Pest House

      If Kevin Motley had not been almost blind, he wouldn't have been quite so much in the dark later. He might have seen a silvery saucer—about the size of a pizza pan—sail into the house through the open window, tilt as it banked around a corner, and lower itself toward the green-tiled kitchen floor. He might have recognized an interesting fact other saucer observers had overlooked: the saucers were not so fast nor so maneuverable as they seemed. They were small and close; it was a matter of perspective.
      Kevin's perspective was all awry. He had been sitting in front of that window for hours, sipping from the bottle beside him every time he thought of Mary Ann. He thought of Mary Ann often. By sunset—a gorgeous splash of red, gold, blue, and purple against the western sky—the sting was almost gone. So was the bourbon. So was his eyesight.
      Kevin was not a common lush. He was a man in love. This is meant to cast no aspersions on love but on Mary Ann.
      Kevin was a warm-hearted, demonstrative young man with only two ambitions in life: to make enough money so that he would never need to work again and to bring Mary Ann home to this house as a bride. So far he had been eminently unsuccessful at both.
      He had never been faced, like some gray-flannel-types, with the hard choice between patched-pants integrity and patched-mind servitude. It was not so much that he had sold his soul to the advertising business; he had given it freely. All he asked of fortune now was to invent a resounding slogan that would assure his success for once and for all.
      At the precise moment, however, it had taken everything he could scrape together to make the downpayment on this suburban ranch house, that rambled—but not far—across a lot where the bermuda fought a losing battle with the dandelions, the chick weed, and the crab grass. He had the house, a mortgage that would take $100 out of his paycheck for the next 30 years, but no Mary Ann.
      Mary Ann, now, was a lovely, long-stemmed creature, whose magnificent dark eyes in a tanned face sparkled with intelligent acquisitiveness. She had a smile that dimpled her cheeks charmingly, and she knew it. She had a disciplined body that did what she told it to without complaining. Her mind did the same.
      She knew what she wanted: she wanted security. She was going to wait, with proper caution, until she got it. So far, although she liked Kevin more than she let herself believe, Kevin did not look like security.
      All this Kevin knew when he was sober. In a way, it didn't matter; he still loved her. But it drove him to drink, and this made Mary Ann even less approachable. She did not approve of drinking for good economic reasons.
      In the kitchen, where Mary Ann did not preside, the silver saucer sank through the green linoleum squares as if they were sand and made a miniature crater in the floor boards before it stopped.
      Idiot! said a small voice in a corner of Kevin's mind. You I keep telling—Jupiter this world is not. At the surface to stop, the anti-grav units we must be using. Women drivers!
      Well, here I got you, said another voice.
      Here is where?
      Where we aimed. The tiny planet. Surveyed it we have. Now contact it is time to make.
      Ay! What a lousy navigator and pilot you are. Tangled are my antennae. We are supposed to make contact with what?
      With the natives. In case you have forgotten, help we are seeking so that our forces we can rebuild, to Jupiter we can return, and the tyrants we can overthrow.
      That I know, dumbhead, but what natives? A thousand times around this world we have been, I swear, and a member of the dominant race we have yet to see. Artifacts like the one in which we are, yes! People, no. Unless the creatures too small to be seen are.
      Men! Just because the world small is, small the natives need not be. The reverse! Because of the light gravity, ten-twenty times our size they might be. The size of the artifacts that would help account for.
      The size of the artifacts to account for, numbskull, would a creature five hundred times our size require!
      This no time to argue is. I must get busy with the eggs.
      The voices stopped. Kevin was sitting bolt upright in his chair, his eyes wide and incredulous. He shook his head and stared down at the bottle in his hand. Automatically it started toward his lips, but he stopped it. If he had begun hearing voices, he had reached his limit. Next he would be seeing things.
