by Eoin Colfer
The man is in a bath of electric eels, he thought. Surely this is my moment.
But Myles maintained an interested expression and Lord Teddy did not suspect anything was amiss. For, in truth, nothing was amiss. Yet.
“But the lure of my father’s gold brought healers from far and wide,” continued Lord Teddy. “Doctors, shamans, and crackpots. Charlatans, the lot of them. I was coated in potions and drained by leeches. Naturally, nothing worked. But there was one old man—an ancient beggar clad in rags; the fellow reeked of camels—who poured a single drop of liquid onto my wound. The next morning, he was gone and I was healed. And what’s more, there was no scar—the wounded skin was completely rejuvenated. Smooth as an infant’s posterior. The fellow disappeared with his purse fattened, but he left behind the belief that it was possible to extend one’s life span. I knew that I could live forever, and, with your help, I shall do exactly that.”
The duke topped up his glass for the third time and somehow relaxed contentedly while the eels coiled around his wrists and ankles like elaborate jewelry.
“So, young man,” he said, “what do you think of my eel friends?”
“Actually, Your Grace,” said Myles, “they are not, in truth, eels. They are knifefish.”
“Don’t be tiresome, Fowl,” said the duke, disappointed. “Surely you appreciate the effort required to train these fellows, no matter what you call them. It involves a system of staggered introduction.”
Myles began picking up Teddy’s clothing, which the duke had simply discarded on the floor.
“Don’t worry about that, dear boy,” said Lord Teddy. “The robots will take care of it.”
“It’s no trouble,” said Myles. “Mess distracts me. I cannot think straight with irregularities in my vision.”
The duke waved a royal hand. “Well, then, by all means; perhaps you could be my butler.”
This made Myles smile. Perhaps the duke would like what a butler could do for him, but he certainly would not like what a Butler would do to him.
Myles hung Lord Teddy’s smoking jacket on a door hook. “In point of fact, I know very little about knifefish, aka electric eels. Only a few facts, in fact. For one thing, they have an excellent sense of smell underwater.”
“You don’t say?” said the duke, a little tipsy now and growing churlish. “That is the very definition of useless information.”
Myles fished one of the duke’s alligator slippers from under a divan. “And, because of their special talents, the Electrophorus electricus have very few predators. One main predator, in fact.”
“And what might that predator be?” asked the duke, interested in spite of himself. After all, he was a hunter.
Myles held up the slipper. “Well, by strange happenstance, Your Grace, the electric eel’s main predator is the American alligator.”
Myles waited a beat for the duke’s brain to catch up.
“Ah,” said Lord Teddy, the implication dawning, and he reached for a handgun hidden under the washcloth on his bath tray, but it was too late for the duke to defend himself.
“Exactly, Your Grace,” said Myles, and he tossed the slipper into the tub.
The electric eels took one whiff of alligator skin and went berserk.
Myles had been so displeased by Lord Teddy’s mocking use of the phrase “useless information” that he added literal insult to actual injury by tearing the duke’s smoking jacket from its hook and dropping it in a puddle on the floor, revealing his own suit underneath.
“Useless information,” he said to the unconscious Lord Teddy, whose upper torso was draped over the tub’s curved lip. “As if I, Myles Fowl, would ever deal in that particular commodity.”
And then, realizing that this was perhaps not the time for petulant dillydallying, he dressed and hurried from the room at medium hustle so as not to trip over his own toes. It would be mortifying to ruin his own ingenious escape strategy by stumbling on the uneven flagstones. Behind him the bathwater popped and crackled like an energetic vat of rice-based cereal and the eels’ subaquatic lightning bolts threw flickering shadows on the tapestry-draped walls.
Tapestries in a damp bathroom, thought Myles. I mean, honestly.
He felt a twinge of guilt for having electrocuted the duke beyond his usual limits, but the fish were little more than babies and the duke would awaken soon enough.
Having successfully exited the duke’s bathroom without a single stumble, Myles clanked up the metal stairs, fervently hoping that Lord Teddy had not trained his eels to slither from their natural habitat and hunt intruders. It seemed unlikely, but in the past few days the unlikely had become almost commonplace, and only a fool did not adjust his mind-set accordingly. There were obviously things in the world that could not yet be explained by science.
