?"
I shook my head. "You better talk to Dobby. He's the one with answers."
"He says these things are from Mars."
"Not Mars," said the second officer. "It was you who said it might be Mars. He said from the stars."
"He's a funny-talking old coot," complained the first policeman. "A lot of stuff he says is more than a man can swallow."
"Jake," said the other one, "we better start doing something about this crowd. We can't let them get too close."
"I'll radio for help," said Jake.
He went to the police car and climbed into it.
"You stick around," the other said to me, "Tm not going anywhere," I said.
The crowd was good-sized by now. More cars had stopped and some of the people in them had gotten out, but most of them just sat and stared. There were an awful lot of kids by this time and the women were still coming, perhaps from blocks away. Word spreads fast in an area like ours.
Dobby came ambling down the yard. He sat down beside me and started pawing at his whiskers.
"It makes no sense," he said, "but, then, of course, it wouldn't."
A car screeched down the street and slammed up to the curb just short of where we sat. Helen came bustling out of it.
"I can't turn my back a minute," she declared, "but something up and happens."
"It's your bugs," I said. "Your nice house-cleaning bugs. They're ripping up the place."
"Why don't you stop them, then?"
"Because I don't know how."
"They're aliens," Dobby told her calmly. "They came from somewhere out in space."
"Dobby Wells, you keep out of this! You've caused me all the trouble I can stand. The idea of getting Billy interested in insects! He's had the place cluttered up all summer."
A man came rushing up. He squatted down beside me and started pawing at my arm. I turned around and saw that it was Barr, the rockhound.
"Marsden," he said, excitedly, "I have changed my mind. I'll give you five thousand for that boulder. I'll write you out a check right now."
"What boulder?" Helen asked. "You mean our boulder out in the back?"
"That's the one," said Barr. "I've got to have that boulder."
"Sell it to him," Helen said.
"I will not," I told her.
"Randall Marsden," she screamed, "you can't turn down five thousand! Think of what five thousand…"
"I can turn it down," I told her, firmly. "It's worth a whole lot more than that. It's not just an agate boulder any longer. It's the first spaceship that ever came to Earth. I can get anything I ask."
Helen gasped.
"Dobby," she asked weakly, "is he telling me the truth?"
"I think," said Dobby, "that for once he is." The wail of sirens sounded down the street. One of the policemen came back from the car.
"You folks will have to get across the street," he said.
"As soon as the others get here, we'll cordon off the place."
We got up to start across the street.
"Lady," said the officer, "you'll have to move your car."
"If you two want to stay together," Dobby offered, "I'll drive it down the street."
Helen gave him the keys and the two of us walked across the street. Dobby got into the car and drove off,
The officers were hustling the other cars away.
A dozen police cars arrived. Men piled out of them. They started pushing back the crowd. Others fanned out to start forming a circle around the house.
Broken furniture, bedding, clothing, draperies from time to time came flying out the kitchen door. The pile of debris grew bigger by the moment.
We stood across the street and watched our house be wrecked.
"They must be almost through by now," I said, with a strange detachment. "I wonder what comes next."
"Randall," said Helen tearfully, clinging to my arm, "what do we do now? They're wrecking all my things. How about it—is it covered by insurance?"
"Why, I don't know," I said. "I never thought of it."
And that was the truth of it—it hadn't crossed my mind. And me an insurance man!
I had written that policy myself and now I tried desperately to remember what the fine print might have said and I had a sinking feeling. How, I asked myself, could anything like this be covered? It certainly was no hazard that could have been anticipated.
"Anyhow," I said, "we still have the boulder. We can sell the boulder."
"I still think we should have taken the five thousand," Helen told me. "What if the Government should move in and just grab the boulder off?"
And she was right, I told myself. This would be just the sort of thing in which the Government could become intensely interested.
I began to think myself that maybe we should have taken that five thousand.
Three policemen walked across the yard and went into the house. Almost at once they came tearing out again. Pouring out behind them came a swarm of glittering dots that hummed and buzzed and swooped so fast they seemed to leave streaks of their golden glitter in the air behind them. The policemen ran in weaving fashion, ducking and dodging. They waved their hands in the air above their heads.
The crowd surged back and began to run. The police cordon broke and retreated with what dignity it could.
I found myself behind the house across the street, my hand still gripping Helen's arm. She was madder than a hornet.
"You needn't have pulled me along so fast," she told me. "I could have made it by myself. You made me lose my shoes."
"Forget your shoes," I told her sharply. "This thing is getting serious. You go and round up Billy and the two of you get out of here. Go up to Amy's place."
