Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) (26 page)

“Not debate, exactly. I was just wondering how forget-me-grass affects the animals on this planet, and wondered if we could discuss that.”

“Have you had another idea, then?”

“Will you listen? Just now we were having a debate. Well, actually it was closer to an argument. If it had escalated any further, we would have been fighting.”

“And?”

“The forget-me-grass prevented us from doing that. And oddly enough, our debate was about aggression.”

Mogamigawa stopped and turned round, staring me hard in the face. “Are you saying that the forget-me-grass stops animals on this planet from attacking each other?”

“Well, it may partly explain that phenomenon, at least.”

“But look around you!” He gave a sweeping wave with one hand to divert my attention to our surroundings. “There’s not much forget-me-grass around here, is there. So we’re not affected by it at all. Only when one’s in the middle of a field of forget-me-grass does memory loss occur. Surely it would be impossible for genetically programmed aggression to be erased just like that?”

“Nevertheless, not only is forget-me-grass distributed all over this planet, but there are also communities of it scattered in various parts. Furthermore, all the higher vertebrates on this planet are herbivores, which means that, unlike us, they’re always munching that grass. We know the false-eared rabbit eats it, at the very least. And it’s also been found in the excretions of other animals.”

Mogamigawa stared at me again. At length, he turned back to survey the scene around us, walked over to a specimen of forget-me-grass growing several feet away and pulled it up by the root. He returned muttering to himself. “It may be caused by pollen toxins, or the composition of gas expiration. I’ll take it back to analyze it with Dr Shimazaki. Put it in your collecting case, will you.” He held up the specimen as if it were a poisonous snake and thrust it towards me.

We hurried on further ahead. Although we wore earth watches, we were confused by the two-hourly alternation of night and day, and had no clear perception of the time or date. In any case, making haste was the best policy.

A false-eared rabbit scampered across our path from right to left and hopped into a clump of grass.

“So what about the false-eared rabbit then?” asked Mogamigawa. He had evidently been mulling over my counter-argument as he walked on, and now spoke with some relish, as if he’d at last discovered his justification.

“What about it?” I retorted.

“It grows nine to eleven ears on its head. Only two of them are real, and the rest are, er…”

“False.”

“That’s right, it has seven to nine false ears. If you grab them, they come off like lizard’s tails, but don’t grow back. Surely, this proves that the rabbit has natural enemies?”

“Certainly, it has natural enemies. But, with respect, it’s only humans who catch rabbits by grabbing their ears. Look at the gaping hooter, a large creature that has no nose. It’s a herbivore. Bearing in mind that the Newdopians eat rabbits and, in fact, the false-eared rabbit is the only meat they eat, the false ears could be seen as a mechanism to prevent capture by humans.”

“Are the natives really the only carnivorous vertebrates on this planet, then?”

“Yes, as far as I know. But of course, we don’t know what we may meet in the jungle.”

Mogamigawa grimaced.

Trees were gradually increasing in density, a sign that the jungle was close at hand. On the previous mission, we had started our detour around the jungle from this point. The trees were not only bizarre in appearance but also had names to match – frizzly acacias and itchy scratchy trees, dripping deutzia, and more. Relic pods already hung in clusters from the branches of the frizzly acacias. Mistress bine lay on the branches of the itchy scratchy trees, like a terrestrial version of the fondleweed. Screeching cicadas shrieked and whooped in ever-growing clamour, and there were increasing numbers of grindhog, panting hart and gaping hooter, the equivalent of earth squirrels, deer and monkeys. The occasional collapsible cow would suddenly stick its neck out from the shadow of a tree ahead of us, making us practically jump out of our skins.

The collapsible cow had a face that scarcely resembled a cow, with a body that was much smaller than a cow’s but looked more like a wild boar. It was called a “cow” merely because it ruminated. Not to say that it ruminated with four stomachs, as a cow does. It would keep its front legs still and move only its hind legs forwards, thus contracting its trunk like an accordion. This would have the effect of compressing its stomach, forcing the contents out into its mouth. Next, it would keep its hind legs still and only move its front legs forwards, stretching its trunk until it looked like a dachshund. Actually, I was quite keen to dissect one to see what its skeleton was like.

