E. S. P. Worm

by Piers Anthony

  “We need planet like this. Plenty metals, plenty protected from invasion. You know, describe perfectly.”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. Was this hulk playing cat-and-mouse with me?

  “Now Strumbermians and Earthians be allies.”

  “Well . . .” Here it comes, I thought. I tried hard to blank out my genuine sentiments. Apparently the Strums didn’t pick up anything that wasn’t directed to them, except for vocabulary. I could test that by thinking a compliment at him that I knew to be phony . . . but I was afraid to chance it. Right now, anyway.

  “You know history? You know how worms and bugs and vermin get all good planets, keep humanoids out? You know why all humanoids need fight against ilk?”

  “Uh, not very well, I’m afraid.”

  “True, you newcomer to space. Probably learn all lies from bugs and worms. Crog tell from Strumbermian viewpoint. Solid brassplated truth. You want to hear, Harold Prodkins?”

  “Very much,” I said. I was curious, though hardly in sympathy. And the longer I could keep him talking, the more likely there would be time for the police—lousy wormbug flatfoots! Hate them! I thought desperately, trying to cover my mental slip.

  Crog rose from his stool and crossed to a cabinet. Had he caught on? Handsome Strumbermian! Or was handsomeness considered effeminate? Strong humanoid! I’d better keep my mind buttoned, or I’d get myself in trouble sure.

  From the cabinet he took a container that looked very much like a wine bottle. Beside the bottle he set two things that could have been dirty soup bowls.

  I watched with mingled interest and apprehension as Crog slopped a milky fluid from the bottle into the bowls. It was a big bottle—a gallon at least—though it looked small in his hand. The bowls were, literally, pint-sized. Something told me I wasn’t going to like this. A pint of rotgut . . .

  Crog returned with the bowls and handed me one. I peered into it, hoping that I could somehow avoid imbibing the stuff. An insectoid vaguely like a flea scooted along the rim and stopped to insert its proboscis into the brimming liquid. Then it stiffened, jerked its legs about convulsively, and fell in. I fished it out with my finger, afraid it might dissolve.

  Crog squatted on his stool again. His bowl went to his lipless mouth, his head tipped back, and the liquid gurgled down like water draining from a spent bathtub. The noise might have signified manners, or plain gusto.

  He lowered the bowl, now a quarter empty. “Ah, that good scrotch!” he said. And emitted a belch like a foghorn blast. “You glug.”

  Under his watchful gaze I raised my own bowl and hesitantly sipped from it. With any luck at all, it would prove as poisonous to me as to that flea . . .

  The taste was worse than anything I had been willing to imagine. Rotted pig-mash and fermented nettles might have been the base, not to mention year-old toad urine. My nostrils had not been assailed by such an aroma since—well, that food-synthesis attempt, again.

  I lowered the bowl, hacking as the nettles ground into my esophagus. Through streaming eyes I saw Crog nodding wisely at me.

  “You get used to it,” he said. “You like. All humanoids like.

  Just wait until effects hit you.”

  “Effects?” I coughed. So it was dope.

  “Enjoyable. Like your liqueurs, your pot.”

  “Oh.” Then: “How—?”

  “Your Warden Nitti tell us about such things, when he try to make deal. He sensible humanoid.”

  Ugh, I thought, but did not communicate.

  “You glug your scrotch,” Crog advised, “and while you glugging it. Crog tell history of Galaxy. Later”—his puffy left eyelid dropped while the rest of his face remained motionless— ”Crog have other pleasant surprise for you.”

  Thought of what Crog might consider pleasant caused me to raise my bowl and glug. Much of my tongue and palate had been anesthetized by the first sip, so it didn’t burn so badly this time. Crog glugged noisily after me.

  I lowered the bowl and waited for the promised effects. I stared at Crog, clear-headed as space, and realized that he was talking; that he had been for some time.

  “ . . . perfect planet for colony. Few ant hills only sign of life. Fairminded person—you, Harold Prodkins—would say we Strumbermians had right to colonize. What’s to stop us—few billion ants? Ants not people. You agree we have right?”

  “I, ah, suppose if this world had not been previously claimed by anyone—wasn’t on any star maps or included in somebody’s territory—”

  “It wasn’t!” Crog said, slamming his fist on his knee with the sound of an explosion. “It all alone in space, just waiting for humanoid colonists.”

