It’s in the exploration records . . .”
Most of the surface of the entity’s planet of origin, Trigger explained, was a watery swamp where no intelligent life had evolved. The host bodies available to it there had primitive nervous systems, and it was incapable of developing awareness which extended beyond that of its host. But a Hub expedition had spent some time on the planet and left it with numerous living specimens. The entities in the specimens began to transfer to human bodies. It was an instinctive process at that point; but with human brains, they acquired a human intelligence potential. They made use of it. Their existence wasn’t suspected until decades later.
“What’s been done about their world?” Telzey asked.
“It’s posted. Satellite warnings in Translingue and a dozen other major Galactic languages, explicit about the danger of psychic invasion. Fortunately, the entity can’t reproduce when it adopts a host outside its native ecology. There’s no way to establish exactly how many were set at large in the Hub by that one expedition, but almost all of them seem to have been located by now.”
“What do they do with them when they’re located?”
“Not much one can do with them really, is there?” Trigger said. “They don’t harm the host body. It lives and procreates and doesn’t mutate out of the species. It uses its brain and may be performing a valuable function in society. To the sentient individual, of course, they’re a destructive parasite. But that’s how they’ve evolved. They get a choice between dying when the body they’ve currently occupied dies or going back to their world and its water creatures. I understand most of them decide to go back.”
“So those three entities found one another,” Telzey said, “and formed an evil little coven, grouped about the Torai Sebaloun figure.”
“For their mutual benefit,” said Trigger. “You can see how Attuk and Perr could be useful to Torai. The Sebaloun family members
Most of the surface of the entity’s planet of origin, Trigger explained, was a watery swamp where no intelligent life had evolved. The host bodies available to it there had primitive nervous systems, and it was incapable of developing awareness which extended beyond that of its host. But a Hub expedition had spent some time on the planet and left it with numerous living specimens. The entities in the specimens began to transfer to human bodies. It was an instinctive process at that point; but with human brains, they acquired a human intelligence potential. They made use of it. Their existence wasn’t suspected until decades later.
“What’s been done about their world?” Telzey asked.
“It’s posted. Satellite warnings in Translingue and a dozen other major Galactic languages, explicit about the danger of psychic invasion. Fortunately, the entity can’t reproduce when it adopts a host outside its native ecology. There’s no way to establish exactly how many were set at large in the Hub by that one expedition, but almost all of them seem to have been located by now.”
“What do they do with them when they’re located?”
“Not much one can do with them really, is there?” Trigger said. “They don’t harm the host body. It lives and procreates and doesn’t mutate out of the species. It uses its brain and may be performing a valuable function in society. To the sentient individual, of course, they’re a destructive parasite. But that’s how they’ve evolved. They get a choice between dying when the body they’ve currently occupied dies or going back to their world and its water creatures. I understand most of them decide to go back.”
“So those three entities found one another,” Telzey said, “and formed an evil little coven, grouped about the Torai Sebaloun figure.”
“For their mutual benefit,” said Trigger. “You can see how Attuk and Perr could be useful to Torai. The Sebaloun family members