      With infinite care, he screwed the metal cap on the bottle, put it down beside the chair, stood up, waited until the room settled down, and felt his way into the kitchen. The only kind of drink he needed was coffee.
      He froze in midstep—a feat worthy of a more sober man. He had almost stepped on a silver saucer about the size of a pizza pan imbedded in a crater in his kitchen floor. And the voices had started again.
      Quakes! Shades of Jupiter. For homesick it makes.
      For once right you are, lamebrain. The rocking! It delights! But artificial it seems. Is this for our benefit done?
      Could it be so? Sensed are we before sensing? If so, a brilliant, sympathetic race have we chanced upon indeed.
      Up antennae! Rapidly!
      Before Kevin's incredulous eyes, a slender silver rod sprouted from the top of the pizza pan. He kicked at it and immediately grabbed his foot and began hopping with the other, screaming and moaning.
      The rod was unhurt.
      See? Response instantaneous!
      Contact let us make!
      Kevin forgot about the coffee. He retreated, limping, toward the living room. Just as he reached the bottle and the bottle reached his lips, the voices started again.
      A response!
      Something I'm pulling in, but feeble. Muddled brainwaves. Short circuits. Crossed neurons. Could this member of the race an idiot be?
      The bottle gurgled. For a moment the voices faded, and then they came back.
      Help the poor thing! Straighten out its mind!
      A blue glow grew on the tip of the silver antenna, like St. Elmo's fire. In a moment it detached itself and floated swiftly through the air toward Kevin's head, growing as it came. For a moment Kevin stared at it with shocked eyes, and then he dodged, staggered back, and tripped over the edge of the rug. He sat down heavily.
      The fireball dipped with him. Kevin batted at it ineffectually. "Beat it! Scram!" But he felt nothing, and the fireball, undeterred, passed into his head and was gone.
      With an awful clarity, Kevin knew that he was sober. He was more sober than he had ever been. He saw himself with merciless clarity.
      He had been drinking for nothing. Mary Ann was what she was, and nothing would change that except maybe a few drinks which she would never take because it might interfere with her self-possession. And he was what he was, and bourbon would only keep him from Mary Ann.
      He had been frightfully drunk, sitting here all yesterday afternoon, staring at the sunset, hearing things, seeing things. He had really been loaded! Then he must have passed out and slept until dawn.
      He raised himself and looked out the window. Yes, the sky was getting light. No, by Jupiter! It was getting dark. No wonder he was sober; he had slept the day around.
      Personally, said a small voice in his head, much improvement I do not see.
      A chance give him, dimbrain. For so long he's been a moron, time he needs under control his thoughts to get.
      Kevin grabbed at his too sober head and tried under control his thoughts to get. He realized for the first time that he still had the bourbon in his hand. It hadn't been twenty-four hours at all. It had been instantaneous. Outside was the same sunset he had been watching when the voices started.
      It wasn't the D.T.'s. He was going mad.
      He raised the bottle to his lips and let the fiery liquid burn its way down his throat. It lay in his stomach for a moment, curling, sending out warm tendrils, and then slowly it dissipated.
      He was still stone sober.
      He took another pull and another. It was useless. He might as well have been drinking distilled water.
      Somehow, something had condemned him to cold sobriety.
      Now somewhere we are getting. I think perhaps for contact he may be ready.
      "No!" Kevin screamed, smashing the bottle against the thing in the kitchen crater. "For contact I'll never be ready!"
      He raced for the front door. Before he could get out of the house and out of range, he heard a final remark:
      A hydrocarbon! And our storerooms refilling needed. Don't waste a drop.
      A race this kind, this considerate, this understanding, too good to be true is.
      Kevin had the door open. He fled down the walk, screaming silently.

