by Eoin Colfer
Axborn squatted before her, and she could see the bow of his mustache in the corner of her eye.
“See?” he said. “Virtuoso.”
Myles Fowl’s hands were lacerated with cuts from the cardboard sheets he had bent to his will and design. On an ordinary day, he would have launched into a well-constructed rant at the discomfort and indeed inconvenience of a blood-slicked work surface, but this was no ordinary day, even by Fowl family standards, and so Myles labored on silently, slotting the pieces of his weapon into place, contenting himself with dark thoughts of rubber-band-centric revenge.
They will regret not Fowl-proofing this room, he thought. I cannot wait to see their faces.
The dwarves had left him alone in the storeroom for less than half an hour in total, but it was all the time Myles needed to assemble his contraption. It would have been most convenient to have NANNI on hand to plot the fold lines with her laser, but Myles had to make do with the blueprints in his head, which were very close to laser-accurate. The problem was the transfer of intent from his brain to his fingertips, as sometimes, it had to be admitted, Myles’s fingertips were not as devastatingly effective as other parts of his body, such as his brains and sharp tongue.
“Nevertheless,” he muttered to himself, “these Fowl fingers should work well enough to cope with bothersome dwarves.”
Myles could not know this, but he was one of only half a dozen twelve-year-olds worldwide to use the word bothersome in a sentence that day, and the other five were reading aloud from a Victorian novel.
Myles had no sooner finished his construction than the dwarf Gveld Horteknut carelessly reentered his prison, making no attempt to protect her person in any way.
Such is her lack of respect for me, thought Myles. Well, General Horteknut may come to regret underestimating Myles Fowl.
Myles felt so slighted by the general’s general body language that he decided to voice this thought.
He jumped out from behind the stack of boxes, wielding his fully automatic rubber-band machine gun—which looked a little like the starship Enterprise festooned with multicolored stripes—and cried, “You may come to regret underestimating Myles Fowl, General Horteknut!”
For a moment, Gveld seemed genuinely happy. “What is that? A toy gun?”
“This is no toy,” said Myles. “This weapon will see me clear of you and your gang of tunneling thugs.”
And then he touched the battery to the trigger, activating the weapon and…shooting himself in the eye.
End of escape attempt.
Gveld escorted Myles out into the basement by the collar, her bemused expression hardening as she dragged.
“This Mud Boy tried to shoot me with rubber bands,” she announced to Gundred, who had joined the Horteknut cluster around the giant spitball.
“I am so relieved that you survived, my general,” said Gundred. “The other Fowl came through the tunnel and dragged the pixel along with him.”
Gveld took in the scene, nodding once in seeming admiration that the two followers had made it this far, and a second time in satisfaction that the situation had been utterly contained. She transferred her grip from Myles’s lapel to the hair on the back of his head.
“Do you see, Mud Boy?” she said. “We are Horteknuts. You cannot hunt us belowground, or you die.”
Myles fought the panic rising in his gorge. Panic was of no use to Beckett. Panic was the enemy of rational thought. Artemis had once said to him, Farm animals panic, brother. Are you a farm animal?
And ten-month-old Myles had shaken his head, to which Artemis had said, Well, then, change your own diaper.
Little Myles had at that point decided that, rather than change his diaper, he would train himself not to need diapers anymore, which took him most of an afternoon.
He felt that panic again now, but something replaced this feeling: hope.
“But Beckett is not dead, General. I see his chest moving. He breathes.”
“He does,” said Gveld. “He does indeed breathe. Dwarf spit is a marvelous material. In an emergency, a dwarf can survive suspended in it for hours. Our saliva has everything a body needs, even nutrients, but your irritating twin won’t breathe for much longer if you do not do what I need you to do, little human.”
“I will do it,” said Myles without hesitation. “My word on that.”
Gveld grimaced. “The word of a human—any human, but especially a Fowl—means less than nothing to me, boy. You need an incentive.”