  “Then I’d say you had a right,” I said. Maybe the Strums did have a claim or two. Immediately I felt ashamed of myself for imagining it. These were pirates!

  “Glad you agree,” said Crog. “As say, only ant heaps. So Strum troops move in with armored vehicles to set up colony.”

  “But I thought you said the place was uninhabited!”

  “Was so. Only ants. Big ants.”

  “Oh!” Now I got the picture. Big ugly ants like those I used to see on my uncle’s farm. God, but I had hated them! I’d poured coal oil on their hills and then set fire to the works.

  “Ants very unintelligent. All they have for protection is old atomic cannon and laser rays. Strumbermians cut down all ants without first invitation to gravbop. Why not? They only bugs and not humanoids. We start pull down ant hills, set up cities. Then, we all but win planet, Jamborangs and Imbibels come.”

  “What’d they do?” Helped the poor deserving humanoids, I hoped.

  “Attacked us. Us! Chased us off. Claimed planet belong to ants. Claimed we violate their right to free existence—that we must pay damages and agree not to take planet again.”

  “You fought?” Who would not have fought against such injustice? I wondered.

  “No,” Crog said regretfully. “Jamborangs and Imbibels too powerful; only fight real wars. Not observe civilized custom of gravbop. We agree leave ants that planet. Not very good planet anyway. We pay for damages, but then”—Crog glugged his scrotch—”then ants invade us!”

  I glugged my own scrotch. “Terrible,” I said, not certain whether I meant ants or drink. “Terrible, terrible, terrible!”

  “Jamborangs and Imbibels come back. They see fighting— go to aid of ants again! Aid ants against Strumbermians!”

  “The dirty bugs!” I exclaimed, shocked. “Give one a light-year and it’ll take a parsec!”

  “Strums lose home planet. Lose three, four dozen home planets. Then Strumbermians move into space. Become what called outlaws. But when we grow strong again, we come back to center of galaxy! Enlist aid of all humanoid species! We take back lost planets! Make bugs and worms the outlaws.”

  What a success story! “Can’t say I blame you,” I said. “If I’d been there, I’d have been on your side. I’d have wanted to stamp the ants out. You bet!”

  “I thought you’d say that, Harold Prodkins. Once you know the truth, not worm-lies. Now you contact your world for us.

  Make arrangements for Earthians to unite with Strums.”

  “We-e-ell,” I said. It was all so logical; why did I hesitate?

  “What you say, Harold Prodkins, Representative of Earth?”

  I thought deeply, trying to find a reason against it. “Earth is new on the galactic scene,” I said at last. “Doesn’t know the bugs from the humanoids.”

  “You fix, Harold Prodkins?” Crog was pathetically eager.

  “Perhaps,” I said, my head swimming. Now was no time to make decisions, I realized. But I’d not forgotten that Crog and I had glugged together.

  “When you land on Strum planet, you fix,” Crog repeated. “That not long now.”

  “Hmmm,” I said fuzzily. I looked down into my bowl and was disappointed to find it empty. Hopefully I said: “That pleasant surprise you promised—another tankard of scrotch?”

  “No, Harold Prodkins.
Something you like much better. You ready, I think.”

  I thought to myself that nothing could be better than another bowl of scrotch. That flea, I now knew, had gone into a convulsion of ecstasy and dived into heaven after only one taste. Almost, I asked Crog to give me scrotch instead of whatever he was planning on.

  Then I heard giggling. My pulse raced. I rotated on my stool.

  There, just emerged from an adjoining apartment, were three Prunian females—the three who had had the room near ours on board the Comet’s Tail! Stunned half out of my scrotch daze, I felt my mouth agape. But who could blame them for wanting to be rid of the bug-captained scow?

  As though from a long way off I heard Crog say: “Meet three Prunian charmers—Plu, Blu and Flu. True humanoids, if mobile-faced (we all have our faults); loyal to the cause of Strumbermia.”

  Plu stuck out her ballooning front and giggled. “We meet Harold Prodkins aboard another ship,” she said, her tone gurgling.

  Blu switched her more-than-ample hips and giggled. “One of us see Harold Prodkins in corridor as he leave ship with Jam brat and Strumbermian.” Hers was a drowning tone.

