Holly, Jane and Kate (Beyond the reef)

Holly, Jane and Kate, three girls who had been trained to freedive to superhuman depths, had spent the morning in repeated breath-hold dives with empty lungs to 75 to 85 metres in their South Pacific lagoon, naked apart from their fluid-filled goggles, a diving knife strapped to their thighs and a tiny dive data recorder. At midday, they swam to the beach, to meet Dr Wanda Strzela, who was in charge of the training camp. After a high-energy drink, the girls took a few minutes rest lying in the sun, as even in the lagoon the water at 80 metres was noticeably cooler than at the surface. They were then ready to start their afternoon training session in the much deeper waters beyond the reef. They often swam the two or three kilometres to the training site, but today they went with Wanda in the motor cruiser to save time, as they had a longer programme than usual. Bill usually went with them, but today he had already started out in the slower moving submersible.

On the slope on the outside of the reef were a number of small diving platforms anchored at different depths. Wanda stopped the boat by the first platform and the girls jumped off and swam to the platform, continuing the hyperventilation they had begun on the cruiser. This platform was in 180 metres of water, and the girls normally used it for deep empty lung dives. Holly went first, as this was one of her favourite exercises. After expanding her lungs to their fullest, she used her powerful muscles to expel as much air as possible, as she let go of the platform and began to sink. Thanks to the small surgical procedure and her yoga training, she was able to put her tongue down her throat, blocking her windpipe to delay her drowning if she blacked out, as had occasionally happened, while still allowing her to flood her sinuses with sea water through her nose to equalise the pressure. As the last bubbles of air trickled from her nose, her downward movement stabilised at about one and a half metres a second. Without moving arms or legs, she felt the steadily increasing pressure tighten its grip on her body, but was able to block the pain from her conscious mind, focusing on slowing her heart rate and concentrating her circulation on her core areas. She loved the feeling that the weight of the water above was pressing in on her and forcing everything inessential from her body, leaving only a vital core...As she reached one hundred metres she broke the thermocline and passed from merely cool water into the freezing cold of the deeps. Had there been anyone to see her in the icy blackness, they would have seen her body begin to look like a drawing from an anatomy book, arteries and muscles standing out as though her skin was wet silk. After falling for two minutes she reached the bottom, and sat on the rocky seabed in a lotus position as she allowed her consciousness to merge with the sea and the slow rhythm of her body. Even so, she was unable to resist running her hands down her body and inserting the forefingers of each hand into her vagina. After a few minutes she was conscious of Jane landing near her and taking up the same posture. When at last she felt she could endure no longer, she pushed herself up and began the long swim back to the surface. She forced herself not to hurry but to maintain a leisurely stroke, passing Kate descending. It was five minutes after leaving the bottom that she broke the surface, straightened her tongue and refilled her agonised lungs. «How was it?» Wanda called from the cruiser. «Fantastic,» Holly replied. «Can I do it again?» «OK, just once,» smiled Wanda, glancing at her watch. Holly at once began a noisy and vigorous hyperventilation and three minutes later was sinking below the waves again, just as Jane surfaced.

After each girl had made two dives (fewer than they sometimes did), they climbed back on to the cruiser, and headed for the second location. «We’ll try 330 metres this time,» remarked Wanda, keeping an eye on the echosounder as she stopped the boat. «The platform’s at three hundred, but you’re ready for something a bit deeper.» This was almost the maximum depth they had reached in Project Seal, but now they were required to work much harder. Jane took the lead this time. She sat on the diving platform at the stern of the cruiser hyperventilating, while Wanda used the cruiser’s winch and crane jib to position a 40kg weight in the water just in front of her, attached to one end of a long coil of nylon rope. Jane took a final, tremendously deep breath, grimacing and straining as she packed her lungs as full of air as possible. She gripped the rope about three metres above the weight, and Wanda released the clamp holding the rope.

