by Eoin Colfer
The centaur ran a quick search on the surveillance database and selected the footage from the chute access tunnel where Julius had died. There was something he wanted to check.
UNCHARTED CHUTE, THREE MILES BELOW SOUTHERN ITALY
The stolen shuttle made good time to the surface. Holly flew as fast as she could without burning the gearbox or smashing them into a chute wall. Time may have been of the essence, but the motley crew would be of little use to anyone if they had to be scraped off the wall like so much crunchy pate.
‘These old rigs are mainly for watch changes,’ explained Holly. ‘The LEP got this one second-hand at a criminal assets auction. It’s souped up to avoid Customs ships. It used to belong to a curry smuggler.’
Artemis sniffed. A faint yellow odour still lingered in the cockpit.
‘Why would anyone smuggle curry?’
‘Extra-hot curry is illegal in Haven. Living underground, we have to be careful of emissions, if you catch my drift.’
Artemis caught her drift and decided not to pursue the subject.
‘We need to locate Opal’s shuttle before we venture above ground and give our position away.’
Holly pulled over, next to a small lake of black oil, the shuttle’s downdraught rippling the surface.
‘Artemis, I think I mentioned that it’s a stealth shuttle.
Nothing can detect her. We don’t have sensors sophisticated enough to spot her.
Opal and her pixie sidekicks could be sitting in their craft just round the next bend, and our computers wouldn’t pick them up.‘
Artemis leaned in over the dashboard readouts. ‘You’re approaching this the wrong way, Holly. We need to find out where the shuttle is not.’
Artemis launched various scans, searching for traces of certain gases within a hundred-mile radius. ‘I think we may assume that the stealth shuttle is very close to E7.
Perhaps right at the mouth, but that still leaves us with a lot of ground to cover, especially if all we have to rely on are our eyes.’
‘That’s what I’ve been saying. But do go on, I’m sure you have a point.’
‘So, I’m using this shuttle’s limited sensor dishes to scan from here right up the chute to the surface and down about thirty miles.’
‘Scanning for what?’ said Holly in exasperation. ‘A hole in the air?’
Artemis grinned. ‘Exactly. You see, normal space is made up of various gases: oxygen, hydrogen and so on; but the stealth shuttle would prevent any of these from being detected inside the ship’s hull. So if we find a small patch of space without the usual ambient gases…’
‘Then we’ve found the stealth shuttle,’ said Holly.
‘Exactly.’
The computer completed its scan quickly, building an on-screen model of the surrounding area. The gases were displayed in various whirling hues.
Artemis instructed the computer to search for anomalies. It found three, one with an abnormally high saturation of carbon monoxide.
‘That’s probably an airport. A lot of exhaust fumes.’
The second anomaly was a large area with only trace elements of any gas.
‘A vacuum, probably a computer plant,’ surmised Artemis.
The third anomaly was a small area, just outside the lip of E7, that appeared to contain no gas of any kind.
‘That’s her. The volume is exactly right. She’s on the north side of the chute entrance.’
‘Well done,’ said Holly, punching him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get up there.’
‘You know, of course, that as soon as we put our nose into the main chute system, Foaly will pick us up.’
Holly gave the engines a few seconds to warm up. ‘It’s too late to worry about that. Haven is more than six hundred miles away. By the time anyone gets here, we’ll be either heroes or outlaws.’
‘We’re already outlaws,’ said Artemis.
‘True,’ agreed Holly. ‘But soon we could be outlaws with no one chasing us.’
POLICE PLAZA, THE LOWER ELEMENTS
Opal Koboi was back. Could it be possible? The thought niggled at Foaly’s ordered mind, unravelling any chain of thought that he tried to compose. He would not find any peace until he found out for certain one way or the other.
The first place to check was the video footage from E37. If one began with the assumption that Koboi was indeed alive, then a number of details could be explained.
First, the strange haze that had appeared on all the tapes was manufactured to hide something and was not simply interference. The loss of audio signal too could have been orchestrated by Koboi to cover whatever had passed between Holly and Julius in the tunnel. And the calamitous explosion could have been Koboi’s doing and not Holly’s. The possibility brought tremendous peace to Foaly, but he contained it. He hadn’t proved anything yet.
