Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

managed to turn. Turnball did not like Vishby, in fact he detested all Atlantean elves with their fishlike heads, slobbering gills, and thick tongues, but Vishby had the seeds of discontent in his heart, and so had unknowingly become Turnball’s slave. Turnball was prepared to tolerate anybody who could help him escape from this prison before it was too late.

Before I lose you, my darling.

“Ah, Mr. Vishby,” he gushed, rising from his non-regulation office chair (three mackerel-smuggling sprites). “You’re looking well. That gill rot is really clearing up.”

Vishby’s hand flew to the triple stripes below his tiny left ear.

“Do you think so, Turnball?” he gurgled, his voice thick and labored. “Leeta says she can’t stand to look at me.” know how Leeta feels, thought Turnball, and: There was a day when I would have had you flogged for addressing me by my first name. Captain Root, if you please. Instead of voicing these less than complimentary thoughts, he took Vishby by his slick elbow with barely a flinch of revulsion. “Leeta does not know how lucky she is,” he said smoothly. “You, my friend, are a catch.”

Vishby did not try to conceal his flinch. “A c-catch?”

Turnball drew a sharp, guilty breath. “Ah yes, excuse me, Vishby. Atlantean water elves do not like to think of themselves as catches, or being caught, for that matter. What I meant to say was that you are a fine specimen of an elf and any female in her right mind would consider herself fortunate indeed to have you as a mate.”

“Thanks, Turnball,” muttered Vishby, mollified. “How’s it been going, then? The plan?”

Turnball squeezed the water elf’s elbow to remind him that there were eyes and ears everywhere.

“Oh, my plan to construct a model of the Nostremius aquanaut? That plan? It’s going rather well. Warden Tarpon Vinyaya is being most cooperative. We’re negotiating over glue.” He led Vishby to his computer screen. “Let me show you my latest blueprint, and can I say how much I appreciate your taking an interest? My rehabilitation depends on interaction with decent individuals like yourself.”

“Uh. . okay,” said Vishby, uncertain whether or not he had just been complimented.

Turnball Root waved his hand in front of the screen, awakening a V-board on the desk (real wood: identity thieves, Nigeria).

“Here, look. I’ve solved the problem with the ballast tanks, see?”

Then with a smooth three-finger combination, he activated the scrambler that Vishby had smuggled in for him. The scrambler was an organic wafer, which had been grown in the Atlantis branch of the now defunct Koboi Labs. The scrambler was a reject lifted from the trash, which had merely needed a dab of silicon to get it operational.

There is so much waste in industry, Turnball had sighed to Vishby. Is it any wonder we’re in the middle of a resource crisis?

The tiny scrambler was vital to Turnball because it made everything else possible. Without it he would have no link to the off-site computer; without it, the authorities here in the Deeps would be able to record every stroke of his keyboard and see exactly what he was really working on.

Turnball tapped the screen. It was split into two sections. One showed a recording from a few hours ago: an arena packed with mesmerized humans crawling all over each other. The second a real- time bot’s-eye view of a burning shuttle craft on an icy tundra.

“One tank is gone and the other is an indulgence, so I will outsource rather than waste any more time on it.”

“Good thinking,” said Vishby, who for the first time was beginning to understand that land dwellers’ phrase in over one’s head.

Turnball Root rested his chin on one hand in the fashion of an elderly actor posing for his headshot. “Yes, Mr. Vishby. Very soon now my model shall be complete. Already one of the major parts is on its way down here, and when that arrives, there won’t be a fairy left in Atlantis. . Eh, that is, there won’t be a fairy left undazzled by my model.”

It was a feeble cover-up, he knew. Was undazzled even a word? But no need for panic, as nobody watched him anymore. They hadn’t for years. He was no longer seen as a threat. The world in general had forgotten the disgraced Captain Turnball Root. Those who knew him now found it difficult to believe that this shabby old-timer could really be as dangerous as his file said he was.

It’s Opal Koboi this, and Opal Koboi that, Turnball often thought bitterly. Well, we’ll see who breaks out of this place first.

Turnball banished the screen with a click of his fingers. “Onward and outward, Vishby. Onward and outward.”

Vishby smiled suddenly, which with sea elves was accompanied by a slurping noise as they pulled their tongue back to make way for teeth. In fact, smiling was an unnatural expression for sea elves, and they only did it to let others know how they were feeling.

“Oh, good news, Turnball. I got my pilot’s licence back finally after the Mulch Diggums escape.”

“Good for you, sir.”

Vishby had been one of Mulch Diggums’s escorts when he escaped from the LEP. All sub-shuttle crew were required to hold a pilot’s qualification, in case the primary pilot became incapacitated.

“Just for emergency trips. But in a year or two I’ll be back in rotation.”

“Well, much as I know how you long to pilot a submarine again, let’s hope there are no emergency evacuations, eh?”

Vishby approximated a wink, which was difficult, as he didn’t have any eyelids and would have to give himself a spray soon to wash off the accumulated grit on his lower lid. His version of a wink was to tilt his head jauntily to one side.

“Emergency evacuations. No, we wouldn’t want that.”

Eye grit, thought Turnball. Disgusting. And: This fish boy is about as subtle as a steamroller with a siren on top. I’d better change the subject in case someone does happen to glance at the security monitors. It would be just my luck.

“So, Mr. Vishby. No mail for me today, I assume?”

“Nope. No mail for the umpteenth day in a row.”

Turnball rubbed his hands in the manner of one with urgent business. “Well, then. I must not keep you from your duties, and I myself have some modeling to do. I impose a schedule on myself, you see, and that must be adhered to.”

“Right you are, Turnball,” said Vishby, who had long since forgotten that he should be the one doing the dismissing, not the other way around. “Just wanted to let you know I had my licence back. Because that was in my schedule.”

Turnball’s smile never wavered, and he kept it bright by promising himself that he would dispose of this fool the second he was no longer of any use.

“Good. Thanks for coming by.”

Vishby was almost fully through the hatch before he turned to drop another clanger.

“Here’s hoping we don’t have an emergency evacuation, eh, Captain Root?”

Turnball moaned internally.

Captain. Now he calls me Captain.

Vatnajokull; Now

The new guy, Orion Fowl, was checking his hosiery.

“No compression socks,” he declared. “I have been on several plane journeys over the past few weeks, yet Artemis never wears compression socks. And I know he is aware of deep-vein thrombosis; he simply chooses to ignore the risks.”

This was Orion’s second rant in as many minutes, the last one detailing Artemis’s use of nonhypoallergenic deodorant, and Holly was growing tired of listening.

“I could sedate you,” she said brightly, as if this were the most reasonable course of action. “We slap a pad on your neck and leave you at the restaurant for the humans. End of hosiery discussion.”

Orion smiled kindly. “You wouldn’t do that, Captain Short. I could freeze to death before help arrived. I am an