Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

I know you would not approve of all these deaths, Leonor, Turnball thought as he sat at his computer, sending instructions through to Vishby’s terminal. But they are necessary if we are to be together forever. Those people are unimportant compared to our eternal love. And you will never know the price of our happiness. All you will know is that we are reunited.

But in truth, Turnball knew that he enjoyed all the machinations tremendously and was almost sorry to send the kill orders. Almost but not quite. Even better than scheming would be all the time to be spent with Leonor, and it had been too long since he had seen his wife’s beautiful face.

So he’d sent the kill orders to the probe and loaded up on mandrake and rice wine.

Luckily, it only took the barest spark of magic to mesmerize humans.

Because they are weak-willed and stupid. But funny, like monkeys.

When Vishby arrived on that final day in prison, Turnball was sitting on his hands, trying hard to contain his excitement.

“Ah, Mr. Vishby,” he said when the door dissolved. “You’re early. Is there some irregularity I should be concerned about?”

Vishby’s impassive fish face was a little more emotional than usual. “The warden’s sister is dead. Commander Vinyaya and a whole shuttle of LEP blown apart. Did we do that?”

Turnball licked the blood rune on his finger. “Whether we did or not is unimportant. You shouldn’t be concerned.”

Vishby absently fingered his neck, where a faint outline of the rune still glowed. “I’m not concerned. Why should I be? It was nothing to do with us.”

“Good. Fabulous. I imagine we have bigger fish to fry.”

Vishby flinched at the fish reference.

“Oh. Oops, sorry, Mr. Vishby. I should be more sensitive. Come now, tell me, what news?” Vishby flapped his gills for a moment, getting the sentences together in his head. Captain Root did not like stammering.

“There’s a space probe heading directly for Atlantis, so we have to evacuate the city. It’s likely that the craft won’t actually penetrate the dome, but the Council can’t take the chance. I’ve been called up to pilot a shuttle, and you’re one of my. . eh. . p-passengers.”

Turnball sighed, disappointed. “Oh. . p-passengers? Really?” Vishby rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Captain. Passengers, of course, one of my passengers.”

“It’s so unprofessional, the stammering.”

“I know,” said Vishby. “I’m working on it. I bought one of those. . eh. . au-audio books. I’m nervous now.”

Turnball decided to go easy on Vishby; there would be plenty of time for discipline later when he was killing the water elf. The ultimate punishment.

“It’s only natural,” he said magnanimously. “First day back in the pilot’s chair. Then there’s this mysterious probe, plus you have to transport all of us dangerous prisoners.”

Vishby seemed even more nervous. “Exactly. Well, the thing is. . I don’t want to do this, Turnball, but. .”

“But you have to cuff me,” finished Turnball. “Of course. I understand completely.” He thrust out his hands with wrists upturned. “It’s not as if you have to fasten the cuffs, is it?”

Vishby blinked and touched his neck. “No. Why would I fasten them? That would be barbaric.”

The water elf laid a set of standard ultralight plastic polymer cuffs across Turnball’s wrist.

“Comfy?” he asked.

Again, Turnball was feeling generous. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. You concentrate on the shuttle.”

“Thanks, Captain. This is a big day for me.”

As Vishby dissolved the door, Turnball was struck by how the guard’s subconscious dealt with betraying all that he believed in. Vishby simply pretended that everything was as it should be, until the moment when it was not. The water elf somehow managed to keep two lives running simultaneously side by side.

Amazing what a person will do to avoid guilt, thought Turnball, following Vishby through the doorway and taking his first breath of free recycled air in years.

Atlantis was a small city by human standards. With barely ten thousand residents, it wouldn’t even qualify as a city to the Mud Men, but to the fairies it was their second center of government and culture, the first being the capital, Haven City. There was a growing lobby to demolish Atlantis altogether, as the upkeep cost a fortune in taxpayers’ money and it was only a matter of time before the humans sank one of their submarine drones in the right spot and got a shot of the dome. But the budget for such a massive relocation and demolition project was so huge that continued maintenance always seemed the more attractive option to the politicians. It was more expensive in the long term, but the politicians reasoned that by the time the long term came around, somebody else would be in office.

Vishby led Turnball Root along a corridor tube with Perspex walling through which he could see dozens of crafts lining up at the various dome pressure-lock tollgates, waiting to swipe their credit chips for exit. There didn’t seem to be any panic. And why would there be? The Atlanteans had been preparing for a dome breach ever since the last one, more than eight thousand years ago, when an asteroid had superheated a two-mile-long tube of ocean before spending its last gasp of energy knocking a crunchball-sized chunk out of the dome, which in those days had not been shatterproof. In less than an hour the entire city had been submerged with more than five thousand casualties. It had taken a hundred years or so to build the new Atlantis on top of the foundations supplied by the ruins of the old Atlantis, and this time an evacuation strategy had featured large in the city blueprints. All of which meant that in case of emergency, every male, female, and child fairy could be out of the city in less than an hour. Drills were held every week, and in nursery school the first rhyme every student learned was:

The blue dome

Protects our home;

If it should crack,

Prepare for evac.

Turnball Root recalled this ditty as he followed Vishby along the corridor.

Crack, evac? What kind of rhyme was that? Evac wasn’t even a real word, just a military contraction. Exactly the kind of word Julius might have used.

I am so glad Leonor never had to endure meeting my boorish brother. If she had, no amount of magical persuasion could have enticed her to marry me.

A part of Turnball knew that he kept Leonor away from the People in general because a ten-minute conversation with any fairy under the world would have shown Leonor that her husband was not quite the noble revolutionary that he pretended to be. Luckily, this was a part of himself that Turnball had become quite adept at ignoring.

Other prisoners were shambling from their cells across narrow bridges onto the main walkway. Each was shackled and dressed in a lime green Deeps prison jumpsuit. Most were laying on the bravado, rolling swaggers and obvious sneers, but Turnball knew from experience that it was the ones with the placid gazes you had to worry about. Those ones were beyond caring.

“Come on now, convicts,” called a particularly Cro-Magnon-looking jumbo pixie, a breed that sometimes popped up in Atlantis due to the pressurized environment. “Keep moving there. Don’t make me buzz you.”

At least I am wearing my full dress uniform, thought Turnball, ignoring the guard, but he did not feel much consoled. Uniform or no, he was being paraded down this walkway like a common prisoner. He soothed himself with the decision that he would definitely kill Vishby as soon as possible and maybe send an e-mail to Leeta, congratulating Vishby’s sweetheart on her new single status. She would probably be delighted.

Vishby raised a fist, bringing the procession to a halt at an intersection. The prisoners were forced to wait like cattle while a large metal cube, secured with titanium bands, was floated past them on a hover trolley.

“Opal Koboi,” explained Vishby. “She’s so dangerous they’re not even letting her out of her cell.”

Turnball bristled. Opal Koboi. People down here spent their days gossiping about Opal Koboi. The current rumor was that there was another Opal Koboi around somewhere who had come out of the past to rescue herself in the present. People might get more done if they stopped obsessing over Opal-blooming- Koboi. If anyone should be concerned about Koboi, it was Turnball. After all, she had murdered his little brother. Then again, better not. Dwelling on the past could cause his ulcer to return.