Mulch swallowed. 'Listen, yes, good idea. Do continue, Mud Boy ... em, Artemis.'
'Thank you,' said Artemis. 'Now. We have been observing the dwarf troupe for months and in all that time, they have never left their own tent unguarded, so we presume that this is where they keep their loot. Generally the entire group are there, except during a
performance when five of the six are needed for the acrobatic routine. Our only window of opportunity is during this period when all but one of the dwarfs are in the ring.'
'All but one?' enquired Mulch. 'I can't be seen by anybody. If they so much as catch a glimpse of me, they'll hunt me down forever. Dwarfs really hold a grudge.'
'Let me finish,' said Artemis. 'I have put some thought into this, you know
. We managed to obtain some video one evening in Brussels from a pencil camera that Butler poked through the canvas.'
Butler turned on a flat-screen television and pressed play on a video remote. The picture that appeared was grey and grainy, but perfectly recognizable. It showed a single dwarf in a round tent, lounging in a leather armchair. He was dressed in the Significants' leotard and mask and was blowing bubbles through a small hoop.
The earthen floor began to vibrate slightly in the centre of the tent where the ground looked disturbed, as though a small earthquake was disrupting that spot only. Moments later a metre diameter circle of earth collapsed entirely, and a masked Sergei emerged from the hole. He vented some gas, and gave his comrade the thumbs up. The bubbleblowing dwarf immediately ran out of the tent.
'Sergei has just tunnelled out of his box, and our bubble-blowing friend is needed in the ring,' explained Artemis. 'Sergei takes over guard duty until the end of the act, when all the other dwarfs return and Sergei reappears in the new box. We have approximately seven minutes to find the tiara.'
Mulch decided to pick a few holes in the plan. 'How do we know the tiara is even there?'
Artemis was ready for that question. 'Because my sources tell me that there are five European jewellery fences coming to tonight's show. They are hardly here to see the clowns.'
Mulch nodded slowly. He knew where the tiara would be. Sergei and his significant friends would hide everything a few metres below their tent, safely buried beyond the reach of humans. That still left hundreds of square metres to search.
'I'll never find it,' he pronounced eventually. 'Not in seven minutes.'
Artemis opened his Powerbook laptop. 'This is a computer simulation.You are the blue figure. Sergei is the red figure.'
On screen the two computer creatures burrowed through simulated earth.
Mulch watched the blue figure for over a minute.
'I have to admit it, Mud Boy,' said the dwarf. 'It's clever. But I need a tank of compressed air.'
Artemis was puzzled. 'Air? I thought you could breathe underground?'
'I can.'The dwarf grinned hugely at Artemis. 'It's not for me.'
So now, Mulch sat in his underground hole with a diver's tank of air strapped to his back. He squatted absolutely silently. Once Sergei entered the earth, his beard hair would be sensitive to the slightest vibration, including radio transmissions, so Artemis had insisted on radio silence until they were in phase two of the plan.
To the west, one high frequency vibration punched through the ambient noise. Sergei was making his move. Mulch could feel his brother dwarf scything through the earth, possibly towards his secret cache of stolen jewellery.
Mulch concentrated on Sergei's progress. He was tunnelling east, but on a downward tangent, obviously heading directly for something. The sonar in Mulch's beard hair fed him constant speed and direction updates. The second dwarf proceeded at a steady pace and incline for almost a hundred metres, then stopped dead. He was checking something. Hopefully the tiara.
Following half a minute of minimal movement, Sergei made for the surface, almost directly for Mulch. Mulch felt a sheen of sweat coat his back. This was the dangerous part. He reached slowly into his leotard, pulling out a ball the size and colour of a satsuma. The ball was an organic sedative used by Chilean natives. Artemis had assured Mulch that it had no side effects, and would actually clear up any sinus problems Sergei may have.
With infinite care, Mulch positioned himself as close to Sergei's trajectory as he dared, then wiggled the fist containing the sedative ball into the earth. Seconds later, Sergei's scything jaws consumed the ball along with a few kilos of earth. Before he had taken half a dozen bites, his forward motion slowed to a dead halt, and his chewing grew sluggish. Now was the dangerous time for Sergei. If he was left unconscious with a gut full of clay, he could choke. Mulch ate through the thin layer of earth separating them, he flipped the sleeping dwarf on to his back, feeding an air tube deep into the black depths of his cavernous mouth. Once the tube was in place, he twisted the tank's nozzle, sending a sustained jet of air through Sergei's system. The air stream ballooned the little fairy's internal organs, flushing all traces of clay through his system. His body shook as though connected to a live wire, but he did not awaken. Instead he snored on.
Mulch left Sergei curled in the earth, and aimed his chomping jaws towards the surface. The clay was typical Irish, soft and moist with low level pollution and teeming with insect life. Seconds later, he felt his questing fingers break the surface, cool air brushing across their tips. Mulch made sure that the circus mask covered the upper half of his face, then pushed his head above ground.
