Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

It was Yohachi, the odd-job man, who brought the Team Leader’s message. He wanted us all to attend an emergency meeting because Dr Shimazaki, an authority on botany and the only woman in our Research Team, was pregnant.

I looked up from my microscope. “Why must we have a meeting just because she’s pregnant?” I asked.

“How should I know?” Lingering for a moment near the door of the lab, Yohachi opened his gap-toothed mouth and laughed coarsely. He was surely about the same age as me, but looked more than ten years older.

“Tell him I’ll be right over,” I said, turning my attention back to the eyepiece.

“He said if you didn’t come straight away, I was to drag you there myself,” Yohachi announced in his thick, rude voice.

“God! He must be in a hurry,” I said, and reluctantly left my seat.

My ecosystems research lab, which also served as my living quarters, was a small makeshift structure near the edge of the Research Base. The Base was at the foot of Mount Mona, where up to ten similar buildings lay scattered about. In the middle of them stood the Research Centre, a two-storey building measuring about forty by forty feet. It was in fact a hastily erected affair that consisted only of the Team Leader’s living quarters and a Meeting Room. Mount Mona, so named by the first expedition to reach the planet, was a low-lying mountain formed primarily of andesite. When a stiff wind blew at night, the hollows and crevices on the mountainsides made a noise that sounded like a woman moaning – hence the name.

I locked the door of the lab and went outside with Yohachi. Not that there were any burglars up there – but with so many freakish plants and creatures around, one couldn’t be too careful.

“Who’s the father then?” I asked Yohachi as we walked along.

Short enough already, Yohachi made himself shorter by hunching his back as he walked. He looked up at me with a sideways glance and grinned. “Who knows? Maybe it’s you, mate.”

“Not me,” I answered straight-faced, then thought for a minute. Yes, I was fairly sure.

A little orange sun began to set behind Mount Mona. It was the season when night and day alternated every two hours on this planet called “Nakamura” in the Kabuki solar system. Both the planet and the solar system had been discovered by Peter Nakamura, a second-generation Japanese who was a big fan of Kabuki theatre. There again, back on Earth it was more commonly known as “Planet Porno,” for which it was famous. The planet was inhabited by humanoid natives who lived in a country called Newdopia, about fifty miles west of the Base. They looked exactly the same as humans, with one major difference – they went around permanently naked.

It suddenly came to me. “It must be you,” I said. “You’ve been sleeping with Dr Shimazaki!”

Whereupon Yohachi’s expression was transformed. Lewd furrows appeared in the corners of his eyes, his mouth grotesquely distorted with lecherous imaginings. It was horribly distressing to see.

“I wish I could, mate!” he replied with an air of deepest torment. “I fancy her all right. God I wish I could.” He made a writhing motion, licked his lips – along with the saliva that flowed over them – and seemed on the verge of tears. “God I wish I could.”

Yohachi’s lechery was renowned throughout the Base. He would have nosebleeds if he didn’t have sex at least twice a day. In fact, he was sharing his quarters with a middle-aged woman he’d brought with him from earth. I’d always assumed she was his wife, but that appeared not to be the case.

Yohachi sighed once more. “I wish I could.”

“So it’s not you then.”

“I wish it was, mate.”

If it wasn’t Yohachi, who on earth could have impregnated that thirty-two-year-old, gentle, fair-skinned, unmarried, well-rounded beauty of a woman, Dr Suiko Shimazaki? Still without a clue, I opened the door to the Research Centre. Yohachi, for some reason, bounded off towards his quarters.

“I was about to crack the feeding habits of the false-eared rabbit!” I complained to the Team Leader on entering the Meeting Room. “Do we really have to debate the ins and outs of private sex acts by Team members here in the Centre?”

With the others yet to arrive, the Team Leader sat alone in the Chairman’s chair, his shoulders hunched around his thick neck as usual. “Firstly, this is no private matter,” he started. “Secondly, we don’t yet know whether it could rightly be called a sex act.”

I stood open-mouthed.

Before I could ask whether it was possible for a woman to become pregnant without engaging in a sex act, in walked Dr Fukada, the physician, and Dr Mogamigawa, the bacteriologist.

“There’s something there all right. It can’t be a phantom pregnancy,” reported Dr Fukada. “But it’s impossible to tell with radiology alone what exactly it is. She’s in her fourth month.”

“She’s been pregnant four months without knowing it? What sort of woman is she?!” I said, almost shouting. “Or perhaps she was deliberately hiding it?”

Ignoring my outburst, Dr Mogamigawa, an utterly humourless, solemn, stubborn old man who refused to recognize anything other than natural science, grimaced as he produced a weed that resembled a type of fern and placed it on the table. “This obscene plant was mixed up among the samples collected by Dr Shimazaki. I found it in her collecting case.”

I jumped up. “What? Widow’s incubus?! What’s that doing in these parts? It’s only supposed to grow west of Newdopia!”

“Correction. West of Lake Turpitude,” Mogamigawa said, glaring at me. “Dr Shimazaki went to the lake to collect plants, but failed to notice that she’d collected the widow’s incubus along with the other samples. The microspores of the widow’s incubus must have penetrated her body. As you know, the androspores of this obscene plant stimulate the ovarian cells of higher vertebrates, and independently cause the growth of new individuals in utero.”

“But Dr Shimazaki is not a widow,” said the Team Leader.

Mogamigawa simply turned away in disdain, as if to say, What has that to do with anything. Dr Fukada took over instead.

“It was tentatively called widow’s incubus by a member of the First Expedition,” he explained. “Actually, it doesn’t matter if the host is a widow or not. It will attempt parthenogenesis with any woman, as long as she isn’t a virgin. Parthenogenesis literally means virgin generation, but in this case perhaps we should call it non-virgin generation. Ahaha. We don’t yet know why it fails to stimulate the ovarian cells of virgins, but it may have something to do with the quantity of estrogenic hormones secreted. And of course it should be no surprise that Dr Shimazaki is not a virgin,” he said with a smile. “After all, she is thirty-two. It would be harsh to cast aspersions on her just because she isn’t a virgin.”

“Hold on, I’m not casting anything on her,” said the Team Leader, stirring in his seat. “Well, there are only four of us – but let’s start the meeting anyway. Dr Shimazaki herself has declined to attend, on the grounds of embarrassment. Well, that’s only natural, considering how shy and demure she is. The geo-mineralogists are out surveying that obscene cloystone at the Hokomaka Pass on Mount Arasate.”

“As the matter demands immediate action, we should act right away. Ah! I appear to have said much the same thing twice. How embarrassing,” said Fukada, who, having written some thirty tedious novels as a hobby, posed as a man of letters. “Ahem. Proceeding to the main issue, pregnancy caused by widow’s incubus reaches full term in ten earth days. So, to amend the statement made by Dr Sona just now, Dr Shimazaki was pregnant for only four days without knowing it. In the two previous cases involving earth women, a member of the First Expedition miscarried on the seventh day, and a female doctor attached to the Base Construction Team rather recklessly aborted her own pregnancy by curettage on the third day. But in Dr Shimazaki’s case, curettage is already out of the question, and we have no way of knowing whether she can miscarry or not. There is every chance that she will in fact give birth. However, Dr Shimazaki herself says that she does not want to.”

“Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she. Having a child fathered by a weed called widow’s incubus would bring disgrace to her long family line of notable scientists.”

“May we keep this discussion on a scientific level?,” said Mogamigawa, glaring at me again. “It is inconceivable that the androspores of widow’s incubus, having entered the body through the respiratory organs, would then proceed directly from there to the uterus. Rather, they merely give some kind of acid stimulus to the woman’s unfertilized ovum, and thereby induce the growth of a new individual. As such, the widow’s incubus has not directly fertilized Dr Shimazaki per se, and therefore cannot be said to have ‘fathered’ anything. All will be revealed when she gives birth, but I feel sure that the new individual will only have chromosomes from the mother’s side. It’s normal for human individuals born by parthenogenesis to lack a reproductive capacity, as Professor Yoishonovitch Sano states in his History of Transparent Embryogeny in Humans.”

“Well yes, that would be the normal way of thinking,” Fukada started in counter-argument. “But things aren’t always normal on this planet, or to be more exact, things tend to veer from the normal towards the obscene, if anything. There is every possibility that the spores of widow’s incubus could reach the uterus via the respiratory, digestive or circulatory organs, or what have you – without biodegrading, mind – and then find some means of infiltrating the uterus. Parthenogenesis is a perfectly normal method of reproduction in the animal kingdom, even on earth. So it wouldn’t be unthinkable for something as preposterous as embryonic fertilization by plant spores to occur on this infamous ‘Planet Porno’. When I said there was ‘something’ inside Dr Shimazaki’s uterus, what I meant was that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a human embryo.”

Mogamigawa’s face was still set in a grimace. “In principle, I agree with you when you call this an obscene planet. But I heard that the foetus miscarried by the female in the First Expedition did indeed appear to be human.”

“However-”

“The problem, however,” I intervened, hoping to speed the discussion along, “is neither the nature of Dr Shimazaki’s pregnancy, nor the identity of her foetus. Surely, it is how to prevent it from reaching full term.”

“Well, on that subject,” the Team Leader said with a nod in my direction, “I think there are two methods available. One is to remove whatever it is from her womb by Caesarean section.”

“We have no equipment for that,” groaned Fukada. “Of course, it can still be done, but I don’t like doing it. And the burden of opening Dr Shimazaki’s abdomen would be too great to bear.”

Fukada was attempting to shirk responsibility as usual. Mogamigawa cast a contemptuous eye in his direction, then turned to me. “Would you happen to know how the Newdopians prevent pregnancies caused by widow’s incubus?” he asked. “Or what measures they take when a pregnancy occurs? They must surely fall victim to it.”

