The Worm Returns

  “So how do we sway hypnotically?” he asked.

  She considered. “Maybe we can dance.”

  “Dance! I don’t do that sissy stuff.”

  She paused a moment, probably figuring out the best way to manage this. “You know, somewhere along the time-line, they wanted to get boys to play with dolls, so they could sell twice as many of them. But boys didn’t like sissy stuff. So they renamed them things like GI Joe and made them look tough, and then the boys liked the dolls just fine.”

  “Stupid boys.”

  “My point is that you do dance. Just not the way a girl does. You call it something else.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Say you meet this tough hombre in a saloon, and you don’t like his look, but the sheriff is there with a posse and a Gatling gun and you know that if you plug him, you’ll get canned, unfair as that may be to you. But you can’t just let the guy get away with annoying you. What do you do?”

  “I’d call him out, then plug him when he meets me in the street.”

  “And what if he plants his fool feet on the floor and won’t move?”

  “Then maybe I’d encourage him a bit, such as shooting at his feet, giving him just time to move ’em before he loses a toe or two. I’m make him dance.”

  “You’d make him dance,” she agreed.

  Then Bad Buffalo realized what he’d said. She’d caught him. Again. “Okay, maybe men do dance.” He smiled grimly. “Some even dance in the air.”

  She reached into her anachronistic memory. “It is not sweet, with nimble feet, the dance upon the air,” she quoted. “Not at a hanging.”

  “Yeah. There’s sheriffs in dozens of towns want to make me do that dance, but they know I’d plug ’em if they tried to arrest me, so they leave me alone.”

  “Very well. Let’s get down before the caterpillar and see if we can impress her with our dance. You shoot at my feet and I’ll shoot at yours. No real guns or bullets, just the motions.”

  Bad Buffalo wasn’t easy about the notion of even that kind of dancing, but if it won over the caterpillar maybe it would be worth it. “You can shoot at my leaves, too,” she said as they dismounted and she assumed her full-sized vapor shape. “Cock your finger.”

  He cocked his finger at her central leaf. She whipped it away and flung her hips to the side to miss the phantom bullet. Ah, so.

  They did the dance, phantom shooting at each other and dancing to escape the bullets. It really was almost fun, because of the way Dia and her leaves gyrated. And it worked! Soon the caterpillar was swaying, echoing the motions of their bodies. In fact, so was Horse. They had both been hypnotized.

  “Now I can guide her,” Dia said. She reverted to her small form and addressed the caterpillar, sending her a telepathic message as she spoke. “Take us to the worm-eating bug planet.”

  The caterpillar started moving. Bad Buffalo leaped onto Horse to get out of the way. They retreated down the tunnel, with the caterpillar following. But the creature was actually leading from the rear. Soon they came to one of the myriad intersecting tunnels, and turned down it. Now Horse and Bad Buffalo were following.

  The caterpillar came to a chamber and a dead end. She advanced a tool of some sort and pressed into the blank wall. A small hole appeared. She pushed against it, and it irised into a big hole—big enough for a man and a horse to pass through.

  They were there.

  Dia flew down and kissed the tip of the caterpillar’s snout. “Thank you so much.” The snout actually turned pink. Dia’s kiss did that. “Please wait for us,” the sprite continued. “We will return soon, and need you to get us safely back to Earth.” Bad Buffalo knew that the caterpillar would wait.

  Now Horse and his riders stepped boldly out upon the surface of the Bug World. Fortunately the air was breathable.

  Chapter 9: Swarm

  The grass was purple. The sky was pink, and Bad Buffalo counted three different moons in varying degrees of waning and waxing.

  “What is this place?” he asked, already not caring much for it. Mostly, he didn’t like the flat field of grass. There wasn’t a tree in sight. Nor a hill of any kind. The outlaw frowned. A body needed trees, even if for shade—or maybe a nice pile of boulders for a good ambush. And grass should be green and a sky should be blue. Bad Buffalo felt quite strongly about that.

