The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Blue’

(mc, f/f, sf, nc)

DISCLAIMER: This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

SYNOPSIS: A scientific expedition to an unexplored corner of New Guinea makes a strange and terrible discovery.

INTRO COMMENTS: Warning: contains... well, I don’t want to give anything away. But be ready for what Eye of Serpent has called ‘Extremely Disturbing Imagination’. Extremely disturbing. If you’ve read my other stories you have an idea of what you are in for.

* * *

‘Blue’

Part One

Katy spun open the carabiner and stepped away from the rope on wobbly legs. She looked up at the four thin yellow cables rising three hundred feet up to the cliff edge, sliding over rock face and dangling through empty air.

And through that stupid bush, she thought, reaching down to scratch at the welts the plant in question had left on her legs.

But complaining about excessive foliage in Papua was like complaining about excessive sand at the beach, and the descent had gone swimmingly, all things considered. Katy looked around the slope of loose rock she was now standing on. Carol was tying off the ropes to the cliff edge, and gave Katy a quick thumbs-up. Katy grinned at her.

She turned around to feel the enormity of it.

They were in a sinkhole, a huge collapsed cave easily a thousand feet in diameter. The floor was a mix of weathered stone and glossy green plants, mostly bushes and ferns, the trees among them stunted from lack of soil. The walls of the hold were broken cliff faces, covered in moss and tenacious creepers; the entire circumference of the top edge was root-furred overhang. From the air, it looked more or less like any other part of the thick jungle covering Papua’s southern highlands; Katy thought they might be the first people ever to come down here.

Wen and Beshaarir came out from around a dappled mahogany plant. “Welcome to the hole,” Wen said to Katy, stepping up to clasp hands. “We’re pretty much done pitching camp.”

The expedition had spent the better part of the day lowering themselves and their supplies to the floor of the sinkhole. Wen picked up the last couple of rucksacks as Beshaarir—Bish— grinned at Katy and clasped her hand in turn. Carol was finishing up organizing the climbing gear and double-checking the ropelines. Those lines were the only way back, a double set of nylon ropes; scaling the crumbling cliffs was out of the question. Katy would probably be able to do it, or Carol, but none of their travelers stood a chance.

“Anything on the radio?” Katy asked Bish.

“Not a chance. Not even that bang-bang-pling station from Wabag.”

No surprise. But their expedition was filed with the authorities, and the universities, and Katy had made sure the other guides knew where they were and so did Douglas and his Piper Cub. If they didn’t turn up in a couple of weeks people knew where to come looking for them. Katy had organized a dozen of these expeditions into the New Guinea highlands; safety was her primary byword.

Carol and Wen came over, Wen carrying a tarp bundle and a mesh sack. It rained at least once a day, so for drinking water all they had to do was spread out plastic sheeting and catch it in bottles. If they could find a spring down here it would probably be safe to drink, but Katy didn’t like “ifs” so they’d brought the sheeting, in case they found something in the water her test kit didn’t like.

“We’re good to go,” Carol said, so the four of them scrambled off of the scree pile and down into the embrace of the jungle. Wen took point, leading them through the lush plant life towards one of the more solid faces of the sinkhole wall.

Katy kept looking up and each time she did so she smiled. They had done it, had descended to the floor of the sinkhole she’d found three years ago. They were walking on ground untrodden by civilized man. Or women, in the case of this expedition.

An all-female expedition. It hadn’t started out that way, but Professor Brown canceled and then Jefferson Shakoff had been hospitalized, and the week before they were due to leave Andy Fitzsimmons had pulled out too. So, all women by default; it made for an interesting footnote. Katy knew that there were some additional risks without any men on board, but the only tribes in the area were by reputation tolerant of strangers. Katy had met the Unpathaqa twice and both times they had been quite courteous in their bone-through-the-septum penis-gourd-wearing sort of way. She’d never met any of the tribes in this area, but they hadn’t seen any sign of them anyway. No sign of other people at all since the helicopter dropped them off; not even pig tracks. As though no one had ever been here at all.

Katy thought of the sinkhole with a sort of proprietary feel; she had discovered it, and now she had brought a team to explore it. It might never bear her name on a map but by gum it was hers in all the ways that mattered. She found it first, and she came back and jumped in.

The vegetation thinned as the four of them neared a different section of cliff face. Wen led them around a stand of Myristica taller than herself and there it was: forward camp. As far from civilization as they were planning to get. Base camp was at the top end of the ropes, and half a mile up hill. At base camp you could use the radio.

