Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 (6 page)

It hung in the sky immediately, a great golden ball.

Connie apparently didn't see it at once, for her face was rapt with the picture she was blissfully regarding in her mind's eye. She went on, "And I wish these people were all young and handsome and beautifully dressed—"

They were. At once.

"—dancing to the strains of a wonderful orchestra—"

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The music was suddenly marvelous.

"—over a floor like satin, in a gorgeous room, hung with brilliantly-lighted crystal chandeliers!"'

The glare was blinding. Connie roused from her dream.

"Look!" I said needlessly.

For a minute she seemed nonplussed as she saw her vision of beauty had come true. And then she smiled, and said aloud, "Dear me, I keep forgetting! Thank you, djinn."

"For you, Connie, anything!" the djinn said.

Connie looked hungrily, feasting her beauty-starved eyes, before turning to me. " 'Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile,"' she quoted prettily.

"Do you have to look at me when you say that?" I asked peevishly.

Connie dimpled. "It's just that the room is so beautiful now I can't help wishing that you combined the charm of Charles Boyer, the physique of Victor Mature, and the looks of Tyrone Power, just to go with it."

Before either of us knew what was happening, every woman in the place was swarming all over me, running their fingers through my hair, smearing my face with lip-sticky kisses, and so forth and so on. I'm not complaining, mind! It wasn't really disagreeable, just startling. The din was terrific but loud above the cries of the maddened women came Connie's voice almost instantly, clarion-clear: "So help me, I wish I'd kept my big mouth shut before I ever wished a wish as silly as that one!"

I might have known it was too good to last. Before you could say Jack Robinson, I was back in the old body, battered but still serviceable, and no woman in the room was giving me even a second glance.

Connie was fanning herself. She looked cjuite distraught. "Good heavens, what a sight!" she murmured. "I'll have to watch what I wish for, after this." The djinn was grinning. "You might have given me five minutes more, Connie, before calling it off," I said, and to save myself I couldn't keep a querulous note from creeping into my voice. **I like you better as you are, dear. No one

would ever call you The Jersey Lily, perhaps—"

"Thank you," I said, somewhat stiffly. "—but still, you have your points." "Thank you again," I said, unbending a little. I leaned forward to kiss her then, but Connie turned her head aside, embarrassed.

"Not now, Pete!" she protested. "You know I don't like love-making in front of others."

"No one's looking," I said. She pointed upward at the djinn. "Don't forget him."

I looked up. He was chuckling and rumbling to himself, enjoying himself hugely. "You have only to wish that Til go away," he reminded us silkily. "I will not!" Connie said. "Now here's a pretty kettle of fish!" I said, beside myself. "Connie, if you love me—"

"I am not getting rid of the djinn!" Connie said flatly. "Why I haven't even begun to wish for anything really good yet. And I won't be rushed. After all, I'm young, with my whole life before me. I want to get used to the idea first. And, in the meantime, I'm having fun, just wishing for inconsequential things."

"But think of what you'll be missing!" I cried unthinkingly.

"Why, you conceited thing, you!" Connie said.

"It really is edifying," broke in the djinn at this point, "to meet a woman like Connie. Not a bit greedy. Not a bit mercenary. None of this wishing for money or jewels or furs or cars or sordid stuff like that."

I regarded hrm with a jaundiced eye. There were times when the djinn's stuffy smugness would have been well-nigh intolerable. But he wasn't fooling me. I knew he was just rubbing it in, laughing up his sleeve at me. He was being suavely obnoxious, skillfully doing his best to goad me into action. For he knew as well as I did that Connie would never release him of her own accord. If the djinn were to be dismissed, I'd have to do it somehow.. I didn't know how, but I'd find a way. I glanced again at the djinn and I think

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he must have been reading my mind, and sought to strengthen my resolve, for under cover of the music he whispered: "Are you man or mouse?" closing one of his eyes in a knowing wink.

And why not? Atter all, we were really allies in a way. He was as anxious to take off as I was to see him do it.

Yes, Connie, and Connie alone, was the real stumbling block. I must think of a way to alter her point of view. I must!

