The Worm Returns

by Piers Anthony

  “Straights are good card hands,” he said. “So are flushes.”

  She silenced him with an impatient glance. “We stayed out of the way, because all humans saw was, well, our bodies.” She inhaled deeply, making her point. “Then the worms returned, emerging from their wormholes to suck out the restored magic. They feed on magic, destroying it. That was disaster.”

  “Worms suck,” Bad Buffalo agreed. “Can’t you chop them up or something when they come out of their holes?”

  “No. A wormhole is not exactly a hole. It’s a—a tunnel between different parts of the universe. The worms may forage anywhere, maybe on the other side of the galaxy, then come here when that’s used up. Much of the universe is sterile, because of them.”

  “Whoa, girl! Universe? Galaxy?”

  “Maybe I’m speaking a bit anachronistically,” Dia said. “Sometimes I lose track of time. You do know what stars are? The worms may come from another star. Regardless, they graze on our magic, and it’s awful. We’re really the last magic creatures on Earth, unless a few remain in Ireland or Africa. The worms won’t stop until the last magic is gone, and we’ll be, well, not even history, because human historians already don’t believe in us. They think they know everything, when really they know nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Bad Buffalo agreed, wishing she would adjust her position on the branch so that he could see between her flexing legs. She was small, but still well worth contemplating. “So how can I help?”

  “You can plug the holes.”

  “Not as long as you’re either too small or too vapory.”

  “The wormholes,” she said, not much amused. “Now please pay attention to what I’m saying, not to my legs. The holes are actually very small, maybe even singularities, but the worms squeeze through them to get here. The holes squeeze things tightly, so that if you poked your finger into one, it would be compressed into less than a grain of sand or a mote of dust. Wormholes are dangerous to approach. That’s why we can’t just walk up to one and plug it; we have to remain a safe distance from it. That means the worm has clearance to feed on the surrounding magic. It’s a real problem.”

  Bad Buffalo decided not ask what a singularity was; this discussion was bypassing his knowledge of the world. If it wasn’t for her shapely little body, he’d have broken off the lecture already. Still, it was time to get to the point. “So how did you say I could help, if I can’t even get close to a hole?”

  “I am getting to that,” she said impatiently. “We think a perfect round acorn might plug a hole, if we could manage to throw it in exactly right. Or a ball of lead. Something really solid, to choke its pipe as it were. When I saw how you shot my acorn, I thought maybe a bullet would do. You could stand back maybe twenty-five feet and fire into it, safely plugging it from there. If you can plug the holes as they form, maybe we can stop this scourge, and after a while, they’ll give up and migrate elsewhere to feed. Like another planet. Then we’d be saved, and the magic would slowly return, and I would be able to be as solid as this and as large as this at the same time.” She became full sized, lifting her spread knees to brace her feet on the branch.

  Bad Buffalo almost freaked out seeing that view from directly below and in front, as maybe she’d intended.

  “So will you do it?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure,” he said. He would have agreed to eat a whale in one mouthful, at this moment.

  “That’s so nice of you,” she said, smiling as she closed her legs and shrank back into mini-size. “You won’t regret it, in a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks,” he echoed blissfully.

  “Very good. Now we must go plug our first wormhole.”

  “Plug our first hole,” he agreed. “Where?”

  “We can sense them as they form,” she explained. “They distort space/time, radiating gravitic ripples.” She paused, seeing his blank expression. “Maybe think of it this way: we can smell them. Anyway, there’s one forming not far from here. All you have to do is shoot a bullet into it.”

  “I can shoot a bullet into anything,” he agreed.

  “I believe it. Follow me.” She jumped off the branch and flew at about his head height. Now he noticed that she had little wings; had she had them all the time? Not that it mattered; it was her torso that counted.

  He kept his eyes on her cute little bottom as he leaped onto Horse and followed her, hardly aware of the forest scenery. Would it really be as easy as shooting bullets into little holes? Would that actually get him a girlfriend like her, his size and solid? Or would something go wrong, as it usually did when there was anything he really wanted? His hopes and fears were riding high.