Mogamigawa resumed our dialogue. “Whether in water, on trees, on land, or underground, they’ve all undergone adaptive radiation that makes them almost identical to earth species, but, unlike the latter, they’re all herbivorous mammals. Moreover, as
you
would have it, they’re not merely mammals but actually primates, or, if not, then higher-order creatures very close to that. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Not really. After all, even reptiles in the Mesozoic underwent adaptive radiation. For example, the triceratops resembled a rhinoceros, the pteranodon a bird, the brontosaurus an elephant, a certain theropod a tiger, and the ichthyosaur a fish.”

“No, no. That’s not what I’m saying. Why are there so few lower order mammals, reptiles or amphibians, as I mentioned just now? There don’t seem to be any fish either, nor birds, except that darned penisparrow.”

I held my tongue. It was clear that if I’d spoken my mind openly, we would only have started another argument. And it would have been much worse than the previous one.

Still Mogamigawa persisted. “Just now, you said you were opposed to Ishiwara’s theory on the
Law of Universal Orthogenesis
. If I remember correctly, he said that ‘Organisms on all planets, not only those in our solar system, evolve from bacteria and algae in the broad sense to intelligent life forms, in accordance with a major law of orthogenesis that pervades the entire cosmos.’ You would disagree with that, would you?”

Now I felt compelled to reply. “Yes, but he went on to say that ‘There are life forms which, in appearance, seem to differ from planet to planet. This is merely an embodiment of the Law, to a certain degree of probability, depending on environment and conditions.’ My view is that there could be a planet that doesn’t fit that principle. Depending on its environment and conditions, of course.”

“More twaddle!” Mogamigawa snarled in his customary way of intimidating his opponent as a precursor to shouting. “Utter tripe! What on earth are you talking about?! No matter what synthetic culture medium we use for our research, the first thing to appear will be bacteria, followed by protozoa that eat the bacteria. The excretions of the protozoa become nutrients on which algae multiply. Then, and only then, will the first multi-cell organism come into being and the symbiotic system stabilize. Whatever the environment or conditions, the cycle of succession in living organisms is always from small to large, from microbes to flora, from flora to fauna. I have never witnessed an ecosystem on any planet that has any other form of succession. Evolution is always the same. Only when there is something to eat can something exist to eat it. It is utterly unthinkable that the birds came first, followed by the insects and seeds that are eaten by them.”

“So you’re saying the idea that humans came first is nonsense?”

“But of course!”

“Even so, a friend of mine has the following theory. First there was man. A being that regressed from man became the common ancestor of humans and apes. That being evolved into an ape, and a being that regressed from the original being became the ancestor of the insectivores, and so on and so on, until finally single cell protozoa were formed. In other words, a theory of reverse evolution.”

“Ha,” Mogamigawa scoffed. “Of course, he cannot be serious, but it’s a pity he didn’t make the argument more intriguing all the same. He’s a scientist, is he?”

“A psychoanalyst. Yasha Tsuchini. It was he who discovered the universal human desire for a regression theory. He claims that the theory of evolution is what humans find most problematic, since they always want to believe in the superiority of the human race. The
regression theory is one of the myths that lie deep and unnoticed in the bosom of modern man. This applies equally to biologists, he says. Their theories are merely the reverse of an intrinsic belief in human supremacy, as witnessed in the claim by Professor O.E. Kenzabroni that ‘Humans who take the side of animals are extremely cruel towards other humans’. To give a more concrete example, even Konrad Lorenz, who won the Nobel Prize for biology some centuries ago, sometimes seemed to extol the superiority of the human race precisely because he was a neo-Darwinist.”

“And yet he was an evolutionist. All right, he supported discrimination based on eugenics, but what’s wrong with arguing the superiority of the human race?”

“Nevertheless, even some modern biologists who’ve been influenced by Lorenz say there could be no such thing as evolution, since everything is determined genetically. According to them, adaptation is achieved through population dynamics in all species.”

