"But we at Obelisk," Snead pointed out, "have. As a matter of fact I've already tried an experiment. I had a one-sentence text printed up, a single line reading: 'The wub, unlike every other living creature, is immortal.'

"I then had it bound in wub-fur; then I read it again. It had been changed. Here." He passed a slim book, handsomely appointed, to Masters. "Read it as it is now."

Masters read aloud: "The wub, like every other living creature, is immortal."

Returning the copy to Snead he said, "Well, all it did was drop out the un; that's not much of a change, two letters."

"But from the standpoint of meaning," Snead said, "it constitutes a bombshell. We're getting feedback from beyond the grave – so to speak. I mean, let's face it; wub-fur is technically dead because the wub that grew it is dead. This is awfully damn close to providing an indisputable verification of the survival of sentient life after death."

"Of course there is one thing," Saperstein said hesitantly. "I hate to bring it up; I don't know what bearing it has on all this. But the Martian wub, for all its uncanny – even miraculous – ability to preserve itself, is from a mentational standpoint a stupid creature. A Terran opossum, for example, has a brain one-third that of a cat. The wub has a brain one-fifth that of an opossum." He looked gloomy.

"Well," Snead said, "the Bible says. 'The last shall be the first.' Possibly the lowly wub is included under this rubric; let's hope so."

Glancing at him, Masters said, "You want eternal life?"

"Certainly," Snead said. "Everybody does."

"Not I," Masters said, with decisiveness. "I have enough troubles now. The last thing I want is to live on as the binding of a book – or in any fashion whatsoever." But inside, he had begun silently to muse. Differently. Very differently, in fact.

"It sounds like something a wub would like," Saperstein agreed. "Being the binding of a book; just lying there supine, on a shelf, year after year, inhaling minute particles from the air. And presumably meditating. Or whatever wubs do after they're dead."

"They think theology," Snead said. "They preach." To his boss he said, "I assume we won't be binding any more books in wub-fur."

"Not for trade purposes," Masters agreed. "Not to sell. But -" He could not rid himself of the conviction that some use lay, here. "I wonder," he said, "if it would impart the same high level of survival factor to anything it was made into. Such as window drapes. Or upholstery in a float-car; maybe it would eliminate death on the commuter paths. Or helmet-liners for combat troops. And for baseball players." The possibilities, to him, seemed enormous… but vague. He would have to think this out, give it a good deal of time.

"Anyhow," Saperstein said, "my firm declines to give you a refund; the characteristics of wub-fur were known publicly in a brochure which we published earlier this year. We categorically stated -"

"Okay, it's our loss," Masters said irritably, with a wave of his hand. "Let it go." To Snead he said, "And it definitely says, in the thirty-odd passages it's interpolated, that life after death is pleasant?"

"Absolutely. 'Our stint on earth doth herald an unstopping bliss.' That sums it up, that line it stuck into De Rerum Natura; it's all right there."

" 'Bliss,' " Masters echoed, nodding. "Of course, we're actually not on Earth; we're on Mars. But I suppose it's the same thing; it just means life, wherever it's lived." Again, even more gravely, he pondered. "What occurs to me," he said thoughtfully, "is it's one thing to talk abstractly about 'life after death.' People have been doing that for fifty thousand years; Lucretius was, two thousand years ago. What interests me more is not the big overall philosophical picture but the concrete fact of the wub-pelt; the immortality which it carried around with it." To Snead he said, "What other books did you bind in it?"

"Tom Paine's Age of Reason," Snead said, consulting his list.

"What were the results?"

"Two-hundred-sixty-seven blank pages. Except right in the middle the one word bleh."

"Continue."

"The Britannica. It didn't precisely change anything, but it added whole articles. On the soul, on transmigration, on hell, damnation, sin, or immortality; the whole twenty-four volume set became religiously oriented." He glanced up. "Should I go on?"

"Sure," Masters said, listening and meditating simultaneously.

"The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. It left the text intact, but it periodically inserted the biblical line, 'The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.' Over and over again.

"James Hilton's Lost Horizon. Shangri-La turns out to be a vision of the after life which -"

"Okay," Masters said. "We get the idea. The question is, what can we do with this? Obviously we can't bind books with it – at least books which it disagrees with." But he was beginning to see another use; a much more personal one. And it far outweighed anything which the wub-fur might do for or to books – in fact for any inanimate object.

As soon as he got to a phone -

"Of special interest," Snead was saying, "is its reaction to a volume of collected papers on psychoanalysis by some of the greatest living Freudian analysts of our time. It allowed each article to remain intact, but at the end of each it added the same phrase." He chuckled." 'Physician, heal thyself.' Bit of a sense of humor, there."

"Yeah," Masters said. Thinking, unceasingly, of the phone and the one vital call which he would make.

Back in his own office at Obelisk Books, Masters tried out a preliminary experiment – to see if this idea would work. Carefully, he wrapped a Royal Albert yellow bone-china cup and saucer in wub-fur, a favorite from his own collection. Then, after much soul-searching and trepidation, he placed the bundle on the floor of his office and, with all his declining might, stepped on it.

The cup did not break. At least it did not seem to.

He unwrapped the package, then and inspected the cup. He had been right; wrapped in living wub-fur it could not be destroyed.

Satisfied, he seated himself at his desk, pondered one last time.

The wrapper of wub-fur had made a temporary, fragile object imperishable. So the wub's doctrine of external survival had worked itself out in practice – exactly as he had expected.

He picked up the phone, dialed his lawyer's number.

"This is about my will," he said to his lawyer, when he had him on the other end of the line. "You know, the latest one I made out a few months ago. I have an additional clause to insert."

"Yes, Mr. Masters," his lawyer said briskly. "Shoot."

"A small item," Masters purred. "Has to do with my coffin. I want it mandatory on my heirs – my coffin is to be lined throughout, top, bottom and sides, with wub-fur. From Flawless, Incorporated. I want to go to my Maker clothed, so to speak, in wub-fur. Makes a better impression that way." He laughed nonchalantly, but his tone was deadly serious – and his attorney caught it.

"If that's what you want," the attorney said.

"And I suggest you do the same," Masters said.

"Why?"

Masters said, "Consult the complete home medical reference library we're going to issue next month. And make certain you get a copy that's bound in wub-fur; it'll be different from the others." He thought, then, about his wub-fur-lined coffin once again. Far underground, with him inside it, with the living wub-fur growing, growing.

It would be interesting to see the version of himself which a choice wub-fur binding produced.

Especially after several centuries.