by Eoin Colfer
It went against Holly’s instincts to run. “I feel like we’re deserting those people down there.”
Foaly pointed at the screen. “At that speed, the probe will reach Atlantis in three hours. We’ll run out of oxygen in five minutes. We’ll be unconscious in six, dead in twelve, and no use to anybody.”
“I feel a little dizzy,” said Orion. “But also wonderfully elated. I feel that I am on the verge of finding a rhyme for the word orange.”
“Oxygen deprivation,” said Foaly. “Or perhaps it’s just him.”
Holly closed down the throttle. “Can we make it?”
Foaly tapped out a complicated equation. “If we go in the opposite direction right now. Maybe. If whoever is doing this has somehow boosted the jammer, then no.”
“Maybe is the best you can do?”
Foaly nodded wearily. “The absolute best.”
Holly swung the pod around with three deft maneuvers. “Best odds I’ve had all day,” she said.
It was a race now, but an unusual one where the competitors were running away from each other. The goal was simple: now that they knew where the probe was headed, Holly had six minutes to pilot the pod out of the jamming corona. Also, it would be nice to have some oxygen to breathe. Luckily, the probe was on a steep descent, so the pod should go on a steep ascent. If they managed to break the surface before the six minutes ran out, then brilliant. They’d broadcast until Haven picked up the signal. If not, since the pod wasn’t equipped with automatic pilot or broadcast facilities, the probe would be on top of the Atlantis security towers before they even noticed it, and another little negative was that they would be dead.
It’s funny, thought Holly. I don’t think my heart rate is up that much. These life-or-death situations have become almost normal for me ever since meeting Artemis Fowl.
She glanced sideways at the romantic who was wearing Artemis’s face, and he caught the look.
“Penny for your thoughts, princess. Though they are worth a king’s ransom.”
“I was wishing that you would go away,” said Holly bluntly. “And return Artemis to us. We need him.”
Orion hmmed. “That thought is not as valuable as I had imagined. Why do you want Artemis back? He is nasty and mean to everyone.”
“Because Artemis could get us out of this alive and save the people of Haven and possibly find out who murdered all those LEP officers.”
“I grant you that,” said Orion, miffed. “But his sonnets are heartless, and that opera house he designed was totally self-indulgent.”
“Yep, that’s what we need now,” Foaly chimed in. “Opera-house designing skills.”
“Oh yes, traitorous steed,” said Orion testily. “Probe-designing skills would be much more useful.”
Holly sounded a quick burst on the klaxon for attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen. All this arguing is consuming oxygen, so could we all please be quiet?”
“Is that a command, beloved?”
“Yes,” whispered Holly ominously. “It is.”
“Very well. Then quiet it shall be. I would rather cut out my own tongue than utter one more word. I would sooner behead myself with a butter knife than speak a single—”
Holly gave in to a baser instinct and jabbed Orion in the solar plexus.
That was wrong, she thought as the boy drooped in his harness, gasping for breath. I am going to feel guilty about that later.
If there was a later. There was plenty of power in the fuel block, just no air in the tanks and no recycling facility to scrub the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air. The pod was supposed to be a short-term option only. It hadn’t been designed for actual missions; the hull could crack under the pressure of steep ascent long before the fuel ran out.
So many ways to die, thought Holly. Eventually, one of them is going to get us.
The digital depth gauge was spinning backward from 10,000 meters. They were in an Atlantic trench, never before seen by human eyes. Shoals of strange luminous fish swarmed around them, easily keeping pace, butting the hull with the fleshy glowing bulbs in their transparent bellies.
Then the light changed and the fish were gone, darting away so quickly it was as though they had simply dematerialized. In their place were seals and whales and fish like silver arrowheads. A chunk of blue ice rolled past, and Holly saw her mother’s face in its planes and shadows.
Oxygen deprivation, she told herself. That’s all it is.
“How long?” she asked Foaly.
The centaur checked the oxygen levels. “Based on three conscious beings—nervous conscious beings I might add—rapidly consuming the air, we’re going to be short a minute or two.”
“You said we could make it!”
“The hole in the tank is expanding.”
Holly beat her fist on the dash. “D’Arvit, Foaly. Why does it always have to be so hard?”
Foaly spoke calmly. “Holly, my friend. You know what you have to do.”
“No, Foaly. I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Holly did know. There were three conscious people breathing hard. Foaly alone took in more oxygen than a bull troll. It only took one person to steer the ship and send the message.
It was a tough choice, but there was no time to agonize over it. She felt for a squat metal cylinder in one of the rings on her belt and pulled it out.
“What’s that, sweetness?” asked Orion, who had just recovered from the belly jab.
Holly answered the question with one of her own. “Would you do anything for me, Orion?”
The boy’s face seemed to light up. “Of course. Absolutely anything.”
“Close your eyes and count to ten.”
Orion was disappointed. “What? No tasks? Not even a dragon to slay?”
“Close your eyes if you love me.”
Orion did so immediately, and Holly prodded him in the neck with a battery-powered Shokker. The electrocuted boy slumped in the harness, two electrode burns smoking gently on his neck.