Katy looked around and nodded; she had picked out the spot but the other women had prepped the site. From the looks of it, they’d done a good job. All seven of them looked up as Katy, Wen, Bish and Carol came into the rock-floored clearing, then went back to what they were doing.

Not just a clearing, the campsite was almost a cave; north facing so that the mouth was in the sun. It was a smooth bite taken out of the base of the cliff, an almost perfect quarter sphere. The cliff walls were shot through with other caves but this one was well-lit, dry, and—with a little effort—free from spiders and other crawlies. It also offered a splendid view of the opposite wall and the arcing rim above.

The radio had been set up on the little camper’s table. Tasya sat next to it, fiddling with the dials. Her face didn’t look as though she held out much hope of finding anything. Ginger was sorting through her tools. Surbitsar and Kiko were seated on their bedrolls, leafing through reference manuals. Maria had her laptop out. Carin was sipping from her canteen. Milly was at the rear wall of the cave, examining a lavender-colored creeper.

Botanists and entomologists and a single ornithologist, representing three different institutions of higher learning. Katy had hoped to rope in a geologist, but that had fallen through at the last moment with Shakoff’s car accident. Still, the potential for discovery here was tremendous; although Katy couldn’t tell a quoll from a bandicoot, she had been present when Professor Lewis had first contacted the Ratumbo’a tribe, and simply being associated with that was a thrill. No anthropologists or zoologists this time, but then two weeks in a sinkhole didn’t appeal to those disciplines as much.

“About an hour of sunlight,” Carol observed, standing next to her. Carol was Katy’s right-hand woman, guide number two, a strictly no-nonsense outdoorswoman. She didn’t like civilization, really, and she left to Katy all the minutia about such things as how they got paid. But no one had better instincts in the bush. She and Katy had... unresolved issues, but issues or no Katy could trust Carol in any situation.

“Can we get started?” Ginger asked. Professor Maitland, really, only on Katy’s expedition everyone went by first name. People responded more quickly if you hollered at them with their first name. Last names were for activities with a lower reaction-time profile.

“I’d like to get a better sense of the hole,” Katy said. “We’ve got a week here and it’s only a few thousand square feet, so we shouldn’t be in a hurry. Carol, you take Wen, Ginger, Carin, and Tasya, and circle clockwise. I’ll take Bish, Kiko, Milly, Maria and Surbitsar, and circle counter-clockwise. I want everyone on the lookout for poisonous plants, venomous snakes, deadfalls. It’s just like up above down here, only it gets dark earlier, so be aware. We’ll meet in the middle and then finish our circuits to back here. Look for possible springs for drinking water, note any hazards, and get a feel for the terrain. This is our first look so don’t hurry but keep moving, anything you want to investigate further we can come back tomorrow.”

“There is nothing on the radio,” Tasya announced, her accent making it sound like ‘Dere is no-teeng’. “Not even the bang-bang-pling-pling music.”

“Then whatever Earth-shaking discoveries we make will have to wait until we get back to civilization to be reported,” Katy replied. “Is everyone ready? Let’s check out our new stomping grounds.”

* * *

Katy totally looked like Lara Croft.

Okay, her hair is blondish rather than brown, and she doesn’t have a long ponytail, and she doesn’t have tits bigger than her head. But she’s got those cute little shorts that are totally too short for her and that tight tight shirt and the way she just takes charge...

Bish sighed. She had known that two weeks in the jungle, on an all-girl expedition with total hotties for guides would be hard on her libido, but knowing ahead of time and experiencing the fact were two totally different things. And of course this sort of trip didn’t attract the overweight or the elderly, just the young and fit... there wasn’t a woman among them whose ass didn’t merit Bish’s attention.

Ginger was older, of course, but a total PILF, and Tasya was hot in that Spy-Who-Loved-Me way and there were Wen and Milly, the Chinagirl from Shanghai and the Chinagirl from Melbourne, and Kiko from Japan by way of Los Angeles who would look just so scrumptious in a schoolgirl outfit, and Brazilian Maria and blond oh-so-American Carin, and then there was Carol with that strong nose and deep deep tan who could just hold Bish down and...

Surbitsar was the least exciting of course because she was just from Chennai, and even she was hot. Not that Bish dated other Indian girls but Surbitsar could be the exception, had she been gay.

