"The timbre isn't that much different for you to know it as a certainty ever. High sex-identification in your time, young man. If I simply heard Eeb's voice I'd never know her sex—not just from her voice."
"Well, she is a woman."
"Certainly, certainly—and a mighty troublesome one. First time something like this has happened in nearly a thousand years. What do you think we ought to do?"
"How the heck should I know? I don't even know what happened."
"True, true. I'd forgotten you're no telepath. I wonder if telepathy came in when high sex-identification began to wane. Umm, no—hardly possible. Eeb is obviously a throwback and she has both. Intriguing."
The door opened and a woman entered the room. She was dressed in shorts and some sort of negligible halter. She walked across the room to the loudspeaker and Eddie, who had, armed with tape measure, once judged a local beauty contest, was sure she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She said, "I'd better shut that thing off before Rajuz lulls you to sleep with all his scientific talk." She flicked a switch on the loudspeaker. "Of course he can still speak through telepathy but your mind won't get the impulses without that loudspeaker, Eddie. See? I can hear him now but you can't."
Eddie had to take her word for it because he couldn't hear a thing. He hardly cared. Of paramount importance was this fact—here was the voice. Not any voice but the one that had brought him here, wherever here was.
Eddie tried to be patient. "You're Eeb," he said. "That much I know. But where the hell are we?"
"You mean, in space?"