Holly looked upwards. A section of the hemisphere’s panel had been removed, and a rope was being lowered towards the temple roof. Swinging from the rope was what appeared to be a naked and extremely hairy rear end.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Holly exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ‘You took your sweet time getting here!’
She seemed to be conversing with a posterior. And then, even more amazingly, the posterior appeared to answer.
‘I love you too, Holly. Now close anything that’s open, because I’m about to overload these trolls’ senses.’
For a moment, Holly’s face was blank, then realization widened her eyes and sucked the blood from her cheeks. She grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.
‘Lie flat, with your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes and mouth. And whatever you do, don’t breathe in.’
Artemis lay on the roof. ‘Tell me there’s a creature on the other end of that posterior.’
‘There is,’ confirmed Holly. ‘But it’s the posterior we have to worry about.’
The trolls were metres away by this point. Close enough to see the red in their eyes and the years of dirt caked in every dreadlock.
Overhead, Mulch Diggums (for, of course, it was he) released a gentle squib of wind from his backside. Just enough to propel him in a gentle circle on the end of his rope. The circular motion was necessary to ensure an even spread of the gas he intended to release. Once he had completed three revolutions, he bore down internally and let fly with every bubble of gas in his bloated stomach.
Because trolls are by nature tunnel-dwelling creatures, they are guided as much by their sense of smell as by their night vision. A blinded troll can often survive for years, navigating his way to food and water supplies by smell alone.
Mulch’s sudden gaseous recyclings sent a million conflicting scent messages to each troll’s brain. The smell was bad enough, and the wind was sufficient to blow back the trolls’ dreadlocks, but the combination of scents inside the dwarf gas — including clay, vegetation, insect life and anything else Mulch had eaten over the past few days — was enough to short out the trolls’ entire nervous systems. They collapsed to their knees, clasping their poor, aching heads in taloned hands. One was so close to Artemis and Holly that one shaggy forearm rested across the LEP Captain’s back.
Holly wriggled out from under the limb. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, pulling Artemis to his feet. ‘The gas won’t put the trolls out for any longer than the light.’
Overhead, Mulch’s revolutions were slowing.
‘I thank you,’ he said, with a theatrical bow, which is not easy on a rope. The dwarf scampered up the rope, gripping with fingers and toes, then lowered it to Artemis and Holly.
‘Jump on,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’
Artemis tested the rope sceptically. ‘Surely that strange creature is too small to haul both of us all the way up there.’
Holly put her foot in a loop at the rope’s end. ‘True, but he’s not alone.’
Artemis squinted at the hemisphere’s missing panel. Another figure had appeared in the gap. The figure’s features were in deep shadow, but the silhouette was unmistakable. ‘Butler!’ he said through his smile. ‘You’re here.’
And suddenly, in spite of everything, Artemis felt completely safe.
‘Hurry up, Artemis,’ called his bodyguard. ‘We don’t have a second to waste.’
Artemis stepped on to 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, maybe he had no choice in the matter.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Though 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 judgement. ‘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 on him. How many times could one person cheat death in twenty-four hours? Surely his odds were getting short.
‘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 of 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 have 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, lifting them smoothly from the ground. If the shuttle had not had portholes, the passengers might not have noticed the take-off.
Butler elbowed Mulch. ‘Did you see that? That’s a take-off. 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. ‘OK, 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 have been stimulated. Did I, perhaps, leave
