My Field Work (Part 7)

The Americans turned up a week later, in an unmarked black helicopter that descended noisily onto the main plaza of the campus one bright, sunny morning. Gail, Alison, Sophie and myself were waiting for them. “Full marks for inconspicuousness, guys,” Gail whispered to me, as the door opened and two people stepped out.

One was a tall man with the shoulders of a corn-fed American footballer, the other was a pretty, fashionably skinny young woman with a mop of bright red hair. They were both wearing identical black suits and black sunglasses.

“That must be Padraigin”, observed Alison. We were all intrigued that, of the two American pharmaceutical reps who had arrived to take over the project, one had the highly unfashionable Irish name of Padraigin, the seldom-encountered female version of the Irish for Patrick. The English equivalent would have been something like Patty. We felt slightly reassured that at least one of our new bosses had some Irish blood in her. Alison stepped forward and put on a brave smile.

“You must be Roy,” she said to the man. He turned his face in her direction, frowned slightly, ignored her outstretched hand, and looked beyond her to the surrounding buildings. I smiled at the young woman, who appeared to be looking at us, although her shades were so opaque it was hard to tell.

“Padraigin, is it?” I said in a friendly voice. She seemed to focus on us.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Um – is your name Padraigin?” I asked. Her blank face tightened, and her sunglasses reflected us back at ourselves.

“It’s pronounced Pa-dray-gin”, she said.

I was silent for a moment. Gail smiled at her.

“Oh,” she said, “right. Um, in Ireland we pronounce it Paw-rig-een.”

“Why,” said Padraigin. It wasn’t that she actually wanted to know about Irish pronunciation; she just wanted to know why we did something so patently stupid.

“…Well,” said Gail, “it’s an Irish name, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Padraigin. “My parents liked the name. It’s like Caitlin. That’s my sister’s name.” She pronounced it Kate-Lynn.

“Ah,” Gail went on, “yeah, now, in this country, Caitlin is pronounced Catleen. At least, in the Irish language it is, and it’s an Irish name, so…” She trailed off under Padraigin’s withering stare.

“That’s completely ridiculous,” said Padraigin. “It’s obviously not pronounced like that. Look at the way it’s spelled. God, you people are so backward.” She paused, gave us a look of I-can’t-believe-this-shit-you’re-telling-me, then shook her head incredulously and walked away, towards the Biology building.

That pretty much set the tone for the Americans’ relationship with us. Padraigin and Roy worked for a pharmaceutical giant called Octopus, which was a subsidiary of MediaCorp, the notorious multinational that also owned one or two film studios, most of the major British newspapers, a global television network and, it was rumoured, an aircraft carrier. Octopus had been funnelling money into the Biology Department for years, and had been taking a special interest in the trees – apart from the sheer curiosity value, I couldn’t imagine why, as there was no money to be made out of a sexually voracious tree. They had clearly come to the conclusion that we were fucking the whole thing up, and that they had to take control.

They walked around the Department, inspecting our facilities, and making little sighs and snorts of disbelief and contempt at our relatively primitive equipment. They peered through the glass walls of the greenhouse and had a brief look at the tree, but they didn’t venture inside. They clearly thought that we were a bunch of ignorant hicks.

Padraigin had a Masters in Biochemistry from Harvard. We knew this because the minute she entered Alison’s office, she took it out of her briefcase, hung it on the wall and announced that this was now her office, and that Alison would have to share office space with somebody else. Alison swallowed her pride, but I could see that Gail was having difficulty keeping her temper. Roy stood by the desk, and Padraigin sat behind it. She finally took off her sunglasses, revealing a pair of large, cool, green eyes.

“The conduct of this investigation has been totally amateurish,” she informed us. “Frankly, I’m surprised we weren’t called in sooner. You people seem to be totally incapable of maximizing data output from the standpoint of resource utilization.”

“What?” I said.

