seconds. The only thing stopping her was the voices in her head.
One of those voices belonged to Foaly, the other to Artemis.
'Hold your position, Captain Short,' advised Foaly the centaur. 'We need to see how far this goes.'
Section 8 had become very interested in Holly's mission since the demon abduction. Foaly was keeping a dedicated line to her helmet open.
Holly's helmet was soundproof, yet she was still nervous talking in such close proximity to the targets. The trick in this situation is to train oneself to speak without any of the usual accompanying gestures. This is harder than it sounds.
'That poor demon will be terrified,' said Holly, lying perfectly still. 'I have to get it out of there.'
'No,' said Artemis sharply. 'You have to see the bigger picture, Holly.
We have no idea how big this organization is, or how much they know about the fairy People.'
'Not as much as you. Demons don't carry the fairy Book. They're not much for rules.'
'At least you have something in common,' said Butler.
'I could use the mesmer on them,' Holly offered. The mesmer was one of the tricks in every fairy's magical bag. It was a siren's song that could have any human happily spilling his guts. 'That would make them tell me what they know.'
'And only what they know,' Artemis pointed out. 'If I was running this organization, everyone would be told only what they needed to know. Nobody would know everything, except me, of course.'
Holly resisted the urge to thump something in frustration. Artemis was right, of course. She had to hang back and see how this situation played out. They needed to spread their net as wide as possible in order to catch all the members of this group.
'I'll need back-up,' Holly whispered. 'How many agents can Section Eight spare?'
Foaly cleared his throat, but didn't answer.
'What is it, Foaly? What's going on down there?'
'Ark Sool caught wind of the abduction.'
The mere mention of that gnome's name drove Holly's blood pressure up a few points. Commander Ark Sool was the reason she had quit the LEP in the first place.
'Sool! How did he find out about it so quickly?'
'He's got a source somewhere in Section Eight. He called in Vinyaya.
She had no option but to hand over all the facts.'
Holly groaned. Sool was the king of red tape. As the dwarfs said, he couldn't make a decision if he was holding a jug of water and his bum-flap was onjire.
'What's the word?'
'Sool is going for damage limitation. The blast walls are up and overground missions have been cancelled. No further action pending a meeting of the Council. If the manure hits the air circulator, Sool isn't going to be the one taking the blame. Not on his own.'
'Politics,' spat Holly. 'Sool only cares about his precious career. So you can't send me anyone?'
Foaly chose his words carefully. 'Not officially. And no one official. I mean, it would be impossible for anyone, a consultant, say, to get past the blast walls carrying something you might need, if you see what I mean.'
Holly understood exactly what Foaly was trying to tell her.
'Ten four, Foaly. I'm on my own. Officially.'
'Exactly. As far as Commander Sool knows, you are simply shadowing the suspects. You are only to take action if they decide to go public. In that case your orders are, and I'm quoting Sool here, 'to take the least complicated and most permanent course of action'.'
'He means vaporize the demon?'
'Sool didn't say that, but that's what he wants.'
Holly despised Sool more with every heartbeat. 'He can't order me to do that! Killing a fairy goes against every law in the Book. I won't do it.'
'Sool knows he can't officially order you to use terminal force on a fairy.
What he's doing here is making an unofficial recommendation. The kind that could have a major effect on your career. It's a tricky one, Holly.
Best-case scenario, this all blows over somehow.'
Artemis voiced the opinion that they all held. 'That's not going to happen. This is no opportunistic snatch. We are dealing with an organized group that knew what they were after. These people were at Barcelona and now here. They have an agenda for their demon, and, unless they're military, I would bet it involves going public for large amounts of money. This will be bigger than the Loch Ness monster,
Bigfoot and theYeti all rolled into one.'
Foaly sighed. 'You're in a fix, Holly. The best thing that could happen for you right now would be a nice non- lethal injury to take you out of the game.'
Holly remembered her old mentor's words. It's not about what's best for us, Julius Root had told her once. It's about what's best For the People.
'Sometimes it's not about us, Foaly. I'll figure this out somehow. I do have help, right?'
'That's right,' confirmed the centaur. 'It's not as if it's the first time we've saved the fairy world.'
Foaly's confident tones made Holly feel better, even if he was hundreds of miles underground.
Artemis interrupted them. 'You two can swap war stories later. We can't afford to miss a word that these people say. If we can beat them to their destination, it could be an advantage.'
Artemis was right. This was not a time for drifting. Holly ran a quick systems check on her helmet instruments, then pointed her visor at the humans below.
'You getting this, Foaly?' she asked.
'Clear as crystal. Did I tell you about my new gas screens?'
Artemis's sigh rattled through the speakers.
'Yes, you did. Now be quiet, centaur. We're on a mission, remember.'
'Whatever you say, Mud Boy. Hey, look, your girlfriend is saying something.'
Artemis had a vast mental reserve of scathing comebacks at his disposal, but none of them covered girlfriend insults. He wasn't even sure if it was an insult. And if it was, who was being insulted? Him or the girl?
The girl spoke French as only a native could.
'Technically,' she said, 'the only crime we are guilty of is fare-dodging,
and perhaps not even that. Legally speaking, how can you kidnap something that is not supposed to exist? I doubt anyone ever accused Murray Gell-Mann of kidnapping a quark, even though he knowingly carried a billion of them around in his pocket.' The girl chuckled gently, causing her glasses to slip down again.
No one else laughed, except an eavesdropping Irish boy two hundred miles away at Fontanarossa International Airport, about to board the last Alitalia flight to Rome. Rome, Artemis reasoned, would be a lot more central than Sicily. Wherever the demon was headed, Artemis could get there faster if he flew from Rome.
'That wasn't bad,' Artemis commented, then relayed the joke to Butler.
'Obviously there are differences in the scenarios, but it's a joke, not a quantum physics lecture.'
Butler's left eyebrow cranked up like a drawbridge. 'Differences in the scenarios, that's just what I was thinking.'
Back on board the bullet train, one of the men, the one with the miraculously healed leg, shifted on the leatherette upholstery.
'What time do we get into Nice, Minerva?' he said.
This single sentence was a goldmine of information for the listening Artemis. Firstly, the girl's name was Minerva, named presumably for the Roman goddess of wisdom. So far, a very apt name indeed. Secondly, their destination was Nice in the south of France. And thirdly, this girl seemed to be in charge. Extraordinary.
The girl, who had been smiling still at her quark joke, switched to irritated mode.
'No names, remember? There are ears everywhere. If a single person uncovers a single detail of our plan, everything we have worked for could be ruined.'
Too late, Mud Girl, thought Captain Holly Short, from her luggage rack.
