Vinyáya plunged her hand into a plate of liquid metal at the door’s center.
“Flux metal,” she explained, pulling her hand out. “The metal is saturated with nano-sensors. There’s no way to fake your way through this door. The nano-sensors read everything from my handprint to my DNA. Even if someone cut off my hand and stuck it in here, the sensors would read a lack of pulse.”
Holly folded her arms. “All this paranoia in one place. I think I can guess who your technical consultant is.”
The door whooshed back, and standing on the other side was exactly the person Holly had expected to see.
“Foaly,” she said fondly, stepping through to embrace the centaur.
Foaly hugged her warmly, stamping his rear hooves with delight.
“Holly,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. “How have you been?”
“Busy,” replied Holly.
Foaly frowned. “You look a little skinny.”
“Amazingly, so do you!” Holly laughed.
Foaly had lost a little weight since she had last seen him. And his coat was glossy and groomed.
Holly patted his flank. “Hmm,” she mused. “You’re using conditioner, and you’re not wearing the brain probe–proof tinfoil hat. Don’t tell me you have a little lady centaur tucked away somewhere.”
Foaly actually blushed. “It’s early days yet, but I’m hopeful.”
The room was packed from floor to ceiling with state-of-the-art electronics. In fact, some of it was in the floors and ceiling, including wall-size gas view screens and an incredibly realistic sim-sky overhead.
Foaly was obviously proud of what he had put together. “Section Eight has the budget. I get the very best of everything.”
“What about your old job?”
The centaur scowled. “I tried working for Sool, but it didn’t work out. He’s destroying everything Commander Root built. Section Eight headhunted me discreetly at a speed-dating weekend. They made me an offer and I accepted. I get plenty of fawning adoration here, not to mention a huge salary hike.”
Mulch had a quick nosey-around and was irritated to find that there wasn’t a single crumb of food in the room.
“None of that salary went on vole curry, I suppose?”
Foaly raised an eyebrow at the dwarf, who was still coated with tunnel dirt.
“No. But we do have a shower room. You do know what a shower is, don’t you, Diggums?”
Mulch’s beard hair bristled. “Yes, I do. And I know a donkey when I see one, too.”
Holly stepped between them. “Okay, you two. No need to take up where you left off. Let’s hold off on the traditional insults until we find out where we are, and why we’re here.”
Mulch lowered himself gleefully onto a cream-color couch, fully aware that some of his mucky coating would rub off on the furniture. Holly sat beside him, but not too close.
Foaly activated a wall screen, then touched it gently to navigate to the program he wanted.
“I love these new gas screens,” he snickered. “Electric pulses heat the particles to different temperatures, causing the gas to turn different colors, forming pictures. Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I’m dumbing it down for the convict.”
“I was completely exonerated,” objected Mulch. “As you well know.”
“The charges were dropped,” Foaly pointed out. “You were not exonerated. It’s a different thing. Slightly.”
“Yes, like a centaur and a donkey are different things. Slightly.”
Holly sighed. It was almost like old times. Foaly was the LEP technical consultant who had steered her through many operations, and Mulch was their reluctant helper. It would be difficult for a stranger to believe that the dwarf and the centaur were actually good friends. She supposed this irritating bickering was how the males of every species showed affection.
A life-size picture of a demon flashed up on the screen. Its eyes were slitted, and its ears were crowned with spikes.
Mulch jumped. “D’Arvit!”
“Relax,” said Foaly. “It’s computer generated. Amazing picture quality, though. I grant you.” Foaly enlarged the face until it filled the screen.
“Full-grown buck demon. Post warp.”
“Post warp?”
“Yes, Holly. Demons do not grow like other fairies. They are quite cuddly until they hit puberty, then their bodies undergo a violent and painful spasm, or warp. After eight to ten hours they emerge from a cocoon of nutrient slime as demons. Before that, they are simply imps. Not the warlocks, though, they never warp. Their magic blossoms. I don’t envy them. Instead of acne and mood swings, a pubescent warlock demon gets lightning bolts shooting out of his fingers. If he’s lucky.”
“Where do they shoot out of if he’s unlucky? And why do we care about any of this?” asked Mulch, cutting to the chase.
“We care because a demon popped up recently in Europe and we didn’t get to him first.”
