Spineworms

Disclaimer: the following story is a purely fictional account. Any relationship to any real person living or dead is coincidental. The narrative contains male restraint and pain with sexual themes. It is intended for mature readers who wish to view such material, and for whom it is legal to do so. The author in no way condones or promotes such acts in real life.

The author is grateful to slavebladeboi, a reader and friend who agreed to review this story before publication, for the valuable help and insight he provided.

Copyright © 2022 by POW. For spam prevention, an animal name has been added to the author’s e-mail address. Remove the animal name to get the actual address: POWauthor zebra at yahoo dot com. This story may be freely copied and distributed so long as it is copied in its entirety, unchanged, including the author credit information and disclaimer. Other POW stories are available at https://powauthor.wordpress.com. The author welcomes feedback.

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The door to the Last Gasp Saloon swung open, ushering in a small cloud of gno-see-ums and a very lost-looking young man of perhaps twenty-four standard years.

Gno-see-ums, when viewed up close, are among the most exquisitely magnificent of creatures, possessing iridescent bodies that fluoresce brilliant shades of purple, green and blue, and lacy wings whose diaphanous membranes are so delicately thin as to be for all practical purposes invisible with only the occasional gleam of reflected sunlight to reveal their existence. Like snowflakes, each one’s pattern is unique, and so each is an irreproducible gem, a minuscule marvel blending biology and art.

These gno-see-ums were not being viewed up close. They were instead flying in diligent circles, obeying their evolutionary imperative to find and orbit the heads of larger creatures and to make occasional forays toward those creatures’ eyes and ears. This trait did not endear them to the customers of the Last Gasp Saloon, and so that establishment had installed an electronic screen just inside the door that registered the presence of each gno-see-um’s gorgeous, opalescent, one-of-a-kind body and incinerated it.

As for the young man, he passed through the bug screen without noticing it or the brief shower of sparks or the tiny puffs of ash. He stood blinking in the dimness while his eyes made the adjustment from the midday brightness outside.

The old man watched from his position at his usual table in the corner by the broken music machine, the one that hadn’t produced a sound since Rally Mastersen, bless his soul, had taken a shot at that oily con artist who’d come in on the Stella Flare, narrowly missing the con man but putting a neat hole right through the only part of the machine that couldn’t be repaired or replaced with parts available at Touchdown or indeed anywhere on Tranakee. Some said the con man was just a pretext and that the jukebox had been Rally’s real target all along. Sandy, owner of the Last Gasp, replied whenever the question was asked that the part was “on order” and had been saying so for the last eighteen years.

The old man liked having the inert bulk of the machine next to him while he nursed his “beer”. It was comforting to know that this particular neighbor was unlikely to take offense to his odor or his opinions and was even less likely to take a shot at him, neither the old-fashioned kind with a swinging fist nor the Rally Mastersen-style kind with a fast-flying projectile. And the seat provided a nice view, not just of the inside of the bar but also (through a grimy window) of the exterior, a panorama ranging from the road west toward town on the left, straight ahead to the spaceport itself where the shuttlecraft came and went in bright, busy arcs, to the teeming morass of the jungle east of the port, off to the right. It was through this window that he had watched the young man making his way from the port, drifting away from the two dozen or so other people he had shared the shuttle with as they queued up to catch the bus to town while he veered off to the saloon.

A possible candidate.

The young man took soft, tentative steps to the bar and climbed up onto one of the high stools. Amaryllis, on duty this slow afternoon, took her time getting to him but eventually made her way over. The old man watched while the young one paid the tourist price for something that he would soon discover was called “beer” but which, aside from the presence of ethanol, had little in common with other beverages by that name.

The old man waited until the young man had taken his first sip of his “beer” and then ambled over. Over the years, he’d developed a pretty good eye for travelers who could be persuaded to trade drinks for stories. This one was worth a try. “Terrible stuff, ain’t it?” he said, not quite stifling a snicker at the expression on the young man’s face so that it came out as almost a cackle.

The young man glanced over at the bartender, perhaps not wanting to voice his honest opinion of her wares in her presence, but Amaryllis was off at the far end of the bar making desultory swipes with a rag at imaginary stains, and the rumble of the air conditioner was sufficiently loud that he evidently decided to chance it. “They actually call this beer?” he asked, turning back to the old man.

“Heh,” the old man replied, taking a long pull from his own. “It grows on yeh.” He watched the young man take a second tentative sip, no larger than the first, then try to muster the nerve to swallow it down. After he managed it, he yawned largely, sucking in a huge breath of air.

“Fresh arrived, ‘less I miss my mark,” the old man observed.

“What?” the young man asked, suddenly on edge. Nothing makes a foreigner who’s trying to blend in feel jumpy like the realization that his disguise wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Yer yawn,” the old man explained. “Yeh’ve prob’ly been breathin’ Tranakee air for, what, ten, fifteen minutes now, ever since yer shuttle landed and they popped the door open. Takes some gettin’ used to, the air around here. It’s got somethin’ like ten times the amount of see-oh-two as Earth. Four thousand parts per million ‘steada four hundred. Won’t hurt yeh none, but like I said, takes some gettin’ used to. Makes yeh feel like you been holdin’ yer breath a while, like yeh jest forgot to breathe fer a bit too long and now yeh gotta catch up. Yeh get used to it eventually. Takes about a year. A local year, I mean.”

He paused to take another gulp of his drink. “That’s how this fine establishment here got its name, y’know. Touchdown is the only spaceport on the planet, so all the folks who’re leavin’ pass through on their way out. And a lot of ’em stop in here to wet their whistles before they head up to where the air ain’t quite so loaded with what we’re all tryin’ to breathe out. So this is their last gasp, eh?”

“Huh,” the young man said. He lifted his glass once more, more out of reflex than conscious decision, then thought better of it and set it down again. The old man hoisted his own and drained it in one long pull, setting it down on the bar when he had finished and making a satisfied smacking sound with his lips.

