Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“That’s all fascinating, Goodie Bo-long,” she said. “But I’d like a dose of the antidote for Cade right now. I have to take him back to the Kindred Mother Ship and I can’t bring him there acting like an animal!”
“Oh, do you think the way he’s constantly wanting to mount you might be a detriment to his career?” Goodie Bo-long sneered.
Andi had just about had enough of the other woman’s snide remarks and sarcastic humor, but she held onto her temper with both hands and didn’t shout.
“I want to bring him back in the same condition he was in before we crashed here on Zo’rath Three,” she said firmly. “I swear I won’t try to spread the antidote to anyone else—I’ve heard from several people how oppressive the men here used to be and how women weren’t allowed to have any kind of a life or a job outside the home. It seems to me you’re all better off now.”
“We most certainly are! Though again, to hear the NOs talk you wouldn’t think so,” Goodie Bo-long remarked. “But it wouldn’t do you any good to try and spread the antidote anyway—it’s an intramuscular injection. And even if you could inject every male on the planet, they’d all be re-infected within an hour or less if they stayed here. That’s because the spoors are self-replicating and by now they’ve spread to every corner of the planet. There’s nowhere on all of Oblivion where you cannot smell The Scent.”
Andi saw that she must be right—it was true that the fresh strawberries scent did seem to be everywhere on Zo’rath Three. But that didn’t change her determination.
“I want you to give it to Cade anyway,” she said stubbornly. “We’re flying away on the Moon shuttle tomorrow—I want him to be in his right mind.”
Goodie Bo-long arched an eyebrow at her.
“Why, so he can learn how you’ve expanded your relationship while he was a mindless Manimal?” she enquired.
Andi felt herself blushing with shame but she kept her chin up.
“I want the antidote and I want it now,” she demanded.
“Oh, very well,” Goodie Bo-long pouted. “But I warn you, it takes some time to take effect because it has to completely dissolve the web of fibers in the male brain. So if I give it to him now, he ought to be coming back to his regular mental faculties in anywhere from twelve to twenty four hours.”
“That long?” Andi exclaimed.
“Yes. And when he does come back, you have only about a thirty-minute window to get him away from Zo’rath Three—away from Oblivion. Otherwise the spoors will simply re-infect his brain and send him right back to the Manimal state of mind,” Goodie Bo-long warned.
Andi bit her lip, doing some mental calculations. It was past midnight now and Flow-da had said the Moon shuttle came at noon and left promptly with no time to spare. If she gave Cade the antidote injection now and he returned to his right mind in around twelve hours, they would be cutting it very close. But if he took longer to come back to himself, they should comfortably reach the Moon colony where there were no Magroagaricus trisporus spoors and she could explain everything to him before they contacted the Kindred Mother Ship and asked for a ride home.
“You’ll be cutting it close, my dear,” Goodie Bo-long remarked, clearly thinking along the same lines. “But only if he comes back closer to the twelve hour mark than the twenty-four hour mark. It’s a rather broad window.”
“Can I wait and give him the injection in the morning to be on the safe side?” Andi asked.
Goodie Bo-long shook her head.
“Unfortunately, I only make one batch of antidote a week. I usually give it to my dear husband there—I feed it into the continuous drip catheter he has implanted in the port in his chest. If he didn’t have that, constantly medicating him every thirty minutes, he’d be re-infected with the spoors.”
She nodded at her husband, who was shirtless and Andi saw that he did indeed have a lump under the skin on the left side of his chest. There was considerable scar tissue over it, as though he had ripped it out several times.
“Yes, he manages to get it out and goes Manimal once in a while,” Goodie Bo-long remarked, obviously seeing where Andi was looking. “But then I just knock him out and put it back in. Then I have the fun of ‘waking him up’ to the painful facts of his new life all over again and letting him watch as Gobi mounts me. That always makes him so upset for some reason!” She gave a nasty laugh.
Dr. Bo-long made an aggrieved and disgusted sound at the back of his throat but said nothing—he seemed to have lapsed into a depressed silence.