Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [71]
“Hurry up, Artemis,” called his bodyguard. “We don’t have a second to waste.”
Artemis stepped onto the rope beside Holly, and Butler quickly pulled them both out of danger.
“Well?” said Holly, her face inches from his own. “We survived. Does that mean we’re friends now? Bonded by trauma.”
Artemis frowned. Friends? Did he have room in his life for a friend? Then again, did he have a choice in the matter?
“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve had little experience in this area, so I may have to read up on it.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Friendship is not a science, Mud Boy. Forget about your massive brain for one minute. Just do what you feel is right.”
Artemis couldn’t believe what he was about to say. Perhaps the thrill of survival was affecting his judgment. “I feel that I shouldn’t be paid to help a friend. Keep your fairy gold. Opal Koboi has to be stopped.”
Holly smiled with genuine warmth for the first time since the commander’s death, but there was a hint of steel in there too.
“With the four of us on her tail, she doesn’t stand a chance.”
CHAPTER 8
SOME INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION
Mulch had left the stolen LEP shuttle at the theme park gate. It had been a simple matter for Butler to disable the park’s cameras and remove a half-rotted section from the hemisphere’s roof in order to effect the rescue.
When they got back to the shuttle, Holly powered up the engines and ran a systems check.
“What on earth were you doing, Mulch?” she asked, amazed by the readings the computer was displaying. “The computer says you came all the way down here in first gear.”
“There are gears?” said the dwarf. “I thought this crate was automatic.”
“Some jockeys prefer gears. Old-fashioned, I know, but more control around the bends. And another thing, you didn’t have to do that gas thing on the rope. There are plenty of stun grenades in the weapons locker.”
“This thing has a locker too? Gears and lockers. Well, I never.”
Butler was giving Artemis a field physical.
“You seem all right,” he said, placing a massive palm over Artemis’s chest. “Holly fixed up your ribs, I see.”
Artemis was in a bit of a daze. Now that he was out of immediate danger, the day’s events were catching up to him. How many times could one person cheat death in twenty-four hours? Surely his odds were getting shorter.
“Tell me, Butler,” he whispered so the others wouldn’t hear, “is it all true? Or is it a hallucination?” Even as the words left his lips, Artemis realized that it was an impossible question. If this was all a hallucination, then his bodyguard was a dream, too.
“I turned down gold, Butler,” continued Artemis, still unable to accept his own grand gesture. “Me. I turned down gold.”
Butler smiled, much more the smile of a friend than a bodyguard. “That doesn’t surprise me one bit. You were becoming quite charitable before the mind wipe.”
Artemis frowned. “Of course you would say that, if you were part of the hallucination.”
Mulch was eavesdropping on the conversation and couldn’t resist a comment. “Didn’t you smell what I shot those trolls with? You think you could hallucinate that, Mud Boy?”
Holly started the engines. “Hold on back there,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s time to go. The sensors picked up some shuttles sweeping local chutes. The authorities are looking for us. I need to get us somewhere off the charts.”
Holly teased the throttle and lifted them smoothly from the ground. If the shuttle had not had portholes, the passengers might not have noticed the takeoff.
Butler elbowed Mulch. “Did you see that? That’s a takeoff. I hope you learned something.”
The dwarf was highly offended. “What do I have to do to get a bit of respect around here? You are all alive because of me, and all I get is abuse.”
Butler laughed. “Okay, little friend. I apologize. We owe you our lives, and I, for one, will never forget it.”
Artemis followed this interaction curiously. “I would deduce that you remember everything, Butler. If, for a moment, I accept this situation as reality, then your memory must