Hair Peace

by Piers Anthony

  “So of course clients take the positive emotions,” Gena said. “And are soon addicted to them. Until they become useless to society, just staying forever high on emotion. And the only politically convenient way to stop it is to get rid of the Ghobots. They become the scapegoats for the base appetites of planetary citizens.”

  “That’s the way we see it,” Quiti agreed.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Flower has been with us a while,” Gena said. “Has he eaten?”

  Quiti and Idola exchanged another glance. “We never thought of that,” Quiti confessed, embarrassed. “We could have gotten him popcorn at the game.”

  “Does he eat popcorn?” Idola asked.

  “He’s a growing child,” Gena said. “He must be hungry.”

  “He must be,” Quiti agreed weakly.

  Gena addressed Flower. “What do you eat, Flower?”

  Eat?

  It turned out, with further questioning, that Ghobots did not eat solid foods. They were creatures of energy. Their cores were intense magnetic fluxes, from which they reached out magnetically to grasp not just iron filings but almost any loose substance and form it into the ghostly semblance of a body. They got their energy from limited nuclear fusion, one atom at a time, merging four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, the same process that powered the sun and stars. All they needed was a local supply of hydrogen, and Earth’s atmosphere provided plenty of that. Their waste product was pure helium, harmless in this context.

  “Cold fusion!” Quiti exclaimed. “The breakthrough of the century!”

  “I think not,” Gena said. “This is strictly small scale. The magnetic flux is so strong in that limited region of the Ghobot core that fusion can be forced. Earth has no technology to match that. Best not even to mention it, lest the greed-heads try to take him apart.”

  Quiti had to agree. Politicians tended to be immune to the realities of science. “Still, it means they are physically harmless. They could come to Earth.”

  “You are considering bringing the fugitive Ghobots here? When you know they’ll soon be anathema because of emote addiction?”

  “I’m working on that,” Quiti said. “But first we have to return Flower to his folks. That should take only an hour or so, via the Worm Web.”

  “Maybe,” Gena agreed cautiously.

  Chapter 5: Worm Wood

  “Now remember, Flower,” Quiti said as they made ready to travel. “You are a creature of the Worm Web, so your whole body is there. But we are mostly physical creatures, and we have to leave our bodies behind, sleeping. We will be with you in spirit only, more apparent than real. If something happens to us, we will revert back to our physical bodies, leaving you behind. But we want to stay with you, to help guide you to your family. Once you are safely home, then we can depart.”

  It is like that when the natives of our planet travel, Flower agreed.

  “You may be more familiar with the Worm routes of your region than we are. Do let us know if there is something that might mess us up.”

  I will, mama Hair, he promised.

  “Can you sniff out your own route here? I know you can’t just jump to it, but is there a trace left as you pass?”

  Yes.

  “So we can follow it back to where you left your mother.”

  Yes.

  “Then let’s go.” Quiti took Idola’s hand as they leaned back comfortably in their easy chairs. With their free hands they touched Flower, making sure they would travel together.

  “’Bye, mom,” Idola said as Quiti’s telepathy encompassed her and Flower.

  Then they focused on the wormholes. It was like diving into a rushing river with many diversions. Idola located the tangled pattern of them clairvoyantly. Quiti telepathically zeroed in on the hole that took them most directly into the main network, avoiding the curls, gaps, and dead ends of the others. It was the telepathy that made this kind of travel feasible: without it Idola would have been in trouble, being able to “see” only one hole at a time beyond the surface pattern. This coordination unified them as an effective traveling entity.

  She felt Flower’s admiring awareness. The Ghobots had neither clairvoyance nor telepathy, but here in the embrace of her mind he was sharing both.

  They came into an annex with several passages leading outward. This was the way Quiti’s mind interpreted the nexus to make it reasonably familiar and navigable. “Which direction did you come from, Flower?”

