Simak, Cliffard D - Golden Bugs, The - Notisblokk

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Simak, Cliffard D - Golden Bugs, The

Title : The Golden Bugs

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1960

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox

TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : February 20, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

The Golden Bugs

Clifford D. Simak

It started as a lousy day.

Arthur Belsen, across the alley, turned on his orchestra at six o'clock and

brought me sitting up in bed.

I'm telling you, Belsen makes his living as an engineer, but music is his

passion. And since he is an engineer, he's not content to leave well enough

alone. He had to mess around.

A year or two before he'd had the idea of a robotic symphony, and the man

has talent, you have to give him that. He went to work on this idea and designed

machines that could read--not only play, but read--music from a tape, and he

built a machine to transcribe the tapes. Then he built a lot of these music

machines in his basement workshop.

And he tried them out!

It was experimental work, quite understandably, and there was redesigning

and adjusting to be done, and Belsen was finicky about the performance that each

machine turned out. So he tried them out a lot--and loudly--not being satisfied

until he had the instrumentation just the way he thought it should be.

There had been some idle talk in the neighborhood about a lynching party,

but nothing came of it. That's the trouble, one of the troubles, with this

neighborhood of ours--they'll talk an arm off you, but never do a thing.

As yet no one could see an end to all the Belsen racket. It had taken him

better than a year to work up the percussion section and that was bad enough.

But now he'd started on the strings and that was even worse.

Helen sat up in bed beside me and put her hands up to her ears, but she

couldn't keep from hearing. Belsen had it turned up loud, to get, as he would

tell you, the feel of it.

By this time, I figured, he probably had the entire neighborhood awake.

'Well, that's it," I said, starting to get up.

"You want me to get breakfast?"

"You might as well," I said. "No one's going to get any sleep with that

thing turned on."

While she started breakfast, I headed for the garden back of the garage to

see how the dahlias might be faring. I don't mind telling you I was delighted

with those dahlias. It was nearly fair time and there were some of them that

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Simak, Cliffard D - Golden Bugs, The

would be at bloom perfection just in time for showing.

I started for the garden, but I never got there. That's the way it is in

this neighborhood. A man will start to do something and never get it done

because someone always catches him and wants to talk a while.

This time it was Dobby. Dobby is Dr. Darby Wells, a venerable old codger

with white chin whiskers, and he lives next door. We all call him Dobby and he

doesn't mind a bit, for in a way it's a badge of tribute to the man. At one time

Dobby had been an entomologist of some repute at the university and it had been

his students who had hung the name on him. It was no corruption of his regular

name, but stemmed rather from his one-time interest in mud-dauber wasps.

But now Dobby was retired, with nothing in the world to do except hold long

and aimless conversations with anyone he could manage to nail down.

As soon as I caught sight of him, I knew I was sunk.

"I think it's admirable," said Dobby, leaning on his fence and launching

into full-length discussion as soon as I was in voice distance, "for a man to

have a hobby. But I submit it's inconsiderate of him to practice it so noisily

at the crack of dawn."

"You mean that," I said, making a thumb at the Belsen house, from which the

screeching and the caterwauling still issued in full force.

"Exactly," said Dobby, combing his white chin whiskers with an air of grave

deliberation. "Now, mind me, not for a moment would I refuse the man the utmost

admiration--"

"Admiration?' I demanded. There are occasions when I have a hard time

understanding Dobby. Not so much because of the pontifical way in which be talks

as because of the way he thinks.

"Precisely;" Debby told me. "Not for his machines, although they are

electronic marvels, but for the way in which he engineers his tapes. The machine

that he rigged up to turn out those tapes is a most versatile contraption.

Sometimes it seems to be almost human."

"When I was a boy," I said, "we had player pianos and the pianos ran on

tapes."

"Yes, Randall, you are right," admitted Dobby; "the principle was there, but

the execution--think of the execution. All those old pianos had to do was tinkle

merrily along, but Belsen has worked into his tapes the most delicate nuances."

"I must have missed them nuances," I told him, without any charity at all.

"All I've heard is racket."

We talked about Belsen and his orchestra until Helen called me in for

breakfast.

I had no sooner sat down than she dragged out her grievance list.

"Randall," she said, with determination, "the kitchen is positively crawling

with grease ants again. They're so small you can hardly see them and all at once

they're into everything."

"I thought you got rid of them," I said.

"I did. I tracked them to their nest and poured boiling water into it. But

this time it's up to you."

"Sure thing," I promised. "I'll do it right away."

"That's what you said last time."

"I was ready to," I told her, "but you beat me to it."

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Simak, Cliffard D - Golden Bugs, The

"And that isn't all," she said. "There are those wasps up in the attic

louvers. They stung the little Montgomery girl the other day."

She was getting ready to say more, but just then Billy, our eleven year old,

came stumbling down the stairs.

"Look, Dad," he cried excitedly, holding out a small-size plastic box. "I

have one here I've never seen before."

I didn't have to ask one what. I knew it was another insect. Last year it

had been stamp collecting and this year it was insects--and that's another thing

about having an idle entomologist for a next door neighbor.

I took the box without enthusiasm.

"A ladybug," I said.

"No, it's not," said Billy. "It's too big to be a ladybug. And the spots are

different and the color is all wrong. This one is gold and a ladybug is orange."

"Well, look it up," I said, impatiently. The kid will do anything to keep

away from reading.

"I did," said Billy. "I looked all through the book and I couldn't find it."

"Oh, for goodness sakes," snapped Helen, "sit down and eat your breakfast.

It's bad enough to be overrun with ants and wasps without you spending all your

time catching other bugs."

"But, Mom, it's educational," protested Billy. "That's what Dr. Wells says.

He says there are seven hundred thousand known families of insects..."

"Where did you find it, son?" I asked, a bit ashamed of how we both were

jumping on him.

"Right in my room," said Billy.

"In the house!" screamed Helen. "Ants aren't bad enough..."

"Soon as I get through eating, I'll show it to Dr. Wells."

"Now, don't you pester Dobby."

"I hope he pesters him a lot," Helen said, tight-lipped. "It was Dobby who

got him started on this foolishness."

I handed back the box and Billy put it down beside his plate and started in

on breakfast.

"Randall," Helen said, taking up her third point of complaint. "I don't know

what I'm going to do with Nora."

Nora was the cleaning woman. She came in twice a week.

"What did she do this time?"

"It's what she doesn't do. She simply will not dust. She just waves a cloth

around and that's all there is to it. She won't move a lamp or vase."

"Well, get someone else," I said.

"Randall, you don't know what you're talking about. Cleaning women are hard

to find and you can't depend on them. I was talking to Amy..."

I listened and made the appropriate replies. I've heard it all before.

As soon as I finished breakfast, I took off for the office. It was too early

Side 3

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