Excerpt from Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. What is he?"

"I dunno. A big roach, I think." Klofac, always to the point.

"Is he alive?"

"He was last time we looked. Hey, Gregor, Gregor, wake up. Say something."

"He talks? He has a name?"

"Good and proper. Gregor, say something to Herr Hoffnung."

"You named a roach?"

"I think he wasn’t always a roach," ventured Kramar.

"He was a man. Young. Early twenties," Anna Marie elucidated. "A traveling salesman. He lived with his parents in the Zeltnergasse."

"How did he..."

Silence.

"This is not some kind of joke?"

"Here, lift him out." Klofac was anxious to prove Gregor’s authenticity. "Kramar, grab his butt. Soukup, reach in and get him under his chest."

"Thorax, my friend. But it’s okay. Just leave him in there."

"No, no, you have to see for yourself. He’ll respond. He’s just shy."

Four pairs of hands reached down into the crate.

"Careful of his antennae. They break." Anna Marie, ever solicitous.

"Up...up...swing him over this way. Now down. Can we put him on the couch?"

"Let me put something down first. There."

In a brown flash, Gregor scrambled instinctively under the couch.

"He likes to be under couches," said Anna Marie by way of explanation for Gregor’s rudeness. "He was always under the couch when I came in to clean his room. He always hid under there."

"Thigmotaxis, my dear," Herr Hoffnung explained. "Roaches are thigmotactic. From the Greek thigma, touch, and taxis, a reflex movement toward one thing or another. Roaches love to be touched all around."

"That’s disgusting."

"Disgusting but true, my good honest man."

It was ten o’clock before negotiations were completed and plans under way. Gregor, recently---and understandably---depressed, had lost several kilograms. And even an exoskeleton can appear strikingly dehydrated. With the accumulated dust, hair, and bits of old food stuck to his back and sides, he was a shocking sight indeed. But his mad escape, freeing his family from their burden, his larval sense of adventure had all lifted his spirits---and when he heard the talk of exhibiting him as "The Hunger Insect," he whispered hoarsely from under the couch.

"No."

Five homo sapiens at the table whirled around to the couch.

"He does talk! Astonishing."

"What do you expect? He was a traveling salesman. They have to talk."

"Gregor? Is that your name?" Herr Hoffnung asked. "I said, is that your name?"

Silence.

"He stopped talking."

"Maybe his name has changed."

"I don’t want to be The Hunger Insect. I want to eat. And I want to think. Eat, read, and think."

"He always had a lot of books in his room," Anna Marie confided to Herr Hoffnung.

"People won’t pay to see a cockroach read and think," Soukup objected.

"What if I tell them what I’m thinking?"

"I don’t think people care what a cockroach thinks."

"Just how many times a day do you expect to eat?" Klofac queried.

"And what did you have in mind for food?" Kramar was anxious for details.

"Gentlemen! Quiet. Our friend Gregor may be old hat to you, but I assure you that whatever he does---if he just sits there and stares---he will be a sensation."

"If he doesn’t do something, they’ll think he’s stuffed."

"Or a statue."

"Wax."

"I’ll move around. I’ll get books off the shelf."

"Now he wants a shelf," Soukup snorted.

"So how many books do you want and what kind?"

Klofac: "The shelf will come out of your salary."

Reprinted from Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin by permission of BlueHen Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2002, Marc Estrin. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.