  Flu giggled and held her naked tail out at waist level. Playfully she did things with its tip. Things I knew I would once have thought objectionable. “He not know which that was!” she gargled. “And she too busy with handsome Strum to invite him in for party!”

  I sat frozen. I dared not move.

  Crog touched me with his stony forefinger. “Which you want, Harold Prodkins?”

  “Which—?” My mind strove to answer the question but balked at understanding it. Crog couldn’t mean—no, certainly he couldn’t mean that!

  “He’s cute,” said Plu, coiling her tail about my arm. The tail tip drifted, massaged, performed expert indecencies. Nice indecencies.

  Blu moved close and rubbed huge conical breasts against me. Round, yet hard; pointed, yet firm— not quite what I had anticipated. “I like,” she gurgled.

  Flu pushed Blu aside. “My turn—you had Strum before!” Quick as a striking snake she circled my waist with a hairy arm, her tail darted, touched, stroked—not randomly.

  Warmth. Heedless. Unashamed. Caring nothing for a world of bag-dresses and pretense. Desire. The view of a triangular shadow under the lifted tail.

  I grabbed the Prunian and took good hold on her, one hand high on that tail.

  “In there!” Crog said. His finger pointed through the doorway.

  Yet I hesitated. Flu half lifted me, half carried, half dragged. It was only part of me that was unwilling, and not the essential part. Only a part that shied like a frightened stallion at the sight of the waiting pallet. I felt myself reacting as the door slammed.

  “I next!” cried Plu from the other side.

  “No, me!” said Blu.

  “Prunians forget Big Shot Leader!” Crog complained. “Crog got enough for any two Prunians. See?” Several loud squeals set my already heated blood pounding.

  I looked into Flu’s newborn-baby face. Smoky eyes glowed, flared as from newly banked coals. Her suggestive tail came up, hovered near her skirt, and unsnapped its fastenings.

  Clothing fell. Flu stood regarding me in all her primeval naturalness. She stepped from the skirt, removed the blouse. Finally she dropped her single undergarment.

  Something in me tried to protest. Better dishonor than death—was that it? I tried to think but couldn’t seem to remember. My head swam and my nostrils filled with the musk of a body that was all lust and all promise. What should I do about it? What did I want to do? Was it, could it be—right?

  My Little Humanoid, Flu thought admiringly, that was one mighty passion-scream!

  Chapter 10

  Crog pointed to the huge clinker on the viewing screen. “New Strumbermia Six-O-Five,” he said. “Prepare yourself, Harold Prodkins. We land.”

  “I don’t know, Crog,” I said from my stool. “Do you really think your Big Shot Commander will accept Earthians as True Humanoids?”

  “If you prove,” Crog said.

  “Can I prove it, Crog? Do I want to?”

  Crog made an almost human shrug. “Why you not know, after scrotch and Prunian?”

  I looked into his expressionless face. “I’d like to know.” Why did I feel this way—certain of my facts—yet hesitant? It wasn’t as though the scrotch and Prunian could still be affecting me. I’d slept for hours. But something—something— “You worried about your friends?” Crog asked.

  “Friends? You mean Plu, Blu and Flu?”

  Crog looked at one of the unstarred Strumbermians and lowered an eyelid. “Mean female Earthian and Jam brat.”

  “Oh, those. Yes, of course.” But it was an overstatement. I was hardly worried about a prude and a worm. What had either ever done for me except make trouble?

  “You want go back? Be with them for landing?”

  “Doesn’t seem worth the effort.”

  Crog grunted politely. He called my attention to our pilot, who was maneuvering the ship into orbit. I watched the strong Strum hands, reminded of how superior hands were to tentacles or other unnatural appendages.

  We slid into the atmosphere. Boiling black sky. Jagged black mountains. Oceans of dirty white hue, like uncured scrotch. Beautiful.

  We passed over a large fortress fast to a mountainside. I had the impression of needle-like cannon pointing at us, a rounded dome-roof tapering to a jutting base bearded with packed snow. Many strange crawly things, fit only for stepping on—except that they were, I realized, twenty or thirty feet long. Then we were going down, down, down—dropping into a narrow valley to a perilously constricted space field.

