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The creature in the magters' brains was a true symbiote then, giving something and receiving something, making a union of symbiotes where all were stronger together than any could be separately. Now this is changed. The magter brain cannot understand the concept of racial death, in a situation where it must understand to be able to survive.
Every time, though, we find some new lichen that's trying to set up a symbiote cycle with the concrete of our bunkers." "And every time," Ringg said cheerfully, "somebody usually me has to see about having them scraped down and repainted. Maybe someday I'll find a paint the lichens don't like the taste of." "Going to explore with Ringg?"
Destruction of the frontal lobes made the magter creatures without emotions or ability for really abstract thought. Apparently they survived better without these. There must have been some horrible failures before the right balance was struck. The final product is a man-plant-animal symbiote that is admirably adapted for survival on this disaster world.
There are probably green spheres throughout the magters' bodies, spores or offspring of those things in their brains. Enough will find their way to the germ cells to make sure that every young magter is infected at birth. While the child is growing, so is the symbiote. Probably a lot faster, since it seems to be a simpler organism.
In exchange for food, oxygen and comfort, the brain-symbiote must generate hormones and enzymes that enable the magter to survive. Some of these might aid digestion, enabling the magter to eat any plant or animal life they can lay their hands on. The symbiote might produce sugars, scavenge the blood of toxins there are so many things it could do.
Therefore the brain-creature is no longer a symbiote but a parasite." "And as a parasite it must be destroyed!" Brion broke in. "We're not fighting shadows any more," he exulted. "We've found the enemy and it's not the magter at all. Just a sort of glorified tapeworm that is too stupid to know when it is killing itself off. Does it have a brain can it think?" "I doubt it very much," Lea said.
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."
Things it must have done, since the magter are obviously the dominant life form on this planet. They paid a high price for the symbiote, but it didn't matter to race survival until now. Did you notice that the magter's brain is no smaller than normal?" "It must be or how else could that brain-symbiote fit in inside the skull with it?" Brion said.
In the coccids, the green particles grow into a kind of yeast that lives within the insect. Not a parasite, but a real symbiote...." Her eyes opened wide as she caught the significance of her own words. A symbiote and Dis was the world where symbiosis and parasitism had become more advanced and complex than on any other planet.
There was a couch opposite the viewport where they could sit and still see Dis. "I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said. "If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that the Nyjorders will find the most humane solution."
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