  “We are on another planet, BB. According to the caterpillar’s mind, the planet is called Libom 76, and it supports a full array of life. The caterpillar, in fact, only works with planets that can sustain life.”

  “Sustain life?” he said, raising a bushy eyebrow. As he did so, he spotted a smudge of something dark that had appeared on the far horizon. It could have been blowing sand. Or a massive flock of birds. He kept his eye on it.

  “It means Libom 76 has the right balance of oxygen to hydrogen, along with being the ideal distance from the local star. You see, BB, not all planets can sustain life. Some are too cold or too hot. Some have no air to breathe.”

  Bad Buffalo grunted, not knowing the half of what she was saying, although he understood living and dying. He experienced plenty of both. Living for him, and dying for his enemies.

  Behind them, the wormhole had retracted to just a small black pinhole in the sky. Mildly alarmed, Bad Buffalo leaned back and stuck his finger in the hole. He worked it open enough to get a good look inside the tunnel, and spotted the giant caterpillar just settling down to wait. He released the hole and it snapped back into place, returned to a mere black dot. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the dot. Bad Buffalo might have missed it, too, had he not known it was there. Which got him wondering: how in tarnation were they ever going to find it again, once they left this spot?

  “This is how,” said the fairy, picking up his thoughts and rising up out of his pocket. The back draft of her little wings blasted cool wind in his face.

  She circled the area beneath the wormhole, and as she did so, she tossed what appeared to be glittering sand. Magic sand, no doubt.

  “There,” she said. “The hole has been marked. And I’m pleased to say that magic works very, very well in this world.”

  “How well?”

  “This well.” And she appeared before him, a full-bodied fairy, perhaps a tad smaller than the women Bad Buffalo was used to, but so perfectly proportioned that Bad Buffalo nearly fell off of Horse, which would have been a first for him.

  Dia settled onto the purple grass, her now normal-sized wings generating quite a windstorm around them.

  “Try me,” she said, and stuck out her rear end.

  Bad Buffalo blinked. Blinked again. Then reached out a tentative hand. She was as real as any woman he had ever felt.

  “Okay, that’s enough, big boy. Save some for later.”

  This very odd world with its purple grass and pink sky was suddenly looking almighty appealing to the outlaw. In fact, he could get used to the place.

  “Don’t even think about it, BB. This isn’t our home. In fact, we are very, very far from our home, so far that it would make your head spin.”

  “Trust me, my head’s spinning.”

  She returned to mini-size and flew back into his pocket. “Down boy. We have work to do. And don’t worry about the wormhole. It’ll stay like that for weeks, although inside the wormhole itself, it will only feel like minutes.”

  “What the devil does that mean?”

  “It means a few minutes in the wormhole are really a few weeks on our world. I don’t see why it would be any different here.”

  “So, when we get back to Earth...”

  “Depending on how long we are in the wormhole, it could be weeks, maybe even months in the future.”

  Bad Buffalo liked the idea of that. He’d had a posse on his tail since leaving Dodge City. Maybe they’d already given up looking for him. He grinned to himself. These wormholes could be very handy to an outlaw like him. Very, very handy.

  He felt another excruciating pain in his chest. The little fairy was pinching him
again, and this time with both her little hands. “Don’t you think about it, BB. If you want anything to do with me, you’ll stay on the right side of the law. And trust me, you very much want something to do with me.”

  He grumbled, but he still was not convinced this little fairy was worth the trouble. Hell, he’d been mean and ornery since last he could remember. Would take a lot to rid him of all the rattlesnake venom coursing through his veins.

  “I agree,” she said, flying up out of his pocket and circling his head. “And I see it as a challenge. But first things first, we have to stop the worms from decimating the magic in our world. And these bugs here figured out how. We need their help, somehow.”

  Bad Buffalo didn’t much care for bugs, since they usually got in his hair and food and boots. But if they could help save the magic in his world—and help bring Dia that much closer into his arms, well, he was willing to play along. “Right, the bugs.”

