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chapter-12-the-dork-posse

Haven City, the Lower Elements

Things were as grim as they had ever been in Haven City. Even the groups of empath elves, who could clearly perceive residual images from bygone millennia, and who liked to lecture school fairies on how life was a bucket of sweet chilies compared to how it used to be in the prospecting days, had to admit that this was the darkest day in Haven’s history.

The citizens of Haven were weathering their darkest night, made darker still by the absence of main power, which meant the only lights were the emergency lamps powered by the old geothermal generators. Dwarf spit had suddenly become a very valuable commodity, and many of Mulch’s relatives could be seen roving the refugee camp that had sprung up around the statue of Frond, selling jars of luminous spit for an ingot or two.

The LEP were coping the best they could, working in most cases with limited equipment. The main problem was coordination. The net of cameras and wireless hubs suspended on gossamer wire from the cavern ceiling had been upgraded three years previously with lenses from Koboi Labs. The entire network had caught fire and rained down on the citizens of Haven, branding many of them with a lattice of scars. This meant that the LEP were operating without intelligence, and relying on old radios for audio communication. Some of the younger police officers had never been in the field without full support from their precious helmets and were feeling a little exposed without constant updates of information from Police Plaza.

Fifty percent of the force was currently committed to fighting a huge fire at Koboi Labs, which had been taken over by the Krom automobile company. The explosion and subsequent fire had collapsed a large section of the underground cavern, and a pressure leak was barely being contained by plasti-gel cannons. The LEP had bulldozed through the rubble and bolstered the roof with pneumatic columns, but the fire was still liquefying the metal struts, and several types of toxic gas were jetting from cylinders around the compound.

Another ten percent of the officers were rounding up escaped prisoners from Howler’s Peak, which had, until its containment field flickered out, housed most of the criminal goblin kingpins behind Haven’s organized crime syndicates, as well as their enforcers and racketeers. These goblins were now scurrying around the backstreets of goblin town with their subcutaneous sleeper tags not responding to the frantic signals being repeatedly sent from headquarters. A few more-recently tagged goblins were unfortunate enough to have second-generation tags, which exploded inside their scalps, blowing holes in their skulls small enough to plug with a penny but large enough to be fatal to the cold-blooded creatures.

More of the officers were up to their eyeballs in the miscellaneous rescues, crowd control, and pursuit of opportunistic felons that went with a catastrophe of this magnitude.

And the rest of the LEP fairies had been put out of action by the explosion of the free cell phones they had recently won in a competition that they couldn’t remember entering—sent, no doubt, by Opal’s minions. In this manner, the evil pixie had managed to take out most of the Council, effectively crippling the People’s government in this time of emergency.

Foaly and his brainiacs were left in Police Plaza, trying to somehow revive a network that had literally been fried. Commander Kelp had barely paused on his way out the door to issue instructions to the centaur.

“Just get the tech working,” he said, strapping on a fourth holster. “Quick as you can.” “You don’t understand!” Foaly objected.

Trouble cut him off with a chop of his hand through the air. “I never understand. That’s why we pay you and your dork posse.” Foaly objected again. “They are not dorks!”

Trouble found space for yet another holster. “Really? That guy brings a Beanie Baby to work every day. And your nephew, Mayne, speaks fluent Unicorn.” “They’re not all dorks,” said Foaly, correcting himself.

“Just get this city working again,” said Trouble. “Lives depend on it.”

Foaly blocked the commander’s way. “You do understand that the old network is vaporized? Are you giving me free rein, to coin an offensive phrase, to do whatever I need to do?” Trouble brushed him aside. “Do whatever you need to do.”

Foaly almost grinned.

Whatever I need to do.

Foaly knew that the secret of a successful product launch was often in the name. A catchy name is more likely to pique investors’ curiosity and help the new invention take off, whereas some plodding series of letters and numbers will put everyone to sleep and ensure the product crashes and burns.

The lab name for Foaly’s latest pet project was Aerial Radiation-Coded Light-Sensitive Surveillance Pterygota 2.0, which the centaur knew had far too many syllables for potential investors. Rich people liked to feel cool, and embarrassing themselves by mispronouncing that mouthful was never going to help them to achieve that; so Foaly nicknamed the little guys ARClights.