“We’ve given you all this money and you’ve come up with jack shit,” she translated, fixing me with a withering stare. She squared her slender shoulders inside her black suit jacket. “From now on, I will be structuring the primary systematics of information management, with a view to capitalizing market-based application procedures.”

I was about to ask her what she meant when Alison translated for us: “You mean, you’re going to take over and get us to find out a way of making money out of this thing.” Alison was pale, and her lips were tight and drawn. Padraigin smiled coldly, as if she were faintly pleased that at least one other person here spoke the same language.

“Exactly,” she said. “There’s no point in funneling resources into the unit if there’s no commercial initiative behind the research. Naturally, I won’t be physically engaging with the subject myself, that’s your job, because after all”, and here her smile took on a faintly malicious edge,” “you have so much more hands-on experience than I do. I will simply direct lab work, which will also be Roy’s special responsibility, and I will also be supervising the overall direction of the research.”

My heart sank. We were basically going to be guinea pigs for Padraigin to watch and make notes about. Great. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering what sort of sex, if any, she herself had. She was so slim, polished and immaculate that it was hard to imagine her being overcome with passion. The only signs of carnality about her, the only evidence that she had blood in her veins and not correcting fluid, were her bright red hair and the healthy pink glow in her cheeks. I noticed, also, that the flash of cleavage between the lapels of her suit jacket looked warm and inviting. She must have caught me glancing at it, because she squared her shoulders and lifted the front of her jacket, to conceal it.

She dismissed us, and we trooped out of the room, depressed. Gail was fuming, and going on about how she had no right to come in here and take it all away from us, but as Alison wearily observed, “She has every right. They’re paying for it. Nothing to do but bow down and get on with it.”

Over the next six weeks, my worst fears about Padraigin’s work methods were confirmed. Gail, Sophie and myself spent most of our time trying to extract sap, core and bark samples from the tree, a process which nine times out of ten ended in our biohazard suits being ripped off our bodies and the thick vines coiling around us, fucking our every orifice and drenching us in explosions of sticky white fluid. It was exhausting and draining to be fucked so regularly, day in and day out, and it didn’t help our sex lives either – Gail and I were almost always too tired to make love to each other, and the same went for Sophie. Alison had helped us for the first week or so, but she soon came down with a mystery illness that kept her off work. So poor Sophie had to worry about her lover, on top of everything else.

Padraigin watched all this from behind two panes of thick glass, with the ever-present Roy recording it all on digital cameras (I wondered if they went back to their hotel room and watched us as a prelude to whatever sort of sex they got up to by themselves). She never appeared to betray any arousal or emotion at what happened to us; we would stagger out of the greenhouse, naked, shaking and covered in fluid, and hand her the sample bottle, and she would snatch it without a word of thanks and scuttle into the lab. We never knew what the hell she was doing in there, and she wouldn’t tell us. Whenever we went for our much-needed drink after work, they never came along. I think they would have forbidden us meal breaks, if they had thought they could get away with it.

Only once did I ever see Padraigin show a flicker of human interest. Gail and Sophie and I had gone into the greenhouse one afternoon, with the express purpose of collecting as much sap as we could. Padraigin had ordered us to go in without our biohazard suits, dressed only in swimming costumes – “Because,” she said, “I’m curious to see whether it responds to human pheromones.” We could have told her that it did, that we already knew that, that we’d learned it the hard way – but we were working for her now, and there was nothing for it but to do what she said.

I was wearing a new pair of red Speedos, Gail was in a one-piece black swimsuit and Sophie wore a pale blue bikini. We all had a plastic litre bottle in each hand, to gather the sap in. We approached the tree in some trepidation. Padraigin was watching intently from behind the glass, about thirty feet away.