But she wasn’t, Bish was pretty sure. None of the rest of them had been giving her any vibes, either, although Carol was totally inscrutable and Kiko and Wen were pretty hard to read as well. Carin and Maria were just habitual flirts. And who knew which way Tasya swung...

Focus, girl. You can bury your face between thighs back in Sydney, you’re here for your dissertation.

Katy clambered atop a boulder and squatted into a deep-knee bend, and Bish sighed.

* * *

Dinner was an ebullient affair. In just their little circuit of the hole, Ginger had found and bagged two unfamiliar beetles, and Kiko identified a Melaleuca plant with totally new markings.

Milly took another spoonful of the couscous; among her other talents, Katy was a surprisingly good cook. Good thing, since Milly doubted that any of the rest of them had much in the way of culinary mastery.

The sun crawled up the eastern wall of the hole, lighting ferns and creepers which dangled for hundreds of feet. There was a small waterfall, which splashed down into a pool at the cliff bottom which had been full of colorful and mildly poisonous (to eat) frogs. None of the frogs were new, although none of the expedition were really animal experts. Milly had her undergraduate degree in vertebrate biology, but she was studying fungi now; and anyway, it was very unlikely for a hole of ten or twenty thousand square feet to contain any unique species of a larger form of life. Bugs, possibly.

Not bugs, insects. Bugs are something specific, Milly corrected herself. That’s like calling a mushroom a plant.

She was almost certainly the most junior person here, only in her second year of the graduate program at Melbourne. But when she had heard that Dr. Maitland was going... and then Milly’s advisor went on sabbatical so the timing just seemed propitious.

Propitious. The trip had been muddy, buggy, sweaty, and blister inducing. But as Milly watched the sunlight recede up the cliff, she had to admit there was also some magic here.

And definitely scholarly potential. The cliff walls were riddled with caves. Carol was already planning out which ones to investigate in the morning; most were higher than ground level but several of them not by much. Some functioned as drains, piping out the water that stood in several small interconnected pools, and hinting that the cave systems must run for very long distances.

Any of them could have some interesting fungi. Probably not unique, not like the plants and insects, but worth investigating all the same.

Katy was happy because her campers were happy. The others were happy because they were here, finally, and were about to start actual fieldwork. It had been five days of slogging to get here, after the helicopter drop, much of it in rain, but now the immediate future held discovery and potential fame. Milly was, perhaps, less excited than the others, but still she wouldn’t have traded anything to be back home. The field was where all the interesting things happened.

* * *

Carin had spotted just the thing, a single-stream waterfall into a shallow pool about a quarter of the way around the hole. Her hair felt filthy and her face greasy and when she had stuck her hand into the stream the water was even kind of warm...

“Katy?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“I saw a waterfall just over there and I’d, well, I’d like to go wash off.”

Katy looked up at the sky, which was coming over purple as the sun sunk below the actual horizon somewhere to the west.

“Well, it’ll be dark soon, but I don’t see why not. I’d say take a buddy but you’re only going over, what, a couple hundred feet, and you’ll want some privacy... sure. Take a torch and be careful. And don’t drink the water, it’s probably fine but you never know.”

“Great, thanks.” Carin rummaged through her pack and found the tiny, thin towel she’d bought at REI back in Chicago. She opened it up, rolled her sweatshorts and a t-shirt into it, found the little plastic box with the organic soap, and rolled them all up into a little bundle.

Kiko handed her a flashlight. “Thanks,” she said. She flipped it on and walked carefully out of camp. The bushes closed immediately behind her, but as she threaded her way towards where she remembered the waterfall being, the smooth curve of the rock sheltering the camp lit up with artificial light.

There was too much running water in the sinkhole for Carin to discern the waterfall’s individual sound, but suddenly she was there, a ten-foot opening in the bushes where the splashing water had carried away all the soil. From a mossy hole in the rocks a dozen feet above, the single stream of water arced out to splash into a small pebble-bedded pool.

A convenient rock at the base of the cliff became a chair and Carin unlaced and pulled off her boots, and the knee-high socks (also from REI) beneath. She winced at the state of her feet; when she got back to camp she’d have to dig out more moleskin. Standing up, the rock next became a clothes rack, and was soon wearing her shorts, t-shirt, underwear and bra.

With the flashlight propped on her piled clothes so as to illuminate the pool, Carin stepped gingerly across the pebbles, some of which still had their edges, and under the stream of water. Instant relief. It was warm and fast and felt clean, and Carin decided that even if she discovered an entirely new genus down here the waterfall was the best discovery of all.