  “Now, according to the caterpillar, the bugs are the dominant species on this planet.”

  “Say again?”

  “Dominant species. It means they rule this world.”

  Bad Buffalo snorted. “Can’t be much of a world, if it’s ruled by bugs.”

  “I guess we’re about to see. Look.”

  Bad Buffalo looked, and what he saw, he didn’t much like. It was a giant black cloud coming their way. The cloud seemed to be expanding exponentially, now filling the sky from horizon to horizon. Some parts of the cloud were denser than others. He’d been in a dust storm before. But this was different, this was black, and it was also buzzing. Dust storms didn’t buzz, last he checked. He considered the wormhole, but it would take a precious few minutes to work it open big enough for all of them to fit. No, there was only one option.

  “Run!” he said, swooping the fairy up off the ground with one hand and tossing her behind him. He spurred Horse hard, and soon they were racing through the high, purple grass.

  Bad Buffalo looked behind him and for the first time in a long time—maybe even ever—he felt real fear: the black, buzzing dust cloud was gaining on them. The noise was growing louder, too, filling his head so much that he couldn’t think. And so he didn’t think; instead, he leaned forward and rode Horse harder than he’d ever rode the creature before. All while Dia held on from behind, resting her head on his back. She could probably fly just as fast, but he wasn’t so sure. Horse was almighty fast—the fastest he’d ever seen.

  For now, Horse needed only to be faster than what was looking increasingly like a swarm...of what he didn’t know.

  He stayed low in the saddle. The purple grass slapped at his heels. He prayed to whatever deity that oversaw this planet that Horse wouldn’t step in a gopher hole—or whatever was equal to a gopher in these parts.

  The buzzing grew louder. His teeth vibrated. His head hurt. He thought his ears might bleed.

  And still, he rode. Bad Buffalo didn’t know the meaning of giving in. Then again, he’d also never run from a fight either. And with that thought, the outlaw yanked the reins hard, drawing Horse to a skidding stop. He turned the creature around and faced the coming swarm.

  He drew both his weapons and took aim.

  Chapter 10: Deal

  Then he paused.

  The black swarm was thickening into an almost solid mass, but not attacking, yet. There wasn’t much point in firing into it until there was a leader to plug. That’s how you stopped a mob: plug the leader, and plug the one who replaced him. Pretty soon the mobsters got the message, and lost their taste for leadership. So far no bug leader had appeared.

  Then he thought of something almost irrelevant. “You say time’s different in the wormhole? Minutes inside are weeks outside?”

  “Yes, that’s one of the things I learned from the caterpillar. Things inside a wormhole are actually squeezed to virtual singularity—that is, pretty thin—and time contracts. There’s a theory about it, but that hasn’t been developed yet.”

  “So what about when we were inside, before rescuing you from the worm? Before we got spit out? Horse was still there waiting for us.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed, surprised. “It could have been two weeks for him. I’ll ask him.” She was silent a moment. “Yes, it was. He’s a very patient horse.”

  “It really was two weeks?”

  “Yes. He says next time please leave him where there’s better grazing. He ate the grass down to stubs in that whole area. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait for you without starving.”

  He felt a pang. People were people who mainly didn’t matter, but Horse was someone he cared about. “Sorry, Horse. I owe you one.”

  Horse wiggled an ear at him, acknowledging. He was generally pretty easygoing.

  “Maybe we’d better consider the bugs,” Dia hinted.

  Bad Buffalo looked. The swarm had coalesced into a single solid-seeming shape, that of a giant buffalo-sized bug. And what a bug! It was entirely made of smaller bugs, which could be seen if one squinted closely at any part of it. They clustered so tightly that they seemed integral, probably forming the giant image of any one of them. It had seven spindly legs, five stout wings, three huge bug-eyes, two limber antennae, and one lip-less mouth with a formidable set of teeth. Along with a candy-striped thorax, and a filthy brown stench.

  Teeth? What color stench?