  Now the Ghobot appeared in his natural guise, as a stick figured ghostly robot. He sniffed. “That way,” he said, pointing. Here on the Worm Web he seemed physical, and could talk in the way they did, or at least like a telephone.

  They took that passage. It opened out into a lovely scenic vista. A valley between mountains was covered with handsome pine trees, with puffy white clouds drifting above. This, too, was purely interpretation, but it would do.

  They walked along a path through the forest. A soft scented breeze wafted their hair back. It was very nice, but it was mostly illusion. They were moving electronically along the crevices in space-time that were the Worm Web.

  They came to an intersection of two trails, and paused. Their original one continued on through the forest, while the other seemed to come from the top of a mountain and wend its way down toward a pond or lake. Both were established worm crevices regularly used by web travelers; the scenic adornments, however interpreted, marked them as usable rather than spurious. “That one,” Flower said, pointing toward the pond.

  They turned to follow it. As they approached the water, Flower hesitated, then stepped back. “Bad,” he said.

  “What is it?” Quiti asked.

  “I think it’s a Worm.”

  Quiti laughed. “Well, this is the Worm Web.” She realized that while on Earth the worms made the wormholes, in the Web the holes preceded the worms, who must have evolved to use them.

  “Trouble,” Flower said, frightened.

  “We’d better pause to figure this out,” Quiti said to Idola. They had not yet seen the Worm, but if it was dangerous they needed to be sure it did not see them before they were ready for it.

  “There’s a nook in a tree where Worms don’t go,” Idola said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because their traces are scattered about, but none are there.” She focused further. “It—It’s the Wormwood Tree.”

  Wormwood. Something horribly bitter or repulsive. If that repelled the Worms, why not? Idola’s Chip clairvoyance was certainly useful. “Take us there.”

  They stepped off the trail, circling trees, making their way to a particular tree that was a giant among midgets, rising out of the forest into the sky, spreading hugely. It was no pine, but neither was it any other species Quiti could recognize. If her mind was interpreting it, why wasn’t it somehow familiar?

  “They are not ordinary trees,” Flower said, picking up her confusion. “They are special refuges.”

  “That explains a lot,” Quiti said sourly.

  The Wormwood Tree’s bark was rough but not prickly, providing convenient handholds. Quiti wondered about that, but decided to leave her question for another time, as there was no indication of danger to them. They climbed up the trunk rather than trying to fly, as this used less energy. For all that it wasn’t exactly physical energy they used here.

  In the center, high above the rest of the forest, was a divergence of great branches forming a kind of platform from which they could view the larger landscape around them. Smaller branches radiated, interlinking, forming a kind of basket or nest. This was the nook, which seemed almost too convenient to be accidental.

  Quiti was suspicious. “Why should a tree provide such a handy perch for us, or for anyone?” She had heard of tentacular trees in a fantasy land that lured and consumed unwary creatures. She wasn’t sure how that would work with spiritual visitors, but had seen enough of the Worm Web to know that such a threat should not be dismissed casually. “It could be a tra
p.”

  “No, they are friendly to us,” Flower said. “No Wormwood Tree has ever harmed one of us.”

  “What do you do for the Wormwoods?”

  “I don’t know,” Flower said nervously.

  “Neither do I,” Idola said. “Can you read its mind, Quiti?”

  Read the mind of a plant? But stranger things had happened on Earth and elsewhere. Quiti focused.

  And found the vegetable awareness of the tree. The thing was not only large, it was complicated, with nerves extending throughout the branches and roots. It tracked air, water, soil, distributing resources from and to each as required, and was alert for threats to its security. Its ambiance was tuned to their minds, so it knew they were not hostile to its welfare. That was why it tolerated their presence, when it could have driven them away by projecting a foul odor to their minds. It was not a trap for them, but more like a refuge, just as Flower had said.