“Yessirree,” he said. “T’ain’t nothin’ like earth beer, but it does grow on a fella. It’s the hops, y’know.”

The young man’s attention, which had started to drift, was pulled back to the old man. “Why’s that?” the inevitable question came. Set the hook and tug, but not too hard.

“Can’t grow ’em right round here. Somethin’ in the soil don’t take to ’em too well and they just blacken up and die afore they even get started growin’.”

“Something in the soil… well surely there’s got to be something they can do? Some kind of fertilizer, maybe, or a fungicide?”

“Woo-ie, look who knows so much! You must be one o’ them ag-ro-no-my specialists! You need to get you on down to town, look up the folks at city hall, let ’em know you got the answers they been lookin’ for!”

The young man blushed, though it was barely noticeable in the dim light of the bar. Time to ease back, let him have his head. “Aw, I’m just messin’ with yeh. Truth is, plenty o’ real smart folks been tryin’ to solve it for years, and it ain’t just the hops. Most fruit trees don’t grow so good neither. The wheat and corn do just fine, but every now and then a man wants to sink his teeth into a crisp, juicy apple, am I right? So they’re workin’ on it. Sure is takin’ ’em a good long while, though. Meantime, we got to make do with a brew that nobody but a few o’ the locals wants to drink, and why would they? Tastes like wallpaper paste, am I right?”

The young man chuckled, starting to relax into the patter.

“Terrible shame, though. So much perfectly good beer goin’ to waste when it could be appreciated in the right hands.”

He gave the young man’s glass a long, lingering look. The young man got the message.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish this, so if you want…?” he offered.

The old man recoiled, all jovial good cheer. “What? No! I couldn’t never take a drink out of another man’s own hands! But if yer of a mind to offer, I sure wouldn’t mind one of my own to match the fine one you’ve got. Maybe I can offer yeh some more local wisdom, straight from a genuine local who’s seen it all, in exchange for your kind generosity.”

And so, without quite remembering ever making the offer, the young man got the barkeep’s attention and soon a fresh glass of watery wallpaper paste was keeping the first one company and the empty had been whisked away.

“So… what else does a new arrival need to know?” The young man dared one more sip of the insipid stuff, forced it down, and resolved that that was the last attempt he would make. Sure, the taste might grow on him… some day. Today was not that day.

The old man leaned back against the stool’s backrest. “Well, now, I’m sure yeh’ve heard already, Tranakee’s got a bit of a reputation, yeh might say. Seems like every blasted plant, animal, an’ in-between thing is out to get us poor human folk. Oh, but we’ve figured out how to give as good as we get, least in the civilized parts. Yeh’ll be fine in Touchdown, or in Minerton or Boone’s Bay or Newport… any o’ the big population centers. They got all the nasties either tamed or scared to come too near. But out in the wilds… aye, that’s where yeh gotta be constantly on yer guard. Constantly!” This last was a shout accompanied by a palm slammed down onto the bar that startled the young man and sent him scootching backward on his stool.

“Ah, there he goes again.” The voice came from over the young man’s shoulder, startling him once more and sending him scootching back the other direction. But it was only Amaryllis. “Tranakee’s not nearly as bad as all that. Feel free to listen to this old coot’s ramblings all you want. But word of advice? Treat it as entertainment, not a travel guide.”

The old man scowled at her. “Aye, go ahead and scoff, lassie. Sure, there’s much less hazard abroad these days, but that weren’t always the case! Why, it ain’t been but five years since Hank Rivers found himself on the wrong side of a pack of riled-up armagators.”

“Hank Rivers walked right into that nest all on his own two feet with the express intention of riling them up,” Amaryllis countered. “As you know perfectly well.”

“Well, sure, he wanted to see if he could get his hands on some young ones, see if it might be possible to tame ’em up if you start early enough. But the gators, well, they didn’t take too well to that notion.” The old man raised his glass in a salute, then drained half of it. “To Hank, best damn gator-wrangler this world will ever see,” he intoned. Amaryllis rolled her eyes and disappeared off to the far end of the bar once more.

“OK,” the young man said. “So avoid the gators. That’s probably easy enough, right?”

“Aye, the gators like it dry, so yeh’ll find them up north in the deserts. But here’s the thing, lad: we call them ‘armagators’ because they look like what yeh’d get if yeh crossed an alligator with an armadillo. But the gators ain’t the only critters round here what’s armored. Everythin’ here’s got armor! Carnivores, omnivores, herbivores… hell, even the plants got protection. Yeh just try makin’ yer way through a field o’ swordgrass, see if them silicon-edged blades don’t slice yer knickers to ribbons.”

The old man took another long pull of his beer, which was by now nearly empty.

“Ah, but it’s the critters yeh’ll be wantin’ to hear about. Tell me, laddie, on your way here, did they tell yeh why this planet got its nickname?”

“The, uh, Armpit Of Orion, you mean?”

“Nay, not that one. The other one.”

The young man cast a quick, furtive glance down toward the far end of the bar. Looking back, he said, very softly, “the, uh… the Rape Planet”?

“Aye. That’s the one.” And from the way the young man’s eyes widened with hungry interest, the old man knew that his instincts had been correct. He knew exactly what story to tell to keep the stream of “beer” flowing his way for the rest of the day.

“Tell yeh what, yeh make sure me mouthparts don’t get all dried out, an’ I’ll tell yeh more’n yeh could ever think to ask about how that name came to be.”

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The first thing you need to know is how the climate works here. Very much like Earth, but cooler. Touchdown here is right on the equator, and instead of temperatures between 25 and 30, it’s a pretty steady 20 to 25. Rain pretty steady throughout the year, so the land is all lush jungle. Then north and south we’ve got grasslands, then deserts, then the temperate lands, then the tundra, and then the ice caps, just like Earth, only it’s all squeezed down narrower-like. The ice caps run down to about fifty degrees latitude so they take up damn near half the planet, and everything else has to fit in the space that’s left.