Pest House Illustration by Duncan Long © 1998. All rights reserved.

      An hour later he came back down the same walk protesting vigorously to a tall, tanned girl with magnificent dark eyes and a smile that dimpled her cheeks charmingly. But right now she wasn't smiling.
      Kevin raised his hand. "I swear that I haven't been drinking. That is," he amended, "that I'm cold sober now. Too sober. It happened, just like I told you. Now I can't even get drunk to forget it."
      "I'll believe it when I see it," Mary Ann said, striding briskly toward the door. "The drinking, I mean."
      Kevin hung back. "I don't think you should go in."
      She turned on him sharply. "I'm going to prove once and for all, Kevin Motley, that you're going on the wagon or in it, There's nothing in there like this wild story you've been babbling. There couldn't be. It's all in your head."
      You're half right anyway, Kevin thought dismally.
      Mary Ann opened the door and stalked into the house as if it were already hers.
      The creature returns, a voice said. And with another.
      This one different is. Hard and disciplined is its mind.
      "There!" Kevin said triumphantly. "Did you hear that?"
      Mary Ann looked at him. "Should I have heard something?"
      She had, Kevin thought. She had. Surely she had. But she wouldn't admit it. She'd rather drive him mad.
      "Well," she said impatiently, "where is it?" Her nose wrinkled. "It smells like a distillery. I wouldn't be surprised at anything you saw."
      Kevin pointed at the center of the kitchen floor. "There!" But the crater was gone, and the kitchen floor was smooth and green. "Look! See that tiny silver antenna!" At least that was still there.
      "That's a pin!" But she didn't offer to touch it. "Look at that floor. It's filthy!"
      There was broken glass scattered around, but it wasn't filthy. The bourbon was all gone.
      One there is who the verdict of its senses will not accept but believes, and one who its senses will not deny yet refuses to believe.
      Dimbrain! The second a female is. Come! Into our suits. Them we cannot perceive directly, but perhaps they can us perceive.
      Kevin looked at Mary Ann, but her face was clear and unperturbed. Her head, though, was unnaturally rigid. The little faker! She was listening. And pretending not to hear! How typical!
      "Kevin!" she screamed, jumping back. "Cockroaches! I can't stand the creatures. Step on them!"
      On the floor beside the antenna were two flat little many legged silvery things. To Kevin they didn't look like cockroaches, but there was no arguing with Mary Ann. He stepped on them. The sole of his shoe gave.
      Ah, the pressure! The beautiful sensation! So good I have not felt since Jupiter we left.
      The goodness, the thoughtfulness of these creatures....
      Kevin lifted his foot. The silver things were unhurt, but his shoe had dents in it. He went to the utility room and took down a hammer from its place on the peg board. He knelt down vindictively beside the little creatures and hit one. The hammer bounced off harmlessly.
      There! Again! Exquisite! I can't stand it!
      Where? Where? What is it?
      Kevin swung the hammer in a vicious arc, but he only succeeded in driving the shiny thing into the linoleum. It lifted itself out with no difficulty, Kevin whacked it again and made another dent. He took a swing at the needle-like antenna. It made his hand sting so bad that he dropped the hammer. The antenna did not move.
      He looked up helplessly. Mary Ann was gone. He ran into the living room. The front door stood open. He ran to it. Mary Ann was halfway down the walk to the car.
      "Mary Ann!"
      She turned toward him a face that was cool and unruffled.
      "I simply can't stand dirty insects, I won't go in that house again, Kevin, until you get rid of them."
      "Get rid of them?" Kevin wailed. "How?"
      She slid into the car, slammed the door, and leaned her head out the window. "Try insect powder. If that doesn't work, get an exterminator. If that doesn't work, get another girl." The car pulled away from the curb.
      It was Kevin's car, but he couldn't think of anything to say. Mary Ann was like that. She borrowed things.
      Kevin turned and stared moodily at the brown ranch house that was to have been his and Mary Ann's honeymoon cottage. Now it was a white elephant that he had to keep meeting the payments on, a pest house taken over by telepathic insects that he couldn't even believe in.
      If the voices in his head could be believed, they were refugees from Jupiter seeking some kind of help from Earth.
      Refugees from Jupiter! he scoffed.
      He needed his head examined. He needed a drink!
      He went through the front door and marched through the living room. He didn't want to go into the kitchen, but that was where the bottle was. The two little silvery shapes were scurrying about the floor, but Kevin ignored them loftily and went to the cabinet above the sink. He took out an unopened fifth of bourbon. Methodically he stripped off the plastic strip and unscrewed the cap. He raised it to his lips and let it gurgle down his throat, neat.
      He waited for a feeling of peace to sweep over him. In vain. He took another pull on the bottle. Still nothing. Impatiently he killed a third of it before he lowered it.
      The spell was still working. These happy insects, these jovial Jovians had removed his ability to react to alcohol. With that blue ball of fire they had given him a cure to end all cures. He could drink all day and it wouldn't matter. Why drink?
      Kevin sighed, capped the bottle, and put it away. He looked under the sink. The insecticide was in a round can with a flat, pry-up lid. The label said:

P O I S O N
Keep away from children and pets
Sprinkle around edges of area where insects
are found. Active ingredients: sodium fluoride
and barium fluosilicate.

      He sprinkled the powder in a circle around the tiny antenna and the bright bugs. Then he perched on a stool, put his chin in his hands, and watched them. One of them blundered into the circle of powder and stopped. In a moment the other came rushing to its side.
      Kevin watched them, but they did not move. He sighed a giant sigh. He had been afraid that his life was ruined, but perhaps after all it was only crippled. It was going to be all right.
      He realized suddenly that he hadn't heard a voice since he came back into the house. Or was it that he had heard them and hadn't listened?
      With the thought the voices returned loud and clear:
      Whoopee!
      Can't over over over-est'mate symp'thy 'n' gen'rosity of natives. Whee!
      You know what? You're drunk!
      So're you!
      True, true. As gov'nor of North Jupiter said to gov'nor of South Jup'ter, "A long time between snifters it is."
      Seri seri seri'sly. Trace element this is for eggs. Now to thorax's content can hatch.
      Kevin stared numbly at the tiny insects. Everything he did turned out wrong. The nasty little things had cost him Mary Ann. They were taking over his mortgaged house. They had even taken away his ability to forget his troubles.
      Tears of self-pity sprang into his eyes. He dashed them away. He'd get them, that's what he'd do. He'd call an exterminator. He didn't care if they had to fumigate the whole house.
      He left the disgusting little drunks nuzzling the sodium fluoride and the barium fluosilicate and went to the phone. In the phone book, the exterminators were listed under "pest control service." Under that heading was a page of phone numbers and advertisements.
      One ad drew his eyes. It was headed:

DEATH SPECIALIST
We don't "control"--We KILL!
One application with a oneyear written guarantee to eliminate
moths, silverfish, carpet beetles, roaches, waterbugs, etc.
AJAX EXTERMINATORS
A.J. "Andy" Andrews, Mgr.

The "etc.," Kevin decided--that's what he had.

