Short Story: The Bigger the Worm
by C.Henry Martens
A one-hundred-sixty-foot earthworm is not your daddy’s nightcrawler, and the very idea of threading it onto a fish hook would make for a whopper of a tale around the campfire. As worm wranglers, Igor Denesovich and Rudy MacGregor had never tried, but in trading good-natured tall tales over excellent vodka or well-mellowed whiskey, they had both speculated on how it could be done. The problem was that there was no need, so in the end they sulked over the lack of imagination that the geneticists had. Without the proper fish, the hook would have to wait.
Mars was shaping up. The name was in contention for the repositioned planet. New Earth was in play, but almost everyone except government stooges objected. The problem was that there were too many names in the suggestion box, so the votes were spread out. Smart money said the new world would be named New Earth anyway. What government ever listened to citizens?
So the work progressed, and the worms ate rock and churned soil at a furious pace to bring enough fertility to what had been barren and sterile forever. At first the worms had died almost as fast as they were planted. The little three-footers hadn’t the staying power of the big boys, and the scientists had worked diligently to increase the size so they were tougher. Gradually the worms began to last longer, and as they died they fed the larger ones that followed. All organic matter returned to the worm beds, and the worm beds grew.
There at the beginning, Igor remembered how the small worms had been nurtured in precious organic soils from earth until they reached mature size. As soon as three feet of voracious, slime covered muscle was sifted from the soil, the big Russian manhandled it into a cardboard tube to be chilled into torpor and shipped to whatever bed it would die in. When Rudy arrived, Igor already had the scar on his chest where an especially frisky critter had latched on and made as if to burrow in. Igor had caught hell over killing it, which said something about the value assigned the worms over their handlers. As a newby, Rudy marveled appropriately when shown the almost three inch wide scar that sunk in as far as it was wide. A good lesson to learn, he did his best to avoid contact with either end of one of the animals. Some were not so lucky, and there were deaths. But on the bright side, after a mutiny as the worms got larger and more dangerous, the pay tripled.
Technology caught up finally, and mechanical means to tube the worms was developed. The pay stayed high, because the equipment was often torn to shreds by ever larger beasts, and men were still endangered.
When the capability to move a large celestial body became feasible, it was only intended to be used for asteroids and objects from the Kuiper Belt. As the technology advanced rapidly, larger objects were more efficient to put effort into, and one day a bright cosmologist advanced the idea that a strategic collision might take Mars out of orbit and reseed it with liquid water at the same time, moving it into an orbit almost opposite the sun from earth. The graviton accelerator pulled a large chunk of ice from deep blackness, well beyond the ex-planet Pluto, and with little manipulation and huge efforts in calculation plunged the unnamed frozen chunk through the solar system and into the God of War’s namesake. Once on the move, detached from what had been its home, Mars took further manipulation by the massive energy device to settle into a stationary orbit once again. With the proper filters, astronomers could see past Sol and track the new planet as it followed the Earth about the sun. Now, after years spent allowing the conflagration to cool and the dust to settle, the worms were preparing the soil.
After a particularly unnerving day, warming and loosing a big bastard into the soil, Rudy returned back to base and a chilled bottle of Igor’s best. His friend’s day was equally rough, loading the day’s mature specimens into giant, reinforced tubes, two of which had bulged dangerously under the strain.
By the time the bottle was half empty, the saloon was getting loud. Two lab techs had joined them, ladies that liked rough men and strong drink, and Igor was glad he had another bottle cooling in his stash locker behind the bar. The dusky redhead leaned in and lightly caressed his ear with her tongue.
“I heard something today, Iggy… something you will be interested in.” Her accent spoke of her Columbian heritage.
Overhearing, Rudy slurred the question that Igor was just starting to form.
“Does it have to do with the Big Puddle?” He grinned. He knew these techs worked in the Ichthy lab. They always smelled of fish.
The smaller of two oceans that had formed was already seeded with small fry, nothing bigger than blue whales. They were all mutationally aberrant and were only being used to spread organic matter and bacteria so later aquatics could be planted. Sooner or later they would have to be controlled, as in terminated, and most thought some kind of poison would be used.
The other woman, a lanky brunette with no eyebrows and a line of intentional skin tags hanging from one cheek, giggled and nudged her friend as they anticipated the reaction their news would have. She spoke.
“Yes, indeedy do, the Big Puddle… indeedy do.” She winked, and neither man knew if it was intentional or merely a tic. She giggled again, and it spread into a belly laugh as both women fed off each other’s mirth.
The redhead finally calmed enough to extort, “Get one ready, Iggy… one of your worms will have something to do besides eat dirt.” She smiled. “The brass decided anything that’ll kill the mutants will be too toxic for earth species, and they don’t want to harm the stuff already planted. They’re worried about the coral and stuff.”
“Yeah, and what they want is a big fish eater.” The brunette leaned in conspiratorially. “Something that can kill the ones they don’t want and digest them, then die off from engineered genetic exhaustion. They’ve had one in the locker down on Earth, bein’ stored after it wuz developed. It’s big, and it’s hungry, and it’ll kill anything it can see in the Puddle… and eat it.”
Igor and Rudy locked eyes and grinned, turning their thoughts to bait.
