“Go,” he said. “Captain Short will pilot you and Butler to the surface. S
tay in contact if…”
He did not finish the sentence, but everyone in the room could guess what he had been about to say.
Stay in contact if…there is anything left to contact.
The Deeps, Atlantis
Opal did not enjoy being forced into the depths of the tube by a flat-topped ramrod, but once she was down inside the neutron crust, she felt quite snuggly, cushioned by a fluffy layer of anti-rad foam.
One is like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, she thought, only a little irked by the rough material of her anti-rad suit. I am about to transform into the godhead. I am about to arrive at my destiny. Bow down, creatures, or bear thine own blindness.
Then she thought, Bear thine own blindness? Is that too much?
There was a niggly doubt in the back of Opal’s head that she had actually made a horrific mistake by setting this plan in motion. It was her most radical maneuver ever, and thousands of fairies and humans would die. Worse still, she herself might cease to exist, or morph into some kind of time-mutant. But Opal dealt with these worries by simply refusing to engage with them. It was childish, she knew; but Opal was ninety percent convinced that she was cosmically ordained to be the first Quantum Being.
The alternative was too abhorrent to be entertained for long: she, Opal Koboi, would be forced to live out her days as a common prisoner in the Deeps, an object of ridicule and derision. The subject of morality tales and school projects. A chimp in a zoo for the Atlantis fairies to stare at with round eyes. To kill everyone or even die herself would be infinitely preferable. Not that she would die. The tube would contain her energy; and with enough concentration, she would become a nuclear version of herself.
One feels one’s destiny at hand. Any minute now.
Haven City
Artemis, Butler, and Holly took the express elevator to Police Plaza’s own shuttleport, which was connected to a magma vent from the earth’s core that supplied much of the city’s power through geothermal rods. Artemis did not speak to the others; he simply muttered to himself and rapped the steel wall of the elevator with his knuckles.
Holly was relieved to find that there was no pattern in the rappings, unless, of course, the pattern was too complicated for her to perceive it. It wouldn’t be the first time Artemis’s thought process had been beyond her grasp.
The elevator was spacious by LEP standards and so allowed Butler enough headroom to stand up straight, though he still knocked his crown against the capsule wall whenever they hit a bump.
Finally Artemis spoke: “If we can get into the shuttle before the deadline, then we stand a real chance of making it to the magma chutes.”
Artemis used the word deadline, but his companions knew that he meant assassination. Pip would shoot Opal when the time was up; none of them doubted that now. Then the consequences of this murder would unfold, whatever they might be; and their best chance of survival lay on the inside of a titanium craft that was built to withstand total immersion in a magma chimney.
The elevator hissed to a halt on pneumatic pistons and the doors opened to admit the assorted noises of utter bedlam. The shuttleport was jammed with frantic fairies fighting their way through the security checkpoints, ignoring the usual X-ray protocols and jumping over barriers and turnstiles. Sprites flew illegally low, their wings grazing the tube lighting. Gnomes huddled together in crunchball formations, attempting to barge their way through the line of LEP crowd-control officers in riot gear.
“People are forgetting their drills,” muttered Holly. “This panic is not going to help anyone.”
Artemis stared crestfallen at the melee. He had seen something like it once in JFK airport, when a TV reality star had turned up in Arrivals. “We won’t make it through. Not without hurting people.”
Butler picked up his comrades and slung one across each shoulder. “The heck we won’t,” he said, stepping determinedly into the multitude.
Pip’s attitude had changed since he’d shot his partner. No more chitchat or posturing; now he was following his instructions to the letter: Wait until your phone alarm beeps, then shoot the pixie.
That Fowl guy. That was bluff, right? He can’t do anything now. It probably wasn’t even Fowl.
Pip decided that he would never divulge what had happened here today. Silence was safety. Words would only bind themselves into strands and hang him.
She need never know.
But Pip knew that she would take one look in his eyes and know everything. For a second Pip thought about running, just disentangling himself from this entire convoluted master plan and being a plain old gnome again.
I cannot do it. She would find me. She would find me and do terrible things to me. And, for some reason, I do not wish to be free of her.
There was nothing for it but to follow the orders that he had not already disobeyed.
Perhaps, if I kill her, she will forgive me.
Pip cocked the hammer on his handgun and pressed it to the back of Opal’s head.
