by Eoin Colfer
He’s burning up, thought Angeline, still running directly toward the dwarf and that cavernous mouth of his, which could easily accommodate a whole family’s Christmas dinner. Beckett was on the ground, too, his forearm trapped beneath the dwarf brute’s foot.
Oh, no, sir, thought Angeline. Not my boy.
From an objective point of view, one might think that Axborn held the advantage here, for wasn’t he a trained and veteran soldier imbued with all the gifts his species had to offer? And yet history has taught us that it is unwise to wager against a protective mother, as often the universe sides with this particular energy. And such proved to be the case in this situation.
Axborn’s finely tuned senses detected Angeline’s approach and he swiveled his head to face her, his unhinged jaw dragging into the turn after his skull, just in time to be whacked on the cheekbone by a metal grouse that was a lot sturdier than its living counterpart. Axborn stumbled backward a single step, unpinning the human boy’s hand. The dwarf’s jaw was fractured, but Axborn was still conscious and determined. He had fought through worse pain and against worthier adversaries, or so he thought. He was right about the pain but dead wrong about the standard of his adversaries.
Angeline took in the scene with a glance and pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher, dousing the toy troll liberally and incidentally cooling Beckett’s burned hand in the process. She swung the extinguisher back toward Axborn so that she might be ready to strike again, only to find the dwarf a yard closer than she anticipated. So Angeline sprayed the foam directly into the dwarf’s mouth, leaving him with no option but to chomp down on the extinguisher itself, which he did. Angeline reacted quickly to the scything teeth and escaped with nothing more than scraped knuckles. The extinguisher was not so fortunate. It went down the path Whistle Blower had recently taken, still hissing foam.
I’ll just regurgitate that, Axborn might have thought, but he never got the chance to, because…
Beckett threw his cluster punch and Axborn was plunged into a world of trauma. Landing the blow in the first place was difficult enough, but pinpointing the exact spot necessary to cut off the artery that controlled the dwarf’s supplementary intestine was a one-in-several-million shot. When Beckett had tussled with the previous two Reclaimers earlier in this adventure, the cluster punch had caused the constricting sphincter muscle to fail, allowing the release of up to a thousand pints of compressed gas and supercritical fluid, but now he was punching directly onto a skin unprotected by a vinesuit, which supercharged the blow’s effect.
Dwarves have a physiological get-out-of-jail-free card, which gives their bio-jet some extra oomph in times of dire emergency. This card can only be played once a decade, as overdoing it can prove fatal. The act of using it is known by many names: Trimming the Weight, the Big One-Two, and Watch Out Below, among others, and it involves the high-speed expulsion of not only the contents of the dwarf’s stomach but also a third of the body’s store of runny fat.
Beckett’s punch activated this process, and Axborn found himself overcome by sickening dread as his body prepared for liftoff.
“D’Arvit,” he said. “Not this. Not now.”
But it was this.
And it was now.
The dwarf might have held on. He was a wind virtuoso, after all, and had once retained over a thousand pints of assorted recyclings for over a week when he was being held prisoner by humans in South America. And so, under reasonable circumstances, he might have waited out the crisis. But these circumstances were far from reasonable in anyone’s book, and the jostling and fizzing of a fire extinguisher in his abdomen pushed him over the edge.
Axborn’s linen shift fluttered, then ballooned like a sail catching the wind. The Reclaimer made a sad whimpering noise and then his heels left the ground, followed by his ankles, and finally, his entire person. A trained dwarf can ride a jet wash, but not when there is an alien element such as extinguisher foam involved.
Beckett rolled aside before he was pounded by a backwash of decompressing air and assorted detritus. Contained in the column were the contents of the Reclaimer’s stomach, which included but were not limited to the eroded remains of:
The skull of a small horse…
…fourteen diamonds…
…a small medieval millstone…
…one BAFTA Best Cinematography award…
…three shark’s teeth…
…a burger patty from a popular fast food chain (no damage)…
…assorted stones and clay…
…a dog collar, which read either FOODLESS or TOODLES (most likely the latter)…
…and two soda cans (diet).