“Do it,” muttered Gail to the tree, “just do it and let’s get this over with.” Sophie smiled, and opened her mouth to say something, when the tree suddenly decided to take Gail at her word. It grabbed her from behind and she shrieked, trying to struggle as the vines curled around her legs, arms and shoulders. She cursed and writhed, but they slithered inside her swimsuit and bunched, ripping the fabric. Gail looked at us, knowing exactly what was about to happen to her, and I cried “No!” but too late – the swimsuit stretched and ripped and fell away from my girlfriend’s body, and then Gail grimaced, closed her eyes and went “AaaUNNH!” as the vines slid between her plump thighs and penetrated her.

I looked at Padraigin, who was staring intently and making notes as Gail whimpered, naked in the grip of the tree. I looked back at Gail, and Sophie desperately lunged at the vines, trying to free her friend – but then, the tough vines looped around her ankles and snaked up her thighs. Sophie tried to pull them off, but they swarmed all over her and she disappeared under a thick tangle of them. I’d had enough. I stepped forward, and let the vines grab me, spiraling up into my trunks and ripping them off me; and I sighed as the vines curled around my cock and balls and parted my naked ass cheeks, pressing at my anus. I had no intention of fighting it anymore. I felt the sweet ache rising inside me, my cock grew stiff, and I just bit my lip and whimpered from the bittersweet pain and pleasure as the vine pushed up into my ass.

Gail was panting, her mouth open, her eyes shut, and Sophie had disappeared under the thick coils of vines that covered her. Then, a heavy, fleshy, globular pseudopodium descended on a limblike “branch”, as thick around as my thigh; it parted at the bottom, revealing a moist, pink aperture, then descended over Gail’s head down to the neck. There was a muffled moan from inside, and Gail clutched at her bare flesh.

The tree pulled Gail down onto her back and parted her legs. Then, Sophie, inside her undulating coil of vines, was lifted up and lowered between Gail’s naked thighs. The vines uncurled from her, exposing her body but holding her in a firm grip. Sophie was on her belly, her face at Gail’s pussy, and she immediately began to lick and kiss at it deliriously. She was still wearing her pale blue bikini.

The tree yanked me over to the women, and pulled me down onto Sophie’s back, freeing my arms a little. I desperately needed to fuck. I wasted no time in untying Sophie’s bikini top and flinging it aside, then I dragged her bikini bottom down over her plump black hips and down her legs. She moaned into Gail’s crotch as I guided my cock down between the tops of her thighs. I meant to just fuck her from behind, I wanted to feel Sophie’s sweet vulva enclosing me, but the tree kept pulling me up so that I mounted her rounded ass cheeks, and I was at the wrong angle. The fucking of my own ass was making me burn more and more with the need to cum, and when I finally managed to locate an entrance, and pushed the tip of my cock into it, the tightness and the stifled groan followed by the exclamation of “Ohhhh Jesus!” told me that I was in Sophie’s ass. The part of my brain that wasn’t overcome with the need to fuck cursed the tree, for making me do this to my friend.

But it was too late to stop now, as the vines were swarming over my upper body and over my head, wrapping around my eyes and pushing into my mouth; I sucked on them and jerked my hips violently into the crack of Sophie’s ass. The tightness and friction of it made me cum in only a few seconds, and I felt her shudder and moan. Her ass squeezed my cock, as she tried to force me out of her, but it merely milked more cum from me, and I drove myself into her a last three or four times.

The vines pulled out of my mouth, and fell limply from around my head. I panted for breath and looked down at Sophie’s nude body beneath me, her long smooth back glistening with sweat and heaving, the dark mounds of her ass still split by the shaft of my cock, her face still buried in Gail’s pussy as she nuzzled my girlfriend. Her head still inside the pod, Gail was making wordless noises of ecstasy.

I turned my face away. Behind the glass, Padraigin was rooted to the spot, and had stopped making notes. She was standing, watching us, with a strange expression; I couldn’t work out whether it was fascination, repulsion or something like…envy?

