“Why is it,” Mogamigawa groaned, “that all higher-order vertebrates on this planet are essentially programmed with an obscene and moreover unproductive urge to mate with any partner they find? You seem to be saying that it’s somehow incorporated in their genes as information.” He spoke in a muffled, lewd tone, and seemed to be twisting his lips as he continued. “What’s more, they’re all so remarkably similar to common earth animals, like the hippopotamus, alligator, rabbit or cow. That makes them seem even more obscene, to us earth humans. Why is that, I wonder.”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘obscene’, but as a phenomenon it’s probably adaptive concentration. To give an example, long ago on earth there were lower-order marsupials that lived only in Australia and surrounding areas. In other words, they only developed after the separation from Eurasia, and underwent adaptive radiation in that isolated location. There they diverged into a variety of forms. However, each of these creatures, known as epitherians, was amazingly close in appearance to higher-order eutherians that existed in other parts of the world. It was a process of parallel evolution. For example, a kangaroo resembles a jumping hare, a Tasmanian tiger-wolf is much like a wolf, a northern marsupial mole is akin to a mole, a koala is likened to a bear, a rabbit-eared bandicoot could be mistaken for a rabbit, a common brushtail possum is not unlike a fox, a dasyure is uncannily similar to a cat, an opossum resembles a mouse, and so on. Though completely different species, the only visible difference between them is that the former have pouches while the latter don’t. Now that we’ve started making scientific surveys on other planets, Professor Fujioni Ishiwara claims that this adaptive radiation or adaptive concentration, or whatever, is linked to genetic-information carriers in life forms on each planet, and has a vastly broad scope of application. I’m opposed to his theory on the Law of Universal Orthogenesis, though.”
“I asked why they’re so obscene,” Mogamigawa said with more than a hint of irritation. “Just as all marsupials are characterized by having a pouch, all the life forms on this planet are characterized as being obscene. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying they’re not obscene!” I said caustically, growing more than a little irritated myself. “If anything, I’d say the characteristics of this planet are that all higher vertebrates are herbivores and that there is a complete absence of a food chain here. Not only are there no predators, but also, since population sizes are stable, there is very little conflict between individuals of the same species, i.e. mutual interference. That’s how I’d characterize the characteristics! There again, it might have nothing to do with population size, but the fact that these species have absolutely no aggression.”
“Ludicrous! What species has no aggression?!” Mogamigawa ranted, parading his basic knowledge of ethology. “If they lose their aggression they will also lose relationships between individuals. If relationships between individuals disappear, they won’t even be able to reproduce. The same is also true of humans, after all.”
“Ah, but this planet is special in that respect,” I countered. “I believe the aggressive impulse is incorporated in the erotic here. Think about it. Animals often bite each other’s necks when copulating, or chase or grapple with each other in foreplay, don’t they. In other words, they do things that, at first sight, seem like aggression when mating. So wouldn’t you agree it’s impossible to make a clear distinction between the two impulses? And for the animals on this planet, the erotic impulse is amplified, since there’s no need to show aggression, either to heterogeneous or to homogeneous individuals. So they try to mate with individuals of both types.”
“Huh. Freudian dualism,” Mogamigawa snapped. “You take a classic theory like that and apply it to the animal kingdom! And you believe all that, do you?”
“Not all of it, naturally!” I snapped back. “But if I could say one thing, the destructive impulse revealed by Freud in his later years, well, Freud wasn’t even serious about that himself. But he came up with a bipolar theory because there were some things he couldn’t explain with libido alone.”
“And so you postulate the existence of animals that have nothing but erotic desires? Fool!” he roared. “You’ve been tainted by the obscenity of 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 att
acking 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 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 forms, in accordance with a major law of orthogenesis that pervades the entire cosmos.’ You would disagree with that, would you?”
Now I felt compelled to reply. “Yes, but he went on to say that ‘There are life forms which, in appearance, seem to differ from planet to planet. This is merely an embodiment of the Law, to a certain degree of probability, depending on environment and conditions.’ My view is that there could be a planet that doesn’t fit that principle. Depending on its environment and conditions, of course.”
“More twaddle!” Mogamigawa snarled in his customary way of intimidating his opponent as a precursor to shouting. “Utter tripe! What on earth are you talking about?! No matter what synthetic culture medium we use for our research, the first thing to appear will be bacteria, followed by protozoa that eat the bacteria. The excretions of the protozoa become nutrients on which algae multiply. Then, and only then, will the first multi-cell organism come into being and the symbiotic system stabilize. Whatever the environment or conditions, the cycle of succession in living organisms is always from small to large, from microbes to flora, from flora to fauna. I have never witnessed an ecosystem on any planet that has any other form of succession. Evolution is always the same. Only when there is something to eat can something exist to eat it. It is utterly unthinkable that the birds came first, followed by the insects and seeds that are eaten by them.”
“So you’re saying the idea that humans came first is nonsense?”
“But of course!”
“Even so, a friend of mine has the following theory. First there was man. A being that regressed from man became the common ancestor of humans and apes. That being evolved into an ape, and a being that regressed from the original being became the ancestor of the insectivores, and so on and so on, until finally single cell protozoa were formed. In other words, a theory of reverse evolution.”
“Ha,” Mogamigawa scoffed. “Of course, he cannot be serious, but it’s a pity he didn’t make the argument more intriguing all the same. He’s a scientist, is he?”
“A psychoanalyst. Yasha Tsuchini. It was he who discovered the universal human desire for a regression theory. He claims that the theory of evolution is what humans find most problematic, since they always want to believe in the superiority of the human race. The regression theory is one of the myths that lie deep and unnoticed in the bosom of modern man. This applies equally to biologists, he says. Their theories are merely the reverse of an intrinsic belief in human supremacy, as witnessed in the claim by Professor O.E. Kenzabroni that
‘Humans who take the side of animals are extremely cruel towards other humans’. To give a more concrete example, even Konrad Lorenz, who won the Nobel Prize for biology some centuries ago, sometimes seemed to extol the superiority of the human race precisely because he was a neo-Darwinist.”
“And yet he was an evolutionist. All right, he supported discrimination based on eugenics, but what’s wrong with arguing the superiority of the human race?”
“Nevertheless, even some modern biologists who’ve been influenced by Lorenz say there could be no such thing as evolution, since everything is determined genetically. According to them, adaptation is achieved through population dynamics in all species.”
“Yes, I know about them. Fools to a man!” Mogamigawa started to shout again. “Incorrigible anti-evolutionists will always appear in one guise or another. You make it sound as if all evolutionists are conservative while regressionists are universally progressive. Or perhaps the modern trend is in that direction anyway. Well, I can’t accept that. Come to think of it, there are even some bacteriologists who argue that humans evolved from single-cell protozoa. Take the theory of ‘Devolution’ proposed by Professor Edmond Hamilton of SFM University. He suggested that intelligent beings that were actually single-cell protozoa from the galaxy Altair, hundreds of thousands of light years from our own galaxy, created a civilization through telepathy and came to earth, the ‘poisonous planet’, billions of years ago, where they gradually regressed, subdivided into lower and lower forms of life, and finally produced the lowest, most grotesque life form of all – man. You’re one of those fools, are you.”