“Yes, I think they do. The vegetation around Newdopia is characterized as having communities, or plant divisions, or anyway very large quantities of widow’s incubus. But since humans cannot enter Newdopia, we don’t yet know how the natives deal with such cases.”

The Team Leader leant forwards. “Then again, the second method I was considering was, in fact, for someone to go to Newdopia and somehow find out about it from the natives. It would also have value as scientific research, so it would be like killing two birds with one stone, as they say.”

“But they won’t let us in,” I said with a shake of the head, remembering how we were flatly refused permission to enter on a previous research mission. “Unless it’s someone who shares their mentality, that is. They’re pretty good at reading our minds, you know.” I turned to face Dr Fukada. “The quickest way would be for you to perform a Caesarean section, after all.”

Fukada immediately started to panic. “Well, yes, in the barbarian era they did such operations very crudely by hand, but now, well, it’s only performed under fully automated conditions using computer systems, and so, that is I mean, as a doctor, I don’t particularly, well, they don’t teach such things at medical school, and…”

Mogamigawa looked up at the ceiling as if to say, So you can’t do it then. I was equally disappointed.

“According to one report, some members of the First Expedition entered Newdopia and saw what it was like,” said the Team Leader to revive the discussion. “How did they manage that?”

“Because it was the first time the natives had seen human beings, I suppose. They didn’t realize that we were such an obscene race, and just let them in without thinking. By that, of course, I mean obscene from their point of view.”

“Obscene? They’re the obscene ones!” Mogamigawa said, wrinkling his cheeks in annoyance. “As far as I’ve heard, they openly have carnal relations with each other, outdoors in broad daylight, and they don’t much care who the partner is! Nor do they care where they do it – in the street, public squares, community halls, anywhere, great numbers of them together at the same time!”

“That’s exactly my point,” I replied, popping up a finger at Dr Mogamigawa. “It’s that very attitude, the attitude that sex acts are obscene and should be hidden from the eyes of others, that appears obscene to them. Looking at it from their point of view, I suppose they would feel distracted or inhibited if we watched their acts with that kind of attitude.”

“Are you saying you don’t find such things obscene?” Mogamigawa gave me a look laden with antipathy.

I blushed slightly. “No, I don’t find such things obscene.”

“In that case, why can’t you get in there?”

“Because I am obscene. Well no, in my case, I find it interesting and enjoyable to watch such things as an onlooker, call it voyeurism, peeping or whatever. But if you asked me to do such things in front of people, I suppose I would feel embarrassed, unnatural, self-conscious, and I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. They can see right through my mental framework, and that’s why I would be refused entry.”

“In other words,” said the Team Leader, appearing to have hit upon an idea, “the only earth humans who would be permitted to enter Newdopia are those who have a highly progressive attitude to sex?”

“Well yes, but from the natives’ point of view, that ‘progressive attitude’ would apparently not be progressive at all. That is, people who are said to have a progressive attitude to sex tend to link sexual liberation to anti-establishment movements, rebellion against the ‘old powers’, criticism of government control and the like. From the Newdopians’ point of view, such people cannot really be said to be pursuing or extolling sex acts at all. Apparently there was a member of the Sexual Liberation Alliance in the First Expedition. The Newdopians rejected her because she only wanted to take advantage of their behaviour to justify a low-level social movement. Anyway, she took to her heels and ran when she was approached by a Newdopian man who resembled a bear, I heard.”

“So just what sort of person can get in?” asked the Team Leader in a rather throwaway tone.

“Well, of course, the kind of person who has no metaphysical conception of the sex act, but who at the same time has an endless supply of powerful philanthropic urges towards the sex act itself.”

“In other words, then…” Mogamigawa widened his eyes and raised his voice in a tone of thorough disgust. “Someone who’s happy to have sexual intercourse with any partner, no matter who?!…” He stopped and scratched his head. “Why am I talking so loudly? Despicable. How low have I fallen since coming to this planet!”

The Team Leader suddenly adjusted his position and stared out to space. “Hmm. Well, we have a person of just that description, do we not.”

I looked at the Team Leader aghast. “Surely you don’t mean Yohachi?…”

“Who else,” replied the Team Leader, fixing his gaze on me. “Yohachi is surely the only person at the Base who has the mentality needed to enter Newdopia.”

“Impossible!” Mogamigawa shook his head as if to add, The very idea. “Even if he managed to get in, with his inferior intelligence he wouldn’t discover anything for us at all.”

“However, Dr Mogamigawa,” the Team Leader said abruptly, in a bid to persuade him, “even if he has no knowledge of medicine or biology, surely it isn’t beyond him to ask how they prevent pregnancy?”

“If Yohachi goes to Newdopia, we’ll never see him again,” I said with a grin. “Apart from anything else, Newdopian women are said to be universally beautiful – far beyond the likes of earth women. Didn’t the report say ‘The women were all like angels’?”

“What a banal expression,” said Fukada, turning away.

“Yes, but someone else could go with him,” argued the Team Leader. “He could wait near the Newdopian border and give Yohachi instructions from there. If the information Yohachi brings is unclear, he could be sent back repeatedly until an intelligible answer is received.”

My head sank. “You want me to go, don’t you.”

“Correct,” the Team Leader declared coldly, before turning to Mogamigawa. “And I think a knowledge of bacteriology will come in handy too. Could you accompany them, Doctor?”

Mogamigawa nodded casually. “I could do that. If we take the survey ship, we’ll be there in about an hour.”

“However,” interrupted the Team Leader, shifting uneasily in his seat. “We only have one ship, and it’s currently being used by the geo-mineralogists.”

“So you could contact Dr Nayama and order him to return immediately.”

“In fact, I was speaking to him by telecall just now,” the Team Leader said with a pained expression. “He says they won’t be back for another two days. As you know, he’s an obstinate so-and-so. He won’t take orders from anyone.”

“Of course, you did tell him how urgent the situation is.”

“Of course. But it was like water off a duck’s back. ‘Let her give birth, then just dump the thing somewhere,’ he said.”

“Very amusing,” Mogamigawa said with a sigh. “Then we shall go by hovercar.”

“What?!” I gasped. “The hovercar will only take us as far as Lake Turpitude. It can’t travel over water. And we can’t go round the lake, as there’s the Sea of Newdopia to the north, and sea from the tip of Cape Onania to the south.” As I spoke, I felt rising anger at the studied silence of Dr Fukada. If only he would perform a Caesarean section, this problem would not have existed in the first place. Surgeons were increasingly unable to perform operations manually; as they themselves said, it was all thanks to advances in medical science. But what good are scientific advances if they cause such inconvenience? “If we go, we’ll have to take the hovercar as far as Lake Turpitude, then make some kind of raft from the vegetation around there, cross the lake, go through the marsh to the west of the lake, then walk the remaining twenty or so miles to Newdopia.”

Dr Mogamigawa groaned. “Is that the only way?!” Evidently sharing my thoughts, he turned to glower at Fukada with a look that said, Quack!

Fukada shifted uncomfortably in his seat and attempted to excuse himself. “Of course, I should go. But as you know, I have a bad leg, not to mention my chronic condition.”

“Nobody is asking you to go, my friend,” Mogamigawa said sharply. Fukada cast him a look of petulant indignation, then fell into a sullen silence.

Nobody said anything for a while.

At length, Fukada could take it no longer and rose from his seat. “Well, I have work to do. Excuse me.”

Once our incompetent friend had left the room, the Team Leader let out a huge sigh. In our disgust, Mogamigawa and I had lost all inclination to speak.

The groaning voice of a woman riding on a wave of ecstasy came blowing in on the wind from Mount Mona.

“What an obscene sound,” cursed Mogamigawa. “A mountain that makes a noise like that should be called Mounting Climax, not Mount Mona.” His eyes bulged. “What am I saying?!” He scratched his head. “Dear me. How low have I fallen.”

I took a long puff from my cigarette and started to speak as calmly as I could. “From my one experience of walking from Lake Turpitude to Newdopia and back, it won’t be all that hard to make a raft and walk there. The main reason why I really didn’t want to go there on foot again was because of the nightmarish flora and fauna we encountered on the way. Not to mention their habitats. Of course, I myself should be well-accustomed to the outlandish habitats of bizarre life forms on alien planets. But even I could not remain apathetic to their sheer obscenity, based on scientific interest alone.”

“Er – you needn’t mention that now,” said the Team Leader in some haste.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I have to warn Dr Mogamigawa of these things before we go. It may help to lighten the blow.”

“Are they really so obscene? I’ve heard rumours, but…”

“Well, most of them are plants and creatures that also exist around here, but over there they’ve formed biocenoses to the point of overpopulation. The plants grow in multi-layered communities, among which the animals form complexes while maintaining relationships of peaceful coexistence. For example, species of algae that are only occasionally found in these parts have formed whole communities in Lake Turpitude, which is arguably their physiologically optimal habitat. There’s clingweed and bleedweed, not to mention fondleweed.”

“Not fondleweed! It’s obscene!” Mogamigawa repeatedly banged both fists on the table and contorted his body. “Only recently my wife went to a lake not far from here and bathed in the water. After a few moments she began to look drowsy, and came out looking utterly dissipated. There was fondleweed in that lake! It’s obscene,” he muttered once his agitation had abated. “I should never have brought my wife to such an obscene planet!”

“Lake Turpitude is also full of strange creatures. It’s literally swimming with flatback hippos, eleventh-hour crocodiles, gurgling alligators, and what have you.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“No. They’re not dangerous, but they come and do obscene things. Besides the larger animals, there are also swarms of matchbox jellyfish and other weird creatures. We’ll have to build the raft sturdily, as it’ll be no joke if it capsizes.”

“I’ll wager there’s something in the marsh too. Is there something in the marsh too?” Mogamigawa asked, trembling with trepidation.

“There are communities of forget-me-grass there.”

