Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) (24 page)

“The weather’s fair, the air is fresh,” said Dr Mogamigawa. “If only we could ignore all these loathsome plants and creatures, it would actually feel quite pleasant out here.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The temperature’s comfortable, humidity’s low, we’re perfectly content and healthy, the scenery is good, the time is morning, about ten in the morning, frizzly acacias flutter in the breeze, penisparrows dance in the air, screeching cicadas shriek and whoop, relic pods hang from the branches, the golden globes reign in the heavens. All in all, a truly obscene world.”

As I finished speaking, I laughed aloud. Mogamigawa looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Sorry. It started going funny in the middle.”

“A word of caution. We are scientists. Please take care to retain your sanity at all times.”

Personally, I was more concerned about
his
sanity from now on, but I kept that thought to myself.

As we approached Lake Turpitude, the ground became increasingly covered with ferns and gymnosperms. The smaller ones included bric-a-bracken, cloven hare’s foot, black-and-whitebeam, animephedra and sagging palm. Larger ones included the foolhardy tree-fern and the burly sequoia. Besides these, there were numerous clusters of ferns and tree ferns that had yet to be named, either by previous expeditions or by Dr Shimazaki.

Mogamigawa alighted from the hovercar, which I’d brought to a halt just ahead of the lake, and surveyed the scene around him. “What a plethora of fern species,” he said.

“Dr Shimazaki says it’s adaptive radiation of flora. Ferns have specialized into many different forms, and there are now several thousand species, apparently.”

“That must make them difficult to name. Of course, Dr Shimazaki would never give them obscene names, would she.” Mogamigawa looked out over the deep green surface of the lake, which remained ominously quiet for now. “I wonder why they had to specialize to that degree. In such a narrow geographical area.”

“Well,” I said, tilting my head. “If they were animals, I could think of a plausible explanation, judging from the environment. Since most of the higher vertebrates around here are herbivores, it may have something to do with their eating habits.”

“Are we going to build this raft then?” asked Yohachi.

“Oh yes. Could you fetch the electronic saw?”

“It’ll take a while, mate,” he said resentfully. “The other gentleman put all his own things on top. The saw is right at the bottom.”

“Look here! Stop moaning and get a bloody move on!” Mogamigawa bellowed. “
Tempus fugit
, man! What’ll we do if the suns set while we’re still on the lake?!”

Yohachi and I started cutting wood. There were various species of pine and cedar, which the members of the expedition had half-jokingly named supine, overcedar, and so on. But those would have taken too long to fell, so we concentrated on cutting tree ferns, which we bound together with rope to form a rectangular raft about twelve foot square. By the time we’d transferred the baggage onto the raft, camouflaged the hovercar under fronds of fern and launched the raft onto the lake, the suns had already started to set.

“Only thirty minutes to nightfall!” said Mogamigawa in dismay as he eyed his wristwatch, having done nothing himself but constantly hustle and bellow at us. “Can we cross to the other side in thirty minutes?”

“Yes, if we all use our poles together,” I replied with an ironic grin.

He pulled a sullen face. “Are you expecting me to use my pole?”

“Yeah, just like you do with your wife every night,” Yohachi whispered in my ear.

We had brought three collapsible plastic poles with which to propel the raft. We extended them to a length of about fifteen feet, took one each and climbed aboard. As we pushed our poles into the edges and bottom of the lake, pockets of air came bubbling up to the water’s surface around the raft, accompanied by a reddish-brown mud. We pulled away from the lake’s edge.

Every now and again, blood-red algae would come up entangled on our poles.

“That’s bleedweed,” I said. “Makes my skin crawl every time I see it.”

“If there’s so much bleedweed here, there must also be a good number of matchbox jellyfish,” Mogamigawa said as he cackhandedly manoeuvred his pole. “They’ll be surfacing any moment now.”

Before I could say “
Well postulated
,” a swarm of rectangular jellyfish that resembled large translucent matchboxes came floating up to the surface and eagerly huddled around our raft belly-side up, mouths agape and tentacles swaying.

“Swimming upside down as usual. What an obscene creature.”

“Also known as the jacuzzi or missionary jellyfish.”