  “We’re not on Planet Earth anymore,” Dia reminded him in a whisper. “Their conventions differ.”

  “They sure do!”

  Now the monstrous bug addressed them telepathically. What manner of creatures are you? Are you edible? You smell odd.

  That stirred up his dander. “You don’t stink so tasty yourself, bug-eye.”

  “We’re from another planet,” Dia said quickly. “We’ve come to make a deal.”

  A foreign planet! No wonder you’re weird. They have no standards.

  “Listen, piss-for-brains!” Bad Buffalo snapped. “You’re the weirdo! Where’d you get that chocolate-and-vanilla striped vest? From your sick poop-hole?”

  “BB!” Dia warned, too late. For some reason, she was nervous about insulting giant alien bugs with teeth.

  All three bug eyes and two antennae oriented on him, and the teeth clacked. You have a rare finesse with concepts, alien visitor.

  “Yeah? Well you can just take that ‘fine S’ and fly it into the blue moon, bugger.”

  “BB!” Dia cried, horrified. “Finesse means it’s good. She’s complimenting you. Stop insulting her!”

  He was taken aback. “She?”

  “This is a representation of the queen of the hive. She came personally, in emulation, to investigate the visitors from the wormhole. Because they don’t trust wormholes. Because of the worms.”

  Oh. He was new to apologies, but he made an effort. “Sorry about that, Queenie. We don’t much like the worms ourselves.”

  It seems we have a certain common basis. Yet you use their holes.

  “Well, we had to, to get here. Didn’t see no other way. We’re from real far away.”

  There was caution in her mind. How far?

  He looked at Dia. “How far?”

  “I think it’s across the galaxy.”

  “Across the whatever.”

  She was relieved; the feeling came through with the thoughts. I heard. That’s far enough; you are not near neighbors. You have no designs on our territory.

  “Yeah. We don’t even decorate our own things much.”

  Amusing humor. So he must have said something funny. He was actually coming to like this big fake bug; she seemed to understand and accept him in a way few, if any, human girls ever had. Oh, I do, you wonderfully lecherous male. What is your business here?

  “Well, the worms are raiding our planet,” he said. “Sucking out all the magic, so my magic girlfriend here can’t hug me and I can’t poke her. That pisses me off.”

  “BB!” Dia protested despairingly.

  You are delightful, the Queen thought, comprehending him perfectl
y. She was reading his thoughts rather than hearing his words, and his thoughts about what he would do with Dia if she were only big and solid enough were deliciously graphic. You have such fundamental urges and expressions.

  Bad Buffalo reminded himself that the fancy words her concepts translated into were not meant to insult him. “Yeah.”

  We like you.

  “Oh? You and who else?”

  “That’s the royal we,” Dia said quickly. “She is thinking of herself. There’s something about your primitive candor that appeals to her.”

  Well, if that’s the way of it, why not? “You seem like quite a dame yourself, Queenie.”

  Oh, I certainly am. I know all about the pleasures of courtship and mating. But this is business. What do you want from us?

  “You can stop the worms from sucking magic. We want some of your bugs to come to our planet and stop the worms there. So the magic can get strong again, and I can get into my girl’s pants.”

  A worthy ambition, and she does seem amenable. Yes, we can provide a starter package of worker females who will proliferate and quickly discourage the worms from further invading your demesnes.

  “Our what?”

  “Earth,” Dia said. “Our land.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  This will solve your problem, the Queen continued. However—

  “Oh shoot! I’ve heard that tone before. There’s always a catch.”

  Indeed. We call it bargaining.

  “Yeah. What do you want, you cunning creature?”

  Your compliments never cease! We would like to have you for our paramour— She paused, picking up his ignorance of the word. Our potent stud. But since that is not feasible, we being of different sizes and species, not to mention the objections of your girlfriend, we must settle for a lesser alternative.

  “Here it comes,” Dia murmured warily. “She’s been flattering your foolish male ego for a reason. Remember, in person she could perch on your finger. She wants something, and it’s not your lechery.”