Trailing behind the heavy weight, Jane plummeted like a stone, having to hang on to the rope to avoid being swept off by the rush of the water. With no braking system on the rope, Jane was soon being pulled down at four metres a second, and she had to concentrate on equalising the pressure in her ears and sinuses as the water pressure doubled twice in less than ten seconds. The blue of the sea quickly darkened, and she was soon falling through the freezing, black water below a hundred metres. With no frame of reference, her only warning of arriving at the bottom after a minute and a half was the rope going slack as the weight crashed into the sea bed. Only a second later, her feet hit the rocks and she released the rope, struggling to endure the crushing pressure on her body. The weight quickly disappeared from her limited sight as Wanda started the winch to pull it back up, and Jane did not stay long on the bottom before starting her swim to the surface. After a few metres it was hard even to be sure that she was going upwards, and her lungs were squeezed so flat that she could not release even a bubble of air to confirm the direction. At a hundred metres, she was relieved to see the sea above her dark blue rather than black, and she swam as fast as she could for the surface, but even so, her ascent lasted almost eight minutes and she was beginning to feel dizzy when her head broke the surface some three hundred metres from the cruiser. As it did, she saw Kate leave the surface for her own dive. Wanda made each of the girls make three dives each, and even Holly found that she only barely reached the surface on her last dive. Wanda shook her head as she looked over the times she had recorded. «You’re standing up to the depth OK, but you’ll have to work on extending those times if you’re going to do anything useful when you get there.»

Moving the cruiser on to the last location, Wanda stopped at a place where the echosounder showed 450 metres. Here the girls had to descend with the 40kg weight, then weight for three minutes on the bottom until Wanda pulled them back to the surface with the cruiser’s electric winch, for a total time underwater of about ten minutes. They did only one dive each, and found it easier than the free-swimming ascent from 330 metres, in spite of the greater pressure. «You’ve been doing that all week,» said Wanda. «Tomorrow I’ll give you longer on the bottom, and next week you can try something deeper.» She allowed them a short rest, spread-eagled on the roof of the cruiser to absorb as much sun as possible warm up their frozen bodies, while Wanda carried out a brief series of medical checks. «I’ve got a little surprise for you,» she said. «It’s only four o’clock and you can try something new before you swim home.» She steered the cruiser towards the reef and away from the entrance to the lagoon, into an area where they had not dived before. Keeping one eye on the echosounder and the other on a series of navigation marks which only she recognised, she finally stopped the cruiser. «The other day, Bill was out here in the submersible and found the remains of a military cargo plane that crashed here about twenty years ago, lying more or less intact at 260 metres. I want you to work as a team to anchor the cruiser over it, explore it, report on its condition and recover the crew’s ID tags and anything else you think may be useful. There are torches in the cabin if you want to use them. Bill is down there in the submersible to watch how you handle the task. You have one hour. Any questions?» «Can we use the weight to go down?» asked Jane. Wanda considered. «Yes,» she replied, «But not the winch. You’ll have to swim up or pull yourselves up on the anchor rope.»

