Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [46]
“I am special,” said the mouth on the screen, “because I can escape the time-field.” “Now tell me,” said Root. “Is he lying?” “Run it again,” said Cumulus. “Show me the eyes.” Argon nodded. “Yes. Just the eyes.” Foaly tapped a few more keys, and Artemis’s deep blue eyes expanded to the width of the screen. “I am special,” boomed the human voice, “because I can escape the time field.” “Well, is he lying?” Cumulus and Argon looked at each other, all traces of antagonism gone. “No,” they said simultaneously. “He’s telling the truth,” added the behaviorist. “Or,” clarified the psychologist, “at least he thinks he is.” Root swabbed his eye with a cleansing solution. “That’s what I thought. When I looked that human in the face, I figured he was either a genius or crazy.” Artemis’s cool eyes glared at them from the screen. “So which is it?” asked Foaly. “A genius or crazy?” Root grabbed his tri-barreled blaster from the gun rack.
“What’s the difference?” he snapped, strapping his trusty weapon to his hip. “Get me an outside line to E1. This Fowl person seems to know all of our rules, so it’s time to break a few.”
CHAPTER 7
MULCH
Time to introduce a new character to our other-worldly pageant. Well, not strictly speaking a new character. We have encountered him before, in the LEP booking line. On remand for numerous larcenies: Mulch Diggums, the kleptomaniac dwarf. A dubious individual, even by Artemis Fowl’s standards. As if this account didn’t already suffer from an overdose of amoral individuals.
Born to a typical dwarf cavern-dwelling family, Mulch had decided early that mining was not for him, and resolved to put his talents to another use, namely digging and entering, generally entering Mud People’s property. Of course this meant forfeiting his magic. Dwellings were sacred. If you broke that rule, you had to be prepared to accept the consequences. Mulch didn’t mind. He didn’t care much for magic anyway. There had never been much use for it down in the mines.
Things had gone pretty well for a few centuries, and he’d built up quite a lucrative aboveground memorabilia business. That was until he’d tried to sell the Jules Rimet Cup to an undercover LEP operative. From then on his luck had turned, and he’d been arrested over twenty times to date. A total of three hundred years in and out of prison.
Mulch had a prodigious appetite for tunneling, and that, unfortunately, is a literal translation. For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of dwarf tunneling, I shall endeavor to explain them as tastefully as possible. Like some members of the reptile family, dwarf males can unhinge their jaws, allowing them to ingest several pounds of earth a second. This material is processed by a superefficient metabolism, stripped of any useful minerals and . . . ejected at the other end, as it were. Charming.
At present, Mulch was languishing in a stone-walled cell in LEP Central. At least, he was trying to project an image of a languishing, unperturbed kind of dwarf. Actually, he was quaking in his steel-toe-capped boots.
The goblin/dwarf turf war was flaring up at the moment and some bright spark LEP elf had seen fit to put him in a cell with a gang of psyched-up goblins. An oversight perhaps. More likely a spot of revenge for trying to pick his arresting officer’s pocket in the booking line.
“So, dwarf,” sneered the head-honcho goblin, a wart-faced fellow covered in tattoos. “How come you don’t chew your way outta here?”
Mulch rapped on the walls. “Solid rock.”
The goblin laughed. “So what? Can’t be any harder than your dwarf skull.”
His cronies laughed. So did Mulch. He thought it might be wise. Wrong.
“You laughin’ at me, dwarf?”
Mulch stopped laughing.
“With you,” he corrected. “I’m laughing with you. That skull joke was pretty funny.”
The goblin advanced, until his slimy nose was a centimeter from Mulch’s own. “You pay-tron-izin’ me, dwarf?”
Mulch swallowed, calculating. If he unhinged now, he could probably swallow the leader before the others reacted. Still, goblins were murder on the digestion. Very bony.
The