      Andy was a red-eyed whiskery middle-aged man. He drove up in front of the house in an old pick-up. It had his motto in faded lettering on the side.
      Kevin, sitting gloomily on the front porch, didn't think he looked much like a death specialist.
      "You the guy with the bugs?" Andy asked.
      Kevin nodded slowly. "Come on."
      He followed him through the door and started toward the kitchen.
      Andy stopped suddenly and looked at Kevin. "What'd you say?" he asked in amazement.
      "I didn't say anything," Kevin said.
      "Somebody said something," Andy insisted stubbornly, "and they're still sayin' it."
      Kevin listened for a moment.
      Never again! Never again!
      From this one you're not even recovered, and about the next time you're talking already.
      Go away. There's an idiot in your suit. In peace let me die.
      "Just don't listen," Kevin said off-handedly. "That's what I do. They're a couple of lushes anyway."
      "I don't want to listen," Andrews wailed, "but I can't help myself."
      Kevin looked at him soberly. "You need a drink."
      "Yes, I do," Andy said fervently.
      As they walked into the kitchen, Kevin said casually, "There's the bugs." The insecticide was all gone now except for a few grains, and one of the bugs sucked these up and scurried back to the antenna to which the other clung.
      "Now I do need a drink," Andy said faintly.
      Kevin got the bottle out of the cabinet. "What are they?"
      "Why do you ask me?" Andy said. "They're your bugs." He grabbed the bottle out of Kevin's hands.
      "Silverfish?" Kevin ventured.
      Andy gurgled. Then he gasped. "Never saw anything like them in my life." He gurgled again.
      "Well, can you get rid of them?"
      When Andy answered his voice was less precise and more confident. "Never found any I couldn't."
      Kevin looked pessimistic. "Yeah? Everything I've tried has been just what they needed."
      "Never saw a bug," Andy said, "that could live in a house full of hydrogen cyanide." He gurgled again. The more he gurgled, the more confident he got. "I'll wipe 'em out." Finally he said triumphantly, "I've stop' hearin' voices."
      Kevin eyed the bottle. It was almost empty. By this time Andy had probably stopped hearing everything.
      When Kevin looked back at the bugs, he noticed the ball of blue fire growing on the tip of the tiny silver antenna. It broke free as he spotted it and began floating through the air.
      "Watch it!" he shouted, and pushed Andy aside.
      "Wha!! Wha!!" Andy spluttered as the bourbon gushed down his whiskery chin. "Look wha' you made me do!" Then his bleary eyes focused on the ball of fire. It was two feet from his head. His eyes widened; his mouth opened, but no sound came out. At the last moment, he tried to dodge, but it was too late. The fireball passed into his head and disappeared.
      A look of startled sobriety tightened Andy's loose features. "What hit me?"
      "You've just been struck sober," Kevin said glumly. "It happens around here."
      Andy shuddered. "A horrible condition. What did it?"
      Kevin nodded toward the floor. "They did."
      "Them?" Andy glowered at the bugs. "That does it! I'm gonna really give it to 'em. First, though, I need another drink."
      Kevin shook his head. "That was the last in the house. Wouldn't do any good anyhow. It'd be like pouring it down the drain. The condition is permanent."
      Andy stared at Kevin with undisguised horror. "You mean--? Never again--?"
      Kevin nodded in gloomy sympathy. "It happened to me, too."
      Andy glared malevolently at the bugs. "Even if they weren't bugs, anybody'd do that deserves to die. What they did I wouldn't do to a cockroach."
      "What's stopping you?" Kevin asked.
      "Nothin'!" Andy spat out fiercely. Now he looked like a death specialist.
      He got rolls of masking tape out of his pick-up. He and Kevin went through the house taping windows, doors, and miscellaneous cracks. Andy left a small opening beneath a front window. Into this he inserted a hose attached to a large metal gas cylinder. He turned a valve. The hose began to hiss. He leaned back against the pick-up, smiling the hard smile of the victorious. "There, you little devils," he said, "see how you like that!"
      A brief qualm clutched Kevin's stomach with an icy hand. The little tykes. They had come all the way from Jupiter. Looking for help. And what did they find? Killers. They hadn't hurt anybody—not much, anyhow. Now they were dying, millions of miles from home.
      The back window drew him irresistibly. He stared through it into the kitchen. Suddenly he stiffened, straightened, waved imperiously at Andy. Silently, as the exterminator bent to the window, Kevin pointed at the kitchen floor.
      The bugs had split apart. Out of shiny silver halves came two fluorescent purple bugs.
      Andy scratched his bristly chin with a yellow thumbnail. "I don't get it."
      "Spacesuits," Kevin muttered.
      "But—"
      "Listen!"
      The beautiful air. The beautiful sympathy. The beautiful people. Again freely we can breathe.
      With a suitable environment to provide us—generosity without parallel it is. Now our children in a proper fashion we can raise.
      So much to do yet. This flimsy artifact we must strengthen. When the anti-gravity we reverse so that the eggs will hatch, it can the weight withstand. Then the long way back to Jupiter will have just begun.
      At last Kevin admitted the truth to himself. The bugs were from Jupiter, that huge, cold fifth planet from the sun. That's why they were so little. In Jupiter's gravity nothing could grow big. And they had to be tough to withstand the pressure of Jupiter's massive atmosphere.
      They had fled from their home for reasons that were probably political. They came to Earth for sanctuary. Now they were going to raise an army—really raise it—and return.
      With their luck, Kevin didn't see how they could miss.
      Andrews suggested, without much hope, "We could break a window."
      Kevin sighed. "It would turn out to be just what they needed. Go turn off the cyanide. Seal up the hole. Send me the bill."
      Andy shrugged. "It's your house." He paused. "Or was."
      Kevin said sadly, "The next payment is due Wednesday."

