“Good thinking,” said Vishby, who for the first time was beginning to understand that land dwellers’ phrase in over one’s head.
Turnball Root rested his chin on one hand in the fashion of an elderly actor posing for his headshot. “Yes, Mr. Vishby. Very soon now my model shall be complete. Already one of the major parts is on its way down here, and when that arrives, there won’t be a fairy left in Atlantis . . . Eh, that is, there won’t be a fairy left undazzled by my model.”
It was a feeble cover-up, he knew. Was undazzled even a word? But no need for panic, as nobody watched him anymore. They hadn’t for years. He was no longer seen as a threat. The world in general had forgotten the disgraced Captain Turnball Root. Those who knew him now found it difficult to believe that this shabby old-timer could really be as dangerous as his file said he was.
It’s Opal Koboi this, and Opal Koboi that, Turnball often thought bitterly. Well, we’ll see who breaks out of this place first.
Turnball banished the screen with a click of his fingers. “Onward and outward, Vishby. Onward and outward.”
Vishby smiled suddenly, which with sea elves was accompanied by a slurping noise as they pulled their tongue back to make way for teeth. In fact, smiling was an unnatural expression for sea elves, and they only did it to let others know how they were feeling.
“Oh, good news, Turnball. I got my pilot’s licence back finally after the Mulch Diggums escape.”
“Good for you, sir.”
Vishby had been one of Mulch Diggums’s escorts when he escaped from the LEP. All sub-shuttle crew were required to hold a pilot’s qualification, in case the primary pilot became incapacitated.
“Just for emergency trips. But in a year or two I’ll be back in rotation.”
“Well, much as I know how you long to pilot a submarine again, let’s hope there are no emergency evacuations, eh?”
Vishby approximated a wink, which was difficult, as he didn’t have any eyelids and would have to give himself a spray soon to wash off the accumulated grit on his lower lid. His version of a wink was to tilt his head jauntily to one side.
“Emergency evacuations. No, we wouldn’t want that.”
Eye grit, thought Turnball. Disgusting. And: This fish boy is about as subtle as a steamroller with a siren on top. I’d better change the subject in case someone does happen to glance at the security monitors. It would be just my luck.
“So, Mr. Vishby. No mail for me today, I assume?”
“Nope. No mail for the umpteenth day in a row.”
Turnball rubbed his hands in the manner of one with urgent business. “Well, then. I must not keep you from your duties, and I myself have some modeling to do. I impose a schedule on myself, you see, and that must be adhered to.”
“Right you are, Turnball,” said Vishby, who had long since forgotten that he should be the one doing the dismissing, not the other way around. “Just wanted to let you know I had my licence back. Because that was in my schedule.”
Turnball’s smile never wavered, and he kept it bright by promising himself that he would dispose of this fool the second he was no longer of any use.
“Good. Thanks for coming by.”
Vishby was almost fully through the hatch before he turned to drop another clanger.
“Here’s hoping we don’t have an emergency evacuation, eh, Captain Root?”
Turnball moaned internally.
Captain. Now he calls me Captain.
Vatnajökull; Now
The new guy, Orion Fowl, was checking his hosiery.
“No compression socks,” he declared. “I have been on several plane journeys over the past few weeks, yet Artemis never wears compression socks. And I know he is aware of deep-vein thrombosis; he simply chooses to ignore the risks.”
This was Orion’s second rant in as many minutes, the last one detailing Artemis’s use of nonhypoallergenic deodorant, and Holly was growing tired of listening.
“I could sedate you,” she said brightly, as if this were the most reasonable course of action. “We slap a pad on your neck and leave you at the restaurant for the humans. End of hosiery discussion.”
Orion smiled kindly. “You wouldn’t do that, Captain Short. I could freeze to death before help arrived. I am an innocent. Also, you have feelings for me.”
“An innocent!” spluttered Holly, and it took an especially outlandish statement to make her splutter. “You are Artemis Fowl! For years, you were public enemy number one.”
“I am not Artemis Fowl,” protested Orion. “I share his body and his knowledge of the Gnommish tongue, among other things, but I have a completely different personality. I am what is known as an alter ego.”
