فصل سوم

chapter-3-fire-and-brimstone

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.

Artemis and Butler leaned back and allowed the safety cinches to drop over their shoulders, pulling comfortably close on tension-sensitive rollers.

Artemis’s fingers scrunched the material of his pants at the knees. Their progress down the feeder rail seemed maddeningly slow. At the end of the metal panel–clad rock tunnel they could see the vent itself, a glowing crescent yawning like the gate to hell.

“Holly,” he said without parting his teeth, “please, a little acceleration.”

Holly lifted her gloved hands from the wheel. “We’re still on the feeder rail, Artemis. It’s all automatic.” Foaly’s face appeared in a heads-up display on the windshield. “I’m sorry, Artemis,” he said. “I really am. We’ve run out of time.” “No!” said Artemis, straining against his belt. “There are fifteen seconds left. Twelve at least.” Foaly’s eyes dropped to the controls before him. “We have to close the doors to ensure everyone inside the blast tunnels survives. I really am sorry, Artemis.” The off-roader jerked, then halted as the power was cut to the rail.

“We can make it,” Artemis said, his voice close to a panicked wheeze.

Up ahead the mouth to hell began to close as the giant dwarf-forged gears rolled the meter-thick slatted shutters down over the vent.

Artemis grasped Holly’s shoulder. “Holly? Please.”

Holly rolled her eyes and flicked the controls to manual.

“D’Arvit,” she said, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

The off-roader leaped forward, jerking free from its guide rail, setting off revolving lights and warning sirens.

Onscreen, Foaly rubbed his eyelids with index fingers. “Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Captain Short goes rogue once more. Hands up who’s surprised. Anyone?” Holly tried to ignore the centaur and concentrate on squeezing the shuttle through the shrinking gap.

Usually I pull this sort of stunt toward the end of an adventure, she thought. Third-act climax. We’re starting early this time.

The shuttle grated along the tunnel floor, the friction sending up twin arcs of sparks that bounced off the walls. Holly slipped control goggles over her eyes and automatically adjusted her vision to the curious double focus necessary to send blink commands to the sensors in her lenses and actually look at what was in front of her.

“Close,” she said. “It’s going to be close.” And then, before they lost the link: “Good luck, Foaly. Stay safe.” The centaur tapped his screen with two fingers. “Good luck to us all.”

Holly bought them an extra few inches by deflating the Cupid’s suspension pads, and the off-roader ducked under the descending blast doors with half a second to spare, swooping into the natural chimney. Below, the earth’s core spewed up magma columns ten miles wide, creating fiery updrafts that blasted the small shuttle’s scorched underside and set it spiraling toward the surface.

Holly set the stabilizers and allowed the headrest to cradle her neck and skull.

“Hold on,” she said. “There’s a rough ride ahead.”

Pip jumped when the alarm sounded on his phone as though he had not been expecting it, as though he had not been counting the seconds. Nevertheless he seemed surprised, now that the moment had finally arrived. Shooting Kip had drained the cockiness from him, and his body language was clearly that of a reluctant assassin.

He tried to regain some of that old cavalier spirit by waving his gun a little and leering at the camera; but it is difficult to represent the murder of a childlike pixie as anything but that.

“I warned you,” he said to the camera. “This is on you people, not me.”

In Police Plaza, Commander Kelp activated the mike.

“I will find you,” he growled. “If it takes me a thousand years, I will find you and deliver you to a lifetime’s imprisonment.” This actually seemed to cheer Pip a little. “You? Find me? Sorry if that doesn’t worry me, cop, but I know someone who scares me a lot more than you.” And without further discussion he shot Opal, once, in the head.

The pixie toppled forward as though struck from behind with a shovel. The bullet’s impact drove her into the ground with some force, but there was very little blood except a small trickle from her ear, almost as if young Opal had fallen from her bicycle in the schoolyard.

In Police Plaza the usually riotous operations center grew quiet as the entire force waited for the repercussions of the murder they had just witnessed. Which quantum theory would prove correct? Perhaps nothing at all would happen apart from the death of a pixie.

“Okay,” said Trouble Kelp, after a long pregnant moment. “We’re still operational. How long before we’re out of the troll’s den?” Foaly was about to run a few calculations on the computer when the wall screen spontaneously shattered, leaking green gas into the room.

“Hold on to something,” he advised. “Chaos is coming.”

Atlantis

Opal Koboi felt herself die, and it was a curious sensation, like an anxious gnawing at her insides.

So this is what trauma feels like, she thought. I’m sure I’ll get over it.

The sour sickness was soon replaced by a fizzing excitement as she relished the notion of what she was to become.

Finally I am transforming. Emerging from my chrysalis as the most powerful creature on the planet. Nothing will stand in my way.

This was all very melodramatic, but Opal decided that, under the circumstances, her eventual biographer would understand.

It never occurred to the pixie that her theory of temporal paradox could simply be dead wrong, and she could be left down a hole in a nuclear reactor having killed her only real ally.

I feel a tingle, she thought. It’s beginning.

The tingle became an uncomfortable burning sensation in the base of her skull that quickly spread to clamp her entire head in a fiery vise. Opal could no longer nurture thoughts of future conquests as her entire being suddenly became fear and pain.

