Zone Boy and the Worm of Incidence

Both the Flagrantians were naked, well-muscled and dangerously armed. They were also perpetually catching fire. Patches of their bright orange skin would simply ignite. This did them no visible harm. These little conflagrations had no apparent cause, other than their moods.

Their moods were mostly belligerent. Presently the two were beside themselves with rage over their foes, the blue-shelled Crabulons. They were also violently exuberant over their latest hunting kill: some monstrous beast of their planet called “the myriatoid.”

It lay at their feet, multiple legs twitching. Ochre fluid leaked from a pair of bullet-shaped breaches in its exoskeleton.

The maleling continued to draw a bead on it with his shiny black killgun.

“Twas last of its kind,” he said, in a solemn yet self-congratulatory tone.

It wasn’t fully clear if the animal was indeed last of its species or whether the maleling was just boasting.

“This animal has five more auxiliary hearts,” said the nano-computer, bursting in on his bubble of attention. “It will likely survive its wounds.”

The nano-computer’s prim voice threw him off. He hadn’t fully recovered from hallucinations in the fungoid cave. Distractions like this taxed his still-scattered concentration.

The Flagrantians seemed impatient for him to say or do something.

“They want you to compliment their kill,” said the nano-computer. “They will take offence if you don’t.  In their society, taking offence can trigger violence.”

He shot a startled look at the Flagrantians. They wouldn’t hear the nano-computer, which was deep inside his ear. But they were so hyper-vigilant he felt, irrationally, they must hear it anyway.

The femoid noted his reaction: like to something said offstage. Her interested gaze locked on him.

She towered more than two metres, slightly shorter than the maleling. Flames fluttered on her cheekbones and danced furtively across one thigh. A bayonet’s point gleamed on the muzzle of her killgun.

Like her partner she spoke with ludicrous formality.

“Wizard, what counsel doth thee take from unseen things?” she said. “My love, doth he treat with invisible servants?”

After a beat, he realized she meant him.

“Verily, he might, my love,” the maleling answered, right bicep sleeved with fire.

“They often identify off-planet travelers as wizards,” explained the nano-computer. “It’s a workable analog for them. Next they’ll ask you for the secret of space travel or for weapons to eradicate Crabulons. Put them off, if you can.”

It offered no specifics on how.

“Doth he parlay with the mushroom?” the femoid mused, pointing as she spoke.

Where she pointed sat a large fungoid. At a glance, he knew it wasn’t exactly a fungoid. Its tipped-over, top-heavy form meant it was the shape-changing oddity that seemed to determined to travel with him. Unlike most mushrooms, it could move. At least the stringy mycelium at its base was moving. Spread out like web of white capillaries, they contorted in a frantic struggle to pierce the canyon’s hard clay. Their tips attempted to grow points like the myriatoid’s horn-shaped feet.

The creature had grown quickly since its larval stage. It had gained significant mass during its short stay among the fungoids, the whole time imitating them. Once the size of a cat, it now came up to his shoulder. But it seemed like it might starve in this harsh place.

The creature-mushroom’s heady smell threatened to re-trigger his hallucinations. He wrenched his eyes from its fleshy, fluorescing body, but bright tracers followed.

He locked eyes with the Flagrantians as they stared back at him. Deadly interest marred the pleasing symmetry of their faces.

“What doth thy mushroom counsel?” the femoid demanded.

“One moment, let me finish,” he said, in a hasty attempt to stall. “Is that what you people do: bother wizards while they converse?” he blustered, feigning haughtiness he didn’t feel.

He turned away from them in a hopefully convincing huff and turned turned back to the creature, truly hoping they could communicate somehow. He thought it might have happened once. Of course he might have just been hallucinating.

The creature’s ripe, earthy smell seemed to change. It became dank and acidic. Somehow, this suggested distress.

Other smells around him changed. The ground smelled metallic, bituminous and cruelly, ungenerously dry. The Flagrantians smelled acrid, angry and slightly sulfurous.

This was more than his own senses could ever tell him. It was scent as something diagrammatic, even linguistic. It was scent keen enough to know the contours of objects in space. That way it was almost sight.

