by Eoin Colfer
The shearing lemon scowled. “Permission to shave this one first, Sister?”
Jeronima’s scowl echoed his own. “Permission granted. With pleasure.”
Clippers flicked a knobbly switch on the handle of his shears and the instrument leaped eagerly into life, as though the hunk of machinery relished the task ahead as much as the man wielding it.
Myles Fowl closed his eyes. “To quote the journalist Margaret Fuller: ‘Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.’”
The fourth lemon switched off his shears. “And what’s that supposed to mean, boy?”
“It means,” said Myles, “that in a roundabout way, all you can do to me is make me smarter.”
Clippers switched on again. “Smarter,” he said, “and balder.”
Even Myles couldn’t argue with that, and in fact he was unusually without comment as the clippers mowed his scalp and the slickened clumps of dark hair gathered around his feet like autumn leaves.
While the Fowls were being shorn of their locks, the nun turned the toy troll over in her fingers, not suspecting for a moment that she held in her hand anything but a plastic plaything.
Lazuli was hypnotized by the twirling troll and felt an almost irresistible compulsion to grab it and make a dash for the surface. But Specialist Heitz knew that such an adrenaline-inspired move would only serve to get her caught and examined under a microscope. Lazuli was on the horns of a dilemma. Or, as a dwarf might say, she was faced with Orsoon’s Choice. Orsoon being a master digger of legend who found himself in a tunnel with trolls to the rear and goblins up ahead. Which way to go? Not much of a choice: death by claw or death by fire. As it happened, Orsoon had chosen to stay where he was and see whether fate might provide a third option. It did. The trolls collapsed the tunnel on themselves and Orsoon clambered to freedom over their thrashing limbs.
Lazuli, too, would bide her time.
But if the nun noticed something odd about the toy troll, then all her biding would be for naught.
It seemed that the vigilant human was also stymied by the nun’s arrival. He moved reluctantly away from the crate and pretended to focus on the twins, who were on their second steaming. Both were shorn now, so their bald heads gleamed in the shower mist. Once more Beckett japed and made faces while Myles chose to meditate.
Sister Jeronima waggled the toy troll in Lance’s direction. “Be thorough,” she commanded. “Every nook and cranny. Those little piojos crawl everywhere.”
“You got it, Sister,” said the man, and took a step closer to the stall. “There will be no survivors.”
Those Fowl boys are in more trouble than they know, thought Lazuli.
But that did not matter, as she was only here for the troll. The twins would have to fend for themselves.
Ten minutes later, the Fowl boys were back in the interrogation room, both zipped up in black jumpsuits that had the word ACRONYM stitched in black across the breast.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Sister,” said Myles, “why would you have such relatively small jumpsuits handy, considering the gargantuan dimensions of your henchmen?”
Jeronima was unsettled by Myles’s vocabulary. “What is this ‘gargantuan dimensions’?”
Beckett helped out. “He means big. Your men are all big, so who are these cool suits for? It would be even cooler if you had some helmets….”
“Sí, Beckett,” said Sister Jeronima. “My men are indeed big. Sometimes big is useful. Sadly, we do not have helmets for boys. Just the pilots. And to answer your question, there was an industrialist several years ago in Italy. We suspected that his daughter might not be human, so we readied ropa protectora for her. Unfortunately, that one slipped through the net. But we still have the jumpsuits.”
“How fortunate for us,” commented Myles. “Otherwise we would be sitting in only plastic underpants.”
“Which are waterproof from both sides,” added his brother, as though imparting classified and wondrous information.
“And now, why don’t we stop the games?” asked Jeronima, smiling with the barest hint of smugness. “You boys are fooling no one.”
“Stop the games?” said Beckett. “I NEVER stop games. What kind of monster are you?”
“Really, chicos? I am an expert. This is my business. The term nunterrogation was invented for me.”
“Your point being?” asked Myles.
“My point being, Myles, that you cannot fool me with your head lice and shaving and this whole—How do you Irish say?—shenanigans.”