I have made a mistake, she thought desperately. No prize is worth another second of this.

Opal thrashed inside her anti-rad suit, fighting the soft constraints of the foam, which blunted her movements. The pain spread through her nervous system, increasing in intensity from merely unbearable to unimaginable. Whatever slender threads of sanity Opal had left snapped like a brig’s moorings in a hurricane.

Opal felt her magic return to conquer the pain in what remained of her nerve endings. The mad and vengeful pixie fought to contain her own energy and not be destroyed utterly by her own power, even now being released as electrons shifted orbits and nuclei spontaneously split. Her body phase-shifted to pure golden energy, vaporizing the radiation suit and burning wormhole trails through the dissolving foam, ricocheting against the walls of the neutron chamber and back into Opal’s ragged consciousness.

Now, she thought. Now the rapture begins, as I remake myself in my own image. I am my own god.

And, with only the power of her mind, Opal reassembled herself. Her appearance remained unchanged, for she was vain and believed herself to be perfect. But she opened and expanded her mind, allowing new powers to coat the bridges between her nerve cells, focusing on the ancient mantras of the dark arts so that her new magic could be used to bring her soldiers up from their resting place. Power like this was too much for one body, and she must excise it as soon as her escape was made, or her atoms would be shredded and swept away like windborne fireflies.

Nails are hard to reassemble, she thought. I might have to sacrifice my fingernails and toenails.

The ripple effects of young Opal’s murder in the corner of a field were more widespread than even Artemis could have imagined, though in truth imagine is the wrong verb, as Artemis Fowl was not in the habit of imagining anything. Even as a small boy, he had never nurtured daydreams of himself on horseback fighting dragons. What Artemis preferred to do was visualize an achievable objective and then work toward that goal.

His mother, Angeline, had once peered over eight-year-old Artemis’s shoulder as he sketched in his journal.

Oh, darling, that’s wonderful! she’d exclaimed, delighted that her boy had finally shown some interest in artistic creativity, even if the picture did seem a little violent. It’s a giant robot destroying a city.

No, Mother, Artemis had sighed, ever the theatrical misunderstood genius. It’s a builder drone constructing a lunar habitat.

Angeline had ruffled her son’s hair in revenge for the sigh and wondered if little Arty might need to talk to someone professional.

Artemis had considered the widespread devastation that would be caused by the spontaneous energy exploding from all Opal-related material, but even he was not aware of the saturation levels Koboi products had achieved in the few years before her incarceration. Koboi Industries had many legitimate businesses, which manufactured everything from weapons parts to medical equipment; but Opal had also several shadow companies that illegally extended her influence to the human world and even into space, and the effects of these tens of thousands of components exploding ranged from inconvenient to downright catastrophic.

In the LEP lockup, two hundred assorted weapons, which were scheduled for recycling the following week, collapsed like melting chocolate bars, then radiated a fierce golden light that fried all local closed-circuit systems before exploding with the power of a hundred bars of Semtex. Fission was not achieved, but the damage was substantial nonetheless. The warehouse was essentially vaporized, and several of the underground city’s load-bearing support pillars were toppled like children’s building blocks.

Haven City Center collapsed inward, allowing a million tons of the earth’s crust to cave in on top of the fairy capital, breaking the pressure seal and increasing the atmosphere readings by almost a thousand percent. Anything under the falling rock was squashed instantly. There were eighty-seven fatalities, and property damage was absolute.

Police Plaza’s basement collapsed, causing the bottom three floors to sink into the depression. Fortunately the upper floors were bolted to the cavern roof, which held firm and saved the lives of many officers who had elected to remain at their posts.

Sixty-three percent of fairy automobiles had Koboi pistons in their engines, which blew simultaneously, causing an incredible synchronized flipping of vehicles, part of which was captured on a parking garage camera that had somehow survived compression. It would in future years become the most viewed clip on the Underworld Web.

Koboi shadow labs had for years been selling obsolete fairy technology to human companies, as it would seem cutting-edge to their shareholders. These little wonder chips or their descendants had wended their way into almost every computer-controlled device built within the past few years. These chips inside laptops, cell phones, televisions, and toasters popped and pinged like kinetically charged ball bearings in tin cans. Eighty percent of electronic communication on planet Earth immediately ceased. Humanity was heaved back to the paper age in half a second.

Life-support systems spat out bolts of energy and died. Precious manuscripts were lost. Banks collapsed as all financial records for the past fifty years were completely wiped out. Planes fell from the sky, the Graum II space station drifted off into space, and defense satellites that were not supposed to exist stopped existing.

People took to the streets, shouting into their dead cell phones as if volume could reactivate them. Looting spread across countries like a computer virus while actual computer viruses died with their hosts, and credit cards became mere rectangles of plastic. Parliaments were stormed worldwide as citizens blamed their governments for this series of inexplicable catastrophes.

Gouts of fire and foul blurts of actual brimstone emerged from cracks in the earth. These were mostly from ruptured pipes, but people took up a cry of Armageddon. Chaos reigned, and the survivalists eagerly unwrapped the kidskin from their crossbows.

Phase one of Opal’s plan was complete.