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CHAPTER 10: A FOWL

MOOD

FEZ, MOROCCO

TEN-year-old Artemis was about as miserable as Butler could remember seeing him, except for perhaps the time he had lost a science prize to an Australian postgraduate. The bodyguard glanced in the mirror of the rented Land Rover, and saw that his young charge was sitting in a puddle of perspiration, his expensive suit virtually dissolving on his spare frame.

A perforated box sat belted on the seat beside Artemis. Three black fingers poked from one of the holes as the captured lemur explored his prison.

Artemis has barely looked at the creature. He is trying to objectify it. It is no small thing to cause the extinction of a species, even to save one’s father.

Artemis, meanwhile, was cataloguing the causes of his misery. A missing father and a mother teetering on the brink of nervous collapse were numbers one and two. Followed by a team of Arctic explorers running up expenses in a Moscow hotel room, doubtless living on room service, caviar with everything. Damon Kronski figured high on the list too. A repulsive man, with repellent ideals.

The local airport, Fez Saïss, had been closed and so Butler had been forced to detour the Learjet to Mohammed V International in Casablanca and rent a Land Rover there. And not a modern Land Rover either. This one belonged in the last millennium and had more holes than a block of Gruyère cheese. The air-conditioning had spluttered its last over a hundred miles ago and the seat padding was worn so thin that Artemis felt like he was sitting on a jackhammer. If the heat didn’t bake him, the vibration would shake him to death.

Still, in spite of all these things, a thought struck Artemis, causing the corner of his mouth to twitch in a half smile.

That strange creature and her human companion are utterly fascinating.

They were desperate to have this lemur and they would not give up. He was certain of it.

Artemis turned his attention to the city suburbs bouncing past his window. The desert highway was suddenly thick with traffic as they neared the city centre. Giant trucks thundered past, tyres taller than a grown man, their flat-beds stuffed with sullen human cargo. Harried donkeys’ hooves clicked on the broken tarmac, their backs piled high with sticks, laundry or even furniture. Thousands of dusty mopeds slalomed through the lanes, often bearing entire families on their rusting frames. The roadside buildings shimmered in the late afternoon sun like mirages. Ghost houses, with tea-drinking spectres seated out at the front.

Closer to the city centre the buildings were denser with no tracts of desert in between. Dwellings were interspersed with garages and video stores, tea shops and pizza parlours. All were the same sandblasted orange colour, with patches of original paint poking through below the lintels.

Artemis felt, as he always did when visiting developing nations, mild surprise at the coexistence of ancient and modern. Goat herders toted iPods on spangled chains and wore Manchester United shirts. Shacks had satellite dishes bolted to their corrugated roofs.

Until recent times, Fez had been a place of real importance, being the depot for the caravan trade from the south and east. It was known as a centre of Arab wisdom, a holy city, and a place of pilgrimage when the route to Mecca was closed by weather conditions or overrun with bandits.

Now it had become a place where outlawed Extinctionists did deals with desperate Irish criminals.

The world is changing more rapidly now than it ever has before, thought Artemis. And I am helping to change it, for the worst.

Not a comforting thought, but comfort was not a luxury he expected to enjoy in the near future.

Artemis’s mobile phone buzzed as an incoming text message arrived, having made its way from Fez to Ireland and back to Morocco.

He checked the screen and a mirthless smile exposed his incisors.

The leather souq. Two hours, read the message.

Kronski wished to make the exchange in a public place.

Apparently the doctor trusts me about as much as I trust him. Smart man.

Holly piloted the shuttle as though she were angry with it, slamming the mining craft round bends until its air brakes screamed and its readout needles shot into the red. She wore a flight helmet hard-wired directly into the shuttle’s cameras, so a wraparound view of the shuttle was available to her at all times; she could even choose a remote view beamed to the shuttle from the tunnel’s various cameras. This particular stretch of tunnel saw little traffic and so the motion-sensitive lights would pop on barely five miles before the shuttle entered a stretch.

Holly tried hard to enjoy the experience of flying and forget everything else. Being a pilot for the LEP was what she had dreamed of since childhood. As she cut yet another corner with a millimetre to spare, and felt the shuttle strain to its limits in her hands, the tension drained from her body as though absorbed by the craft.

Artemis lied to me and blackmailed me, but he did it for his mother. A good reason. Who’s to say that I would not have done the same thing myself? If I could have saved my mother, I would have done whatever I needed to do, including manipulate my friends.

And so she could understand what Artemis had done – even though she felt it was unnecessary – but that did not mean she could forgive him just yet.

And how could she forget it? It felt as though she had completely misjudged their friendship.

That won’t happen again.

One thing that Holly was certain of: the most she and Artemis could ever have now was what they’d always had – grudging respect.

Holly patched into the passenger-seat bubble-cam on the shuttle ceiling and was gratified to see Artemis clutching the armrests on his seat. Perhaps it was the camera feed or perhaps his face was actually green.

You blew it, Mud Boy, thought Holly, and then, I hope it’s your face and not the feed.