“Shenanigans?” echoed Myles. “You think we are attempting to trick you?”
“Sí,” said Jeronima with some confidence. “This I do think. And not just any trick. The oldest trick in the book. How could you think I would be so estúpido?”
“Trick?” asked Beckett. “Like a magic trick?”
“No, not like the magic trick,” said Jeronima, happy to let the twins wriggle on her hook. “Like the sibling switch. The parent trap. The twin two-step. Whatever you wish to call it.”
Myles nodded. “You think we traded places?”
“Sí,” confirmed Sister Jeronima. “I do think this. This entire lice fiasco, simply so you could trick me into having your heads shaved and you become almost identical.”
“Preposterous,” said Beckett.
Jeronima pounced on this. “Preposterous, Beckett? That’s a big word, chico. That is the kind of word one would expect from Myles Fowl.”
Beckett actually blushed. He couldn’t help it.
“Aha,” said Jeronima, slapping the table between them. “Your cheeks, chico. They betray you.”
“Beckett’s cheeks are stupid,” objected Myles. “More stupid than his brain.”
The nun feigned shock. “Beckett’s cheeks are more stupid than his brain? That is a most un-Myles-like observation. How can cheeks be stupid?”
“You’re stupid,” said Myles, sulking now.
“Perhaps not as stupid as you had hoped, chicos,” said Jeronima. “And now, show to me your birthmark, Beckett.”
Beckett clamped a hand over his arm. “Quiet, Sister. Infinity is asleep.”
“Wake him up at once,” insisted the nun, a little impatiently. She enjoyed a gloat as much as the next Sister, but there was work to be done.
“You never wake a sleeping birthmark,” said Beckett. “They get disoriented.”
“Enough,” said Jeronima, and she snapped her fingers at the henchman Myles had nicknamed Oberon, who had stripped off his hazmat suit and was dressed in a larger version of the ACRONYM jumpsuits. The huge man’s hair was tied up in a topknot with what looked like a thin strip of tree bark, and his face had the ruddy glow of a man who had been punched many times over the decades.
“Show to me his arm,” commanded Sister Jeronima.
“Which one, Sister?” asked Oberon.
“Izquierda,” replied the nun. “The left arm.”
Oberon was embarrassed to ask for more information. “I mean, which kid?”
“Derecho,” snapped Jeronima. “The right one.”
Oberon closed his eyes to get it straight. “So, the right kid’s left arm. Your right, or my right?”
“This one,” said Jeronima, pointing to Beckett. “Aquí.”
“That one,” said Oberon with obvious relief. “You know, Sister, these left-right issues are tricky. I whacked the wrong guy once. He was standing to the right of the right guy on the right side of the street. Since then I like to be sure.”
“I had believed that story to be urban legend,” said Jeronima. “This time no whacking. Just pull down the sleeve, por favor.”
Conveniently, the jumpsuits had inoculation patches on both sleeves, so it was a matter of less than a single second for Oberon to rip open the Velcro seal and expose the skinny Fowl biceps within.
No birthmark.
“Voilà,” said Jeronima. “Or perhaps not. As there is nothing. No birthma
rk. No Infinity. Therefore, you are Myles, not Beckett. You are playing dumb and he is attempting to play smart. But just to be certain…”
Oberon didn’t need to be told. He ripped open the real Beckett’s patch to reveal the red birthmark exactly where Jeronima had suspected it would be.
“It was worth a try,” said Beckett, unashamed. “You would be surprised how often people underestimate children.”
“Not this nun,” said Jeronima. “I used to be a child.”
“My hat is off to your inner child, madam,” said Myles, his words slathered with sarcasm.
“And also your hair,” touchéd Sister Jeronima. “I allowed this charade to continue so that you can understand how absolutamente helpless your situation is. And now that we are finished with the playacting, let me tell you the bald truth: ACRONYM has good reason to believe that the Fowls are in collusion with these Fairy People, and now we have proof. Regardless of whether you twins are complicit or not, I intend to keep you here until someone attempts to rescue you. Whoever or whatever comes for you, there will be no escape for anyone.”
Myles reclaimed his spectacles from his twin. “You are providing me with a lot of information, Sister.”
Jeronima smiled, and her mask of civility slid away like dead skin from a skull.
“You know what they say, chicos: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a lot can be fatal.”
Beckett pawed at his own face. “Do you know that there are exciting things happening right now in the world? And instead of watching them I have to sit here and listen to you two being supervillains.”
Myles treated Sister Jeronima to a sinister smile of his own. “As usual, brother, we disagree. I am finding the developing situation most intriguing, and, if I might make a prediction, I would say that events will not unfold as our captor expects.”
Jeronima fake-yawned. “I am thinking that Beckett is correcto. This is boring.”
Beckett raised his hand. “Oh, can I do a prediction?”
“Why not?” said Jeronima.
“I predict,” said Beckett, “that my brother is right.”
Oberon, who hadn’t really been following the conversation for a while, jumped in with: “Right? Which right? And which brother? Right like correct? Or right like not left?”
Jeronima muttered under her breath in Spanish. She may have been quoting scripture, but probably not. “Never mind, idiota. Just take Mr. Smarty of the Pants to the other cell.”
“Should I handcuff the dummy before I go?” Oberon asked. “They say he can do the cluster punch.”
“¿Es eso cierto?” asked the nun, surprised by this. “That is not in the file. Who told you this?”
“Him,” said Oberon, pointing to his partner, who was not there. “That is, the other guy.”
“The other guy, as you call him, is cataloging the twins’ effects,” said the nun. “And as for you, yes, restrain this one. I believe there are size XS cuffs in the armory.”
“Way ahead of you, Sister,” said Oberon, twirling a twinkling set of handcuffs on his index finger. “I signed some out earlier, just in case.”
“And that is why I keep you around, agente,” said Jeronima.
Beckett, as one might expect of him at this point in the narrative, refused to see the downside of being restrained. “Handcuffs!” he crowed. “I bet I can escape from these. Wait and see. I might be an escaper-ist, Myles.”
“Escapologist, brother,” said Myles. “And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you were.”
“I bet it will take me three hundred and eighty-six point two seconds to get out of these.”
“That is most specific, Beck,” said Myles.
Oberon snicked the cuffs around Beckett’s wrists and gave the chain a tug to make sure they were secure.
“If you give these bracelets the slip, I’ll whistle ‘Dixie,’” he said, then asked his boss, “Should I cuff the other one?”
Jeronima’s look was loaded with derision. “No, Agent. I don’t imagine Myles Fowl will be any trouble to one of such gargantuan dimensions.”
And so the twins were once again separated, though they could feel each other’s presence through a twinge of pain in their wrist scars. Myles had often postulated that this throbbing was a phantom manifestation of the physical connection they had shared in the womb, while Beckett reasoned that Myles was a pain even when he wasn’t in the room. Both theories were correct.
Sister Jeronima intended to put the screws to Beckett, whom she considered the weaker link. A little knifeplay to get his lip wobbling and then some yelling Italian in his face. This was a trick Jeronima often employed during her nunterrogations. It didn’t really matter which Italian words she used. Jeronima often employed the lyrics from Rigoletto and she had trained herself to yell for almost a minute without pausing for breath.
She sat opposite the boy, who was staring at his handcuffs as though he might open them with psychic powers.
“Can I see the knife again, Sister?” the boy asked without looking up.
“Certainly, Beckett,” answered Jeronima. “Later you may see it up close. Perhaps a little closer than you might like.”
Jeronima drew the knife from an almost invisible pocket in her sleeve, and the blade glittered in her hand like a star.
“That’s so shiny,” said Beckett, paying attention now.
“You are like the bird,” said Jeronima, stowing the blade. “The magpie who likes shiny things.”
“I do like shiny things. And yellow things. Those lemon men were funny.”