“So we heard. Demons are coming back from Hybras now?”
“Maybe, Holly.” Foaly tapped the screen, splitting it into smaller sections. Demon pictures appeared in each one. “These demons have materialized momentarily throughout the past five centuries. Luckily, none of them have stayed around long enough to be captured by the Mud Men.” Foaly highlighted the fourth picture. “My predecessor managed to hold on to this one for twelve hours. He got a silver medallion onto him, and there was a full moon.”
“That must’ve been a special moment,” said Mulch.
Foaly sighed. “Didn’t you learn anything in school? Demons are unique among all the creatures of the earth. Their island, Hybras, is actually an enormous moon rock that came down during the Triassic period when the moon was hit by a meteorite. From what we can glean from fairy cave paintings and virtual models, this moon rock punched into a magma stream and more or less got itself welded to the surface. Demons are descended from lunar microorganisms that lived inside the rock. They are subject to a strong physical and mental lunar attraction; they even levitate during the full moon. And it is this attraction that pulls them back into our dimension. They have to wear silver to repel the lunar pull. Silver is the most effective dimensional anchor. Gold works, too, but sometimes you leave bits of yourself behind.”
“So let’s say we believe all this interdimensional lunar attraction baloney,” said Mulch, doing his utmost to wind Foaly up. “What has that go to do with us?”
“It has everything to do with us,” snapped Foaly. “If the humans capture a demon, who do you think will be next under their microscope?”
Vinyáya took up the backstory. “That is why, five hundred years ago, Council Chairman Nan Burdeh set up Section Eight to monitor demon activity. Luckily, Burdeh was a billionaire, and when she died, she left her entire fortune to Section Eight. Hence the rather impressive setup. We are a very small, covert division of the LEP, but everything we have is the best. Over the years our brief has expanded to include secret missions that are too sensitive to entrust to regular LEP. But demonology is still our priority. For five centuries our finest minds have been studying the ancient demon texts, trying to predict where the next demon will pop up. Generally our calculations are correct and we can contain the situation. But twelve hours ago something happened in Barcelona.”
“What happened?” asked Mulch, a reasonable question for once.
Foaly opened another box on the screen. Most of the picture was white. “This happened.”
Mulch peered at the box. “A very small snowstorm?”
Foaly wagged a finger at him. “I swear, if I weren’t such a fan of mockery myself, I would have you tossed out of here on your combustible behind.”
Mulch accepted the compliment with a gracious nod.
“No, this is not a small snowstorm. This is whiteout. Someone was blocking our scopes.”
Holly nodded. Scopes was the shop name for the shrouded trackers attached to human communications satellites.
“You can see th
at whatever happened in our little snowstorm must have been pretty unusual, because the Mud Men are very eager to get away from it.”
On screen, humans outside the whiteout zone were wildly running away or driving their cars into walls.
“Human news programs reported several sightings of a lizardlike creature appearing out of thin air for several seconds. Of course there are no photographs. I had calculated that there would be an appearance, but more than three feet to the left, and we had set up an Elldee, sorry, light-distortion projector accordingly. Unfortunately, although we got the time right, the exact location was wrong. Somehow, whoever was inside that ball of interference got the location exactly right.”
“So Artemis saved us,” noted Holly.
Vinyáya was puzzled. “Saved us? How?”
“Well, if it hadn’t been for that interference, our demon friend would have been all over the Internet by now. And you think that Artemis was inside the ball of interference.”
Foaly grinned, obviously delighted with his own cunning. “Little Arty thought he could outwit me. He knows the LEP keeps him under constant surveillance.”
“Even though they promised not to,” interjected Holly.
Foaly ignored this technicality, plowing on. “So Artemis sent out decoys to Brazil and Finland, but we put a satellite on all three. Took a big chunk out of my budget, I can tell you.”
Mulch groaned. “I am either going to barf, or fall asleep, or both.”
Vinyáya slammed a fist into her palm. “Right. I’ve had enough of the dwarf. Let’s just toss him into a holding cell for a few days.”
“You can’t do that,” objected Mulch.
Vinyáya grinned nastily at him. “Oh, yes I can. You wouldn’t believe the powers Section Eight has. So shut up, or listen to your own voice bouncing back at you from steel walls.”