I only saw her for a moment, because just then Gail gave a muffled, liquid cry and arched her back, as she came; then, the pod that had closed over her head opened a little, and a warm, sticky flood of white fluid gushed out of her and spilled all over her naked torso, flowing down over her breasts and belly, down between her thighs and surging over the top of Sophie’s head. Sophie snorted and coughed, and as I reached down to pull her up, the pod unfolded itself from Gail’s head and directed a thick jet of the white sap over my face and chest for good measure. I gasped and spluttered, and the three of us sprawled in the pool of sap as the tree untangled itself from us, pulled its tentacles from the various parts of our bodies it had invaded, and coyly withdrew to its usual dormant state. We lay on the earth of the greenhouse, our naked bodies covered in white fluid, looking like nothing so much as a minor orgy in a paint factory.

Gail coughed, and spat out some sap. We wiped the goo out of our eyes and blinked at each other. I eased my softening cock out of Sophie’s anus, and she sighed slightly, tensing, as I did so. “Sorry about that, Soph,” I whispered, “it wasn’t the hole I was aiming for.” She rolled onto her back, looked up at me, gave me a painful half-smile and then squeezed my shoulder affectionately. Then we rolled off each other, and with aching bodies, we started scooping up as much of the sap as we could get into our specimen bottles. When I looked up at Padraigin, she was wearing her usual impatient expression. Just another day for her.

Winter turned to spring, and Gail, Sophie and I had become resigned to our status as low-status drones when at the end of a particularly long and hard day, Padraigin called us into her office.

“I have good news,” she said, and for the first time, she was smiling in a way that suggested she was actually happy. “There have been major breakthroughs, and the head of our European division is coming over to hear a presentation.”

“What major breakthroughs?” asked Gail, brushing a wet strand of hair out of her face. She had just come from the showers, after an unusually prolonged and intense fucking by the tree that had left her weak and shaky. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and she wasn’t even bothering to conceal her adamant dislike of Padraigin.

“I’ve been working on a compound derived from the tree’s sap,” Padraigin rattled on. “I may as well tell you about the way the research has been going. Octopus is interested in seeing if the tree has any properties that could be of use in a drug for prolonging sexual arousal in women.”

“A female Viagra,” said Gail stonily. “That’s what you’ve been working on?”

“Oh, but much more potent,” said Padraigin, her green eyes flashing. “Of course, there were things we had to iron out. But I’m glad to say that I think we’ve come up with something that has major commercial potential.”

“I’m very happy for you,” said Gail. “I suppose you want us to test it?”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” said Padraigin. “I’ve tested it on myself. It works fine. No side-effects whatsoever.”

I glanced at Roy, and had to restrain a laugh – the look of tight-lipped sullenness on his face told me that he had not been a part of the testing process.

“How serious have the tests been?” asked Sophie. “You can’t go presenting this thing without proper clinical trials.”

“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous!” snapped Padraigin. “It’s an arousal drug, for Christ’s sake, not a cancer cure. The thing is fine. The only problem is, I can’t think of a name for it. I thought maybe something Irish-sounding, seeing as the drug was developed here.”

“How about Poguemahone?” suggested Gail, and this time I snorted so loud that my spit flew across the room and hit the window. Poguemahone, from the Irish póg mo thóin, means “kiss my arse”. Padraigin looked delighted.

“That’s great!” she said. “So anyway, I need you here tomorrow at nine for the presentation. Your Minister of something is gonna be here as well, I forget what exactly…”

“Arts and Sciences,” murmured Roy.

“That’s right,” said Padraigin. “Nine sharp. And dress up for once in your lives, all right? You can go now.” She’d lost her earlier good humour, and seemed a bit disappointed that we hadn’t showered her with congratulations on her new wonder drug.

Later that night in the pub, round about the third pint, Gail returned once again to the main point. “She’s fucking nuts! She hasn’t run any sort of serious trials on this thing. And she’s doing a presentation on it, in front of the Minister? What’s she plan to do, have us go down there and put on a show?”