We’ve got long days and short years. Twenty-eight and a half standard hours to a day, eighty-eight days – our days – to a year. Mencazar, that’s our star, she’s quite a bit smaller and dimmer than old Sol, so Tranakee has to be right up close to stay warm. A year goes by pretty fast, about three and a half standard months. That accounts for the high CO₂ levels, too. A nice blanket to keep the chill away so those ice caps don’t decide to meet up in the middle and crowd everything else right out.

Now, the critters… there’s one thing that everything bigger than your finger here has in common, and that’s armor. If evolution ever invented soft-skinned beasties like you and me on this world, they got eaten up right quick by the steel-plated bullies that were already here. All kinds of armor – flat plates, spikes, ridges, scales, sandpaper grit. You might be imagining dinosaurs and you wouldn’t be far off, except these fellas are warm-blooded, some of them. There are reptile-like beasties and mammal-like beasties and even a few that sort of look like birds, though they don’t fly and they wear armor like everything else, just a little bit lighter weight.

I mentioned the armagators before… they’re the biggest predator around. They live in the deserts and the grasslands and they hunt in packs. Don’t let the name fool you into thinking they’re like Earth gators. These guys are more like armored lions, all bony ridges and sharp edges. And they’re fast, you wouldn’t believe how fast they can run when they put their minds to it. Turn one of them loose near a zebra on Earth and it wouldn’t even have to bite its prey to take it down, all it would have to do is run alongside for a while and let all the pointy bits rip the zebra’s hide right off. No, you don’t want to be messing with gators.

But here’s the thing, ALL the critters here have that same level of protection. Take the quillies, for instance. They fill the niche that rabbits fit into on Earth, little tiny grass-eaters, cute as all-get-out, and they breed fast because so many of them get eaten by bigger things. Except if you startle one of these cute little buggers, suddenly it puffs up like a porcupine, looks like it grew to twice its size and all sharp pointy ends no matter which way you come at it. Now, the local hunters have ways to handle that, but us soft-handed humans can’t get near them. And that’s how it is with all the local animals: they have shells like turtles, overlapping plates like fish scales, rough spikes like something out of the Cretaceous, spines… if you can imagine it, there’s something here wearing it.

‘Scuse me while I take a moment to fill up. All this talk dries a mouth out fast.

Now… here’s where the nickname comes from. Near as we can tell, there’s no such thing as male nor female here on Tranakee. Every single creature big enough to see is a bit of both. How’s that work? you might wonder. Do they just pop out clones of themselves when the mood strikes them? And the answer to that is no, they do the whole egg-meets-sperm dance that life everywhere else we’ve visited does. They just don’t separate the roles the way we do.

Every creature here has male parts and female parts. The science guys are still learning all the details, but they’ve found all sorts. There’s some beasts that like to self-pollinate, others that like to mix things up, and the great bulk of the rest that fall somewhere in between. Evolution seems to like its balancing acts – you want the ability to keep going with a set of genes that’s working well, but you also want to be able to stir the pot when troubled times come.

So for those that like to mix it up, how do they do it? Well, that’s where it gets interesting, because not a one of the beasties we’ve seen has what you might call external lady parts. They’ve got the egg-making pieces, but there’s no opening to let those eggs, or the tiny critters that grow from the eggs, out into the world.

Aw, just think on it a bit. It’ll come to you.

Ah, there it is, I can see it on your face. Yup, the wee ones make their own way out. Usually with their teeth or their claws or whatever other sharp parts nature saw fit to grace them with. A lot of the time, the parent survives. With the gators it’s about one in four that dies in childbirth. The others survive and heal up and go on to be mother – or father – to more kids later on.

And now I see the wheels turning in your head again. If there’s no way out, then there’s no way in either. Stands to reason, eh? So what’s a wanna-be father to do? Uh huh. He makes his own way in.

“Traumatic insemination”, it’s called. Not unheard of back on the old mother world. Bedbugs do it, I hear. Seems like nature keeps stumbling on the same solutions to problems even light years apart. The horny bloke sees something he likes, something that gets his appetite up, and he makes his way over and he takes it.

His prong comes out from its protective sheath, and it is a sight to behold. Nothing at all like its earthly equivalent. This thing is razor-tipped with bone-reinforced edges, a tool built for piercing through the armor of loverboy’s intended bride. Because it’s made of bone or shell or whatever its owner’s armor is made of, it’s only got one size. It’s not a changeable thing like yours and mine. And it’s only got one purpose: it’s a weapon. He pins his chosen target down, lines himself up at a soft-looking spot between two plates or at a gap between spikes, and thrusts it home.

It seldom takes long, rarely more than a minute. Sex on this planet is rough and fast – it’s too dangerous to take your time! Because the recipient of that prong’s attentions won’t be wanting to hang around and have a cuddle afterward. No, he’s got a prong of his own and if he could, he’d turn the tables and leave his own load inside his attacker. Usually he can’t because he’s thoroughly pinned and subdued, although every once in a while it happens.

Once the squirting is done, loverboy pulls out, lets go, and gets the hell away before his bride can tear his throat out. Meanwhile, those little sperms travel through the lymph system of the mother-to-be and try to work their way to the ovaries. Sometimes nothing comes of it, other times one or two or half a dozen new critters start slowly growing inside, taking their sustenance from the mother’s blood. Then, sooner or later, the time comes for them to get out and start making their own way in the world, and so they do. And the mother either dies from the trauma of the path they carve, or else survives and goes on to heal up. Maybe it happens again, sometimes more than once. And if the poor fellow lives long enough and grows big enough, maybe he gets to father some children himself later on.

