by Eoin Colfer
Foaly hooked his phone to the bot’s brain and was delighted to see its readout light up. He ran a few checks and was easily able to pinpoint the shadow program. “This is a little puzzling. The bot was sent new mission parameters by the control orb. Charmingly enough, it’s actually telling its gel to kill us all right now. That’s why we never detected any outside interference—there was none. It’s a simple little shadow program, a few lines of code, that’s all. Simple to kill.” He did so with a few taps of the keyboard.
“Where is this control orb?” asked Artemis.
“It’s in my lab, in Haven.”
“Could it have been tampered with?”
Foaly didn’t have to think about this for long. “Impossible, and I’m not just being typical me and denying that my equipment is responsible. I check that thing most days. I ran a systems check yesterday, and there was nothing out of the ordinary in the orb’s history. Whoever set this up has been feeding the probe instructions for weeks, if not months.”
Artemis closed his eyes to blot out the shining fours that had appeared in his vision, floating around the craft’s interior, hissing malignantly.
I manage to survive a giant squid attack, and now I’m worried about hissing fours. Great.
“I need everyone to sit in a line, on the opposite bench, small to tall.”
“That’s the Atlantis Complex talking, Mud Boy,” said Holly. “Fight it.”
Artemis pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Please, Holly. For me.”
Mulch was delighted with this game. “Should we hold hands, or chant? How about: five keeps me alive, four makes my bottom sore?”
“Number poetry?” said Artemis skeptically. “That’s ridiculous. Please, sit where I ask.”
They did, reluctantly and grumbling, Foaly and Mulch arguing for a moment over who was smaller. There was no argument over who was tallest. Butler sat hunched at the end, chin almost between his knees. Beside him sat Juliet, then Foaly, then Mulch, and finally Holly, who had set the ship on neutral.
Five, thought Artemis. Five friends to keep me alive.
He sat, still clad in the pressure exoskeleton suit, watching his friends and taking strength, letting his ideas build.
Finally he said, “Foaly, there must have been a second orb.”
Foaly nodded. “There was. We always grow a backup. In this case we used the clone, because the original was damaged. Only minor damage, true, but you can’t take chances with space travel. The first was sent off to be incinerated.”
“Where?”
“Atlantis. Koboi Labs got the contract. This was obviously before we realized how deranged Opal is.”
“So, if we accept that Turnball Root got hold of the second orb and had it repaired by Vishby, or whoever else worked for him, then would the probe obey commands from that orb?”
“Of course. No questions asked. They could be sent by any computer with a satellite link.”
Butler raised a finger. “Can I say something?”
“Of course, old friend.”
“Foaly. Your security sucks. When are you guys going to learn? A few years ago the goblins built a shuttle, and now you have convicts running your space program.”
Foaly stamped a hoof. “Hey, pal, less of the judgmental attitude. We’ve stayed hidden for thousands of years. That’s how good our security is.”
“Five ten fifteen twenty,” shouted Artemis. “Please. We need to work quickly.”
“Can we tease you about this later?” said Mulch. “I have some great material.”
“Later,” said Artemis. “For now, we need to work out where Turnball is going and what his final objective is.”
When there was no argument, he continued. “If we assume that Turnball used his orb to control the probe, and used these amorphobots to carry him away, can we track the amorphobots?”
Foaly’s head movement was somewhere between a nod and a shake. “Possibly. But not for long.”
Artemis understood. “The gel dissipates in salt water.”
“That’s right. The friction between the water and the bots wears down the gel, but as soon as it separates from the brain, it begins to dissolve. No charge, no cohesion. I’d say with a melon-sized bubble, you might get a few hours.”
“It’s already been a few hours. How much longer do we have?”
“It may already be too late. If I was allowed out of my school desk, I might be able to tell you.”
“Of course, please.”
Foaly swung his arms forward, lifting himself from his awkward seated position, and clopped into the cockpit, where he quickly entered the gel’s chemical makeup into the gyro’s rudimentary computer and dropped a filter over the portholes.
