The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  It was not what one might call pleasant, but being shaken did not harm them. And as for the white liquid that flowed down the outside of the space suits, the people suspected the worst. The enemy that had captured the people so quickly and with such cunning seemed the incarnation of a sly and calculating mind.

  Fortunately, not to all of them.

  —

  In spite of their trials and tribulations, the people in the all-terrain vehicle had the opportunity to think.

  They followed everything that was happening and their habit of comparison and analysis gradually came to the fore. This process was in general unconscious, a result of the vast experience of human culture, which indicated that all victories were the result of a creative approach, and that where there was no creativity there could be no hope.

  Their normal patterns of thought had led them into trouble, but they needed to avoid a second such mistake. They were centralized and focused and from the outside the intelligent activity of the shrubbery had for a moment shaken the biologist’s initial conviction that they were dealing with a primitive, although unusual, creature. This conviction was not in any sense unthinking, for it was based on a knowledge of the general rules of evolution, knowledge that function determines form. The fact that the shrubbery had not disarmed its captives, and had not found an effective way to kill helpless people, finally put the argument beyond all doubt. Their enemies were not possessed of intelligence, nor were they stupid, just as a plant on Earth is neither clever nor dumb; they were excellently adapted to particular conditions and situations, and that was the sum of it.

  Once they had realized this, it only took a little more time for them to see the way out of what had seemed an impossible situation.

  The clues were there for them to see. Wherever the battle was not raging, the mangors’ leaves continued peacefully to absorb the light. As soon as the shooting died down, creatures like giant wood lice appeared and hurried fearlessly through the branches and even paused to eat the leaves.

  Of course, this idyll remained unobserved by minds overwhelmed by events, but it remained captured in their consciousness. In order for the thoughts that derived from this observation to be fully processed, a few remaining prejudices needed to be overcome. In particular, one had to realize that mankind’s omnipotence was not in his strength or in the powerful forms of energy he had mastered, or in the complexity of its machines….It was not even in its wisdom: it was to be found in the flexibility, breadth, and farsightedness of his thought. Another prejudice: one had to be aware that a tactic that had worked a thousand times would not definitely work the thousand and first. And another: one had to clear one’s mind of the idea that human beings are always rational, when in fact they are only rational when they can seize and assess something new and rebuild their former image of the world, and act in accordance with reality, whatever that might now be.

  Without thinking about it consciously (necessity is the best teacher), the biologist had avoided all these obstacles. And then he realized what had to be done.

  He realized it at the exact moment when a despairing cry reached them through their headphones.

  “The liquid’s dissolving my space suit!”

  And so the critical period commenced, and the biologist understood that his discovery was useless: there was no time to explain; events had outrun the workings of his mind.

  However…

  “How do you know that the juice can dissolve silicate?”

  “The upper layer is flaking off and falling away!”

  The juice was applied half an hour ago, came the instant thought. And there are three layers….

  “Stop!” he shouted. “We’ve still got time and there’s a definite solution!”

  But it was too late. The only free member of their group had already run over to the captive. The cutter’s blade sparkled….

  Before the cutter could remove another tentacle, a few others released their captives and grabbed the brave man. Although he was prepared for the attack, the tentacles moved faster than he could react. A second later he was in the same situation as the others.

  Horror did not stop the biologist from noticing that his conjecture had been radiantly confirmed in its weakest point. Now he believed they could succeed. Unless, of course, a new action by the shrubbery made things impossible.

  —

  This was something that he need not have feared. The mangors knew that their root juice acted slowly and did not hurry to try another plan. As for their initial enemy, the all-terrain vehicle, its behavior convinced them that it was dead. And so it remained for them only to wait while the process of decomposition softened the tissue of the strangely hard ourban. Nothing was as it usually was, but everything was going according to plan.

  —

  The lower hatch opened inward. The biologist was the first to come out. The hatch shut behind him at once—however convinced he was of his theory, there was no sense in risking everyone’s life.

  In turning the all-terrain vehicle over, the mangors had made it easier for the plan to be carried out, for now the human had a lot of room to maneuver, which he would not have had if the hatch had remained underneath.

  Crawling, and trying not to touch the tentacles if he could avoid it, the man slid off the hull of the all-terrain vehicle and continued on all fours, twisting his whole body, through the terrifying tangle of undergrowth.

  It was difficult even to watch. The most frightening thing for the biologist was the touch of the greasy-pale tentacles and the knowledge that it would cost them nothing to seize him and crush him. In spite of everything, his imagination involuntarily conquered his reason, which normally kept his instincts under control. How could they not see he was an enemy!

  —

  For the mangors, however, it was absolutely clear that what was crawling through their branches was harmless or even helpful. No other creature would have been able to turn up out of the blue and crawl through the very heart of the organism—it would have been captured, recognized, and destroyed at the border. The mangors did not know what kinds of creatures were crawling around inside them; they paid no attention to the animals that ate sick leaves, or captured harmful insects, or fed on dying tissue. Even humans are incapable without help of noticing the harmless creatures that nest in their own bodies. And so the biologist was in no danger, just as if he were strolling through the park.

