Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl. The Opal Deception

Holly slapped at the grille, then wormed her fingers through the holes. The grille was shiny and new. Fresh weld marks dotted its rim. This was new and everything else was old. Koboi!

Something nudged Holly’s arm. An aqua tele-pod. It was anchored to the grille by a plastic tie. Opal’s face filled the small screen sealed inside, and her grin filled most of her face. She was saying something again and again on a short loop. The words were inaudible over the din of sluice and bubble, but the meaning was clear: / beat you again.

Holly grabbed the tele-pod, ripping it from its tether.

The effort threw her from the slipstream into the relatively calm surrounding waters. Her strength was gone, and she had no option but to go where the river led her.

Artemis dragged himself from the flat face of the grille, using the last of his oxygen to kick his legs, just twice.

He was free of the whirlpool, floating along after Holly towards a dark mound,

further down the river. Air, he thought with keen desperation, / need to breathe. Not soon. Now. If not now, never.

Artemis broke the surface mouth-first. His throat was sucking down air before the water cleared. The first breath came back up, laced with fluid, but the second was clear, and the third. Artemis felt the strength flow back into his limbs like mercury in his veins.

Holly was safe. Lying on the dark island in the river. Her chest heaved like a bellows and the tele-pod lay beneath her splayed fingers.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Opal Koboi on-screen. ‘Sooo predictable. ’ She said it over and over, until Artemis struggled from the shallow water, climbed on the mound and found the mute button.

‘I am really starting to dislike her,’ he panted. ‘She may come to regret little touches like the underwater television, because it’s things like that which give me the motivation to get out of here.’

Holly sat up, looking around. They were lying on a mound of rubbish. Artemis guessed that since Opal had welded the grille across the filter pipe, the current swept everything the trolls discarded to this shallow spot. A small island of junk in the river bend. There were disembodied robot heads on the heap, along with battered statues and troll remains. Troll skulls with the thick wedge of forehead bone, and rotting pelts.

At least those particular trolls could not eat them. The dangerous trolls had followed them and were working themselves up into a lather again along the banks on both sides. But there was at least six metres of fifteen-centimetre-deep water separating them from the land. They were safe, for the moment.

Artemis felt memories attempting to break through to the surface. He was on the verge of remembering everything, he was certain of it. He sat completely still, willing it to happen. Unconnected images flashed behind his eyes: a mountain of gold; green, scaly creatures snorting fireballs; Butler packed in ice. But the images slid from his consciousness like drops of water off a windshield.

Holly sat up. ‘Anything?’

‘Maybe,’ said Artemis. ‘Something. I’m not sure. Everything is happening so fast. I need time to meditate.’

‘We’re out of time,’ said Holly, climbing to the top of the junk pile. Skulls cracked beneath her feet. ‘Look.’

Artemis turned towards the left bank. One of the trolls had picked up a large rock and raised it above his head.

Artemis tried to make himself small. If that rock hit, they would both be gravely injured, at the very least.

The troll grunted like a tennis pro serving, spinning the rock into the river. It barely missed the pile, landing with a huge splash in the shallow waters.

‘A poor shot,’ said Holly.

Artemis frowned. ‘I doubt it.’

A second troll grabbed a missile, and a third. Soon all the brutes were hurling rocks, robot parts, sticks or whatever they could get their hands on towards the rubbish heap. Not one hit the shivering pair huddled on the pile.

‘They keep missing,’ said Holly. ‘Every one of them.’

Artemis’s bones ached from cold, fear and sustained tension.

‘They’re not trying to hit us,’ he said. ‘They’re building a bridge.’

TARA, IRELAND, DAWN

The fairy shuttle port in Tara was the biggest in Europe. More than eight thousand tourists a year passed through its X-ray arches. Eight hundred and fifty cubic metres of terminal concealed beneath an overgrown hillock in the middle of the McGraney farm. It was a marvel of subterranean architecture.

Mulch Diggums, fugitive kleptomaniac dwarf, was pretty marvellous himself in the subterranean area. Butler drove the Fowl Bentley north from the manor, and on

Mulch’s instructions slowed the luxury car down, five hundred metres from the shuttle port’s camouflaged entrance. This allowed Mulch to dive through the rear door straight into the earth. He quickly disappeared, submerged below a layer of rich Irish soil. The best in the world.

Mulch knew the shuttle port layout well. He had once broken his cousin Nord out of police custody here, when the LEP had arrested him on industrial pollution charges. A vein of clay ran right up to the shuttle port wall and, if you knew where to look, there was a sheet of metal casing that had been worn thin by years of Irish damp. But on this particular occasion, Mulch was not interested in evading the LEP; quite the opposite.

He surfaced inside the holographic bush that hid the shuttle port’s service entrance. He climbed out of his tunnel, shook the clay from his behind, got all the tunnel wind out of his system a bit more noisily than was absolutely necessary, and waited.

Five seconds later, the entrance hatch slid across and four grabbing hands reached out, yanking Mulch into the shuttle port’s interior. Mulch did not resist, allowing himself to be bundled along a dark corridor and into an interview room. He was plonked down on an uncomfortable chair, handcuffed and left on his own to stew.