“I think the Minister should meet the tree,” I grinned. The Minister for Arts and Sciences was a tall, attractive blond woman in her fifties. The papers were always running stories about the “most glamorous woman in government”, neglecting to mention that her policy of ruthless cuts had caused many arts centers to close down. I thought it would be fun to see this smooth, immaculately turned-out woman naked and writhing while the tree fucked her in orifices she hadn’t known she had. Gail just scowled and took a drink from her pint.

“Bloody Padraigin. She probably would set the tree on us, if she thought she’d get more subsidies. God, I’m knackered. I’ve got bruises on my thighs like you wouldn’t believe. I’m getting really fucked off, being her paid worker bee while she takes the credit.”

“Maybe she’ll go back to America and let us get on with it,” said Sophie, sipping her glass of wine.

“Here’s hoping,” said Gail, raising her pint glass. We all toasted Padraigin’s departure.

In fact, she did stop being in charge of the project, but not quite in the way we anticipated.

We all went to work next day joined by Alison, who was feeling much better, and who had put on a little weight from her weeks in bed. The four of us were dressed in our best suits, and we found Padraigin rushing around in the conference room, yelling at the hapless undergraduates who were trying to work out how to operate PowerPoint, calling them incompetent morons, and rejecting the college tap water for being too “flat” and ordering somebody to go out and get a dozen bottles of Evian. Roy was sitting at the table, making notes. Everybody was waiting for the Head of the European Division and the Minister, who were having a power breakfast in the government buildings.

We all went to work next day joined by Alison, who was feeling much better, and who had put on a little weight from her weeks in bed. The four of us were dressed in our best suits, and we found Padraigin rushing around in the conference room, yelling at the hapless undergraduates who were trying to work out how to operate PowerPoint, calling them incompetent morons, and rejecting the college tap water for being too “flat” and ordering somebody to go out and get a dozen bottles of Evian. Roy was sitting at the table, making notes. Everybody was waiting for the Head of the European Division and the Minister, who were having a power breakfast in the government buildings.

Finally, Padraigin’s phone rang; it was the college porter telling us that the party had arrived. They mooched into the room in that annoyingly unhurried way that very powerful people have, knowing perfectly well that we exist to wait on them, not the other way round. The Head of the European Division was a smooth, compact, powerful-looking guy in his fifties, looking like a Police captain or a mob boss, with an air of tailored suits and very expensive soap. The Minister, Mrs. McDonald, was tall, rather lovely-looking in a cool and scented sort of way, and a fluent talker, wearing a daringly low-cut top under her pinstripe suit. There was a handful of Octopus executives, a couple of secretarial-looking people and finally two armed Gardaí (Irish: police officers), a handsome, ridiculously young-looking guy and his partner, an even younger-looking, small, rather pretty brunette, the Minister’s bodyguard, who stood together by the door and looked impassive.

The Head of the Division, Mr. Macchio, introduced Mrs. McDonald to Padraigin, who smiled in a poised way and didn’t bother to introduce the rest of us, referring to us as “the workers”. Then we all sat at the table, the lights dimmed, and the presentation began.

Padraigin stood next to the projection screen with a pointer in her hand.

“For some months now,” she began, “the team here have been investigating the properties of certain flora that were originally discovered in the central plain.” A picture came up of the swamp-tree that had fucked Gail and I so many months ago. “These trees,” she went on, “have a unique manner of interacting with humans, the precise details of which need not be gone into here, but which, suffice to say, have encouraged the development of a product that we believe can, if put into production, bring significant benefits to this country’s economy. The fact that the only source of raw materials for the product are in this country, further encourages our hopes for the future.”

She paused, coughed slightly, and went on. The picture of the tree was replaced by an animation of a slowly rotating molecule.