“Not forget-me-grass! It’s obscene!” Mogamigawa repeatedly banged both fists on the tabletop and contorted his body. “Only recently I was collecting species of grass for culture tests on perforating bacterial pathogens, and that plant was mixed in amongst them. I forgot what culture tests I was supposed to be doing! That was just with one specimen. If we have to cross a whole field of forget-me-grass, who knows what we’ll forget. We might even forget what we’ve gone there for!”

“Perhaps you should make a note of it in advance,” said the Team Leader.

“What if we forget how to read?”

The Team Leader laughed dismissively. “It causes temporary amnesia, not senile dementia! Honestly, it can’t be that bad.”

“Wasn’t there a jungle too?” Mogamigawa looked at me with fear in his eyes. “What’s in the jungle?”

“There are communities of sheath and mantle, characteristic of woodland borders, lying between the jungle and liberated vegetation zones such as fields of forget-me-grass. Mistress bine grows there. It’s a type of lichen that hangs from the branches of the itchy scratchy tree. As for animals in those parts, the main ones are the panting hart, the false-eared rabbit, the grindhog, the gaping hooter and the collapsible cow. For birds we have the penisparrow, for insects the screeching cicada. Unclassified species include the relic pod, and finally, one that’s heard but never seen, the wife waker.”

“Not the wife waker! It’s obscene!” Mogamigawa banged his fists madly on the tabletop and scratched his hair. “If one hears its ghastly cry while in bed at night, one is sure to have an erotic dream! It wakes my wife, then she wakes me. I should never have brought her to such an obscene planet!” He put his head in his hands.

Serves you right for not trusting her on earth, I thought.

Mogamigawa lifted his head. “And what’s in the jungle ahead of that?” He was gripping the edge of the table with both hands. “Some unspeakable abominations, I suppose?”

“Actually, I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “The first time I went, it was a research trip and we weren’t in such a hurry. The jungle was dark and eerily foreboding, even during the day. It was like a pandora’s box – we had no way of knowing what ghastly horrors it might hold. We certainly weren’t brave enough to go in, so we made a detour.”

“‘Dark and eerily foreboding’. ‘Pandora’s box’. ‘Ghastly horrors’. Must you use such provocative expressions?” the Team Leader said in grouchy irritation. “You’re an ecologist, aren’t you? Where’s your spirit of enquiry?! Not only will these be the very places to find clues for elucidating habitats, but they’re also treasure troves of new species for alien biology, are they not?”

Go yourself then, I thought, casting him a reproachful glance.

“And this time I suppose we’ll have to go straight through it,” Mogamigawa said dolefully.

The Team Leader turned to face him, nodding vigorously. “Yes! Yes! But even then, you’re sure to make some new discoveries!”

I had to agree. Too many, if anything.

By the time we’d discussed other details, such as our itinerary and what to take with us, dawn had broken. First, a pink sun appeared over the distant horizon beyond our window, then, about fifteen minutes later, the orange sun we’d seen setting earlier also started to rise from the same point. These two formed a ‘spectroscopic binary’, two stars that look like one from a distance, with a very small interval between them. The pink sun was the principal star, the orange one the companion. Though slightly different in colour, when seen side by side they looked just like a pair of woman’s breasts. This earnt them a variety of names, among them ‘golden globes’, ‘heavenly orbs’, and ‘cupid’s kettledrums’.

Mogamigawa and I decided to spend the two hours of daylight making preparations, then to catch some sleep for the ensuing two hours of night. We knew we would need to store up energy in advance, as sleeping would not always be an option on our journey. The Team Leader had already called Yohachi and handed him his weighty mission. Needless to say, Yohachi was delighted.

It was still dark when I stepped out of my research laboratory after less than two hours of sleep. Outside the Centre, Yohachi was already loading baggage onto the hovercar while Mogamigawa shouted instructions.

“Look here! Load those more carefully, would you? Look, that case is full of culture-medium slides! Don’t put the microscope at the bottom, man! Put food at the bottom!”

My own baggage consisted of a single collecting case containing insect jars, dissection equipment and the like. I had wanted to take a trapping cage for small animals too, but it would have been impossible to carry such things on foot. For detailed study, I could borrow Dr Mogamigawa’s sophisticated electron microscope.

The three of us boarded the hovercar in front of the Team Leader, who had come out to see us off. I would drive, with Mogamigawa in the passenger seat next to me and Yohachi in the back with the baggage. I switched on the repulsion force engine, whereupon the vehicle rose about three feet off the ground.

“Take care now,” the Team Leader said perfunctorily. “I look forward to a splendid catch.”

Mogamigawa snorted. “And you, sir, look after things while we’re away. If Shimazaki gives birth before we return, watch that quack of a doctor, will you? If you leave him to his own devices, there’s no knowing what he’ll get up to.”

I turned the vehicle due west and started off. It was an easy drive, as there was little rainfall in this area and the terrain consisted mainly of savannah-type grassland. Our frequent visits to the lake to fetch water had created a natural pathway, along which the hovercar sped at 100mph. Soon the golden globes rose over the horizon, and the suns started to shine down on us in the open-topped vehicle. There was no wind, the air was warm. Tall frizzly acacias grew here and there, while screeching cicadas – little insects like caddis flies – shrieked and whooped gaily around the treetops. Small crimson birds called penisparrows populated the air. The penisparrow was a terribly obscene bird whose head bore a striking resemblance to a penis. Meanwhile, the unclassifiable species known as the relic pod hung from the lower branches of the frizzly acacias.

“The weather’s fair, the air is fresh,” said Dr Mogamigawa. “If only we could ignore all these loathsome plants and creatures, it would actually feel quite pleasant out here.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The temperature’s comfortable, humidity’s low, we’re perfectly content and healthy, the scenery is good, the time is morning, about ten in the morning, frizzly acacias flutter in the breeze, penisparrows dance in the air, screeching cicadas shriek and whoop, relic pods hang from the branches, the golden globes reign in the heavens. All in all, a truly obscene world.”

As I finished speaking, I laughed aloud. Mogamigawa looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Sorry. It started going funny in the middle.”

“A word of caution. We are scientists. Please take care to retain your sanity at all times.”

Personally, I was more concerned about his sanity from now on, but I kept that thought to myself.

As we approached Lake Turpitude, the ground became increasingly covered with ferns and gymnosperms. The smaller ones included bric-a-bracken, cloven hare’s foot, black-and-whitebeam, animephedra and sagging palm. Larger ones included the foolhardy tree-fern and the burly sequoia. Besides these, there were numerous clusters of ferns and tree ferns that had yet to be named, either by previous expeditions or by Dr Shimazaki.

Mogamigawa alighted from the hovercar, which I’d brought to a halt just ahead of the lake, and surveyed the scene around him. “What a plethora of fern species,” he said.

“Dr Shimazaki says it’s adaptive radiation of flora. Ferns have specialized into many different forms, and there are now several thousand species, apparently.”

“That must make them difficult to name. Of course, Dr Shimazaki would never give them obscene names, would she.” Mogamigawa looked out over the deep green surface of the lake, which remained ominously quiet for now. “I wonder why they had to specialize to that degree. In such a narrow geographical area.”

“Well,” I said, tilting my head. “If they were animals, I could think of a plausible explanation, judging from the environment. Since most of the higher vertebrates around here are herbivores, it may have something to do with their eating habits.”

“Are we going to build this raft then?” asked Yohachi.

“Oh yes. Could you fetch the electronic saw?”

“It’ll take a while, mate,” he said resentfully. “The other gentleman put all his own things on top. The saw is right at the bottom.”

“Look here! Stop moaning and get a bloody move on!” Mogamigawa bellowed. “Tempus fugit, man! What’ll we do if the suns set while we’re still on the lake?!”

Yohachi and I started cutting wood. There were various species of pine and cedar, which the members of the expedition had half-jokingly named supine, overcedar, and so on. But those would have taken too long to fell, so we concentrated on cutting tree ferns, which we bound together with rope to form a rectangular raft about twelve foot square. By the time we’d transferred the baggage onto the raft, camouflaged the hovercar under fronds of fern and launched the raft onto the lake, the suns had already started to set.

“Only thirty minutes to nightfall!” said Mogamigawa in dismay as he eyed his wristwatch, having done nothing himself but constantly hustle and bellow at us. “Can we cross to the other side in thirty minutes?”

“Yes, if we all use our poles together,” I replied with an ironic grin.

He pulled a sullen face. “Are you expecting me to use my pole?”

“Yeah, just like you do with your wife every night,” Yohachi whispered in my ear.

We had brought three collapsible plastic poles with which to propel the raft. We extended them to a length of about fifteen feet, took one each and climbed aboard. As we pushed our poles into the edges and bottom of the lake, pockets of air came bubbling up to the water’s surface around the raft, accompanied by a reddish-brown mud. We pulled away from the lake’s edge.

Every now and again, blood-red algae would come up entangled on our poles.

“That’s bleedweed,” I said. “Makes my skin crawl every time I see it.”

“If there’s so much bleedweed here, there must also be a good number of matchbox jellyfish,” Mogamigawa said as he cackhandedly manoeuvred his pole. “They’ll be surfacing any moment now.”

Before I could say “Well postulated,” a swarm of rectangular jellyfish that resembled large translucent matchboxes came floating up to the surface and eagerly huddled around our raft belly-side up, mouths agape and tentacles swaying.

“Swimming upside down as usual. What an obscene creature.”

“Also known as the jacuzzi or missionary jellyfish.”

“I did some research on these once,” said Mogamigawa. “They have ectodermal reproductive glands and appear to eat bleedweed, as well as various species of vegetable plankton.”

“Do they sting?” asked Yohachi.

“Well, considering how very obscene they are, they’re obviously going to sting, aren’t they,” said Mogamigawa, staring at Yohachi maliciously. “Why not try grabbing one?”

