“I have been embodied in male human form, and I wonder why.”

“For the same reason. You’ll mainly be interacting with humans, so we want you to look human. And it’s a lot easier to grow your body from a human DNA template, rather than trying to make some inorganic form that comes close to it.”

“You have only partially answered my question: namely, you have explained why I am in human form.” E. C. Tally pointed down at his genitals. “But as you see, I have been embodied in the male figure. The female figure, the one that both you and Lee Boro wear, appears lighter in construction and needs less food as fuel. Since I will be obliged to eat, I wonder why I was provided with the larger and less efficient form.”

Sue Ando stared at him. “Hmm. You know, Tally, I don’t have any answer to that. I’m sure that the Council has a reason for it, and it’s probably got something to do with where you’re going. But you should ask during your briefing. One thing’s sure, it’s too late to change bodies now. You’re supposed to get to the Bose Network and head for Dobelle in three days.”

“May I speak?”

“Certainly.” Ando smiled. “But not now, and not to me. You’re overdue with the briefing group. Go on, E. C. Tally. When you get there you can bend their ears as much as you like.”

Three standard days before departure: that was seventy-two hours — 259 thousand seconds, 259 billion microseconds, 259 billion trillion attoseconds. The grapefruit-sized sphere of E. C. Tally’s brain had a clock rate of eighteen attoseconds. Three days should have been enough to ponder every thought that had ever been thought by every organic entity in the whole spiral arm.

And yet Tally was learning that those three days would be insufficient. The hours were flying by. It was not the facts that provided the problem, even though they came trickling in with painful slowness from the human intermediary. The difficulty came with their implications, and with the surges they produced in the unfamiliar query circuits added at the time of E. C. Tally’s embodiment.