Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) (29 page)

“And anyway, what happened then?” I asked, drawing closer to Yohachi. “Tell me more.”

“It was around midday, I think. All of them, even the old people and children who hadn’t appeared much till then, and all the young men and women as well, they all went haring off together. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked the woman I was having sex with at the time. She said it was a ballet performance. So I followed them all to the open-air arena.” Yohachi’s eyes suddenly started to glisten. “I have never seen such a fantastic sight in all my life. There was no scenery, no lighting, just dozens of naked men and women dancing together on the stage. And they were actually having sex as they
danced and jigged around. When they brought the lower parts of their bodies together, the man’s erect penis would actually go inside the woman. The join between the two of them would turn into a kind of support, so they could both hold hands while the woman, with her face upwards and leaning back, would twirl around and around. Ah. I could never find the words to explain how wonderful it was.” Yohachi slapped one knee one after the other in frustration. “Then the men would line up in a circle. The women would line up in another circle around them. The men would start by dancing with the woman facing them, then with the next one.”

“Aha. Like changing partners.”

“The man would lift the woman high into the air from behind. The woman would stretch out her arms and legs in mid-air and arch her body backwards. The man’s penis would go inside the woman again. Then he would change to the next woman and lift her up in the same way. And he would go inside her as well. And so he would pass all the women in the outer circle round to the next man. And the music, I even started to appreciate that music, which I hadn’t really noticed until then. It really moved me. Ah. How it moved me. And I started wondering why we can’t do that kind of thing on earth. Why doesn’t anybody think of such a wonderful ballet on earth, or even try to? I felt so happy. No one was looking at me like I was a dirty old man, no one called me obscene or perverted. Far from it, they showed me such a wonderful kind of art. When I thought about it, it seemed like the ultimate kind of love, a kind of art that couldn’t ever be bettered, and I was so moved by it that I actually cried,” Yohachi said with tears in his eyes. “What we call sexual intercourse on earth, it’s something sordid, something you have to do hidden from prying eyes. It’s seen as obscene, dirty, sometimes even as a crime, and you get taken away by the police and frowned on by society even if you just describe it in words or pictures, let alone do it in front of people. But here it’s done in broad daylight and out of doors, openly, the most beautiful natural thing a person could do, and it’s performed as a kind of art. That moved me to tears. Come to think of it, it’s only natural that this kind of art exists. Don’t you think it’s strange for a society
not
to have such beautiful art? Well anyway, what went through my
mind as I watched the ballet was that anyone who doesn’t understand the beauty of this can’t be called human any more. If someone from earth watched that ballet and said it was obscene or something, that would be someone who can’t understand love or art or anything. But, in fact, most people on earth would be like that person. Realizing that made me cry even more. It all got muddled up together – my feeling of bitterness at being looked down upon till now, the sadness of those earth people, and my happiness and emotion at being able to watch that ballet. In the end, I was bawling my head off.” Tears were streaming down his face.

That Yohachi could speak with such eloquence, such enthusiasm, when he was usually so taciturn and poor at expressing himself, proved how deeply he’d been moved. The realization of this helped me to share some of his emotion.

My gaze was still fixed on Yohachi’s face when Mogamigawa called over to me, his eye still on the microscope.

“Sona. Come and look at this.”

When I looked into the eyepiece, I saw, swimming there in a sea of semen, some flagellar bacilli that were clearly distinct from the spermatozoa.

“What are these, then?” I asked.

“A type of salmonella,” answered Mogamigawa. “On earth, this bacillus is well known to cause typhous diseases in humans, as well as food poisoning and gastroenteritis through infection from the excreta of birds and mammals. But that’s not all. There’s a type of salmonella bacillus that has no effect on humans but causes miscarriage in horses, i.e. equine mycotic abortion. This one seems to be parasitic on penisparrows and infectious to humans, causing what we might call ‘human mycotic abortion’. That’s what it must be.”

“In other words, the Newdopians have been controlling their population with the aid of salmonella and the penisparrow. Hmm. I had wondered why there isn’t a population surplus with all this sexual activity going on,” I said as I continued to watch the movement of the salmonella bacilli. “Yohachi has always wanted to sleep with Dr Shimazaki. Now he’ll have to, to infect her with salmonella. Lucky bastard!”