“Yes, I know about them. Fools to a man!” Mogamigawa started to shout again. “Incorrigible anti-evolutionists will always appear in one guise or another. You make it sound as if all evolutionists are conservative while regressionists are universally progressive. Or perhaps the modern trend is in that direction anyway. Well, I can’t accept that. Come to think of it, there are even some bacteriologists who argue that humans evolved from single-cell protozoa. Take the theory of ‘Devolution’ proposed by Professor Edmond Hamilton of SFM University. He suggested that intelligent beings that were actually single-cell protozoa from the galaxy Altair, hundreds of thousands of light years from our own galaxy, created a civilization through telepathy and came to earth, the ‘poisonous planet’, billions of years ago, where they gradually regressed, subdivided into lower and lower forms of life, and finally produced the lowest, most grotesque life form of all – man. You’re one of those fools, are you.”

“Surely Hamilton’s claims are meant as a rebuttal of the ‘black superiority’ of evolutionists who regard the human race as the ultimate product of evolution, the highest natural creation in the cosmos. You see—”

“Not all evolutionists are discrimination theorists, you know!” yelled Mogamigawa. “Even among humanoids, there are some telepaths, like all of the Newdopians on this planet, but only a fraction of humans on earth. Now that intelligent humanoid beings of a higher order than earth humans, in a sense, are being discovered on different planets, evolutionists who maintain such an antiquated approach—”

“Er, sorry to interrupt, gentlemen,” Yohachi said sardonically from the rear. “We’re in the jungle, in case you hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t we better be careful? Just now there was a huge spider dangling above your heads, wondering which of you to go for!”

Darkness had suddenly fallen around us, and I’d assumed that the suns had retreated behind clouds. In fact, we were already inside the jungle, a tertiary mixed forest.

“Ah. That was probably a nursery spider,” I said as I continued along an animal trail. “Please be careful, Dr Mogamigawa. This area is full of itchy scratchy trees. We may have to edge past them sideways.” Already starting to itch under their influence, I was beginning to feel irritated myself. That sensation of shuddering just before having sex started to creep up my spine, and I sneezed twice in quick succession.

“
Aaaaaaaargh!
”

Mogamigawa had become horribly entangled in mistress bine, which had bound him fast to the trunk of an itchy scratchy tree and instantly covered his body with bluish-green lichen. “Quick, man! Get the knife out, quick!” he screamed at Yohachi with a half-crazed expression, panting with increasing ferocity. “
Aaargh! Aaargh!
” A look of sheer rapture started to spread over his features.

Yohachi grinned as he slowly pulled a knife from his pocket; then, waiting for the perfect moment when Mogamigawa’s frenzied screams reached their gasping climax and his body slumped down limply, brandished the knife and cut the mistress bine into pieces.

“Why didn’t you cut it sooner, man?!” Crumpled in a heap on the ground, Mogamigawa glared up at Yohachi reproachfully. “You did that deliberately, didn’t you!”

“Come, did you?” Yohachi let out his vulgar laugh.

“Shut up!” Mogamigawa clambered to his feet with renewed vigour, as if to show that he hadn’t just ejaculated, and shouted loudly again. “Come on then! Let’s be off,
quam celerrime
! Otherwise we’ll still be in this obscene jungle when it gets dark!”

It was obvious to see that he was merely putting on a show. Even I was cringing at the thought of the abominable creatures that lay in wait for us ahead.

“Yes. Let’s make haste!” I called in falsely high spirits, quite at odds with the quaking in my heart. But no sooner had I started off than I screamed loudly and fell flat on my back. A gigantic nursery spider had slid down from the trees in front of my eyes, brought its weird lemur-like face close to mine, then gripped my face tenderly with its folded, hairy front legs and seemed about to kiss me.

“Chase it away, for Christ’s sake!” I shrieked, virtually foaming at the mouth as I lay prostrate on the ground.

“It’s gone,” said Yohachi. “You scared it off when you screamed.”

“Was that really a spider?” asked Mogamigawa behind me when we’d started off in trepidation once more. “It had four legs, did it not. More like a cross between a lemur and a spider monkey, I’d say.”

“It is almost certainly not a spider. After all, one characteristic of this planet is that there are hardly any insects at all, except for those screeching cicadas,” I answered as I waded through the undergrowth. “I can’t say anything for sure until we catch one, but I think they’re either mammals or something close to that. Its hands were warm.”