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Sulphur began to overpower overpowered other smells as flame engulfed the maleling’s annoyed face.

“Wizard we lose patience,” cautioned the maleling.

“One moment. One more!” he stammered.

“He doth delay,” said the femoid. “Careful of the wizard’s wiles, my spouse.” Her enchanting eyes narrowed.

“Indeed, m’love,” said her mate. “Wizard, tell us now: what powers can thee lend ‘gainst the vexing crab-folk, that their unsightly race perish?”

“Tell, wizard,” urged the femoid. Flames sprang from her shoulders, like wings.

Her eyes suddenly widened with alarm. “Behold!” she exclaimed. “The wizard’s servant transforms!”

What was it doing now?

The creature no longer looked anything like a fungus. It was multi-legged, low to the ground and armoured, like the myriatoid.

“What devilry be this?” uttered the maleling.

“Methinks our quarry is not last of its kind after all,” quoth the femoid.

“This one here is even better, methinks,” said the maleling. “Methinks it may be first its kind.”

The two raised their killguns.

At that instant, with great commotion, Crabulons came in their tanks and airships, battle-paint on their blue shells, antennae twitching with rage.

“War is upon us,” gushed the maleling. Flames swelled around the beginnings of his erection.

“Indeed, my heart,” the femoid all but sang. “We two alone, with our captive wizard, face this army.”

“Nay, look, my love. Our fellow fighters come.”

One Crabulon airship exploded. The Flagrantian floater which gunned it down sailed soundlessly over. Others of like design followed.

One floater landed. Fighters debarked, aflame like torches. Crabulon soldiers immediately charged, with their gauntleted pincers and shell-mounted cannons.

Flagrantian gunners blasted the Crabulon war tanks from their floaters. Semi-living Crabulon tanks, in turn, shot those down.

The couple facing him forgot the myriatoid, which limped cautiously away.

But they were still focused on him, or else whatever they saw behind him.

Air rushed wildly into what felt like a tunnel at his back. This was the Worm’s mouth, he dearly hoped. He never in his life wanted more to get away from a place.

“The wizard tries to escape,” cried the femoid. “See his portal.”

“Escape, thee shall not!” bellowed the maleling. He fired his killgun in near-unison with his mate.

These dire actions seemed to be slowing down as he watched. As the Worm engulfed him, time slowed to a crawl.

At sluggish speed, two kill-bullets spiralled toward him. He watched them with prolonged, paralyzed dread.

(Next: Bullets Between Worlds)

(Previous: Dream of Fungus)

Rain fell heavily at him: black as tar and unstoppably lethal. It spattered alien pavement with sickening splashes, as if a plague of formless, oily frogs was smashing down. Somewhere inside his ear canal the nano-computer repeatedly warned one drop of the caustic torrent could boil the flesh from his bones and then dissolve the bones afterward.

Luckily he had an umbrella. The silky plume of its canopy was coal-coloured and vaguely bat-like. Its silver shaft terminated in a bulbous pommel carved with feathery whorls, like some gloomy bird’s pinions. Its style suited the rest of his clothes: somber greatcoat with inverness cape, leatherette kid gloves and a belfry topper, which held tight to his anarchic mane of hair.

The whole ensemble had been fashioned by sub-microscopic assemblers pushing one atom next to another until they’d minutely woven his latest lapse in taste. He knew nothing about the technology of these nano-factories, or the programs running them. These came from Worm, which he barely knew anything more about. The Worm was the benefactor who fashioned such things and the tormentor that sent him to lethal, rainy planets like this one.

The rain’s cutting, carbolic smell tickled his nostrils. After hours of hearing the nano-computer’s analysis, he begged it kindly cease.

“Yes, I know. The rain is awful. Just keep it off me.”

In that respect, his umbrella worked. It kept the rain off his head and even somehow chased it from his feet. Drops fled in hasty runnels wherever his boots struck pavement.

