Of course, Butler was not aware of these biological details. All he knew was that he was suddenly flying backward, up high through the air, holding on to a jet-powered dwarf.
Not again, he thought, possibly the only human who would have this thought in this situation.
Butler saw Juliet shrinking into the distance, her mouth a shocked dark circle. And to Juliet it seemed as though her brother had suddenly developed the power of flight while wrestling a dwarf clad in a shiny hooded leotard.
I’ll worry about Juliet worrying about me later, thought Butler, trying not to think about the glossy, bubbled stream pushing them farther into the sky and closer to whatever craft they were suspended from. Look out below.
Butler had a more urgent problem than Juliet worrying about him, which he realized upon jamming Cruik’s helmet onto his own head. He and Cruik were coming up on the gyro, fast with no control over their approach. All Cruik could do was yell something about his brain, so it was up to Butler to see them through this alive. Altitude wasn’t the problem. They weren’t high enough to sustain any real damage, especially with a watery mattress below. The problem was the gyro’s rotor blade, which would slice them both into fine strips if they passed through it, then doubtless the gyrocopter would explode and incinerate the slices. The engine was whisper quiet, but a couple of bodies passing through the blade would soon blow the mufflers.
My last act on Earth could be to expose the Fairy People, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it.
Up they went, whooshing backward, wind snagging their clothes, chilling their skin. The dwarf’s eyes were wide and rolling, and his flesh hung in loose flaps.
He was chubby before. I’m sure of it.
The gyro blade was feet away as they whiplashed over the top of the craft and hung suspended for a nanosecond as Cruik finally ran out of nether-tunnel steam.
“Nice timing,” snarled Butler, then down they went directly toward the rotors.
Still, thought Butler. Killed saving my sister from a murderous dwarf. It could be worse.
At the last possible moment, the gyro’s rotor swiveled ninety degrees, tilting the craft dramatically, allowing Butler and Cruik to slot into it neatly on the leeward side.
Butler barely had a moment to thank his lucky stars when he was thrust into yet another perilous situation.
There seemed to be some serious fighting going on among an entire gang of dwarves. The passenger bay was littered with unconscious fairies while the three remaining dwarfs were slugging it out, two against one. The one had a bloody nose and a sooty star on his shoulder where someone had tagged him with a Neutrino, but still he seemed quite cheery.
“It’s about time you got here,” he said to Butler from the side of his mouth. “These guys are quite angry that I flipped their gyro.”
“Tombstone, you collaborator!” howled one of the remaining dwarfs.
“Tombstone?” said Butler, managing to groan and speak at the same time.
“Yeah,” said Butler’s old friend Mulch Diggums. “It’s my out-and-about name. And lucky for you I do go out.”
The gyro’s stabilizers steadied the craft, and Butler took advantage of the moment’s peace to disentangle himself from Cruik, whom he tossed out of the bay door.
“Ah, Cruik,” said Mulch. “Rarely does one meet someone with such a phonetically appropriate name.”
Butler wasn’t even listening. If there were a time to engage with Mulch’s ramblings, he hadn’t reached it yet. Instead he turned to the remaining hostile dwarfs.
“You two,” he said, treating them to his fiercest expression, an expression which had once made a troll think that maybe he had bitten off a little more than he could chew.
The two in question quailed under Butler’s gaze and wondered anxiously what this giant would order them to do.
Butler jerked a thumb toward the bay door. “Jump,” he said, keeping it simple. The dwarfs looked at each other, and the look spoke volumes.
Should we actually jump into daylight, they thought, or should we stay and fight this terrifying man mountain?
They held hands and jumped.
It took mere moments for Mulch to get control of the flight systems and drop the gyro down to scoop up Juliet.
“Hi-ho, Jade Princess,” he called from the pilot’s chair. “How’s the wrestling career going? I have an alter ego now too. Tombstone, they call me. What do you think?”
“I like it,” said Juliet, kissing Mulch’s cheek. “Thanks for rescuing us.”