That’s where the nickname comes from. Every act of reproduction on this world is an act of force, or at least it was until we got here.

Now that’s how the gators do it, and they’re the ones been studied the most. Naturally, other kinds of animals do it different in the details, but it all follows the same basic pattern. Sometimes it’s one-on-one like the gators, sometimes it’s a gang-bang free-for all with multiple critters each trying to do the poking while not getting poked himself. You see that more in the temperate lands where there’s seasons. I tell you, you’ll never see nothing like a herd of ganucks – that’s the armagators’ main prey – when rutting time comes around. Thousands of them! They look sort of like fattened-up horses, short and stocky and with skin like smooth stone in overlapping plates. And when the rut comes upon them, they huddle up in twos and threes and tens and twenties and the prongs are all out and straining to find a crack in some other beast’s shell to poke their way through. Lasts three or four days and then the ganucks go back to their normal placid lives, running from the gators and grinding up the swordgrass with their indestructible teeth.

With the gators, it’s mostly the big ones that do the poking and the littler ones that get poked. Then the next generation’s on its way and some of the pregnant ones won’t survive the birth, but the ones that live go on to grow bigger and stronger and eventually they’re the ones doing the fathering. And for the ganucks it’s just a wild mess, and the same one that’s fathering children on someone else might be getting in a motherly way himself at the very same time. None of this fuss about mating rituals and courtship dances and trying to win your intended’s heart. Not here. Here if you see something you like, you take it, either alone or in a group.

What you’ll find, especially among the carnivores but elsewhere as well, is a lot more cross-species sex than you find on Earth. If you’re a hungry, horny beastie and you see something that might satisfy two appetites at once, well, why not? Once you’ve got your prey subdued, give it a poke first, then chow down. It won’t do a thing for passing your genes on, but it sure does feel good to scratch that itch before settling in for a tasty meal.

Good thing you’ve got a strong stomach, laddie. Some folks, they get up and head for the washrooms when they hear that bit. But not you, I see. A strong constitution. Then you’ll probably not object to me telling you about the spineworms. Of course, I’ll be needing a refill if I’m to have the stamina to make it through that tale.

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Ah, thank you kindly. Now, the spineworms…

Spineworms are mostly vegetarians, you see, but don’t think that makes them harmless. Of course, one look at them tells you that much. They look like a cross between a giant centipede and an armored snake. About a zillion legs that all end in sharp pincers and these massive jaws that can crunch through bone. They grow to be a meter, even a meter and a half long. You’ll find them all over the planet, here in the jungles and up in the grasslands, anywhere the temperature doesn’t dip below freezing.

I said before that we’ve managed to drive all the nasties away from human places, didn’t I? And so we have, but the spineworms, well, we haven’t found a way to ward them off. They tend not to come into the towns because we only have Earth plants growing here and they don’t like the taste. But they’re here, all right. Just past the perimeter, where the grass gives way to the jungle, you’ll find them. Don’t even have to go far, just a few meters in and they’ll be there, thought you might not see them at first. They’re surprising hard to spot for something so big. They manage to blend in to tree branches or ground cover and you can be right on top of one and never know it until suddenly the ground starts to move. Mostly they won’t bother you. They just want to live their vegetarian little lives, and they’re more scared of you than you are of them. That is, unless it’s time for making babies.

Now the noteworthy thing about spineworms is, out of all the species on this planet, the members of this one have decided they want nothing to do with all the troubles and travails of motherhood.

So how do they do it? Well, they take a tip from the orchid’s playbook. You know how most plants have big, fat seeds? Acorns, sunflowers, wheat, corn, coconuts, the whole lot? The plant knows that its kids will get a better shot at life if the parent provides them with a starter pack of nutrients to draw on while they’re first starting out. It’s the way of plants… most plants… for the parent to sacrifice. Not orchids, though. Orchid seeds are teeeeeny tiny and contain nothing at all to help them get going, just a set of DNA and a good-luck wish from dear old mom and dad. Millions of seeds get sent out on the breeze and only a tiny handful get lucky enough to land on something that they can steal nutrients from. The rest die before they even get started.

The spineworms do it much the same way. See, with most of your higher-order critters, whether on Earth or Tranakee or wherever, sperms are tiny and get produced by the millions, while eggs are larger and much more precious. The eggs have got that built-in starter pack like the plant seeds so the new life gets a head start when it’s first growing. The spineworms don’t do that – their eggs are tiny like a sperm or an orchid seed, with nothing at all for the young one to draw on.

So the act starts out much like it does for any other beastie – one spineworm takes a shine to another, gets it into a compromised position and does the deed. A few days later, the sperms have found the eggs, and here’s where the story takes a turn. Momma spineworm wants no part of the brood he’s got growing inside him, so it’s time to offload the duty on to somebody else. Now, those fertilized eggs have got exactly nothing going for them. What they need to do is find their way to some other critter’s egg so they can take advantage of all that yummy deliciousness that some other parent provided for its own young’uns, but how to get there?

You might think that the logical answer would be to repeat the rape trick. Do a quick poke into some hapless larger beast. Only that doesn’t work. Turns out the egg-making parts tend to be deep inside a beastie’s body where they’re hard to get to directly. And injecting elsewhere just triggers an immune response from the victim and all those helpless spineworm eggs don’t stand a chance. So here’s what the clever worms do instead.

They can’t get their own eggs to the host’s eggs directly, but something already exists that is designed to be injected anywhere into a victim and make its way to the eggs while evading the victim’s immune system on the way. That custom-tailored delivery device is sperm from the same type of critter. So the spineworm injects its eggs into the local equivalent of a prostate gland where each spineworm egg attaches itself to a sperm. The sperm then get poked into a likely candidate, the spineworm’s eggs hitch a ride, and when they get there: mother lode. The baby spineworms start growing fast once they reach that treasure trove and out-compete the critter’s own kids. Then, when they’ve grown big enough, they use those jaws to tunnel their way out, find themselves a nice patch of moss to eat, and spend the next few years growing up until it’s time to repeat the cycle. Because they’re so much smaller than the host critters, they usually don’t even do much damage on the way out, not near as much as the host’s own kids would. Downright polite, eh?

