Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,108

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