Destiny, noun. Destiny — the predetermined course of events often conceived as a resistless power or agency…
"The accepted definition," Dr. Raven had said, as if he might be addressing a lecture hall, "may have to be modified slightly when Asher writes his book."
But how could Sutton find destiny? Destiny was an idea, an abstraction.
"You forget," Dr. Raven had told him, speaking gently as one would to a child, "that part about the resistless power or agency. That is what he found…the power or agency."
"Sutton told me about the beings he found on Cygni," Adams had said. "He was at a loss as to how best to describe them. He said the nearest that he could come was symbiotic abstractions."
Dr. Raven had nodded his head and pulled his shell-like ears and figured that maybe symbiotic abstractions would fit the bill, although it was hard for one to decide just what a symbiotic abstraction was or what it would look like.
What it would look like — or what it might be.
The informational robot had been very technical when Adams had put the question to him.
"Symbiosis," he had said. "Why, sir, symbiosis is quite simple. It is a mutually beneficial internal partnership between two organisms of different kinds. Mutually beneficial, you understand, sir. That is the important thing — that mutually beneficial business. Not a benefit to one of the things alone, but to both of them.
"Commensalism, now, that is something else. In commensalism there still is mutual benefit, sir, but the relationship is external, not internal. Nor parasitism, either, for that matter. Because in parasitic instances only one thing benefits. The host does not benefit, just the parasite.