“The old-fashioned way,” repeated Mulch. “With a futuristic pressure suit and a fairy phone.”
A raft of vocal objections followed:
“You can’t go—it’s too dangerous.”
“I shall go in your place.”
“Why does it have to be my phone?”
Artemis waited until the clamor had died down, then dealt with the protests in his usual terse, patronizing manner.
“I must go because the next stage of Turnball’s plan obviously involves further loss of life, and the lives of many are more important than the lives of the few.”
“I saw that on Star Trek,” said Mulch.
“It must be me,” continued Artemis. “Because there is only one suit, and it appears to be approximately my size. And, if I’m not mistaken—and it would be highly unusual that I would be—a correct fit is vital, where pressure suits are concerned, unless you want your eyeballs popping out of their sockets.”
If someone else had said this, it might be considered a joke to lift the atmosphere, but from the mouth of Artemis Fowl it was a simple statement of fact.
“And finally, Foaly, it has to be your phone because, knowing your build standards as I do, it was made to withstand great pressures. Am I correct?”
“You are,” said Foaly, accepting the compliment with a nod of his long face. “About the fit of the suit too. These things won’t even seal properly if they don’t like your dimensions.”
Butler was not pleased, but in the end he was the employee, though Artemis did not play that card. “I must go, Butler,” said Artemis firmly. “My mind is eating me alive. I think the guilt is the main problem. I must do whatever I can to atone.”
“And?” said Butler, unconvinced.
Artemis held his arms out so that Foaly could drape the suit sleeves over them.
“And I will not be beaten by that jackass.”
“Jackass?” said Foaly, wounded. “My favorite uncle is a jackass.”
The pressure suit was actually two suits. The inner layer was a one-piece membrane threaded with life support, and the outer shell was body armor with a volatile surface that absorbed the water pressure and used it to power the servo mechanisms. Very clever, as you would expect from Koboi Laboratories.
“Koboi,” muttered Artemis, dismayed when he saw the logo. Even a person not obsessed with omens would be a little put out by his nemesis’s signature etched into the suit that was supposed to save his life. “I am not buoyed by that.”
“You are not supposed to be buoyed,” said Foaly, lowering the transparent helmet bubble. “You are supposed to be equalized.”
“I’m pretty sure that both of you just made really horrible jokes,” said Mulch, who was chewing something he had found somewhere. “But I’m not sure because I think you broke my funny bone.”
At this point, Mulch’s comments were like background chatter and were almost soothingly constant.
Foaly fixed his phone to an omni-sensor at the front of the helmet. “It would take a swipe from a whale’s tail to knock this loose. It’s good for any depths or pressure you are likely to encounter, and will even pick up the vibration of your speech and convert them to sound waves. But do try to enunciate.”
“You stick close to the rock face,” said Butler, cradling the helmet to make sure Artemis was paying attention. “And at the first sign of trouble, I’m making the call to reel you in, not you. Do you understand, Artemis?”
Artemis nodded. The suit was connected to a dock on the ship’s hull by a signature electromagnetic beam, which would zap it back to base in case of emergency.
“Just have a quick look around the site with Foaly’s phone, and back you come. Ten minutes is all you get; then you’ll have to follow another lead. Got it?”
Another nod from Artemis, but it seemed more like he was shutting out something than actually listening to Butler’s words.
Butler snapped his fingers. “Focus, Artemis! Time enough for your Atlantis Complex later. We have the Atlantis Trench outside that door and six miles of water above it. If you want to stay alive, you need to stay alert.” He turned to Holly. “This is ridiculous. I’m pulling the plug.”
Holly’s mouth was a tight line as she shook her head. “Navy rules, Butler. You’re on my boat, you follow my orders.”
“As I remember, I brought the boat.”
“Yes, thanks for bringing my boat.”
Artemis used this exchange to move closer to the rear air lock, a tight space where Butler could not follow.
