Zzapp! "There's another!" Trent cried. "They tunnel through anything-even air-so we hear the collapse of the vacuum behind them. This one should be right about-there!" He smashed his stones together again, crunching the wiggle.
After that it was hectic. The wiggles were zapping determinedly outward, each in its own pattern. There was no way of telling how long they would freeze in place-seconds or minutes-or how far they would zap-inches or feet. But each wiggle went in the precise direction it had started, never shifting even a fraction, so it was possible to trace that line and locate it fairly quickly. If someone stood in front of a wiggle at the wrong time, he got zapped-and if the hole were through a vital organ, he died. But it was not feasible to stand behind a wiggle, for the closer in toward the source of the swarm one went, the more the wiggles were present. There were so many wiggles that a creature smashing one could be simultaneously holed by another. It was necessary to stand at the outer fringe of expansion and nab the leaders first.
The wiggles really seemed to be mindless, or at least indifferent to external things. Their preset wiggle courses holed anything-anything at all-in the way. If a person didn't locate a wiggle fast, it was too late, for the thing had zapped again. Yet it could be tricky to find a still wiggle, for it looked like a twisted stem from the side and a coiled stem from the end. It had to move to attract attention to itself-and then it might be too late to nab it.
"This is like standing in a firing range and catching the bullets as they pass," Trent muttered. That sounded like another Mundane allusion; evidently Mundane wiggles were called bullets.
The invisible giant operated beside Bink on the right, as his nose plainly told him. TRAMP!-and a wiggle was crushed out of existence. Maybe a hundred wiggles at once. But so was anything else that got underfoot. Bink didn't dare point out wiggles for Bigfoot; it would be his own death warrant. For all he knew, the giant was stomping randomly. It was as good a way as any.
On the left side, a unicorn operated. When it located a wiggle, it either crushed it between horn and hoof or closed its mouth over it and ground it to shreds with its equine teeth. This seemed to Bink to be a distasteful and hazardous mode of operation, because if it mistimed a wiggle-
Zzapp! A hole appeared in the unicorn's jaw. Blood dripped out. The creature made a single neigh of anguish-then trotted along the path of the zap. It located the wiggle and chomped down again, using the other side of its jaw.
Bink admired the unicorn's courage. But he had to get on with his own job. Two wiggles had just zapped within range. He pointed out the nearest for Trent, then ran to the other, afraid Trent would not reach it in time. His hound's teeth were made for cutting and tearing, not chewing, but maybe they would do. He bit down on the wiggle.
It squished unpleasantly. Its body was firm but not really hard, and the juices squirted out. The taste was absolutely awful. There was some sort of acid-yecch! But Bink chewed carefully several times, to be sure of crushing it all; he knew that any unsquished fragment would zap away as a tiny wiggle, just as dangerous as the original. He spat out the remains. Surely his mouth would never be the same again.
Zzapp! Zzapp! Two more wiggles nearby. Trent heard one and went after it; Bink sought out the other. But even as they both oriented, a third zzapp! sounded between them. The pace was stepping up as the great internal mass of wiggles reached the perimeter. There were too many wiggles to keep up with! The complete swarm might number a million.
There was a deafening bellow from above. "OOAAOUGH!'
Herman the centaur galloped by. Blood trailed from a glancing wiggle-wound in his flank. "Bigfoot's hit!" he cried. "Get out of the way."
"But the wiggles are breaking out," Trent said.
"I know! We're taking heavy losses all around the perimeter. It's a bigger swarm than I thought, more dense in the center. We can't hold them anyway. We'll have to form a new containment circle, and hope that more help arrives in time. Save yourselves before the giant falls."
Good advice. A huge print appeared in Bink's territory as Bigfoot staggered. They got out of there.
"AAOOGAHH!" the giant bawled. Another print appeared, this time in toward the center of the circle. A wash of air passed as he fell, heavy-laden with the giant-aroma. "GOUGH-OOOAAAA-" The sound arched down from a fifty-foot elevation toward the center of the wiggle swarm. The crash was like that of a petrified pine felled by magic. WHOOMP!
Herman, who had taken refuge behind the same jellybarrel tree as Trent and Bink, wiped a squirt of jelly out of his eye and shook his head sadly. "There goes a big, big man! Little hope now of containing the menace. We're disorganized and short of personnel, and the strength of the enemy is sweeping outward. Only a hurricane could get them all, and the weather's dry." Then he looked again at Trent. "You seem familiar. Aren't you-yes. Twenty years ago-"
Trent raised his hand. "I regret the necessity-" he began.
"No, wait, Magician," Herman said. "Transform me not. I will not betray your secret. I could have bashed your head in with my foot just now, had I intended you ill. Know you not why I was exiled from my kind?"
Trent paused. "I know not, for I do not know you."
"I am Herman the Hermit, punished for the obscenity of practicing magic. By summoning will-o'-the-wisps. No centaur is supposed to-"
"You mean centaurs can practice magic?"
"They could-if they would. We centaurs have existed so long in Xanth we have become a natural species. But magic is considered-"
"Obscene," Trent finished, voicing Bink's thought. So magic intelligent creatures could do magic; their inability was cultural, not genetic. "So you became a hermit in the wilderness."
"Correct. I share your humiliation of exile. But now we have a need more important than privacy. Use your talent to abolish the wiggle menace!"
"I can't transform all the wiggles. I must focus on one at a time, and there are too many-"
"Not that. We must cauterize them. I had hoped my wisps would lead in a salamander-"
"A salamander," Trent exclaimed. "Of course! But even so, the fire could not spread fast enough to bum out all the wiggles, and if it did, the fire itself would then be unstoppable, a greater menace than the wiggles. We'd merely exchange one devastation for another."
"Not so. There are certain restrictions on salamanders, and with foresight they can be controlled. I was thinking of-"
Zzapp! A hole appeared in the trunk of the tree. Jelly oozed out like purple blood. Bink dashed out to crunch the wiggle, who fortunately had passed between them and injured no one. Yuch! That taste!
"They're inside the trees," Trent said. "Some are bound to land within things. Impossible to catch those ones."
Herman trotted over to a nondescript bush. He yanked several vines from it. "Salamander weed," he explained. "I have become a fair naturalist in my years of isolation. This is the one thing a salamander can't burn. It represents a natural barrier to the fire; eventually the flames are stopped by proliferating weeds. If I make a harness of this, I can carry a salamander around in a great circle just beyond the infestation-"
"But how to stop the fire before it destroys most of Xanth?" Trent asked. "We can't wait on the chance of the weeds; half of the wilderness could be ravaged before it burns itself out. We can't possibly clear a firebreak in time." He paused. "You know, that must be why your wisps summoned no salamanders. This thick forest would naturally have a salamander-repulsion spell to keep them away, because such a fire would quickly prejudice this whole environment. Still, if we start a fire-"