Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,57

builders use, spirit levels? I’m going to try and bring one home tomorrow, you see.” It was the first time Rod hadn’t been silenced merely by the look on his wife’s face. He worked for a company that made nothing but measuring instruments for stationery, construction tools, medical instruments and the like. He belonged to the Development Division in the company’s laboratory.

To her credit, Caprice gave it a moment’s thought. After all, there’d also been the altercation with Stubber Nasamule earlier in the day. Of course, the central thrust of her “thought” was self-protection and self-advancement, as always. “If I’m the first to discover that Marine City is tilting and report it to the Mayor, I could get promoted. But what if it’s all a pack of lies?”

“Actually, it was Professor McLogick who first discovered it.”

“No,” and she glared at him again. “Once the tilt has become undeniable, I will be the first to discover it and report it to the Mayor – officially, not as a malicious rumour. Do you understand?”

Unable to follow his wife’s logic, Rod changed the subject. “The North No. 2 Block was tilting a bit more when I looked this morning. Well, I’m going to get our company to make a lot of spirit levels and distribute them to stationers all over Marine City. We’ll make a lot of money when everyone starts noticing the tilt, I should think.”

Caprice smiled wryly. “That’s about the best you can come up with, isn’t it. Look what happened last time, when you thought of that, what was it called, that funny thing. You made yourself a laughing stock.”

“You mean the painometer. There was nothing funny about it. The Director merely said it would be difficult to commercialize.” When it came to matters technological, Rod had no thoughts for anything else. “I figured they might need them in hospitals and the like. That’s why I worked out the units of pain. Look!” He slapped himself hard on the cheek. “Whenever you do that to me, the pain level is one kiltago. Of course, pain thresholds differ from person to person. It’s like the average body temperature. The painometer calculates the degree of pain based on the heat emitted from the affected area, the sensation in the tactile region of the brain, the pulse and so on. The first models will be very primitive, but they’ll gradually increase in precision, and then I think everyone will be interested and want to buy one.”

Caprice stared blankly at Rod as he continued his discourse. Not that she was listening to a word he said. No, she was thinking, “Oh dear. Why did I have to marry this man? He’s so brainless, unrefined and cack-handed, slow on the uptake, so dull that he can only think of one thing. But, well… maybe he’s just right for me.”

At around the same time, the pianist Histe Rica was giving a recital in Marine City Hall, a 200-seater venue. Soon after she started performing Bartók’s Improvisations for Piano, her grand piano started to edge, little by little, across the stage towards the auditorium. The first to notice this was a young lighting technician whose job was to train the fresnel lens spotlight on the artiste. Ms Rica herself failed to notice the movement, as her chair was shifting along with the piano. Moreover, since the purpose of a fresnel lens is to soften the edges of the light, the piano’s right leg was only a few inches from the edge of the stage when the lighting technician realized what was happening. As he was desperately wondering how to inform the artiste, the piano plunged into the auditorium with a deafening roar, performed a half-turn with its three legs pointing upwards, then described another half turn that broke its legs and pedals, hurling them into the air, scattering the hammers and keys, and causing the strings to fly out. The momentum sent Histe Rica sprawling, exposing her fleshy white thighs and lemon-yellow underwear, and leaving her upside down at the foot of the stage. Three women in the front row were either struck by the lid of the piano or crushed under it. They suffered ruptured organs, skull fractures, and smashed faces, and all died instantly. Another woman was decapitated by a snapped piano wire, while twelve others nearby suffered non-fatal injuries of varying degrees. Panic broke out in the Hall, which was virtually full for this recital. After all, Histe Rica had a music school in