Atlantis
In the reactor, Opal’s head was buzzing with excitement. It must be soon. Very soon. She had been counting the seconds, but the bumpy elevator ride had disoriented her.
I am ready, she thought. Ready for the next step.
Pull it! she broadcast, knowing her younger self would hear the thought and panic. Pull the trigger.
Police Plaza
Foaly felt his forelock droop under the weight of perspiration and tried to remember what his parting comment to Caballine had been that morning.
I think I told her that I loved her. I always do. But did I say it this morning? Did I?
It seemed very important to him.
Caballine is in the suburbs. She will be out of harm’s way. Fine.
The centaur did not believe his own thoughts. If Opal was behind this, there would be serpentine twists to this plan yet to be revealed.
Opal Koboi does not make plans; she writes operas.
For the first time in his life, Foaly was horrified to catch himself thinking that someone else might just be a little smarter than he was.
Police Plaza Shuttleport
Butler waded through the crowd, dropping his feet with care. His appearance in the shuttleport only served to heighten the level of panic, but that could not be helped now. Some temporary discomforts would have to be borne by certain fairies if it meant reaching their shuttle in time. Elves shoaled around his knees like cleaner-fish, several poking him with buzz batons and a couple spraying him with pheromone repellent spray, which Butler found to his great annoyance instantly shrunk his sinuses.
When they reached the security turnstile, the huge bodyguard simply stepped over it, leaving the majority of the frightened populace milling around on the other side. Butler had the presence of mind to dunk Holly in front of the retinal scanner so they could be beeped through without activating the terminal’s security measures.
Holly called to a sprite she recognized on the security desk.
“Chix. Is our chute open?”
Chix Verbil had once been Holly’s podmate on a stakeout and was only alive because she had dragged his wounded frame out of harm’s way.
“Uh…yeah. Commander Kelp told us to make a hole. Are you okay, Captain?”
Holly dismounted from Butler’s shelflike shoulder, landing with sparks from her boot heels.
“Fine.”
“Unusual mode of transport,” commented Chix, nervously hovering a foot from the floor, his reflection shimmering in the polished steel below like a sprite trapped in another dimension.
“Don’t worry, Chix,” said Holly, patting Butler’s thigh. “He’s tame. Unless he smells fear.”
Butler sniffed the air as though there were a faint scent of terror.
Chix rose a few inches, his wings a hummingbird blur. He tapped the V-board on his wrist computer with sweating digits. “Okay. You are set to go. The ground crew checked all your life support. And we popped in a fresh plasma cube while we were in there, so you’re good for
a few decades. The blast doors are dropping in less than two minutes, so I would get moving if I were you and take those two Mud Men…ah, humans…with you.”
Butler decided that it would be quicker to keep Artemis pinioned on his shoulder until they were in the shuttle, as he would probably trip over a dwarf in his haste. He set off at a quick lope down the metal tube linking the check-in desk to their berth.
Foaly had managed to get a remodeling order approved for the bay so that Butler could walk under the lintel with his chin tucked low. The shuttle itself was actually an off-road vehicle confiscated by the Criminal Assets Bureau from a tuna smuggler. Its middle row of seats had been removed so that the bodyguard could stretch out in the back. Riding the off-roader was Butler’s favorite part of his underworld visits.
Off-roader! Foaly had snorted. As if there is anywhere to go in Haven that doesn’t have roads. Plasma-guzzling status symbols, that’s all these clunkers are.
Which hadn’t stopped him from gleefully ordering a refit so that the vehicle resembled an American Humvee and could accommodate two humans in the back. And because Artemis was one of the humans, Foaly could not help but show off a little, stuffing more extras into the confined space than would be found in the average Mars probe: gel seats, thirty-two speakers, 3-D HDTV; and for Holly, oxy-boost, and a single laser cutter in the hood ornament, which was an imp blowing a long-stemmed horn. This was why the shuttle was referred to as the Silver Cupid. It was a little romantic-sounding for Artemis’s taste, and so Holly referred to it by name as often as possible.
The off-roader detected Holly’s proximity and sent a message to her wrist computer inquiring whether it should pop the doors and start itself up. Holly confirmed without missing a step, and the batwing doors swung smoothly upward just in time for Butler to unload Artemis like a sack of kittens from his shoulder into the backseat. Holly slid into the single front seat in the nose of the blocky craft and had locked on to the supply rail before the doors had sealed.