The Atlantis Complex

by Eoin Colfer

  “The old-fashioned way,” repeated Mulch. “With a futuristic pressure suit and a fairy phone.”

  A raft of vocal objections followed:

  “You can’t go—it’s too dangerous.”

  “I shall go in your place.”

  “Why does it have to be my phone?”

  Artemis waited until the clamor had died down, then dealt with the protests in his usual terse, patronizing manner.

  “I must go because the next stage of Turnball’s plan obviously involves further loss of life, and the lives of many are more important than the lives of the few.”

  “I saw that on Star Trek,” said Mulch.

  “It must be me,” continued Artemis. “Because there is only one suit, and it appears to be approximately my size. And, if I’m not mistaken—and it would be highly unusual that I would be—a correct fit is vital, where pressure suits are concerned, unless you want your eyeballs popping out of their sockets.”

  If someone else had said this, it might be considered a joke to lift the atmosphere, but from the mouth of Artemis Fowl it was a simple statement of fact.

  “And finally, Foaly, it has to be your phone because, knowing your build standards as I do, it was made to withstand great pressures. Am I correct?”

  “You are,” said Foaly, accepting the compliment with a nod of his long face. “About the fit of the suit too. These things won’t even seal properly if they don’t like your dimensions.”

  Butler was not pleased, but in the end he was the employee, though Artemis did not play that card. “I must go, Butler,” said Artemis firmly. “My mind is eating me alive. I think the guilt is the main problem. I must do whatever I can to atone.”

  “And?” said Butler, unconvinced.

  Artemis held his arms out so that Foaly could drape the suit sleeves over them.

  “And I will not be beaten by that jackass.”

  “Jackass?” said Foaly, wounded. “My favorite uncle is a jackass.”

  The pressure suit was actually two suits. The inner layer was a one-piece membrane threaded with life support, and the outer shell was body armor with a volatile surface that absorbed the water pressure and used it to power the servo mechanisms. Very clever, as you would expect from Koboi Laboratories.

  “Koboi,” muttered Artemis, dismayed when he saw the logo. Even a person not obsessed with omens would be a little put out by his nemesis’s signature etched into the suit that was supposed to save his life. “I am not buoyed by that.”

  “You are not supposed to be buoyed,” said Foaly, lowering the transparent helmet bubble. “You are supposed to be equalized.”

  “I’m pretty sure that both of you just made really horrible jokes,” said Mulch, who was chewing something he had found somewhere. “But I’m not sure because I think you broke my funny bone.”

  At this point, Mulch’s comments were like background chatter and were almost soothingly constant.

  Foaly fixed his phone to an omni-sensor at the front of the helmet. “It would take a swipe from a whale’s tail to knock this loose. It’s good for any depths or pressure you are likely to encounter, and will even pick up the vibration of your speech and convert them to sound waves. But do try to enunciate.”

  “You stick close to the rock face,” said Butler, cradling the helmet to make sure Artemis was paying attention. “And at the first sign of trouble, I’m making the call to reel you in, not you. Do you understand, Artemis?”

  Artemis nodded. The suit was connected to a dock on the ship’s hull by a signature electromagnetic beam, which would zap it back to base in case of emergency.

  “Just have a quick look around the site with Foaly’s phone, and back you come. Ten minutes is all you get; then you’ll have to follow another lead. Got it?”

  Another nod from Artemis, but it seemed more like he was shutting out something than actually listening to Butler’s words.

  Butler snapped his fingers. “Focus, Artemis! Time enough for your Atlantis Complex later. We have the Atlantis Trench outside that door and six miles of water above it. If you want to stay alive, you need to stay alert.” He turned to Holly. “This is ridiculous. I’m pulling the plug.”

  Holly’s mouth was a tight line as she shook her head. “Navy rules, Butler. You’re on my boat, you follow my orders.”

  “As I remember, I brought the boat.”

  “Yes, thanks for bringing my boat.”

  Artemis used this exchange to move closer to the rear air lock, a tight space where Butler could not follow.