Jane nodded and the girls began a rapid but intense hyperventilation. Their first, exploratory dive used the weight, and they clustered round the rope, arms round each others’ shoulders and the rope pressed between them. The descent was not quite as rapid as with only one of them, but they were on the bottom in a minute and a half. They had brought torches, but soon found that when they switched them on, they could see only a metre or so in front of them, while once their eyes had adapted to the minimal amount of light that filtered through the water above them, they could manage to explore the seabed. They spread out in a line so that they could just make out the next girl, and swam across the sea floor looking for the plane until their chests heaved for lack of air and they had to start the six-minute swim to the surface. Wanda moved the boat to their new position, and after a couple of minutes hyperventilation they dived again. This time they were better organised and could search a larger area of the sea floor before they had to go up. On the third dive they found the plane, and Holly dived with the cruiser’s anchor to place it near the wreckage. They were now able to dive with the weight and ascend by pulling themselves up the anchor rope in less than five minutes. They split up to examine the plane, starting with the exterior and scraping marine growth from the fuselage to find the serial number. After a couple of dives they moved on to the inside, using an emergency door which they found open. They felt a touch of fear which in view of the risks they accepted in diving was quite illogical as they entered the dark cabin, in which unknown slimy objects floated, dimly illuminated by the light from their torches. The two crewmen had evidently been trapped in their seats in the cockpit, and the girls had to feel among their bones to find the ID tags. Further dives enabled them to penetrate the cargo area and inspect the remains of the freight. It was hard for them to remember details in the dark, cold conditions, their brains suffering from lack of oxygen and on the verge of narcosis. At last the hour was over and they crawled back on to the cruiser, totally exhausted, to report. Wanda listened without comment, then asked «What were the throttle settings?» The girls looked at each other in consternation. None of them had thought to look. Jane shrugged, hyperventilated briefly, grabbed the 40kg weight and disappeared into the water. Holly and Kate sat on the diving platform to wait. When she was not in sight ascending after eight minutes, they began a rapid hyperventilation, and after nine minutes they dived in and swam quickly down with powerful strokes. They found Jane floating unconscious at fifty metres, hauled her to the surface, lifted her out on to the deck of the cruiser, pulled her tongue from her throat and tried to revive her with mouth-to-mouth and chest compression. After a couple of minutes, Jane stirred weakly, began breathing, retched and tried to sit up. «They were closed,» she gasped. At this point, Wanda came over to her, gave her a brief but thorough medical check and said «You’re starting to get the idea, but you’ll need to stay under a lot longer if you’re going to be any use. Take ten minutes rest and then swim back to base.»

As Holly, Jane and Kate stood up in the surf after their two kilometre swim home, Bill was walking down the beach to meet them. «Am I glad to see you,» he said, his words confirmed by the bulge in his Speedos. «Gather you had a bit of a problem out there. But I got some good pictures of you with the low-light camera.»

The four walked up the beach towards the buildings, where the girls washed each other with a basin of fresh water and then massaged each other’s aching bodies with oil. By this time, Wanda and Bill had finished preparing supper, a coconut and fish curry, which appeared on the menu rather frequently as a change from tinned and frozen food. Over fresh fruit, they chatted about the day’s diving. Afterwards, Holly, Jane and Kate went off for their regular three-hour weightlifting session, while Bill checked and maintained equipment and Wanda processed the day’s research data.

When the evening’s work was all finished, Wanda hung up her lab coat, revealing a toned, sexy body wearing only a black lycra thong, and she and Bill joined the girls on their futon for a couple of hours sex before sleeping. Each of the four women on the island was bisexual and always insisted on performing with Bill, as well as with all the other women. This would have been beyond even Bill’s not inconsiderable powers if Wanda had not read some new medical research and provided him with a drug that suppressed release of prolactin, enabling Bill to join the women and enjoy many orgasms in succession. (Its long-term safety was doubtful, but as Bill said, «The girls aren’t worrying about next year, so it’s the least I can do for them.»)

This evening, Wanda was careful to begin with Jane. She ran her long, sensitive fingers over Jane’s muscular torso and expertly caressed her nipples. «You must not think I didn’t care about what happened this afternoon,» she whispered into Jane’s ear, «But you have all decided where your future lies and I will help you focus your will on that future and make your body the tool of your will.» Jane kissed her and her long, muscular tongue entered Wanda’s mouth and stroked Wanda’s tongue. «You know we are already dead,» she replied. «Do not be sad when our bodies break, but remember what they have done.». They embraced in silence for a moment, then as a wave of pleasure rippled through Wanda she murmured «I shall certainly remember what your body is doing now. And we can all share that pleasure.»

At last, as the moon rose over the lagoon, five sweaty, limp bodies fell into a deep sleep, refreshing them for another day in the lagoon and beyond the reef.

Writing stories since 2003