There’s a bit more to it, of course. How do you get the fertilized eggs into somebody else’s prostate gland? It’s not like beasties are out there baring their prostates and saying “here y’go, have at it!” But unlike ovaries, those glands are reachable. All it takes is a bit of probing through one of the few non-armored openings the local beasties have. The trick is to keep the owner calm while you’re getting to it.

They like to take their victims at night. Any one of a number of likely candidates will do, they’re very flexible in their choice of host. Really all they care about is finding something large enough to make nice, fat eggs for a few dozen baby spineworms to feast on. Around here the conehorns do nicely, as do the spikesloths and the hurpets and the glizzards. But the worms’ll gladly take on a ganuck or an armagator if the opportunity presents itself.

So… dead of night. The victim is lying still, maybe sleeping. The spineworm creeps up, soundless as you please, and finds its way to the back of the target’s neck. Most critters have a gap in the plates or a space between the quills or some weak spot there because the head needs to be able to move around. The spineworm seeks out that spot, lines up, and then BAM! Those jaws open wide, two finger-sized mandibles flaring out sideways, and then they plunge into the neck on either side of the spinal column. That usually wakes the victim up right quick and he’s none too happy about getting the nape of his neck bit, so he’s apt to flail around and try to shake his attacker off. Only he can’t.

See, the spineworm injects a toxin the moment he strikes and this toxin shuts down all nerve signals passing through the upper spine. It starts to take effect immediately, throws the victim’s coordination off, then takes about ten, twenty seconds for the full effect to kick in, but when it does, total paralysis. The target’s voluntary muscles have all been shut down. Breathing, heartbeat, digestion, all that continues on just fine, but the legs can’t move, the body can’t roll over. He’s stuck. He’s got this meter-long snake attached to his back and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

Once the victim is nice and quiet, the spineworm’s other end gets to work. The worm gets its body all lined up right down the victim’s backbone. Digs its little legs in through the shells or the plates or what have you. That’s how they got their name, case it wasn’t screaming obvious by now already. That puts the tail end of the worm at just about the right place on a good-sized victim. The tail starts probing around, seeking out the opening that can’t be armor-covered without getting in the way of it doing its job. Once it finds the hole, in goes the tail, and it’s not some small, dainty thing. A spineworm is about as big around as a man’s wrist, and it tapers a wee bit at the tail end, but not a whole lot. You can bet the victim is none too pleased with this turn of events, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s stuck, frozen in place. He knows what’s going on down there ’cause he can feel it happening, but he can’t do a blamed thing about it.

So in it goes and it probes around a bit until it finds the prostate, at which point this little needle tip emerges and starts injecting those teeny tiny fertilized eggs. It’s a slow process, takes a good couple of hours because the spineworm wants to distribute them all around as much as it can. So it’s poke, squirt, wait, poke, squirt, wait. And all the while the larger creature is lying there feeling himself get manipulated in this most personal and private of places.

After that’s done, the tail comes out and then it’s more waiting. The worm needs to give its eggs time to attach themselves to suitable sperms, see. All the while he holds his captive still, trickling that toxin in steady-like, drip by drip. He keeps those massive jaws clamped squarely around that spine, and if any predator or other threat comes by during that time, thinking he just found himself a ready meal or an easy lay, well, that spineworm just rears up its tail and makes sure he’s nice and visible and that’s usually all it takes. The predator, or the would-be suitor, knows all too well that the spineworm would gladly take the chance to have itself a second host. After all, it’s already done its business with the first – it could drop off now and its little ones would find themselves implanted sooner or later. So the visitor usually gets the hint and hits the road in a hurry.

But “sooner or later” isn’t enough for the spineworm. He wants to make sure that delivery gets made right quick, soon as those eggs have latched themselves on to a likely-looking sperm. Once the spineworm figures its been long enough, he starts easing off on the paralysis potion and at the same time he starts ramping up on a different cocktail of chemicals. This is a heady brew indeed, and I’ll bet you can guess what’s in it. Remember, the worm’s goal is not just to get his young into the host’s sperm, but also to get that sperm into the next host so they can find their way to the eggs.

So it’s testosterone he delivers, or the local equivalent which is similar enough to the human kind as makes no difference. The big T and a dozen other chemicals that make the poor bloke feel hornier than he’s ever felt in his life. He’s felt the urge before, but nothing like this. This is an all-consuming desire that totally overpowers any other thoughts he might think. By the time the paralysis wears off, he’s forgotten all about the jaws clamped onto his neck and he’s off in hot pursuit of the first likely target he can find. Then it’s wham, bam, slam, a lightning-fast session even by Tranakee standards. The worm drops off while the deed’s being done and vanishes into the undergrowth leaving the poor bloke he’s made use of to slowly shake off the effects of the various drugs he’s been hyped up on.

Now why do I tell you this tale, eh? Well, I mentioned that spineworms ain’t too picky in their choice of host, didn’t I?

Well, it turns out that spineworms have been known to take humans.

Ah, yes. That sends a shiver down the back of the neck, don’t it?

Imagine it: you’re lying in your tent, not because it’s cold but because you want to keep the rain off, and also because you don’t want any night-prowling nasties to come make a snack of you while you’re sleeping. You’ve zipped your tent up tight to keep out even the tiniest of them. But that makes no difference to the spineworm. He’s figured out you’re in there and his jaws make short work of that wispy fabric. Quick as you please he’s cut himself a hole through and let himself in. Slow and silent, he creeps up to you, sleeping all innocent and unawares. He lines himself up, takes aim, and then: BAM!