  “Ten minutes, old friend,” he said, his voice robotic through the helmet speaker. “Then you can reel me back in.”

  Butler suddenly thought about how Angeline Fowl would react when she heard about this latest escapade.

  “Artemis, wait. There must be another way. . . .”

  But his objection bounced off a wall of Perspex as the air lock dividing wall slid down with a noise like ball bearings rolling around the bottom of a can.

  “I don’t like that ball-bearing noise,” said Mulch. “Doesn’t sound very watertight.”

  No one argued. They knew what he meant.

  * * *

  On the other side of the divider, Artemis was having a few misgivings of his own. He had just noticed the mercenaries’ name for the ship, which was painted on the inside of the ocean door in what was supposed to look like blood but could not be or it would have long since washed off.

  Probably some rubber-based solution, thought Artemis, but the base of the mercenaries’ paint was not what bothered him—it was the name itself, which was Plunderer, in Gnommish of course. The verb plunder was pronounced ffurfor, and the er suffix that changes the verb to a noun has, in Gnommish, the sound fer, which would imply that one is derived from the other. Grammar lesson aside, the pronunciation of the word plunderer was more or less fourfourfour.

  Four four four, thought Artemis, pale inside his helmet.

  Death death death.

  At which point the hull door slid up with more ball-bearing noises, and the ocean sucked him into its deep dark depths.

  Take a moment, thought Artemis as the suit’s outer skin vibrated and activated the glow orbs at his temples, fingertips, and knees. Don’t count, don’t organize, just do as Butler advized and focus.

  He did not feel underwater, though he knew he was. His body did not experience the expected resistance from the ocean, there was no dulling of the motor skills, and he felt as though he could move with the same fluency as he always did, though Butler would argue whether his movements were ever fluid.

  Which would have been great, had not the giant squid, whose territory he had just invaded, wrapped this glowing intruder in ten fat limbs and whisked him off toward his lair.

  Ah, the mythical giant squid. Genus Architeuthis, thought Artemis, strangely calm now that he was faced with a catastrophe worthy of all the worrying he’d been doing. Not so mythical anymore.

  CHAPTER 9

  FORBIDDEN LOVE

  TURNBALL Root had met Leonor Carsby on the remote Hawaiian island of Lehua in the summer of 1938. Leonor was there because she had crash-landed her Lockheed Electra into the northern slope of the island’s volcanic ridge and freewheeled into the oddly shaped natural canal known as The Keyhole, which cut through the island. Turnball had been there because he’d maintained a winter residence on the otherwise uninhabited island, where he liked to drink wine and listen to jazz recordings while he planned his next heist.

  They were an unlikely couple, but their first meeting took place in the kind of extreme circumstances that often cause hearts to beat faster and believe themselves in love.

  Leonor Carsby was a human Manhattan heiress, but also a founding member of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women in aviation first presided over by Amelia Earhart. When Earhart was lost in the Pacific, Leonor Carsby vowed that she herself would complete the journey that her friend and hero Amelia had begun.

  In April 1938 she took off from California with a
navigator and extra-large fuel tanks. Six weeks later, Leonor Carsby arrived in The Keyhole with neither, having lost both to Lehua’s cruel crescent-shaped ridge. It was a miracle she herself survived, improbably protected only by the Lockheed’s bubble cockpit.

  On his daily patrol, Unix had come across the heiress spread-eagled on a flat rock at the water’s edge. She was not in good shape: dehydrated, one leg badly broken, delirious, and on the edge of death.

  The sprite called it in, expecting to be given the execution order, but something about the human woman’s face on his screen interested Turnball. He instructed Unix not to do anything, but to wait for his arrival.

  Turnball took the trouble to shave, draw his hair back into a ponytail, and put on a fresh ruffled shirt before taking the lift from the subterranean cave to the surface. There he found Unix squatting over the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. Even twisted unnaturally and covered with blood and bruises, it was clear to Turnball that she was an exquisite beauty.