  They entered a glade.

  “There,” she said, pointing.

  There in the center of the glade was a tiny black spot. Bad Buffalo was almost disappointed. But she had said the wormholes were tiny.

  He took aim at the spot, not bothering to dismount. He could readily score on it from here.

  Chapter 3: Wormhole

  Bad Buffalo’s shot was true, as he knew it would be, as he expected it to be.

  In fact, Bad Buffalo couldn’t remember the last time his shot hadn’t been true. Perhaps it had been back when he was a youngster, first learning his way around a pistol, but even then, to the consternation of his mother and all those within two or three towns of him, he had been surprisingly adept at shooting. Bad Buffalo never did understand what the big deal was. Bullets shot straight, didn’t they? All a body had to do was aim the pistol, line up his target, pull the trigger, and let the bullet do the rest.

  Smaller targets posed little problem for Bad Buffalo. In fact, the smaller the target, the truer his aim. Bad Buffalo tended to get lazy when his target was, say, a big, fat banker holding a big, fat bag of money.

  Truth was, Bad Buffalo rarely shot anyone in cold blood. In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn’t. No, anyone he had ever shot had needed a good shooting, at least according to Bad Buffalo’s code of ethics, which were quite loose, to say the least. A cheating card shark, a cheating bartender (Bad Buffalo always knew when his whiskey was watered down), a cheating girlfriend, a cheating banker, a cheating baker, a cheating ironsmith, a cheating preacher.

  These days, of course, people rarely cheated him. These days, of course, people rarely crossed his path in any way, shape or form. Indeed, Bad Buffalo lived a mostly isolated life, usually drinking whiskey alone at the abandoned saloons. Or quietly robbing banks that had long since been abandoned, once word had spread that Bad Buffalo was coming to town.

  Now, the lonely gunslinger lowered his gun and watched as the dark wormhole winked out of existence. Where it went, he didn’t know. Where his bullet went, he didn’t know that either.

  Almighty strange, he thought. Bad Buffalo didn’t like strange. And when Bad Buffalo saw something he didn’t like, he got mad. When Bad Buffalo got mad, he liked to shoot things.

  “Are there any more wormholes?” he asked. It was all he could do to not put some hot lead into a crow circling high overhead. Bad Buffalo didn’t like crows. Too black. Too loud. Too many. But a part of the gunslinger was aware that the crow might be another sprite in disguise. Bad Buffalo was many things, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Unless you cheated him.

  But Dia wasn’t listening. She had flown over to the very spot where the wormhole had appeared, and flitted about this way and that, moving so rapidly that Bad Buffalo got a little dizzy. Bad Buffalo didn’t like being dizzy. He grew angry and nearly raised his gun, when he reminded himself that he liked Dia, and she really hadn’t done anything wrong to him. Bad Buffalo often had to talk himself out of killing things. More often than not, he lost the argument. But now, he lowered his gun. Yeah, he liked the little sprite. She’d said something about being his girlfriend. And he liked that idea, too.

  “I think it’s gone, Buffalo,” said Dia, flitting back over to him. “That was some good shooting.”

  Bad Buffalo shrugged. He didn’t understand the concept
of a compliment. First, he rarely got them. Second, he didn’t need them. His shooting was what it was: on target every time. It was like complimenting the sun for rising each morning.

  “Someone thinks mighty high of himself,” said Dia. She had dropped down on his shoulder. From the corner of his eye, he could see she had her hands on her hips and was scanning the surrounding mountainside.

  “What the devil does that mean?” he asked.

  “Oh, I forgot to mention: I can read minds when I’m pint-size, which is when I’m at my densest and strongest. Heck, half of what I’ve been telling you has been through telepathy, as it is now.”

  “Telepa...” But Bad Buffalo gave up trying to sound out the word. Truth was, he didn’t like big, fancy words. In fact, he didn’t have much use for words at all. Whiskey, women and money was all he really had much use for. A well-placed grunt had gotten him far in life. So had his guns.