There was another dwarf sitting in the armchair. Today he was playing with four yo-yos. One spinning from each hand and each foot. Mulch said nothing, though he felt a sudden longing to chat with his fellow dwarf. He simply gave a thumbs-up signal.
The second dwarf coiled in his yo-yos wordlessly. Then pulling on a pair of pointy toed boots, bolted for the tent flap. Mulch could hear the sudden roar of the crowd as Sergei's box exploded. Two minutes gone. Five minutes left.
He upended his rear and plotted a course for the exact spot where Sergei had stopped. This was not as difficult as it would seem. Dwarfs' internal compasses are fantastic instruments, and can lead the fairy creatures with the same accuracy as any GPS system. Mulch dived.
There was a small chamber hollowed out below the tent. A typical dwarf hidey hole, with spit slickened walls providing low level luminescence in the darkness. Dwarf spit is a multi-functional secretion. Apart from the normal uses, it also hardens on prolonged contact with air to form a lacquer, that is not only tough but also slightly luminous.
Sitting in the centre of the small chamber was a wooden chest. It was not locked. Why would it be? There would be no one down here but dwarfs. Mulch felt a stab of shame. It was one thing robbing from the mud men, but he was ripping off brother dwarfs who were just trying to make an honest living stealing from humans. It was an all time low. Mulch made up his mind to somehow reimburse Sergei the Significant and his band once this was over.
The tiara was inside the chest, the blue stone on its crown winked in the light of the spittle. Now there was a real jewel. Nothing fake about that. Mulch stuffed it inside his leotard. There were plenty of other jewels in the box, but he ignored them. It was bad enough taking the tiara. Now all he had to do was haul Sergei to the surface where he could recover safely, and leave the same way he had come. He would be gone before the other dwarfs realized anything was wrong.
Mulch headed back towards Sergei, collected his limp form and ate his way back to the surface, dragging his sleeping brother dwarf behind him. He re-hinged his jaw, climbing from the hole.
The tent was still deserted. The Significants should be well over half way through their act by now. Mulch dragged Sergei to the lip of the hole, and took a dwarf flint dagger from his boot. He would cut some strips from the chair and secure Sergei's hands, feet and jaws. Artemis had assured him that Sergei would not wake up, but what did the Mud Boy know about dwarf insides.
'Sorry about this, brother,' he whispered almost fondly. 'I hate to do it, but the Mud Boy has me over a barrel.'
Something shimmered in the corner of Mulch's vision. It shimmered and then spoke.
'First I want you to tell me about the Mud Boy, dwarf,' it said. 'And then I want you to tell me about the barrel.'
CHAPTER 5: Ringmaster
Holly Short flew north until she came to mainland Italy, then turned forty degrees left over the lights of Brindisi.
'You are supposed to avoid major flight routes and city areas,' Foaly reminded her over the helmet speakers. 'That is the first rule of recon.'
'The first rule of recon is to find the rogue fairy,' Holly retorted. 'Do you want me to locate this dwarf or not? If I stick to the coastline, it will take me all night to reach Ireland. My way, I'll get there by eleven p.m. local time. Anyway, I'm shielded.'
Fairies have the power to increase their heart rate and pump their arteries to bursting, which causes their bodies to vibrate so quickly that they are never in one place long enough to be seen. The only human ever to see through this magical trick, pardon the pun, was, of course, Artemis Fowl, who had filmed fairies on a high speed camera then viewed the frames still by still.
'Shielding isn't as foolproof as it used to be,' noted Foaly. 'I have sent the helmet's tracker pattern to your helmet. All you have to do is follow the beep. When you find our dwarf, the commander wants you to ...'
The centaur's voice faded out in a liquid hiss of static. The magma flares beneath the earth's crust were up tonight, whiting out LEP communications. This was the third time since she started the journey. All she could do was proceed according to plan, and hope the channels cleared up.
It was a fine night, so Holly navigated using the stars. Of course her helmet had a built-in GPS triangulated by three satellites, but stellar navigation was one of the first courses taught in the LEP academy. It was possible that a recon officer could be trapped above ground without science, and under those circumstances the stars could be that officer's only hope of finding a fairy shuttle port.
The landscape sped by below her, dotted by an ever growing number of human enclaves. Each time she ventured topside, there were more. Soon there would be no countryside left, and no trees to make the oxygen. Then everyone would be breathing artificial air above ground and below it.
Holly tried to ignore the pollution alert logo flashing in her visor. The helmet would filter out most of it, and anyway she had no choice. It was either fly over the cities, or possibly lose the rogue dwarf. And Captain Holly Short did not like to lose.
She enlarged the search grid in her helmet visor, and zeroed in on a large, circular, striped tent. A circus. The dwarf was hiding in a circus. Hardly original, but an effective place to pose as a human dwarf.
Holly dipped the flaps on her mechanical wings, descending to twenty feet. The tracker beep pulled her off to the left, away from the main tent itself, towards a smaller adjacent one. Holly swooped lower still, making sure to keep her shield fully buzzed up as the area was teeming with humans.