  As he stood over Leonor, with the sun behind him, casting long shadows across his face, the aviatrix opened her eyes, took Turnball in, and said two words: “My God.” And then she was lost to delirium once more.

  Turnball was intrigued. He felt a thaw around a heart, which had been frozen for decades. Who was this woman who had fallen from the skies?

  “Bring her inside,” he told Unix. “Use whatever magic we have to make her well.”

  Unix did as he was told without comment, as was his way. Many other lieutenants might have questioned the wisdom of using the gang’s dwindling supply of magic on a human. There was a newbie in the group who still had half a tank in him. When that was gone, who knew how long it would be before they had power again?

  But Unix did not complain, and neither did the others, as they were all aware that Turnball Root did not handle moaning well, and moaners tended to find themselves stranded somewhere uncomfortable, waiting for something extremely painful to happen to them.

  So Leonor Carsby was taken into the subterranean cave and nursed back to health. Turnball did not involve himself too much during the early stages, preferring to show up when Leonor was on the point of waking up so he could pretend he had been there the whole time. Initially, Leonor did nothing but heal and sleep, but after some weeks she began to speak, hesitantly at first, but then questions tumbled out of her so quickly that Turnball could hardly keep up.

  “Who are you?”

  “What are you?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Is Pierre, my navigator, alive?”

  “When will I be fit to travel?”

  Generally, Turnball handled questions about as well as he handled moaning, but from Leonor Carsby, every question caused him to smile indulgently and answer in detail.

  Why is this? he wondered. Why do I tolerate this human instead of simply tossing her to the sharks in the normal fashion? I am spending time and magic on her in extravagant amounts.

  Turnball began thinking about Leonor’s face when he wasn’t looking at it. Water chimes reminded him of her laugh. Sometimes he was sure he could hear her call to him, though he was on the far side of the island.

  Grow up, you fool, he told himself. Yours is not the heart of a romantic.

  But the heart cannot lie, and Turnball Root found himself in love with Leonor Carsby. He canceled two raids on federal bullion sites to be by her side, and moved his office to her room so he could work while she slept.

  And, for her part, Leonor loved him too. She knew he was not human, but still she loved him. He told her about everything but the violence. Turnball styled himself as a revolutionary on the run from an unjust state, and she believed it. Why wouldn’t she? He was the dashing hero who had saved her, and Turnball made sure none of his cronies shattered this illusion.

  When Leonor was well enough, Turnball took her to Mount Everest in his shuttle, and she cried tears of amazement. As they hovered there, shrouded by the cold white mist, Turnball asked the question he had been wanting to ask for two months.

  “That first moment, my dear, when your eyes met mine, you said, ‘My God.’ Why did you say that?”

  Leonor dried her eyes. “I was half dead, Turnball. You’ll laugh and think me silly.”

  Root took her hand. “I could never think that. Never.”

  “Very well. I shall tell you. I said those words, Turnball, because I thought I had died and you were a fierce, handsome angel come to take me to heaven.”

  Turnball did not laugh, and he did not think it was silly. He knew at that moment that this gorgeous petite woman was the love of his life and he had to have her.

  So when Leonor began talking of her return to New York, and how Turnball would be the sensation of the city, he pricked the ball of his thumb with a quill, drew a thrall rune with the blood, and prepared himself a supper of mandrake and rice wine.

  Venice, Italy; Now

  The giant amorphobot bore Turnball Root to his beloved, who waited for him at the basement dock to their house in Venice. The house stood four stories high and had been commissioned by Turnball himself in 1798 and built from the finest reconstituted Italian marble mixed with fairy polymers, which would absorb the gradual shift of the city without cracking. It took several hours to make the journey, during which time the amorphobot kept Turnball and his men alive by periodically surfacing to replenish its cells with oxygen and spiking their arms with saline drips for nourishment. As they traveled, Turnball logged on to the computer in the amor-phobot’s belly to ensure that all was ready for the next stage of his plan.