Those jaws are built for cutting through much tougher than papery human skin. They pass through like butter and seize on to the spine. You wake up right fast and start whacking at it to try to get it off, but it’s already too late. You might get in a good blow or two, but you don’t stand a chance of dislodging those massive mandibles. It’d take more than a crowbar to pry them apart now. Meanwhile, the toxin’s starting to flow and soon enough your muscles start to feel draggy and slow. At that point your best bet is to try to arrange yourself in something like a comfortable position, because you’re going to be in it for a good long while.

You might also think about getting your pants down if you’ve still got them on. Not only are you about to lose control of your muscles down there, including your bladder, but that spineworm’s got a job to do and if he has to shred some more fabric to do it, that’s not going to slow him down one bit. If you want to be able to wear your trousers again once he lets you go, you probably want to save them now. Better yet, don’t sleep with them on in the first place.

Once he’s got you nice and quiet, that’s when the probing starts. Considering this planet’s nickname, he’s surprisingly polite and gentle about it. Most of the spineworm’s body is covered in rough, jagged armor, raspy like sandpaper up close and all sharp jagged edges from a distance. But the tail? That part’s smooth as silk, hard scales but no pointy bits to catch tender skin on. He even goes so far as to exude some slime around the end of his tail to ease his way in. A right gentleman, he is. But a determined one. Nothing’s going to stop him from his appointed task. So in it goes, whether you like it or not, and you can feel every bit of him as he stretches that opening out to make room.

Then he starts poking tiny holes, depositing those eggs. That you don’t feel so much. The nerves down there aren’t fine enough to pick up the feel of that tiny needle. That’s probably a good thing. What most men feel is just a probing, squeezing pressure. And some of them respond in a way that’s only natural. Can’t really blame them, it’s not like they have any control over themselves at this point. They can’t help it if they start sporting wood.

So this goes on for three, four hours, and then it’s time to wait. You have no idea how slow the time can crawl when you’re lying there in total blackness, helpless, knowing there’s this fearsome beast fastened on to your neck but unable to do anything about it, not even able to move anything below your neck. You can blink and you can swallow and you can breathe, but that’s about the limit of it.

Oh, and speaking of breathing, it’s particularly nasty for a newcomer like yourself who’s not used to our air. That yawning you’ve been doing and those deep breaths you’ve been taking? There’ll be none of those while the spineworm’s got you in his grip. He wants you calm, remember? He lets you breathe, but only normal breaths, none of these great gulping heaves. So you’ll lie there constantly feeling like you’re about to suffocate. You can never get rid of enough CO₂ to feel right. But it won’t kill you. It’ll just make you feel like you’re about to die every second that you’re lying there. Every. Single. Second. I tell you, time doesn’t pass slower anywhere in the universe than it does for a man in the grip of a spineworm. Especially a newbie.

The sun comes up, the jungle comes to life around the outside of your tent, but inside nothing changes. You’re still lying there just as he took you, and he keeps a firm grip on the back of your neck to make sure you don’t start messing around. So the sun crawls slowly across the sky until at last it sets again and you’re still stuck there, frozen stiff like a statue. And remember our days are more than four hours longer than standard days, so if your inner clock is still keeping Earth time, well, you’re screwed even worse. You know at this point you’ve got another too-long night and another too-long day to endure before he’s ready to let you up. Oh, and you can feel every single one of those hundreds of legs as they adjust themselves all up and down your spine. Right creepy, that sensation is.

But that’s not the worst of it. Not by a long shot. See, the thing about that brew of chemicals he injects… they’re designed for Tranakee beasties. They happen to work sort of similar on earthly life, but not exactly the same.

For one thing, the paralysis potion doesn’t wear off nearly as fast in humans as it does in a conehorn or a glizzard. They can metabolize it away faster than we can. So when the sun finally starts getting ready to go down at the end of that second day, when he starts easing back on that while he ramps up the other chemicals, you’re not going to be standing up any time soon. No, you’re going to be lying there not moving for a good while yet. Nothing you can do about it.

Meanwhile, that testosterone is hitting your system and suddenly you’ve got something to think about besides the worm on your back and the stale air in your lungs. Not that you actually forget about either of those, it’s just that your body starts feeling frisky in a way that is powerful frustrating because there’s still nothing you can do about it. But there’s more.

All the rest of the chemicals that he’s started injecting into your system, those are fitted for Tranakee life too, and some, maybe even all of them don’t work the same as they’re intended to. Remember, that cocktail is supposed to make the target feel aggressive because sex around here is all about taking, not persuading. So the worm amps up the target’s feistiness, turns him into an ornery, rampaging bull. Humans feel some of that effect. We get rammy, start wanting to get up and run around or fight or punch something, but the mix also affects the nerves. In a big way.

Different people have described different sensations. One poor fellow said it was like his arms and legs had been set on fire. Another said similar, but the heat was inside, like his veins were flowing with molten silver. Another said it was like a million bees stinging him all at once. Another said it was like an electric shock that never turned off, making his muscles tense and cramp and exhaust themselves. For some the pain is constant, for others it comes in waves, throbbing so intense the poor fellow thinks he’ll die from the agony, then fading away, only to come back again even stronger five minutes later. Seems everyone reacts a bit different to that cocktail, but they all agree it’s the worst pain they’ve ever felt.

But one thing’s the same: the spineworm’s wondering why its target isn’t getting up and doing something about it. They’re none too bright, spineworms. Evolution gave them some brilliantly effective programming to follow, but when the program doesn’t work quite right, they don’t know how to adapt. They can’t improvise. They just double down and dump more of that caustic brew in, and the poor trapped fellow’s suffering just gets worse.

