Conversation with a Bug

When the squeaky little voice called "Help me! Help me!" over and over again, Henry nearly jumped out of his skin. He had just returned to his apartment from seeing a re-rerun of The Fly at his neighborhood theater, and his first thought was of that awful climactic scene in the web. "Impossible!" he told himself, but he started looking around anyhow. "Where are you?" he asked.

"In the corner, near the ceiling. Hurry!" said the voice. It sounded anxious.

He saw nothing in the indicated spot, but his room was equipped with one small floor lamp with a fifteen-watt bulb, so it wasn't surprising. Clambering up onto a straight-backed chair, he looked more closely into the angle where the ceiling met the walls, and beheld a small wasp struggling in the confines of a cobweb, its whirring wings tearing ragged holes in the fabric, which then clung to its body like chunks of gluey gray seaweed. Down in the corner of the web lurked a spider, its jewel-eyes an octet of emotion.

"You spoke?" Henry said in some amazement.

"Yes," whimpered the tiny voice. "Save me before this chitin-covered horror finishes me off!"

Henry lifted a hand toward the web, then paused. "If I do," he said carefully, "what's in it for me?"

'Mercy!" squeaked the voice. "First the rescue; then we'll discuss the reward."

"Nothing doing," said Henry. "You might just vanish into some dark corner and leave me flat, with webbed fingers."

"You're a hard man," came the mournful squeak.

"On the contrary," Henry said, "I am soft as anything. That is my problem. I have no confidence, neither in my social life, nor in my physiognomy and musculature. All my life has been spent reading books on bodybuilding and popularity-molding, and look at me."

There was a pause, then the voice ventured, "You do seem rather puny."

"I am," Henry agreed wistfully. "I am five feet, three inches tall, weigh one hundred pounds, and have pimples, weak eyes and receding hair. I don't imagine you can do much for me, but whatever you could do would be certain to improve my condition."

'As a matter of fact, I can help you," said the voice. "I am not what I appear to be, which is why I can speak to you. I am under a spell, put upon me by a rival genie."

"A genie?" gasped Henry. "Like in the Arabian Nights, a magical creature who grants wishes and stuff?"

"Yesss!" shrieked the tiny, tinny voice. "Now, hurry, squash this hideous thing before it gets to me, and I will grant you a wish!"

"If you're so necromantic," Henry said suspiciously, "why don't you just blast this other creature or something?"

"A genie," said the bug, "may never use his powers for bis own ends, but only in the interests of his master." It sounded like a quote.

"You take an oath or something?" said Henry.

"Certainly. You can't become a genie if you're going to use your magic for yourself. You'd take over the universe or something."

'And if you break the oath?"

"All your magic fizzles, and you're just a floating spirit, who can observe things but do nothing about them. It's pretty awful."

"I can imagine," Henry sympathized. "But how come just one wish? I kind of thought three was the custom."

The wasp beat its wings more furiously against the web, and the spider (continued on page 136)Conversation(continued from page 93) scuttled to another corner, watching its progress.

"People got too greedy, too clever in their wishes. So we hold them to one, that's all."

"Isn't it worth three to be rescued?" persisted Henry.

"Can't do it. If I tried to exceed one wish, it'd revoke an amendment to my oath, and all my spells would fizzle."

"Damn," sighed Henry. "I hardly know what to wish for."

"Rescue first, think later!"

"No," Henry said. "Genies are tricky. I want you to grant my wish before I rescue you, just in case."

"OK, OK, OK!" shrilled the genie. "Think!"

Henry thought very hard, watching the tableau in the corner nervously, lest his wish fulfiller get itself destroyed during his meditations. It was terribly difficult to decide on something, on the spur of the moment. "I could ask for wealth, I suppose," he said slowly. "No matter what a person looks like, he can be awfully popular if he's well to do."

"Money?" said the genie. "It's a deal!"

There came a whistling of hot winds, a terrible glare of lemon-colored lightning, and Henry's room was suddenly swamped in a sea of fluttering green bills, with an emerald or two glinting among the confusion. He also noticed a number of elegant men's rings laid out on the kitchen table, their stones varying from ruby to carnelian to gentian to onyx, and the sink was stacked golden with doubloons. "Now save me!" cried the genie.

"But——" Henry faltered, giddy at the sight of all that wealth, and choked by the power of his own heartbeats, "money isn't everything, you know ..."

"What?" came the raucous squeak, almost in despair. "A king's ransom, and you're not sure?"