There was a natural vent in the Moroccan desert, south of Agadir, where tunnel gas filtered up through half a mile of sand. The only evidence of this was a slight discoloration of the sand above the vent, which was quickly dispersed by the winds as soon as it reached the surface. Nevertheless, a thousand years of the process had left the dunes with curious red streaks, which the local villagers swore was blood from the victims of Raisuli, a famous twentieth-century bandit. It was highly unlikely that anyone swallowed these claims, least of all the villagers themselves, but it made good reading in the guidebooks and drew visitors to the otherwise unremarkable area.

Holly drilled the craft through the vent, sealing the shuttle’s own air filters against the tiny sand particles. She was flying virtually blind with only a three-dimensional model of the vent to navigate by. Luckily, it was a short leg of the trip and it took mere seconds for the shuttle to punch through to the African sky. In spite of the craft’s insulated skin, its passengers soon began to feel the heat. Especially Mulch Diggums. Unlike the other fairy families, dwarfs were not surface creatures and did not dream of golden sun on their upturned faces. Anything higher than sea level gave them vertigo.

Mulch burped wetly. ‘This is too high. I don’t like this. Hot, too darned hot. I need to go to the bathroom. For what I’m not sure exactly. Just don’t follow me in there. Whatever you hear, don’t come in.’ When a dwarf gave this sort of advice, it was wise not to ignore it.

Holly sent a charge through the windscreen to clear it, then pointed the shuttle’s nose north-east towards Fez. With a bit of luck, they could still beat little Artemis to the rendezvous point.

She set the autopilot and swivelled her seat to face Artemis, whose face was just returning to its normal pallor.

‘You’re sure about the rendezvous point?’ she asked.

Artemis wasn’t sure about anything and this uncertainty fogged his brain.

‘Not sure, Holly. But I clearly remember making the exchange at the leather souq in Fez. At the very least it is a place to start. If Kronski and my younger self do not show up, then we proceed to the Extinctionists’ compound.’ Holly frowned. ‘Hmm. This scheme is not up to your usual standards and our time is running out. We don’t have a couple of days to play around with. Time is the enemy.’ ‘Yes,’ agreed Artemis. ‘Time is the crux of this entire misadventure.’ Holly took a nutri-block from the tiny refrigerator and returned to her controls.

Artemis studied his friend’s back, trying to read her body language. Hunched, rounded shoulders and arms crossed in front of her body. She was cutting herself off, hostile to communication. He needed to produce some masterstroke to get himself back in her good books.

Artemis pressed his nose to the porthole, watching the Moroccan desert flash past in streaks of ochre and gold. There must be something that Holly wanted. Something she regretted not doing that in some way he could facilitate.

After a moment’s concentrated thought, it came to him. Hadn’t he seen a field holograph pack on one of the storage rails? And wasn’t there someone to whom Holly had never said goodbye?

POLICE PLAZA, HAVEN CITY, THE LOWER ELEMENTS

Commander Julius Root was up to the quivering tip of his fungus cigar in paperwork. Not that it was actual paperwork. There hadn’t been any LEP files written on real paper in a centaur’s age. It was all saved on a crystal and kept in a central core somewhere in info-space, and apparently now Foaly’s people were trying to grow memory plants, which meant that some day information could be stored in plants or dungheaps, or even the cigar sticking out of Root’s mouth. The commander did not understand any of this, nor did he want to. Let Foaly have the worlds of nano and cyber technologies. He would take the world of everyday LEP problems. And there were plenty of those.

First, his old enemy Mulch Diggums was running riot above ground. It was almost as if the dwarf were taunting him. His latest crime spree involved breaking into shuttle ports, then selling his booty on to exiled fairies living among the humans. At each site he would leave a nice pyramid of recycled earth in the middle of the floor, like a calling card.

Then there were those blasted swear toads. A couple of college graduate warlocks had granted the power of speech to the common bloated tunnel toad. Naturally, being college graduates, they had only granted the toads the power of bad language. Now, thanks to an unforeseen side effect, namely fertility, there was a virtual epidemic of these toads running around Haven, offending every citizen they hopped into.

The goblin gangs were growing in strength and audacity. Only last week they had fireballed a patrol car on its route through goblin town.

Julius Root leaned back in his swivel chair, allowing the smoke from his cigar to form a cloud around his head. There were days when he felt like hanging up his holster for good. Days when it felt as though there was nothing to keep him in the job.

The hologram ring buzzed on the ceiling like a disco ball. Incoming call. Root checked the caller ID.

Captain Holly Short.

Root allowed himself a rare grin.

Then there were days when he knew exactly what he had to do.

I have to groom the best people to take over when I am gone. People like Captain Kelp, Foaly – gods help me – and Captain Holly Short.

Root had hand-picked Holly from the ranks. Promoted her to captain, the first female to hold the title in the LEP’s history. And she had done him proud. Every recon so far had been successful, without a single mind-wipe or time-stop.

She’s the one, Julius, said Root’s inner voice. Smart, fearless, compassionate, Holly Short will make a splendid captain. Who knows, maybe a great commander.

Root wiped the smile from his face. Captain Short did not need to see him smiling proudly, like a doting grandfather. She needed discipline, order and a healthy dollop of respect/fear for her commanding officer.

He tapped the accept pad on his desktop screen, and the hologram ring blasted a Milky Way of stars from its projectors that swirled and solidified into the flickering form of Captain Holly Short wearing a human suit. Undercover obviously. He could see her exactly as she was, but she could not see him until he stepped into the footprint of the holographic ring, which he did.

‘Captain Short, all is well in Hamburg, I trust?’

Holly seemed speechless for a moment, her mouth hung open and her hands reached out as if to touch the commander. In her time he was dead, murdered by Opal Koboi, but here and now Julius Root was as vital as she remembered.

Root cleared his throat. ‘All is well, Captain?’

‘Yes. Of course, Commander. All is well, for the moment. Though it might be an idea to have Retrieval on standby.’ Root dismissed this idea with a wave of his cigar. ‘Nonsense. Your record so far speaks for itself. You have never needed back-up before.’ Holly smiled. ‘Always a first time.’

Root blinked, something on the hologram ring’s floating gaseous readout had caught his eye.

‘Are you calling me from Africa? What are you doing in Africa?’

Holly slapped her palm against the instrument panel on her end. ‘No, I’m in Hamburg, in the observation hide. Stupid machine. The projectors are all wrong too. I look about ten years old on the monitor. I’m going to strangle Foaly when I get back.’ Root couldn’t help but smile at that, but he tucked it away quickly.

‘Why the hologram, Short? What’s wrong with a plain old communicator? Do you know how expensive it is to beam sound and vision through the Earth’s crust?’ Holly’s image flickered and stared at its feet, then up again.

‘I… I just wanted to thank you, Jul– Commander.’

Root was surprised. Thank him. For months of impossible tasks and double shifts.

‘Thank me, Captain? This is most irregular. I’m not sure I’m doing my job right if fairies are thanking me.’ ‘Yes, yes you are,’ blurted Holly’s image. ‘You do a fine job, more than fine. No one appreciated – appreciates you enough. But I do now. I know what you were – are trying to do for me. So, thank you, and I won’t let you down.’ Root was surprised to find that he was actually touched. It wasn’t every day he was faced with such genuine emotion.

Look at me, he thought. Blubbering at a hologram. Wouldn’t Foaly love this.

‘I… em… I accept your thanks and I believe them to be heartfelt. Although I don’t expect an expensive hologram call during every mission, just the once will be fine.’ ‘Understood, Commander.’

‘And be careful in Hamburg. Make sure to check your equipment.’

‘I will, Commander,’ said Holly, and Root could have sworn she rolled her eyes, but it could have been another glitch in the program.

‘Anything else, Captain?’

Holly reached out her hand; it shimmered and wavered slightly with the motion. Root was not sure what he was supposed to do. Hologram etiquette was very clear: hugging and shaking were not encouraged. After all, who wants to embrace a pixellated image?

But still the hand was there.

‘Wish me luck, Commander. One officer to another.’

Root grunted. With any other subordinate he would have suspected toadying, but Captain Short had always impressed him with her candour.

He reached out his hand and felt a slight tingle as it touched Holly’s virtual digits.

‘Good luck, Captain,’ he said gruffly. ‘And try to tone down that maverick streak. Some day I won’t be around to help you.’ ‘Will do, Commander. Goodbye,’ said Holly, and then she was gone, but in the seconds before her holographic image fizzled out Julius Root could have sworn he saw rough holographic tears glint on her cheeks.

Stupid machine, he thought. I will demand that Foaly recalibrate the lot of them.

Holly stepped out of the holo-booth, which resembled an ancient shower unit with rubber curtain. With the touch of a button it collapsed and self-sealed into the portable briefcase.

There were tears in her eyes as she strapped herself into the pilot’s chair and flicked off autopilot.

Artemis squirmed slightly in the co-pilot’s chair.

‘So, are we even?’

Holly nodded. ‘Yes. We’re even. But your elf-kissing days are over.’ ‘I see,’ said Artemis.

‘It’s not a challenge, Artemis. Over is over.’

‘I know,’ said Artemis neutrally.

They sat in silence for a while, watching low mountains speed across the desert towards them, then Holly leaned across and punched Artemis gently on the shoulder.

‘Thanks, Arty.’

‘You are most welcome. All I did was have an idea.’

Mulch emerged noisily from the bathroom, scratching and grunting.

‘Wooo-oh, that’s better. Thank the gods for soundproofing, eh?’

Holly winced. ‘Close the door and let the extractor fan do its work.’ Mulch slammed the door with a flick of his heel. ‘I was thinking in there, you know, rooo-minating.’ ‘I don’t think I want to hear this.’

Mulch ploughed on regardless. ‘That little lemur. The silky whatever. You know who he reminds me of with that buzz-cut hairdo?’ They had all been thinking it.

‘Commander Root,’ said Holly, smiling.

‘Yep. A miniature Commander Root.’

‘Julius Junior,’ said Artemis.

They crested the foothills of the Atlas Mountains and Fez was revealed like the heart of the land, its arteries clogged with vehicles.

‘Jayjay,’ said Holly. ‘That’s his name. Now let’s go get him.’

She switched on the shuttle’s shield and initiated their descent into Fez.