  The screen turned darker as we lowered. There was wind or rain or something obscuring it—massed hailstones, maybe. When this did not pass I realized that we had landed.

  Crog looked at me obliquely. “You still prisoner. You go ahead to airlock. Worm and female there.”

  “Yes, Big Shot Leader,” I said. Technically he was right, but I certainly didn’t feel like a prisoner. I trotted down the corridor. I liked to see the ship’s rats scuttle ahead. I kicked at one who was slow and lame. Damned weakling!

  The inner lock was closed, and I waited impatiently for it to open. When I finally got out into the cargo port I saw what looked like an overgrown landcrab crouching at the exit. IS VEHICLE! Crog thought. Interesting—he could communicate just as well from a distance, and knew what I was doing though out of sight. I had somehow thought telepathy was a close-range phenomenon. I’d better find out how far thought could travel. . . .

  The vehicle wasn’t really buglike up close, though I knew it to be the same as the ones I’d seen from above. In fact, it looked like a magnificent piece of machinery. It would be a much more comfortable way of departing the ship than my entry had been. Though why the thought of walking in space should have bothered me I could not say. Spacewalking was fun.

  I heard feeble footfalls and obnoxious slithering and turned to see Nancy and Qumax.

  “Harold!” Nancy cried. For a moment I was afraid she was going to put her flabby arms around me, but she didn’t, fortunately. “I was worried I’d never see you again!”

  “I’m fine,” I said, repressing a spasm of disgust. This pink-checked prude imagined that I cared for her! Remembering those glorious moments with Flu, I wondered what even an enlightened Earthian female (let alone Nancy’s type!) could possibly do to match them.

  Did they torture you, Harold Prodkins? Qumax thought irritatingly.

  “No, they didn’t, worm,” I said. “The Big Shot Leader merely explained things. I feel that he’s given me a real education.” My skin crawled as I looked at this soft larva, but I realized that it would be wisest to conceal my proper distaste for the time being.

  Crog stomped out and motioned us into the vehicle. I DRIVE! I went up the steps, which were each a foot too high for me. Nancy scrambled along, her scrawny thighs showing pinkly through new tears in her coveralls. I wished she wouldn’t embarrass me
by advertising her weakness and softness. Once her clammy hand brushed against me and I jerked aside. The worm made a few half-hearted humping attempts, then waited stupidly until two Strumbermians hoisted him. To think that I had ever associated with this poor excuse for a creature!

  Inside was a lengthy surface for Qumax to stretch out on, and padded stools for Nancy and me. Strumbermians strapped us down. Crog strapped himself into the driver’s stool. He did things with some knobs.

  The ship’s outer lock opened and our vehicle lurched through. It walked on pointed stilts, the cab elevated a few feet in the air. The steps retracted into the underbody, making the center section partially streamlined. The machine crawled outside and dropped to a gravite-cushioned landing field.

  I turned in my seat and looked out at the curve of the ship. It was big and seemed to be sphere-shaped. I saw more Strums clustered about the base. There were squat buildings and other vehicles much like our own. I marveled at the clean, functional lines. Nothing ridiculously fancy here!

  We moved out beyond the curve of the ship. Now a high wind buffeted us, and the tractor lurched and trembled like a drunken daddy-longlegs, depressing as that image was. What fun!

  The melancholy sky was pleasant. I loved that starless black. High spires like the sere bones of a weathered corpse rose up on the horizon. Stark, simple, lovely.

  Our machine adjusted its strides to the buffeting. We traveled away from the field. Faster and faster, jogging along toward the jags. Then up into the icy peaks. Pleasant drafts of snow leaked inside and speckled us. Huge batlike things flapped and wheeled overhead, ice splintering off their wings. Then as we climbed the sleet, oddly, became rain. Great gouts of gluey substance struck the windshield and adhered until scraped away with a wiper built like a snowplow. The color was spectacular.

  BRIGHT RAIN, RED RAIN, COLOR OF FRESH DRAWN BLOOD RAIN!

  It was Crog, mentally humming his tune of joy and homecoming. I had not realized he had such esthetic sensitivities.

  Ahead a broken-skull structure clung fast to a cliffside. It was a huge building, sturdy and handsome—in fact, it was the fortress I had seen during the descent.