Three stories later, Myles found himself panting at the laboratory door, unpursued by man, beast, or robot. He rested bent almost double for a moment, drawing deep breaths to his core and vowing to pay more attention to his cardio regime in the future. But as soon as his heart had dropped below two hundred beats per minute, Myles, whistling the same tune Teddy had earlier, summarily tapped in the lock code and pressed on into the lab. He was momentarily distracted by the Aladdin’s cave of cutting-edge equipment, especially a cryogenics pod that was definitely not on the general market, but a whimper from Whistle Blower reminded him of his mission’s urgency and he hurried past computer banks and elevated readouts to the troll station, where the little fellow had obviously been completely disoriented from being suspended upside down and pumped full of sedatives.
For a supposed scientist, the duke’s methods are quite cavalier, thought Myles. It is no wonder his arms are elongated.
Whistle Blower reacted to Myles’s approach with sluggish aggression, twitching his claws and rattling his bonds, all to no avail. It would take many multiples of the troll’s strength to fracture titanium robot clamps.
Fortunately for Whistle Blower, it was a matter of half a dozen keystrokes on the nearest keyboard for Myles Fowl to free the little troll from his bonds.
Whistle Blower dropped into the plastic funnel, his head stoppering the funnel mouth.
Myles Fowl had never been known for his bedside manner. He’d once tried to assure a six-year-old food-poisoned Beckett by telling him The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” a factoid that did nothing to ease the churning in his twin’s belly.
And so now, as he gingerly tugged the toy troll out of the funnel by one leg, he had no idea how to comfort the creature.
“There now, little chap,” he said. “Chin up and all that. It could be worse—you could be dead instead of simply drugged and depleted.”
This had about as much effect on the troll as the Nietzsche quote had on Beckett half a decade earlier. Whistle Blower simply continued his soft moaning, his eyes white slits.
He will recover, thought Myles. He must recover.
In point of fact, there was indeed a recovery, but it was not the troll but rather the duke who exhibited more vitality than Myles had expected by appearing at the laboratory door. Teddy’s hair stuck out in a frizzled halo, effectively tripling the size of his head, and from deep inside that hirsute globe came a raw wail.
“Fowl!” he cried. “Fowl.”
Even at the age of eleven, Myles had become somewhat accustomed to hearing his own surname roared/screamed/yelled at him by irate adults, but he had been so sure the eels would blast the duke from consciousness for some time that he was surprised to see the fellow not ten feet away with his Victorian costume hanging from his limbs in sopping pouches.
“Bravo, Your Grace,” said Myles. “You display remarkable powers of recuperation.”
Lord Teddy offered a brief explanation before continuing with his offensive. “I’ve built up a resistance, don’t you know? And also, I had a wireless grounding breaker stuck to my palm in case you tried something.”
Lord Teddy held o
ut his hand, revealing what looked like a circular Band-Aid. He tore off the device and threw it at Myles’s feet.
“A breaker,” said Myles. “I should have foreseen that.”
And Myles realized that the unsettling emotion that he was experiencing was probably a blend of surprise and shock that the duke had not been completely taken in by his fratricide act. He took several steps backward—quicker than he would have liked, given what Beckett had always called his two left feet—and found himself with his back pressed hard against the safety bar of the balcony door.
Lord Teddy shook himself like a wet dog so the water flew in ribbons from his beard, and then returned to his previous state of anger.
“I almost trusted you, Fowl. I really wanted to believe I had found someone who understood.”
Myles cradled Whistle Blower to his chest. “Oh, but I do understand, Your Grace. I admire your quest, in fact. But your methods are crude and unscientific. Craft cannot be replaced by equipment and brutality.”
Lord Teddy checked that the venom beaker was in the desktop refrigerator and deposited it in a pouch at the front of his swimming costume, where it hung like a potbelly.
“I feel, my boy,” he said, “that our partnership has run its course.”