  “Telepathy, Buffalo.” She leaped off his shoulder and buzzed around him, coming to a stop directly in front of him. “And if you’ll look close enough, you’ll notice my lips aren’t moving.”

  Bad Buffalo had noticed that. But he had promptly forgotten it when she had flirted with him. Yes, indeed, her lips weren’t moving.

  “You can read my thoughts?” he asked, just coming around to the concept.

  “Most of them. The ones right there running along the front of your brain. And, yes, I will make a good girlfriend if we can get out of this mess, but I won’t be your girlfriend if every little thing sets you off and you choose your gun to answer your problems.”

  Bad Buffalo literally had no idea what she was talking about. He was about to tell her that much when he saw for himself another wormhole appear behind her. It appeared quickly, and this time it was much bigger than the first. Bad Buffalo raised his gun, but Dia was in the way. She yelped—not because of the gun.

  Indeed, one of the worm-like tentacles had reached around her little waist.

  Buffalo saw the fear in her eye and this time she did use her tele-whatchamacallit. She screamed for him, loud and clear, except he couldn’t draw a bead on the tentacle with her in the way. And she kept screaming even as the tentacle dragged her back into the wormhole.

  Just like that, she was gone.

  Chapter 4: Worm Turned

  Bad Buffalo stared at the fading hole that had swallowed his would-be girlfriend. That annoyed him, and few folk liked him when he was annoyed.

  He holstered his gun and dived at the hole. He caught it with his hands. It reminded him of a tightly pursed mouth. He punched it to loosen it up, jammed a finger in, then another, prying open the sphincter-like circle. It yielded reluctantly, emitting a belch of noxious gas. He yanked it wide apart, finding no teeth to knock out, then hauled himself into it. There was a moment of suffocating pressure. Then he was inside, sliding down a curving slope like the inside of a beer bottle. The throat, maybe.

  He emerged in what might be the stomach of the thing. The air here was foul, but he had breathed worse. There was the worm, maybe three feet thick, its tentacular tongue still wrapped around Dia, who was kicking and screaming desperately. The worm had a good hold of her, and it seemed she couldn’t expand into vapor to escape. But she was crosswise to its circular mouth and it couldn’t quite get her inside. Yet.

  The thought of her getting eaten by the worm annoyed him further. In fact, he was on the verge of getting angry. Folk really didn’t like him when he was angry.

  For a fleeting moment, Bad Buffalo considered drawing his gun and plugging the worm. But he was afraid the bullet would pass through it and make a hole in the side of the wormhole, and he wasn’t sure that was safe. So he used his fists instead. That saved on bullets.

  He stepped up to the side of the worm and punched it in the snoot, or as close as he could get. The creature was probably about the mass of several buffalo with a bear or two thrown in, but it was one good, hard punch. It dented the soft flesh and shoved the creature back several inches.

  The tongue tentacle loosened, and Dia slid free. “BB!” she cried gladly. “You came to rescue me from a horrible fate!”

  BB? Well, his initials would probably do. “Somebody had to,” he said gruffly.

  Then the worm oriented. Its blind snout curved around to sniff out the source of the punch. Its tongue uncoiled, snapping at Bad Buffalo.

  And recoiled, as did the snout.

  “What, turning chicken, you coward?” he said. He advanced on it, and launched another punch, making the snout compress like an accordion as it retreated. “Stand up and fight like a man, you worm!”

  But the creature kept retreating, and finally it turned tail, literally, and wriggled rapidly down the intestine-like tunnel.

  “You saved me!” the tiny Dia exclaimed, flying up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  He liked that, but knew they weren’t out of danger. “We gotta get outta here.”

  “That may not be easy. The worms can get out, but we don’t have their magic.”

  “Yeah? Maybe I can punch our way out.” He kicked at the yielding membrane of the wormhole.

  Then there came a reaction. The entire wall of the tube heaved inward and outward in some kind of convulsion.