  But that could not be all. Why should it go to the trouble of assisting passing visitors who were doing it no favors? Since they were here only spiritually, they neither ate its fruit, whatever it might be, nor excreted potential fertilizer, and had no edible bodies. They did not seem to be assisting it in breeding, either, in the manner of bees with other plants. Yet they had to be offering it something, to cause it to encourage their presence. Nature seldom if ever offered something for nothing.

  The question evoked the answer: visitors were sometimes the targets of the Worms. In fact they could lure Worms in. And Worms, being native to the Web, did have sustenance for the tree. Their energy cores were excellent nourishment. Any Worm that entered the tree’s close environment was subject to predation.

  “We’re bait,” Quiti announced. “It eats Worms.”

  Idola clapped her hands. “So this is the perfect place for us, to relax without fear of Worms. It’s like Carmen loving carjackers.”

  “That’s nice,” Quiti said, amused by the analogy. “But we’re not vacationing here. We’re just passing through.”

  “Oh. Yes. But we did stop here to figure out why Flower is afraid of the Worm.”

  “Oh, yes,” Quiti echoed. She turned to the boy. “Why do you fear the Worm? Isn’t it just another traveler, as we are?”

  Flower burst into tears, his style, flickering wildly and losing coherence.

  “I guess not,” Idola said, taken aback.

  Quiti swept him into her embrace, comforting him in motherly fashion, her hair wrapping around him. Here in the Worm Web he felt perfectly physical, though it was a stick figure she was holding. “I’m sorry, Flower. I thought it was an innocent question.”

  “I can’t answer,” he sobbed, more tears dripping from his flower face.

  This required finesse. “I just want to understand. May I read your mind?”

  “Yes. As long as you hold me close.”

  She carefully probed his alien mind, starting at the edges and infiltrating cautiously toward the center, all the while holding him in her comforting embrace. A fringe of her own mind marveled at the manner she was separating the physical contact from the mental contact, when they had no physical presence here; it was all interpretation. But since it was working, she did not care to question it.

  She got it, much as she had absorbed the information about the tree. Now she spoke to Idola, making it verbal so as not to divert her mental or physical contact with the child: more interpretation.

  “Most creatures of the galaxy are planetary, but some are capable of traveling the worm holes when they know how, as we do, spiritually. Some creatures are native to the Worm Web, existing physically, in their manner, in it. The Worms are one such species. Some are borderline, like the Ghobots, native to an original planet but able to travel physically on the Web, because their essence is magnetic, rather than physical. That is how Flower came to us on Earth, physically.”

  “Wow,” Idola said.

  “But his species has enemies, and though they escaped to the Worm Web, their enemies hired killers to chase them down and kill them. These are the Worms, who are mercenaries. They don’t care about anything themselves, other than survival and energy food, but as hirelings they get a lot of that. They are merciless, not having the wit to appreciate any larger picture. So Flower fears the Worm for good reason. If it catches him, it will kill him.”

  “How did he escape it before?” Idola asked.

  “They knew the Worms had been hired, but the Worms had not yet located the traveling Ghobots. The Worm Web is huge: it’s like searching for a dinghy on the Pacific Ocean. The chances of their being found soon were remote.”

  “But then this Worm—”

  “May be random,” Quiti said. “Merely cruising around, searching, with no idea its prey was nearby. In which case it should have moved on by now.”

  “Or—” Idola started grimly.

  “Or it got news of our entry to the Web and hightailed from their base over here to intercept us.”

  “In which case we’re in trouble.”

  “Maybe,” Quiti agreed cautiously. “But only if it’s that second option. I think it more likely the first option, in which case we can safely resume traveling.”

  “I don’t know,” Idola said. “If a Worm tuned in to somebody’s entry into the Web, and headed here to check it out, but we skedaddled to the safety of the tree before it quite nailed us, it might play possum to let us think it never saw us, then pounce the moment we come out.”

  “Smart girl,” Quiti said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Of course I’m smart. I’m a genius now, remember. A Chip off the block. So are you, Hairbrain. You were coming to it next. We need to make a plan that covers all options.”

