“Would she breed true—if we had a male?” Yulin asked the computer.

“No,” the computer responded, sounding almost apologetic. “That would take a lot more work. She would breed a horse, of course.”

“You could make a breeding pair of centaurs, though?” Yulin persisted.

“Most probably,” Obie hedged. “After all, the only limit to this process is my input. I have to have the knowledge of how to do it, how things are put together, before I can work something out.”

Yulin nodded, but he was plainly as excited as the older man whose life’s work this was.

The centaur looked up at them. “Are we just going to stay here all day?” she asked impatiently. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Obie, what does she eat?” Yulin asked.

“Grass, hay, anything of that nature,” the computer replied. “I had to take some short cuts, of course. The torso is mostly muscle tissue and supporting bone. I used the horse’s part for the organs.”

Yulin nodded, then looked over at the older scientist, still somewhat dazed by what he’d wrought.

“Gil?” he called. “How about some cosmetic touch-ups, and then we can keep her this way awhile? It would be interesting to see how this alteration works out.”

Zinder nodded absently.

With one more pass, Yulin was able to give the new creature a younger human half; he tightened her up and restored what appeared to be youthful good looks.

They were almost finished when a door opened near the old scientist and a young girl, no more than fourteen, walked in with a tray. She was about 165 centimeters tall, but she weighed close to sixty-eight kilograms. Pudgy, stocky, awkward, with thick legs and fat-enlarged breasts, she wasn’t helped by dressing in a diaphanous dress, sandals, and overdone makeup, or by the obviously dyed long blond hair. She looked somehow grotesque, but the old man smiled indulgently.