The tropics were just so damned dirty, and hot, and wet. She’d been muddy since the helicopter drop and sleeping in sweaty clothes and her hair... it was a good thing she’d gotten it cut short because if she still had the ponytail it would have been disgusting. Not that Ginger or Kiko or the others seemed to mind theirs, but Carin just couldn’t stand having dirty hair.

She stood under the water a moment longer and then stepped over to fetch the soap. It was some organic stuff that was hardly gentle on the skin, but it did get the job done. Carin lathered up and stepped under the water to rinse off.

A long moment later, she slicked back her hair and opened her eyes to see another puddle of light neighboring hers.

“I am waiting patiently for my turn,” said a sultry South American voice. “And am most definitely giving to you your privacy.”

“I am,” Maria said, as she stepped into the pool totally naked, “over there behind the bushes. And as I am very patient,” she added, stepping forward, her dark skin dappling with beads of water from the spray, “you can feel free to take your time.”

Their nipples touched and Carin shuddered, and then they were kissing under the waterfall, clean water dousing their nude bodies and running between their thighs.

* * *

The sky was a canopy of glowing dust and sparkling jewels.

“I love the sky out in the country,” Carin whispered, and flexed her fingers, which were intertwined with Maria’s.

“I too,” Maria replied, and kissed her again.

They were sitting on a dry patch of rock about twenty feet from the waterfall, which was now almost invisible in the dark. Maria leaned against the boulder behind them, and sighed.

Carin was the first American girl she had loved—there had been three—who did not seem to get some sort of ‘thrill of the forbidden’ from loving her. She was big and gangly and strong: very American. But she was also... not all tied up inside. She acted without regret.

Maria wondered if she could keep her.

In Brasilia, of course... in Brasil the person that Maria was did not exist so easily. She loved Brasil, of course, loved the people and their spirit. But two women together was an affront to masculinity, and could not be tolerated...

“A penny for your thoughts,” Carin said.

“What does this mean?”

Carin laughed. “It just means that you seem to be thinking of something and I am wondering what that something is.”

“The future,” Maria sighed. “I am thinking I am falling in love with you, and this will lead to some choices.”

They were quiet for a moment. The stars truly were magnificent.

“Let the future happen in the future,” Carin said. “We are here on this fantastic expedition. We can write papers from this, make names. And while we are together we can make love. And afterward will happen and when it does, we can worry about it then.”

Maria squeezed her fingers and kissed her again.

“You are right. But— what is that?” she asked.

There was a light—no, not a light, a blue glow, in the bushes on the other side of the waterfall. Maria and Carin both stood up. The glow faded.

“Did you see that?”

“I sure did,” Carin replied, flicking on her flashlight and walking quickly around the waterfall. They had already gotten dressed, in case anyone came to find them. “It moved. Like it walked away.”

“Yes.” They were there now, looking at the cluster of waist-high bushes where the light had been.

“There!” Carin said, and Maria looked up to see something blue disappear into the cliff wall.

They picked their way through the bushes to the cliff face, but the hole that it had vanished into was only about a foot in diameter. Shining a flashlight into it revealed nothing.

“Bioluminescent...” Carin whispered.

“We may become more famous than we thought.”

* * *

Kiko looked up as Maria walked back into camp, looking refreshed, her long black hair a wet cascade over her shoulders. Carin followed, her short hair slicked back, looking boyish.

A shower did sound appealing, but Kiko was already on her bedroll and at this point her legs would probably mutiny if she asked them to carry her one more foot.

“We saw something,” Carin announced. Everyone looked at them.

“There was a blue glow in the bushes. Big, maybe half a meter tall. And then it moved away, and when we went to look where it had been, we saw it disappear into a hole in the cliff.”

“A blue glow? You mean bioluminescence?” Professor Maitland asked.

Carin nodded. “Yes,” Maria said, “I also saw it. It was definitely illuminating itself.”

Kiko looked around the camp. Everyone was wide-eyed. Tasya stood up. “Let me see where,” she said eagerly.

“No,” Katy said. Everyone turned to her.

“Not tonight. Everyone is too tired from the hike, it’s dark, we’re still not familiar with this hole. Whatever it was will be there tomorrow night, and the night after, and so on. I don’t want any of us scrambling around hunting glowing things and breaking legs.”

Kiko expected Tasya to object, but the Russian just frowned, nodded, and sat back down. She must be as tired as Kiko was.

