had been abolished, at least in any official or recognized sense. It had been established by suitable panels of experts, to which various judiciaries deferred in certain decisions, that that institution constituted an infringement of species freedom, at least in Brenner’s and Rodriguez’ species, if not in that of others, such as those of penguins, king lizards, sticklebacks, and inwits, that it humiliated all partners involved, in whatever numbers or arrangements, interfered with the indisputable role of the state in guiding socialization into correct channels, and was in clear violation of numerous rights which had been recently discovered. Mating now, and, indeed, sexual relations, and, in particular, heterosexual relations, with their appendant dangers of populationalism, was regarded on many worlds as either a crime, ranging from a felony to a misdemeanor, a civil wrong, or tort, or a vice, depending on the world. Breeding on several of these worlds, of course, tended to be supervised through various state boards. If the state had a right, for example, to require licenses for operating certain forms of equipment, for example, vehicles, or businesses, or to regulate the possession of, say, bladed weapons of more than two inches in length, surely it had the right, it seemed, to supervise the far more important matter of the number and nature of the constituents of the commonwealth itself. Advanced biological techniques, for example, for fertilization and storage, were helpful in these matters, as well as in vitro nourishment or, in most cases, recourse to host mothers. In some cases, gametes were so prepared and fused that the genetic endowments pertinent to a given organism could be traced to an indefinite number of “parents,” so to speak. Emotional relationships, such as love, had long ago been seen for the cruel and heinous traps they were, the ingenious devices of insidious forebears, designed to exploit and suppress certain portions of the species. To be sure, love, directed toward its proper object, such as a movement, party, or state, was encouraged, depending, of course, on the particular movement, party, or state in question. Various companies, incidentally, it had been recognized, particularly within the companies, were also fit objects for the exercise of this devotion. To be sure, many of these principles, prescriptions, and such, were by certain portions of these populations more honored in the breach than not. Many members of a species tended to remain incorrigible. It was also speculated that numerous dissenters, or even nonconformists, or even recusants, might exist in secret. The business of reconstructing a species in its own best interest, of transforming it, in effect, into something different, remained, as always, difficult. But such work constituted a challenge to the behavioral engineers, and, indeed, this challenge encouraged many to enter the field, often idealistic youths willing to take upon themselves the responsibility for the amelioration of the species. The approach, as might be supposed, was often two pronged, psychological and biological, the psychological aspects having to do with the control of conditioning programs, for the most part, aside from affirmative and negative control of the media, administered through supervised, centralized school systems, proven to be the most efficient in producing reliable educational output, and the biological aspects having to do with selective breeding, politicized eugenics controlled through screening, replication licenses, abortions, prenatal and postnatal, and, of course, genetic engineering. It is interesting to note that on the home world of Brenner and Rodriguez aborting a member of their own species, particularly one of certain groups, was regarded as unobjectionable, especially when done under the direction of the state, which often bore the expense of the operation, whereas aborting a member of another species, rational or subrational, was not, but rather constituted a felony. The rationale for this seemed to be that the state had the right to control its own body, in effect, its body politic. In many cases, of course, it must be admitted that the state accorded the liberty of such terminations to the mother, whether the conceiving mother or the host mother, and whether the member of the species was within a body or in a nourishment vat. Postnatal abortions at the option of either the conceiving mother or the host mother could be performed during the first several years of the organism’s life, the matter of being within or outside a body, or vat, being sensibly regarded as biologically irrelevant, given the gradualistic nature of organic development, which obviously continued from the first fusion of gametes at least until