The ARClights were the latest in a series of experimental bio-mech organisms that Foaly was convinced were the future of technology. The centaur had met considerable resistance from the Council on ethical grounds because he was marrying technology to living beings, even though he argued that most of the LEP officers now had little chips implanted in their cerebellums to help them control their helmets. The Council’s counter-argument was that the officers could choose whether or not to have the implants, whereas Foaly’s little experiments were grown that way.

And so, Foaly had not been given the go-ahead for public trials. Which is not to say that he hadn’t conducted any. He just hadn’t released his precious ARClights in public, not in the fairy public, at any rate. On the Fowl Estate—now, that was another matter.

The entire ARClight project was contained in a single battered field kit case hidden in plain view on top of a locker in the lab. Foaly reared up on his hind legs to snag the case and plonked it down on his workstation.

His nephew, Mayne, clopped up behind him to see what was going on.

“Dung navarr, Oncle?” he said.

“No unicorn-speak today, Mayne,” said Foaly, settling into his modified office harness. “I don’t have time.” Mayne folded his arms. “The unicorns are our cousins, Uncle. We should respect their tongue.” Foaly moved closer to the case so the scanner could identify him and pop the locks.

“I do respect the unicorns, Mayne. But real unicorns cannot talk. That gibberish you’re spouting came from a miniseries.” “Written by an empath,” said Mayne pointedly.

Foaly opened the case. “Listen, nephew, if you want to strap a horn to your forehead and go to conventions on the weekends, that’s completely fine. But today I need you in this universe. Understood?” “Understood,” said Mayne, grumpily. His mood lifted when he saw what was in the case. “Are those Critters?” “No,” said Foaly. “Critters are microorganisms. These are ARClights. The next generation.” Mayne remembered something. “You were refused permission for trials with those, weren’t you?” It irritated Foaly immensely that a centaur of his genius was being forced to justify himself to an assistant for the sake of relations with his sister.

“I got permission just now, from Commander Kelp. It’s all on video.”

“Wow,” said Mayne. “In that case, let’s see those little fellows in action.” Maybe he’s not so bad, thought Foaly, keying in the activation code on an old-fashioned manual keyboard in the case.

Once the code was punched in, the case synched with the lab’s wall screen, splitting it into a dozen blank boxes. This was nothing particularly special, and would have absolutely no one clapping their hands and saying Ooooh. What would have people applauding and gushing was the swarm of miniature genetically modified dragonflies waking up inside the case. The insects shook their sleepy heads and set their wings buzzing, then lifted off in perfect synchronized formation to hover at Foaly’s eye level.

“Oooh,” said Mayne, clapping his hands.

“Just wait,” said Foaly, activating the little dragonflies’ sensors. “Prepare to be amazed.” The cloud of dragonflies jittered as though suddenly charged, and their tiny eyes glowed green. Eleven of the twelve onscreen boxes displayed composite 3-D views of Foaly, stitched together from the viewpoint of each insect. Not only did the insects read the visible spectrum, but also infrared, UV, and thermal. A constantly updating stream of data scrolled down the side of the screens, displaying reams of information on Foaly’s heart rate, blood pressure, pulse, and gas emissions.

“These little beauties can go anywhere and see everything. They can glean information from every microbe. And all anyone can see is a swarm of dragonflies. My little ARClights could fly through the X-ray in an airport, and no one could tell they are stuffed with bio-tech. They go where I send them, and spy on who I tell them to.” Mayne pointed at a corner of the screen. “That section is blank.”

Foaly harrumphed. “I did a trial in Fowl Manor. And Artemis somehow detected the virtually undetectable. I imagine my beauties are lying in pieces under an electron microscope in his laboratory.” “I didn’t read that in any report.”

“No. I forgot to mention it. That trial wasn’t exactly an unqualified success, but this one will be.” Foaly’s fingers were clicking blurs on the keyboard. “Once I program in the mission parameters, then my ARClights will have citywide surveillance restored in minutes.” Foaly instructed a single bug to land on his index finger. “You, my little fellow, are special, because you will be going to my home, just to make sure my beloved Caballine is all right.” Mayne leaned in, peering at the little bug. “You can do that?”

Foaly wiggled his finger, and the bug flew off, winding sideways through a vent.