“Now, any objections to my turning off the lantern?” Katy asked. “Maybe the blue thing will pay us a visit.”

There were none, so she turned the knob, and the hissing of the propane died away and then it was still.

Well, not still, exactly. There were monkeys hooting at each other some distance away, up at the surface, and insects of various sorts buzzed and clicked and chirped and courted each other in insectile ways.

The first night, it had bothered Kiko, all the noise. By the end of the second night she was too tired for it to be more than a moment’s distraction. Somehow all the stairmaster at the LA Fitness hadn’t quite prepared her for marching up and down mud hills through thick jungle with boots that grew heavier with every mud clump that adhered to them.

But they were here now, and in the morning there was no more marching. Kiko looked up at the stars, framed by the rim of the hole, bright and clear and numbering in their millions. She could count the stars she could see in LA’s night sky on one hand.

A blue glow. If they could find it... and it was an animal (unheard of!), maybe a glowing frog or something... half a meter? Maybe a snake... no, that’s ridiculous...

And then she was asleep.

* * *

The sun didn’t peer into the sinkhole until after ten o’clock, but they had all been up at seven. Professor Maitland made coffee on the little kerosene burner; it had started to drizzle again but cleared up after an hour, leaving the sky above wreathed in swaths of cloud.

It was hot and humid as a sauna.

At least the mosquitoes let us alone, Tasya thought, stopping to peer around. Caesia, utricularia, and plocoglottis—typical varieties for the region, stunted a little by the lack of soil depth.

She looked over at Beshaarir, who gave her a smile and a thumbs-up. She smiled back. The expedition leader had insisted—and no one defied Katy—that they work in teams. The entomologists—Professor Maitland and Wen, Surbitsar and Akiko—decided to stick together. Carin and Maria—trees and birds, Tasya had silently dubbed them, the tall botanist and the vivacious ornithologist—had gone to examine a copse of stunted trees at the eastern end of the hole. Milly went with Carol and Katy to do some cave exploration, leaving the two remaining botanists to work together.

They had all gone with Carin and Maria that morning to look at where the mysterious blue mobile creature had been seen, but there were no obvious tracks nor any sign of it or its kin. Katy promised a nocturnal expedition that evening.

Tasya looked at her companion and sighed inwardly. Beshaarir was perfectly nice, of course, though a bit immature. But Tasya would have preferred a more professional tone to this expedition. The American trip she had taken into the Sierra Nevada mountains had been more to her liking, none of this first-name thing, more professional and focused on the research.

But, in truth, this was fine. Tasya dropped the thought and froze, and reversed her previous step. There. She had not stepped onto it. Was that an Utricularia, flowering there? If so, she did not recognize it.

Tasya dropped into a crouch. “Beshaarir,” she called, “please to come and look at something here.”

The mahogany-skinned, always smiling woman appeared. “What have you found? And please call me ‘Bish’, all my friends—does that bladderwort have pink flowers?”

* * *

Wen regretted not being more fluent in English. Professor Maitland used American colloquialisms almost constantly, and by the time Wen had decoded one the professor was on to the next one. To make it worse, she had moved from America to Australia twenty years ago, and now had a very confusing accent.

The Indian girl, Surbitsar, was having the same problem, and she and Wen had begun to share looks of resignation whenever Professor Maitland—Ginger—said something about “the whole nine yards” or “pig’s ears” or “stepping up onto the plate”. And Surbitsar was from a country whose official language was English!

That small fly in Wen’s stew aside—and that was one expression at least that made sense—Wen was quite happy. Perplexing as she may be Professor Maitland was very highly thought of in her field and Wen was now discovering why. Her knowledge was encyclopedic; not once had they needed to refer to the pocket manuals that she and Surbitsar had seen fit to bring. Professor Maitland’s—Ginger’s—fieldcraft was also inspiring; she moved quickly through the rocks and bushes, yet nothing escaped her notice.

Signing up for this journey had been a decision Wen had subsequently questioned, but no longer. She already knew that she would now rise above her colleagues back at university. Their skills being equal, Wen would have studied with Professor Maitland and gone to Papua and, just perhaps, had made interesting new discoveries. They would have only read more books.

She spotted a eurycantha on the leaf of a plant, stalked it slowly for a moment, then netted it. It was definitely a eurycantha, but very large, and with leopard-like markings. Wen examined it for a moment, and then went to consult with Professor Maitland.

