Alien Emergencies - James White [199]
“The following year a number of the beings were observed by the Eurils in a fully conscious state,” he continued, “going about their business in small group gestalts inside heated domes under the winter ice, which indicates that they do not go into hibernation unless or until it is forced on them. It is unnecessary, therefore, to duplicate the extremes of temperature of their planet of origin on their new home since any world closely resembling their summer environment would suit them. Had this not been so, the near impossibility of finding another and identical planetary environment to the one they were trying to leave would have made the migration hopeless from the start. And the reasons for the CRLT life-form becoming a group entity, initially a small-group entity, are also becoming clear.”
Even at the time of the Eurils’ visit the CRLTs, despite their advanced technology, were not having things all their own way. They lived on an incredibly savage world which had no clear division between its animal and vegetable predators. In order to have any chance of survival at all, the young CRLTs had to be born physically well developed and remain under the protection of the parent for as long as possible. In the CRLTs case, parturition was delayed until the offspring was a young adult who had learned how to survive and how to aid the continued survival of its parent.
Separation took place every winter, when everything went to sleep and there was no physical threat, and the young one rejoined its parent in the spring to continue its lessons in survival. The young one, who at this stage was invariably female, reached physical maturity early and produced a child of its own. And so it went with the original adult, who had begun to change its sex to male, trailing a long tail of beings of diminishing degrees of masculinity and experience behind it as it moved up the chain of the group entity toward the head.
“The CRLT brain forms part of the central nerve core which during fusion is linked to the brains of the individuals ahead of and behind it via the interfaces at each end of the body,” Conway went on, “so that an individual segment learns not only by its own experience but from those of its predecessors farther up the line. This means that the larger the number of individuals in the group, the smarter will be its male head and forward segments. Should the head segment, who is the elder of the group and probably its decision maker, die from natural or other causes, the male next in line takes over.”
Murchison cleared her throat delicately and said, “If anyone wishes at this juncture to make a general observation regarding the superiority, physical or intellectual, of the male over the female, be advised that I shall spit in his, her, or its eye.”
Conway smiled and shook his head. He said seriously, “The male head will, naturally, fertilize a number of young female tail segments of other group entities, but there is a problem. Surely there would be serious psychological difficulties, sex-based frustrations, with so many of the intervening segments neither fully male or female and unable to—”
“There is no problem,” Murchison broke in, “if all mentation and, presumably, the pain and pleasure stimuli are shared by every individual in the group.”
“Of course, I’d forgotten that aspect,” Conway said. “But there is another. Think of the length of our survivor. If mentation and experience are shared, then this could be a very long-lived and highly intelligent group entity indeed—”
The discussion was cut short at that point by the lock cycling warning. The third pair of CRLTs had arrived.
These two had been taken from the sternmost loops of the coilship where the casualties among the most senior and intelligent CRLTs had been heaviest. According to Vespasian’s tactical computer and the findings of Descartes’s specialists in e-t written languages and numerical systems, fifty-three of the CRLT hibernation cylinders—and their occupants—had been destroyed as a result of the collision, and between these two