Foaly ran the tape through a few filters without result. The strange blurred section refused to be sharpened, cloned or shifted. That in itself was unusual. If the blurred spot was just computer glitchery, Foaly should have been able to do something about it. But the indistinct patch stood its ground, repelling everything Foaly threw at it.
You may have the high-tech ground covered, thought the centaur. But what about good old low-tech?
Foaly zoomed the footage on to moments before the explosion. The blurred patch had transferred itself to Julius’s chest, and indeed at times the commander appeared to be looking at it. Was there an explosive device under there? If so, then it must have been remotely detonated. The jammer signal was probably sent from the same remote. The detonation command would override all other signals, including the jammer. This meant that for perhaps a thousandth of a second before detonation, whatever was on Julius’s chest would become visible. Not long enough for the fairy eye to capture, but a camera would see it just fine.
Foaly fast forwarded to the explosion and then began to work his way backwards, frame by frame. It was agonizing, watching his friend being reassembled by the reversed film. The centaur tried to ignore it, concentrating on the tape. The flames shrank from orange plumes to white shards, eventually containing themselves inside an orange mini-sun. Then, for a single frame, something appeared. Foaly flicked past it, then returned.
There! On Julius’s chest, right where the blur used to be. A device of some kind.
Foaly’s fingers jabbed the enlarge tool. A thirty-centimetre-square metal panel was secured to Julius’s chest with octo-bonds. It had been picked up by the camera for a single frame. Less than one-thousandth of a second, which was why it had been missed by the investigators. On the face of the panel was a plasma screen. Someone had been communicating with the commander before he died. That someone had not wanted to be overheard, hence the audio jammer. Unfortunately, the screen was now blank, as the detonation signal that disrupted the jammer would also have disrupted the video.
I know who it is, thought Foaly. It’s Opal Koboi, backjrom limbo. But he needed proof. The centaur’s word was worth about as much to Ark Sool as a dwarf’s denial that he had passed wind.
Foaly glared at the live feed from the Argon Clinic. There she was. Opal Koboi, still deep in her coma. Apparently.
How did you do it? How could you swap places with another fairy?
Plastic surgery wouldn’t do it. Surgery couldn’t change DNA. Foaly opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a piece of equipment that resembled two miniature kitchen plungers.
There was only one way to find out what was going on here. He would have to ask Opal directly.
When Foaly arrived at the clinic, Doctor Argon was reluctant to allow him into Opal’s room.
‘Miss Koboi is in a deep state of catatonia,’ said the gnome peevishly. ‘Who knows what effect your devices will have on her psyche? It’s difficult, well-nigh impossible, to explain to a lay fairy what damage intrusive stimuli may have on the recovering mind.’
Foaly whinnied. ‘You had no trouble letting the TV networks in. I suppose they pay better than the LEP. I do hope you are
not beginning to view Opal as your personal possession, Doctor. She is a state prisoner, and I can have her moved to a state facility any time I like.’
‘Maybe just five minutes,’ said Jerbal Argon, tapping in the door’s security code.
Foaly clopped past him, plonking his briefcase on the table. Opal swung gently in the draught from the doorway. And it did seem to be Opal. Even this close, with every feature in focus, Foaly could have sworn that this was his old adversary. The same Opal who had competed with him for every prize at college. The same Opal who had very nearly succeeded in having him blamed for the goblin uprising.
‘Get her down from there,’ he ordered.
Argon positioned a bunk below the harness, complaining at every step. ‘I shouldn’t be doing physical labour,’ he moaned. ‘It’s my hip. No one knows the pain I’m in. No one. The warlocks can’t do a thing for me.’
‘Don’t you have staff to do this sort of thing?’
‘Normally, yes,’ said Argon, lowering the harness. ‘But my janitors are on leave.
Both at the same time. Normally I wouldn’t allow it, but good pixie workers are hard to find.’