  Turnball found that he was very comfortable working in this sheltered environment with the world flashing by. He was insulated yet in control.

  Safe.

  From the corner of his eye, through the bleary mask of gel, Turnball was aware that Bobb Ragby and Ching Mayle now regarded him with something approaching worship, following the spectacular nature of their escape. Worship. He liked that.

  As they approached the Italian coast, Turnball felt his calm smugness desert him, as a nervous serpent crawled into his stomach.

  Leonor. How I have missed you.

  Since Turnball had acquired a computer, there had been barely a day when they had not written to each other, but Leonor refused to participate in video calls, and of course Turnball knew why.

  You will always be beautiful to me, my darling.

  The amorphobot thrummed the length of Venice’s Grand Canal, skirting the mounds of rubbish and corpses of murdered princes, until it stopped in front of the only subaquatic gate with an omni-sensor. The bot winked at the sensor, and the sensor winked back, and now that everyone was all pally, the gate opened without blasting them with the recessed Neutrino lances on its pillars.

  Turnball winked at his crew. “Thank goodness for that, eh? Sometimes that gate is a little unfriendly.” It was difficult to talk with the slow surge of gel over one’s teeth, but Turnball felt the comment was worth it. Leonor would like that one.

  Turnball’s crew did not answer; their accomodation inside the gel bot was a little more cramped than their captain’s. They were squished together like salted slugs in a cone.

  The bot elongated itself to flow easily down the narrow channel to Turnball’s underground dock. Strip lights glowed in the gloom, drawing them underneath the house. Deeper and deeper they went, until at last the bot expelled Turnball gently onto a sloping slipway. He straightened his coat, tightened his ponytail, and walked slowly along the ramp toward the slight figure waiting in the shadows.

  “Put the others to sleep,” he told the bot. “I need to talk to my wife.”

  A plasma charge crackled through the bot, knocking out the fairies inside. Unix barely had time to roll his eyes before passing out.

  Turnball took a halting step, nervous as a teenage elf about to take his first moon flight.

  “Leonor? Darling. I have come home to you. Come and kiss me.”

  His wife hobbled forward from the blackness, leaning
heavily on an ivory-topped cane. Her fingers were gnarled, with glowing rheumatoid knuckles, her body was angular and unnatural, with sharp bones stretching the heavy lace of her skirt. One eye drooped, and the other was closed completely, and the lines on her face were scored deep by time and black with shadows.

  “Turnball. As handsome as ever. It is so wonderful to see you free.” Leonor’s voice was a mere rasp, labored and painful.

  “Now that you are home,” she said, haltingly, “I can allow myself to die.”

  Turnball’s heart lurched. He had palpitations, and a red band of heat tightened about his forehead. Everything he had ever done suddenly seemed all for nothing.

  “You cannot die,” he said furiously, rubbing the pad of his thumb, heating the rune. “I love you, I need you.”

  Leonor’s eyelids fluttered. “I cannot die,” she repeated.

  “But why not, Turnball? I am too old for life. Only my longing to see you again has kept me alive, but my time has passed. I regret nothing, except that I never flew again. I wanted to, but I didn’t. . . . Why was that?”

  My hold is weakening. The old spell has died.

  “You chose a life with me, my darling,” he said, rushing the last steps to her side. “But now that I have found the secret to eternal youth, you can be young again, and soon you will fly wherever you want to go.”

  Turnball felt the tiniest pressure as her fragile hand squeezed his fingers. “I would like that, my dear.”

  “Of course you would,” said Turnball, steering his wife to the basement elevator. And now you should rest. I have a lot to organize before we leave.”

  Leonor allowed herself to be led, feeling, as always, powerless to resist her charismatic husband.

  “That’s my Turnball. Always coming to my rescue. One of these days I will rescue you.”

  “You do rescue me,” said Turnball sincerely. “Every day.”

  A barb of guilt pricked his heart, as he knew he could never allow Leonor to fly again. For if she could fly, then she might fly away.