“There will be more, as you say, ‘lemon men’ very soon. Many more than the four I have now. Men from London and Berlin. Already there are four teams of ACRONYM agents converging on this place.”
“Funny lemon men with their stupid guns.”
“Guns are necessary in our line of work,” said Jeronima. “Our fairy enemies will have guns. And perhaps magic.”
“I like enemies,” declared Beckett. “Fairies with laser eyes.”
“I think not, chico. We have heard no evidence of laser eyes. Perhaps some powers of hypnotism and…”
Jeronima stopped speaking, because she had the sudden chilling realization that she was the one being interviewed.
“Un momento,” she said, and then thought for a moment, her mind coming around like a slow gun turret to the fact that she had possibly been—was being—bamboozled.
“Am I giving you the information?”
“You are indeed,” said Beckett. “I find interrogation so much more effective when the interviewee believes themselves the interviewer. Thank you, Sister Jeronima. You have been most informative. Four armed men besides yourself and a small window of opportunity for us to escape the extra ACRONYM agents who are on their way.”
Jeronima felt as though her cerebrospinal brain fluid had congealed. “Wait now. Wait un momento. So you are…you would be…?”
“I would be Myles Fowl,” said he, who was in truth Myles. “And you would be double bluffed.”
“But the birthmark?” said Jeronima.
“Oh, that,” said Myles. He tore open the inoculation patch, peeled the birthmark from his upper arm and popped it in his mouth. “Gelatin-based transfer. Strawberry. My favorite.”
Sister Jeronima simply could not wrap her head around the fact that she had been outmaneuvered by a child.
“That birthmark is in the ACRONYM file. I have seen the photograph with my own eyes.”
Myles’s mocking laugh sounded very much like a certain goat meme that was doing the rounds on the internet. “You have seen the photograph? Do you really think the Fowls have not prepared for an abduction? My family has many enemies, and Father has long encouraged us to find a way to switch, and then show strength where weakness is expected. There is no birthmark—there never was. We make them in the refrigerator and display them as it suits us.”
“All this time?” said Jeronima.
“For as long as I can remember,” said Myles. �
��Father told us many times that someone would come for us. If it hadn’t been ACRONYM, it would have been the CIA, or perhaps the yakuza or mafia.”
“Why do you tell me all of this?” Jeronima wondered. “I don’t even ask.”
Myles smiled kindly, as one might at a confused toddler. “I am, of course, stalling.”
At which point someone outside the cell tapped in the door code.
Oberon prodded the boy he believed to be Myles down the corridor with a forefinger.
“You kids thought you were so clever pulling the old switcheroo,” he said, smirking. “But that Sister Jeronima is a smart cookie. Like, razor-sharp.”
“I do wish you would stop mixing your metaphors,” said he who was actually Beckett. “Or, to be precise, stop mixing metaphors with similes. You are offending my ears.”
“You got a mouth,” said Oberon.
At which point Beckett’s real personality leaked out and he said a few things not dictated by the NANNI AI in Myles’s spectacles directly into his cheekbones. “Of course I have a mouth. I have arms, too, and legs that are strong like a cheetah’s, which is the fastest cat in the world, in case you didn’t know, and makes a sound like a lawn mower.”
“Wait a second,” said Oberon. “I thought you were the science-y one.”
“That is so true,” said Beckett, trying to cover. “Mr. Science, that’s me. You wouldn’t believe all the boring stuff I know. Like the radius of a square root is on the opposite side of a black hole.”
Oberon would have totally gone for this, not being much of an academic himself, but Beckett felt his cover was blown and decided it was time to make his move, and so turned to face his captor.
“Do you like football?” he asked.
“Actually, I do,” said the henchman. “Real football, though. The American kind. I was the kicker in high school.” Oberon slapped his right thigh. “I kicked a fifty-yard field goal with this tree trunk right here. Some people said forty-five, but it was fifty, all right. I got muscles like coconuts in there. Why are you asking?”
Beckett flexed his fingers, then curled them into a fist.