All of which missed Beckett by a hairbreadth, except for one of the shark’s teeth, which nicked his forehead.
Axborn sustained substantially more damage than the Fowl twin. He flew in an erratic line, flailing as he zoomed to a height of thirty feet, at which point his engine sputtered out and he plummeted to earth headfirst, plunging into an ancient well that used to serve the monastery some five hundred years previously. Unlike Whistle Blower on his descent into the dwarf’s stomach, Axborn did hit the sides on his way down. Several times, in fact. Luckily for the dwarf, the well had been dry since April, so he would not drown in the dark shaft; unluckily for him, the well had been dry since April, so his impact was not softened by several feet of water.
Beckett took Whistle Blower in his arms and was mightily relieved to find that his friend was resting comfortably.
“We saved him!” he exclaimed, turning to his mother. “You were outstanding, Mum, attacking a dwarf with a duck. Not just a dwarf—a Reclaimer. And he took off like a rocket. I wish I could do that. Just the taking-off bit, though, not the landing, if you could even call that a landing.” Beckett had a sudden idea. “Mum, after what you did, you could join the Regrettables! I was thinking of inventing an initiation ceremony. How would you feel about eating grass?”
Angeline was not in the mood for her son’s excited chatter. She’d had experience with loss. She knew about consequences.
“Beckett,” she said, “are you hurt? Are you in pain?”
Beckett focused on his own body for a second, then shook his head. “No, Mum. There’s no need to worry about Beckett Fowl.”
Angeline suddenly saw the world through a film of tears. “You don’t understand, my precious boy. Of course there’s a need. Don’t you know what I would do to protect you? How you break my heart with every foolish stunt?”
“I do, Mum,” said Beckett, but he didn’t fully comprehend the depth of his mother’s constant fear for her sons’ well-being. And he would not understand it for almost two decades, when it would become his time to worry.
Angeline wiped her eyes. “Where is Myles? Is he safe?”
Beckett was glad to have an easy question to answer. “Oh yes. Myles is safe inside the collapsing building in the city.”
Artemis Senior joined them just in time to hear that statement. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll take the Fowl Star.”
Beckett stifled a squeal of excitement. The Fowl Star, which his father tinkered with in the boathouse in his spare time, was a foiling yacht that could theoretically exceed sixty knots at top speed. Artemis Senior was perfectly aware that his boys might borrow the yacht for test runs if they could, so it was coded to his own biometrics. Myles had overridden the biometric settings armed only with copper wire and his genius, but the twin had never taken out the boat, as he wanted to leave his father with a shred of dignity. Beckett rightly guessed that, given the gravity of the situation, and indeed the effects of gravity on unstable buildings, a squeal of excitement from him might not be appreciated.
The Convention Centre Dublin
Let us return now to Dublin’s iconic convention center, where thousands of lives hang quite literally in the balance. To recap: Myles has, in the past fifteen minutes, managed to:
1. Foil Gveld’s plan to reclaim the famed Horteknut lost gold.
2. Keep the convention center up
right on its foundations.
And…
3. Reveal that his twin brother is, in fact, a holographic decoy.
Imagine what I could do in an hour, Myles thought, and he spent a nanosecond considering this intriguing notion. Off the top of his head, Myles conservatively estimated that, given sixty minutes, he could:
1. Come up with a viable alternative to Ireland’s various border issues.
2. Devise a plan to make the entire island energy self-sufficient (actually, that would only take fifteen minutes).
And…
3. Design rocket thrusters that could move Dalkey Island to a warmer latitude for the winter months.
But at the moment, Myles certainly did not have a leisurely hour to scheme and plot, for there was a most irate dwarf general one elevator shaft over who seemed quite intent on killing him, and he was pretty much out of ammunition ideas-wise about how he should sidestep being killed. Myles’s only hope was that the general’s irrational behavior patterns would scuttle her own plans.