“They only sting before reproducing,” I explained to Yohachi, then turned back to Mogamigawa. “And when they do, it doesn’t really hurt but is a rather pleasant feeling. Why do you think that is?”

“That’s precisely my point,” he replied sourly. “Their pre-reproductive nematocysts contain poison, like that of earth jellyfish. I’m analysing this poison now, but it seems somehow to display anaphylaxis. That is, the first sting only has a mild effect on the ejaculatory centre, but with increased frequency the resistivity is lowered, finally leading to ejaculation. It’s the opposite of immunity.”

“Have you tried it out?” I said with a snort of laughter. “Oh. Sorry.”

Mogamigawa gave me a murderous look.

“Let’s catch a few of them, then!” said Yohachi.

A gentle splish-splashing noise could be heard. I looked back towards the shore, which was already about fifty yards behind us.

One by one, a colony of gurgling alligators, which appeared to have been basking on mudflats some distance from our launch point, were starting to slip into the lake.

“Do you think they’re coming after us?” Mogamigawa said anxiously.

“But of course,” I answered as I vigorously thrust my pole down to the bottom of the lake. “And in some numbers. Let’s make haste!”

The alligators, somewhat smaller than the earth variety, started to approach our raft in groups. Although some seemed to have concealed themselves underwater, dozens of them swam just under the water’s surface, showing only the tips of their snouts, their eyes and the tops of their bony backs, which resembled dorsal fins. They closed in on us at speed, making no sound in the water except the lazy gurgling noise of breath flapping out of their nostrils.

“If they all come here, the raft will capsize!” Mogamigawa shrieked while frantically working his pole. “What do they want from us?!”

“Our chastity,” I replied. “They have a habit of mating with other species.”

“If they drag us underwater we’ll drown!” Mogamigawa wailed. “Isn’t there anything we can do? How did you get over this last time?”

“By getting to the other side quickly. The opposite shore is the territory of eleventh-hour crocodiles…”

Just at that moment, the alligators approaching underwater must have risen to the surface, for the raft suddenly listed to one side. We all lurched with it.

Mogamigawa crouched down on the surface of the raft to prevent himself from falling. “These must all be females, then?” he asked.

“Some are male, some female,” I answered, also squatting on the raft. I had hurriedly withdrawn my pole, which they’d tried to wrench from my grasp with their gaping mouths, and was now holding on to it for dear life. “They can’t tell the gender of other species, so they just try to mate with them anyway.”

“But it’s usually only the male that displays courtship!”

“Yes, but on this planet both males and females display courtship. We know that attractants such as sex pheromones have hardly any effect between individuals of the same species, which means that they don’t mate much among themselves. They compensate for this with a strange innate releasing mechanism, whereby they chase other species as if hunting prey.”

“Won’t the species then become extinct?”

“No. Excessive inbreeding is more likely to cause extinction. Especially on this planet, where the animals have hardly any natural enemies.”

“Why don’t we try it out?” said Yohachi, using his pole to bash an alligator as it tried to crawl onto the raft. “It might feel good.”

“Idiot. If it’s a male, your anus will be ripped apart,” I said, then gasped in relief when I saw the opposite shore only thirty feet away. “Thank God! Eleventh-hour crocodiles!”

Slightly larger than the gurgling alligators, groups of eleventh-hour crocodiles were crawling into the lake from swamps near the shore.

Pushed up from below by the alligators’ snouts, our raft continued to tilt wildly. We clung onto our baggage to avoid being shaken off, and waited for the eleventh-hour crocodiles to arrive.

“But it’s out of the frying pan into the fire, isn’t it?” said Mogamigawa, shaking with fear.

“We’ll escape while they’re fighting,” I replied.

The eleventh-hour crocodile at the head of the group snapped at one of the gurgling alligators. The pair corkscrewed their bodies and leapt six feet into the air as they grappled with each other. A massive spray of water flew up, and at last, the mother of all battles started around our raft.

“Now!” I yelled.

We desperately worked our poles to escape from the carnage.

“That’s quite a battle,” said Mogamigawa, turning back to watch the action goggle-eyed. “Many of them will surely die.”

“No. What you’re seeing is a ‘ritual contest’, as they say in ethology. It’s the same as when males of earth species fight over the females. The difference on this planet is that they’re not fighting over females but over the spectators, creatures of other species that simply watch the action from the side. They’re waiting to yield their chastity to the victors.” I was punting along for all I was worth, but let out a cry when I saw the far bank approaching. “Oh no! What a fool I’ve been! There’s a pod of flatback hippos near here!”

Mogamigawa raised his voice in alarm. “Those unearthly creatures?! Good God, it’ll be no joke if we’re ravished by them! Which way should we go?”

“Let’s skirt the shore southwards. Hey, Yohachi – look out!”

Before I could finish, a number of flatback hippos surfaced around the raft, showing only their flat rectangular backs.

“Take that!” I shouted.

“Take that!” yelled Yohachi.

“And take your bestial desires with you!” added Mogamigawa.

We thrust our poles into the backs of the flatback hippos in a mad frenzy. Their soft backs were covered with fine crêpe-like wrinkles resembling the mesh of a reed mat. With each manly thrust, the ends of our poles would penetrate the skin and slide into the thick fat on their backs. But it didn’t appear to hurt the hippos at all, for they continued to close in on our raft undeterred, oblivious of their gaping wounds. A very small quantity of white fat oozed out of the round holes made in their backs by the poles. As I continued to thrust, I wondered if perhaps they actually enjoyed having this done to them…

The hippos’ backs now had so many holes in them that they began to resemble honeycombs, a truly sickening sight. I decided to stop thrusting the pole and started smashing them over the head with it instead. But merely being hit on the head wasn’t going to make these hippos desist. They continued to look up at us ruefully, their eyes bloodshot with carnal lust, some diving down below the raft while others waited for a chance to crawl up onto it.

“Aaargh!” Yohachi had plunged his pole into a hippo’s back with such force that he was unable to pull it out again. As he clung to the end of the pole, he was lifted off the raft and hoisted about three feet into the air vertically above the hippo’s back. “HELPPPP!!!” he cried, eyeballs bulging.

Our raft, surrounded on three sides by flatback hippos, was gradually buffeted along the shore away from Yohachi. The hippo that had Yohachi on its back also continued to chase, but lagged somewhat behind the others under Yohachi’s weight. The gap between us gradually widened as a result, though we remained at the same distance from the shore.

“Is it all right to leave him like that?” Mogamigawa asked.

“The main thing is for us to reach the shore,” I replied. “Then we can throw him a rope.”

At that moment, one of the hippos must have stood on all fours in the shallows directly beneath us, for the raft started to tilt at an acute angle.

“As I thought – we should have made the raft of pine or cedar,” I shouted, frantically gathering up the baggage to stop it falling into the water. “We’ll be up a creek if we fall off now. The water round here is full of fondleweed!”

“But we’re men, and we’re wearing trousers, are we not? We will surely not be fondled so vigorously,” said Mogamigawa. “This is no good at all. We’ll capsize at this rate. You take the machinery and equipment, and I’ll take the food. If the raft capsizes, we’ll wade ashore with the bags on our backs. We’ll just have to force our way through the fondleweed. Audere est facere, my friend!”

“Right.”

The raft moved closer to the shore. Dusk was starting to close in.

With the flatback hippos still standing beneath us, the raft had tilted to an angle of about forty degrees. We slid down its surface with the baggage on our backs, landing thigh-deep in water.

“Run! Run or be fondled!” Mogamigawa hollered as he started to race bow-legged through the water. I followed behind. The flatback hippos were still grouped on the other side of the raft, and as they could only waddle through the shallows with their slow thumping feet, there was no danger of them catching us.

We reached the shore safely without being molested by fondleweed, then turned back in relief to look at the lake. The flatback hippos had given up chasing us. Instead, they were now homing in on Yohachi from all sides. Some started to clamber up onto the hippo that had Yohachi’s pole stuck in its back.

“Quick, fetch the rope!”

I went to get the rope out of the baggage, but it was too late. Yohachi’s trousers, along with his pants, were instantly snapped off by the gargantuan mouths of the flatback hippos.

“That’s it – I’m off!” Yohachi shrieked. He boldly leapt off the pole and bounded towards us, completely naked from the waist down, using the heads and backs of the hippos as stepping stones, then plunged straight into the lake and began to run towards us waist-high in water.

I braced myself. “Hey – he’s running through the fondleweed…”

“Come on, he’s a man! Even if it fondles him, it won’t be that bad.”

No sooner Mogamigawa had spoken than Yohachi started to slow down. His eyes assumed a haunted look, and he gasped oppressively as he walked the next two or three steps. Then a half-smile came over his face as he issued a loud cry, bent his head backwards, and in that pose fell flat on his face in the water.

“It’s got him!” Mogamigawa shouted aghast. “The fool! He should have kept his trousers on!”

As I watched, I shook at the horrible thought of what the swarming fondleweed might be doing to Yohachi under the water. The surface started to bubble feverishly, then Yohachi’s face appeared, followed by his upper body. He started towards us with an expression of complete exhaustion, staggered up onto the shore with white trails of semen hanging from his still erect member, and collapsed at the water’s edge panting furiously.

“I wonder why the flatback hippos remain unharmed by this fondleweed,” Mogamigawa mused as I nursed Yohachi. “They eat fondleweed, so they must always be physically surrounded by it.”

“No, even the flatback hippos are fondled. Or to be more exact, they only know where their food is when it starts to fondle them. Of course, they must have the occasional orgasm while they eat.”

“Really? Now I begin to understand,” Mogamigawa said with a nod. “Once, Dr Shimazaki asked me to test the water quality near a spot where fondleweed grows. There I discovered large quantities of helical bacteria breeding on protein, potassium and calcium. The fondleweed evidently absorbs these substances once they’ve been degraded into inorganic matter and excreted by those bacteria.”

