The Diligent Bugs of Kook Bog

Soap

Chapter 1

The Day the Ground Gave Way

Young Rudy Promovendis was fourteen years old when his world, quite literally, collapsed.

It came as a surprise to him, but the signs had been there all along. The mud had been rising throughout Mossville for months, if not years, and the periodic rumbles of the shifting earth had become all too familiar to the town's residents. From time to time, Rudy heard the hushed talk among adults of a coming catastrophe. There had already been damage from smaller quakes and slides. Mud-related mishaps had even claimed a handful of lives, but the incidents had been isolated. The worst, it was rightly feared by many, was yet to come.

Rudy's father had certainly sensed the danger. Pythagorus Promovendis had been more preoccupied by the encroaching mud than anybody else. The older man's eyes shone with a strange, mad fire when the soft ground groaned beneath their feet. His father knew that time was short to prepare. But for Rudy, the reality of the threat had not sunk in.

On the fateful morning Rudy had opened his window in preparation for an experiment involving Pyrolusite powder and spirits of salt. Even in his youth, Rudy was cautious and conscientious scientist. He pushed the window up as high as it went and drew the curtains back to let in as much fresh air as he could. This wasn't Rudy's first time working with hazardous gasses and he had no wish to extinguish himself in the name of science.

Below the window, through the orange and yellow autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, his father's work shed stood quietly, embedded in the soft mud of the hillside. Rudy's gaze lingered on the work shed. Once upon a time, his father had welcomed his help, but as Rudy got older, his father had become cagey and distant. Rudy had not seen the inside of the work shed since he was seven or eight years old. The rejection stung. He knew his father was working on something extraordinary.

The less you know about my work these days the better, his father had told him. The time will come. Wait.

But Rudy found it impossible not to wonder. His father's occasional, tantalizing outbursts made his curiosity burn all the more hotly.

When I finish my work, all of this will be behind us, Pythagorus mumbled from time to time over yet another supper of thin porridge and offal. This family's troubles will be over, along with all of Mossville's.

But when Rudy pressed him for more on the nature of the windfall, his father became gruff and evasive.

In due time, boy, he said. But the time had never come.

Rudy returned to his experiment. An ancient leather-bound tome lay on his desk, tied around the middle with a bone-white ribbon. Principia Chemica was printed in faded gold leaf across the cover. Rudy untied the ribbon and gently opened the book.

A stiff wire stand held a test tube a few feet above the surface of his desk. Rudy spooned the black powder into the test tube and poured the clear liquid after it. He struck a match and lit the wick of a small alcohol burner. A low flame began to glow.

A curl of greenish-yellow gas began to rise from the test tube. Rudy sat back pulled his shirt in front of his face instinctively as the faint whiff of the gas—somewhere between pepper and pineapple—reached his nose.

Rudolph! his mother's voice came up through the floorboards.

Rudy blew out the flame and scurried to the head of the stairs.

Yes, Mother! he called.

Wood! said his mother.

Yes, Mother!

Quickly, Rudy put on his boots and jacket and went out to the woodpile behind the house. He took the ax from its place against the pile and split three logs, as much as he could carry.

As he gathered the woods in his arms, he heard a faint buzzing sound. He looked around.

A loose cloud of aphids had begun to take shape amid the trees behind the house. Rudy watched as the cloud thickened and grew. Slowly, the aphids began to rise. Rudy's gaze followed the pulsating swarm of aphids upward.

With a start, Rudy realized that other insects had also begun to swarm and rise. Throughout the woods, columns of flies and gnats emerged in ragged vertical streaks. As he watched, the streaks moved together, consolidating into a dark column which extended straight into the sky.

Rudy clutched the bundle of wood and ran into the house.

In the kitchen, Rudy's mother was fiddling with the door of the stove. She was a large woman with thick, strong hands. The latch of the door flopped uselessly in her fingers and the door swung freely on its hinge.

Where is your father? He said he'd fix this when he came home from town, but that was hours ago!

Piece by piece, she took the wood from Rudy's arms and tossed it into the belly of the stove.

He must have come home and gone straight to that work shed of his, she said. He has no sense of time in there.

The bugs are acting strangely again, Mother, said Rudy.

His mother paused, knitting her brows.

Go on up to your room, she said. I'll call you when your broth is hot.

Mother, he said. What do you suppose Father is building?

Rudy's mother sighed.

I don't know, Rudolph, she said. But for all his quirks, your father is a brilliant man. If he says his work is important, I believe that it is. I'm sure he has his reasons for his secrecy.

Rudy shrugged, unsatisfied with the answer.

Rudy returned to his room and sat quietly for a time. He found a scarf in the bottom of his chest of clothing and wrapped it around his face before returning to his experiment. Once again, he positioned the burner underneath the test tube and lit the wick. Once again, the greenish gas began to snake upward.

Rudy felt a tremor pass through him. It was so subtle that for a moment he thought he had merely shivered, although he did not feel cold. Rudy paused. For a second or two, all was still. Then came another tremor. The burner on the table rattled, then went silent for two or three more seconds.

That was all the warning there was.

Before Rudy could even stand, the floor beneath him lurched sickeningly. His stomach rose as his body dropped and the floor bumped to a halt, hurling him off of his chair, then shifted and began to creak in the opposite direction, like a ship on a stormy sea.

The contents of Rudy's desk, burner, test tube, books, and all spilled onto the floor with a crash. Rudy gasped as he watched the poisonous green puff rise from the shattered test tube. The burner, too, had smashed. In an instant, a low flame flashed across the floor, where the alcohol from the burner was spreading slowly.

Rudy leaped to his feet. He grabbed the tattered woolen blanket from his bed and began to beat the burning alcohol. The blue flames danced and licked the blanket. He held his breath and squinted his eyes against the spreading haze of chlorine that was filling his room. From below he heard his mother's shout.