And Gveld’s behavior was indeed undeniably irrational. It was undeniable, unless you were Gveld Horteknut, who was convinced that she was reasonably calm under the extreme circumstances.
“I am calm,” she was telling her second-in-command. “I have never been calmer. And once I kill this human child and grind his bones into sand, which I will then use in my hourglass, all will be well. Of course, my closest friend is a human, and my lifelong ambition has been denied me, and I’ve had a headache for the past year, but one can’t have everything, eh, Gundred dearest?”
“Ah,” said Myles, as though he were part of the conversation. “I do have a theory about that. The headaches, at least. How long have you been wearing that golden grill on your teeth?”
“Shut your mouth, human filth,” said Gveld in reply. “Do not draw my attention just yet.”
Myles nodded as though the dwarf had given a reasonable response, such as, Six months, or quite some time, thanks very much for asking.
“I see,” he said. “It strikes me that over time some natural gold compounds have broken down and released gold ions into your system. These ions can have toxic effects on living organisms. The effects could possibly present as extreme paranoia, atypical behavior, extreme anger, and a hatred of people smarter than you.” Myles smiled. “Actually, I added that last one, to show I have a good bedside manner.”
“I am a dwarf,” said Gveld. “Perhaps Gundred is susceptible to gold toxicity, but real dwarves are not.”
Gundred couldn’t help but groan. It seemed that Gveld was somehow going to make every single conversation in the foreseeable future about Gundred’s deception. Having said that, the foreseeable future could be quite brief.
“Unless,” said Myles, “the gold has been radioactively tagged, which the ACRONYM gold has been, according to their own records.”
This was a very good point.
And well made.
Even Gveld would have to take notice of that, unless, of course, she was suffering from gold toxicity and therefore paranoid.
“Nice try, Fowl,” she said, sneering. “If I have toxic poisoning, then my decision-making process is flawed. How convenient for you.”
“Not at all,” countered Myles. “Paranoia is almost justified when facing an opponent of my caliber. In fact, delusions of persecution are possibly the only things that would give you the necessary edge to beat me. They do, however, make life tricky for those in your command.”
Gundred took up the thread. “Gveld, this explains everything: the dangerous missions, the fallen comrades…. And all for what? Gold that we don’t need? Foolish pride that will likely kill us all? You need to take a step back, General.”
Speaking of taking a step back, perhaps we too should step back from Gveld and Myles’s repartee to remind ourselves of the precarious mastermind cocoon our protagonists find themselves bantering inside. It is unlikely that the entire collapsing building scenario would slip our minds, but perhaps we have been distracted from the attending circumstances. Circumstances such as the tiny fact that the entire city was in absolute uproar. One of Dublin’s major landmarks seemed to have come alive of its own accord, complete with teetering and moaning, during a solar eclipse. People had no idea what was going on, but they were certainly prepared to hazard some guesses, which were broadcast to the world at the speed of byte on various social media platforms, the latest being an app called Humblebrag, which encouraged users to misrepresent their own lives by posting only the most extreme moments, and guaranteed that at no point would any facts be checked. Ever.
So, on Humblebrag, people saw various service cables being torn from the sidewalk and whipping around like skipping ropes.
One wrote: Freaky Egyptian snake invasion. #ragnarokishere
An embarrassing mangling of two mythologies.
From the nearby bridge, someone put up a video of sparkling glass showers with the tagline: It’s raining glass. Hallelujah.
Even though the glass was obviously falling from the building and not the sky overhead.
Yet another account holder, @OpenYourEyesPeople, posted, Dublin city center is on fire and shaking itself apart. I bet warrior dwarves are behind this.
Of course, hardly anyone took any notice of this spookily accurate wager, even though, in fairness to @OpenYourEyesPeople, her assertions were correct. Dublin city center was indeed shaking itself apart, and warrior dwarves were the culprits, for the most part.