So that’s the third night for you: you’re consumed with the urge to move but you can’t. You’re stuck in a body that can’t move, fiery pain all over, still suffocating from the bad air, and on top of it all you’re so horny you can’t think straight and your prong is filled up tighter than an overstuffed sausage. You haven’t slept right for two days, no way to get more than a fitful nap with that beast in charge. And there’s no chance at all of sleeping it off now because he’s playing the strings of your nerves like a master violinist. That night just drags on and on and on until you’re half-crazed from the pain, half-crazed from the immobility, and half-crazed from sheer horniness.

When the sun comes up on the third day, that’s when the spineworm’s backup program kicks in. This is the spineworm’s way of dealing with obstinate beasties that don’t get the message that they’re supposed to go out and hunt down a mate. While you’re lying there in agony, your back door gets invaded once more. The spineworm’s tail starts tickling at your prostate again, and if the constant flaming agony had somehow caused your woody to soften up, that attention’ll get it good and solid again.

He’s slow about it. Takes his time. He starts tickling and probing again. He figures if you haven’t gotten up to find a place to squirt your juice, maybe he needs to help you along. So he tickles and probes, tickles and probes, and you’re just going crazier and crazier from the need to unload. Right around now your arms and legs start to tingle and twitch as your body finally starts breaking down the paralysis potion, but you’re still a long way from having any control over them. If you had any ideas of, say, helping things along with your own five fingers, there’s not a chance of that happening. You won’t have enough coordination for that kind of detail work for a good many hours yet.

So he’s going to work on you, but like I said, he’s slow. It takes him a couple of hours to get you all built up. I mean, you’ve been ready for it, despite the fiery pain, for hours and hours already, but without any way to let loose. Now he’s building you up from the inside and you can tell you’re finally going to be able to squirt some of the tension out. Eventually. Because it takes him for. ev. er to get you to that point. No matter how much you try to help him along by sheer willpower, you’re limited in how much you can accomplish.

Now, I don’t know and it ain’t none of my business whether you’re quick on the draw, under normal circumstances I mean, or a fellow who likes to take his time, but even if you’re the slowpokiest slowpoke ever created, the end game is still the same, right? Ten, fifteen seconds of AW YEAH and then done. Maybe twenty seconds at the outside.

Not this time. This time won’t be like anything you’ve ever felt before. This time when you reach that peak, you’ll find it’s one long, drawn-out squirting pulse and then… you wait. Still balanced on that knife edge. Waiting for that second pulse. Waiting. Maybe five minutes in, it comes, and the second squirt takes its sweet time like the first one did but when it’s done you still don’t feel that sense of relief. So you wait some more, still teetering on that edge and maybe six or eight minutes after that the next surge comes. And still the worm keeps going. He’s going to keep on riding you until HE believes it’s over.

So there you are, caught in mid-ecstasy for what could be two or three hours of constant bliss going eight, ten, fifteen minutes between pulses and riding the wave in between. Somehow, the flaming pain in your hands and legs becomes less important. It’s still there, it just doesn’t matter quite so much. All you can think about is that next squirt, that next crest of pleasure. It just goes on and on and on. A three-hour-long happy ending to your ordeal.

Why does it work that way when every other similar act on this world is over in a minute or less? No idea. Some screwball interaction between Tranakee biology and the earthly kind. Some scientist could probably figure it out, but they’re all pretty busy with the apple trees and the gator repellant and the hops. They haven’t had time to dig too deep into this strange quirk, especially since it’s easy enough to avoid the issue. All you have to do is wear a hard cover over your neck when you sleep out in the bush. It’s bulky and none too comfortable, but if you want to avoid spending three days frozen stiff while papa spineworm palpates your poop-chute, that’s the way to do it. They’re available in all the stores that sell outdoor goods… like Rosie’s there across the square. She keeps spineworm hoods right next to the tents and the groundcloths. Anyone who’s buying the one is gonna want the other too.

Anyway, by the time the spineworm finally senses that you’ve been drained dry, you have indeed been drained completely dry. There’s not a drop of fluid left in you. That’s when the spineworm finally decides to drop off and disappear back into the jungle. His one-track mind is finally satisfied that he’s done his duty to his species. He hasn’t, of course. Human innards are too different from coneheads or spikesloths or hurpets. Those fertilized spineworm eggs end up like the orchid seeds that land on rocks instead of soil: nothing here for you, too bad, all done. The environment’s too alien for them. There’s never been a case of a human finding himself pregnant with baby spineworms. They just don’t survive in us.

So you’ll recover just fine. By the time the worm lets go, the burning pain in your skin is receding and you’ll have regained enough control over your limbs that you can maybe stand, maybe walk, but you don’t feel like doing that. All you feel like doing is passing out cold from the ordeal you’ve just been through. You’re plain exhausted, so you catch up on all the sleep you missed the last three days. You’ll be perfectly safe – even if another spineworm comes a’hunting, he’ll pass you by. Spineworms can sense whether a potential target is empty or full, and he’ll know there’s no point in taking you on when your fuel gauge is on zero. You’ve got two or three days to recover before you’ll start to smell tasty to the spineworms again. Plenty of time to make your way back to civilized country with a hell of a tale to tell.

Because you will make it back. I’ll tell you this, not one single man who’s been taken by a spineworm has died from the experience. They’ve all gone through hell, sure, but the spineworms ain’t killed a single one.

---

“Now that’s a flat-out lie,” Amaryllis interrupted. “Just two years ago, Rosie’s cousin Kaithleen got attacked right in her own home in Mudport. The damn thing cut right through the metal screen on the window to get to her. It was a Friday night so no one expected to see her until Monday, and by the time they found her it was too late to save her.”

“Well, now, ain’t that just what I said?” the old man explained with exaggerated patience. “Not a single man who’s been taken has died of it!”

Amaryllis threw up her hands. “That’s a technicality!”