“I can do whatever I like. They are even coded to my voice. Watch.” Foaly leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. “ARClight activation code alpha alpha one. I am Foaly. Foaly is my name. Immediate deployment to downtown Haven. Scenario three. All sections. Citywide disaster. Fly, my pretties, fly.” The ARClights moved like a shoal of silver fish through water, gliding through the air in perfect synchronized flight, then forming into a tight cylinder and shooting through the vent. Their wings skittered against the chute wall, sending back data from every inch covered.

The theatricality appealed to Mayne’s graphic novel–loving sensibility.

“’Fly, my pretties, fly.’ Cool. Did you make that up yourself?”

Foaly began analyzing the data that was already flooding in from his ARClights.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every word a Foaly original.”

The ARClights could be steered manually; or, if that function was off-line, they would fly to preordained irradiated spots on the cavern roof. The tiny bio-tech insects performed perfectly, and within minutes Foaly had a functioning network suspended above Haven that could be manipulated with a word or gesture.

“Now, Mayne,” he said to his nephew. “I want you to take over here and feed information to Commander Kelp over the”—he shuddered—“radio. I am going to take a minute to check on your Aunty Caballine.” “Mak dak jiball, Oncle,” said Mayne, saluting. Something else actual unicorns could not do.

Humans have a saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which basically means if you think it’s beautiful, then it is beautiful. The elfin version of this saying was composed by the great poet B.O. Selecta, who said: Even the plainest of the plain shall deign to reign, which critics have always thought was a bit rhymey. The dwarf version of the maxim is: If it don’t stink, marry it, which is slightly less romantic, but the general gist is the same.

Foaly had no need of these sayings, for in his mind beauty was personified by his wife, Caballine. If anyone had ever asked him for a definition of beauty, he would simply have directed their gaze to his wrist, and then activated the hologram crystal built into his wrist computer, projecting a revolving CG rendering of his wife into midair.

Foaly was so in love with his wife that he sighed whenever Caballine crossed his mind, which was several times an hour. As far as the centaur was concerned, he had found his soul mate.

Love had tugged Foaly’s fetlock relatively late in life. When all the other centaurs had been galloping around the sim-pasture, pawing the dirt, texting the fillies, and sending their chosen ones candied carrots, Foaly had been up to his armpits in laboratory equipment, trying to get his radical inventions out of his head and into the real world. By the time he realized that love might be passing him by, it had already disappeared over the horizon. So the centaur convinced himself that he didn’t need companionship and was content to live for his job and work friends.

Then, when Holly Short was missing in another dimension, he met Caballine at Police Plaza. At least that was what he told everyone. Met might be a slightly misleading verb, as it implies that the situation was pleasant, or at least nonviolent. What actually happened was that one of Foaly’s face-recognition software programs malfunctioned in a bank camera and identified Caballine as a goblin bank robber. She was immediately pounced on by the security guard jumbo pixies and ridden to Police Plaza. The ultimate ignominy for a centaur.

By the time the entire mess was traced back to software error, Caballine had been confined to a gel cell for over three hours. She had missed her mother’s birthday party and was extremely anxious to throttle the person responsible for the mix-up. Foaly was told by Commander Kelp in no uncertain terms to get down to the holding cells and take responsibility for his foul-up.

Foaly trudged down there, ready to spout one of a dozen standard excuses, all of which evaporated when he came face-to-face with Caballine in the hospitality suite. Foaly didn’t meet many centaurs, and he certainly would never bump into one as beautiful as Caballine, with her chestnut eyes, strong wide nose, and glossy hair down to her waist.

“Just my luck,” he blurted, without thinking. “That’s just typical of my luck.” Caballine had herself all psyched up to tear metaphorical strips off the hide of whatever imbecile had been responsible for her incarceration—and perhaps actual strips, too—but Foaly’s reaction gave her pause, and she decided to give him one chance to dig himself out of the hole he was in.

“What is just typical of your luck?” she said, regarding him frankly, letting him know that his answer better be a good one.

Foaly knew the pressure was on and so thought carefully before answering.

“It’s just typical of my luck,” he said eventually, “that I finally meet someone as beautiful as you, and all you want to do is kill me.” This was a pretty good line, and, judging by the misery in Foaly’s eyes, there was also more than a grain of truth in it.

