Chapter 21

The tropical fruit juice served with her breakfast had been less than tasty, and Pal wondered if her captors got it at a bargain price. She was inclined to think that some of the fruit used in it had been slightly spoiled.

She wasn't feeling too great when Paul entered her room less than an hour later. He had a rather grimly apologetic expression on his face.

"Hate to have to tell you this, Pal, but you're the latest guinea pig for our test lab."

She looked at him for several seconds, trying to understand what was happening. As the import of his words sank in, she began to see Heidi's ravaged body in her imagination.

"Betty's already a test case, and Heidi hasn't recovered enough to start a new series. We have to have someone in reasonably good health, or the results would not be at all conclusive. If this new stuff can be tolerated by your system, it can be farmed out for large scale tests on groups of people by legitimate test labs."

"What... what kind of... stuff is it?" Pal could just find her voice to ask the question. "I mean, what's it supposed to do?"

"It's a new approach to an antibiotic that Jonas has been trying to perfect for years. It seems to have no adverse effects on the small animals in the lab, so now we give it the people test."

"When do I start?" she asked, shakily.

"You have," he told her. "It was in your fruit juice this morning. So one of us will be looking in on you from time to time until we're sure you have no problems.

"If you experience any unusual feelings, ring for us. Okay? Pal? Do you understand what I'm telling you?" She had just let her face go blank as she tried to not think of what could happen.

"Yes I understand." She flaked out on the bed and closed her eyes, resigning herself to whatever came along. It was too late to worry about it, whatever she might think.

"Feeling all right?" asked Paul.

"Yes. Just let me rest. Leave me alone, please."

"Okay. Jonas will be in shortly to make a few checks." He went out the door, leaving it open. She closed her eyes tighter, as if it might shut out the reality of her frightening situation.

When came in, he checked her temperature, blood pressure, reflexes, and half a hundred other things-or so it seemed. He seemed quite pleased when he left, humming as he made entries on the clipboard he carried.

From then on, it was a constant boring routine of checkups at all hours of the day and night. Pal was ready to throw herself on the floor and hope the electric current might finish her off while she was in this uncaring mood. But that required effort and will- two things that she didn't seem to have a lot of.

Then she started feeling better, even cheerful, until Jonas had decided that the tests were safely negative, and he was all smiles, too.

Then the little lumps started to pop up in her mouth. Two hours after Jonas examined the first of them, she had them beginning to crop up around her vulva, then in her vaginal passage.