“I did some research on these once,” said Mogamigawa. “They have ectodermal reproductive glands and appear to eat bleedweed, as well as various species of vegetable plankton.”

“Do they sting?” asked Yohachi.

“Well, considering how very obscene they are, they’re obviously going to sting, aren’t they,” said Mogamigawa, staring at Yohachi maliciously. “Why not try grabbing one?”

“They only sting before reproducing,” I explained to Yohachi, then turned back to Mogamigawa. “And when they do, it doesn’t really hurt but is a rather pleasant feeling. Why do you think that is?”

“That’s precisely my point,” he replied sourly. “Their pre-reproductive nematocysts contain poison, like that of earth jellyfish. I’m analysing this poison now, but it seems somehow to display anaphylaxis. That is, the first sting only has a mild effect on the ejaculatory centre, but with increased frequency the resistivity is lowered, finally leading to ejaculation. It’s the opposite of immunity.”

“Have you tried it out?” I said with a snort of laughter. “Oh. Sorry.”

Mogamigawa gave me a murderous look.

“Let’s catch a few of them, then!” said Yohachi.

A gentle splish-splashing noise could be heard. I looked back towards the shore, which was already about fifty yards behind us.

One by one, a colony of gurgling alligators, which appeared to have been basking on mudflats some distance from our launch point, were starting to slip into the lake.

“Do you think they’re coming after us?” Mogamigawa said anxiously.

“But of course,” I answered as I vigorously thrust my pole down to the bottom of the lake. “And in some numbers. Let’s make haste!”

The alligators, somewhat smaller than the earth variety, started to approach our raft in groups. Although some seemed to have concealed themselves underwater, dozens of them swam just under the water’s surface, showing only the tips of their snouts, their eyes and the tops of their bony backs, which resembled dorsal fins. They closed in on us at speed, making no sound in the water except the lazy gurgling noise of breath flapping out of their nostrils.

“If they all come here, the raft will capsize!” Mogamigawa shrieked while frantically working his pole. “What do they want from us?!”

“Our chastity,” I replied. “They have a habit of mating with other species.”

“If they drag us underwater we’ll drown!” Mogamigawa wailed. “Isn’t there anything we can do? How did you get over this last time?”

“By getting to the other side quickly. The opposite shore is the territory of eleventh-hour crocodiles…”

Just at that moment, the alligators approaching underwater must have risen to the surface, for the raft suddenly listed to one side. We all lurched with it.

Mogamigawa crouched down on the surface of the raft to prevent himself from falling. “These must all be females, then?” he asked.

“Some are male, some female,” I answered, also squatting on the raft. I had hurriedly withdrawn my pole, which they’d tried to wrench from my grasp with their gaping mouths, and was now holding on to it for dear life. “They can’t tell the gender of other species, so they just try to mate with them anyway.”

“But it’s usually only the male that displays courtship!”

“Yes, but on this planet both males and females display courtship. We know that attractants such as sex pheromones have hardly any effect between individuals of the same species, which means that they don’t mate much among themselves. They compensate for this with a strange innate releasing mechanism, whereby they chase other species as if hunting prey.”

“Won’t the species then become extinct?”

“No. Excessive inbreeding is more likely to cause extinction. Especially on this planet, where the animals have hardly any natural enemies.”

“Why don’t we try it out?” said Yohachi, using his pole to bash an alligator as it tried to crawl onto the raft. “It might feel good.”

“Idiot. If it’s a male, your anus will be ripped apart,” I said, then gasped in relief when I saw the opposite shore only thirty feet away. “Thank God! Eleventh-hour crocodiles!”

Slightly larger than the gurgling alligators, groups of eleventh-hour crocodiles were crawling into the lake from swamps near the shore.

Pushed up from below by the alligators’ snouts, our raft continued to tilt wildly. We clung onto our baggage to avoid being shaken off, and waited for the eleventh-hour crocodiles to arrive.

“But it’s out of the frying pan into the fire, isn’t it?” said Mogamigawa, shaking with fear.

“We’ll escape while they’re fighting,” I replied.

The eleventh-hour crocodile at the head of the group snapped at one of the gurgling alligators. The pair corkscrewed their bodies and leapt six feet into the air as they grappled with each other. A massive spray of water flew up, and at last, the mother of all battles started around our raft.