Caballine decided to take pity on the dejected centaur before her and dial down her antagonism a few notches, but it was too early to let Foaly off the hook completely.

“And why wouldn’t I want to kill you? You think I look like a criminal.”

“I don’t think that. I would never think that.”

“Really? Because the algorithm that identified me as a goblin bank robber is based on your thought patterns.” This lady is smart, Foaly realized. Smart and gorgeous.

“True,” he said. “But I imagine there were secondary factors involved.”

“Such as?”

Foaly decided to go for broke. He felt an attraction toward this centaur that was short-circuiting his brain. The closest he could come to describing the sensation was a sustained low-level electrical shock, like the ones he inflicted on volunteers in his sleep-deprivation experiments.

“Such as, my machine is incredibly stupid, because you are the opposite of a goblin bank robber.” Caballine was amused but not won over just yet.

“Which is?”

“Which is a non-goblin customer making a deposit.”

“Which is what I am, dummy.”

Foaly flinched. “What?”

“Dummy. Your machine is a dummy.”

“Yes. Absolutely. I will have it disassembled immediately and reassembled as a toaster.” Caballine bit her lip and could have conceivably been holding back a smile.

“That’s a start. But you still have a long way to go before we’re done here.” “I understand. If you have any capital crimes in your past, I could wipe them from your record. In fact, if you’d like to disappear altogether, I could arrange that.” Foaly rethought this last sentence. “That sounded like I was going to have you killed, which I totally am not. The last thing I would ever do is have you killed. Quite the opposite.” Caballine took her handbag from the back of a chair and slung it across her fringed blouse. “You are quite fond of opposites, Mr. Foaly. What is the opposite of having me killed?” Foaly met her gaze for the first time. “Keeping you happy and alive forever.” Caballine moved to leave, and Foaly thought, Stupid donkey. You blew it.

But she stopped at the threshold and threw Foaly a lifeline.

“I do have a parking ticket that I did pay, but your machines seem to have it in for me, and they swear I didn’t. You could have a look at that.” “No problem,” said Foaly. “Consider it done and that machine compacted.”

“I’m going to tell all my friends about this,” said Caballine, already leaving the room, “when I see them at the Hoovre Gallery launch this weekend. Do you like art, Mr. Foaly?” Foaly stood there for a full minute after she was gone, staring at the spot where Caballine’s head had been when she’d last spoke. Later on, he had to rewind the suite’s surveillance footage to make sure Caballine had kind of, sort of, asked him on a date.

And now they were married, and Foaly considered himself the luckiest dummy in the world and, even though the city was mired in a crisis the likes of which had never before been visited on the subterranean metropolis, he had no hesitation in taking a moment to check on his gorgeous wife, who would probably be at this moment at home worrying about him.

Caballine, he thought, I will be with you soon.

Since their wedding ritual, Foaly and his wife had shared a mental bond like the one often experienced by twins.

I know she is alive, he thought.

But that was all he knew. She could be hurt, trapped, distressed, or in danger. Foaly did not know. And he had to know.

The ARClight Foaly had dispatched to check on Caballine had been built especially for that purpose and knew exactly where to go. Foaly had months ago painted a corner of the kitchen ceiling with a laser that would attract the bug from hundreds of miles away if need be.

Foaly shunted the other ARClight feeds to the main situation room, where Mayne could monitor them, and then concentrated on Caballine’s bug.

Fly, my pretty. Fly.

The modified dragonfly zipped through Police Plaza’s vent system and out over the city, darting through the chaos that permeated the streets and buildings. Fires flared in the piazza and on the freeway. The billboards that lined every street had been reduced to carbonized frames, and floodwater filled the sunken open-air amphitheater as far as Row H.

Mayne can handle that for five minutes, thought Foaly. I am coming, Caballine.

The ARClight buzzed beyond the central plaza to the southern suburb, which had more of a rural feel. Genetically modified trees grew in small copses, and there were even controlled amounts of woodland creatures that were carefully monitored and released aboveground when they multiplied to nuisance levels. The dwellings here were modest, less modern in their architecture, and outside the evacuation zone. Foaly and Caballine lived in a small split-level with adobe walls and curved windows. The color scheme was autumnal throughout, and the décor had always been a little back to nature for Foaly’s taste, though he would never have dreamed of mentioning it.

