Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

in the evening I would be doing black-market deals with the goblin gangs.” Turnball smiled and shook his head. “Good days.”

Leonor did not react, as Turnball had thought it best to give her just a drop of sedative until the warlock had restored her youth. He knew from her talk of death that he was losing his grip on his wife, and she was not strong enough to survive another thrall rune.

So sleep, my darling. Sleep. Soon, all will be as it was.

As soon as Captain Short returned with the demon. And if she did not? Then he would board the Nostremius and take the warlock by force. Perhaps he would lose a crew member or two, but they should be glad to die for their captain’s wife.

One level down, in the brig, Bobb Ragby was on guard duty, a duty that he was enjoying immensely, as he considered it payback for all the years he himself had been lorded over by guards. It didn’t matter to Bobb that his gel-bound prisoners weren’t actually the people who’d watched over him: that was just their bad luck. He was taking special pleasure in teasing Mulch Diggums, whom he had long considered a competitor in the top criminal dwarf competition that he’d played in his head during the long hours spent on the toilet, thanks to a diet of processed food.

Turnball had ordered him to split the amorphobots for safety, and now one hung in each corner of the cell like a giant wobbling egg sac.

If any of them act up, then use the shocker feature at your own discretion, Turnball had said. And if they try to shoot their way out, make sure we get that on video so we can have a good laugh later.

Ragby had decided he would definitely use the shocker at the first provocation, maybe before the first provocation.

“Hey, Diggums, why don’t you try to eat some of the gel so I have an excuse to electrocute you?”

Mulch did not waste his energy talking: he simply bared his enormous teeth.

“Yeah?” said Ragby. “They ain’t so big. The more I look at you, Diggums, the less I believe all that junk your little groupies spew back at The Sozzled Parrot. You don’t look like much of a burglar to me, Diggums. I think you’re a phoney. A fraud, a tale-spinning liar.”

Mulch brought a hand up to his face. Yawn.

Artemis had been returned to the grip of his amorphobot once the branding had been completed, and with nothing to do but think in its clammy folds, he could feel whatever was left of his battered personality slipping away. The rune on his neck had taken hold of his willpower in a vicelike grip, and while he could think and speak at the moment, it took a lot of effort, and he guessed that he only had those rudimentary functions because Turnball hadn’t given him any specific instructions yet. Once he had his orders, then he would be powerless to resist.

Turnball will be able to order me to do anything, he realized.

Through the distorting field of gel, Artemis could see Ragby taunting Mulch, and thought that perhaps it would be a good idea if he joined the argument.

Speaking through the gel was a tricky affair that involved forming the words through clenched teeth, which kept the gel out but allowed it to pick up vibration in the throat.

“Hello, Mr. Ragby,” he said. The amorphobot sprouted a gel speaker and translated the vibrations into words.

“Hey, look,” said Ragby. “The thrall speaks. What do you want, Mud Boy? A little shock, is that what you want?”

Artemis decided that highbrow intellectual argument was not the way to go with this person, and chose to go straight for the personal insult.

“I want you to have a bath, dwarf. You stink.”

Ragby was delighted to have a little diversion. “Wow. That’s like actual grown-up fighting talk. You do know that your bodyguard is out of action?”

If Butler had been equipped with laser eyeballs, Bobb Ragby would have had holes bored right through his skull.

What are you up to, Artemis? wondered Butler. This kind of insult is not your style.

“I don’t need a bodyguard to dispose of you, Ragby,” continued Artemis. “Just a bucket of water and a wire brush.”

“Funny,” said Ragby, though he sounded a little less amused than previously.

“Perhaps some disinfectant, so your germs would not spread.”

“I have a fungus,” said Ragby. “It’s a real medical condition and it’s very hurtful of you to bring it up.”

“Awww,” said Artemis. “Is the big tough dwarf in pain?”

Ragby had had enough. “Not as much pain as you,” he said, and instructed the bot to pass a charge through its gel sac.

Artemis was attacked by shards of white lightning. He jittered for a moment like a marionette in the hands of a toddler, then relaxed, floating unconscious in the gel.

Ragby laughed. “Not so funny now, are you?”

Butler growled, which would have been menacing had not his bot speakers translated it as a robotic purr, then he began to push. It should have been impossible for him to make any impact without traction, but somehow he actually managed to distend the gel, causing the bot to chitter as though being tickled.

“You guys are hilarious,” said Ragby, and allowed Butler to wear himself out for a few minutes before he grew bored and shocked the bodyguard. Not enough to knock the big human out, but certainly enough to calm him down a little.

“Two down,” he said cheerily. “Who’s next?”

“Me,” said Mulch. “I’m next.”

Bobb Ragby turned to find Mulch Diggums rolled into a ball, rear end pointed directly at Bobb himself. The rear end was not covered by material, or, in other words, it was a bare bottom and it meant business.

Ragby, as a dwarf himself and a subscriber to Where the Wind Blows monthly, knew exactly what was about to happen.

“No way,” he breathed. He should shock Diggums, he knew, but this was too much entertainment to pass up. If things got out of hand, he could press the button; until then no harm in watching. Just in time, he remembered to press record on the security cameras, in case the captain wanted a look later.

“Go on, Diggums. If you actually break free, then I’ll present my own backside for a good kicking.”

Mulch did not reply: breathing was too difficult inside the gel to go wasting any precious energy trading insults with Bobb Ragby. Instead he wrapped his forearms around his shins and bore down on his colon, which was inflated like a very long balloon snake.

“Go, Mulch!” whooped Ragby. “Make your people proud. Just so you know, this will be up on the Ethernet in about five minutes.”

The first bubble to emerge was cantaloupe sized. These big bubbles were known among dwarf tunnelers as corkers, from back in the days when corks were used to cap bottles. Often a corker had to be cleared before the main flow could begin.

“Good-sized corker,” Bobb Ragby admitted.

Once the corker was out of his system, Mulch followed it with a flurry of smaller squibs, which emerged into the gel with an initial speed that was quickly arrested by the bot’s gel.

“Is that it?” called Bobb, a little disappointed, truth be known. “Is that all you got?”

That was not all Mulch had got. A hundred more assorted squibs quickly followed, some spheres, some ellipsoids, and Ragby swore he saw a cube.

“Now you’re just showing off!” he said.

The bubbles just kept on coming in various sizes and shapes. Some were transparent, some suspiciously opaque, and a few had wisps of gas inside that crackled when they hit the gel.

The bot chittered nervously, the metal hardware heart flashing orange as its built-in spectrometer struggled to analyze the gas’s components.

“Now that I have never seen,” said Bobb, his finger hovering over the shocker button.

Still the bubbles flowed, inflating the amorphobot to twice its original size. Its chitterings climbed the octaves