“Ten minutes, old friend,” he said, his voice robotic through the helmet speaker. “Then you can reel me back in.”
Butler suddenly thought about how Angeline Fowl would react when she heard about this latest escapade.
“Artemis, wait. There must be another way. . . .”
But his objection bounced off a wall of Perspex as the air lock dividing wall slid down with a noise like ball bearings rolling around the bottom of a can.
“I don’t like that ball-bearing noise,” said Mulch. “Doesn’t sound very watertight.”
No one argued. They knew what he meant.
* * *
On the other side of the divider, Artemis was having a few misgivings of his own. He had just noticed the mercenaries’ name for the ship, which was painted on the inside of the ocean door in what was supposed to look like blood but could not be or it would have long since washed off.
Probably some rubber-based solution, thought Artemis, but the base of the mercenaries’ paint was not what bothered him—it was the name itself, which was Plunderer, in Gnommish of course. The verb plunder was pronounced ffurfor, and the er suffix that changes the verb to a noun has, in Gnommish, the sound fer, which would imply that one is derived from the other. Grammar lesson aside, the pronunciation of the word plunderer was more or less fourfourfour.
Four four four, thought Artemis, pale inside his helmet.
Death death death.
At which point the hull door slid up with more ball-bearing noises, and the ocean sucked him into its deep dark depths.
Take a moment, thought Artemis as the suit’s outer skin vibrated and activated the glow orbs at his temples, fingertips, and knees. Don’t count, don’t organize, just do as Butler advized and focus.
He did not feel underwater, though he knew he was. His body did not experience the expected resistance from the ocean, there was no dulling of the motor skills, and he felt as though he could move with the same fluency as he always did, though Butler would argue whether his movements were ever fluid.
Which would have been great, had not the giant squid, whose territory he had just invaded, wrapped this glowing intruder in ten fat limbs and whisked him off toward his lair.
Ah, the mythical giant squid. Genus Architeuthis, thought Artemis, strangely calm now that he was faced with a catastrophe worthy of all the worrying he’d been doing. Not so mythical anymore.
CHAPTER 9
FORBIDDEN LOVE
TURNBALL Root had met Leonor Carsby on the remote Hawaiian island of Lehua in the summer of 1938. Leonor was there because she had crash-landed her Lockheed Electra into the northern slope of the island’s volcanic ridge and freewheeled into the oddly shaped natural canal known as The Keyhole, which cut through the island. Turnball had been there because he’d maintained a winter residence on the otherwise uninhabited island, where he liked to drink wine and listen to jazz recordings while he planned his next heist.
They were an unlikely couple, but their first meeting took place in the kind of extreme circumstances that often cause hearts to beat faster and believe themselves in love.
Leonor Carsby was a human Manhattan heiress, but also a founding member of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women in aviation first presided over by Amelia Earhart. When Earhart was lost in the Pacific, Leonor Carsby vowed that she herself would complete the journey that her friend and hero Amelia had begun.
In April 1938 she took off from California with a
navigator and extra-large fuel tanks. Six weeks later, Leonor Carsby arrived in The Keyhole with neither, having lost both to Lehua’s cruel crescent-shaped ridge. It was a miracle she herself survived, improbably protected only by the Lockheed’s bubble cockpit.
On his daily patrol, Unix had come across the heiress spread-eagled on a flat rock at the water’s edge. She was not in good shape: dehydrated, one leg badly broken, delirious, and on the edge of death.
The sprite called it in, expecting to be given the execution order, but something about the human woman’s face on his screen interested Turnball. He instructed Unix not to do anything, but to wait for his arrival.
Turnball took the trouble to shave, draw his hair back into a ponytail, and put on a fresh ruffled shirt before taking the lift from the subterranean cave to the surface. There he found Unix squatting over the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. Even twisted unnaturally and covered with blood and bruises, it was clear to Turnball that she was an exquisite beauty.