But the old man was undeterred. “‘T’aint no such thing!” he countered. “It makes all the difference in the world! Kaithleen was just unfortunate enough as to have the wrong sort of plumbing. Confuses the spineworms mightily, it does. Mostly they don’t go fer the ladies – don’t smell quite right to ’em, but remember, the beasties here don’t divvy themselves up into ladies and gents. It’s all one and the same to them. The worms don’t understand the difference, and so every once in a while one of ’em comes round a’ringin’ the wrong doorbell. And when that happens, he goes a’huntin’ for the right gland to deposit his eggs in, only ‘t’ain’t there to be found. I said it afore, they run a brilliant program when it works but they ain’t too bright about improvisin’ when things go haywire. In a case like Kaithleen’s, they just keep pokin’ an’ pokin’, pushin’ deeper and deeper, seekin’ what can’t be found, and soon enough there’s holes and cuts in places what oughtn’t have holes in ’em and then there ain’t nothin’ to be done.”

“Fine, then,” Amaryllis snorted. “How do you explain Bud Schustrin and Dave Haight, hmm? No question what their plumbing was.”

“Aw, lassie, yeh know that answer as well as I do, and yeh also know that was more’n two hundred years ago. Local years,” he added with a brief tilt of his head toward the young man, who had long since stopped contributing any words of his own to the discussion. “It weren’t the spineworms what killed them two, ’twas the attempt to get them off. That was back afore we knew that the only way to get a spineworm off a man is to wait until he’s had his way. Any meddling just leads to a bad end. Bud’s friends tried to pry the thing’s jaws loose with a crowbar – no matter how hard they pulled, they couldn’t get ’em to open up, and then when they finally eased up an’ took a breather, the spineworm was a second late in reacting. He was still concentratin’ on bitin’ down and snipped poor Bud’s spine right in two.”

Amaryllis gave up and stalked off down to the far end of the bar once more, but the old man hadn’t really been speaking to her anyway.

“And Dave was likewise the victim of good intentions gone wrong. The folks he was traveling with figured they’d try and end his ordeal sooner, afore the fiery pain started. Morning of the second day, they, uh, gave him a helping hand, yeh might say. Only the spineworm, following its program with sheer stubborn bloody-mindedness, recognized that it was too soon, that the eggs wouldn’t have had enough time to latch on, and so it started over again from the beginning. It gave Dave a brand new dose of paralysis potion on top of the maintenance drip he’d been on, and that was enough to stop his heart and his breathing.”

He lifted up his glass, gave a somber salute to the departed, and drained the dregs. “Moral of the story: don’t mess with spineworms.”

The young man sat, blinking slowly, giving every appearance of having turned into a glizzard caught in a searchlight’s glare. Silence reigned for perhaps half a minute.

“Well, if’n yeh’ll pardon me,” the old man said, gesturing at the empty glass, “I’ve got to go recycle a bit of this.” He stood up, cracked a few joints, and shuffled off to the washroom. It took him a while to get there, then to get his business done and to wash up afterward. By the time he returned, the young man had settled up his tab at the Last Gasp Saloon and had disappeared out the door with only a few fresh wisps of ash around the bug screen to mark his passing.

The old man settled himself once more at his favorite table by Rally Mastersen’s memorial music machine. He took one of the napkins from the dispenser on the table, moistened it with spit, and rubbed at the smudgiest patches of the window until the view outside was marginally clearer, disturbing a handful of gno-see-um corpses on the sill as he did. Logic implied they must be older than the bug screen, which meant they had been there for at least eight years. Time had not been kind to their once-iridescent loveliness.

His thirst quenched for the moment, the old man stared out the window for a while. He certainly could pick ’em, yes indeed. The only thing that tasted better than a “beer” was a “beer” on someone else’s nickel. It was just a matter of knowing the audience, choosing the right story for the target.

There was a time when he might have aspired to greater things. After his own first encounter out in the jungle, the thought of going into business had crossed his mind, and had crossed it again and again as the years went by. He knew exactly the sort of business he could run: a zoo of sorts. A petting zoo, you might say, specializing in one particular specimen of local fauna. He’d provide a safe, clean place for those who wanted an experience like absolutely no other, an experience that could only be had on Tranakee. All it would have taken was a little get-up-and-go, just a bit more ambition than he’d actually possessed…

Ah, well. No use crying over might-have-beens. Besides, it would have meant a lot of work and for what? To get money that he would just spend on “beer”? Far easier to leave the wildlife in the wild, skip the part about work and money, and get the “beer” directly. Exactly the life he was living now, in other words.

Ah, there he was, the young fellow. Right on schedule, not that the old man was actually keeping track of the time. Emerging from the door of Rosie’s general store across the way, carrying what appeared to be a tent and a ground cloth, but nothing else. Swiping distractedly at the gno-see-ums that unerringly zeroed in on him the moment he emerged into the moist tropical air. Yawning reflexively as his unadapted body sought to purge unwanted carbon from his system.

And heading not west toward town or north to the spaceport, but going east, chasing his shadow away from the light of the slowly sinking sun.

---

Author’s note: Parasites that alter the behavior of their hosts are fascinating creatures; see Wikipedia for a glimpse into what they’re capable of. Probably the most commonly known is toxoplasma gondii, which causes infected mice to be attracted to the smell of cat urine, thus increasing their odds of being eaten by a cat… which puts the parasite into the cat’s digestive tract, which is where the next stage of its life cycle takes place. Others cause crickets to drown themselves in ponds or alter the way spiders spin their webs or make fish flap and splash at the surface where they get eaten by birds, all for the benefit of the parasite at the expense of the host. In light of the examples of behavior-altering parasites that we know about here on Earth, the fictional version I’ve concocted in this tale, outlandish as it may seem, really isn’t all that far-fetched.

That’s on top of “traumatic insemination” as practiced by bedbugs (real) and orchids’ stingy parental gifts to their offspring (also real)… nature’s variety is an absolutely amazing thing.