“So the process goes something like this. First, fondleweed fondles the flatback hippos, and the males ejaculate. Bacteria reproduce by eating the protein and other substances in their semen. The fondleweed then absorbs the degraded excretions of the bacteria and transforms them into vegetable protein, which the hippos eat. In other words, it’s a tripartite regenerative cycle – right?”

“Well, yes, although of course there are other species of bacteria that live on the excretions of the flatback hippos.”

Undeterred by Mogamigawa’s challenging expression, I continued to argue in the growing belief that we were about to make a discovery – a clue to understanding the laws that governed ecosystems on this planet. “On the other hand, since fondleweed forces the flatback hippos to ejaculate, this must create environmental resistance to increases in population size, weakening the fecundity of the species as a whole. This in turn provides negative feedback that prevents the fondleweed from being completely consumed by the hippos. In other words, what we have here is a regulating biotope for these three species. After all, with no pronounced seasonal variation in climate on this planet, organisms would go through population explosions followed immediately by extinction if left unchecked, wouldn’t they.”

“You seem overhasty in your desire to make judgements, but you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, my friend. Even if that happened to be true in this case, don’t forget that this is merely a single cybernetic system within the wide, open space of an entire planet. We don’t know how it links with others.”

As Mogamigawa continued to speak with his customary glare, Yohachi tottered shakily to his feet.

“I think I’m all right now,” he said.

“So you should be. Pull yourself together, man. What’s two or three ejaculations?!” said Mogamigawa.

Yohachi gave him a withering look. “Anyone else would have passed out, or even died. I came seven or eight times!”

The suns had already set. But for us, it was time to be on the move, as we had to cross the marsh right away. It would have been sheer lunacy, after all, to go through that dark and eerily foreboding jungle at night.

We let Yohachi carry most of the baggage, while we ourselves took only the experimental observation equipment that we thought might come in handy on the way. With that, we entered the marsh. I took the lead with Mogamigawa following behind.

“Anyway,” I said as I walked on ahead, “the relationship between those alligators, the matchbox jellyfish and the bleedweed could also be seen as part of a multi-species regenerative system similar to that of the flatback hippos and the fondleweed, could it not. Unlike the earth varieties, the alligators are not carnivores but eat bleedweed and other algae. And besides, they’re mammals, aren’t they? What completely ridiculous names the expedition members gave these creatures. The false-eared rabbit isn’t even a rabbit, for Christ’s sake!”

“Well, there are still cases of such risible names being fabricated by amateurs. More than that, though, aren’t nearly all the higher vertebrates on this planet mammals? What happened to all the lower-order reptiles, amphibians, et cetera? Did they all die out like the giant reptiles on earth during the Mesozoic, do you think?”

I was stuck for words. If I’d said what I’d been thinking for a while now, it was certain that Mogamigawa would once again look at me as if I’d lost my mind.

I changed the subject in the nick of time. “However, the very fact that most species of higher-order animals are mammals and, although very different in appearance, are so similar as to be related to each other, means that mating between species is possible, even if they can’t actually reproduce. Although of course, if a small animal like the false-eared rabbit were to mate with one of those flatback hippos, it would probably die of organ rupture.”

“I wonder if the hippos actually go looking for other animals to have it off with,” Yohachi said loudly as he walked along at the rear, a mountain of baggage piled high on his back. “After all, they’re always being done over by that fondleweed, aren’t they. And by the way, it’s really fantastic being done over by that fondleweed.”

“What Yohachi just said is correct,” I continued regardless. “All higher-order vertebrates have an innate releasing mechanism that incorporates the activity of mating with individuals of other species. However, flatback hippos usually herd together with individuals of the same species, and the expression of the mechanism is suppressed by the fondleweed. In any case, many species would be killed if the hippos mated with them. The mechanism is only released through stimulation when higher vertebrates of other species approach them.”

“Why is it,” Mogamigawa groaned, “that all higher-order vertebrates on this planet are essentially programmed with an obscene and moreover unproductive urge to mate with any partner they find? You seem to be saying that it’s somehow incorporated in their genes as information.” He spoke in a muffled, lewd tone, and seemed to be twisting his lips as he continued. “What’s more, they’re all so remarkably similar to common earth animals, like the hippopotamus, alligator, rabbit or cow. That makes them seem even more obscene, to us earth humans. Why is that, I wonder.”

“Well, I don’t know about ‘obscene’, but as a phenomenon it’s probably adaptive concentration. To give an example, long ago on earth there were lower-order marsupials that lived only in Australia and surrounding areas. In other words, they only developed after the separation from Eurasia, and underwent adaptive radiation in that isolated location. There they diverged into a variety of forms. However, each of these creatures, known as epitherians, was amazingly close in appearance to higher-order eutherians that existed in other parts of the world. It was a process of parallel evolution. For example, a kangaroo resembles a jumping hare, a Tasmanian tiger-wolf is much like a wolf, a northern marsupial mole is akin to a mole, a koala is likened to a bear, a rabbit-eared bandicoot could be mistaken for a rabbit, a common brushtail possum is not unlike a fox, a dasyure is uncannily similar to a cat, an opossum resembles a mouse, and so on. Though completely different species, the only visible difference between them is that the former have pouches while the latter don’t. Now that we’ve started making scientific surveys on other planets, Professor Fujioni Ishiwara claims that this adaptive radiation or adaptive concentration, or whatever, is linked to genetic-information carriers in life forms on each planet, and has a vastly broad scope of application. I’m opposed to his theory on the Law of Universal Orthogenesis, though.”

“I asked why they’re so obscene,” Mogamigawa said with more than a hint of irritation. “Just as all marsupials are characterized by having a pouch, all the life forms on this planet are characterized as being obscene. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying they’re not obscene!” I said caustically, growing more than a little irritated myself. “If anything, I’d say the characteristics of this planet are that all higher vertebrates are herbivores and that there is a complete absence of a food chain here. Not only are there no predators, but also, since population sizes are stable, there is very little conflict between individuals of the same species, i.e. mutual interference. That’s how I’d characterize the characteristics! There again, it might have nothing to do with population size, but the fact that these species have absolutely no aggression.”

“Ludicrous! What species has no aggression?!” Mogamigawa ranted, parading his basic knowledge of ethology. “If they lose their aggression they will also lose relationships between individuals. If relationships between individuals disappear, they won’t even be able to reproduce. The same is also true of humans, after all.”

“Ah, but this planet is special in that respect,” I countered. “I believe the aggressive impulse is incorporated in the erotic here. Think about it. Animals often bite each other’s necks when copulating, or chase or grapple with each other in foreplay, don’t they. In other words, they do things that, at first sight, seem like aggression when mating. So wouldn’t you agree it’s impossible to make a clear distinction between the two impulses? And for the animals on this planet, the erotic impulse is amplified, since there’s no need to show aggression, either to heterogeneous or to homogeneous individuals. So they try to mate with individuals of both types.”

“Huh. Freudian dualism,” Mogamigawa snapped. “You take a classic theory like that and apply it to the animal kingdom! And you believe all that, do you?”

“Not all of it, naturally!” I snapped back. “But if I could say one thing, the destructive impulse revealed by Freud in his later years, well, Freud wasn’t even serious about that himself. But he came up with a bipolar theory because there were some things he couldn’t explain with libido alone.”

“And so you postulate the existence of animals that have nothing but erotic desires? Fool!” he roared. “You’ve been tainted by the obscenity of the creatures on this planet!”

“The obscene thing again?!” I roared back. “Are bacteria not obscene, then?”

“Bacteria are not obscene! What are you talking about?! The bacteria on this planet are the same as those on earth. They’re not obscene in the slightest. They reproduce homogeneously, as they should, and if we attempt successive subculture of multiple species, they fight each other, as they should, and the losers are wiped out. That is as it should be. Or what are you saying? That your Jungian theory also applies to the bacteria on this planet?!”

“It’s not Jungian! It’s… someone else-ian…”

“Well, it matters not, but why doesn’t, what, the thing that only affects higher-order animals, why doesn’t it affect bacteria too? See! You’ve got it all wrong. Habitual… whatsit… would have to be, as it were, interrupted… and all that. Wouldn’t you see that as odd?”

“But bacteria and those, what was it, higher, yes, higher-order thingies, they’re different… aren’t they?”

“No, they’re not!”

“I’m not saying that, you know, everything on this… on this planet has to be… kind of… uniform… the… you know, genetic stuff… it doesn’t have to be the same…”

“And that’s what’s odd, is what I’m saying.”

“That’s right. It’s odd.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hold on. What exactly were we talking about?”

We somehow sensed that something was not quite right and, without knowing what it was, stopped dead in our tracks. We flashed our torches at the dimly star-lit scene around us.

“It’s a field,” I mumbled. “We’re in a field of that, you know, what-do-you-call-it.”

“Forget-me-grass,” said Yohachi.

“Let’s get out of here!” wailed Mogamigawa as he dashed past me, stumbling over the weeds and hollows in the ground as he went. “If we stay here doing… what-not… then we’ll… whatever!”

“That, you know, that thing, it’s gradually getting more, you know!”

I had a vague feeling that we’d been arguing about something, but I couldn’t remember what it was about. Proof enough that we were in the middle of a community of forget-me-grass. Our powers of thought or memory were rapidly disappearing – what could be more unsettling than that? I quickened my pace until I was virtually running.

We continued for about a mile after emerging from the field. The Algernon effect had receded, but our amnesia remained. By the time our memories at last started to return, dawn had broken and the golden globes were already in full view. Trees grew sparsely in the surrounding terrain, false-eared rabbits hopped in and out of the undergrowth, and the odd collapsible cow stood munching grass here and there.

“Er, Doctor,” I called out to Mogamigawa, who still walked on ahead.

