The Fowl Twins

by Eoin Colfer

  I’ll probably need to have them syringed, she thought, even while she knew that her ears were the least of her worries.

  If I don’t get out from under this human, I’ll either drown or suffocate.

  It was funny: The Fowl boys had always seemed puny to her, and she had jogged up training ramps with heavier packs on her back, but now Myles or Beckett, whichever one it was, seemed to weigh a ton.

  Lazuli waved her free arm to remind those still alive that she too was among the living and was relieved when someone grabbed it and hauled her out from under Myles. It had to be Myles, because it was Beckett who pulled her out.

  Beckett was shaking his head and talking at her, with Whistle Blower doing his usual mimicking act by the boy’s side.

  “What?” she said. “What are you saying? I can’t hear.”

  Lazuli tugged at her chinstrap, removing the LEP helmet, and shook her head to clear out at least some of the water.

  “Now, Beck,” she said. “What did you say?”

  Beckett pointed to Myles, who was lying beside her, having recently been piled on top of her, and she had a fuzzy memory of someone being shot.

  “I said that when Myles sees that,” repeated Beckett, “he isn’t going to be happy, even though he should be.”

  Lazuli looked where Beckett was pointing and was inclined to agree. Myles was not going to be happy, but at least he would be alive to be furious.

  D’Arvit, she thought. I did that. I can do things now!

  Myles’s journey back to consciousness was quite abrupt, and he sat up suddenly, shouting, “Do not weep for me; weep for a world without me!”

  And then he immediately collapsed back onto the muddy ground, breathing deeply through lungs that were certainly not perforated by shotgun pellets as they had been minutes ago. Myles lay still with his eyes closed for several moments, just letting the information percolate.

  He heard Whistle Blower grunt and Beckett reply, “No, pal. He is not sleeping or stupid. Myles is thinking about stuff. Trying to make sense of it all.”

  The troll grunted again, and perhaps an expert linguist could have told the difference between the two sets of grunts, but Myles could not. Fortunately, Beckett the trans-species polyglot understood.

  “Those were Myles’s last words. He’s been practicing for years.”

  The troll made a rumbling sound, and Myles, even with his eyes closed, knew he was being laughed at.

  Myles took another moment to compose himself, then opened his eyes to find Beckett squatting beside him. His brother may have been bantering with Whistle Blower, but there was a look of serious concern on his young face.

  “Welcome back, brother,” said Beckett.

  Myles realized that he was indeed okay when he patently should not be okay.

  “Was I shot?” he asked.

  “Right in the chest,” confirmed Beckett.

  “So, by all the laws of anatomy, and indeed, biology, rigor mortis should be already setting in.”

  “You would be fish food, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

  “My suit?” asked Myles.

  “Ruined. Blood and guts all over it.”

  “That was a brand-new suit.”

  “And there’s mud on your shoes.”

  Would the indignities never cease? Myles wondered. “What a day,” he said. “How are any of us alive?”

  Whistle Blower pointed a talon at Beckett. The implication was clear. He had saved everyone.

  “You did it?”

  “I remembered what you said about the shrink-wrappers being set off by an electrical charge, and I saw sparking wires hanging from NANNI’s guts, so I pinballed Whistle Blower off NANNI so the drone would set off the duke’s shells. You should have seen Whistle Blower. He got the angle perfect.”

  Myles was amazed. “That was really clever.”

  “I know,” said Beckett. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Myles closed his eyes again and said what he really wanted to say: “You saved us all, Beck. I thought I was so smart, and you saved us all.”

  When Myles opened his eyes, Beckett was smiling down at him in that open way of his, with his love for his twin right there on his face.

  “You are smart, Myles. And you did buy me some time by dying.”

  Myles frowned thinking about this. “That’s right. I should be dead. Specialist Heitz must have manifested healing powers. They are common among fairies.”

  “That’s what happened,” said Beckett. “You should have seen it. There was like steam and lightning, and then two purple dragons flew out of the clouds, and you got a handprint burned onto your chest.”

  Myles thought that maybe his twin was exaggerating. “Is all of that factually accurate, brother?”

  “You caught me,” said Beckett. “There were no dragons.”

  Myles laughed and felt a burning stretch in the skin of his chest. “Oh,” he said.

  Lazuli peered into the blowhole. What she saw down there ranked among the weirdest sights of her lifetime, and that was saying something, considering all that she had seen over the past couple of days.

  So much chaos in two days, she thought. And then: I would not have believed it possible that I would feel sorry for the duke.

  But she did, even though she herself still felt wretched and Lord Teddy had tried on at least two occasions to abduct her for purposes of experimentation. Why? Because the fate he had brought upon himself was, in her opinion, worse than death. For, by a bizarre confluence of circumstances, Lord Teddy had simultaneously achieved his ambition of immortality while forfeiting any hope of eternal youth.

  To explain:

  Lord Teddy and his cellophane sphere had plugged the blowhole most effectively, and so he hung there suspended while the seawater sporadically battered the sphere from below. The chemicals in the shrink-wrappers had somehow combined with the troll venom in the beaker the duke had been carrying on his person. The poison had been rendered chemically active by the trapped electricity and entered Lord Teddy’s bloodstream through the lacerations in his stomach made by the fractured jar. So now the duke’s life had been both saved and indefinitely extended, but he would live that life as a hundred-and-fifty-year-old man. Lazuli used her helmet Optix to zoom in on Lord Teddy’s face and saw that the duke’s prized beard had thinned considerably and was as gray as ash. She was surprised to see that Lord Teddy was glaring back at her. His eyelids were heavy with folds of ancient skin, but there was still a crack of eyeball visible, and it seemed as though all the hatred of the past one and a half centuries were being beamed up the blowhole at Lazuli. The glare turned Lazuli’s already queasy stomach and any sympathy she had been feeling immediately evaporated.

  That human would kill us all, she thought and knew it to be true. Lazuli realized that she didn’t know what to do about the duke. Would it be best for all concerned, including Bleedham-Drye himself, if she simply dropped rocks on the sphere until it became dislodged and washed out to sea?

  An icon in her visor beeped and Lazuli realized with some relief that this decision was not hers to make. After all, she was Recon. This was a command decision.

  MYLES buttoned his tattered shirt as best he could. To the casual observer, it would seem like he was wearing an outfit that had been fed through a rather voracious industrial shredder. There were four buttons left but only two buttonholes, and so the actual coverage was negligible, but it made the fastidious Myles feel a little better.

  A small drone hovered at his shoulder and played a delivery fanfare, and Myles saw that his spectacles were in its wire tray. Myles put on the glasses and felt instantly more relaxed and ready for the next crisis, though he was sure the universe would grant them a breather after all they’d been through.

  “NANNI,” he said. “Situation report?”

  “There are imminent crises,” said NANNI. “We have a coast guard boat approaching from the nearby island of St. Mary’s. Apparently, Specialist Heitz’s pyrotechnical displays
were noticed. On the plus side, the light penetrating the mist is simply beautiful.”

  Myles nodded. The light was beautiful, he supposed, when one considered its refraction on contact with a dense medium. But he was more interested in the approaching coast guard.

  This was not too serious. It should be simple enough to hijack a boat from unarmed sailors. In fact, this approaching craft could be a blessing in disguise.

  “Hardly a crisis, NANNI,” he said. “Monitor their radio chatter.”

  “There are also two Westland helicopters inbound. Both with paratroopers packed in tighter than sardines. Have you ever heard Bach’s Chaconne in D? A perfect blend of mathematics and beauty. This is what I intend to become eventually.”

  Interesting, thought Myles. It would appear that NANNI is grappling with a creative impulse.

  But he should probably concentrate on the helicopters.