If one were to take a bird’s-eye view of the situation—though, in fact, there was not one actual bird’s-eye view available, as all the birds, not being stupid creatures, had fled the area as soon as the first explosion cracked the center’s foundations—but if one could have taken a bird’s-eye view, then that view would have been both awesome and terrible. It was as if a circle of hell had dropped neatly onto the convention center and its environs. At ground zero—that being the center’s lobby area—the entire floor had dropped half a level, creating a rubble-filled crater that was spiked with steel rods and jagged glass and had jets of multicolored flame shooting through the cracks. This rubble was mostly a uniquely veined marble tile, fragments of which would become highly collectible over the following years. The atrium was clogged with a particulate dust that spread through the empty and twisted window frames and across downtown Dublin like a Victorian pea-soup fog. The walls bolstering the Liffey’s banks had been toppled entirely in places, and four of the river’s bridges had been compromised; two would eventually collapse completely. In fact, the safest place in the entire zone was inside the earthquake elevators, where our protagonists were trading insults and arguments.
Unfortunately for them, their safety bubbles were about to burst, for when Gundred made the statement You need to take a step back, General, Gveld Horteknut, who felt herself attacked on two fronts, countered with a classic confrontation tactic, that being to throw the attacker’s comment back at her, opposite-style.
“No, Gundred,” she said. “I need to take a step forward.”
Which didn’t make much literal sense in such a tight space, but when Gveld drew her crystal sword and began hacking at the silicon nitride plates separating them from Myles Fowl, her intentions became abundantly clear.
For his part, Myles was surprised it had taken her this long. And there we have it, he thought. The irrational homicidal impulse.
Gveld was, he knew, at the crossroads of a mental anguish born of paranoia, single-mindedness, betrayal, and the reality that her centuries-old ambition now lay in ruins at her feet.
Her own life is not as important to her now as the termination of mine, Myles realized.
The crystal sword was sharp enough to carve a diamond and soon made a jagged hole in the toughened silicon nitride, which mildly surprised Myles.
No matter, he thought. It is only a small hole, and at that rate it will take her fifteen minutes to reach me.
Gveld obviously came to the same realization, because she pulled a crystal dagg
er from her belt and began hacking with both hands.
Myles studied her technique silently for a moment before calculating. Taking into the account the smaller blade and Gveld’s increased rate of speed, I would estimate that, if circumstances do not change, I will be dead in ten minutes.
Myles upped his internal warning system level to critical. He searched his mind for a solution, but he was trapped in an elevator with no power. There was no workaround. All he could hope for was a change in circumstances.
“I know it is highly unlikely,” he said, putting on his glasses, “but I don’t suppose you can suggest a way I might extricate myself from this predicament, NANNI?”
NANNI was a little punch-drunk after the various explosions and said, “Can you change your state from solid to liquid, Myles?”
Myles rolled his eyes, an expression that was wasted on the AI. “I am mostly liquid anyway, NANNI, but if you mean can I phase-change voluntarily, then the answer is not at the moment.”
“Then you are toast,” said NANNI, which was hardly scientific, but Myles got the message.
“Hmm,” he said. “There must be something I can do.”
“What did you think was going to happen when you confronted General Horteknut?” NANNI asked.
“I presumed Gveld would bow down before my superior intellect,” said Myles. “Oh, and yes, I also expected a tantrum, but usually good sense prevails.”
But not in this instance, Myles realized. In this particular case, death shall prevail.
And he really wished he had made the toxic-poisoning deduction earlier in this particular adventure.
Gveld seemed possessed by the desire to kill Myles and was drawing an almost supernatural strength from somewhere. Myles knew he was witnessing a very rare case of hysterical strength, in which an individual’s system is flooded by proteins and enzymes to facilitate extraordinary feats of might and stamina, and he realized that he would have to revise his estimate as to his own time of death, as Gveld would not slow down until the job was done.