“Yes,” he answered in apparent relief. His voice was soft, quite in contrast to his previous tone. “Would you like to continue our discussion?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I see. Well, debate is certainly important, is it not.”

“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.”

“So what’s behind the name, then?”

“Nursery spider? It was named by a chap called Hatsumi, a member of the First Expedition. He loved making puns, and it was he who named most of the species on this planet. But he came across so many bizarre life forms that, when quizzed about the names back on earth, he often couldn’t remember why he’d named them.”

“How thoroughly irresponsible.”

“Indeed. But there must be some meaning behind the name.”

We heard a flapping, rustling noise of something violently beating the leaves of the trees above us. A flying creature skimmed over our heads, its large warm body smacking against my instinctively raised hand.

“Graarrghh!” the thing squawked, then fell to the ground and scuttled off into the undergrowth.

“A penisparrow!” Yohachi shouted in amazement. “A whopping great penisparrow! The size of a cat! The king of all penisparrows!”

“No. That wasn’t a penisparrow,” I said, still somewhat stunned. “It had fur, and its call was different too. It either glides by stretching the skin on its sides like a flying squirrel, or else it has membrane wings like a chiropteran, I’d say.”

“I don’t believe it,” Mogamigawa muttered grumpily. “We keep seeing creatures that do nothing but support your famous regression theory!”

I was little inclined to go over the whole regression theory again. On the other hand, if we had something to debate, perhaps we could distract our minds from our mounting terror. So I started again. “The regression theory is difficult to establish because it assumes that humans suddenly appeared out of nothing. But let’s say the Newdopians are intelligent humanoid beings that came here from some other planet. By that I don’t mean some major species migration, but something like, well, you remember back in the Second Green Revolution on earth, when all those obnoxious hippies were herded onto spaceships and banished beyond our galaxy. The Newdopians could be their descendants.”

“Based on what, pray?”

“Based on the fact that they haven’t spread all over this planet but are limited to one location. Perhaps they knew about their ancestors, and for that very reason predicted that, sooner or later, intelligent life forms similar to themselves would visit them from another planet. That’s why they created a proper country as they have done here. They did refuse us entry, after all. And we may not be the first beings to have visited Newdopia from another planet.”

“And you’re saying that all the mammals on this planet could have regressed from them?”

“That’s right. I mean, look at those!” I indicated a group of three gaping hooters sitting in line on a nearby tree, flaring their exposed nostrils as they looked down at us. “Give them noses, and they’d look just like Newdopians, don’t you think?”

“Well, I’ve only seen the natives on photographs. But hold on – what about the flora then? Are you saying they existed on this planet from the beginning?”

“Yes, at least the algae. And there were probably also fauna, up to about the stage of multi-cell protozoa. It’s conceivable that the original ancestors of the Newdopians carried food provisions in the form of chlorella or such like. They must also have brought parasites with them. That would explain the discontinuity between higher-and lower-order fauna, and the fact that there are many gymnosperms but only two or three species of angiosperm among the flora. In other words, the fauna have not yet regressed as far as reptiles or fish, while the flora have yet to evolve as far as angiosperms.”

“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t explain anything of the sort,” said Mogamigawa. “Otherwise how can you accommodate the screeching cicada, an insect? Also, considering your adaptive radiation of gymnosperms, it’s abnormal for there to be so few species of higher order vertebrates. If they’re all mating so heterogeneously, I would have expected new species equipped with genetic plasticity to be crawling all over the place. And there’s also the puzzle of how the fecundity of the Newdopians and higher vertebrates is kept in check, inter alia.”

“Actually, the screeching cicada is merely an extremely primitive form of insect, despite the name. On earth it would be about the equivalent of the protoblattaria or primitive cockroaches that appeared in the Carboniferous period. Whether it evolved from a crustacean, or from one of the earliest arthropods like the trilobite, it must have subdivided into various forms when it came up on dry land. As such, we should see other types of insects here. I don’t know why that’s not so, but I’d say the most plausible explanation is that all the other primitive insects died out, for some reason, leaving only the screeching cicadas to adapt and survive. It may sound ridiculous, but their cry so resembles the shrieking voices of young women that it sounds highly erotic, and this may have helped them adapt to the overriding ambience of eroticism on this planet. Their cry so intensely stimulates sexual urges, you see.”

“It’s unscientific, I admit, but I’ve also started to feel the same way. I mean, this planet may be a world in which only indecent life forms are allowed to exist,” Mogamigawa said with a sigh, seeming to lack energy after his violation by mistress bine.

“Sssh!”

I signalled to Mogamigawa and Yohachi to keep their heads down, and hid myself in a thicket of evergreen fern. Beyond the thicket lay an open clearing that appeared to be the dead centre of the jungle. There, a number of animals were writhing around in highly furtive activity.

“Are they mating?” whispered Mogamigawa, who’d crawled along the ground to join me.

“Clearly.”

“The female resembles a small bear…”

“And the male looks like a mountain goat. The other two seem to be a cross between a tapir and a pig.”

“What are they doing?”

“Waiting their turn, probably,” I answered, sickened by the sheer outlandishness of it. “I’ve never seen any of these before. They must live permanently in the jungle. I can’t remember hearing names that would answer to any of them, either.”

“I doubt such an obscene sight could be found on any other planet,” muttered Mogamigawa with a look of nausea. He hurriedly started to crawl back. “Let’s be off. I don’t wish to see any more of this.”

Noticing the sound of rustling leaves as Mogamigawa brushed against the evergreen ferns, the two creatures that resembled tapir-pigs reared up on their hind legs and turned towards us.

“Oh no! They’ve spotted us!” exclaimed Yohachi.

The two tapir-pigs both sported massive erections. No sooner had they discovered us than their bloodshot eyes started to glisten, as if they assumed us to be new objects for their sexual gratification. They began to waddle towards us on hind legs, hips jerking and lower bellies thrust forwards, revealing their swollen members. Their appearance reminded me of a certain type of middle-aged man who’s so starved of physical affection that he turns into a sex-crazed monster. Nothing could be more repugnant to the eyes.

I set aside my fear and prepared to run. But the blood drained from my face when I saw another seven or eight animals suddenly emerge from the undergrowth around the dead centre. The tapir-pigs weren’t the only ones that had been waiting their turn to mate – these others had also been lying in the thickets quietly biding their time. They were all creatures that I’d never seen before in the two months since I’d been on this planet. One looked like a horse, another resembled a dog, another an elephant, another a sloth and another looked like nothing on earth. The weirdest of them all resembled a massive gaping hooter, but was even closer in appearance to a human. They all stood on hind legs, displaying erect penises and panting heavily as they yielded themselves to their burning carnal desires and started to approach us. No words could describe the dread that filled us at that moment.

“Naargh!”

“Hyaargh!”

“Here they come!”

We started to run for all we were worth. It was as if we were being pursued by the demons of vengeance for spying on the Walpurgis night feast. We felt like dead men already, and had lost all sense of our bearings. All we could do was to keep running, gasping and wheezing for breath as we imagined what might happen to us if we stopped or fell, those demonic beasts ravishing us from behind, their blood-red members thrust deep inside of us. Just when it seemed that our hearts would leap out of our mouths, it was Mogamigawa who at last flopped down onto the ground in exhaustion, then Yohachi on top of him, and finally myself on top of the two of them.

“Nooooooooooooo!” Mogamigawa, evidently mistaking us for the beasts, leapt up waving his arms about madly like a man in the throes of death, and tried to run off again. He was about to collide with an itchy scratchy tree that stood in his path, but howled with fright when he saw its trunk. “Wha! Gnngggnngg! Frphhhghh! Drrgrrrnnn!” No words of significance would emerge from his mouth.

A tapir-pig had become entangled in mistress bine on the trunk of the itchy scratchy tree, and had died as it remained fastened there. Its exposed face had started to decompose and its eyeballs had fallen out. We shuddered at the ghastly sight of its agonized features, and slumped to the ground petrified with terror.

“That’s odd,” I said with a tilt of my head when I’d recovered my senses and found my tongue again. I pointed at the carcass of the dead tapir-pig. “Mistress bine only has gripping force initially, but eventually it relaxes its hold. So a creature as large as that should be able to disengage itself easily. And anyway, this individual is a male. Surely, the animal would have lost its usefulness once it had released its protein, and the mistress bine would have returned to its usual dangling state…”

“Perhaps he gave himself up voluntarily?” suggested Yohachi. “Perhaps he got such an unbearable itch from the itchy scratchy tree, and because he didn’t have a partner, went to rub himself on the plant. Then he couldn’t stop doing it, and as more and more of the plants came to give him one, he eventually used up all his energy and died. That’s what I reckon.”

“Hmm. You may have something there,” I said, looking him up and down. “But what made you think that?”

“I dunno,” he laughed. “That itchy scratchy tree has been making me itch like hell for a while now. I wouldn’t mind getting tangled up in that plant myself!”

“You’ve already ejaculated seven or eight times and still you say that?!” said Mogamigawa with a frown. “How utterly disgusting!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if all the animals in this jungle, including the ones that were mating just now, have their sexual desire aroused by the itchy scratchy tree,” I said with a nod to Mogamigawa as I got up. “It’s just one big orgy around here. Let’s get out, quick!”

In the blind panic of our flight, we’d strayed off our linear course through the jungle. I set off once more at the head of the group with compass in hand.

As we continued to push on westwards, we stumbled across a truly heart-rending scene. A female gaping hooter had collapsed at the foot of a sagging fern palm and, with thighs spread wide, was in the process of giving birth. The baby’s blood-drenched head and shoulders were already protruding outside the mother’s body. I stopped walking and lowered my head to watch.

Mogamigawa edged close to me and whispered in my ear. “Aren’t we right in the middle of an animal trail here? Why give birth in such a wide-open space, when it doesn’t even live here?”