It seemed the downpour would never stop. It hadn’t in three days. He’d been walking in it for all that time, somehow not getting tired. Something preserved his vigour. Devices in his clothes pricked his skin—feeding him stimulants, nutritional cocktails and hormones that stopped his muscles from cramping.

Physically, he felt he could walk forever. Mentally, he felt like he had been. After three days, tedium was a powerful vexation. He switched his umbrella from hand to hand not out of fatigue, just for variety. Walking had gotten boring and, frankly, depressing.

Massive aerial billboards cruised overhead, flashing unknowable slogans. His fascination with them had fizzled a couple of days ago.

There was no end, it seemed, to these streets or their featureless buildings, which climbed for kilometres. Silhouettes moved in their windows, but no-one went in or out and there were no visible doors. No-one walked the streets. Not that he blamed them. He wouldn’t be out there if he had choice in the matter.

His only course was to keep walking, until the Worm finally extracted him. Weeks might pass before that. Meanwhile, he’d jettisoned all hope of meeting anyone.

Then he saw a shape approaching, a block or so away. Improbably, it traveled on two legs.

In the great multiverse life was rare, and humanoids more so. He wouldn’t have been shocked at the strange gait of whatever thing oozed or shambled toward him or by how many pincers or tentacles it waved at him. But someone coming with arms, torso and two willowy legs was actually a novelty.

He couldn’t make out the person’s features, but he noted the umbrella passing restively from hand to hand. It wasn’t every day he met himself, but in his type of travels, it happened. His double’s boots clacked with identical rhythm, which felt like unwelcome parody of his own stride. He sighed, deeply nonplussed. Here we go again, he thought.

The other ceased walking, just as he did. They stood, a stone’s toss apart. Which is when he noticed the self gazing back at him was female. Her hips descended in more hourglass fashion than his own.  Her face’s subtle softenings were less male. The curve of breasts displaced her lapels. Her sardonic leer no doubt caused his own to bloom defensively.

“Hello, you,” she said.

“Well this is something,” he answered, with a tiny bored exhalation.

“There isn’t much time,” she urged. “Listen.”

“There’s nothing but time,” he groused. “We can stand here all day, all week. Nothing will change. It’ll still be raining.”

“It’s actually the end of the rainy season,” she corrected. Her eyes sharply shifted. “Go left! Now!”

He jumped, bashful at having obeyed. Something thudded on the pavement, where he’d just been standing.

It was grey, fleshy and larva-like, the size of a grown raccoon. It wriggled desperately, as raindrops touched it and sizzled. Yet the larva weathered the caustic mizzle.
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Stories above, a window slammed shut.

“There will be more,” she cautioned. “Come on.”

Windows snicked open and sidewalks pounded with more impacts.

She led him a merry chase over wet streets. The two careened around corners and finally shot into a narrow alley. In three days, he hadn’t noticed there were alleys.

Pipes erupted from the tower’s back wall, pulsing and throbbing like intestines. Porous, tongue-like stumps extruded near them, licking off rainwater.

Bombardments continued beyond the alley—where nothing hit from above, since there were no windows.

“These things need acids to break down the outer membranes,” she explained. “That triggers the next instar.”

He studied her expression, which was unreadable, like his own usually was. He was unnerved by a glimmer of erotic fascination for her.

“If you don’t mind my asking…”

“Yes?” she said, most definitely minding.

“You’ve been here before, I take it?”

“Now that,” she said, “is an interesting question.”

At which point a small volume of air before his face distended suddenly. At first there was minor dimpling, which inflated into a dark sphere. Shimmering surrounded its contours, but the sphere, itself, was lightless, without reflectance, like a hole painted on the floor in an old cartoon.

Of course the Worm would pick this moment to arrive and swallow him.

It advanced, half-obscuring his second self. Its shimmer lensed her, funhouse fashion.

“You could have waited,” he said.

Unnoticed, one larva had flopped into the alley and jiggled up to his left heel. He saw it just as he and it both were engulfed in the Worm’s warping non-space.

He thought he’d seen his other self shrug, as if all this was expected.

Then he was falling.

(Next: Boy Falling)