“Luckily for us, the mercenaries decided to leave the scanners intact. Everyone pick a window. I’ve run a scan for a specific radiation, and the gel trail should show up as a luminous green. Shout if you see something.”
They all took a porthole, except Holly, who sat in the pilot’s chair, ready to take off in whichever direction the trail led.
“I see it!” said Mulch. “No, wait. It’s a really angry squid looking for his little nut. Sorry. I know that was inappropriate, but I’m hungry.”
“There,” called Juliet. “I see something, portside.”
Artemis switched to her porthole. Winding from the depths of the crater was a wispy stream of shining bubbles that disappeared as they watched it, the lower bubbles separating into smaller blobs, then toward the end of the trail, some were disappearing altogether.
“Quickly, Holly,” said Artemis urgently. “Follow those bubbles.”
Holly opened the throttle. “Now there’s an order I never thought I’d hear from you,” she said.
They sped after the bubble trail in the mercenaries’ gyro, though Foaly did argue that technically they were not bubbles but globules, for which information he received a punch on the shoulder from Juliet.
“Hey, don’t punch me,” protested the centaur.
“Technically, that was a rap, not a punch,” corrected Juliet. “Now this . . . this is a punch.”
The trail grew fainter before their eyes, and Holly quickly programmed in a projected course whenever the globules changed direction, just in case they disappeared altogether.
Artemis sat in the copilot’s chair with a hand over one eye and his second hand in front of his face.
“The thumb is generally acknowledged to be a finger,” he told Holly. “In which case we’re safe, because that makes five fingers. But some experts argue that the thumb is completely different and is one of the things that sets us apart from the animals, and in that case we only have four fingers on each hands. And that’s bad.”
He’s getting worse, thought Holly anxiously.
Butler was stumped. If someone were threatening Artemis, the correct protective action was usually pretty obvious: Clobber the bad guy and confiscate his weapon. But now the bad guy was Artemis’s own mind, and it was turning him against everyone, including Butler.
How can I trust any order Artemis gives me? the bodyguard wondered. It could simply be a ruse to get me out of the way. Just like Mexico.
He squatted beside Artemis. “You do have faith in me now, don’t you, Artemis?”
Artemis tried to meet his eyes but couldn’t manage it. “I’m trying, old friend. I want to, but I know that soon I won’t have the strength. I need help, and soon.”
They both knew what Artemis wasn’t saying: I need help before I go out of my mind entirely.
They followed the gel trail eastward through the Atlantic and around the tip of Gibraltar into the Med. In the early afternoon the trail died suddenly. The last green bubble popped, and suddenly they were fifty feet underwater, two miles outside the Golfo di Venezia with nothing but yachts and gondolas in the gyro’s scopes.
“It has to be Venice,” said Holly, bringing the ship to periscope depth, taking the opportunity to fill the air tanks and equalize. “It’s right
in front of us.”
“Venice is a big city,” said Butler. “And not an easy place to search. How are we going to find these guys?”
The amorphobot brain in Foaly’s hand suddenly beeped as it established a link with its brethren. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. They’re close. Very close. Very, very close.”
Artemis was not happy with his melodramatic statement. “Very, very close? Really, Foaly? You’re a scientist. How close, exactly?”
Foaly pointed to the gyro’s hatch. “That close.”
The next minute or two were frantic and seemed to have an entire day’s worth of happenings compressed into a few moments. To Artemis and Foaly, the whole thing was just flashes of color and blurred movement. Butler, Holly, and Juliet saw a little more, being trained soldiers. Butler even managed to get off the bench, which did him absolutely no good whatsoever.
The gyro’s hatch made a sound like a giant plastic bottle being stepped on by a giant foot, then simply disappeared. Rather, it appeared to disappear. It was actually torn backward with great force then hurled into the sky. The hatch eventually lodged in the shaft of the bell tower of San Marco Piazza, which caused quite a bit of consternation in the city, especially for the painter whose rope was severed by the spinning hatch, and who plummeted a hundred feet to land on his brother’s back. The brothers were already fighting, and this didn’t make things any better.
