of their hosts, whose animal habits and undirected behavior were highly
repugnant to them. It was vital to their continued mental well-being that the
masters escaped periodically from their hosts to lead their own lives—usually
during the hours of darkness when the tools were no longer in use and could be
quartered where they could not harm themselves. This they did in the small,
quiet, private places, tiny areas of civilization and culture and beauty amid
the ugliness of the cities, where their families nested and they were separated
from the host creatures by everything but distance.
It had long been an accepted fact among them that nc creature or culture could
avoid stagnation if it did not; outside its family or its tribe or, ultimately,
its world. Ir their continuing search for other intelligent beings like or
totally unlike themselves, many extrasolar planets had been discovered and small
colonies established on them, but none of the indigenous life-forms possessed
intelligence and had become just so many sets of other-species tools.
Because of an intense aversion to allowing themselves to be touched by the proxy
hands of a nonintelligent creature, their medical science catered chiefly to the
needs of their hosts and did not include surgery. The result was that when one
of their own-planet tools contracted a disease that, to it, was mildly
debilitating, the effect on the parasite was often lethal.
Cha Thrat paused for a moment and raised one of her upper hands to support the
weight of the parasite. Sensation had returned to her neck and she felt that the
creature’s tendrils were loosening and pulling free. She could hear Prilicla and
Murchison on the deck below.
“That is what happened to their ship,” she went on. “The host FGHJs caught
something that caused a mild, undulant fever, and recovered. The parasites, with
this one exception, perished. But before they returned to their own quarters to
die, they placed their now-undirected host creatures in places where food was
available and they would not injure themselves, in the hope that help would
reach the host creatures in time. The survivor, who seemed to have a partial
resistance to the disease, rendered the vessel safe and accessible to rescuers,
released the distress beacon, and returned to the ship’s Nest to comfort its
dying friends.
“But the effort to do this work,” Cha Thrat went on, talking directly to
Prilicla and Murchison who were nowcoming up the ramp toward her, “was too much
for its host, an aging FGHJ of whom it was particularly fond, and the creature
had a sudden cardiac malfunction and died inside the Nest,”The distress signal
was answered not by one of their own ships, but by Rhabwar” she concluded, “and
the rest we know.”
Prilicla did not reply and Murchison moved to one side, keeping the thin tube of
its cutting torch aimed at the back of Cha Thrat’s neck. Nervously the
Pathologist said, “I’d need to check it with my scanner, of course, but I’d say
physiological classification DTRC. It’s very similar to the DTSB symbiotes some
FGLIs wear for fine surgical work. In those cases it’s the parasite who supplies
the digits and the Tralthan the brains, although there are some OR nurses who
would argue about that…”
It broke off as Cha Thrat said, “I have been trying to relinquish control of my
speech centers so that it would be able to talk to you directly through me, but
it is much too weak and is only barely conscious, so I must be its voice. It
already knows from my mind who you are, and it is Crelyarrel, of the third
division of Trennchi, of the one hundred and seventh division of Yau, and of the
four hundred and eighth subdivision of the great Villa of the Rhiim. I cannot
properly describe its feelings in words, but there is joy at the knowledge that
the Rhiim are not the only intelligent species in the Galaxy, sorrow that this
wonderful knowledge will die with it, and apologies for anxiety it caused us
by—”
“I know what it is feeling,” Prilicla said gently, and suddenly they were washed
by a great, impalpable wave of sympathy, friendship, and reassurance. “We are