And musing thus, I fell into a brown study.

TTNFORTUNATELY, it was rudely in-*—' terrupted.

I don't know what brought Gloria Sbayne to that particular hotel at that particular time. I don't even want to know. I prefer to remain in ignorance of a grim and unrelenting Fate that holds these things in store for a man to tantalize him to the point of madness.

To indulge in a little ancient history, I knew Gloria when she was a show-girl, and I was press-agenting one of her shows, Let's Do It! She is blonde, with a face and a figure that are out of this world. I don't know how she does it, but put a Mother Hubbard on Gloria and she'd still manage to look like Gypsy Rose Lee just before the curtain comes down. Her personality is volatile, and she is extremely vivacious.

I could tell you, too, that she has an I. Q. of .0005, but why should I try to flatter her?

She appeared now from nowhere, and draped herself inextricably around me. "Pete Bartlett, you ole son-of-a-gun! Last time I saw you, BoBo was trying to drag you out from under her grand piano, but you wouldn't let go of Marilyn's ankle!"

"Uh," I said.

"Indeed?" Connie said, all ears.

"Uh, Gloria. This is my wife, Connie," I said, hurling myself into the breach. "We were married this morning."

"I give it a year!" cried Gloria, turning on the charm.

"Indeed?" Conoie said again.

The look she threw at me was hostile in the extreme.

"You're going to let me steal your hus* band for just one teentsy dance, aren't you, Mrs. Bartlett?" Gloria asked, without listening for an answer.

"I don't feel like dancing, Gloria," I muttered.

"Oh, go right ahead! Don't consider me!" Connie said. And she added murderously, "Petey-weetie-sweetiel"

I never realized before what an unpleasant laugh Gloria had. "Is that what she calls you! Dear God, wait'll the gang hears tli is!"

I still didn't like the glint in Connie's eyes, but I was too dazed to do anything but suffer Gloria to drag me to my tottering feet and pull me out onto the dance floor. She was talking incessantly, as usual, but it was all just a vague roaring in my ears.

Now I'm not one for making excuses for myself, as a general rule. But after all, I'd had a strenuous day. I honestly think I must have been barely conscious for the next few minutes, and that must have been why I was the last to discover the peculiar thing that happened next.

The first hint I had of anything wrong was that I noticed people were beginning to edge away from us and eye us askance. This intrigued me faintly, for my dancing isn't so bad as all that. And then, too, there seemed to be some weird metamorphosis going on under my hands.

Lightly though I'd been holding Gloria, I couldn't be uncognizant of the fact, in the beginning, that her bare back was soft and smooth to the touch. But now the fingers of my right hand were encountering strange bony protuberances. And my left hand seemed to be holding within it an eagle's talon.

I was really puzzled. But before I could draw back to look down at Gloria, she must have caught a glimpse of herself in one of the gilded mirrors adorning the walls of the room. For she started screaming like a squad-car siren.

I did look down at her then, and had all I could do to keep from ululating wildly myself.

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That wasn't Gloria Shayne I was holding! It was a withered crone, a snaggle-toothed hag! And those bony projections I'd been feeling under my hand were the vertebrae of her bent spine.

I knew the reason for this at once, of course. I directed a glare at Connie, still sitting demurely at our table with that unseemly fog hanging low over her head.

Gloria had fainted after that one piercing scream, so I picked her up in my arms, and made my way across the dance floor to Connie.

"You know what that was?" I asked.

"What?"

"The last straw," I said. "Don't you k you've done enough damage already?"

One thing about Connie, she isn't vindictive once she has made her point. She could very well have left Gloria just as she was, a5 a lesser, more spiteful, woman would have done. But instead she said, "I wish Gloria to be returned to her natural state at once!"

And, of course, the djinn obliged. Gloria opened her eyes almost immediately, and seemed considerably bemused to find herself attractive once more.

"Good heavens!" she said. "I must have been dreaming. Though how I could have possibly been dreaming while I was dancing—"

"Pete has that effect on all women," Connie murmured.