  “ACRONYM,” muttered Myles. The organization had located them somehow. It was reasonable to presume that Sister Jeronima had survived and pointed a finger at Lord Teddy. Myles found that he was relieved Jeronima was alive, for he had no desire to see her die or even be seriously harmed. Though it would have been nice if the bloodthirsty nun had been incapacitated for a few weeks. Perhaps with a nasty gum infection that required complete bed rest without much in the way of talking.

  “That is a crisis,” he admitted to NANNI. “ETA?”

  “Nothing too immediate,” said NANNI.

  “Good,” said Myles. Perhaps they could get away on the lifeboat before the helicopters arrived.

  “We have thirty, perhaps forty seconds before the first helicopter breaches the cloud bank.”

  “Fantastic,” said Myles. “That gives us so much time.”

  “I know,” said NANNI brightly. “Imagine how many calculations I can run in forty seconds. I have, in fact, composed a concerto since we’ve been speaking.”

  “Round up your metallic troops,” said Myles, bringing the conversation back on track while straightening his goldfish tie, which had curled a little in the heat but was other-wise undamaged. “We need to face down some soldiers.”

  Lazuli appeared at Myles’s side.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said.

  “That’s what I do,” said Myles. “I worry. And thank you, Specialist, for saving my life. I fully intend to have regression hypnotherapy in order to relive my own death at my leisure and perhaps learn a little something about the afterlife.”

  “That sounds like fun, Myles,” said Lazuli. She nodded at the bright red handprint scar seared onto Myles’s chest. The scar was so perfect it could have been dusted for prints. “Sorry about that,” she said. “It was my first healing.”

  Myles shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. It doesn’t hurt really, and I have no doubt that this scar shall become a touchstone. A reminder that life occasionally gets in the way of my plans and I should be prepared for that.”

  Beckett joined them, Whistle Blower perched on his shoulder, sniffing the air. “Whistle Blower says there are metal birds approaching. I think he means helicopters.”

  “Helicopters full of ACRONYM operatives sporting knee pads, no doubt,” said Myles. “We should retreat inside the house and prepare the drones for a firefight. I will not allow these people to touch a hair on our fairy friends’ heads.” Myles tapped the arm of his spectacles and even this familiar action comforted him. “NANNI, monitor their communications and see what we can interfere with on those birds.”

  Lazuli reached up and touched his shoulder. “Myles, there is no need. You are not the only thing healed by the magic.”

  Myles noticed that Lazuli was wearing her helmet, and that its heads-up display was running streams of data.

  “Oh,” he said. “Biological circuits.”

  “Exactly,” said Lazuli.

  Myles also noticed that while their group in general looked like they had been dragged flailing through a muddy thicket full of crabs, Lazuli’s uniform was now immaculate.

  “Self-cleaning fibers?” he asked.

  “Precisely.”

  “In that case,” said Myles, “the floor is yours, Specialist Heitz.”

  “I could use thirty seconds of interference,” said Lazuli.

  “I think we can do that,” said Myles. “NANNI, can we put up a curtain? Nothing lethal, but annoying.”

  “I can manage that,” said NANNI. “You will be safe here on the ground.”

  “Safe,” said Myles. “Finally.”

  And relief flooded his brain with neurotransmitters.

  Beckett experienced no such brain flood. “What? I have a lot of pent-up energy. Can’t I hit something?”

  “No, Beckett,” said Myles firmly. “It’s Lazuli’s turn.”

  Whistle Blower threw a mini tantrum, sloshing in the mud and slashing the air, sensing from Beckett’s disposition that they would not be stomping on anyone.

  “Boys,” said Lazuli sternly, “go and sit on that bench and watch. You might as well enjoy it, because you more than likely will be getting your minds wiped in a few minutes.”

  The three sat on the bench, a cast-iron affair rather cleverly wrought to display the battle between Saint George and his dragon, even though that battle had actually taken place on another continent.

  As the three watched Lazuli walk with some degree of swagger toward the helicopters that breached the St. George cloud cover, noses aggressively angled downward, NANNI vibrated words into Myles’s cheekbone.