“This is the molecule that we have isolated,” said Padraigin, pausing only to cough again somewhat louder, before resuming “that constitutes the principal active ingredient of the agent. Excuse me.” She paused again, flushing slightly, took out a handkerchief, coughed heavily into it, and put it away again. Somebody handed her a drink of water. She took a sip and continued.

“Without being too technical, the agent works by encouraging serotonin production. Serotonin, as I’m sure we all know, is the so-called chemical for happiness. Its release is stimulated by this molecule, which is only present in certain tissues found in these trees and which appears to be impossible to synthesise. We have, however, managed to produce a product using natural plant derivatives, which simulates the arousing and pleasurable effects of the tree without its unfortunate side-effects.”

She stopped and swallowed. She seemed to be perspiring heavily. She picked up the water glass and had a long drink out of it. There was a slightly uncomfortable silence.

“Just out of curiosity,” asked Mrs. McDonald politely, “exactly what are the side-effects of the stuff from this tree? How does it interact with humans?”

“I can answer that,” said Gail, and then yelped and clenched her teeth as Alison kicked her under the table.

“It’s a somatic process that’s somewhat difficult to describe,” said Alison smoothly. Padraigin gave Alison a grateful look. She clearly wasn’t feeling at all well. She indicated to the student to put up the next slide, and the screen was suddenly filled with an array of chemical formulae.

“We believe that this product,” Padraigin began, then swallowed and had another drink of water, “this product…can…”

She gulped and swayed slightly, then stumbled against the edge of the table and groaned.

“Are you all right, Ms Hooper?” asked Mr. Macchio.

“I’m fine, I’m sorry,” grated Padraigin through clenched teeth. “Just a touch of cramp. I’m very sorry, must be something I ate. Just give me a moment, and I’ll…”

Suddenly her green eyes glazed over, she shuddered and moaned. She dropped her clipboard, pulled open her suit jacket, and thrust a slim hand inside the waistband of her skirt, into her crotch. She closed her eyes.

“Ohhhhhh…” Padraigin moaned. “Ohh fuuck...” She was clearly touching herself down there, vigorously, and getting results.

Gail’s hand gripped mine. I glanced at her – her face showed something like glee for the first time in weeks. Mr. Macchio half-rose, his face like thunder, but then Padraigin opened her eyes and stared at him – and her eyes seemed to flash green fire. He fell back into his seat and his mouth hung open. And a strange green glow extended from Padraigin, to fill half the room. I was reminded of a story I’d read about an incident during the Manhattan Project, in which a test of the critical mass went wrong and caused the uranium to glow a lethal, radioactive blue.

The people from MediaCorp, Mrs. McDonald, her entourage and Padraigin herself were up at the other end of the table, inside the fuzzy area of green light, and something seemed to be holding them in their seats. Gail, Sophie, Alison and I were at the narrow end of the table, with the undergraduates, where the light was normal. We stared at each other, and found that we all had total freedom of movement. We were glad, because none of us, not Alison, Sophie, Gail, any of our assistants, or myself, wanted to go near Padraigin right now.

Padraigin was rubbing herself furiously, and staring at Mrs. McDonald, who was apparently transfixed with horror. Then, to our amazement, Padraigin ripped off her jacket, pulled her skirt down over her ankles, tore open her blouse, and hauled frantically at the rest of her underclothing. She tore her bra in two and threw it aside, revealing a pair of lovely pear-shaped breasts – then she pulled down her tights and slid her panties down over her unexpectedly broad hips, stripping herself naked.

She had a beautiful body, not as designer-slim as I’d imagined, but with pleasing curves at the hips and lovely pert breasts. She sank to her knees, baring her white teeth and growling, and a sort of milky film flicked over her green eyes as her right hand worked furiously between her legs. Her other hand was caressing her tight pink ass as she knelt on the floor, emitting weird liquid purring noises, then she seemed to convulse and twitch, as if she were about to throw up – then, to our lasting horror and amazement, she fell onto all fours, and convulsed once more, and a thick coil of ten-foot-long green tentacles sprang out of her mouth and twisted exultantly in the air.