Now Gloria may be a fool, but she isn't a damned fooi, as my Grandpa used to say. "You ask me," she said now, "there's something mighty fishy going on around here." She stood up to go.

"In the future, my dear," Connie said, bidding her good-bye, "it might be very much wiser to leave other women's husbands alone."

Gloria paled. "You did have a hand in— in whatever it was that happened to me!" She looked at me then, her brown eyes soft with pity. "I don't know what it is you've married, Pete, but you sure picked a dilly!"

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," Connie agreed smoothly.

VI

WELL, I'd had all that any mortal man could be reasonably expected to stand.

"We'll go back to the cottage, Connie, right now," I said grimly. "There's a thing or two I want to talk about with you."

She could have the djinn, or she could have me. I meant to show her she couldn't have both.

Connie's eyes widened at this new note of determination in my voice. Troubled, she looked up at the djinn. He was watching me expectantly, almost encouragingly, I thought.

Connie said, "Very well."

We picked our way carefully back in the dark along the splintered, sand -strewn boards of the deserted beach walk. To our left the sea washed quietly against the shore, and the great golden moon that Connie had wished for still hung low in the sky.

It was a beautiful world, I thought sadly, but a troubled one. And here Connie and I had been frivoling the hours away with nonsense. I was ashamed. Perhaps Connie felt something of this, too, for she was very quiet.

As for the djinn, he justtrailed smckily behind us, like the wake from a funnel.

Back in the cottage once more, I asked Connie to sit in a chair. From its depth she regarded me silently while I paced the strip of carpet before her, marshalling my arguments. The djinn hovered above her, quiet too.

"Connie," I said at last, "I'm going to be very, very serious. In the months since we've known each other, I've never shown this side of myself to you before. Almost it will seem to you as if I'm stepping out of character."

She waited.

"Today," I went on, "you had something happen to you that could happen not just once in a lifetime, but once in a millennium. You were given the power to have every wish of yours gratified immediately. So far, you've just amused yourself indiscreetly, but no doubt you believe that you can ask of the

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djinn a number of things which he will immediately see that you get?"

"Of course," Connie said.

"Of course," said the djinn. "It his always been my policy to give the customer just a little bit mote than the next man." He was jesting again, but his heart wasn't in it. He too had fallen under the spell of this strangely sobered mood that was upon us.

Before I could go on, Connie said, "Peter, I want to say something. It has always been obvious to me that you considered me a mental and emotional lightweight. No, don't bother to deny it," she said, when I would have protested. "I've always known it—here." And she touched her heart. "But, Peter, perhaps I'm really not so shallow as you feared. These wishes now, need not always be for my personal gratification, as you seem to fear. I could ask for the larger things, the things of the spirit. I could ask for peace, Peter, an end of war."

She looked up at me pleadingly, begging to be understood. How I wanted to take her, then and there, into my arms! But I waited, holding myself back. Again I tried to muster my arguments.

"An end of war?" I echoed slowly. "But. Connie, after every war hasn't the world been just a little bit better? Oh, not right away, but eventually? Man has always built from destruction. He seems to learn no other way. Even the atomic age was ushered in on a wave of destruction."

CONNIE looked shocked. "But, Pete, surely you're not advocating war as a desirable thing!"

"No, of course not! But man seems to be a funny animal, Connie. He never appreciates something handed him on a silver platter. I could be wrong, but I think wishing peace for him would only be like repairing a leak in a broken hose. He'll only break out some place else. Peace is something he will have to earn for himself, or it will never mean anything to him."

"Whether that's true or not," Connie said, "let's put that question aside for the moment. There are other things. Surely I

could ask for an end of needless suffering? A cure for incurable diseases?"

"But, Connie," I objected, "you believe in some Greater Power, don't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then perhaps you'll concede that— It has an overall plan; that It, at least, knows i

there's a meaning to every terrible thing in life—a meaning that our small minds can't fathom?"

"Y—yes."

"Then who among us can say that any suffering is needless?"

Oh, call my arguments specious! Oil this sophistry, if you will! I was on shaky ground, and no one knew it better than I. But I was desperate, I tell you, desperate!