Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,96

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