Goodness! The stove!

The flames began to subside under Rudy's beating. He threw the blanket over the remaining alcohol and stomped it out completely with his feet. The green gas, too, was thinning in the wind from the open window. The room's movement slowed and eventually shuddered to a halt with the floor still at a sickening angle.

Rudy's relief was short-lived. The room was uncomfortably hot. And when dared to gasp for air through his tightly wadded shirt, the acrid smell of smoke filled his nostrils. Only moments before, the wisps of smoke from below had been barely noticeable. Now thick gray tendrils seeped through the cracks between the floorboards and under his door. Rudy realized sickly that the real fire had been beneath him the whole time.

Rudy dashed to the door of his bedroom, but the doorknob burned his fingers and he pulled away. Beyond his bedroom the crackling of the flames and the creaking of burning wood told him that the blaze was advancing rapidly through the house. Smoke now billowed into his room from all directions.

There was only one way out. It would not be an easy jump, but not impossible. He sprinted across the floor of his bedroom, through the smoke and lingering green gas, and dove headlong out the window into the branches of the maple outside.

As the branches bent beneath him, Rudy looked back at the room he'd just escaped. At that moment his mother, panting and soot-blackened, burst into the bedroom door at the far side of his room, followed by a billow of flame.

Mother! he screamed, as the branches gave way, rolling him onto the soft ground below with a belching splat. The mud at the base of the house was nearly up to his knees.

Rudy struggled to stand. The house was an inferno. He looked up desperately at his own bedroom window, but his mother did not appear.

He spun around and began down the slope towards his father's work shed. The hill had become a nearly solid mudslide. Trees and bushes seemed to crawl alongside him like slugs as he splashed and slid into the deepening muck.

Father! he cried. Father! Help!

But as he approached the place where the work shed should have been, he felt first confusion and then raw horror. When he finally spotted the corner of the work shed's roof poking up from the soupy mud, his heart stopped.

FATHER! he screamed.

He stood waist deep in the oozing river of mud. Above him the fire roared, consuming his home and all he had ever known. Below him the remnants of his father's precious work shed disappeared into the brown deluge.

Father! his voice was now only a rasp.

It had all happened so suddenly that his emotions could scarcely catch up to the horrific events. His head spun. His parents were gone. His home was gone. Everything was gone.

The mud of Mossville had claimed its latest victims.

The day would stay with Rudy all his life. He would carry the burden of the events even into adulthood. When his own son Theo was born, Rudy had to glance away in pain for a moment at the reflection of his parents in the bright-eyed baby's face.

At least Mossville was safe now, he told himself. At least his child would never know what it was to fear and distrust the very ground upon which he stood.

He had no idea how wrong he was.

Chapter 2

The Noble Gnat Lends a Hand

The moth's powdery wings sparkled golden and gray in the dim light of the old bulb overhead. Theo Promovendis held its body gingerly between the tips of his fingers. Getting them into the harnesses was the most difficult part. This one was the last. Theo sucked his lip in concentration as he placed the moth's body into the delicate wire structure, carefully inserting each leg into its place. A fine, dark thread ran from the harness. Theo snapped the tiny latch across the moth's midsection and released the moth to join the mass of others fluttering above his desk. Each one was tethered to the complex mechanical apparatus laid out across the desktop.

Although it was daytime, the light from the bulb was the only illumination in Theo's bedroom aside from a narrow crack at the edge of his curtains. His father often complained that he should spend more time outside in the sunlight, but that couldn't be helped. After all, it was only because of his father's annoying rules that Theo was forced to work in such secrecy in the first place.

The room was strewn with the makings of countless projects. Parts and pulleys, springs and sprockets, bulbs, tubes and bearings covered the floor and sat in piles in the corners of the room. Theo was always finding discarded little mechanical treasures around town, particularly in the mother lode of the Mossville Municipal Dump. At least, the things he found had mostly been discarded. On the occasions when Theo borrowed items that were (strictly speaking) still in use, it was always with the earnest intention to return them as soon as he was finished with them. But of course, the work of such a restless young inventor was never truly finished.

There were other things in the room more typical of a boy of eleven. There were models of airplanes, ships and trains in various states of completion. Vehicles made of balsa wood, cloth, paper and tin were scattered on the shelves of the book case and displayed atop the wardrobe and the large antique cabinet.

On the bookshelf, among comic books and hobby magazines, stood several imposing tomes. Among the books were The Boy's Anthology of Tales of High Adventure, Braustache & Bakerfield's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mechanical Movements and Assemblies, The Comprehensive Guide to the Design and Construction of Lifelike Clockwork Automata, and Waldo Malone's How To Build Your Own Analytical Engine with Odds And Ends From Around the House. In the corner beside the bookshelf lay more books concealed under blankets, newspaper comics pages, and hand-drawn blueprints. The worn bindings of The Young Outdoorsman's Field Guide to The Noble Gnat and His Habitats, Physics for the Amateur Horticulturist and Bullock and Brewster's Compendium of Arthropod Semiochemical Interactions peeked out from under the coverings, which hid the pile of books a little too well to have been placed entirely by accident.

Theo glanced once over his shoulder at the door and sat still for a few seconds, listening for any sounds from outside the room. He quietly opened the doors of the cabinet and took out an old wooden trunk. He set it on the corner of his desk and opened it with a tarnished brass key.

The trunk was packed to the brim with jars and vials. An apothecary scale and weights were tucked into one corner. Droppers, measuring spoons, and tweezers were wedged between containers of variously colored powders and fluids.

On his forehead Theo wore a pair of bulky, riveted brass aviation goggles with darkly mirrored lenses that——he had been told——had once belonged to his grandfather. He brought them down over his eyes.

He took a jar containing