Henry ran a hand through his thinning hair, glanced down his spindly frame at his unsightly potbelly (barely the size of a cantaloupe, but it spoiled the over-all silhouette), and he blinked his nearsighted eyes and sniffed. "I mean, even with money, and the power it brings, and also the friendly company of better-than-nothing fair-weather friends, I would still have to look at myself, and live with myself, and——"

"OK, then," sobbed the genie. "Here!"

The hot winds brought the lemon lightning again, and all at once Henry's head thumped the ceiling as he became—amid the hissing whirlwind of vanishing wealth—six feet, four inches tall, with two-and-a-half-foot shoulders, a flat abdomen like sheet steel, and his hand, reaching again to his head, felt a thatch of curly hair which, as he tugged out the forelock for a look, was a handsome raven shade and gloriously healthy. He could feel the cavities vanishing from his teeth, feel the missing teeth replaced by strong white ones, and feel all his pimples vanishing into suddenly firm, bronzed flesh. "How do I look?" he murmured, trembling.

"Like Rock Hudson," yelled the genie. "Now, quickly, save me from this—Oh hell! Now, what's wrong?"

"I—I miss all that money," said Henry. "Isn't there some way of—uh—combining wishes? I mean, couldn't you make me a handsome millionaire, both at once?"

"Impossible," the genie groaned. "Money is one thing, looks are another. It can't be done. Which do you want?"

Henry wrung his hands. "I don't know!" he said truthfully. "What's the fun of being handsome if you're poor?"

"I got it!" said the genie, eagerly. "Use your looks to get into the movies, and earn your millions!"

Henry sighed. "They already have a Rock Hudson."

"OK, then," said the voice, desper ately, "use the money to get good looks. Plastic surgery, a toupee, a ten-week course at Vic Tanny's, and platform shoes ought to——"

"But I wouldn't look like Rock Hudson, even then," Henry mumbled, shaking his head. "It wouldn't be the same."

"How about popularity, then?" the genie hollered. "If you're popular, really popular, looks don't matter, because people like you as you are. And as for money, you could always use your popularity to borrow it or something ..."

"Well," Henry said, toying with the idea. "I suppose even Rock Hudson's looks don't guarantee him a date every night, but popularity would ..."

"Done!" said the genie. Again that wind, and that lightning, and Henry shriveled like a pricked balloon, back to his own form. He felt no different. "Am I popular?" he queried hopefully.

At that moment the phone began to ring, the door to his room burst inward, and in galloped a crowd of cheering girls, with warm red lips and sparkling bright eyes, all calling his name. He rushed for them, grabbed the nearest one, and——

"Come back here!" screamed the wispy voice of the genie.

Wham! Crackle! Bzzzt!

Henry fell to the floor, his arms empty. The room was devoid of girls. Ashamed, he got up from the rug and slouched over to the chair in the corner and got back onto it. "Sorry," he whispered, as he came abreast of the web once more. "I got carried away."

"You should be sorry!" snapped the genie. "I've had enough of this messing around! You pick a wish, and mighty quick, or all bets are off!"

Henry looked closely at the web. Things were desperate, indeed. The wasp had shredded enough web so that it now hung within half an inch of the spider's fangs. The wasp buzzed and whirred like crazy. "Well ..." said Henry, "I suppose I can trust you to grant my wish after I save you?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" whimpered the genie, as the gap between the pair of horrid little creatures narrowed. "Anything! But hurry!"

Henry made his decision.

"All right," he said, jumping from the chair. He got a hammer from the kitchen drawer, rushed back and reached the site of the combatants once more. "Hold still so I don't miss!" he said.

"All right," sobbed the genie.

Henry swung the hammer with all his might ...

The spider squashed out flat against the wallpaper, making a nauseating spot. Henry shuddered and dropped the hammer to the floor. "You're free," he sighed.

Silence.

"You're free," he repeated, prodding the wasp with the bony tip of one finger. Then corrosive agony lanced down his hand, and he fell back onto the floor, almost stunning himself, looking with shock at the swelling sting-lump on the back of his knuckle.

Suddenly furious, he clambered onto the chair again.

"What did you do that for?" he demanded. "After all, I saved you from the spider, didn't I? ... Genie?"

More silence.

Then Henry had a disturbing thought. He dashed to the phone, yanked it up, and dialed the Museum of Natural History.

"Does a spider have any natural enemies?" he asked the man who answered.

"Of course," said the man. "Birds, toads, the dreaded ichneumon fly, and, of course, the hunting wasp."

"Oh dear," Henry said, and hung up.

The trouble with talking to a pair of bugs is that you don't know which one's lips are moving. Henry has since moved to a new apartment. That spot on the wall was driving him out of his mind.