He strode to the wall-mounted Bleedham-Drye crest and drew both rapiers, tossing one toward Myles so that it skittered to a rest at the boy’s feet.
“Shall we settle this like gentlemen?”
Myles wondered why on earth a chap would mount a crest in his laboratory and also felt that this challenge was a bit rich coming from a practiced swordsman with a considerable reach advantage, and so he replied, “No, Your Grace. We shall settle this like scientists.”
Myles backed through the balcony door into the night, with the blood moon full at his back and the sea breeze sharpening his senses.
“Give me that troll,” said Lord Teddy, trembling with indignant rage. “Get back in here this instant and hand him over.”
Whistle Blower’s extraordinary recuperative powers were kicking in, and the little fellow wriggled in Myles’s arms.
In seconds he will be back to his destructive self, Myles realized.
And though he felt foolish even attempting to speak the creature’s language, Myles growled an approximation of Beckett’s name in what he supposed might be called Trollish.
Teddy was too stunned to maintain his anger. “Are you…? Are you actually speaking to that troll, Fowl? Have you completely lost your marbles?”
Myles spoke Beckett’s name once more in the troll’s tongue and the effect was remarkable. Whistle Blower stretched out in the crook of his arms and burbled as though he were taking a nap in a beachside hammock and not at the center of a gothic scenario involving a vertiginous altitude and a murderous duke in his swimming costume, with a backdrop of all the best nature had to offer.
Even at this height Myles’s shaven skull was quickly coated with a fine salt mist, which the boy was absently aware would dehydrate his epidermis. He also knew that that he only had two choices regarding which way he could go, those choices being up or down, and so he talked to the duke to buy himself a few paltry seconds.
“My marbles, Your Grace, are all accounted for,” he said. “You are the one who suffers from marble deficiency.”
Teddy had calmed somewhat now that he had a sword in his hand. “My dear boy, you are trapped, and that is all there is to it. Step inside and we can talk about this. I may decide to simply give you a thrashing and send you on your way.”
“A gracious offer,” said Myles, “but I am the one in control here. After all, I have your test subject in my grasp.” And with that he dangled Whistle Blower over the balcony railing by one foot.
The duke was not in the least alarmed and, in fact, scoffed, which involved a flapping of his lips followed closely by a sarcastic comment. “Of course, my boy. The bald twerp on the very high ledge is in complete control.” He knuckled the venom beaker in his pouch so it clinked. “I have what I need right here, Myles Fowl. Technically, I don’t need either of you.”
“Perhaps,” said Myles, “but that small sample will run out.”
“Perhaps,” said Lord Teddy. “And perhaps I will hire somebody even smarter than you to replicate the venom. So, unless you can climb or fly, you are certainly not in control.”
Myles looked to the skies and then to the courtyard below as though considering these options.
“I’m afraid, Your Grace, that physical activity has never been my strong suit,” he said. “But I do know someone who can climb, and another someone who can fly.”
And with that magnificently dramatic declaration, Myles Fowl turned and dropped Whistle Blower over the balcony and followed this shocking action by raising his arms and taking off like some form of miniature superhero.
The duke, driven beyond demented by the odious grandstanding twin, lunged at the boy’s ascending ankles, succeeding in snagging one.
“No, you don’t, my clever lad,” he said, digging in his heels. “No one turns his back on royalty.”
At this point the duke’s gaze was naturally directed upward, and he realized that Myles Fowl was not, in fact, flying, but being airlifted by the blasted fairy who was supposed to be dead.
“Bamboozled!” he cried, and he would have gnashed his teeth if the thought had occurred to him, which it did not. What did occur was that he had a sword in his hand and the fairy’s gossamer wings were well within the reach of his elongated arms.
I’ll bring the pair of them tumbling down, he thought.
At this point Whistle Blower’s fate had temporarily slipped Lord Teddy’s mind. In fact, his quest for eternal life seemed somewhat less important than it had moments ago. Now the shining goal in his life was to destroy this infuriating boy with his smug grin.