Mogamigawa groaned morosely. “Why should a fool like that be given such an enviable task? No, there’s a quicker way. Dr Shimazaki could masturbate using the penisparrow as a dildo,” he said, then blushed when he sensed my burning glare on his face. “Er, of course, I’m not saying that out of jealousy, no no no. It’s because I doubt Dr Shimazaki would wish to be violated by such a man.”

“I’m not so sure. I reckon she’d prefer that to some unnatural method like masturbating with a penisparrow. Especially if she saw him as he is now…”

Mogamigawa glanced back towards Yohachi, then brought his mouth to my ear. “Don’t you think the look on his face has changed?” he whispered conspiratorially.

“Yes. That’s the face of someone who’s been awakened to art. The gleam in his eye is completely different,” I answered. I started to collect up my things, which lay scattered about on the river bank. “Well, anyway, why don’t we leave the decision to Dr Shimazaki?”

“Yes, I suppose we could,” Mogamigawa said with little conviction as he idly packed away his electron microscope. “Damn that Yohachi! How could he have better looks than me?!”

A whole day would soon have passed since our meeting at the Research Centre. In that case, Dr Shimazaki would soon be entering the sixth month of her pregnancy, in earth terms. Whatever was gestating inside her captivating midriff had to be aborted as soon as possible, and for that it was imperative that we return quickly. It was hard on the elderly Dr Mogamigawa, as we’d only slept a total of four hours in about a day and half. But as soon as we’d gathered up our baggage, we immediately set off for the Research Base.

As we neared the jungle, night fell once more.

“I refuse!” exclaimed Mogamigawa, who’d been trailing behind with little enthusiasm until then. He parked his backside on the ground and started to fret like a spoilt child. “Of course I’m tired anyway, but going through that jungle at night would be my vision of hell. Who knows what hideous monstrosities will appear? I’m not going in there, and that’s the end of it. Why don’t we just sleep here for two hours until it grows light again? Eh, Sona? Won’t you?” In the end he was almost begging.

“All right, let’s do that,” I said. “To be sure, I don’t think the jungle will be any less terrifying than it was before.”

We decided to take a nap at the foot of a frizzly acacia tree, from whose branches hung a line of relic pods, in a hollow just ahead of the jungle. I knew that having frequent catnaps would merely deprive us of deep sleep. That was particularly bad for the brain activity of scientists such as ourselves, not to mention our physical well-being. But it really couldn’t be helped in our present situation.

I was starting to doze when Yohachi shook me awake.

“What is it? I’m trying to sleep! I was just about to drop off!”

“You’ve been asleep more than two hours already, mate!”

I opened my eyes to find that it was already broad daylight.

“I can’t find Dr Mogamigawa,” said Yohachi.

“He must be collecting something in the vicinity.”

“I don’t think so.” Yohachi took me to the spot where Mogamigawa had been sleeping, and pointed at the ground.

The footprints of several creatures had disturbed the sandy surface there. The buttons from Mogamigawa’s clothing lay scattered around, but the bag containing his electron microscope lay undisturbed in its original position. I was convinced that creatures from the jungle had abducted Mogamigawa during the night.

“Hurry!” I shouted, almost screaming at Yohachi. Mogamigawa may have been a pig-headed old man, but I admired his enthusiasm for research and his virtuous morality. It would have been just too awful if he’d been gang-raped by large creatures and his internal organs had burst. I felt sorry for him. We quickly lifted the baggage onto our backs and headed towards the jungle. “Look there,” I said. “The tracks continue this way. Don’t lose sight of them.”

We immediately lost sight of the tracks under a deposit of dead fern leaves. We then turned towards the dead centre, where we’d seen the creatures having their orgy on our outward journey.

Mogamigawa’s bloodstained clothes lay torn to shreds in the middle of the dead centre.

“His pants are here too,” said Yohachi with an air of insouciance. “The animals must have taken turns to use his ageing body as the object of their pleasure.”

“Could you stop talking like that?” I snapped as I surveyed the scene around us. “I just hope to God he’s not dead.”

For the next half hour or so, Yohachi and I searched the vicinity of the dead centre, occasionally calling out to each other to prevent us from getting separated. Wherever they’d hidden themselves, we could see no sign of a single creature, let alone our dear colleague.