Back in the gyro, water immediately began flooding the ship’s interior, but most of the available space was filled by the rolling forms of six amorphobots, which flowed into the bay, chittering as they selected their targets. It was all over in less than a second. The bots pounced on their targets, quickly engulfing them in turgid gel, and spirited them into the azure blue of the Mediterranean.
As they were whisked toward the murky form of a fairy ship in the depths, each prisoner had his or her own thoughts about what had happened.
Artemis was stunned by how much this abduction reminded him of his time spent battling through the mind-screen in his own brain.
Holly wondered if her weapon would work inside the gunk, or if it had been disabled yet again.
Foaly couldn’t help feeling a little fondness for the amorphobot that held him prisoner; after all, he had grown it in a lab beaker.
Juliet tried to keep Butler in sight. So long as she could see her brother, she felt reasonably safe.
Butler thrashed for a moment, but quickly realized that his efforts were futile, and so drew himself in like a newborn, conserving his energy for one explosive movement.
Mulch was also considering an explosive movement. Maybe he couldn’t escape, but he could certainly make this blobby thing regret picking him up. The dwarf pulled his knees slowly to his chest and allowed the gas in his tubes to collect into long bubbles. Eventually he would have enough force to blast through, or else he would be left floating in what would look like the world’s largest lava lamp.
* * *
Turnball Root was having a reasonably good time. He would have been having a wonderful time but for the fact that his darling Leonor was not in the condition he would like her to be, and he was worried that if he was able to restore Leonor’s faculties, she would quickly tumble to the fact that he was not quite the principled revolutionary he had always pretended to be, and he would lose her love. Leonor had a strong sense of morality, and she would definitely kick up a fuss at the idea of him imprisoning a demon warlock to keep her forever young. Turnball glanced at the thrall rune on his thumb. The intricate set of spirals and characters that had kept Leonor on the hook, but the power of which was weakening all the time. Would she have left him without it? Maybe. Probably.
Turnball was possibly the world’s foremost expert on runes. They suited his situation, as they only required a tiny spark of magic to kick-start them, and thereafter operated on the power of the symbols themselves. Different people reacted differently to rune control. Some could be controled for decades while others would reject the black magic and go instantly insane. Leonor had been the ideal thrall because a large part of her wanted to believe what Turnball told her.
With his modified laser, Turnball could enslave anyone he wished, for as long as he wished, no matter how they felt about him, and without the need for a single spark of magic.
Like these new prisoners, for example. A veritable treasure chest of talents at his disposal. One never knew when a teenage mastermind would come in handy, or a technical centaur, especially when it was well known that the little demon trusted them both. With those two and the warlock, he could start his own principality if he chose to.
Yes, I am having a reasonably good time, thought Turnball. But soon I will be having an excellent time. Just one more set of people to kill. Maybe two.
The amorphobots had entered the ambulance through the air lock and morphed into one in the ambulance’s only cell. Actually, the bot holding Mulch Diggums was excluded from the morph, as the other bots could not identify the chemical spectrum of the gas bubbles inside the dwarf’s body, and did not frankly like the look of Mulch anyway, and so, though it tried to meld with the others, the bot was repulsed and wobbled lonely in the corner.
Turnball Root descended the spiral staircase from the bridge and literally swaggered into the cell to gloat.
“Look here,” he said to Unix, who stood at his shoulder, grim as ever. “The finest fairy and human minds all gathered together in one cell.”
They hung before him suspended in smart gel, unable to do much besides take shallow breaths and move like sleepy swimmers.
“Don’t even bother making the effort to call for help or shoot your way out,” Turnball continued. “I am jamming your phones and weapons.” He leaned close to the bot’s shimmering surface. “Here’s one of Julius’s little pups. Didn’t we shoot her already, Unix?”
A leery smile tightened the sprite’s jaw, though it did not make him seem like a nicer person.