And so the duke put his cricket training to good use and swung the foil in a wide arc, which was, strictly speaking, a move more suited to a saber, but Teddy was angry and can be forgiven for mixing up his weapons. However, bad technique or not, the swing did achieve its purpose, that purpose being to damage Lazuli’s wings. The tip of Teddy’s foil sliced through her lower right winglet, which was possibly not catastrophic, and the specialist could have pulled out of the spin given perhaps thirty seconds of open sky.
But Lazuli had neither an open sky nor half a minute and was weighed down by a passenger. The ratio of passengers to pilots was increased to three to one when Lazuli’s rig lost altitude abruptly and Teddy was forced to relinquish his hold on Myles’s leg. The duke’s hand was replaced almost immediately by Beckett Fowl’s own, as the twin had climbed Childerblaine House’s gray wall to take delivery of Whistle Blower. When Lazuli’s whining rig spun her down and into the wall, Beckett thought he might save both Lazuli and his brother.
“Myles,” he cried, “hold on!”
Myles did not answer, for he was engaged in quite an acrobatic activity and was intensely uncomfortable.
Somehow, in a single moment, Beckett threaded his arm under Lazuli’s belt, securing the fairy to him. With his natural instinct for weights and balance, Beckett figured he could both maintain his perch on the wall and support Myles and Lazuli, for a few seconds at least. Had Lazuli’s rig been inactive, Beckett might have proved correct, but the damaged wing split completely and interfered with the upper set of wings. The left wings went into spasm with such force that the entire group of assorted fairies and humans were snatched from the wall and sent pinwheeling through the dragon’s breath toward the unforgiving rock some thirty feet below.
For perhaps one hundredth of a single second, the bunch left their outline in the fog, cartoon-character style.
It could be pointed out, perhaps somewhat cruelly, that Beckett and his intrepid comrades had finally lived up to their chosen group name:
The Regrettables.
THIS is perhaps an opportune moment for us to freeze our heroes in mid-plummet and swing back in time to the first major fall of the day. You wil
l remember how, mere hours before, Myles had succeeded in tipping one teammate to her supposed death and then pushing his brother off the top of a cliff, sealing the deal with a wrist bump. This was step one in his audacious plan to hoodwink the duke and save the Regrettables, for, in fact, ye of little faith, it was never Myles’s intention to betray his twin. Certainly indulging in criminality is a Fowl family trait, but, unlike the backstabbing Bleedham-Dryes, one Fowl would never sell another down the river—or over a cliff edge, for that matter.
In Myles’s mind, his plan was simple mathematics and therefore utterly straightforward, and it never would have made it onto the CHOMP (Chart of Myles’s Plans) that he updated on a weekly basis and kept on NANNI’s desktop. The current number one was his plot to steal an Egyptian pyramid during an eclipse using only a revolutionary system of pneumatic levers and some double-sided tape.
As a matter of fact, Myles had been mildly surprised when Lord Teddy even partially fell for his ruse, but he supposed that, in all fairness to the duke, he had been missing a vital piece of information, that being the fact that Lazuli had allowed Myles to examine her wrist computer as the Orient Express passed through Switzerland. During this cursory examination of the display, he had quickly realized that the system ReGen MeePee (Regeneration Mini Program) was funneling power to functions in order of urgency. The first priority for reactivation was the computer’s readout itself. The LEP device had not yet been ready for complex calculations, but Myles had determined, using the exponential growth equation Y=ABx, that the circuits would regenerate sufficiently to provide the next available function—flight mode—in seventeen hours. And so Myles had started a mental countdown toward that time.
Fast-forward seventeen hours minus five seconds, and we find the so-called Regrettables clustered at the edge of St. George’s precipice. Myles was finishing up his countdown to the moment he could safely nudge Specialist Heitz over the edge. Her wings activated just as predicted, because science, and it was only when Myles saw Specialist Heitz hovering at a safe altitude that he tackled Beckett. Not literally tackled him, of course, for that would be foolhardy given Beckett’s expertise in all matters physical. Instead, he babbled on about brotherhood and loyalty, but that was just structured noise—the important information exchanged between the brothers was passed through the medium of Fowl Argot.
