The Artemis Fowl Files - Eoin Colfer [33]
“Sorry about this, brother,” he whispered almost fondly. “I hate to do it, but the Mud Boy has me over a barrel.”
Something shimmered in the corner of Mulch’s vision. It shimmered and then spoke.
“First I want you to tell me about the Mud Boy, dwarf,” it said. “And then I want you to tell me about the barrel.”
CHAPTER 5: RINGMASTER
Over the Italian Coast
HOLLY Short flew north until she came to mainland Italy, then turned forty degrees to the left over the lights of Brindisi.
“You are supposed to avoid major flight routes and city areas,” Foaly reminded her over the helmet speakers. “That is the first rule of Recon.”
“The first rule of Recon is to find the rogue fairy,” Holly retorted. “Do you want me to locate this dwarf or not? If I stick to the coastline, it will take me all night to reach Ireland. My way, I’ll get there by eleven P.M. local time. Anyway, I’m shielded.”
Fairies have the power to increase their heart rate and pump their arteries to bursting, which causes their bodies to vibrate so quickly that they are never in one place long enough to be seen. The only human ever to see through this magical trick, pardon the pun, was, of course, Artemis Fowl, who had filmed fairies on a high-speed camera and then viewed the frames still by still.
“Shielding isn’t as foolproof as it used to be,” noted Foaly. “I have sent the helmet’s tracker pattern to your helmet. All you have to do is follow the beep. When you find our dwarf, the commander wants you to …”
The centaur’s voice faded out in a liquid hiss of static. The magma flares beneath the earth’s crust were up tonight, whiting out LEP communications. This was the third flare since she started her journey. All she could do was proceed according to plan, and hope the channels cleared up.
It was a fine night, so Holly navigated using the stars. Of course her helmet had a built-in GPS unit triangulated by three satellites, but stellar navigation was one of the first courses taught in the LEP academy. It was possible that a Recon officer could be trapped aboveground without science, and under those circumstances the stars could be that officer’s only hope of finding a fairy shuttle port.
The landscape sped by below her, dotted by an ever growing number of human enclaves. Each time she ventured topside, there were more. Soon there would be no countryside left, and no trees to make the oxygen. Then everyone would be breathing artificial air aboveground and below it.
Holly tried to ignore the pollution-alert logo flashing in her visor. The helmet would filter out most of it, and anyway she had no choice. It was either fly over the cities, or possibly lose the rogue dwarf. And Captain Holly Short did not like to lose.
She enlarged the search grid in her helmet visor, and zeroed in on a large, circular, striped tent. A circus. The dwarf was hiding in a circus. Hardly original, but an effective place to pose as a human dwarf.
Holly dipped the flaps on her mechanical wings, descending to twenty feet. The tracker beep pulled her off to the left, away from the main tent itself, toward a smaller adjacent one. Holly swooped lower still, making sure to keep her shield fully buzzed up since the area was teeming with humans.
She hovered above the tip of the tent pole. The stolen helmet was inside, no doubt about it. To investigate further, she would have to enter the structure. The fairy bible, or Book, prevented fairies from entering human dwellings uninvited, but recently the high court had ruled that tents were temporary structures and as such were not included in the Book’s edict. Holly burned the stitches on the tent’s seam with a laser burst from her Neutrino 2000, and slipped inside.
On the earthen surface below were two dwarfs. One had the stolen helmet strapped across his back, the second was jammed down a hole in the ground. Both wore upper face masks and matching red leotards.