The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington Read Free Book Online Page A

for his morning bath. He scrubbed his head vigorously, then washed both of his sniffwhips, counting each segment as it passed between his lips, 356 segments in all, each responsible for absorbing some information about the world around him. Next he washed and scrubbed his tail-prongs with his rear gitalongs, and tested each prong, wiggling it and standing it erect, for although his tailprongs were no longer sensitive to sound they were still capable of full erection. He could also use them, if the occasion required, for feeling his way backwards; reverse sniffwhips, as it were.
    How does a fastidious genteel roosterroach know when his nightly (or thrice-nightly) ablutions are finished? Of the 178 segments on each sniffwhip, the last two, at the very tip, have as their sole function an appraisal of one’s own cleanliness, tidiness, and aroma. Sam no less than any other roosterroach would rather have lost both his tailprongs and been totally deaf than to lose the tips of his sniff-whips. Whenever an individual loses these, through accident, battle, or failure to keep them clean, that individual is almost certain to be dirty, stinking, and flowzy…until he regenerates the tips.
    For all Man’s repugnance toward him, the roosterroach is the most immaculate of insects, permitting no speck of dirt or disease to remain upon his body. And Gregor Samsa Ingledew was the most immaculate of roosterroaches. Not just in his person but in his surroundings: he kept the interior of the Clock, and most of its exterior too, spotless. The Woman, who was a fastidious housekeeper Herself, would have been proud of Sam, if She knew he existed. She did not. Didn’t She ever wonder, when She was dusting Her room, why the Clock and the mantelshelf never needed to be dusted?
    Sam climbed down the mantel and gained the floor. He was about to approach closer to a female, other than his mother, of any species, than he had ever been since his life began. For all his excellent grooming, which along with his intelligence, squirehood, and residential situation made him the most attractive and eligible bachelor of Stay More, Sam had a congenital flaw more damaging than deafness: he was enormously and painfully shy of females. All Ingledews had been, as long as anyone could remember. It was a family legend, nay, a longstanding family joke: if every Ingledew male had been the subject of some great story of heroic deeds, he was also the butt of some hilarious anecdote involving his shyness toward females and the extraordinary circumstances of fate or feminine intrigue that had permitted at least one male Ingledew in each generation to marry and perpetuate the family name…as well as the congenital dread of females.
    But his terrible shyness toward any member of the opposite sex would not now prevent Sam from approaching Sharon, for he did not intend to let Her see him. She was absorbed in Her conversation over the black talking-instrument. He selected the best route to get as close as possible to Her voice without being seen, and climbed up the very back of the tall cheer-of-ease, an easy task of crawling gitalong over gitalong through the nap of the fabric. Reaching the summit, he climbed down the other side, right behind Her head. He was very careful not to touch Her hair, and very careful to keep an escape route in sight in order to vanish in an instant in the unlikely event that She began to turn Her head in his direction.
    From this proximity, Her voice was almost booming, although She spoke quietly. He could hear, if not every word, at least some of it.
    “…and feel so sorry for him but don’t see that there’s a blessed thing I or anyone could do…” She was saying. She was, Sam assumed, talking to Her grandmother. He had anticipated that She might be putting a call through to the Man Himself, but Holy House did not contain a talking-instrument. Sam was surprised to discover that he was glad She wasn’t talking to Larry, which would have made