“Nicely done,” said Foaly nervously. “Not in the neck for me, if you don’t mind.”
Holly checked the Shokker. “Don’t worry. I only had enough charge for one.”
Foaly could not suppress a sigh of relief, and when he glanced guiltily across at Orion, knowing that really he should be the unconscious one, Holly hit him in the flank with the second charge.
Foaly did not even have time to think You sneaky elf before slumping in the corner.
“Sorry, guys,” said Holly, then made a silent vow not to speak again until it was time to send the message.
The pod powered toward the surface, its prow slicing through the water. Holly steered through a vast underwater canyon that had developed its own ecology completely safe from human exploitation. She saw huge undulating eels that could crush a bus, strange crabs with glowing shells, and some kind of two-legged creature that disappeared into a crevice before she could get a proper look at it.
She took the most direct line she could through the canyon, finding a rock chimney that allowed her to exit into open sea.
There was still nothing on the communications array. Solidly blocked. She needed to get farther away.
I could really do with some warlock magic right now, Holly thought. If N º1 were here, he could wiggle his runes and turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.
Water, fish, and bubbles flashed past the window, and could that be a shaft of light from the surface? Had the craft reached the photic zone?
Holly tried the radio again. She heard static this time, but maybe with some chatter inside it.
Good, she thought, but her head was fuzzy. Did I imagine that?
No, you heard it all right, said the unconscious Foaly. Did I ever tell you about my kids?
Oxygen deprivation. That’s all it was.
Why did you shoot me, sweetness? wondered passed-out Orion. Did I displease you?
It’s too late. Too late.
Holly was shaking now. She filled her lungs but was not satisfied with
the foul air. The pod walls suddenly became concave, bending in to crush her.
“It’s not happening,” she called, breaking her vow of silence.
She checked the coms again. Some signal now. There were definitely words among the static.
Enough to transmit?
One way to find out. Holly tapped through her options on the dashboard readout and selected transmit only to be informed that the external antenna was not available. The computer advised her to check the connection. Holly pressed her face to the starboard and saw that the connection was pretty well defunct, as the entire thing had been knocked out of its housing by one impact or another.
Why doesn’t this tug bucket, Stone Age piece of junk have an internal antenna? Even glooping phones have internal antennae.
Phones! Of course.
Holly punched the harness-release button on her chest and dropped to her knees. She slid along the deck, moving toward Foaly.
It smells bad down here. Stale air.
For a second, one of the handrails grew a snake’s head and hissed at her.
Your time is running out, it said. Your odds are short, Short.
Don’t listen to the snake, said Foaly, without moving his lips. He’s just bitter because his soul is stuck in a handrail because of some stuff that happened in a previous life.
I still love you, said sleeping Orion, breathing slow and steady, using hardly any oxygen.
I am really going insane this time, thought Holly.
Holly pulled herself along Foaly’s frame, reaching into his shirt pocket for his phone. The centaur never went anywhere without his precious phone, and was proud of its modified clunkiness.
I love that phone, said Foaly proudly. Over five hundred mi-p’s. All my own design. I did a nice one called Offspring. Say you find the love of your life: all you need to do is take a photo of you and your beloved, and Offspring will show you what your potential kids will look like.
Fascinating. I hope we get to talk about it for real sometime.
The phone was switched on, so there was no need for a password, although knowing Foaly as she did, Holly supposed that his password would be some version of his own name. His screen was a crazy jumble of mi-p’s that probably made sense if you were a centaur.
The problem with all these applications is that sometimes a person just wants to make a quick call. Where’s the phone icon?
Then the icons started waving at her. “Pick me,” they chorused. “Over here.” That’s not a hallucination, said passed-out Foaly proudly.
Those little guys are animated.
“Phone,” Holly shouted into the communicator’s microphone, hoping for voice control. To her relief, a blurry old-fashioned cone phone icon expanded to fill the screen.
It’s not actually blurry. My eyesight’s fading.
“Call Police Plaza,” she ordered the icon.
The phone ticked for a moment, then asked. “Do you wish to call Phil’s Pizza?”
“No. Call Police Plaza.”
The water rushing by was definitely more azure now, shot through with bubbles and bending streaks of light.
“Do you wish to call Police Plaza?”
“Yes,” gasped Holly. “Yes, I do.”
There was more jostling as the pod passed through the surface disturbance and was flipped by the waves.
“Connecting you with Police Plaza.”
The phone hummed gently as it tried to connect, then said in a comically sad voice: “Boo-hoo. You don’t have a strong enough signal. Would you like to record a message for me to send just as soon as the signal is strong enough?”
“Yes,” croaked Holly.
“Did you say yikes? Because yikes is not an appropriate response in this situation.”
Holly composed herself. “Yes. I would like to compose a message.”
“Great,” said the phone brightly. “Start recording after the bell, and remember good manners don’t cost anything, so always introduce yourself and say good-bye.”
Say good-bye, thought Holly. Funny.