* * *

Carol played her flashlight across the ceiling. Thin tubes studded it like hedgehog spines, miniature stalactites formed from the constant condensation when the humid air met the cave’s cool. A drip of water hit her eyebrow and she blinked.

She looked around. It was the third cave they had investigated, all clustered together on the northern side of the sinkhole like someone had stabbed the rock with an icepick. The other two had branched and tapered into narrow openings, and it wasn’t yet time to truly go spelunking, with the rope around your waist and the flashlight in your teeth. Not with so many other caves open for an easy scramble.

Water had formed these holes, to be sure, the rock worn and smooth. The miniature stalactites told Carol that the water level had fallen and not regained its height in many years, just as the lack of stalagmites told her that it did cover the floor here on a regular basis. But originally this entire cave system had been submerged, formed by water draining through the sinkhole, flowing underground, over centuries.

“Pretty typical,” Milly said, shining her flashlight over a patch of black runners on the floor. She was very pretty in that Chinese way, golden skin and deep black eyes.

“Then let’s go to the next,” Katy replied. Carol could not see her face behind the glow of her light but she didn’t need to. She saw Katy in her dreams.

They had a drunken fling in Singapore, once. It meant little enough to Katy but Carol could still taste her lips, could still smell her flesh. Katy knew. She knew and she didn’t know what to do about it.

The bitch of it was, neither did Carol. She wanted Katy, wanted to possess her and to be possessed by her, and if that wasn’t possible she needed to move on. But to what? Where? Katy was the one she wanted. And they were so good together, such a team...

“Carol?”

The other two were looking at her, framed in the light of the cavern entrance.

“Hang on,” she replied. “I want to check something out. Come give me more light.”

There was a hole in the back of the room, at about chest height, and beyond it another chamber. Carol had looked in with her light and had planned to come back later, but thinking about Katy had put her in a weird place so she decided to check it out now. It would give her a little physical distance.

She leaned into the hole, which was plenty wide to crawl through; the rock within reach on the inside however was smooth and offered no holds.

“Footlift,” she said, lifting a leg, and a pair of laced fingers came up under her foot. Gently, Carol stood up on them and slithered into the next room.

She stood up and played her flashlight around. The room was tall and offered three immediately visible openings into caves beyond. “Okay, we should check this out,” she said to the two waiting in the entrance. Bracing her legs on either side of the hole, she held out a hand to Milly, who took it and pulled herself in, sliding between Carol’s legs. Then Katy.

“Wow,” Katy said, looking around, leaning her head back to stare up into the darkness at the high ceiling. “This is... wow.”

“Still no stalagmites,” Carol observed, “but the floor is dry.”

“Hey, check this out,” Milly said from across the small room.

Carol and Katy went to her. She was standing at one of the tunnels leading out, stretching into darkness at a slight upward angle, joining the room a few feet above the floor. “This is almost a right angle,” Milly observed, pointing at the edge of the tunnel floor where it met the wall.

“It is,” Katy said, running her hand along it. Carol aimed her flashlight up along the floor of the tunnel and to her surprise it was flat. Flat, with a groove running along the center of it in a straight line.

“Strange,” she said.

“It almost looks carved,” said Milly.

“It does,” agreed Katy. “It’s like those underwater formations off Okinawa.”

Carol blinked, and squinted. She turned off her light.

“Carol?”

“Turn off your lights for a moment.”

The other two did so.

Carol’s eyes slowly adjusted; there was faint light coming from the entrance, just enough to make out the shapes of the other two close by, but not enough to discern any detail.

There was also light coming from up the tunnel.

Blue light.

“Holy shit,” Katy said.

“Let’s go look.”

* * *

Surbitsar took a long pull from her canteen. It was not fair, to be sweating so much and still not be cool.

The sun was beaming down into the sinkhole. The entomologists had returned to the camp to get out of the sun and to catalogue their finds. Nothing Earth-shattering, but at least a half a dozen potential new subspecies. Professor Maitland was taking digital pictures of their samples, laid out one at a time on a white card. The Chinese woman—Wen was her name, the other one was Milly—was making tea.

There was a thrashing sound and Milly emerged from the bushes. “Hey, everyone,” she said breathlessly, “you’ve got to come see this.”

“See what?” Professor Maitland asked, looking up from the camera.

“I can’t explain it, it’s something we found in the caves. It’s fantastic. Come on! Oh, and grab flashlights.”

Wen looked up as the other three shared glances. Professor Maitland popped the camera into a breast pocket of her camo-green vest; Kiko pulled three flashlights from a supply bag. Surbitsar went over to stand where Milly stood panting. Wen shrugged and turned off the little burner.

They followed Milly the short distance to the southern wall. Katy was there with Carol and Tasya and Maria and Carin and Beshaarir. Everyone.

“Okay, does everyone have a torch?” Katy asked as the five of them arrived.

“No,” Tasya said. Carol handed her one, leaving herself empty-handed.

“Are you not coming?” Tasya asked.

“It’s not safe for us all to be inside at the same time. Someone has to be able to go for help if there’s a cave-in or something.”

“I don’t have a torch either,” Beshaarir said.

“Here’s my extra,” Katy said, pulling a small bit of yellow plastic from a waist pack and handing it to her. “It’s kinetic, you squeeze to get electricity.”

Bish took the flashlight and Katy looked around. “Okay, everyone ready? Follow me, then.”

“Do we need water?” the professor asked.

“A good question, but no—we’re only going about five minutes in, and it’s scrambling only.”

“And what is it we’re going to see?”

Katy grinned. “You’ll find out.”

With that, she entered the cave.

They formed up more or less in single file; Surbitsar was following Professor Maitland, with Tasya behind her. They passed through a narrow, smooth tunnel, where she had to duck, and into a small rounded room. There was a hole at about chest height in the back wall, and Milly made a saddle of her hands and Katy clambered into it, then extended a hand to pull Milly up after.

Katy pulled them all up, in turn, and Surbitsar was again impressed by the strength and endurance of their guide. She wasn’t even sweating as she pulled Maria up into the next room with the rest of them.

It was small in diameter but very tall, rounded by water, and had several dark passages leading out. Katy chose one opposite the hole they had entered through, whose floor began at about waist height and sloped up away from the room. Single file again, they followed her, scrambling onto the ledge and then crouch-walking forward.

As they walked, the ceiling rose, and Surbitsar realized with some surprise that the floor was flat; not simply naturally flat but flat like a road surface, and with a seam running down the exact center. And where it met the walls, there was a sharp, ninety degree edge. The ceiling was curved in an almost perfect vault.

But there had never been a stoneworking civilization on Papua.

Their flashlights filled the tunnel with light. Then they entered the next room.

Her first sense was of space, vertical space, and then of a strange light. The floor was still at a slight angle but they were out of the tunnel; when Surbitsar played her small flashlight beam upward, it only dimly found a ceiling.

“Everyone turn out your light,” Katy said.

Surbitsar clicked hers off, as did the others.

The room was lit in aquamarine.

Some of them gasped. It was lit, well enough to read by, and as they spread out slightly to see Surbitsar could see that this chamber had a number of exits and the exits were rectangular, not just vaguely but with perfect corners, and there was a pale blue-green glow coming from each of these exits and lighting the room.

“That’s not natural,” someone said, awed. It reminded Surbitsar of the Blue Grotto, on the island of Capri, in Italy. She and her husband had traveled there only last year, and it had the same aquamarine color, the same sense of radiance.

“What is this place?” came the voice of Professor Maitland.

“Okay, torches back on,” Katy said, and the yellow light of electric bulbs filled the room.

The exits Surbitsar had seen were, almost irrefutably, carved entrances. They jutted out into the room like porches, squared off, their outer surfaces smooth in a way that suggested carving. There were three of them, equally spaced, at slight height differentials.

“These were created by people,” Tasya said quietly.

“But who?” Wen asked. “And when?”

“Anyone an archaeologist?” Katy asked, grinning.

“No,” Professor Maitland said, “but I am a biologist, and I’ve never seen a natural glow quite like that. What’s causing it?”

“It’s the same color that we saw,” Carin observed. “Last night.”

“Well,” Katy shrugged. “Let’s go look.”

* * *

The floor beyond the square arch was flat and dry. Ginger stepped in and checked the ceiling, which was as smooth and level as the floor.

It was incredible. There was almost no possibility that this was a natural feature, yet there were no records whatsoever of a stonecarving civilization anywhere near here. The closest had to be... Kampuchea? Forget the beetles—no, she couldn’t forget the beetles, she was already thinking of one as Alcidodes Maitlandii —this discovery of an ancient cave dwelling dwarfed whatever else they found in this pit.

And the glow—what was the glow? Katy was just in front of her, and she saw the same eagerness in the young woman’s eyes as she crept forward, checking the floor carefully, checking the walls, checking the roof.

