The Fowl Twins Deny All Charges

by Eoin Colfer

  “Myles,” said his mother, “are you all right? Is Beckett safe?”

  “We are both fine, Mother,” said Myles. “Have you been hurt?”

  It was his father who answered, in a brusque tone. “No, son. Just our pride. This is really intolerable, Myles. What happened to the fairy ban? You didn’t even make it back to the villa before you broke your promise. And we had to watch that copy of you dissolve before our eyes.”

  “That is correct, father mine,” said Myles. “It was a copy.”

  “Of course it was a copy,” said Artemis Senior. “The organs were made of paper, mostly.”

  “I do apologize for all this palaver,” said Myles. “Believe me when I say that it’s not my doing and I will extricate the family from this predicament.”

  “And lovely Lazuli, too?” said his mother.

  “Yes, of course. Lazuli, too.” Myles thought of the pixel wrapped in a vinesuit and determined he should get back to the pressing issue of saving lives. He had just enough time to deliver one vital message.

  “All you need to do is stay cool,” he told his parents.

  Artemis Senior was surprised to hear these words coming out of his son’s mouth. “I’m sorry, Myles, my boy. Did my son Myles just tell his parents to stay cool?”

  “I did,” said Myles. “Just stay cool until I come to let you out of the safe room. Stay cool. It’s an informal phrase, meaning to relax or avoid becoming agitated.”

  “We know what it means, Myles,” said Artemis Senior. “It just seems strange coming from you.”

  Gundred had apparently finished reading the plan, because she snatched the communicator out of Myles’s hand. “And that’s enough of that, human. I just wanted you to see just how thoroughly you are outmaneuvered. Whatever you try, somebody close to you will die.”

  Myles thought this was probably true, but he had to try anyway, or else, he was reasonably certain, everybody would die.

  Half an hour later, Myles was being bundled out of the PIGLET back into the Dalkey basement where Beckett and Lazuli were being held captive. General Gveld Horteknut was sitting on a crate in the light of Beckett’s spitball, delivering a mini pre-battle pep talk to Vigor and two slightly shamefaced dwarves.

  “They can take our land,” she told her audience of three, “but they’ll never take our gold!”

  Myles, who was transfixed by the sight of his twin revolving in the glowing ball, ran his mouth automatically. “Technically, they did take your gold. You are merely taking it back.”

  Gveld froze, her fist raised, and swiveled her eyes in order to subject Myles to her familiar glare.

  “Not that such a distinction is important,” Myles added hurriedly. “Don’t mind me, I’m just a stickler for details. Most irritating, I realize.”

  Gveld continued her speech. “They say that, on that fateful first night ten thousand years ago when the humans collapsed our warrens and stole our hard-mined gold, there was a Fowl among the humans. You heard that right. A mighty Fowl warrior was among the first to claim his share of our treasure.”

  “This one is no warrior,” said one listener, who had a rune shaved into his scalp and an obviously dyed orange beard tied at the back of his neck and running over his shoulders like a cloak. “Nor his brother, neither.”

  Gveld did not point out that Myles’s brother certainly had behaved like a warrior.

  “Yes, Dyggar,” she said. “These mud spawn are not warriors. But they have talents, nonetheless. And they will try to destroy us, as their kind have done for thousands of years. But let me promise you something: not this time. This time the Horteknut Reclaimers shall be victorious. This time the humans lose.”

  “This time the humans lose,” echoed Dyggar, brandishing what Myles recognized from his schematic files as a lance version of an LEP buzz baton.

  “About that,” said Myles. “I have delivered on your Irish Backstop. You can walk into that elevator and claim the Horteknut gold.”

  Gveld nodded slowly. “Gundred sent me the file and I read it carefully. I have to say, boy, that, technically, you did not deliver anything. Not the way I interpret it.”

  Myles returned her slow nod. “I see. Because my plan hasn’t yet borne fruit, you are choosing to categorize it as a failure.”

  “That I am,” said Gveld. “And that is why Dyggar volunteered to stay behind and make sure the terms of failure are met. You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Dyggar?”