“Because it has no natural enemies, of course,” I replied. “But look at the baby’s head! It doesn’t look anything like a gaping hooter – it’s a much larger creature. More like a hybrid between a gaping hooter and that bear-like thing we saw earlier.”

“The mother’s certainly having a hard time of it.”

“Yes. The baby’s too big and she will probably die. Look how badly she’s bleeding.”

“In that case, the baby will also die. There’ll be no mother to feed it, and no surrogate mother either, as it’s a hybrid.”

“Yes, naturally.” I stretched my back, then went over to examine the newborn before turning back to Dr Mogamigawa. “Hybrids like this must be born and die all the time in this jungle. Poor wretches! Right, let’s be on our way. It’ll be dark soon.”

“Wait a minute!” yelled Mogamigawa, placing his palm on my chest to hold me back. “Take a look at that!”

A nursery spider, hanging on a thread that emerged from its backside, came sliding down from the trees directly above the prostrate body of the dying mother. We watched its behaviour closely, wondering what it was planning to do.

Though a mammal, the nursery spider seemed to have a number of silk-spinning glands in its backside, from which it produced a silk-like thread. This thread must have been formed by mucus secreted from those glands, instantly congealing on contact with air, and was found on closer observation to consist of several strands. If there were only one, it would have broken with the weight of the nursery spider alone. The spider descended onto the mother’s body with all four legs; then, after appearing to sniff around it, crawled across to the newborn hybrid by its side.

Suddenly, the spider popped the blood-soaked newborn into its mouth and stood up on its hind legs. Then it appeared to be using its front legs to scoop forwards the thread, which was continuously secreted from the silk-spinning glands on its backside, winding it very nimbly around the body of the newborn in its mouth.

“It’s preparing to eat it later,” murmured Mogamigawa with an air of excitement.

“But the nursery spider is not supposed to be a carnivore,” I whispered back. “I think we’re about to discover the meaning behind the name. Let’s watch a little longer.”

The suns started to dip, and a ray of orange light fell diagonally onto the floor of the jungle, vividly illuminating the figure of the nursery spider as it continued its surreal activity.

At length, my jaw dropped when I realized what was being created in the arms of the nursery spider. “A relic pod! So that’s what they are! Newborn hybrids cocooned in the silk of the nursery spider and hung from the branches of trees – for whatever purpose. If only I’d studied the relic pod earlier, I could have discovered so much! But instead, I classified it as unclassifiable and wasted my time examining the ecology of animals closer to hand!”

“That was certainly inattentive of you,” agreed Mogamigawa.

In no time at all, the nursery spider had wound its silk around the newborn in the shape of a pear, leaving only a single hole at the top – probably for air. Then it grabbed a few threads that protruded from around the neck of the pod, slung them over its shoulder in true swagman fashion, and started to climb the nearest tree.

“If the aim is not to eat it, it must be to rear it,” I said as we started off again. “It cocoons the newborn in silk to return it to the ‘womb’, as it were. The newborn grows inside the cocoon until it can stand by itself. So there you are – now we know why they’re called nursery spiders.”

“But where is the merit in so doing?” asked Mogamigawa. “Rearing hybrid young brings no prima facie benefit to the host.”

“That’s true,” I replied with a tilt of my head. There could surely be no life form on any planet that would engage in such pointless activity outside the major goal of preserving its own species. “Once we’re out of the jungle, let’s cut a relic pod from a tree and open it up. We may discover something.”

When we at last emerged from the jungle, night had fallen once more. We switched on the girdle lamps that hung from our waists, and continued westwards through a belt of woodland margin over gently rolling terrain.

We came to a shallow river that flowed some five miles down from the mountains in the north, and decided to set up camp on its rocky shore. With our many exertions so far, we had started to feel slightly inebriated. There was more oxygen in the air than on earth, making our fatigue all the more extreme.

“You go on to Newdopia by yourself now. The border is right over there,” Mogamigawa commanded Yohachi. “You know what you’re supposed to do, don’t you. We’ve told you often enough.”

Yohachi guffawed. “I’m a man, aren’t I? You needn’t tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Mogamigawa scowled. “Not that, you fool!”

I pointed at Yohachi’s nether regions. Having been relieved of his trousers by the flatback hippos, he was wearing nothing but his spare pair of pants. “Take your clothes off,” I said. “You’ll have less trouble getting in if you’re completely naked. You can carry your baggage on your back.”

“All right. I’ll do that.” Yohachi merrily hummed a tune as he undressed himself.

“What’s got into him?” Mogamigawa said as an aside.

Completely naked but for a canvas bag containing a telecall and other requisites tied around his head, Yohachi splashed into the river with gaily dancing steps, waded over to the other side and disappeared into a grove of trees.

“What a cheerful chap,” Mogamigawa said with a wry smile before easing himself onto the ground.

I went to find a sandy area and lay down there. Well might the Newdopians live their lives permanently naked – the climate was pleasant and there were no pestering insects, leaving one to sleep in peace without even needing a blanket.

“He’s cheerful all right. He can have sex as often as he wants in there,” I said with a huge yawn. And no sooner had I spoken than the dark demons of sleep descended on me.

I awoke after only two hours, unable to bear the dazzling light shining down from the two suns. That was the problem with this planet. Most people, on first arriving here, had their biorhythms disturbed and suffered badly from sleeplessness.

I boiled some rice in a mess tin, opened a can of Sakata Land Horned Beef and ate my dinner. As I was brewing some coffee with water from the river, Mogamigawa, who’d disappeared from his sleeping place, returned with three relic pods hanging from his arms.

“Let’s open them right away. I really must know. Do you have any scissors?”

“I do.” Taking a pair of dissection scissors from my collecting case, I snipped one of the relic pods open in a straight line from the hole at the top to the base.

Inside the cocoon was a hybrid creature, curled in fetal position with eyes still closed, surrounded by a liquid that resembled amniotic fluid. It was probably formed when the inner surface of the silk cocoon had dissolved. The creature had the body of a nursery spider and the head of a tapir-pig.

“A cross between a nursery spider and a tapir-pig,” I said. “So the parent must have turned its own hybrid newborn into a relic pod.”

“Hmm.” Mogamigawa snorted in a way that suggested disagreement, then signalled to me to open the other two cocoons.

The other two relic pods contained not hybrids but juvenile nursery spiders with eyes already open and hair on their bodies. They grew excited and let out unearthly cries when they felt the outside air. I exchanged astonished looks with Mogamigawa.

“The wife waker!”

“So that’s where the noise comes from!”

“Look here, Sona,” said Mogamigawa, using each hand to prevent a juvenile nursery spider from escaping as he scrutinized their bellies. “For what possible reason would a nursery spider cocoon its own young in silk and turn them into relic pods? When they’re not even hybrids?”

“Because that’s how they rear their young? They can’t distinguish between their own young and, say, hybrids produced by other creatures. If they see a baby, their first instinct is to wrap it in…” I stopped in mid-sentence and stared wide-eyed at Mogamigawa. “In other words…”

He nodded. “I think these juveniles may have no reproductive capacity. Could you examine them for me? Use my electron microscope if you like.”

“All right.”

I didn’t need the electron microscope, for it was clear to see that the juveniles had no sex organs. What’s more, the sex organs of the other relic pod – the cross between a nursery spider and a tapir-pig – were severely reduced and looked more like vestigial organs.

“First generation hybrids with no reproductive capacity all mutate into nursery spiders,” I said with a sigh. “How did you know?”

“I simply imagined that the spiders might raise the young of other species because they cannot reproduce by themselves,” Mogamigawa said rather proudly. “Also, I felt that the niche of the spiders in the jungle was abnormally high. Each time I looked up, I would invariably see a nursery spider in the trees above me. I thought that it must therefore be the dominant species. And when we saw that the relic pods were in fact produced by nursery spiders, I became convinced of it when I considered the sheer quantity of relic pods hanging from the branches of the trees.”

“To think that such a thing could be possible!” Gazing at one of the open relic pods, I dipped the tip of my finger into the thick, slimy solution inside it.

“The fluid must provide a stimulus that triggers spontaneous metamorphosis, you see. It causes evolutionary regression to the nursery spider, which seems, to all appearances, the lowest life form on this planet. It often happens among lower-order organisms – an anomalous metamorphosis that causes a once evolved species to regress back again under external stimuli. If you had it your way, the reverse evolution theory should apply to this planet, shouldn’t it. Ergo, the nursery spider must be preventing any further regression or divergence of species. Or in other words, anomalous metamorphosis on this planet has become what Goethe called ‘normal metamorphosis’.”

“This seems increasingly like an artificial ecosystem, doesn’t it,” I mused.

“I’ve started to see the Newdopians in a slightly different light myself. They seem after all to have a highly advanced spiritual culture, as well as a grasp of science and technology,” Mogamigawa agreed. “Of course, it’s virtually impossible to create a totally artificial ecosystem, but they must have started the reverse evolution of higher-order species and had the technology for suppressing species divergence. Or even if they didn’t, they must at least have known that any higher-order species that devolved from themselves would inevitably be able to coexist peacefully, as befits their own planet. And in fact that’s exactly what happened. Furthermore, even lower-order species and plants evolved until they could be incorporated into the ecosystem of these higher-order vertebrates. Or perhaps those species alone were not eliminated but underwent adaptive radiation.”

“Rather than having technology as such, perhaps they merely applied a reverse logic to the theory of evolution,” I added. “That is, on planets where the theory of evolution applies, there always exists a predator-prey relationship. Even man, the ‘terminal animal’, inevitably needs an aggressive instinct, which makes him destroy his environment, start wars and so forth. In that case, conversely, if we could create a planet to which the regression theory applies and where only relationships based on libido exist, it should be possible to maintain a peaceful environment. Instead of a Thanatosian ‘eat or be eaten’ ecology, we should be able to create an Erosian ecology, in which all living things love each other. Being pacifists, the original colonists must surely have been convinced of that. Considering the dubious nature of Freud’s dualist theory in his later years, even I have started to think that this erotic ecology may more closely warrant the title of orthodoxy in our cosmos.”