  This soon became clear to everyone.

  —

  There were only two dangers that the biologist might face, and he had thought about them already. He did not move in a straight line, because that would have meant crawling through the sections that had been damaged in the shooting, which might cause a pain reaction in the mangors, which would, of course, lead to a defensive reaction. Although it made his journey much longer, he traveled through areas where the mangors had not been touched. And, when he got outside the all-terrain vehicle, he did not stand up and he did not run, as he knew very well that his opponent had already learned to equate the figure of a walking man with danger.

  The crew of the all-terrain vehicle followed his actions perfectly. It would not be correct to say that they did so without trembling, but they were successful. And just in time.

  As he had predicted, the space suits of the prisoners were still resisting the destructive effects of the plant juice. There was still some time….

  The fight with the tentacles, which had ended so mournfully, nevertheless confirmed at first sight all that the biologist had guessed. The clump of tentacles had exhausted all its reserves. So tired out were they that they had not even been able to lift their newest captive off the ground. Perhaps they could have taken one or two more enemies, but now another four people entered the fight. The other mangors were no danger: their “plasma reflex” response to the humans’ weapons would not vanish so fast.

  Everything that happened then was strongly reminiscent of a live-action version of the sculpture of Laocoön.

  —
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  Now all they had to do was free the all-terrain vehicle. But the idea of killing the bushes that were still mysterious but were now defenseless, given that their weak points were clear, stuck in the humans’ throats. And they eagerly came to the conclusion that the mangors would abandon the all-terrain vehicle when they felt the approach of the storm.

  Here they were mistaken. Instinct demanded that the mangors not release their prey, and when the storm approached they carried the all-terrain vehicle away.

  This was a fateful miscalculation on their part. Unlike an ourban, the all-terrain vehicle could not be broken down into pieces; its size made it difficult for the mangors to move, and the storm caught them.

  And what the storms were like there, the reason the mangors became nomadic creatures, half plant, half animal, was revealed later to the humans by the fragments of the all-terrain vehicle scattered over many miles.

  Standing Woman

  YASUTAKA TSUTSUI

  Translated by Dana Lewis

  Yasutaka Tsutsui (1934– ) is a Japanese author whose works of absurdist science fiction and commentary on the media landscape made him one of the Big Three of Japanese speculative fiction in the twentieth century, alongside Shinichi Hoshi and Sakyō Komatsu. He is best understood first as Japan’s answer to the New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s, and secondly as comparable in some ways to such social satirists as Robert Sheckley, Norman Spinrad, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; his later works form the basis of Japanese science fiction postmodernism.

  Tsutsui graduated from Doshisha University, Kyoto, in 1957 with a master’s thesis on psychoanalysis and surrealism and worked for several years at a branch of the Nomura design firm, spending his bonus money to produce the science fiction fanzine Null (1961–64). Null attracted many young members of the Japanese science fiction community, including Kazumasa Hirai and Taku Mayumura, but folded after its eleventh issue as Tsutsui was drawn into other activities. Tsutsui helped run the third Japanese Daicon convention, wrote for SF Magazine, and was the screenwriter for the anime television series Super Jetter (1965). He became closely associated with the science fiction author Sakyō Komatsu and eventually lampooned Komatsu’s Nippon chinbotsu with “Nippon igai zenbu chinbotsu” in 1973 (“Everything Apart from Japan Sinks”), which won the following year’s Short Form Seiun Award, one of the most respected awards for Japanese science fiction.

  Tsutsui has courted controversy throughout his career, including waging a crusade against political correctness, and he embarked on a self-imposed authorial strike from 1993 to 1996, after his story “Muteki keisatsu” (“Unmanned Police”; Nigiyaka-na Mirai, 1968) was dropped from an anthology published by Kadokawa. However, during that well-publicized absence from print, Tsutsui was intensely active in digital media, publishing his first “digital book,” Tsutsui Yasutaka yonsenji gekijō (Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Four-Thousand-Character Theater), in 1994 for the Japanese PC-9800 system. The anime films The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Paprika (2009) are both based on his novels.

  “Standing Woman” (1974) is a classic of surreal science fiction, first published in English in Omni in 1981 and reprinted many times, including in The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories (1997).

  STANDING WOMAN

  Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Translated by Dana Lewis

  I stayed up all night and finally finished a forty-page short story. It was a trivial entertainment piece, capable of neither harm nor good.

  “These days you can’t write stories that might do harm or good: it can’t be helped.” That’s what I told myself while I fastened the manuscript with a paper clip and put it into an envelope.

  As to whether I have it in me to write stories that might do harm or good, I do my best not to think about it. I might want to try.