  “No, my general. I can be relied upon. Dwarf law says the terms must be met.”

  Myles appealed to Gundred. “And you, mademoiselle? Does this seem like it is in accordance with dwarf law to you?”

  Gundred could not meet his eyes. “Gveld, my general, the human delivered. His plan is sound.”

  “Yes, Number Two,” said Gveld, resting a hand on Gundred’s soldier. “His plan. But I don’t trust human plans that seem solid but will melt like ice in the sun. A possible future result is of no use to me. I do not wish my last thought under this earth to be The human betrayed us, and I let him live.”

  “But they are children…” said Gundred with an edge of protest in her voice.

  “No,” said Gveld. “They are Fowls. Believing the Fowls to be harmless children has historically been a deadly mistake for our kind. Fowl spawn are born dangerous.”

  Even Myles couldn’t argue with that, and neither did Gundred.

  “Of course, my general. As always, you show us the way.”

  Gveld smiled her dazzling golden smile. “I try, my friend,” she said. “Now, is everything unfolding as planned?”

  “Yes, General,” said Gundred. “Vigor and the shamed will make their way to the basement with their charges. And I have chosen some appropriate disguises for the two of us.”

  “Very good, Number Two,” said Gveld. “Fetch the outfits, and I shall meet you at the PIGLET.”

  Gundred bowed slightly. “Yes, General.”

  And she left, keeping her gaze glued to the floor, making zero eye contact with Myles.

  Gveld nodded at Dyggar. “Is your lance charged?”

  Dyggar pressed a button on the shaft and electricity fizzled at the tip. “Of course, General. I will not fail you.”

  “I never doubted you, soldier,” said Gveld, clapping him on the shoulder. “Remember, once the clever one kills the stupid one, he must shoot the pixel before earning his own quick death. Those are the terms.”

  This was said as though the general were reading from an everyday to-do list of chores.

  Dyggar counted off on his fingers. “Stupid one. Pixel. Clever one. Got it.”

  “Good soldier,” said Gveld, and then once she had checked to make sure Gundred had indeed left the Dalkey basement, the general whispered into Myles’s ear. “Sometimes Gundred wavers. She is not a born Horteknut, after all. But she’s an invaluable sounding board for me and my dearest friend under the earth. But this mission is different. It’s the last mission, and what Gundred doesn’t need to know is—”

  “You’re going to kill every ACRONYM agent in that building,” finished Myles. “Shut them down for good.” Myles could not believe he had not seen this before. Perhaps it was simply too horrible an option for his mind even to consider. “You’re not going to simply fake a seismic event. You’re going to blow up that building and destroy any evidence that you were ever there.”

  Gveld smiled. “Maybe you are more like me than you thought.”

  Myles did not respond. He was thinking how he himself had ensured that thousands of extra humans would be caught up in Gveld’s explosion.

  Feel guilty later, he ordered himself. Solve the current problem first.

  The current problem was Dyggar.

  Dyggar, who was so eager to kill some humans.

  Gveld curled the fingers of her right hand into a cylinder and peered through them at her soldier.

  “Tunnel safely, my soldier. And do not talk to that human lest he worm his way into your head.”

 
Dyggar returned the gesture. “Tunnel safely, my general.”

  And then the general was gone, and Dyggar took a human handgun from his belt.

  SO NOW Myles Fowl found himself in the unenviable position of having to shoot his brother and also execute that same brother’s best friend.

  This is a nice mess I’ve gotten myself into, he thought, adapting a phrase made famous by Laurel and Hardy, who were the stars of many Fowl family movie nights. Myles remembered that whenever Oliver Hardy used a version of this phrase, Beckett would exclaim in exasperation, You’re all laughing now, but anytime I make a mess, no one says “That’s a nice mess, Beckett.”

  Myles was finding it difficult to believe that Gveld had reneged on an Irish Backstop, which was supposed to be sacred.

  I routinely mistrust humans, Myles thought. But somehow I had believed fairies to be a tad more reliable.

  Apparently, he’d thought wrong. It was as Artemis had often said: There are snakes in every species.