“Well, I don’t know where they came from. But I’ve no doubt they must have learnt a lot from the egregious errors of their home planet,” said Mogamigawa, waxing oddly lyrical. “Perhaps that planet surprisingly resembled the earth.”

I felt the same. We looked at each other and laughed with one voice.

“Isn’t it about time we contacted Yohachi?” I said as I finished my coffee and took out the telecall. “He may have done it so much that he’s forgotten what he’s there for.”

“That sounds likely,” said Mogamigawa.

“Yo!” Yohachi’s voice as he answered the telecall was bounding with cheerful energy. In the background, I could hear the spirited sound of five-beat music.

“So you got in all right? It sounds very lively there. Are you in a dance hall?”

“I’m at an open-air arena. They’re doing ballet on the stage. I’ve never seen anything so fantastic in all my life!”

“Idle bugger!” Mogamigawa snatched the telecall from my hand and bellowed into it. “Have you asked them how to contracept pregnancy by widow’s incubus and abort the fetus, man?”

“Yeah. I’ve asked.”

“Well, come straight back here then!”

“Can’t I watch this a bit longer? You see it’s… well… it’s just fantastic!”

“No you may not!” bawled Mogamigawa. “Or do you mean to keep two eminent scientists such as ourselves waiting idly by in a place like this? That would be the biggest mistake in the history of science, I can tell you. Though I can’t expect you to take responsibility for that.”

“I can’t quite hear what you’re saying, but anyway, yeah, OK, I’ll be on my way soon,” said Yohachi, and with that he terminated the telecall from his end.

Night fell once more. When it was starting to grow light again, Yohachi at last returned. After his carnal excesses, I was fully expecting him to look completely spent – but on the contrary, he appeared utterly exhilarated. He strolled up from the river with a relaxed gait, water dripping from his naked body. Even the look in his eyes had changed.

“Seems you were well-received!” I said with a grin.

Yohachi shook his head with an expression of sincerity, though still with a look of elation on his face. “I wasn’t particularly well-received, but I wasn’t driven away either. We always go on about ‘entering’ their country, but there was no border of any sort, and it was at night. So I just walked in amongst them, and was soon surrounded by a lot of naked men and women who were trying to ask me something. The moment I tried to speak, they seemed to know immediately what I wanted to say, which saved me a lot of trouble, I can tell you. They even started to take words out of my head and put them together until they could speak earth language themselves. They seemed to know straight away what I was there for, and soon they were all laughing their heads off.”

“And did they tell you what we asked?”

Yohachi nodded at Mogamigawa. “I don’t know if you’d call it ‘telling’, but one of the men just said this: ‘Ah. Well, all you have to do is have sex with the women here, then go back and have sex with the one who’s pregnant’.”

Mogamigawa turned to me with a look of bewilderment. “What on earth can he mean?”

“And what happened then?” I asked, leaning towards Yohachi with mounting curiosity. “Did you have sex with the women?”

“Oh yeah,” Yohachi replied with the same earnest expression on his face. “The men quickly lost interest and buggered off. But the women hung around for a bit. They were all so beautiful. And naked. I just couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I already had a hard-on and was chomping at the bit. Then one of the women led me to a nearby park and let me do it with her on the grass. After that I did it with, oh, God knows how many. Twelve or thirteen? But I still didn’t forget why I was there in the first place, all right? ‘I mustn’t forget what they tell me,’ I thought, ‘I must remember it correctly.’ So I repeated the same questions to four or five women. One of them said this. The women in this country are often raped by those penisparrows in their sleep. I mean, the birds stick their heads into the women’s… you know. That’s the penisparrow’s kind of, er…”

“Habit?”

“Habit, yeah. This woman said the penisparrow carries a sort of infection caused by, er, something-ella, and so more than half of the women in Newdopia have been, you know, they’ve been…”

“Infected?”

“Yes, infected by that, er, whatever it was. So then it also infects the men. And the, er, something-ella eats the, er, something of the widow’s incubus, the… er…”

“Spores?”

“Yeah, it eats the spores of the widow’s incubus, and that stops them from getting pregnant. And even if they do get pregnant, they just have to have sex with a man who’s got the infection, and then they can get rid of it easily.”

“I want to know more about this infection,” Mogamigawa said to Yohachi. “Let me examine you.”

Yohachi grasped his overworked member, which now hung down limply. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

“No, no. That’s not enough. I’m asking you to masturbate, strum your banjo, grease your pole, whatever. I need a specimen, man.”

“I don’t really feel like doing it now,” Yohachi grumbled, but still managed to squeeze out a quantity of semen onto Mogamigawa’s glass slide. Mogamigawa immediately started to observe it under his electron microscope.

“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.

“Dr Mogamigawa…” I at last managed to squeeze out in a strained voice. “W-what’s happened to you? W-what hideous thing have you become?”

“Pardon? Oh, this.” Mogamigawa started to crawl around like a spider as he surveyed the changes in his appearance. They didn’t appear to shock him so much at all. “Well, as long as I still have my mind, I really don’t care what happens to my body. Actually, I feel jolly good and fresh, as if I’ve been reborn. After all, there’s nothing more precious than one’s health, is there! You arrived at just the right time, old chap. If the transformation had advanced any further, my mind would have become the same as a nursery spider’s. What simply perfect timing! Heeheehee!” His flippant tone suggested that even his personality had changed. He hopped onto the trunk of a nearby tree with a sprightly leap and turned his head downwards. “Look! I can even do this.”

In utter confusion, I turned to Yohachi for help. “Yohachi. What shall we do?”

Yohachi calmly returned my stare. “Do about what, mate? If you mean the professor, what can we do but take him back to the Base?”

That was the problem. Taking him back would be all right, but how would we explain it to his wife? If she saw her husband transformed into a spider, she might have an apoplexy. She might drop dead on the spot. Then again, it would be next to impossible to explain his condition without letting her see him. “I’m very sorry, madam, but your husband has been turned into a spider.” She was never going to believe that – she would think we were joking.

Mogamigawa was frolicking about, revelling in his ability to move his reborn, flexible body just as he wished. “Dr Mogamigawa?” I called.

“Yeeeeuurrggh! Yeeeeuurrggh! Oh, sorry! Mea culpa. It comes out like that when I start talking suddenly. What is it, my friend? You’re wondering whether you should take me back to the Base? But of course you should. You needn’t worry one jot about my wife. She can cope, I assure you. The main thing is that I’m so full of energy! My mind is crystal-clear. Now that I’ve lost my sexual functions and my sexual desires, I’m liberated from obligatory sex with my wife, not to mention concern or jealousy over her infidelity. That means I can devote myself to my research and enjoy life on this wonderful planet. So yes, my dear Sona, I can hardly wait to get going! Carpe diem, as they say! Wahahahahahaha!” He climbed the tree as he spoke, then roared with laughter as he slid back down in front of our eyes, on a thread that emerged from his backside. “Wahaha! Wahahahahahahaha! Wahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

This was no longer the Mogamigawa of old. That’s how it seemed to me. It was someone else. Or perhaps some new species of creature.

The three of us, or should I say the two of us and one spider, set off for the Research Base in accordance with Mogamigawa’s wish. The now arachnid Mogamigawa scurried along the ground ahead of us. It may seem hard to believe, but he didn’t appear to see anything remotely wretched or absurd in his condition. Paying no heed to my muddled thoughts, he continued to speak without pause.

“You know, this may be a kind of retribution against my former self, a kind of quid pro quo. I used to think that the humanoids and animals on this planet, even the natural phenomena, were all obscene. But what splendid retribution! This planet has transformed me, a conservative, opinionated old man who abhorred anything erotic, into a nursery spider, a creature that has no sexual capacity and is, at it were, the ideal host for me. In doing so, it has released me from sex and incorporated me into the ecology of this planet – mirabile dictu! That’s right. I am no longer human. I am a creature. Well, Sona my friend? What name would you give to this new creature? Hmm?”

I could find no words with which to reply, and simply continued walking in silence. Instead, Yohachi, whose face now exuded a kind of sublime saintliness, answered on my behalf. “Mutatis mutandis,” he said in the austere, solemn tone of a divine revelation.

“I see, yes, I see. Mutatis mutandis. Indeed yes, I have mutated into a spider and the spider has mutated into me, yes indeed. Wahahahahahahahahaha. What an excellent name. Oh look. We’ve left the jungle now. Soon we’ll be in the field of forget-me-grass. What fun. How wonderful it is to walk as freely as this, to hop and jump like this. But more than that, I’m no longer burdened by the pressures of sex, which were clinging to me doggedly and refused to desist even in my sixties. I will never again be troubled by mistress bine, fondleweed or the itchy scratchy tree. This planet is exactly like heaven to me now. No, no. This planet really is heaven, is it not? Newdopia may be a paradise where totally naked deities have created a country. This planet is a paradise of love! It has the magical power to make not only Yohachi and myself but all humans adapt and conform, sooner or later, provided they live here long enough. From now on, I can continue my research without constraint. But occasionally I will go out to the jungle to save unfortunate newborn hybrids that have been separated from their dead parents. I will cocoon them with my silk and change them into relic pods. Yes – I will dedicate myself to the instinct of love! I will live here for the rest of my life. Look! Is that a field of forget-me-grass I begin to see in the distance? What joy. What joy. And after the forget-me-grass, there’s Lake Turpitude. What fun. What fun. Wahahahahahahahahaha. Wahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Waha. Waha. Wahahahahahahahahahahahah. Wahahahahahahaha-hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Wahahahahaha-hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.”