  The morning sunlight hurt my eyes as I slipped on my wooden clogs and left the house with the envelope. Since there was still time before the first mail truck would come, I turned my feet toward the park. In the morning no children come to this park, a mere eighty square meters in the middle of a cramped residential district. It’s quiet here. So I always include the park in my morning walk. Nowadays even the scanty green provided by the ten or so trees is priceless in the megalopolis.

  I should have brought some bread, I thought. My favorite dogpillar stands next to the park bench. It’s an affable dogpillar with buff-colored fur, quite large for a mongrel.

  The liquid-fertilizer truck had just left when I reached the park; the ground was damp and there was a faint smell of chlorine. The elderly gentleman I often saw there was sitting on the bench next to the dogpillar, feeding the buff post what seemed to be meat dumplings. Dogpillars usually have excellent appetites. Maybe the liquid fertilizer, absorbed by the roots sunk deep in the ground and passed on up through the legs, leaves something to be desired.

  They’ll eat just about anything you give them.

  “You brought him something? I slipped up today. I forgot to bring my bread,” I said to the elderly man.

  He turned gentle eyes on me and smiled softly.

  “Ah, you like this fellow, too?”

  “Yes,” I replied, sitting down beside him. “He looks exactly like the dog I used to have.”

  The dogpillar looked up at me with large, black eyes and wagged its tail.

  “Actually, I kept a dog like this fellow myself,” the man said, scratching the ruff of the dogpillar’s neck. “He was made into a dogpillar when he was three. Haven’t you seen him? Between the haberdashery and the film shop on the coast road. Isn’t there a dogpillar there that looks like this fellow?”

  I nodded, adding, “Then that one was yours?”

  “Yes, he was our pet. His name was Hachi. Now he’s completely vegetized. A beautiful dogtree.”

  “Now that you mention it, he does look a lot like this fellow. Maybe they came from the same stock.”

  “And the dog you kept?” the elderly man asked. “Where is he planted?”

  “Our dog was named Buff,” I answered, shaking my head. “He was planted beside the entrance to the cemetery on the edge of town when he was four. Poor thing, he died right after he was planted. The fertilizer trucks don’t get out that way very often, and it was so far I couldn’t take him food every day. Maybe they planted him badly. He died before becoming a tree.”

  “Then he was removed?”

  “No, fortunately, it didn’t much matter there if he smelled or not, and so he was left there and dried. Now he’s a bonepillar. He makes fine material for the neighborhood elementary-school science class, I hear.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  The elderly man stroked the dogpillar’s head. “This fellow here, I wonder what he was called before he became a dogpillar.”

  “No calling a dogpillar by its original name,” I said. “Isn’t that a strange law?”

  The man looked at me sharply, then replied casually, “Didn’t they just extend the laws concerning people to dogs? That’s why they lose their names when they become dogpillars.” He nodded while scratching the dogpillar’s jaw. “Not only the old names, but you can’t give them new names, either. That’s because there are no proper nouns for plants.”

  Why, of course, I thought.

  He looked at my envelope with MANUSCRIPT ENCLOSED written on it.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you a writer?”

  I was a little embarrassed.

  “Well, yes. Just trivial things.”

  After looking at me closely, the man returned to stroking the dogpillar’s head. “I also used to write things.”

  He managed to suppress a smile.

  “How many years is it now since I stopped writing? It feels like a long time.”

  I stared at the man’s profile. Now that he said so, it was a face I seemed to have seen somewhere before. I started to ask his name, hesitated, and fell silent.

  The elderly man said abruptly. “It’s become a hard world to write in.”

  I lowered my eyes, ash
amed of myself, who still continued to write in such a world.

  The man apologized hurriedly at my sudden depression.

  “That was rude. I’m not criticizing you. I’m the one who should feel ashamed.”

  “No,” I told him, after looking quickly around us, “I can’t give up writing, because I haven’t the courage. Giving up writing! Why, after all, that would be a gesture against society.”

  The elderly man continued stroking the dogpillar. After a long while he spoke.

  “It’s painful, suddenly giving up writing. Now that it’s come to this, I would have been better off if I’d gone on boldly writing social criticism and had been arrested. There are even times when I think that. But I was just a dilettante, never knowing poverty, craving peaceful dreams. I wanted to live a comfortable life. As a person strong in self-respect, I couldn’t endure being exposed to the eyes of the world, ridiculed. So I quit writing. A sorry tale.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No, no, let’s not talk about it. You never know who might be listening, even here on the street.”

  I changed the subject. “Do you live here?”

  “Do you know the beauty parlor on the main street? You turn in there. My name is Hiyama.” He nodded at me. “Come over sometime. I’m married, but…”

  “Thank you very much.”

  I gave him my own name.

  I didn’t remember any writer named Hiyama. No doubt he wrote under a pen name. I had no intention of visiting his house. This is a world where even two or three writers getting together is considered illegal assembly.

  “It’s time for a mail truck to come in.”

  Taking pains to look at my watch, I stood.

  “I’m afraid I’d better go,” I said.