It was as if a plant had suddenly sprouted out of her mouth. The glistening, bulbous tentacles wavered blindly in the air, their roots still deep somewhere inside Padraigin’s slim body – then they leapt forward, and seized the Minister, Mrs. McDonald.

Mrs. McDonald snapped out of her trance and screamed. The young Garda and Ban Garda (policeman and policewoman, respectively) stepped forward, reaching for their guns, but then they stopped, as if hypnotized – and fell on each other, ripping each other’s uniforms off, kissing each other and wrestling urgently. Alison stood up, looked at us, and hesitated. Sophie grabbed her arm. We didn’t want this to happen – but at the same time, we did, we needed whatever sort of truth was unfolding here to unfold. The four of us, and our two student assistants, rose and backed away as far as we could from the green glow.

The tentacles wasted no time in pulling Mrs. McDonald’s clothes off her; first her natty pinstriped suit and shoes were flung into a corner, then her low-cut silky top, and finally her bra and her panties were hauled off her; then they quickly snaked around her thrashing naked form and bulged into her mouth, slithering down into her crotch and lifting up her naked arse to shove a slimy, swollen tip between her buttocks. She was dragged off her chair and fell on her back on the floor, trying to struggle, but straining her bare arms and legs against the tightening grip of the swarming tentacles. Unable to scream because of the vines filling her mouth, she gave a stifled moan and her eyes bulged as they penetrated her vagina; then, as she desperately struggled to move her hips away, they slid inexorably up into her ass, making her shut her eyes tight and squeal “MMMM!” Then her head disappeared as the vines coiled up around it, enveloping her completely.

Meanwhile, the tentacles that weren’t fucking the Minister were still swarming out of Padraigin’s mouth and crawling all over her own body. She was sprawled face down on the conference room floor, the tips of the vines pushing up into her vulva and shoving down between her quivering ass cheeks. The poor girl whimpered as she was overcome by whatever had taken root inside her, even as the tentacles bursting out of her mouth were enveloping and fucking the naked body of the older woman.

We could do nothing but watch. Everyone inside the bubble of green light that had spread to encompass those at the top of the table was either totally still, or overcome with lust. Padraigin was twitching and moaning as she came over and over again from the fleshy green vines in her ass and pussy. The Minister was whimpering and squirming, her naked body almost invisible inside the thick cocoon of vines, as the tentacles invaded her completely. The Garda and Ban Garda had got each other’s clothes off, and their naked, panting wrestling match had been won for the moment by the Garda, who had forced his partner onto her belly on the carpet, mounted her, and was energetically sodomising her while she panted, groaned and reached behind herself to touch him, running her hands over his naked hips and vocally urging him on (in Irish, which we afterwards agreed had been especially impressive).

We stood and watched in silence. None of us wanted to get involved. Eventually Gail grinned and remarked, “My friends always said that only geeks were interested in botany.”

Finally, the tentacles inside the Minister came, and the cocoon of vines that covered her body burst and exploded with white fluid, drenching her; Padraigin herself shuddered, squealed and writhed, rolling onto her back, as the same white fluid spilled up in gouts out of her mouth, pouring over her face; and the Garda groaned as he spent himself noisily in the Ban Garda’s anus, while she moaned loudly and pushed her hips back onto his cock, one hand thrust between her legs. The green light faded. The only sounds were heavy breathing from Padraigin, Mrs. McDonald, and the two hapless Gardaí, still lying on the carpet, sweaty, naked and disheveled.

The tentacles that were still filling Padraigin’s mouth and had covered Mrs. McDonald suddenly withered and dissolved into pale smoke – then they had gone, leaving only a faint small of new-cut grass. The Minister lay on her stomach, naked, her body flushed pink with orgasm, one arm outflung, the other touching her nipple; her ribcage heaving, her whole body covered in white sap, which dripped off her and soaked into the carpet. The male cop, suddenly self-aware, was stricken with embarrassment; he gingerly dismounted from the even more embarrassed female cop, and they withdrew into a corner, clinging to each other and trembling.

