The Only Neat Thing to Do

'You're a brain parasite!' she cries loudly. 'You're an intelligent brain parasite, using my eyes to see with and my ears to hear with, and talking through my mouth as if I were a zombie — and, and for all I know, you're taking over my whole brain!'

'Oh, please! P-please!' She hears her own voice tremble. 'I can leave at any moment — is that what you wish? And I damage nothing — nothing at all. I use very little energy. In fact, I have cleared away some debris in your main blood-supply tube, so there is more than ample for us both. I need only a few components from time to time. But I can withdraw right now. It would be a slow process, because I've become more deeply enmeshed and my mentor isn't here to direct me. But if that's what you want, I shall start at once, leaving just as I came. … Maybe— n-now that I'm refreshed, I could survive longer, clinging to your ship.'

The pathos affects Coati; the timbre of the voice calls up the image of a tiny, sad, frightened creature shivering in the cold prison of space.

'We'll decide about that later,' she says somewhat gruffly. 'Meanwhile I have your word of honor you aren't messing up my brain?'

'Indeed not,' her own voice whispers back indignantly. 'It is a beautiful brain.'

'But what do you want? Where are you trying to go?'

'Now I want only to go home. I thought, if I could reach some central Human place, we could find someone who would carry me back to my home planet and my proper host.'

'But why did you leave Boney and Ko and go with that message pipe in the first place?'

'Oh — I had no idea then how big the empty spaces are; I thought it would be like a long trip out-of-body at home. Brrr-rr! There's so much I don't know. Can you tell that I am quite a young being? I have not at all finished my instructions. My mentors tell me I am foolish, or foolhardy. I–I wanted adventure?' The little voice sounds suddenly quite strong and positive. 'I still do, but I see I must be better prepared.'

'Hmm. Hey, can you tell I'm young, too? I guess that makes two of us. I guess I'm out here looking for adventure, too.'

'You do understand.'

'Yeah.' Coati grins, sighs. 'Well, I can carry you back to FedBase, and I'm sure they'll be sending parties to your planet soon. It's a First Contact for us, you know; that's what we call meeting a new non-Human race. We know about fifty so far, but no one just like you. So I'm certain people will be going.'

'Oh, thank you! Thank you so much.'

Coati feels a surge of physical pleasure, an urge—

'Hey, you're doing that again! Stop it.'

'Oh, I am sorry.' The glow fades. 'It's a primitive response to gratitude. To give pleasure. You see, our normal hosts are quite mindless; they can be thanked only by physical sensation.'

'I see.' Pondering this, Coati sees something else, too. 'I suppose you could make them feel pain, too, to punish them, if they did something you didn't like?'

'I suppose so. But we don't like pain; it churns up the delicate brain. Those are some of the lessons I haven't had yet. I had to only once, when my host was playing too near a dangerous cliff. And then I soothed it with pleasure right after it moved back. We use it only in emergencies, if the host threatens to harm itself, rare things like that. …Or, wait, I remember, if the host gets into what you call a fight. …You can see it's complicated.'

'I see,' Coati repeats. Uneasily she realizes that this young alien passenger might have more control over her than was exactly neat. But it seems to be so well-meaning, to have no intent at all to harm her. She relaxes — unable to suppress a twinge of wonder whether her easy emotional acceptance of its presence in — whew! — her brain might not be a feeling partly engineered by the alien. Maybe the really neat thing to do would be to ask her passenger to withdraw, right now. Could she fix some comfortable place for it to stay outside her? Maybe she'll do that, when they get a bit closer to FedBase.

Meanwhile, what about her plan for visiting the planet Boney and Ko were headed for? If she could pick up a trace of them, it would be a real help to FedBase. And wouldn't it be a shame to come all this way without taking a look?

That argument with herself is soon over. And her young appetite is making itself felt. She picks out a ration snack and starts to set the drive course for the planets, explaining between munches what she plans to do before returning to FedBase. Her passenger raises no objection to this delay.

'I am so grateful, so grateful you would think to deliver me,' her voice says with some difficulty around the cheese bites.

As Coati opens the cold-keeper, a flash of gold attracts her attention. It's more of that gold dust, clinging to the chilly surface. She bats it away, and some floats to her face.

'By the way, what is this stuff? It came in the message pipe, with you. Can you see it? Hey, it's on my legs, too.' She extends one,

'Yes,' her 'different' voice replies. 'They are seeds.'

She's getting used to this weird dialogue with herself. It reminds her of a show she saw, where a ventriloquist animated a dummy. 'I'm a ventriloquist's dummy,' she chuckles to herself. 'Only I'm the ventriloquist, too.

'What kind of seeds, of what?' she asks aloud.

'Ours.' There's a sound, or feeling, like a sigh, as if a troubling thought had passed. Then the voice says more briskly, 'Wait, I forgot. I should release a chemical to keep them off you. They are attracted to — to the pheromones of life.'

'I didn't know I knew those words,' Coati tells her invisible companion. 'I guess you were really into my vocabulary while I slept.'

'Oh, yes. I labored.'

A moment later Coati feels a slight flush prickling her skin. Is this the 'chemical'? Before she can feel alarmed, it passes. And she sees that the floating dust — or seeds— has fallen away from her as if repelled by a charge.

'Good-o.' She eats a bit more, finishing the course-set. 'That reminds me, what do you call your race? And you, you must have a name. We should get better acquainted!' She laughs for two; all sense of trouble has gone.

'I am of the Eea, or Eeadron. Personally I'm called Syliobene.'

'Hello, Syliobene! I'm Coati Cass. Coati.'

'Hello, Coati Cass Coati.'

'No, I meant, just Coati. Cass is my family name.'

'Ah, 'family.' We wondered about that, with the other Humans.'

'Sure, I'll be glad to explain. But later—' Coati cuts herself off. 'I mean, there'll be plenty of time to explain everything while we slowly approach the planet orbiting that star. And I think I'm entitled to your story first, Syliobene, since I'm providing the body. Don't you agree that's fair?'

'Oh, yes. I must take care not to be selfish, when you do so much.'

Somehow this speech for the first time conveys to Coati that her passenger really is a young, almost childish being. The big words it had found in her mind had kept misleading her. But now Syliobene sounds so much like herself reminding herself of her manners. She chuckles again, benignly. Could it be that they are two kids — even two females — together, out looking for adventure in the starfields? And it's nice to have this unexpected companion; much as Coati loves to read and view, she's beginning to get the idea that a lot of space voyaging consists of lonely sitting and waiting, when you aren't in cold-sleep. Of course, she guiltily reminds herself, she could be checking the charts to see if all the coordinates of the relatively few stars out here are straight. But Boney and Ko have undoubtedly done all that — after all, this was their second trip to this sun; on the first one they merely spotted planets. And learning about an alien race is surely important.

She leans back comfortably and asks, 'Now, what about your planet? What does it look like? And your hosts — how does that work? How did such a system ever evolve in the first place? Hey, I know — can you make me see an image, a vision of your home?'

'Alas, no. Such a feat is beyond my powers. Making speech is the utmost I can do.'

'Well, tell me about it all.'

'I will. But first I must say, we have no such — no such material equipment, no such technology