Myles struggled to wiggle out of Gveld’s steel grip. He was not successful.
“I am completely incentivized,” insisted Myles. “My dear brother is suspended in your excretions.”
“Their excretions,” corrected Gveld. “Like most females, Gundred and I are non-excreters. In fact, Gundred is a surface dwarf.”
Myles knew exactly what a surface dwarf was from Artemis’s extensive files, though he did not let on. He did, however, subtly try to ingratiate himself.
“Though I suppose, technically, excreter is not a completely accurate term, as that material is certainly not waste.”
Gveld shook Myles like a doll in Gundred’s direction. “What do you think, my second? Is this brat trying psychological manipulation on us? Using sly compliments?”
“I suspect he is, General,” said Gundred. “Do you find yourself warming to him?”
“That I do not,” said Gveld. “In fact, I find myself disliking him more by the minute.”
Myles felt the dwarf’s thick fingers find the nerve clusters in his neck, and he had no trouble believing that she disliked him intensely.
“General,” he said, “I will do what you ask. Just ask it.”
Gveld forced Myles’s face against the spitball, mushing it into the pliable surface so that Beckett’s revolving image warped and stretched.
“You believe you will do what I ask at this critical moment,” she said into his ear. “But when the sunlight falls upon your face, you will ask yourself, Is there another way? I am a Fowl, after all. Surely I can thwart this so-called general.”
“That is not true,” said Myles, even as he realized that it was. “I have a strong grasp of consequences and near total recall.”
“Perhaps,” said Gveld. “But in my experience humans need to be shown how dire their situation is. Most people have no context for these circumstances and believe them to be temporary. You need a demonstration that this is your new reality.”
“A demonstration is not necessary, General,” said Myles. “My brother’s life is at stake and that is all the information I need. There is no reason to harm him.”
Gveld pulled Myles from the blob and turned his face to a pile of vines on the floor. One of the other dwarves whistled and a gap opened up in the vines, revealing Lazuli’s drawn face, blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.
“This is war, Fowl. People get harmed. Take your little police officer friend, trussed up in one of our vinesuits. Remarkable suits, those. They respond to our every little whistle and gesture.”
Lazuli is hurt, thought Myles.
“So, you see, Mud Whelp, I do not intend to harm your brother…” said Gveld.
Myles suddenly knew what all this was leading to, and he set his mind fully to finding a solution. He had only seconds, but then, seconds to an ordinary person was a lifetime to Myles Fowl. The twin concentrated fully on recalling Artemis’s files, which he had pored over for months, including as they did all the information from the LEP Core, which is what the fairy police called their Cloud. He also had time to mentally search the ACRONYM files, which he had helped himself to on a previous adventure (see LEP file: The Fowl Twins). These were woefully light on specifics, except for one interesting detail, which he put a pin in for later. Just when Myles felt he was circling a possible solution, Gveld finished her sentence, which was a sentence in more ways than one.
“…but I do intend to crush the life from this pixel’s bones to create an indelible impression.”
; To be perfectly honest, Lazuli seemed dead already, the only sign of life being a spasmodic jittering of two fingers on her left hand.
I must save her, as Beckett would be heartbroken if something happened to Lazuli, Myles thought. And then he realized: I myself would be heartbroken.
And so, before Gveld could issue a whistle or gesture, Myles was forced to interject with a plan that was considerably less than fully formed.
“General Horteknut,” he said, “can I just say at this point that I would like to invoke an Irish Backstop?”
Gveld’s cheeks were already puffed for a whistle, but she expelled the air harmlessly and fixed Myles with the most hate-infused stare he’d ever been subjected to, and he had been subjected to fourteen hate-infused stares so far in his life, the first being from a kindergarten bully whose weapon of choice was mean rhymes. On one occasion Benedict Keane and his friends had chanted at the brothers:
“The Fowl Twins, the Fowl Twins
Are making me sick.
The smart one is ugly,
And the other one’s thick.”