Mr. Macchio managed to finally stand up. He stepped over the recumbent body of the Minister and looked down at Padraigin, who was crimson with humiliation, her face and body streaked with the white fluid. She stared fearfully up at him and put one hand over her bare breasts, the other over her red patch of pubic hair, trying to cover herself. For the first time, I actually felt a pang of sympathy for her.

“Ms Hooper,” he rumbled, “consider yourself fired.”

And with that, the rest of the MediaCorp team rose and followed him out of the room. Only Roy remained, sitting at the table with a dazed expression on his face.

The four of us stood up and ran towards the other end of the table. Alison and Sophie looked to the Minister; Gail and I knelt next to Padraigin.

“Do you get it now?” asked Gail quietly.

Padraigin looked up at her, and her eyes were wet with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have doubted you guys. You knew what you were doing and I didn’t trust you. I’m such a fucking idiot…”

Gail looked down at her, and I felt a surge of love for her as her face softened and she gathered the sobbing girl into her arms.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, patting Padraigin on the shoulder. “You’re one of us now. None of us know what’s going on. We have to work together. You see how it is?”

“Yes,” Padraigin sniffed into Gail’s bosom. “Fuck the company. Fuck the money. I’m really sorry. I want to work with you guys. Is that okay?”

Gail hugged her, flashed a smile at me, and kissed the poor girl on her forehead. “Of course it is. But we’re in deep shit now. We may have to go underground.”

“I agree,” said a voice. We turned and looked at the Minister, who was sitting up, managing an exhausted smile from behind the mask of clinging white sap that had spilled over her face. Sophie had draped her suit jacket over Mrs. McDonald’s shoulders, which didn’t cover her at all but was at least a gesture towards modesty. Behind her, the two cops were huddling together, naked, looking at us with an expression of awed respect.

“This is the most extraordinary thing that’s ever happened to me,” said Mrs. McDonald quietly. “I can either go mad, or I can try to think about it. I’m going to think about it, but we have to keep this top secret. This is not going back to my people, or the government, or anyone else. Is that clear?”

She looked at her staff sternly. They looked too shocked to disobey, and just nodded dumbly.

“Now,” she went on, “that’s not going to be easy with MediaCorp after you. You’ve made yourselves some very bad enemies. I think you people have to get out of here, and go somewhere you can’t be found.”

“We have to get the tree out too,” said Alison. Mrs. McDonald nodded.

“Definitely. You need to go somewhere secret, and somewhere safe. It might be an idea for you to take Donal and Margaret with you, if they want to go.” She looked inquiringly at the two naked Gardaí, who both nodded enthusiastically. “They know what this thing can do,” she went on, “and they trust me implicitly. Plus, they’ve been trained in security. I’ll try to cover for you. Whatever this thing is, it’s too powerful; we have to keep it safe from MediaCorp.”

“Okay,” said Alison, and she seemed to be gaining new strength with the prospect of our new status as outlaws. “We go silent, and we go deep. Are we all ready for this? There’s no going back.”

“I’m ready,” said Gail.

“I’m ready,” I said.

“So am I,” said Sophie, smiling and polishing her glasses.

“So are we,” chorused Donal and Margaret.

“Can I come too?” said Padraigin weakly.

“Of course you can,” said Gail. Alison and I hugged Padraigin, who grinned shamefacedly and started to apologise all over again.

“Wait a second,” said Sophie. We all looked at her. She was scanning the room, and then stopped, staring at something on the ground. She looked troubled. We knew just how troubled she was when she spoke next, because she swore. What she said was:

“What the fuck has happened to Roy?”

To Be Continued…