By Monday Mary Ann could stand it no longer. She came looking for Kevin.
Kevin met her in the front yard. It wasn't a front yard any more. Where the bermuda had fought a losing battle with the dandelions, the chick weed, and the crab grass, there was now a paved parking lot. In the center of it was a tall pillar. On the pillar was a blue neon sign:

SEE THE MARTIANS!
SEE their flying saucer!
HEAR their telepathic conversation!
WATCH them build cities, factories,
spaceships, raise children, drill armies.
Admission $1

      The parking lot was crammed with cars. At every window of the house, a wooden balcony held bleachers and every bleacher seat held a spectator, his eyes peering in the window.
      "Thank goodness you brought back the car," Kevin said.
      Mary Ann stared up at the sign. "What is all this?"
      "They're really from Jupiter," Kevin said apologetically, "but nobody has ever heard of Jupiter."
      "Are you making money?"
      "Faster than I can get it to the bank. That's why I've missed the car. The paving and the balconies cost almost a thousand dollars, and I've already got that back. At night the government takes over for another thousand. They want to find out how the anti-gravity works. I don't think they'lI have much luck, though.
      "The bugs told me how to make that blue fireball—the sober-upper—but they said we couldn't understand the anti-gravity. They were right."
      Dazedly Mary Ann asked, "What are you going to do with it—the sober-upper?"
      "Oh, I'm patenting the thing. No bar should be without one. The strength can be cut down. Then it isn't permanent. Don't you want to look?"
      For a moment Mary Ann held back, but cupidity won over caution. She walked to a balcony that had just been vacated. She bent over and peered through the picture window. The living room was crawling with fluorescent purple insects. "Ugh!" she said.
      "They've got a way to speed up the breeding process," Kevin said. "Look. They're building."
      In the center of the room a group of silver buildings was growing into a city. "The walls of the house," Kevin said, "are coated with that stuff. Windows, too, except there it's transparent. That's a favor to me. The government scientists say that they can't even scratch it with their sharpest drills. They think it's some collapsed metal—matter as it exists under the pressure of Jupiter. The bugs are mining it miles down and converting it in the crawl space. Inside there, the air pressure is twenty times ours."
      Mary Ann said, "The bugs—they'll take over."
      "Not a chance," Kevin said. "It's just too much trouble. They have to expend too much energy to stay alive. There's Neptune, Saturn, and Uranus—giant, cold worlds like their own—that they can colonize in comfort. No, they're here because no one would ever think of looking here for them."
      Ah! The cold, unhappy one has returned.
      Poor creature! Something can't we do?!
      Kevin's eyes widened. "Did you hear that?"
      Mary Ann looked innocent. She did it very well. "Hear what?"
      "They were talking about you."
      Mary Ann frowned. "I thought you were on the wagon. If you're going to—"
      "Look out!" Kevin shouted.
      The green fireball came through the window as if there were nothing there. It passed into Mary Ann's head and disappeared.
      Mary Ann's controlled features relaxed. She smiled, really smiled, Kevin realized, for the first time. Her magnificent eyes widened, looked hungrily at Kevin. "Swee'hear'!" she said. "I'm jus' crazy 'bout you!"
      "Hey!" Kevin shouted at the house. "You've got to do something about this."
      Nobody paid any attention.
      "Worry too much," said Mary Ann, trying to kiss him and planting a red smear of lipstick on his nose. "Don' worry. Jus' have fun! Whoopee!"
      Kevin sighed and swung Mary Ann into his arms. She lay there, lasciviously boneless, her arms draped around his neck, her lips nibbling at his ear lobe.
      Those darned bugs! They always overdid everything.