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"Evolutionary success ... is going to absolutely require mobility on, at a minimum, an interplanetary scale. We either go or we die out."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Brain Specialist Caste | ||
| A hive race only produces intelligence when needed (which was not very often). |
In this excerpt, an alien creature confronts a human who hopes to take advantage of an alien race of workers. It speaks through one of the humans, Mirny, whom he has parasitized.
| "I find myself awakened again," Swarm said dreamily. "I am pleased to see that it is no major emergency that concerns me. Instead it is a threat that has become almost routine." It hesitated delicately. Mirny's body moved slightly in midair; her breathing was inhumanly regular. The eyes opened and closed. "Another young race."
"What are you?" "I am the Swarm. That is, I am one of its castes. I am a tool, an adaptation; my specialty is intelligence. I am not often needed. It is good to be needed again..." "Like yourself, I enjoy irony," it said. "It is a pretty trap you have found yourself in, captain-doctor. You meant to make the Swarm work for you and your race. You meant to breed us and study us and use us. It is an excellent plan, but one we hit upon long before your race evolved..." "...Intelligence is a great bother. It makes all kinds of trouble for us." "What do you mean?" "You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness," Swarm said. "As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait." "...I am a tool, as I said." The mutated device on the end of its arm made a sighing noise. "When you began your pheromonal experiments, the chemical imbalance became apparent to the Queen. It triggered certain genetic patterns within her body, and I was reborn. Chemical sabotage is a problem that can best be dealt with by intelligence. I am a brain replete, you see, specially designed to be far more intelligent than any young race. Within three days I was fully self-conscious. Within five days I had deciphered these markings on my body. They are the genetically encoded history of my race... within five days and two hours I recognized the problem at hand and knew what to do. I am now doing it. I am six days old." |
| Technovelgy from Swarm,
by Bruce Sterling. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1982 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the brain bug from Starship Troopers (1959) by Robert Heinlein and to the pinkness from Time is the Simplest Thing (1961) by Clifford Simak.
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