Foaly’s ears pricked up. ‘Pixies? Your janitors are pixies?’
‘Yes. We’re quite proud of them around here — minor celebrities, you know. The pixie twins. And, of course, they have the highest respect for me.’
Foaly’s hands shook as he unpacked his equipment. It all seemed to be coming together. First Chix, then the strange device on Julius’s chest, now pixie janitors who were on leave. He just needed one more piece of the puzzle.
‘What is it you have there?’ asked Argon anxiously. ‘Nothing that could cause any damage?’
Foaly tilted the unconscious pixie’s head backwards. ‘Don’t worry, Argon. It’s just a Retimager. I’m not going in any further than the eyeballs.’
He held the pixie’s eyes open, one at a time, sealing the plunger-like cups around the sockets. ‘Every image is recorded on the retinas. This leaves a trail of micro-scratches that can be enhanced and read.’
‘I know what a Retimager is,’ snapped Argon. ‘I do read science journals occasionally, you know. So you can tell what the last thing Opal saw was. What good will that do?’
Foaly connected the eyepieces to a wall computer. ‘We shall see,’ he said, endeavouring to sound cryptic rather than desperate.
He opened the Retimager’s program on the plasma screen, and two dark images appeared.
‘Left and right eyes,’ explained Foaly, toggling a key until the two images overlapped. The image was obviously a head from a side angle, but it was too dark to identify.
‘Ooh, such brilliance,’ gushed Argon sarcastically. ‘Shall I call the networks? Or should I just faint in awe?’
Foaly ignored him. ‘Lighten and enhance,’ he said to the computer.
A computer-generated paintbrush swabbed the screen, leaving a brighter and sharper picture behind it.
‘It’s a pixie,’ muttered Foaly. ‘But still not enough detail.’ He scratched his chin.
‘Computer, match this picture with patient Koboi, Opal.’
A picture of Opal flashed up on a separate window. It resized itself and revolved until the new picture was at the same angle as the original. Red arrows flashed between the pictures, connecting identical points. After a few moments the space between the two pictures was completely blitzed with red lines.
‘Are these two pictures of the same person?’ asked Foaly.
‘Affirmative,’ said the computer. ‘Though there is a point zero five per cent possibility of error.’
Foaly jabbed the print button. ‘I’ll take those odds.’
Argon stepped closer to the screen, as though in a daze. His face was pale, and growing paler as he realized the implications of the picture.
‘She saw herself from the side,’ he whispered. ‘That means…’
‘There were two Opal Kobois,’ completed Foaly. ‘The real one, that you let escape. And this shell here, which can only be…’
‘A clone.’
‘Precisely,’ said Foaly, plucking the hard copy from the printer. ‘She had herself cloned, and then your janitors waltzed her right out of here under your nose.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘“Oh dear” hardly covers it. Maybe now would be a good time to call the networks, or faint in awe.’
Argon took the second option, collapsing to the floor in a limp heap. The sudden evaporation of his dreams of fame and fortune were too much to handle all at once.
Foaly stepped over him and then galloped all the way to Police Plaza.
E7, SOUTHERN ITALY
Opal Koboi was having a hard time being patient. She had used up every last drop of her patience in the Argon Clinic. And now she wanted things to happen on her command. Unfortunately, a hundred million tonnes of haematite will only sink through the Earth at five metres per second and there isn’t a lot anybody can do about it.
Opal decided to pass the time by watching Holly Short die. That cretinous captain. Who did she think she was, with her crew cut and cute bow lips? Opal glanced at herself in a reflective surface. Now there was real beauty. There was a face that deserved its own currency, and it was quite possible that she would soon have it.
‘Mervall,’ she snapped. ‘Bring me the Eleven Wonders disk. I need something to cheer me up.’
‘Right away, Miss Koboi,’ said Merv. ‘Would you like me to finish preparing the meal first, or bring you the disk directly?’
Opal rolled her eyes at her reflection. ‘What did I just say?’
‘You said to bring you the disk.’
‘So what do you think you should do, my dearest Mervall?’