  “Oops,” Dia said. “I think you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll do it again. Take that, hole-for-brains. And that. And that.” He kicked the membrane repeatedly.

  The tube constricted, squeezing the two of them together. Then it developed a bubble that carried them rapidly along. It squeezed them right out of the opening mouth. They flew through the air and landed on a pile of moss.

  “Peristalsis!” Dia exclaimed. “It vomited us out!”

  “Guess it didn’t much like getting its butt kicked, or whatever.” He looked around, but the wormhole was gone. Only Horse remained, placidly glazing. Horse was used to Bad Buffalo’s comings and goings, and took them in stride. “Served it right.”

  “Oh, BB!” Dia exclaimed, kissing him on the nose. “I thought I was done for, but you rescued me! I’m ever so grateful.”

  “Well, that and a lot more substance would be great.”

  “About that,” she said, looking thoughtful. “You saved me before the monster could eat me, and I didn’t lose any magic in that high-magic environment. In fact, I even have a bit more than I had before. Maybe I can thank you in a way you’ll appreciate.”

  “You can be big and solid?” he asked hopefully.

  “Not that much more magic. But maybe I can be part smart.” She stood before him and expanded to full human size, nude. “Feel me.”

  “But you’re vapor!” he protested.

  “There,” she said, touching her own chest. “Now.”

  He shrugged and extended one hand to her marvelous bare front. And felt flesh. “They’re real!” he exclaimed, grabbing with both hands.

  “But only for a moment, and only there,” she said as he squeezed. Sure enough, the moment passed and she dissolved back into vapor, there and everywhere. But it had been some feel.

  “Wow,” he said belatedly. “But how’d you get any magic, instead of having it all sucked out of you?”

  “I have been thinking about that,” she said, reverting to mini size. “The worms do suck magic, while this one didn’t. Instead it grabbed me physically. I think I represented a compact tasty package of magic, so it was easier to eat me whole instead of taking the time to suck out all my magic. The end would have been the same. Once it digested my magic, it would have spit out the husk of my body. But I noticed also that it is high intensity magic inside the wormhole, supercharged, so I didn’t shed magic there, I absorbed it, maybe by osmosis. If I’d stayed there longer, I might have taken in enough to, well, become full-size solid. You would have liked that.”

  He was learning to ignore her four-bit words and squeeze out the meaning. “Yeah. We should’ve stayed longer.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous. You did the right thing, saving me quickly. But I wo
nder. When you punched the worm, it really reacted. It backed off.”

  “Folk do back off when I brace them,” Bad Buffalo said. “It turned out to be a big sissy.”

  “I’m not at all sure of that. There was something else. Now I am coming to realize what it is. You have no magic at all.”

  “Right. I’m strictly a down-to-earth guy.”

  “Most humans have a little magic, which they tend to pass off as coincidence. They pick it up from the natural environment, just as we sprites do, but not as efficiently. They’re not really interested in magic.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you have none at all. You’re void.”

  “Folk do avoid me,” he agreed.

  She smiled as if he’d said something funny. “I mean, there’s not even a tiny trace of magic in you. While the worm is a magic eater. You must taste really bad to it.”

  “I leave a bad taste,” he agreed. “What’s your point?”

  “Why didn’t you pick up magic from the wormhole, as I did? Why aren’t you sucking all the magic from me? Not because you want to; because such a void should be as bad as a worm. Magic abhors a vacuum. But you don’t suck.”

  “I love hearing that from such a pretty girl.”

  “You must be something else.”

  “I sure am.”

  “I mean that your void must somehow be blocked off, so that magic does not nudge in to fill it. That must be a kind of magic itself. Maybe like antimatter.”

  “Huh? I thought I was understanding you, but now I’m lost. I’m magic because I’m not magic?”

  “It’s confusing to me, too. But I think that only a special kind of magic must be able to prevent magic from acting the way it normally does. You may be inherently immune. I wonder if someone cast a magic spell on you whether it would work.”