around to gather food, and eats the pieces they capture that are too big for them. This is biontergasy, two creatures living and working together, yet each capable of existing alone. Now, this same crustacean has a parasite living under its shell, a degenerated form of a snail that has lost all powers of movement. A true parasite that takes food from its host's body and gives nothing in return. Inside this snail's gut there is a protozoan that lives off the snail's ingested food. Yet this little organism is not a parasite as you might think at first, but a symbiote. It takes food from the snail, but at the same time it secretes a chemical that aids the snail's digestion of the food. Do you get the picture? All these life forms exist in a complicated interdependence." Brion frowned in concentration, sipping at the drink. "It's making some kind of sense now. Symbiosis, [Pg 107]parasitism and all the rest are just ways of describing variations of the same basic process of living together. And there is probably a grading and shading between some of these that make the exact relationship hard to define." [Pg 107] "Precisely. Existence is so difficult on this world that the competing forms have almost died out. There are still a few left, preying off the others. It was the co-operating and interdependent life forms that really won out in the race for survival. I say life forms with intent; the creatures here are mostly a mixture of plant and animal, like the lichens you have elsewhere. The Disans have a creature they call a vaede that they use for water when traveling. It has rudimentary powers of motion from its animal parts, yet uses photosynthesis and stores water like a plant. When the Disans drink from it the thing taps their blood stream for food elements." "I know," Brion said wryly. "I drank from one. You can see my scars. I'm beginning to comprehend how the Disans fit into the physical pattern of their world, and I realize it must have all kinds of psychological [Pg 108]effects on them. Do you think this has any effect on their social organization?" [Pg 108] "An important one. But maybe I'm making too many suppositions now, perhaps your researchers upstairs can tell you better, after all this is their field." Brion had studied the reports on the social setup and not one word of them made sense. They were a solid maze of unknown symbols and cryptic charts. "Please
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