‘I think I should bring you the disk,’ said Merv.
‘Genius, Mervall. Pure genius.’
Merv left the shuttle’s kitchenette, ejecting a disk from the recorder. The computer would have the film on its hard drive, but Miss Koboi liked to have her personal favourites on disk so she could be cheered up, wherever she happened to be.
Highlights from the past included her father’s nervous breakdown, the attack on Police
Plaza and Foaly bawling his eyes out in the LEP operations booth.
Merv handed the disk to Opal.
‘And?’ said the tiny pixie.
Merv was stumped for a moment, then he remembered. One of Opal’s new commandments was that the Brill brothers should bow when they approached their leader. He swallowed his pride and bowed low from the waist.
‘Better. Now, weren’t you supposed to be preparing dinner?’
Merv retreated, still bowing. There had been a lot of pride-swallowing going on around here in the last few hours. Opal was unhappy with the level of service and respect provided by the Brill brothers, and so she had drawn up a list of rules. These directives included the aforementioned bowing, never looking Opal in the eyes, going outside the shuttle to pass wind and not thinking too loudly within three metres of their employer.
‘Because I know what you are thinking,’ Opal had said in a low, tremulous voice. ‘I can see your thoughts swirling around your head. Right now, you’re marvelling at how beautiful I am.’
‘Uncanny,’ gasped Merv, while traitorously wondering if there was a cuckoo flitting about his head at that very moment. Opal was going seriously off the rails with all this changing her species and world domination. He and Scant would have deserted her by now if she hadn’t promised that they could have Barbados when she was queen of the Earth. That and the fact that, if they deserted her now, Opal would add the Brill brothers to her vengeance list.
Merv retreated to the kitchen and continued with his efforts to prepare Miss
Koboi’s food without actually touching it. Another new rule. Meanwhile, Scant was in the cargo bay, checking the detonator relays on the last two shaped charges. One for the job, and one back-up. The charges were about the size of melons but they would make a much bigger mess if they exploded. He checked that
the magnetic relay pods were secure on the casings. The relays were standard mining sparker units that would accept the signal from the remote detonator and send a neutron charge into the bellies of the charges.
Scant winked at his brother through the kitchen doorway.
Merv pursed his lips in silent imitation of a cuckoo. Scant nodded wearily. They were both getting tired of Opal’s outrageous behaviour. Only the prospect of drinking pina coladas on the beach in Barbados kept them going.
Opal, oblivious to all the discontent in her camp, popped the video disk into the multi-drive. To watch one’s enemies die in glorious colour and surround-sound was surely one of the greatest assets of technology. Several video windows opened on the screen. Each one represented the view from one of the hemisphere’s cameras.
Opal watched delightedly as Holly and Artemis were driven into the river by a pack of slobbering trolls. She ‘Oohed’ and ‘Aahed’ as they took refuge on the tiny island of corpses. Her tiny heart beat faster as they scaled the Temple scaffolding. She was about to instruct Mervall to fetch her some chocolate truffles from the booty box to go with the movie, when the cameras blacked out.
‘Mervall,’ she squealed, wringing her delicate fingers. ‘Descant! Get in here.’
The Brill brothers rushed into the lounge, handguns drawn.
‘Yes, Miss Koboi?’ said Scant, laying the shaped charges down on a fur-covered lounger.
Opal covered her face. ‘Don’t look at me!’ she ordered.
Scant lowered his eyes. ‘Sorry. No eye contact. I forgot.’
‘And stop thinking that.’
‘Yes, Miss Koboi. Sorry, Miss Koboi.’ Scant had no idea what he was supposed to be thinking, so he tried to blank out everything.
Opal crossed her arms, tapping her fingers on her forearms, until both brothers were bowing before her.
‘Something has gone wrong,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly. ‘Our Temple of Artemis cameras seem to have malfunctioned.’
Merv rewound the footage up to the last image. In it, the trolls were advancing on Artemis and Holly across the Temple roof.
‘It looks like they were done for anyway, Miss Koboi.’