The tunnel extended some ways, and then—it opened, into a nearly hemispherical room, and the ceiling was covered in glowing blue ovoids.

Ginger stepped carefully into the room, and looked around awed.

Not fungus, at least none she was familiar with. Was Milly here? Yes, there she was, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling. It was covered in the things; it looked like the inside of a pomegranate, egg-shaped objects in a tight lattice, glowing a soft aquamarine. The beam of Ginger’s flashlight was almost invisible on the flat floor.

The floor. There, in the center of the round room, was a carving. A design, unmistakably human, the carved outline of a woman lying on the floor. She was stylized in a manner that reminded Ginger vaguely of Mesoamerica, but only vaguely; as though an Olmec had come along and made a crime scene drawing.

All ten of them were in the room now, alternating between marveling at the ceiling and at the design on the floor. The outline of the woman was overlaid with the outline of a star or a cross, centered on her torso. A long thin ray reached up across her head, another down between her legs. Two shorter rays stood out to either side of her torso.

“Well, Ginger,” Katy asked in a quiet voice, “do we go back and tell people now, or do we wait the full two weeks?”

“Katy,” Ginger said, “the world can wait. This is... unbelievable. In my life I never thought... no one has seen this for centuries. This shouldn’t be here. Can’t be here.”

“I should have brought an archaeologist,” Katy observed.

Tasya had reached up towards the blue ovoids covering the ceiling with the butt of her flashlight. She looked over toward Katy and Ginger. “Should I?”

“Gently,” Ginger replied.

Tasya prodded it.

Nothing happened; it moved as one would expect a fleshy object to move, denting in, pushing the ovoids next to it aside.

“What can they possibly be?” Wen asked from across the room.

“No idea,” Ginger replied.

“They don’t seem like any fruiting body I’ve ever seen,” Milly said.

“There are more,” Maria said, and everyone looked. She was crouched down at one edge of the room, next to a patch of darkness that had to be another tunnel. “There is more glow down there.”

Katy and Ginger came over, crouching to avoid the ceiling at the edge of the room, and looked down the tunnel. Sure enough, more blue glowing.

“Let’s check it out,” Katy said, and frog-walked into the low tunnel. Ginger followed, and then the others.

This tunnel was short and opened into an even larger room, much larger, with the floor at many different levels. The ceiling was higher but the blue glowing things hung down, were long tendrils dangling from the ceiling. As in the other room they covered the ceiling, and the effect was akin to a woodland full of snow and icicles. There were larger ovoids, the size of beer kegs, on the floor, dotted infrequently around the room.

Ginger approached one and crouched down next to it. In the glowing aquamarine there were patterns, faint color variations of lighter and darker blue. It reminded her of a jellyfish.

“What do they live on?” Katy wondered.

“Look,” Carin observed. They had fanned out into the room, moving carefully, tentatively. Carin had gone down a level, was perhaps four feed below the level Ginger was standing on. She pointed towards her feet. “Stairs. From there down to here.”

Prosaic, but powerful. People had made these chambers. How long ago?

“They’re not a fungus,” Milly said. She was standing on a higher section of the room, her head surrounded by glowing blue pods. “At least not like I’ve ever seen. They have to be a plant; we can’t see the ceiling and there may be roots— oh!”

Her sudden cry of surprise froze everyone in the room. They all looked at Milly.

“It... moved,” she said. “I touched it with my glove and it—”

Someone grabbed Ginger’s wrist. She turned to see who it was, but no one was near her, everyone was spread out around the room -

It was a blue strand from the ceiling.

Wen screamed.

Then the room was a dizzying blur of motion, as blue tentacles shot down from the ceiling and grabbed hold of arms, legs, bodies. Katy had flashed out a knife and lopped off a psuedopod that had wrapped around an arm and it split in two, spurting glowing blue fluid. Milly had disappeared, the ceiling looking as though it had simply reached down and enveloped her.

Ginger fought with the tendril on her arm and pulled towards the exit. She saw Tasya run out, and Kiko struggling, but then more psuedopods slapped themselves around Ginger’s other arm, and her leg, and suddenly she was jerked into the air. Wen’s screaming had stopped; Ginger was flipped around, upside down, and saw Katy lose her knife as a tentacle seized her wrist; she heard yelling and cries from the others but then she was being pulled up, up, and everything turned bright blue as she was sucked up into the ceiling.

END Part One