“Now!” I yelled.

We desperately worked our poles to escape from the carnage.

“That’s quite a battle,” said Mogamigawa, turning back to watch the action goggle-eyed. “Many of them will surely die.”

“No. What you’re seeing is a ‘ritual contest’, as they say in ethology. It’s the same as when males of earth species fight over the females. The difference on this planet is that they’re not fighting over females
but over the spectators, creatures of other species that simply watch the action from the side. They’re waiting to yield their chastity to the victors.” I was punting along for all I was worth, but let out a cry when I saw the far bank approaching. “Oh no! What a fool I’ve been! There’s a pod of flatback hippos near here!”

Mogamigawa raised his voice in alarm. “Those unearthly creatures?! Good God, it’ll be no joke if we’re ravished by
them
! Which way should we go?”

“Let’s skirt the shore southwards. Hey, Yohachi – look out!”

Before I could finish, a number of flatback hippos surfaced around the raft, showing only their flat rectangular backs.

“Take that!” I shouted.

“Take that!” yelled Yohachi.

“And take your bestial desires with you!” added Mogamigawa.

We thrust our poles into the backs of the flatback hippos in a mad frenzy. Their soft backs were covered with fine crêpe-like wrinkles resembling the mesh of a reed mat. With each manly thrust, the ends of our poles would penetrate the skin and slide into the thick fat on their backs. But it didn’t appear to hurt the hippos at all, for they continued to close in on our raft undeterred, oblivious of their gaping wounds. A very small quantity of white fat oozed out of the round holes made in their backs by the poles. As I continued to thrust, I wondered if perhaps they actually enjoyed having this done to them…

The hippos’ backs now had so many holes in them that they began to resemble honeycombs, a truly sickening sight. I decided to stop thrusting the pole and started smashing them over the head with it instead. But merely being hit on the head wasn’t going to make these hippos desist. They continued to look up at us ruefully, their eyes bloodshot with carnal lust, some diving down below the raft while others waited for a chance to crawl up onto it.

“
Aaargh!
” Yohachi had plunged his pole into a hippo’s back with such force that he was unable to pull it out again. As he clung to the end of the pole, he was lifted off the raft and hoisted about three feet into the air vertically above the hippo’s back. “HELPPPP!!!” he cried, eyeballs bulging.

Our raft, surrounded on three sides by flatback hippos, was gradually buffeted along the shore away from Yohachi. The hippo that had Yohachi on its back also continued to chase, but lagged somewhat behind the others under Yohachi’s weight. The gap between us gradually widened as a result, though we remained at the same distance from the shore.

“Is it all right to leave him like that?” Mogamigawa asked.

“The main thing is for us to reach the shore,” I replied. “Then we can throw him a rope.”

At that moment, one of the hippos must have stood on all fours in the shallows directly beneath us, for the raft started to tilt at an acute angle.

“As I thought – we should have made the raft of pine or cedar,” I shouted, frantically gathering up the baggage to stop it falling into the water. “We’ll be up a creek if we fall off now. The water round here is full of fondleweed!”

“But we’re men, and we’re wearing trousers, are we not? We will surely not be fondled so vigorously,” said Mogamigawa. “This is no good at all. We’ll capsize at this rate. You take the machinery and equipment, and I’ll take the food. If the raft capsizes, we’ll wade ashore with the bags on our backs. We’ll just have to force our way through the fondleweed.
Audere est facere
, my friend!”

“Right.”

The raft moved closer to the shore. Dusk was starting to close in.

With the flatback hippos still standing beneath us, the raft had tilted to an angle of about forty degrees. We slid down its surface with the baggage on our backs, landing thigh-deep in water.

“Run! Run or be fondled!” Mogamigawa hollered as he started to race bow-legged through the water. I followed behind. The flatback hippos were still grouped on the other side of the raft, and as they could only waddle through the shallows with their slow thumping feet, there was no danger of them catching us.

We reached the shore safely without being molested by fondleweed, then turned back in relief to look at the lake. The flatback hippos had given up chasing us. Instead, they were now
homing in on Yohachi from all sides. Some started to clamber up onto the hippo that had Yohachi’s pole stuck in its back.