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A one-hundred-sixty-foot earthworm is not your daddy’s nightcrawler, and the very idea of threading it onto a fish hook would make for a whopper of a tale around the campfire. As worm wranglers, Igor Denesovich and Rudy MacGregor had never tried, but in trading good-natured tall tales over excellent vodka or well-mellowed whiskey, they had both speculated on how it could be done. The problem was that there was no need, so in the end they sulked over the lack of imagination that the geneticists had. Without the proper fish, the hook would have to wait.
Mars was shaping up. The name was in contention for the repositioned planet. New Earth was in play, but almost everyone except government stooges objected. The problem was that there were too many names in the suggestion box, so the votes were spread out. Smart money said the new world would be named New Earth anyway. What government ever listened to citizens?
So the work progressed, and the worms ate rock and churned soil at a furious pace to bring enough fertility to what had been barren and sterile forever. At first the worms had died almost as fast as they were planted. The little three-footers hadn’t the staying power of the big boys, and the scientists had worked diligently to increase the size so they were tougher. Gradually the worms began to last longer, and as they died they fed the larger ones that followed. All organic matter returned to the worm beds, and the worm beds grew.
There at the beginning, Igor remembered how the small worms had been nurtured in precious organic soils from earth until they reached mature size. As soon as three feet of voracious, slime covered muscle was sifted from the soil, the big Russian manhandled it into a cardboard tube to be chilled into torpor and shipped to whatever bed it would die in. When Rudy arrived, Igor already had the scar on his chest where an especially frisky critter had latched on and made as if to burrow in. Igor had caught hell over killing it, which said something about the value assigned the worms over their handlers. As a newby, Rudy marveled appropriately when shown the almost three inch wide scar that sunk in as far as it was wide. A good lesson to learn, he did his best to avoid contact with either end of one of the animals. Some were not so lucky, and there were deaths. But on the bright side, after a mutiny as the worms got larger and more dangerous, the pay tripled.
Technology caught up finally, and mechanical means to tube the worms was developed. The pay stayed high, because the equipment was often torn to shreds by ever larger beasts, and men were still endangered.
When the capability to move a large celestial body became feasible, it was only intended to be used for asteroids and objects from the Kuiper Belt. As the technology advanced rapidly, larger objects were more efficient to put effort into, and one day a bright cosmologist advanced the idea that a strategic collision might take Mars out of orbit and reseed it with liquid water at the same time, moving it into an orbit almost opposite the sun from earth. The graviton accelerator pulled a large chunk of ice from deep blackness, well beyond the ex-planet Pluto, and with little manipulation and huge efforts in calculation plunged the unnamed frozen chunk through the solar system and into the God of War’s namesake. Once on the move, detached from what had been its home, Mars took further manipulation by the massive energy device to settle into a stationary orbit once again. With the proper filters, astronomers could see past Sol and track the new planet as it followed the Earth about the sun. Now, after years spent allowing the conflagration to cool and the dust to settle, the worms were preparing the soil.
After a particularly unnerving day, warming and loosing a big bastard into the soil, Rudy returned back to base and a chilled bottle of Igor’s best. His friend’s day was equally rough, loading the day’s mature specimens into giant, reinforced tubes, two of which had bulged dangerously under the strain.
By the time the bottle was half empty, the saloon was getting loud. Two lab techs had joined them, ladies that liked rough men and strong drink, and Igor was glad he had another bottle cooling in his stash locker behind the bar. The dusky redhead leaned in and lightly caressed his ear with her tongue.
“I heard something today, Iggy… something you will be interested in.” Her accent spoke of her Columbian heritage.
Overhearing, Rudy slurred the question that Igor was just starting to form.
“Does it have to do with the Big Puddle?” He grinned. He knew these techs worked in the Ichthy lab. They always smelled of fish.
The smaller of two oceans that had formed was already seeded with small fry, nothing bigger than blue whales. They were all mutationally aberrant and were only being used to spread organic matter and bacteria so later aquatics could be planted. Sooner or later they would have to be controlled, as in terminated, and most thought some kind of poison would be used.
The other woman, a lanky brunette with no eyebrows and a line of intentional skin tags hanging from one cheek, giggled and nudged her friend as they anticipated the reaction their news would have. She spoke.
“Yes, indeedy do, the Big Puddle… indeedy do.” She winked, and neither man knew if it was intentional or merely a tic. She giggled again, and it spread into a belly laugh as both women fed off each other’s mirth.
The redhead finally calmed enough to extort, “Get one ready, Iggy… one of your worms will have something to do besides eat dirt.” She smiled. “The brass decided anything that’ll kill the mutants will be too toxic for earth species, and they don’t want to harm the stuff already planted. They’re worried about the coral and stuff.”
“Yeah, and what they want is a big fish eater.” The brunette leaned in conspiratorially. “Something that can kill the ones they don’t want and digest them, then die off from engineered genetic exhaustion. They’ve had one in the locker down on Earth, bein’ stored after it wuz developed. It’s big, and it’s hungry, and it’ll kill anything it can see in the Puddle… and eat it.”
Igor and Rudy locked eyes and grinned, turning their thoughts to bait.
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www.readmota.com
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