“Remember that the plant wants to eat you,” the groundskeeper said. “It’s not going to let you get away. Don’t fight it. Let yourself be eaten.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m finding your advice to be less than one hundred percent helpful,” Wilson said to the groundskeeper. The plant was now beginning to drag him under.

“I’m sorry,” the groundskeeper said. “Usually the kharhn we feed to the kingsflower are already dead. I never get to see anything live fed to it. This is exciting for me.”

Wilson fought hard not to roll his eyes. “Glad you’re enjoying the show,” he said. “Will you hand me that rope now, please?”

“What?” the groundskeeper said, then remembered what he had in his hands. “Right. Sorry.” He handed one end of the rope to Wilson, who quickly tied it to himself in a mountain climber hold. Schmidt took the other end from the groundskeeper.

“Don’t lose your grip,” Wilson said. He was now up to his groin in plant. “I don’t want to be fully digested.”

“You’ll be fine,” Schmidt said, encouragingly.

“Next time it’s your turn,” Wilson said.

“I’ll pass,” Schmidt said.

More tentacles shot up, roping around Wilson’s shoulder and head. “Okay, I am officially not liking this anymore,” he said.

“Is it painful?” the groundskeeper asked. “I am asking for science.”

“Do you mind if we hold the questions until afterward?” Wilson asked. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

“Yes, sorry,” the groundskeeper said. “I’m just excited. Damn it!” The Icheloe started patting his garments. “I should be recording this.”

Wilson glanced over to Schmidt, looking as exasperated as he could under the circumstances. Schmidt shrugged. It had been a strange day.

“This is it,” Wilson said. Only his head was above the surface now. Between the tentacles constricting and dragging him down and the pulsing, peristaltic motion of the fleur du roi plant sucking him down into the ground, he was reasonably sure he was going to have post-traumatic flashbacks for months.

“Hold your breath!” the groundskeeper said.

“Why?” Wilson wanted to know.

“It couldn’t hurt!” the groundskeeper said. Wilson was going to make a sarcastic reply to this but then realized that, in fact, it couldn’t hurt. He took a deep breath.

The plant sucked him fully under.

“This is the best day ever,” said the groundskeeper to Schmidt.

*   *   *

Wilson had a minute or two of suffocating closeness from the plant as the thing pushed him into its digestive sac. Then there was a drop as he fell from the thing’s throat into its belly. The fall was broken by a spongy, wet mass at the bottom: the plant’s digestive floor.

“Are you in?” Schmidt said, to Wilson, via his BrainPal.

“Where else do you think I would be?” Wilson said, out loud. His BrainPal would forward the voice to Schmidt.

“Can you see Tuffy?” Schmidt asked.

“Give me a second,” Wilson said. “It’s dark down here. I need to give my eyes a moment to adjust.”

“Take your time,” Schmidt said.

“Thanks,” Wilson said, sarcastically.

Thirty seconds later, Wilson’s genetically-engineered eyes had adjusted to the very dim light from above to see his environment, a dank, teardop-shaped organic capsule barely large enough to stand in and stretch his arms.

Wilson looked around and then said, “Uh.”

“‘Uh’?” Schmidt said. “‘Uh’ is not usually good.”

“Ask the groundskeeper how long it takes this thing to digest something,” Wilson said.

“The groundskeeper says it usually takes several days,” Schmidt said. “Why?”

“We have a problem,” Wilson said.

“Is Tuffy dead already?” Schmidt asked, alarm in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Wilson said. “The damn thing isn’t here.”

“Where did he go?” Schmidt asked.

“If I knew that, Hart, I wouldn’t be saying ‘uh,’ now, would I?” Wilson said, irritated. “Give me a minute.” He peered hard into the dim. After a minute, he got down on his hands and knees and moved toward a small shadow near the base of the capsule. “There’s a tear here,” Wilson said, after examining the shadow. “Behind the tear it looks like there’s a small tunnel or something.”

“The groundskeeper says the rock bed below the palace is riddled with fissures and tunnels,” Schmidt said, after a brief pause. “It’s part of the cave system that’s underneath the palace.”

“Do the tunnels and fissures go anywhere?” Wilson asked.

“He says ‘maybe,’” Schmidt said. “They’ve never mapped the entire system.”

From deep inside the black tunnel, Wilson heard a very small, echoing bark.

“Okay, good news,” Wilson said. “The dog’s still alive. Bad news: The dog is still alive somewhere down a very small, dark tunnel.”

“Can you go down the tunnel?” Schmidt asked.

Wilson looked and then felt around the wall of the capsule. “How does our groundskeeper friend feel about me tearing into the plant wall a little bit?” he asked.

“He says that in the wild these plants have to deal with wild animals kicking and tearing at their insides all the time, so you’re not going to hurt it too much,” Schmidt said. “Just don’t tear it any more than you have to.”

“Got it,” Wilson said. “Also, Hart, do me a favor and throw me down a light, please.”

“The only light I have is on my PDA,” Schmidt said.

“Ask the groundskeeper,” Wilson said.

Down the tunnel, there was a sudden, surprised yelp.

“Ask him to hurry, please,” Wilson said.

A couple minutes later, the mouth of the plant opened and a small object tumbled down into the capsule. Wilson retrieved the light, switched it on, lifted the tear and shone the light down the tunnel, sweeping it around to get an idea of its dimensions. He figured if he crawled, he might barely be able to make his way down the tunnel. The tunnel itself was long enough that the light shone down into darkness.

“I’m going to have to undo the rope,” Wilson said. “It’s not long enough to go all the way down this tunnel.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Schmidt said.

“Being swallowed by a carnivorous plant isn’t a good idea,” Wilson said, undoing the rope. “Compared to that, letting go of the rope is nothing.”

“What if you get lost down there?” Schmidt asked.

“My BrainPal will let you know where I am, and I’ll let you know if I get stuck,” Wilson said. “You’ll be able to tell by the screaming panic in my voice.”

“Okay,” Schmidt said. “Also, I don’t know if this is information that you need to know right now, but I just got a ping from Ambassador Waverly’s assistant. She says the negotiations should wrap up in an hour and then the ambassador will want Tuffy for, and I swear to God this is a quote, ‘a little snuggle time.’”

“Wonderful,” Wilson said. “Well, at least now we know how much time we have.”

“One hour,” Schmidt said. “Happy spelunking. Try not to die.”

“Right,” Wilson said. He knelt at the tear, tore it just enough to shove his body through, put the light between his teeth, got on his hands and knees and started crawling.

The first hundred meters were the easy part; the tunnel was narrow and low, but dry and relatively straight as it descended through the rock. Wilson figured that if he had to guess, he’d venture it was once a lava tube at some point, but at the moment all he really wanted was for the thing not to collapse on him. He wasn’t ordinarily claustrophobic, but he’d also never been dozens of meters down a tube in a rock, either. He thought he was allowed a spot of unease.

After a hundred meters or so, the tube became slightly wider and higher but also more jagged and twisting, and the angle of descent became substantially steeper. Wilson hoped that somewhere along the way the tunnel might become wide enough for him to turn around in; he didn’t like the idea of having to back out ass first, dragging the dog along with him.