appeared to be using its front legs to scoop forwards the thread, which was continuously secreted from the silk- spinning glands on its backside, winding it very nimbly around the body of the newborn in its mouth.
“It’s preparing to eat it later,” murmured Mogamigawa with an air of excitement.
“But the nursery spider is not supposed to be a carnivore,” I whispered back. “I think we’re about to discover the meaning behind the name. Let’s watch a little longer.”
The suns started to dip, and a ray of orange light fell diagonally onto the floor of the jungle, vividly illuminating the figure of the nursery spider as it continued its surreal activity.
At length, my jaw dropped when I realized what was being created in the arms of the nursery spider. “A relic pod! So that’s what they are! Newborn hybrids cocooned in the silk of the nursery spider and hung from the branches of trees – for whatever purpose. If only I’d studied the relic pod earlier, I could have discovered so much! But instead, I classified it as unclassifiable and wasted my time examining the ecology of animals closer to hand!”
“That was certainly inattentive of you,” agreed Mogamigawa.
In no time at all, the nursery spider had wound its silk around the newborn in the shape of a pear, leaving only a single hole at the top – probably for air. Then it grabbed a few threads that protruded from around the neck of the pod, slung them over its shoulder in true swagman fashion, and started to climb the nearest tree.
“If the aim is not to eat it, it must be to rear it,” I said as we started off again. “It cocoons the newborn in silk to return it to the ‘womb’, as it were. The newborn grows inside the cocoon until it can stand by itself. So there you are – now we know why they’re called nursery spiders.”
“But where is the merit in so doing?” asked Mogamigawa. “Rearing hybrid young brings no prima facie benefit to the host.”
“That’s true,” I replied with a tilt of my head. There could surely be no life form on any planet that would engage in such pointless activity outside the major goal of preserving its own species. “Once we’re out of the jungle, let’s cut a relic pod from a tree and open it up. We may discover something.”
When we at last emerged from the jungle, night had fallen once more. We switched on the girdle lamps that hung from our waists, and continued westwards through a belt of woodland margin over gently rolling terrain.
We came to a shallow river that flowed some five miles down from the mountains in the north, and decided to set up camp on its rocky shore. With our many exertions so far, we had started to feel slightly inebriated. There was more oxygen in the air than on earth, making our fatigue all the more extreme.
“You go on to Newdopia by yourself now. The border is right over there,” Mogamigawa commanded Yohachi. “You know what you’re supposed to do, don’t you. We’ve told you often enough.”
Yohachi guffawed. “I’m a man, aren’t I? You needn’t tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Mogamigawa scowled. “Not that, you fool!”
I pointed at Yohachi’s nether regions. Having been relieved of his trousers by the flatback hippos, he was wearing nothing but his spare pair of pants. “Take your clothes off,” I said. “You’ll have less trouble getting in if you’re completely naked. You can carry your baggage on your back.”
“All right. I’ll do that.” Yohachi merrily hummed a tune as he undressed himself.
“What’s got into him?” Mogamigawa said as an aside.
Completely naked but for a canvas bag containing a telecall and other requisites tied around his head, Yohachi splashed into the river with gaily dancing steps, waded over to the other side and disappeared into a grove of trees.
“What a cheerful chap,” Mogamigawa said with a wry smile before easing himself onto the ground.
I went to find a sandy area and lay down there. Well might the Newdopians live their lives permanently naked – the climate was pleasant and there were no pestering insects, leaving one to sleep in peace without even needing a blanket.
“He’s cheerful all right. He can have sex as often as he wants in there,” I said with a huge yawn. And no sooner had I spoken than the dark demons of sleep descended on me.
I awoke after only two hours, unable to bear the dazzling light shining down from the two suns. That was the problem with this planet. Most people, on first arriving here, had their biorhythms disturbed and suffered badly from sleeplessness.
I boiled some rice in a mess tin, opened a can of Sakata Land Horned Beef and ate my dinner. As I was brewing some coffee with water from the river, Mogamigawa, who’d disappeared from his sleeping place, returned with three relic pods hanging from his arms.
“Let’s open them right away. I really must know. Do you have any scissors?”
“I do.” Taking a pair of dissection scissors from my collecting case, I snipped one of the relic pods open in a straight line from the hole at the top to the base.
Inside the cocoon was a hybrid creature, curled in fetal position with eyes still closed, surrounded by a liquid that resembled amniotic fluid. It was probably formed when the inner surface of the silk cocoon had dissolved. The creature had the body of a nursery spider and the head of a tapir-pig.
“A cross between a nursery spider and a tapir-pig,” I said. “So the parent must have turned its own hybrid newborn into a relic pod.”
“Hmm.” Mogamigawa snorted in a way that suggested disagreement, then signalled to me to open the other two cocoons.
The other two relic pods contained not hybrids but juvenile nursery spiders with eyes already open and hair on their bodies. They grew excited and let out unearthly cries when they felt the outside air. I exchanged astonished looks with Mogamigawa.
“The wife waker!”
“So that’s where the noise comes from!”
“Look here, Sona,” said Mogamigawa, using each hand to prevent a juvenile nursery spider from escaping as he scrutinized their bellies. “For what possible reason would a nursery spider cocoon its own young in silk and turn them into relic pods? When they’re not even hybrids?”
“Because that’s how they rear their young? They can’t distinguish between their own young and, say, hybrids produced by other creatures. If they see a baby, their first instinct is to wrap it in…” I stopped in mid-sentence and stared wide-eyed at Mogamigawa. “In other words…”
He nodded. “I think these juveniles may have no reproductive capacity. Could you examine them for me? Use my electron microscope if you like.”
“All right.”
I didn’t need the electron microscope, for it was clear to see that the juveniles had no sex organs. What’s more, the sex organs of the other relic pod – the cross between a nursery spider and a tapir-pig – were severely reduced and looked more like vestigial organs.
“First generation hybrids with no reproductive capacity all mutate into nursery spiders,” I said with a sigh. “How did you know?”
“I simply imagined that the spiders might raise the young of other species because they cannot reproduce by themselves,” Mogamigawa said rather proudly. “Also, I felt that the niche of the spiders in the jungle was abnormally high. Each time I looked up, I would invariably see a nursery spider in the trees above me. I thought that it must therefore be the dominant species. And when we saw that the relic pods were in fact produced by nursery spiders, I became convinced of it when I considered the sheer quantity of relic pods hanging from the branches of the trees.”
“To think that such a thing could be possible!” Gazing at one of the open relic pods, I dipped the tip of my finger into the thick, slimy solution inside it.
“The fluid must provide a stimulus that triggers spontaneous metamorphosis, you see. It causes evolutionary regression to the nursery spider, which seems, to all appearances, the lowest life form on this planet. It often happens among lower-order organisms – an anomalous metamorphosis that causes a once evolved species to regress back again under external stimuli. If you had it your way, the reverse evolution theory should apply to this planet, shouldn’t it. Ergo, the nursery spider must be preventing any further regression or divergence of species. Or in other words, anomalous metamorphosis on this planet has become what Goethe called ‘normal metamorphosis’.”
“This seems increasingly like an artificial ecosystem, doesn’t it,” I mused.