I returned to the dead centre, wondering how I was going to explain it to Mogamigawa’s wife on our return, and how I would berate the Team Leader for forcing an old man on such a dangerous mission. Yohachi was just standing there, looking up vacantly into the trees.

“He’ll obviously be lying on the ground naked,” I said. “There’s no point in looking for him up there.”

Yohachi ignored me and started talking, as if to himself, still looking up pensively. “He must have been stark-naked… There was blood on his clothes… In that case, if one of them spiders had found him lying on the ground unconscious, what would it have thought?” He slowly turned to face me. “It would have thought he was a big animal that had just been born. In that case, what would it have done? Wrapped him up in one of them cocoon things, of course. Wouldn’t it?”

For a moment I was flabbergasted. “What on earth gave you such a far-fetched idea?” I asked. Then I realized. I hurriedly turned my eyes to the object of Yohachi’s gaze.

Above our heads, a massive relic pod, large enough to contain a collapsible cow, was hanging down from the middle of a stout branch.

“You’re saying that could be Dr Mogamigawa?” I leant backwards, held my breath and stared up at the relic pod.

“Let’s climb the tree together,” I said after coming to my senses a few moments later. Yohachi remained as unperturbed as ever. “We’ll pick it up together and bring it down carefully. If he’s inside, we obviously won’t want to drop it.”

Yohachi pushed my heavy backside from below as I climbed up ahead. I really had put on a lot of weight in middle age. I crawled along the branch in a snail-like fashion and, on reaching the little
air hole of the relic pod, peered into it. It was pitch-dark inside and there was nothing to be seen, nor any sign of movement.

I shouted into the air hole. “Doctor Mogamigawa! Are you in there?”

At that, the swollen base of the huge relic pod suddenly started to squirm and wriggle restlessly. A sound like the obscene cry of the frequently heard wife waker, but several times louder, was emitted from the air hole like a steam whistle, reverberating all around us. The sound was so intense that I instinctively put my hands to my ears and nearly fell from the branch.

“
Yeeuurrgghuuukkkmmmaunnnnngghhherereeuurghhhhh! Yeeeeuurrggh! Yeeeeuurrggh! Yeeeuuurrrnnnnnnnggghhherereeuuurghhhhh!!!
” The wife waker continued to scream what sounded like obscenities for several minutes, before at last starting to speak in intelligible earth language. “Oh, so sorry. Is that you, Sona?” It was the voice of Dr Mogamigawa. “When I tried to speak just now, nothing but that funny noise would come out. I even surprised myself, to be fair.”

“Dr Mogamigawa!” Relieved to hear him speaking with such apparent good cheer, I signalled to Yohachi to come and join me in the tree.

“Well, I
am
glad you found me, I must say. I suppose you’ve imagined what happened, but I’ve had a pretty rough time of it, I can tell you. Wahahahahaha!” Confined there in the pod, Mogamigawa spoke with a blithe gaiety that suggested the opposite of a “pretty rough time”. “Now, would you let me out of here sharpish, as it were? Otherwise the stimulus from the liquid in here will transform the rest of me into a nursery spider, and we wouldn’t want that, would we!”

The rest of me?… I had a terrible foreboding. With Yohachi’s help, I quickly hoisted the relic pod up onto the branch, cut the thread that tied it fast, and brought it down from the tree. We were soaking in sweat. “Are you all right in there?” I called. “I’m going to open the pod with my scissors now.”

“Yes, would you mind? I’m fine, have no worries there. My desire to return to the womb has been sated, and I’ve had a good sleep inside the old amniotic fluid. Perhaps that’s why I feel in such high spirits! Wahahahahahahaha!”

I cut open the relic pod with the scissors, then watched open-mouthed as Dr Mogamigawa crawled out. In no more than two hours, his metamorphosis had advanced with astonishing speed. Only his head remained unchanged. In fact, it would be truer to say that he was now a nursery spider with the face of Dr Mogamigawa. Four spindly limbs protruded from the side of his trunk and bent under his belly in the fashion of a four-legged spider. His trunk was flat, and his whole body was covered with soft-looking light-brown hairs. Wart-like protuberances, probably his silk-spinning organs, had already broken out near his anus. His penis had shrivelled to the point of non-existence.