  “We do,” Quiti agreed. “So let’s assume the worst. That the Worm catches us. How do we handle it?”

  “Does Flower know?”

  Quiti delved back into the child’s mind, seeking what he knew of the Worms. “They strike by shooting beams of electro-spiritual shock forward. When it hits a spirit visitor, it blasts it out of the Web and back to the home planet. Harmless in its fashion, but it pretty well disrupts whatever the visitor was doing on the Web. That’s the risk we take. When it hits a Web native, it destroys it. That’s death. When it hits a borderline individual, like Ghobot, it’s like a knockout punch. Then that stunned victim can be taken prisoner, or dumped somewhere out of the action. If it has useful information, it gets interrogated. If it’s edible, it gets eaten. If it is sexually appealing, it gets raped. It’s not good, regardless.” Quiti’s imagination balked at the notion of a creature being raped by a worm.

  “Is there any defense?”

  Quiti checked. “Yes. Mainly avoidance, like hiding or dodging so the shock misses. But a Ghobot who is prepared can bounce it back at the Worm, and if that scores it kills the Worm. Or loop it around and hurl it at someone else. But each defense usually works only once, because while the Worms aren’t really smart, they learn from immediate experience and guard against being balked the same way twice in succession.”

  “There are three of us, and we can coordinate using your telepathy. Could one of us distract the Worm while the other blasts it?”

  “Doubtful. We don’t have a weapon against it, except for turning its own weapon against it.”

  “Suppose I show you exactly where the Worm is, you project an image of Flower for it to fire at, and Flower loops that shot around to hit it in the tail?”

  Quiti considered. “Flower, could we do that? Could you catch and redirect the shot if I showed you exactly where it was and where to put it?”

  “Right up the Worm’s ass,” Idola added, laughing.

  Flower laughed too. They were after all both children. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then I think we have a viable combat strategy,” Quiti said. “Hoping we don’t have to use it.” She glanced at Idola. “Are there any other details we should consider?”

  “We maybe should try to travel faster than just walking through the woods. So as to
cut down our time of exposure.”

  “Good thought. Walking is simply the way we interpret it. What did you have in mind?”

  “A motor scooter?” Idola asked hopefully.

  Quiti laughed. “Those things are dangerous. We could get flung off into the lake.”

  “Then maybe a jet ski, only it jets over land too.”

  “I could shape it,” Flower said, “if you show me how.”

  “Great!” Idola said, forming a picture in her mind of what vaguely resembled a motorcycle on skis.

  Quiti was dubious, but as she considered it, the notion seemed more viable. Which was more dangerous, the vehicle or the delay when deadly creatures were lurking? “See what you can do.”

  “Do it,” Idola told the Ghobot.

  Flower formed into the device Idola was picturing. It looked precarious to Quiti. “Enclose it somewhat, to protect us from dust, sleet, branches or stray birds or whatnot.”

  A shield formed around it. That would have to do. “We’ll try it,” Quiti said. “But if we get dumped, it’s back to walking.”

  Idola clapped her hands, a mannerism of hers. “We’ll zoom!”

  Quiti mounted the device, finding the handholds and simple controls. Idola got on behind her, riding shotgun as it were. “Bye, Wormwood!” she called. “Thanks for everything.”

  They nudged out of the nest and down into the forest, on their way at last.

  Chapter 6: Bezel 4

  Quiti handled the controls cautiously, getting the feel of them as she slowly guided the craft down to the ground and around the pine trees. Soon she was confident that there were no problems here, as her awareness that this was actually the boy she was rescuing settled into background mode. What a difference the Worm Web made! She emerged onto the original path and picked up speed as they approached the pond. It was true: this was significantly faster than walking.

  Of course this was not actually a machine, as she reminded herself again. It was the Ghobot in a robot variation. But here in the Worm Web, reality was what they made it, and this was part of the proof of that. “You okay, Flower?” she inquired.