The Only Neat Thing to Do

by James Tiptree Jr.

  As soon as she's started, she turns to the scope to check. Planets — yes! One — two — four — and there it is! Blue-green and white even at this distance! Boney and Ko had said it tested highly terraform. It looks it, all right, thinks Coati, who has seen only holos of antique Earth. She wonders briefly what the missing nonterraform part could be: irregularities of climate, absence of some major life-forms? It doesn't matter — anything over 75 percent means livable without protective gear, air and water present and good. She'll be able to get out and explore in the greatest comfort— on a new world! But are Boney and Ko already there?

  When she gets into orbital distance from the planet, she must run a standard search pattern around it. All Federation ships have radar-responsive gear to help locate them.

  But her little ship doesn't have a real Federation search-scope. She'll have to use her eyes, and fly much too narrow a course. This could be tedious; she sighs.

  She finds herself crossing her legs and wriggling and scratching herself idly. Really, this sex overflow is too much! The mental part is fairly calm, though, almost like real happiness. Nice. Only distracting. …And, as she leans back to start waiting out the run in, she feels again that sense of presence in the ship. Company, companionship. Is she going a little nutters? "Calm down," she tells herself firmly.

  A minim of dead silence …into which a tiny, tiny voice says distinctly, "Hello …hello? Please don't be frightened. Hello?"

  It's coming from somewhere behind and above her.

  Coati whirls, peers up and around everywhere, seeing nothing new.

  "Wh-where are you?" she demands. "Who are you, in here?"

  "I am a very small being. You saved my life. Please don't be frightened of me. Hello?"

  "Hello," Coati replies slowly, peering around hard. Still she sees nothing. And the voice is still behind her when she turns. She doesn't feel frightened at all, just intensely excited and curious.

  "What do you mean, I saved your life?"

  "I was clinging to the outside of that artifact you call a message. I would have died soon."

  "Well, good." But now Coati is a bit frightened. When the voice spoke, she definitely detected movement in her own larynx and tongue — as if she were speaking the words herself. Gods — she is going nutters, she's hallucinating! "I'm talking to myself!"

  "No, no," the voice — her voice — reassures her. "You are correct — I am using your speech apparatus. Please forgive me; I have none of my own that you could hear."

  Coati digests this dubiously. If this is a hallucination, it's really complex. She's never done anything like this before. Could it be real, some kind of alien telekinesis?

  "But where are you? Why don't you come out and show yourself?"

  "I can't. I will explain. Please promise me you won't be frightened. I have damaged nothing, and I will leave anytime you desire."

  Coati suddenly gets an idea, and eyes the computer sharply. In fantasy shows she's seen holos about alien minds taking over computers. So far as she knows, it's never happened in reality. But maybe—

  "Are you in my computer?"

  "Your computer?" Incredibly, the voice gives what might almost be a giggle. "In a way, yes. I told you I am very, very small. I am in empty places, in your head." Quickly it adds, "You aren't frightened, please? I can go out anytime, but then we can't speak."

  "In my head!" Coati exclaims. For some reason she, too, feels like laughing. She knows she should be making some serious response, but all she can think of is, this is why her sinuses feel stuffy. "How did you get in my head?"

  "When you rescued me I was incapable of thought. We have a primitive tropism to enter a body and make our way to the head. When I came to myself, I was here. You see, on my home we live in the brains of our host animals. In fact, we are their brains."

  "You went through my body? Oh — from that place on my arm?"

  "Yes, I must have done. I have only vague, primitive memories. You see, we are really so small. We live in what I think you call intermolecular, maybe interatomic spaces. Our passage doesn't injure anything. To me, your body is as open and porous as your landscape is to you. I didn't realize there was so much large-scale solidity around until I saw it through your eyes! Then, when you went cold, I came to myself and learned my way around, and deciphered the speech centers. I had a long, long time. It was …lonely. I didn't know if you would ever awaken…"

  "Yeah…." Coati thinks this over. She's pretty sure she couldn't imagine all this. It must be real! But all she can think of to say is, "You're using my eyes, too?"

  "I've tapped into the optic nerve, at the second juncture. Very delicately, I assure you. And to your auditory channels. It's one of the first things we do, a primitive program. And we make the host feel happy, to keep from frightening it. You do feel happy, don't you?"

  "Happy? — Hey, are you doing that? Listen, if that's you, you're overdoing it! I don't want to feel quite so 'happy,' as you call it. Can you turn it down?"

  "You don't? Oh, I am sorry. Please wait — my movements are slow."

