Soul of the Cell — Piers Anthony

Kerr answers an intriguing ad addressed to liberal arts majors: one year's pay for one month at a posh resort. High creativity essential, laboratory sex included. Critical importance to global welfare. What does it mean? He meets other liberal artists who are similarly perplexed. He winds up in an odd dormitory room with three pretty girls and total lack of privacy: they must sleep, shower, and use the toilet interactively, and everything they do may be recorded. But the project classes are all on the intricacies of a single living cell. How does this dull biology relate to global welfare, and what about that laboratory sex? Bemused, they continue, becoming fast friends and sexual partners; it's a lot like group love. Then they learn the relevance of the cell, and are amazed; it's some cell. Sophisticated alien humanoid robots are involved, and other sapient worlds. It all does tie together, and they really will be trying to save the world, and more.