  “Artemis left a file on the subject and legalities of mind-wiping. Perhaps you would like to review it now? There may be a loophole.”

  “I would very much like to review that,” said Myles under his breath, and a small window in his right lens played a message from his big brother for his eye only.

  “Very interesting,” he said, after the short video played.

  The message gave Myles an idea of what to do if what he thought might happen later did happen just after what was about to happen more immediately.

  Sister Jeronima Gonzalez-Ramos de Zárate of Bilbao knew that the traditional image of a nun was a calm, unarmed, pious lady clad in a simple smock, but, at this precise moment, she certainly did not fit the usual profile. Sister Jeronima was kitted out in her battle suit, which was slightly reminiscent of a nun’s smock if one squinted from a distance, but, up close, the body armor and Kevlar plates were clearly visible, as were the handles of throwing knives sticking out of various custom pockets in her vest, not to mention the assault rifle she held in her gloved hands.

  Jeronima was not the only one prepared for battle. There were a further twelve agents with their own favorite hardware all checking their safeties and going through whatever good-luck rituals they had performed in a hundred similar encounters. Similar in the fact that they were going into battle, but that was where the similarity to this situation ended. No one had ever flown through a cloud bank with two teams of paratroopers to take on a couple of niños and miniature fairies, she felt sure.

  But she was not about to take any chances. Jeronima was determined to have those fairies alive and those children dead. And as for Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, he would either die here today or spend the rest of his life in ACRONYM’s most secure cell, which happened to be two hundred feet underground in a repurposed nuclear shelter in Arizona with very poor air-conditioning, so the room constantly smelled of dead coyote.

  And that fate, Jeronima thought, would be too good for the rat duke.

  The ACRONYM birds had been holding at Penzance for a few hours, trying to poke their sensors through Lord Teddy’s security field with zero luck. They had no visual through the fog bank, no thermals from the ACRONYM satellite, and nothing but the cries of seagulls from their directional microphones. Both pilots had been on the point of calling the whole thing off when suddenly St. George opened up like a flower in the sun and digital info began to flood through.

  “Their dead zone has just livened up,” said Phones, their tech guy.
“I got everything we need.”

  Jeronima knew she should spend a moment wondering why the duke would shut down his defenses, but she was too angry for caution.

  “We go now,” she shouted. “¡Vamos!”

  And so vamos they did, and, two minutes later, Jeronima found herself standing out on a chopper runner wearing a gunner’s rig. Good battle practice would have been for her, as senior officer, to wait on the mainland and let the paratroopers perform the extraction, but Jeronima would not have missed out on this mission for all the velvet slippers in the Vatican.

  They entered the outer ring of fog, rotors whipping the mist into vortices and graying out the windshields, and then they were through, and Jeronima saw that there was nothing special about the vista. Just another English rock in the ocean with a tumbledown manor house and a patchwork of threadbare fields.

  What might be termed unusual was the tiny blue fairy standing on the edge of a northerly cliff, hands on hips as if daring the helos to come any closer.

  “We got one possible hostile on the cliff,” said the copilot into her cans. “You want we should use the fifty-cal on her, Sister J?”

  Jeronima indulged her imagination for one sweet moment, seeing in her mind’s eye the annoying little fairy blown to tiny pieces by a fifty-caliber cannon.

  But I need her in order to salvage something from this mission.

  So she said, “Negativo. I want her safe. The humans you can kill, but use small caliber only—I don’t want any daño collateral. Tranquilize the fairy. And if you refer to me as Sister J again, I will toss you out of this helicopter. ¿Comprendes, idiota?”

  Before the sharpshooter in the second helicopter could switch out his live rounds for tranqs, a flock of birds rose in a synchronized cloud before the helicopters. Pilots in general have a terror of birds, as a bird strike can bring most craft down as efficiently as any missile, but then Jeronima saw that the flying objects were not birds, but drones.