Holly recorded a concise message containing as few coughs and splutters as possible, identifying herself, as the phone had suggested, and also identifying the threat heading toward Atlantis. Almost as soon as she had finished, Holly collapsed on her back, flopping weakly like a stranded fish. There were spots before her eyes, which grew larger and became pale circles, crowding together, obscuring her vision. She did not see the colors outside the porthole change from blue to green to the dull, pearlescent white of a northern sky.
She did not hear the pressure vents pop, or feel cool air flooding the cabin, and Captain Holly Short did not know that fifteen minutes after the pod surfaced, her message to Police Plaza would finally be transmitted and be acted upon almost immediately.
It would have been acted upon immediately had not the sprite on the switchboard, a certain Chix Verbil, initially believed that the message was a prank call from his poker buddy, Crooz, made to make fun of his nasally voice.
Chix only decided to pass the message on to Commander Trouble Kelp when it occurred to him that there could be a career downside to ignoring the warning that could have saved Atlantis.
“I like your attitude,” said Tombstone.
The Deeps, Atlantis; Now
Turnball Root was busy pretending to be busy working on his model of the Nostremius aquanaut, so that he would appear all the more innocent when they came to get him, which he was certain they would very shortly.
Pretending to be busy takes more energy than simply being busy, Turnball realized, and this cheered him tremendously, as it was a witty observation and just the kind of thing that his eventual biographers would pick up on. But witty observations must now take a backseat to the plan. After all, witty observations would be far more enjoyable when he had someone else besides Vishby to listen to them. Leonor adored his little comments and often wrote them in her diary. Turnball’s eyes lost their focus, and his hands froze in space as he remembered their first summer together on that beautiful island in the Pacific. She, boyish in her vest and jodhpurs, he handsome and rakish in his LEP dress jacket.
“This can never work, Captain. How can it possibly work? I am human, after all, and you are most certainly not.”
And quick as a flash, he took her hands in his and said: “Love can break down any barriers. Love and magic.”
That was when he made her love him.
Leonor jumped a little but didn’t remove her hands.
“I felt a spark, Turnball,” she said.
He joked, “I felt it too,” then explained, “Static electricity, that always happens to me.”
Leonor believed it and fell for her captain.
She would have loved me soon enough anyway, thought Turnball crossly. I simply hurried the process.
But he knew in his heart that he had bolstered Leonor’s emotions with magic, and now that she was so far beyond her natural end, his hold on her was slipping.
Without magic, will she love me as I love her? he wondered a thousand times a day, and knew that he was terrified to find out.
To keep his vital signs steady, Turnball turned his thoughts once more to his thrall, Mr. Vishby.
Vishby was undeniably a repulsive dolt, and yet Turnball Root had a soft spot for the lad, and would perhaps even decide to let him live when this was all over, or at least kill him quickly. Of all the great schemes and impossible heists that Turnball had been involved in as a crooked cop, fugitive, or inmate, the simple-sounding act of turning Vishby had been the most ambitious. It had required perfect timing, audacity, and months of grooming. Turnball often thought of this plan, which he had set into motion almost four years previously. . . .
It wasn’t as if Vishby were a human with an already treacherous and self-serving nature. Vishby was a fairy, and most fairies, with the exception of goblins, were just not inclined toward the criminal life. Common lawbreakers, like that Diggums character, were common enough, but intelligent, foresighted cri
minals were rare.
Vishby’s downfall was that he was a moaner, and as the months had rolled by, he’d gradually let down his guard with Turnball Root and told him all about his demotion following Mulch Diggums’s escape. He’d also expressed a bitterness toward the LEP for the reprimand and wished he could do something to get back at them.
Turnball saw his chance—his first real chance of escape since his arrest. He’d formulated a plan to recruit Vishby.
The first stage was to feign sympathy for the water elf, whereas in reality, had he been in charge, he would have flushed him out of an airlock for his performance in the Diggums episode.
I so enjoy our chats, he had said. How I wish we could talk more freely.
Vishby had clammed up immediately, remembering that every word was on tape.
On his next visit, Vishby had entered with a smug tilt to his fishy head, and Turnball knew his plan would succeed.
I switched off your mike, the prison warder had said. Now we can talk about whatever we like.
And then Turnball knew that he had him. All it would take was a little Turnball Root magic to make Vishby his slave.
Except that Turnball Root didn’t have magic. That was the one irrevocable price that criminals paid: loss of magic, forever. This was one forfeit that there was no coming back from, and exiled criminals had been trying for centuries. They bought potions, tried spells, chanted in the moonlight, slept upside down, bathed in centaur dung. Nothing worked. Once you had broken the fairy rules, your magic was gone. It was partly a psychological thing, but mostly it was the result of age-old warlock hexes that successive administrations did not feel like unlocking.
This denial of his basic fairy rights had always irked Turnball, and during his years as a fugitive he had spent a fortune on dozens of witch doctors and quacks who all claimed they could have him running hot, brimful of magic, if only he would take this potion or recite that spell backward in the dead of night while holding a grumpy frog. Nothing worked. Nothing until, a century ago, Turnball found an exiled sprite living in Ho Chi Minh City who had somehow managed to maintain a tiny spark of power, just enough to remove the occasional wart. For a huge price, which Turnball would have paid a million times over, she revealed her secret: