My thinking was that, if animals half the size of a man fit through its mouth, I could get inside, too. With a little effort, some lubricant, and a bit of pushing, of course.
Twenty minutes later, perhaps due to my somewhat larger-than-average body type, it was proving to take an awful lot of pushing. Not only by me, but also by four of Tarkon’s bodyguards, who were trying to use brute muscular strength (something they don’t lack, let me point out) to shove me down the monster’s gullet.
Since none of my lubricants were helping much either, I cut to the chase and injected twenty kilos of an extra-powerful muscle relaxant straight into the worm’s pharynx. This dilated the creature’s throat enough to let me through, making me the first veterinarian biologist to study the digestive system of the largest aquatic animal in the galaxy from the inside—and while the animal was still alive.
That was six hours ago.
Since then I’ve been wading ponderously in my ultraprotective suit (designed to protect an astronaut from cosmic rays and micrometeorite impacts in the weightlessness of space, it isn’t exactly light or easy to move in on the planet’s surface, not even with the aid of its powerful servomotors), through a thick, dark haze that my helmet’s headlamp can’t truly dissipate.
Luckily, after my tight squeeze down the tsunami’s throat, its esophagus and stomach both turned out to be large enough to walk through standing upright, which was really something for me. I could even have parked a small spaceship inside if I’d had one handy.
The cartridges of monster muscle relaxants I brought with me have allowed me to make my way through the valves of the digestive system, from one to the next: stomach, small intestine, and finally, large intestine. I still have two shots, which I’m saving for my triumphal exit: the anal sphincter.
Lucky I can’t smell the liquid I’m walking through. Sometimes up to my waist, sometimes all the way up to my neck. Glad I’m not a Juhungan now. With no sense of sight or sound, they rely entirely on smell, touch, and taste to understand the world. This would not be any fun for them, I’m sure.
Ever since the laxative episode, I thought the whole operation stank, no pun intended. But I never expected I’d be regressing to my infancy. Playing with poo—and for keeps, on a grand scale.
I don’t even want to think what would happen if the ultraprotective suit failed…
It’d make for a pretty tragicomic epitaph: ASPHYXIATED IN EXCREMENT.
Of course, there’s shit and then there’s shit.
The laxative was a good idea… Considering the consistency of the fecal matter the colossus expelled in its first bowel movement, I would have needed a sonic drill or an even more powerful excavation tool to make my way through a full colon.
Maybe the critter had been constipated, and that’s why it had surfaced, to swallow some air…
This piece of sludge here won’t come loose. With all the accretions removed, it turns out to be a nearly perfect sphere, some ten centimeters in diameter. In the dim light of my personal spotlights it looks an iridescent white, like mother-of-pearl. A fecal pearl? Interesting… But now’s not the time to study digestive-system oddities.
I’m starting to lose my patience. Narbuk, who can see everything from his vantage point, tells me it’s less than a hundred meters to the back end. But I’d rather buy Mrs. Tarkon a new bracelet, Aldebaran topaz-encrusted platinum and all, than go through the whole business of sedating this monumental worm and inspecting its digestive system a second time…
So I give the old sphere a few light taps with my ceramic-armored glove, testing it…
Hurray for intuition! On the third tap it splits in half, proving to be more a thin crust than a gelatinous coating.
And, hallelujah, the glimmering bracelet falls straight into my hand!
Almost clean even.
Almost. Let’s not exaggerate.
A moment of triumph like this makes the whole intestinal trek of the past few hours seem worth it.
I dance a quick jig, shit-kicking included.
“Misión accomplished—got it,” I announce, terse but contented, unceremoniously pocketing the bauble in a flap of the suit. I keep moving along, much more quickly now. “I’m heading out de aquí like a rocket, Narbuk. Quieres saber something funny? Sabes what pearls are? The bracelet was encased in a structure muy similar. Fecal pearls! Probablemente tsunamis secrete a kind of nacre, aunque they aren’t mollusks, to proteger themselves from contaminantes de heavy metal. Platinum es básicamente inert, though… They must grow increíblemente quickly también, unlike oyster pearls en la Earth. I wonder if they’d be worth algo…”
“Boss Sangan,” Narbuk cuts me off. “Me know you gran científico, but better olvidar las pearls and theories por ahora. Tsunami wake soon. Heart beat más rápido, me detect primer nerve impulses.”
Shit.
Would it be too scatological to say that things are looking dark brown?
Not at all. Literally, shit… And here I am in it up to my chest, that’s the worst part.
“I’m… casi… out,” I say to calm him, panting as I try to break the galactic speed record for sprinting in an ultraprotective suit through a colon filled with mysterious liquids. “But… just en caso… get ready… para sedar it again…”
“Yo very sorry, Boss Sangan.” With his characteristic sense of timing, the Laggoru pours the proverbial bucket of cold water on my idea. “Me already think esto. Tarkon aides dicen que you use all Nerea morpheorol, primera dosis. También say Amphorians have colony near. Only dos días para produce other ton, they will.”
Great. Wonderful news. It never rains, it pours. So there won’t be any more sedatives coming? Not for… another two days? Nobody bothered to tell me that little detail. Probably because they guessed (and rightly so) that if I’d known there wasn’t enough morpheorol for a second dose, I never would have gone so happily into the guts of the tsunami.
I suddenly remember a character out of Cuban folklore, whom my mother always told me about… Chacumbele, que él mismito se mató. Chacumbele, who killed himself, all by himself.
But what can I do now?
“Hold on to the brush, porque I’m taking the ladder,” one housepainter said to the other.
Nothing to do but to run faster.
“Oh… magnífico,” I joke, panting. “So… in just dos días… Tarkon y estos guys… can sleep bien… after mi funeral.”
“Boss Sangan kind man, worry por los demás. But morpheorol be not bueno for humanos,” says Narbuk, completely serious. “Por favor, now hurry. Peristaltic contractions, esophagus. Colon, un minuto. Me think este es dangerous sign…”
“Piss off, Narbuk,” I grumble, knowing perfectly well what it’s a dangerous sign of.
Luckily I can see the great, wrinkled dark star of the beast’s anal sphincter. I don’t think I ever thought an ass looked so beautiful. Of course, I’d never seen such a big one before… And never from the inside.
“See that, tú pesimista Laggoru? Yo estoy at the back door; ahora I’ll just inject the muscle relaxants, y…”
And of course, I run out of time.
With an impressive rumble that the microphones in my helmet amplify even more, something huge slams into me from the back. My instinctive reaction is to hold on to the mucous membrane of the tsunami’s colon with all the power of the servomotors in my gloves—and doing this saves me: By the time the force of the tremendous semiliquid flatulence washes me away, the anus has relaxed enough that I emerge without losing any limbs in the violent process.