Foaly pulled his V-board toward him and expertly controlled the little bug with numerical coordinates, though it would have been easier to use a joystick, or even voice control. It was ironic that someone who was responsible for so many technological breakthroughs still preferred to use an ancient virtual keyboard that he had made from a window frame when he was in college.

The top half of the door was ajar, and so Foaly had his ARClight dip inside the lobby, which was decorated with woven wall hangings depicting great moments in centaurian history, such as the discovery of fire by King Thurgood, and the accidental discovery of penicillin by the stable hand Shammy Sod, whose name had entered the popular vernacular to mean an extremely lucky person, for example: He’s won the lottery for the second time, the shammy sod.

The dragonfly whirred along the corridor to find Caballine sitting on her yoga blanket, staring at the cell phone in her hand. She looked shaken but unhurt, and was scrolling through the menus on her screen, looking for a network.

You will have no luck there, my love, thought Foaly, then sent a text to her phone directly from the ARClight.

There’s a little dragonfly watching over you, said the text. Caballine read it and raised her face, searching for the bug. Foaly set the eyes flashing green to help her. Foaly’s wife raised her hand, and the bug swooped down to land on her finger.

“My clever husband,” she said, smiling. “What is happening to our city?”

Foaly sent another message, and made a mental note to add a voice box to the next version of the ARClights.

You are safe at home. We have had some major explosions, but all is under control.

Caballine nodded. “Will you be home soon?” she asked the bug.

Not soon. It could be a long night.

“Don’t worry, honey. I know they need you. Is Holly okay?”

I don’t know. We’ve lost contact, but if anyone can look after herself, it’s Holly Short.

Caballine lifted her finger and the dragonfly hovered before her face. “You need to look after yourself, too, Mr. Technical Consultant.” I will, texted Foaly.

Caballine took a ribboned box from the low table. “While I’m waiting for you, I will open this lovely gift that someone sent to me, you romantic centaur.” Back in the lab, Foaly felt a stab of jealousy. A gift? Who would have sent a present? His jealousy was quickly trumped by anxiety. After all, this was the day of Opal Koboi’s great revenge, and there was no one the pixie hated more than him.

Don’t open it, he sent quickly. I did not send it, and bad things are happening.

But Caballine did not need to open the box, for it was both time- and DNA-coded, and as soon as she touched it, the omni-sensor on the side scanned her finger and set the opening mechanism whirring. The lid pinged away from the box, spinning away to slap the wall, and inside was…nothing. Literally nothing. A black absence that seemed to repel ambient light.

Caballine peered into the box. “What is this?” she asked. “One of your gizmos?” Which was as much as Foaly heard, because the blackness—or whatever it was—shorted out the ARClight, leaving Foaly ignorant as to his wife’s fate.

“No!” he blurted. “No. No.”

Something was happening. Something sinister. Opal had decided to target Caballine specifically to torture him. He was sure of it. The pixie’s accomplice, whoever it was, had mailed his wife this seemingly innocuous box, but it was far from harmless; Foaly would bet his two hundred plus patents on it.

What has she done?

The centaur agonized over the question for about five seconds, until Mayne stuck his head into the room.

“We have something from the ARClights. I think I should push it across to your screens.” Foaly stamped a hoof. “Not now, stupid pony. Caballine is in danger.”

“You need to see this,” said Mayne, standing his ground.

Something in his nephew’s tone, a bite of steel that hinted at the centaur this boy would become, made Foaly look up. “Very well. Shunt it across.” The screens immediately came to life with overhead shots of Haven from dozens of angles. Each shot was black and white except for clusters of red dots.

“The dots are the escaped goblin sleeper/seekers,” explained Mayne. “The ARClights can detect their radiation signatures but not activate them.” “But this is good news,” said Foaly irritably. “Send the coordinates to the agents on the ground.” “They were moving randomly, but seconds ago they all changed direction, at exactly the same time.” Foaly knew then what Opal had done, how her weapon had gotten past the courier’s security scans. She had used a sonix bomb.

“And they’re headed for my house,” he said.

Mayne swallowed. “Exactly. Just as fast as they can run. The first group will arrive in less than five minutes.” At this point Mayne was talking to thin air, as Foaly had already galloped out through the side door.