the patient and not the disease. However, my species prides itself in being the
most timid and cowardly in the Federation, and all possible precautions will be
taken. Friend Cha, set the vision pickup to show if any of those life-forms try
to leave the compartment and follow you. If any of them do, I shall return at
once to Rhabwar and seal the boarding tube. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Senior Physician,” said Cha Thrat.
“If anything suspicious occurs while I am with you,” it went on, “even if I am
able to avoid capture and still appear to be my own self, friend Fletcher will
seal the tube and put the quarantine procedure into immediate effect.
“We need as much information on this life-form as you can give us,” it ended.
“Please continue, friend Cha, we are recording. I’m leaving now.”
“And I’m going with you,” Murchison said firmly. “If this is the ship’s only
survivor, one of a newly discovered intelligent species and possible future
member of the Federation, Thorny will walk on me with all six of its feet if I
let it die. Danalta and Naydrad can stay here in case we have need of special
equipment and to watch the vision pickup. And in case the little beastie isn’t
as friendly as Cha Thrat insists it is, I’ll add a heavy-duty cutting torch to
my instruments so that I can protect your back.” .
“Thank you, friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, “but no.”
“But yes, Senior Physician,” the Pathologist replied. “With respect, you have
the rank but not the muscles : stop me.”
Impatiently Cha Thrat said, “if you want to be able to detect any conscious
emotional radiation, please hurry. The patient needs urgent attention…”
There was an immediate objection from Fletcher regarding her unjustified use of
the word “patient.” She ignored it and, trying her best to describe the thoughts
and images that had been placed with so much effort in her mind, went on to
outline the case history of the survivor and the history of its species.
They came from a world that even the Sommaradvan, Gogleskan, and Earth-human
components of her mind considered beautiful, a planet so bountiful that the
larger species of fauna did not have to struggle for survival and did not, for
that reason, develop intelligence. But from the earliest times, when all life
was in the oceans, a species evolved capable of attaching itself to a variety of
native life-forms. They formed a symbiotic partnership in which the host
creature was directed to the best sources of food while the weak and relatively
tiny parasite had the protection of its larger mount as well as the mobility
that enabled it to seek out its own, less readily available food supply. By the
time the host creatures left the oceans to become large and unintelligent land
animals, the mutually profitable arrangement continued and the parasite had
become very intelligent indeed.
The earliest recorded history told of vain attempts to nurture intelligence in
many different species of host creature. The native, six-limbed FGHJ life-form
with its ability to work in a wide variety of materials, when aparasite was
directing its hands, was favored above all the others.
But more and more they had wished for mind-partners they could not control,
beings who would argue and debate and contribute new ideas and viewpoints,
rather than creatures who were little more than general-purpose,
self-replenishing organic tools with the ability to see, hear, and manipulate to
order.
With these tools they built great cities and manufacturing complexes and vessels
that circumnavigated their world, flew in the atmosphere above it, and,
ultimately crossed the terrible and wonderful emptiness between the stars. But
the cities, like their starships, were functional and unbeautiful because they
had been built by and for the comfort and use of beings without any appreciation
of beauty, and whose animal needs were satisfied by food, warmth, and regular
satisfaction of the urge to procreate. Like valuable tools they had to be
properly maintained, and many of them were well loved with the affection that a
civilized being feels for a faithful but nonintelligent pet.
But the parasites had their own special needs that in no respect resembled those