  To which Beckett had added, Especially the snake species.

  Which was true.

  Of course, Myles was not totally naive, and he had pre-prepared a backup plan in case of this exact eventuality. But he was a little less confident in this plan now that it seemed he would actually have to whip it out. Especially since this plan relied on motor skills and timing.

  So now Myles was faced with a metaphorical snake of his own, in the form of Dyggar with his strange back beard, which probably drew impressed oohs from the patrons of a dwarf bar. To make matters even stranger, Dyggar wore a tunic that was composed entirely of shaved aloe vera leaves.

  Myles tried to make conversation in the glow of the spitball that kept his twin suspended in slow revolution. “I suppose those leaves keep you moisturized in the tunnels,” he said in Gnommish, which was the fairy common tongue.

  “Yeah. So what?” Dyggar seemed a little defensive. “Skin-care regimens are not just for elves anymore. Being wet all the time makes a guy dry, which is weird. I get these little pustules in the crook of my arm. Do you want to see?”

  “No, thank you so much,” said Myles. “I think I’ll just get on with shooting my brother, if you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Dyggar. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m in no hurry.”

  “You’re not going to the convention center?”

  Dyggar pouted. “No, thanks to you. I gotta make sure you kill these two, then finish you off. And after that I have to wait here for Axborn.”

  “I do apologize for delaying you,” said Myles. “Perhaps there will still be time for you to join the others?”

  “Nah,” said Dyggar. “We’re on clean-up duty. Me and Axborn. The others get to find the treasure. Meanwhile, I’m stuck here with a twerp like you.”

  Myles filed this information, as he did all information. “Look on the bright side,” he said. “At least you get to kill me.”

  “Yeah,” said Dyggar, mollified a little. “There is that.” He held out the gun to Myles. “There’s one bullet in the pipe. You aim it anywhere but at that spitball and I’ll blast you with so many volts your eyeballs will dry up. Also, you will be dead.”

  “You have thought of everything, my good fellow,” said Myles, accepting the weapon.

  Dyggar stamped a foot, annoyed with himself. “I just remembered. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  “Quite right,” said Myles. “Don’t say another word. Just rest your power lance on Lazuli’s left arm—on a dead man’s switch—in case I try something.”

  Dyggar beamed him a look that said I was going to do that, but he did not speak as he moved into position behind the spitball so Myles could not shoot him without also shooting through his brother.

  Myles studied the handgun. It was a small .22, known as a pipsqueak pistol by those familiar with such things, but in spite of the nickname, Myles knew that at this range the small gun would have no problem killing his twin, even through a glob of gel.

  Dyggar cleared his throat for attention and then pointed at his own body. The message was clear: Go for the heart.

  Myles answered with a shake of his head and pointed to his own forehead. “Headshot, to be certain,” he said. “I don’t want to have to borrow a bullet and shoot my brother again.”

  Dyggar winked. Wise choice.

  Myles squared up to the giant spitball. Inside the translucent sphere, Beckett was revolving slowly head over heels. A complete revolution, Myles calculated, would take fifty-eight seconds, which meant that Beck’s head would move five degrees from the apex, or indeed any point, in slightly less than a second. The bullet would dip far less, as it would have considerably more momentum than Beckett, and even though the medium was at least a thousand times denser than air, the tiny missile should find Myles’s actual target with barely any velocity left.

  No matter, thought Myles. All I need it to do is tickle him.

  Myles knew how to shoot a gun and had practiced simulations, but he had never shot one in reality. And he vowed there and then that he never would again. But, at this particular point in time, Myles couldn’t see any other way to save Beck and Lazuli both.

  What if I injure my twin?

  You cannot. It’s physics.

  Myles closed one eye, sighted along the barrel (aiming directly at Beckett’s head), counted to one, and pulled the trigger.

  The recoil was negligible from such a small weapon, but the flash and smoke clouded Myles’s view so he did not see what happened next, and the bang echoed around the room, so the twin did not hear the sound he was hoping for.