And four-year-old Myles had responded quick as a flash:
“Oh, what a disaster,
Is Benedict Keane.
He’s dense as a neutron,
And bright as graphene.”
Hence the stare.
And Ben Keane’s stare had nothing on General Horteknut’s.
“How dare you say those words?” said Gveld. “That term is for fairies alone. You may neither say it nor invoke it.”
Myles was ready for that.
“My brother and I were declared to be of sufficient fairy heritage to avoid mind-wiping last year [see LEP file: The Fowl Twins], so I restate my desire to invoke the Irish Backstop. No true dwarf may refuse this request.”
“I may refuse it,” said Gveld Horteknut. “And I do refuse it!”
Vigor took a step forward. “Begging your pardon, General, but are you refusing a backstop that’s been formally invoked?”
Gveld waved him away. “Don’t listen to the Mud Boy’s jabber, Number Three. He’s no fairy. Humans cannot invoke anything.”
“It’s true what he claims,” protested Vigor mildly. “Both twins were declared to be one-quarter fairy. They were possessed by one of Opal Koboi’s ghosts. I have a source in the LEP, so I read the report.” The Horteknut Number Three took another step forward, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. “An Irish Backstop, General. It’s an omen.”
This gave Gveld pause.
If this was indeed true about the twins’ DNA, then she would have to accept the Irish Backstop. Indeed, she would be privileged to accept it. The Irish Backstop had been initiated during the Willows Wars and led to glorious victory for the dwarf army. It could indeed be an omen, and if there was one thing dwarves loved almost as much as gold, it was a vendetta—but omens were a close third.
Gveld took her time considering. Her initial impulse had been to kill the boy before the echo of his blasphemy faded, but…
But…
A glorious victory for the Reclaimers could only mean a full recovery of the Horteknut hoard. It was possible she could accomplish that with her band, the finest band of Reclaimers to ever dig a hole, but omens had their own kind of alchemy. They gave the troops a feeling of destiny and right. So…
“Very well, Fowl. I shall allow your invocation, but I warn you, the terms must be met.”
“I know what an Irish Backstop is, General,” said Myles, unable to temper his haughty nature.
“Then you know that should you fail in your task, both of your coconspirators will die slowly and painfully.”
“Unless I myself strike the fatal blows,” said Myles, feeling the weight of those words in his stomach.
These were the terms: The contract invoker—in this case, Myles—was given a task appropriate for one with his gifts. Should he fail or abscond, then the nominated prisoners, Beckett and Lazuli, would suffer a slow execution and he himself would be hunted down to suffer the same fate. This slow execution could be avoided if Myles returned and surrendered himself to Gveld, in which case all three of the Fowl party would be dispatched quickly and relatively painlessly. This was also the case should Myles actually succeed. Succeed or fail, everyone would be dead.
It was an ancient and brutal contract, and Myles had just signed up to it using the lives of his teammates as collateral.
THERE may be some among you who are not familiar with the ins and outs of an Irish Backstop, even though the details are required reading in almost every fairy high school program besides the dwarves’ own, as their code of secrecy forbids the keeping of accurate records. Dwarf texts are littered with deliberate lies and exaggerations seeded specifically to frustrate researchers. For example, dwarf bard Drollbag the Profound’s history states that A dwarf male’s belly is so stretchy that it may comfortably accommodate the entirety of a bull troll within. Which has proved false at least once a year, when some gullible dwarf has tried it. Drollbag’s book also claims that if a dwarf be rightly trunneled, which translates to trapped in a tunnel, then he may spontaneously transform into:
1. The most sparkly of rainbows
2. A squirrel of the nimblest variety
Or…
3. A cloud of fetid gas
None of which are accurate, except the last one does at least have an element of truth to it.
In spite of all this blarney, any dwarf who’s ever chewed sod knows the story of the first Irish Backstop, as this tale has been passed down through the generations and is considered the holiest and most inspirational of histories.