“And the great Foaly. Savior of the People. Not anymore, my little pony. Soon you will be my thrall, and delighted to be so.” Turnball wiggled his thumbs at the captives, and they could see the red runes painted there.
“And what have we here?” Turnball stopped in front of the Butlers. “Crazy Bear and the Jade Princess. I missed you once before, but it won’t happen a second time.”
“What about me?” Mulch managed to say, and the bot translated the vibrations of his larynx into sound.
“What about you?”
“Don’t I get a description? I’m dangerous too.”
Turnball laughed, but softly so the noise would not awaken Leonor, who slept in the berth upstairs. “I like you, dwarf. You have spirit, but nonetheless I shall kill you, as you are of no use to me, unless you fancy a position as jester. A fat, smelly jester. Obviously I am assuming that you smell bad. You certainly look as though you might.”
Turnball moved on to Artemis. “And, of course, Artemis Fowl. Ex-criminal mastermind and current psychotic. How is the Complex going, Artemis? I bet you have a bad number. What is it, five? Four?” Artemis must have flinched because Turnball knew he had guessed correctly. “Four, then. And how do I know you suffer from Atlantis? You should ask your friend Foaly. He’s the one who supplies me with pictures.”
Artemis was not at all surprised to find that some of his paranoia was actually justified.
Turnball paced along the line like a general delivering a prebattle pep talk. “I am delighted that you are all here, genuinely delighted. Because you can be useful to me. You see, my wife is very old, and to save her life and bring her youth back, I need a very powerful magician.”
Artemis’s eyes widened. He got it straight away. All of this to lure No1 out of Haven.
“Your friend No1 will be helping out with the injured on the Nostremius, and we were going to go in there, masquerading as patients, and bring him out with my super-duper modified lasers, but there was always going to be the niggly problem of the little fellow perhaps getting a magical bol
t off before I enthralled him. But now, Holly Short, one of his best friends in the whole world, is going to fetch him for me.”
Turnball turned to Unix. “Tell the bot to spit out Captain Short.”
Unix consulted a computer rendering of the bot and its contents on a wall screen. With a flick of his finger, he dragged Holly from the gel. Almost instantaneously, the bot did the same. Holly felt as though she were being vomited from the belly of a beast onto the cold metal floor. She lay there gasping as her lungs accustomed themselves to breathing pure air once more. She opened her eyes to see a grinning Turnball looming over her.
“I’m remembering more and more about you as time goes by,” he said, and kicked her hard in the ribs with one black boot. “And I remember that you put me in prison. But never mind, eh. Now you can make up for it by doing me a good turn.”
Holly spat a blob of gel onto the deck. “Not likely, Turnball.”
Turnball kicked her again. “You will address me by my rank.”
Holly spoke through gritted teeth. “I doubt it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Turnball, and put his boot on her throat. From his pocket he pulled what looked like a penlight.
“This looks like a penlight, doesn’t it?”
Holly could not speak, but she was guessing the slim cylinder was something more sinister than a light.
“Yet it is quite a bit more than that. You may have guessed that black-magic runes are something of a hobby of mine. Illegal, yes, but almost everything I do is illegal, so why start worrying now? What this little laser does is burn the rune directly into the skin of the person I wish to enslave. No magic necessary. So long as I have the corresponding rune on my person, then you are in my thrall forever.”
Turnball showed his thumb to Holly, the one with Vishby’s rune still inscribed on the pad, the magic of which could be transferred to her now that Vishby was dead. “And guess what, my dear? A free slot just opened up in my organization.”
Root activated the laser and hummed for a moment until the tip turned red, then he jammed it into Holly’s neck, branding her with his binding rune. Holly bucked and screamed in a black-magic fit. “Not so gentle as the touch,” noted Turnball, stepping out of puke range just in case. The fit lasted less than a minute, leaving Holly rigid on the floor, breathing abnormally fast, eyelids fluttering. Turnball licked the blood rune on his own thumb. “Now, Miss Short, what say we go and kidnap a warlock?” Holly stood, arms stiff by her side, eyes unfocused.