Holly snorted. “I don’t think that defense will stand up in front of a tribunal.”
“Oh, it does,” said Orion happily. “All the time.”
Holly wormed up the slide of wafer slop to the lip of the crater in which the small band sheltered.
“No signs of hostiles. They appear to have descended into the underground craters.”
“Appear?” said Foaly. “Can’t you be a little more specific?”
Holly shook her head. “No. I’m on eyes only. All our instruments are out. We have no link outside our own local network. I would guess that the probe is blocking communications.”
Foaly was busy grooming himself, peeling long strings of gluey nano-wafers from his flank. “It’s designed to emit a broad-spectrum jammer if it’s under attack, knocking out communications and weapons. I’m surprised Artemis’s cannon fired, and I would imagine your guns have been isolated by now, and shut down.”
Holly checked her Neutrino. Dead as a doornail. There was nothing on her helmet readout either except a slowly revolving red skull icon, which signaled catastrophic systems failure.
“D’Arvit,” she hissed. “No weapons, no communications. How are we supposed to stop this thing?”
The centaur shrugged. “It’s a probe, not a battleship. It should be easy enough to destroy once radar picks it up. If this is some mastermind’s plot to destroy the fairy world, then he’s not much of a mastermind.”
Orion raised a finger. “I feel I should point out, correct me if Artemis is misremembering, but didn’t your instruments dismally fail to pick up this probe in the first place?”
Foaly scowled. “I was just starting to like you a little better than the other one.”
Holly stood erect. “We need to follow the probe.
Work out where it’s going and somehow get word through to Haven.”
Orion smiled. “You know, Miss Holly, you look very dramatic like that, backlit by the fire. Very attractive, if I may say so. I know you shared a moment passionné with Artemis, which he subsequently fouled up with his typical boorish behavior. Let me just throw something out there for you to consider while we’re chasing the probe: I share Artemis’s passion but not his boorishness. No pressure; just think about it.”
This was enough to elicit a deafening moment of silence even in the middle of a crisis, which Orion seemed to be blissfully unaffected by.
Foaly was the first to speak. “What’s that look you have on your face there, Commander Short? What’s going through your head right now? Don’t think about it, just tell me.”
Holly ignored him, but that didn’t stop the centaur talking.
“You had a moment of passion with Artemis Fowl?” he said. “I don’t remember reading that in your report.”
Holly may have been blushing, or it may have been the aforementioned dramatic backlighting. “It wasn’t in my report, okay? Because there was no moment of passion.”
Foaly didn’t give up so easily. “So nothing happened, Holly?”
“Nothing worth talking about. When we went back in time, my emotions got a little jumbled. It was temporary, okay? Can we please focus? We are supposed to be professionals.”
“Not me,” said Orion cheerily. “I’m just a teenager with hormones running wild. And may I say, young fairy lady,
they’re running wild in your direction.”
Holly lifted her visor and looked the hormonal teenager in the eye. “This had better not be a game, Artemis. If you do not have some serious psychosis, you will be sorry.”
“Oh, I’m crazy, all right. I do have plenty of psychoses,” said Orion cheerily. “Multiple personality, delusional dementia, OCD. I’ve got them all, but most of all, I’m crazy about you.”
“That’s not a bad line,” muttered Foaly. “He is definitely not Artemis.”
Holly stamped the slush from her boots. “We have two objectives: first, we need to hide evidence of fairy technology, i.e. the shuttle, from curious humans until such time as we can send a LEPretrieval team to haul it below. And our second objective is to somehow stay on the tail of that probe and get a message through to Police Plaza that it’s up here.” She glanced sharply at Foaly. “Could this be a simple malfunction?”
“No,” said the centaur with absolute certainty. “And I say that with absolute certainty. That probe has been deliberately reprogrammed, the amorphobots too. They were never meant to be used as weapons.”
“Then we have an enemy. Police Plaza needs to be warned.”
Holly turned to Orion. “Well, any ideas?”
The boy’s eyebrows rose a notch. “Bivouac?”
Holly rubbed the spot on her forehead where a headache had just blossomed.
“Bivouac. Fabulous.”
From behind came a sudden wrenching noise as the shuttle sank a little lower in the ice like a defeated warrior.