Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,95

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