Mulch smiled. “There was nothing on the TV. Except pay-per-view, and I refuse to buy programs, on principle. Except that chef guy with the foul mouth. I love him and what he can to with a turkey crown and a couple of string beans.”
Juliet’s newfound memories reminded her of Mulch’s obsession with food.
“So you just happened to be in a bar when the call came in to these guys?” said Butler doubtfully, throwing some emergency field packs to the stranded dwarfs below.
Mulch tugged the virtual joystick, quickly pulling the gyro into the clouds.
“Yes. It’s fate, my friends. I went against my own kind for you. I hope you appreciate it. Or rather, I hope your rich master appreciates it.”
Butler closed the hatch, shutting out the rush of air. “The way I remember it, I did most of the saving.”
“All you did was mess up my plan,” snorted the dwarf. “I was going to let them stun you both, winch you aboard, and then make my move.”
“Brilliant plan.”
“As opposed to throwing yourself into the gyro rotor blade?”
“Point taken.”
There was silence for a moment, the kind of silence you would definitely not get in a human flying machine. Also the kind of silence you get when a small group of people wonder just how long they can keep emerging from certain-death situations with a reasonable amount of life in their bodies.
“We’re off again, I suppose?” said Mulch eventually.
“Off on another save-the-world, nick-of-time, seat-of-the-pants adventure?”
“Well, in the space of one night we have been attacked by zombie wrestling fans and invisible dwarfs,” said Butler glumly. “So it certainly looks like it.”
“Where to?” asked Mulch. “Nowhere too sunny, I hope. Or too cold. I hate snow.”
Butler found that he was smiling, not with fondness exactly, but not with wolfish menace either.
“Iceland,” he said.
The gyro dipped sharply as Mulch momentarily let go of the V-joystick. “If you’re kidding, Butler, that’s not funny.”
Butler’s smile disappeared. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
CHAPTER 7
HOW DO I LOVE THEE?
Vatnajökull; Now
Orion Fowl chose to strap himself into the emergency evac harness directly behind Holly and spoke into her ear as she piloted the escape pod through the glacial wormhole excavated by the rogue probe.
Having a person talk directly into one’s ear is irritating at the best of times, but when that person is spouting romantic nonsense while the owner of the ear is attempting to wrestle with the controls of a twenty-year-old escape pod in a high-speed pursuit, then it’s a little more than annoying—it’s dangerously distracting.
Holly scrubbed the porthole with the sleeve of her suit. Outside, a single nose beam picked out the wormhole’s path.
Straight, she thought. At least it’s straight. “How do I love thee?” wondered Orion. “Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally . . . obviously eternally—that goes without saying.”
Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. “Is he serious?” she called over her shoulder to Foaly.
“Oh, absolutely,” said the centaur, his voice juddering along with the pod’s motion. “If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately.”
“Oh, I would never,” Orion assured her. “Ladies don’t look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows, like the goodly beast and
myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough.”
“I am not exuding anything,” said Holly, through gritted teeth.
Orion tapped her shoulder. “I beg to differ. You’re exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It’s pastel blue with little dolphins.”
Holly gripped the wheel tightly. “I’m going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?”
“And dolphins, little ones,” said Foaly, happy enough to be distracted from the fact that they were now chasing the probe that had blown up their shuttle, which was a bit like a mouse chasing a cat, a giant mutant cat with laser eyes and a bellyful of smaller spiteful cats.
“Be quiet, goodly beast. Be quiet, both of you.”
Holly could not afford to be distracted, so to shut out the babbling Orion, she talked herself through what she was doing, recording it all on the ship’s log.
“Still going through the ice, an incredibly thick vein. No radar, or sonar, just following the lights.”
The light show on display through the porthole was both eerie and colorful. The probe’s engines shot beams along the carved ice, sending rainbows flickering across the flat planes. Holly was sure she saw an entire school of whales preserved in the glacier, and maybe some kind of enormous sea reptile.
“The probe maintains its course, a diagonal descent. We are transitioning from ice to rock now, with no discernable delay.”
It was true: the increased density seemed to have no effect on the probe’s laser cutters.