“What are you looking for?” asked Root.
“I don’t know, Commander. Something. Anything.”
It took a few minutes, but finally Holly got it. She knew immediately that she was right. Her intuition was buzzing like a swarm of bees at the base of her neck. “Look here,” she said, enlarging Boohn’s brow. “A scale blister. This goblin is shedding.”
“So?” said Foaly grumpily.
Holly reopened Boohn’s exit file. “Now look. No blister.”
“So he burst the blister. Big deal.”
“No. It’s more than that. Going in, Boohn’s skin was almost gray. Now he’s bright green. He even has a camouflage pattern on his back.”
Foaly snorted. “A lot of good camouflage is in the city.”
“What’s your point, Captain?” asked Root, stubbing out his cigar.
“Boohn shed his skin in the visitors’ room. So where’s the skin?”
There was silence for a long moment as the others absorbed the implications of this question.
“Would it work?” asked Root urgently.
Foaly was almost dumbstruck. “By the gods, I think it would.”
The centaur pulled out a keyboard, his thick fingers flying across the Gnommish letters. A new video box appeared on the screen. In this box, another goblin was leaving the room. It looked a lot like Boohn. A lot, but not exactly. Something wasn’t quite right. Foaly zoomed in on the goblin’s head. At high magnification it was clear that the goblin’s skin was ill-fitting. Patches were missing altogether, and the goblin seemed to be holding folds together across his waist.
“He did it. I can’t believe it.”
“This was all planned,” said Holly. “This was no opportunistic act. Boohn waits until he’s shedding. Then he visits his uncle and they peel off his skin. General Scalene puts on the skin and just walks out the front door, fooling all your scanners on the way. When Boohn’s name shows up again, you think it’s a glitch. Simple, but completely ingenious.”
Foaly collapsed into a specially designed office chair. “This is incredible. Can goblins do that?”
“Are you kidding?” said Root. “A good goblin seamstress can peel a skin without a single tear. That’s what they make their clothes from, when they bother wearing any.”
“I know that. I meant, could goblins think of this all on their own. I don’t think so. We need to catch Scalene and find out who planned this.”
Foaly dialed a connection to the Koboi-cam in the Argon clinic. “I’m going to check that Opal Koboi is still under. This sort of thing is just her style.” A minute later, he swiveled to face Root. “Nope. Still in dreamland. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’d hate to have Opal back in circulation, but at least we’d know what we were up against.”
A thought struck Holly, draining the blood from her face. “You don’t think it could be him, do you? It couldn’t be Artemis Fowl?”
“Definitely not,” said Foaly. “It’s not the Mud Boy. Impossible.”
Root wasn’t convinced. “I wouldn’t be throwing that word around so much, if I were you. Holly, as soon as we catch Scalene, I want you to sign out a surveillance pack and spend a couple of days on the Mud Boy’s trail. See what he’s up to. Just in case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Foaly. I’m authorizing a surveillance upgrade. Whatever you need. I want to hear every call Artemis makes, and read every letter he sends.”
“But, Julius. I supervised his mind wipe myself. It was a sweet job. I scooped out his fairy memories cleaner than a goblin sucking a snail out of its shell. If we were to turn up at Artemis’s front door dancing the cancan, he still wouldn’t remember us. It would take some kind of planted trigger to initiate even partial recall.”
Root did not appreciate being argued with. “One, don’t call me Julius. Two, do what I say, horsey boy, or I’ll have your budget slashed. And three, what in Frond’s name is the cancan?”
Foaly rolled his eyes. “Forget it. I’ll organize the upgrades.”
“Wise move,” said Root, plucking a vibrating phone from his belt. He listened for several seconds, grunting affirmatives into the speaker.
“Forget Fowl for the moment,” he said, closing the phone. “Trouble has located General Scalene. He’s in E37. Holly, you’re with me. Foaly, you follow us in the tech shuttle. Apparently the general wants to talk.”
Haven City was waking up for morning trade. Although to call it morning was a bit misleading, as there was only artificial light this far underground. By human standards, Haven was barely more than a village, having fewer than ten thousand inhabitants. But in fairy terms, Haven was the largest metropolis since the original Atlantis, most of which lay buried beneath a three-story shuttle dock in the new Atlantis.
Commander Root’s LEP cruiser cut through the rush-hour traffic, its magnetic field automatically shunting other vehicles out of the way into slots in the slow lane. Root and Holly sat in the back, wishing the journey away. This situation was becoming stranger by the minute. First of all, Scalene escapes, and now his locater shows up and he wants to talk to Commander Root.
“What do you make of this?” asked Root eventually. One of the reasons he made such a fine commander was that he respected his officers’ opinions.
“I don’t know. It could be a trap. Whatever happens, you can’t go in there alone.”
Root nodded. “I know. Even I am not that stubborn. Anyway, Trouble will probably have the situation secured by the time I get there. He doesn’t like waiting around for the brass to arrive. Like someone else I know, eh, Holly?”
Holly half grinned, half grimaced. She had been reprimanded more than once for ignoring the order to wait for reinforcements.
Root raised the soundproof barrier between them and the driver.
“We need to talk, Holly. About the major thing.”
Holly looked her superior in the eyes. There was a touch of sadness in them.
“I didn’t get it,” she blurted, unable to hide her relief.
“No. No, you did get it. Or you will. The official announcement is tomorrow. The first female major in Recon history. Quite an achievement.”
“But, Commander, I don’t think that . . .”
Root silenced her with a wave of his finger. “I want to tell you something, Holly. About my career. It’s actually a metaphor for your career, so listen carefully and see if you can figure it out. Many years ago, when you were still wearing one-piece baby suits with padded backsides, I was a hotshot Recon jock. I loved the smell of fresh air. Every moment I spent in the moonlight was a golden moment.”
Holly had no trouble putting herself in the commander’s shoes. She felt exactly the same way about her own surface trips.
“So I did my job as well as I could—a little bit too well, as it happened. One day I went and got myself promoted.”
Root clamped a purifier globe around the end of a cigar so the smell would not stink up the car. It was a rare gesture.
“Major Julius Root. It was the last thing I wanted, so I marched in to my commander’s office and told him so. ‘I’m a field fairy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to sit behind a desk filling out e-forms.’ Believe it or not, I got quite agitated.”
Holly tried to look amazed, but couldn’t pull it off. The commander spent most of his time in an agitated red-faced state, which explained his nickname, Beetroot.
“But my commander said something that changed my mind. Do you want to know what that was?”
Root plowed on with his story without waiting for an answer. “My commander said; ‘Julius, this promotion is not for you;it’s for the People.’” Root raised one eyebrow. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Holly knew what he meant. It was the flaw in her argument.
Root placed a hand on her shoulder. “The People need good officers, Holly. They need fairies like you to protect them from the Mud Men. Would I prefer to be zipping around under the stars with the wind in my nostrils? Yes. W
ould I do as much good? No.”
Root paused to suck deeply on his cigar, the glow illuminated the purifier globe. “You’re a good Recon officer, Holly. One of the best I’ve seen. A bit impulsive at times, not much respect for authority, but an intuitive officer, nonetheless. I wouldn’t dream of taking you off the front lines if I didn’t think you could serve the LEP better belowground. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Commander,” said Holly glumly. He was right, even if her selfish side wasn’t ready to accept it just yet. At least she had the Fowl surveillance to look forward to before her new job anchored her in the lower elements.