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would fly low over the natural reserve, looking at the well-kept fossils
of animals that once roamed this land. Odessa couldn't fully compre-
hend his unusual obsession for academic pursuits, but reasoned that
perhaps it was due to a mutation of some kind. She would be sure
that when she bought her baby there would be no similar flaws.

It was now the year 2551 and they had just completed a well-
earned rejuvenation life meal that would satisfy them for at least five
years. They had settled in their comfortable airpocket seats to digest
the meal. Cleanthes had visited the state library recently to get a book
that he had heard his friends talking about. It was the latest literary
sensation, and feeling the need to keep up to date on current affairs, he
decided to read the abridged version.

"Is that the book you talked of?" asked Odessa.
"Yes. It's called Ancient Theories."
"Oh, it's fiction?" asked Odessa.
"No, not exactly," replied Cleanthes, "although it reads like fiction.
It's stories are of how people once believed in what they called the
body-mind-soul triad. The ancients," he explained, "believed that each
body possessed a mind and a soul. They were something abstract."
"Of course," he added for the benefit of Odessa, "the ancients
weren't fortunate enough to be tube beings."
"How quaint," said Odessa, tolerating sweetly his mutation and
not knowing how people came to be if they weren't tube beings.
"I think I'll nap for a while," she said, climbing down from her
air-pocket. "Don't read too long, and if you use your eyes be sure
to keep your air pocket in the light."
When the sun struck the antenna on the roof of their abode the
next morning, signaling the time all tube beings are to awaken,
Odessa-always the first to get up-went in to call Cleanthes. He had
just awakened and the mindreader earphones were still over his head.
"That must be a good book," said Odessa, "that you would sleep-
read all night."
"It's an odd thing," said Cleanthes. "I had such a funny sensa-
tion while absorbing the thought impressions that it's no wonder it's
the most borrowed book."
"Oh, bother the book," Odessa said, hustling him out of bed.
"You better hurry; today we fill out the forms for the child."
The clerk at the state building gave them the necessary form and
they went to a table to fill it out. It was a simple matter, since they
knew exactly what they wanted. A female baby, blond hair, blue
eyes, with a full weight of 125 pounds and full height of six feet.

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