There are inevitably almost as many renderings of this story as there are dwarves to tell it, but the following condensed version has been woven together from common threads.
It began in wartime, as these things often do. Back in the days before humans took up the reins as the planet’s main organized force of evil, the dwarves were having a tiff with the elves. Their issue was as follows: The dwarves felt that the invasive root systems of weeping willow trees were collapsing their tunnels and in certain places needed to be culled. The elves felt that willow trees were sacred and must not under any circumstances be touched by fairy hands. One thing led to another: a branch chopped here, and a limb sliced there, and within a century the dwarves and the elves were at each other’s throats, and both camps had more or less forgotten the trees along the way. It all came to a head in Ireland, when an elf troop charged into a dwarf pit and was trapped utterly. The dwarf general, a lover of cruel games, offered to walk back from the traditional extended torture of the elfin captain’s staff if the captain himself would report to the elf king’s tent and strike him dead. In exchange for this traitorous action, she would execute him and his troops without the usual torture. If he failed or reneged on his agreement, then there would be the usual torture, unless he himself returned to strike the killing blows. This was the Irish Backstop, and it was indeed a diabolical arrangement. The twice-cursed captain left the battlefield but arrived back within the day, unable to complete his sworn mission. He had resigned himself to ending his own soldiers’ lives with blasts from his magical lance rather than let them suffer. He aimed his lance, but the elf king, having heard of his captain’s loyalty, showed up at the last second and surrendered to the dwarf general. The general’s icy heart was melted by this gesture and she let the elves off the hook. There were hugs all around and the fairies never fought again, or so the story goes.
The only part of that legend which Gveld Horteknut did not buy was the merciful ending. “Take my word for it, human,” she told Myles before prodding him from the basement room. “Dwarf generals do not show mercy. I personally would have killed them all, including the elf king when he showed up. Cut off the head of the snake, then slice up the snake’s body. And then burn the snake segments. That’s my philosophy.”
Myles felt for that snake, even if it was just metaphorical.
Gundred was given the thankless task of deliverin
g an expositional catch-up to Myles Fowl on their short journey to the surface. They were squashed side-by-side in a vehicle that was disguised to look like a discarded supermarket cart. It jerked forward in fits and starts while the nose rig pummeled and chewed the earth in front of it. The vehicle operated on a complicated hub of sealed gears and cogs ingeniously powered by Gundred’s steady pedaling, a system that reminded Myles of Lazuli’s backup flight mechanism (see LEP file: The Fowl Twins).
“I imagine this is a short-range vehicle,” he said.
Gundred grunted as she powered the craft through a rock shelf. “That depends on the stamina of the pilot. A PIGLET can run forever with a robust operator at the pedals.”
“A PIGLET,” said Myles. “Let me guess: Propulsion through Internal Gears and Locking Epicyclic Transmission?”
“It’s local, not locking,” said Gundred a touch grumpily.
“Locking is better,” said Myles. “You should take a note.”
Gundred pedaled a little more aggressively, but Myles either did not notice that he was needling the dwarf, or he did not care. Probably option B.
“Also, may I say, Gundred, this PIGLET of yours is not so very aerodynamic?”
Gundred had an answer for that. “We’re not traveling through the air, human. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed.”
“The principle is the same,” said Myles. “In fact, a subterranean craft should be more aerodynamic, if anything.”
Gundred was not taking notes on subterranean travel from a human. “Forgive me if I don’t pay too much attention to a Mud Boy on his first ride in a PIGLET.”
“Oh, I do forgive that,” said Myles, not sounding especially forgiving. “What I shall not forgive is the incarceration, intimidation, and attempted murder. There will be a reckoning for those, you can count on it.”
Gundred stopped pedaling, and the PIGLET shuddered to a halt in a layer of granite-speckled clay. Myles noted the buried skeleton of a horse frozen in mid-gallop and wondered what calamity had befallen the animal.