Mulch did not have time to stew. Every second he spent sitting here picking insects from his beard hair was another second that Artemis and Holly had to spend running from trolls.

The dwarf rose from the chair, slapping his palms against the two-way mirror inset in the interview room wall.

‘Chix Verbil,’ he shouted, ‘I know you’re watching me. We need to talk. It’s about Holly Short.’

Mulch kept right on banging on the glass until the cell door swung open and Chix

Verbil entered the room. Chix was the LEP’s fairy on the surface. Chix had been the first LEP casualty in the B’wa Kell goblin revolution, a year previously, and, had it not been for Holly Short, he would have been its first fatality. As it turned out, he got a medal from the Committee, a series of high-profile interviews on network television and a cushy surface job in El.

Chix entered suspiciously, his sprite wings folded behind him. The strap was off his Neutrino holster.

‘Mulch Diggums, isn’t it? Are you surrendering?’

Mulch snorted. ‘What do you think? I go to all the trouble of breaking out, just to surrender to a sprite. I think not, lame brain.’

Chix bristled, his wings fanning out behind him. ‘Hey, listen, dwarf. You’re in no position to be making cracks. You’re in my custody, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are six security fairies surrounding this room.’

‘Security fairies. Don’t make me laugh. They couldn’t secure an apple in an orchard. I escaped from a sub-shuttle under a couple of miles of water. I can see at least six ways out of here without breaking a sweat.’

Chix hovered nervously. ‘I’d like to see you try. I’d have two charges in your behind before you could unhinge that jaw of yours.’

Mulch winced. Dwarfs don’t like ‘behind’ jokes.

‘OK, easy there, Mister Gung-ho. Let’s talk about your wing. How’s it healing up?’

‘How do you know about that?’

‘It was big news. You were all over the TV for a while, even on pirate satellite. I

was watching your ugly face in Chicago not so long ago.’

Chix preened. ‘Chicago?’

‘That’s right. You were saying, if I remember rightly, how Holly Short saved your life, and how sprites never forget a debt, and whenever she needed you, you were there, whatever it took.’

Chix coughed nervously. ‘A lot of that was scripted. And, anyway, that was before…’

‘Before one of the most decorated officers in the LEP suddenly decided to go crazy and shoot her own commander?’

‘Yes. Before that.’

Mulch looked Verbil straight in his green face. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

Chix hovered even higher for a long moment, his wings whipping the air into currents. Then he settled back down to earth, sitting in the room’s second chair. ‘No. I don’t believe it. Not for a second. Julius Root was like a father to Holly, to all of us.’

Chix covered his face with his hands, afraid to hear the answer to his next question.

‘So, Diggums. Why are you here?’

Mulch leaned in close. ‘Is this being recorded?’

‘Of course. Standard operating procedure.’

‘Can you switch off the mike?’

‘I suppose. Why should I?’

‘Because I’m going to tell you something important to the People’s survival. But I’ll only tell you if the mikes are off.’

Chix’s wings began to flap once more. ‘This better be really good. I better really like this, dwarf.’

Mulch shrugged. ‘Oh, you’re not going to like it. But it is really good.’

Chix’s green fingers tapped a code into a keyboard on the table. ‘OK, Diggums. We can talk freely.’

Mulch leaned forward across the desk. ‘The thing is, Opal Koboi is back.’

Chix did not respond verbally, but the colour drained from his face. Instead of its usual robust emerald, the sprite’s complexion was now pasty lime-green.

‘Opal has escaped, somehow, and she has set this big revenge thing in motion.

First General Scalene, then Commander Root, and now Holly and Artemis Fowl.’

‘O-Opal?’ stammered Chix, his wounded wing suddenly throbbing.

‘She’s taking out anyone who had a hand in her imprisonment. Which, if memory serves me correctly, includes you.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ squeaked Verbil, as though protesting his innocence to Mulch could help him.

Mulch sat back. ‘Hey, there’s no point telling me. I’m not out to get you. If I remember correctly, you were on all the chat shows, spouting how you personally were the first member of the LEP to come into contact with the goblin smugglers.’

‘Maybe she didn’t see that,’ said Chix hopefully. ‘She was in a coma.’

‘I’m sure someone taped it for her.’

Verbil thought about it, absently grooming his wings.

‘So what do you want from me?’

‘I need you to get a message to Foaly. Tell him what I said about Opal.’ Mulch covered his mouth with a hand to fox any lip-readers who might review the tape. ‘And I want the LEP shuttle. I know where it’s parked. I just need the starter chip and the ignition code.’

‘What? Ridiculous! I’d go to jail.’

Mulch shook his head. ‘No, no. Without sound, all Police Plaza are going to see is another ingenious Mulch Diggums escape. I knock you out, steal your chip and tunnel out through the pipe behind that water dispenser.’

Chix frowned. ‘Go back to the “knock me out” part again.’

Mulch slammed one palm down on the table. ‘Listen, Verbil, Holly is in mortal danger right now. She may already be dead.’

‘That’s what I heard,’ interjected Chix.

‘Well, she will definitely be dead if I don’t get down there right now.’