"Do you know where Billy is?"
"He's around somewhere. He is with his pals. Just look for a bunch of boys."
"And you?"
"I'll be along," I said.
"You'll be careful, Randall?"
I patted her shoulder and stooped down to kiss her. "I'll be careful. I'm not very brave, you know. Now go and get the boy."
She started away and then turned back. "Will we ever go back home?" she asked.
"I think we will," I said, "and soon. Someone will find a way to get them out of there."
I watched her walk away and felt the chilly coldness of the kindness of my lie.
Would we, in solemn truth, ever go back home again? Would the entire world, all of humanity, ever be at home again? Would the golden bugs take away the smug comfort and the warm security that Man had known for ages in his sole possession of a planet of his own?
I went up the backyard slope and found Helen's shoes. I put them in my pocket. I came to the back of the house and peeked around the corner.
The bugs had given up the chase, but now a squadron of them flew in a lazy, shining circle around and just above the house. It was plain to see that they were on patrol.
I ducked back around the house and sat down in the grass, with my back against the house. It was a warm amid blue-sky summer day; the kind of day a man should mow his lawn.
A slobbering horror, I thought, no matter how obscene or fearful, might be understood, might be fought against. But the cold assuredness with which the golden bugs were directed to their purpose, the self-centered, vicious efficiency with which they operated, was something else again.
And their impersonal detachment, their very disregard of us, was like a chilly blast upon human dignity.
I heard footsteps and looked up, startled.
It was Arthur Belsen and he was upset.
But that was not unusual. Belsen could get upset at something that was downright trivial.
"I was looking for you everywhere," he chattered. "I met Dobby just a while ago and he tells me these bugs of yours…"
"They're no bugs of mine," I told him sharply. I was getting tired of everyone talking as if I owned the bugs, as if I might be somehow responsible for their having come to Earth.
"Well, anyway, he was telling me they are after metal." I nodded. "That's what they're after. Maybe it's precious stuff to them. Maybe they haven't got too much of it wherever they are from."
And I thought about the agate boulder. If they had had metal, certainly they'd not have used the agate boulder.
"I had an awful time getting home," said Belsen. "I thought there was a fire. There are cars parked in the street for blocks and an awful crowd. I was lucky to get through."
"Come on and sit down," I told him. "Stop your fidgeting."
But he paid no attention to me.
"I have an awful lot of metal," he said. "All those machines of mine down in the basement. I've put a lot of time and work and money into those machines and I can't let anything happen to them. You don't think the bugs will start branching out, do you?"
"Branching out?"
"Well, yes, you know—after they get through with everything in your house, they might start getting into other houses."
&
nbsp; "I hadn't thought of it," I said. "I suppose that it could happen."
I sat there and thought about it and I had visions of them advancing house by house, cleaning out and salvaging all the metal, putting it into one big pile until it covered the entire block and eventually the city.
"Dobby says that they are crystal. Isn't that a funny thing for bugs to be?"
I said nothing. After all, he was talking to himself.
"But crystal can't be alive," protested Belsen. "Crystal is stuff that things are made of. Vacuum tubes and such. There is no life in it."
"Don't try to fight with me," I told him. "I can't help it if they are crystal."
There seemed to be a lot of ruckus going on out in the street and I got on my feet to peer around the corner of the house.
For a moment there was nothing to see. Everything looked peaceful. One or two policemen were running around excitedly, but I couldn't see that anything was happening. It looked just as it had before.
Then a door slowly, almost majestically, detached itself from one of the police cars parked along the curb and started floating toward the open kitchen door. It reached the door and made a neat left turn and disappeared inside.
A rear vision mirror sailed flashing through the air. It was followed by a siren. Both disappeared within the house.
Good Lord, I told myself, the bugs are going after the cars!
Now I saw that a couple of the cars were already minus hoods and fenders and that some other doors were missing.
The bugs, I thought, had finally really hit the jackpot. They wouldn't stop until they'd stripped the cars clean down to the tires.
And I was thinking, too, with a strange perverse reaction, that there wasn't nearly room enough inside the house to pack all those dismantled cars, What, I wondered, would the bugs do when the house was full?
A half dozen policemen dashed across the street and started for the house. They reached the lawn before the bug patrol above the house became aware of them and swooped down in a screaming, golden arc.
The policemen ran back pell-mell. The bug patrol, it's duty done, returned to circling the house. Fenders, doors, taillights, headlights, radio antennae, and other parts of cars continued to pour into the house.
All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories Page 88
