You will, said destiny. You will.
And I did, thought Sutton, remembering. I did.
His body shook as he remembered and his mind stood awed with the vast, unsuspected immensity of destiny…of trillions upon trillions of destinies to match the teeming life of the galaxy.
Destiny had stirred a million years before and a shaggy ape thing had stooped and picked up a broken stick. It stirred again and struck flint together. It stirred once more and there was a bow and arrow. Again, and the wheel was born.
Destiny whispered and a thing climbed dripping from the water and in the years to come its fins were legs and its gills were nostrils.
Symbiotic abstractions. Parasites. Call them what you would. They were destiny.
And the time had come for the galaxy to know of destiny.
If parasites, then beneficial parasites, ready to give more than they could take. For all they got was the sense of living, the sense of being…and what they gave, or stood ready to give, was far more than mere living.
For many of the lives they lived must be dull, indeed. An angleworm, for instance. Or the bloated unintelligence that crept through nauseous jungle worlds.
But because of them someday an angleworm might be more than an angleworm…or a greater angleworm. The bloated unintelligence might be something that would reach to greater heights than Man.