Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,61
as residents of Marine City, but the direction in which they tilted was also a useful aid to judging compass bearings.
Early on Sunday – the day the tilt increased from eleven to twelve degrees – Professor McLogick prepared to move out of the City. He didn’t keep many books at home anyway, and his furniture easily fitted into a single removal van. He’d nearly finished loading the furniture, with the help of two removal men and two of his students, when they were spotted by some local housewives who’d just got up and now came to surround them. Most of them were sympathizers of the Mayor, and had already tried various tricks to stop people escaping. This time, however, their adversary was Professor McLogick. They knew that their persuasion would be to no avail, that the tables would only be turned and he’d start lecturing them, and that, if anything, they’d end up wishing he would just leave. So all they did, at first, was to surround the truck from a distance and loudly hurl abuse.
“So you’re running away then!”
“Coward! Call yourself a man?!”
“Frightened of a little slope, are we?”
But Professor McLogick wouldn’t be Professor McLogick if he didn’t have his say at this point. “Ladies,” he called out loudly. “You’d better leave quickly too. The buildings will start falling soon. After all, it stands to reason that they haven’t been built properly, with all this bribery and corruption.”
From among the housewives stepped one woman. She strode forwards, stopped in front of the Professor, and slapped him hard on the face.
It was Miss Loyalty. The sound of the slap rang out through the fresh morning air.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” screamed one of the students, full of youthful vigour. He ran straight up to Miss Loyalty and punched her to the ground.
All hell broke loose. The house was in the middle of an estate. One look from their upper floor balconies told the other residents what was happening right away. Housewives came swarming in like wasps from all directions.
The Professor jumped onto the loading platform at the back of the van. “Get in quick! Get in quick!” he yelled at the students, who were fighting with the women over some boxes that hadn’t been loaded yet. “I don’t need those. Get in quick. If we’re caught by the police, we’ll all be executed!”
“Jesus!”
“Move it!”
The removal men, shaken at the thought of execution, started up the van in a panic. The students managed to free themselves from the women, and jumped onto the platform in the nick of time. The housewives, being women, declined to chase the van in a bid to stop it leaving. And so, Professor McLogick made his escape from Marine City.
The following morning, the poetess Stille Hungova awoke at six o’clock, still hungover, and went to get a drink of tap water. “Urghhh!” she exclaimed as she spat it out. It was sea water.
The water pipes from the mainland had burst. They’d been designed with sufficient tolerance for movement, bearing in mind that Marine City was built on an artificial island. But now the pipes had been crushed on the seabed. The water supply to Marine City was cut. The gas supply was also turned off, in view of the obvious danger. That day, Mayor Fedora Last asked the Waterworks Bureau for a supply of water to Marine City using tank trucks. Meanwhile, shoppers fought tooth and nail over mineral water in supermarkets and propane gas in hardware stores; dozens of housewives were seriously injured.
Caprice Le Mesurier, appointed Chief of Police to succeed Rory O’Storm, suddenly started to assume a more friendly attitude towards her husband Rod. This was partly because she saw him in a different light now that he’d been promoted to Head of Sales. But it was also because she’d been compelled to vow even greater allegiance to Fedora Last, like it or not, in view of the tremendous debt she now owed her. She’d be in dire straits if Rod said he wanted to move out. On that day, as it happened, the Transport Bureau gave notice that the bus service between the metropolis and the City would terminate the following day. Now Caprice would have to buy Rod the car he’d always wanted.
Prompted by the loss of water and the termination of the bus service, more citizens now tried to escape to the mainland, resulting in scores of skirmishes with people trying to stop them. The writer Justa Plagiarist realized there