  Coati waits, thinking so furiously about everything at once that her mind is a chaos. Presently there comes a marked decrease in the distracting physical glow. More than all the rest, this serves to convince her of the reality of her new inhabitant.

  "Can you read my mind?" she asks slowly.

  "Only when you form words," her own voice replies. "Subvocalizing, I think you call it. I used all that long cold time tracing out your vocabulary and language. We have a primitive drive to communication; perhaps all life-forms have."

  "Acquiring a whole language from a static, sleeping brain is quite a feat," says Coati thoughtfully. She is beginning to feel a distinct difference in her voice when the alien is using it; it seems higher, tighter — and she hears herself using words that she knows only from reading, not habitual use.

  "Yes. Luckily I had so much time. But I was so dismayed and depressed when it seemed you'd never awaken. All that work would be for nothing. I am so happy to find you alive! Not just for the work, but for — for life. …Oh, and I have had one chance to practice with your species before. But your brain is quite different."

  However flustered and overwhelmed by the novelty of all this, Coati isn't stupid. The words about "home" and "hosts" are making a connection with Boney and Ko's report.

  "Did the two men who sent that message you were riding on visit your home planet? They were two Humans— that's what I am — in a ship bigger than this."

  "Oh, yes! I was one of those who took turns being with them! And I was visiting one of them when they left." …The voice seems to check itself. "Your brain is really very different."

  "Thanks," says Coati inanely. "I've heard that those two men — those two Humans — weren't regarded as exactly bright."

  'Bright?' Ah, yes. …We performed some repairs, but we couldn't do much."

  Coati's chaotic thoughts coalesce. What she's sitting here chatting with is an alien — an alien who is possibly deadly, very likely dangerous, who has invaded her head.

  "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 s
hivering 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 as you have. What techniques we have are of the mind. I am filled with amazement at all you do. Your race has achieved marvels! I saw a distant world when I looked through your device — a world! And you speak of visiting it as casually as we would go to a lake or a tree farm. A wonder!"

  "Yes, we have a lot of technology. So do some other races, like the Swain and the Moom. But I want yours, Syliobene! To start with, what's this business of Eea and Eeadron?"

  "Ah. Yes, of course. Well, I personally, just myself, am an Eea. But when I am in my proper host, which is a Dron, I am an Eeadron. An Eea by itself is almost nothing. It can do nothing but wait, depending on its primitive tropisms, until a host comes by. It is very rare for Eea to become detached as you found me — except when we are visiting another Eeadron for news or instruction. And then we leave much of ourselves in place, in our personal Dron, to which we return. I, being young, was able to detach myself almost completely to go wi
th the Humans as one of their visitors."

  "Oh — were there other Eea inside Boney and Ko when they took off?"

  "Yes — one each, at least."

  "What would you call that — Eeahumans?" Coati laughs.

  But her companion does not seem to join in. "They were very old," she hears herself mutter softly. And then something that sounds like, "no idea of the length of the trip…" "So you came away when they messaged. Whew — wild act! Oh, Syliobene, I'm so glad I intercepted it and saved you."

  "I too, dear Coati Cass."

  "But now we've got to get serious about this crazy system of yours. Are you the only people on your planet that have their brains in separate bodies? — Oh, wait. I just realized we should record all this; we'll never be able to go over it twice. Hold while I put in a new cassette."

  She gets set up, and bethinks herself to make it sound professional with an introduction.

  "This is Coati Cass recording, on board the CC-One, approaching unnamed planet at—'' She gives all the coordinates, the standard date and time, and the fact that Boney and Ko were last reported to be headed toward this planet.

  "Before that they landed on a planet at thirty-twenty north and reported a First Contact with life-forms there. Their report is in a message forwarded to Base before I came here. Now it seems that when they left the planet, some of the life-forms came with them; specifically, two at least of the almost invisible Eea, in their heads. And some seeds, and another Eea, a very young one, who came along, she says, for the adventure. This young Eea moved to the message pipe, not realizing how long the trip would be, and was almost dead when I opened the pipe. She — I call it 'she' because we haven't got sexes, if any, straightened out yet — she moved over to me when I opened the pipe, and is right now residing in my head, where she can see and hear through my senses, and speak with my voice. I am interviewing her about her planet, Nolian. Now remember, all the voice you hear will be mine — but I myself am the one asking the questions. I think you will soon be able to tell when Syllobene — that's her name — is speaking with my voice; it's higher and sort of constricted, and she uses words I didn't know I knew. She learned all that while I was in cold-sleep coming here. Now, Syllobene, would you please repeat what you've told me so far, about the Eea and the Eeadron?"