  What happened next was that Myles’s plan worked perfectly: the small bullet bored into the gel, destroying the sphere’s integrity as it lost momentum. While it seemed initially that the projectile could not miss Beckett’s head, the blond boy dipped a fraction more than the bullet, and the shot passed through one of his curls and onward through the sphere, holding on to barely enough energy to pop out the other side and dink Dyggar on the forehead.

  The dwarf squealed, thinking he had been shot dead, and reflexively released his grip on his lance’s dead man’s switch, sending a lethal current coursing through Lazuli’s tissue. This current shorted out Foaly’s magic-suppressor, waking Lazuli’s power, which responded like any antibody would when under attack by destroying its attacker. A corona of magical power bloomed around Lazuli, incin-erating the vinesuit that contained her and slamming Dyggar into the sheetrock, where he made a vaguely dwarf-shaped hole.

  “I shouldn’t have talked to you,” he said, before passing out.

  “No, my good man,” agreed Myles, though the dwarf was not a man. “You shouldn’t have.”

  It was an understandable misclassification to make in the stressful circumstances, as mythological dwarves are virtually indistinguishable from human little people, and yet his error seemed to bother Myles perhaps more than it reasonably should. In fact, he sent the gun clattering across the floor and sat with his back to the wall.

  “Stupid. Stupid,” he said, knocking his own forehead with the heel of one hand. “Dyggar is a dwarf, not a man. And you have the temerity to call yourself a genius? A person may as well refer to an ionic bond as a covalent bond. Stupid.”

  And he continued in this vein until Beckett sat beside him and draped a sopping arm over his shoulder, at which point Myles stopped beating himself up and sniffled a little. When Lazuli crawled over to join the pair, Myles wept quietly for somewhere in the region of thirty-seven seconds.

  “It’s okay, brother,” said Beckett quietly. “You saved us. You’re the only one who could have done it. Artemis would have managed one, but you got two.”

  Lazuli tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth, nothing but smoke came out. She exhaled a long plume, then coughed a half a dozen times.

  “Your magic’s back,” Beckett noted.

  “Yep,” said Lazuli when she had recovered her voice. “Luckily, the electricity shorted out Foaly’s suppressor.”

>   This comment brought Myles out of his funk.

  “Luckily?” he said, somewhat insulted. “Luckily? I will have you know, Specialist, that your magical revival had little to do with luck, less to do with fortune, and nothing whatsoever to do with karma, kismet, or happenstance. I knew exactly how to activate your powers. My methods were a little crude, I grant you, but as we learned during our adventure on the island of Saint George, your trigger appears to be imminent death, which is morbidly humorous. So I thought a lethal shock would kill two birds with one stone. Obviously, you were not one of the birds.”

  Lazuli felt relieved but also angry, not to mention sore all over.

  “So, you shocked me on purpose, Myles Fowl?”

  Myles raised a finger. “I saved you on purpose, Specialist. There is quite a big difference.”

  Lazuli huffed. “Yes, about fifty thousand volts.”

  “I think you know, as a weapons expert,” said Myles, “that it’s the current that will kill you, not the voltage.”

  Then something occurred to him. “Specialist, are you trying to distract me from my feelings of guilt by using accusations and insults?”

  Lazuli straightened her Gloop tie, which the magic had not incinerated, in an obvious imitation of Myles himself. “I am,” she confirmed. “Is it working?”

  Myles took his own pulse with two fingers. “I would say that it is. Thank you, Specialist.”

  “Good,” said Lazuli. “Then I suggest that maybe we Regrettables pick ourselves up and go stop the dwarves.”

  “Finally!” said Beckett, punching the air. “I was in that rubber ball for even longer than forever. And I’ve been stuck here for nearly a minute. Any more of this waiting around and I’ll turn into Myles.”

  I suppose I can examine my bruised psyche later, thought Myles, climbing to his feet.

  He opened a second door in the basement, which led to a stairway that presumably ran up to Dalkey High Street.

  “What say we use the stairs this time, my fellow Regrettables?” he said, grasping the wooden banister. “They are so much better suited for non-tunneling bipeds.”