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
“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
“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.”
