“I am here for you, Giovanni,” she said in a voice as beautiful as her eyes. In fact, everything about the girl was beautiful. Her porcelain features. And those eyes. They would not let him go.
Zito fought her spell. “For me? What do you mean? Is your mother nearby?”
The girl smiled. “Not nearby, no. You are my family now.”
Giovanni tried to make sense of this simple sentence, but he could not. Was it really important? Those eyes, and that voice. So melodic. Layers of crystal tinkling.
Humans react differently to the fairy mesmer. Most fall immediately under its hypnotic spell, but there are those with strong minds who need to be pushed a little. And the more they are pushed, the greater the risk of brain damage.
“I am your family now?” said Zito slowly, as though he were searching each word for meaning.
“Yes, human,” snapped Opal impatiently, pushing harder. “My family. I am your daughter, Belinda. You adopted me last month, secretly. The papers are in your bureau.”
Giovanni’s eyes lost their focus. “Adopted? Bureau?”
Opal drummed her tiny fingers on the base of the lamp. She had forgotten how dull some humans could be, especially under the mesmer. And this one was supposed to be a genius.
“Yes. Adopted. Bureau. You love me more than life, remember? You would do absolutely anything for your darling Belinda.”
A tear pooled on Zito’s eyelid. “Belinda. My little girl. I’d do anything for you, dear, anything.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Opal impatiently. “Of course. I said that. Just because you’re mesmerized doesn’t mean you have to repeat everything I say. That is so tiresome.”
Zito noticed two small creatures in the corner. Creatures with pointed ears. This fact penetrated the mesmer’s fugue.
“I see. Over there. Are they human?”
Opal glowered at the Brill brothers. They were supposed to stay out of sight. Mesmerizing a strong mind such as Zito’s was a delicate enough operation without distractions.
She added another layer to her voice. “You cannot see those figures. You will never see them again.”
Zito was relieved. “Of course. Good. Nothing at all. Mind playing tricks.”
Opal scowled. What was it about humans and grammar? At the first sign of stress, it went out the window. Mind playing tricks. Really.
“Now, Giovanni, Daddy. I think we need to talk about your next project.”
“The water-powered car?”
“No, idiot. Not the water-powered car. The core probe.
I know you have designed one. Quite a good design for a human, though I will be making changes.”
“The core probe. Impossible. Can’t get through crust. Don’t have enough iron.”
“We can’t get through the crust. We don’t have enough iron. Speak properly, for heaven’s sake. It’s trying enough speaking Mud Man without listening to your gibberish. Honestly, you human geniuses are not all you’re cracked up to be.”
Zito’s beleaguered brain made the effort. “I am sorry, dearest Belinda. I simply mean that the core probe project is long term. It will have to wait until we can find a practical way to gather the iron, and cut through the earth’s crust.”
Opal looked at the dazed Sicilian. “Poor dear stupid Daddy. You developed a super laser to cut through the crust. Don’t you remember?”
A dewdrop of sweat rolled down Zito’s cheek. “A super laser? Now that you mention it . . .”
“And can you guess what you’ll find when you do cut through?”
Zito could guess. Part of his intellect was still his own. “A hematite orebody? It would have to be massive. Of very high grade.”
Opal led him to the window. In the distance, the wind farm’s blades flashed in the starlight.
“And where do you think we should dig?”
“I think we should dig under the wind farm,” said Zito, resting his forehead against the cool glass.
“Very good, Daddy. If you dig there I will be ever so happy.”
Zito patted the pixie’s hair. “Ever so happy,” he said sleepily. “Belinda, my little girl. Papers are in bureau.”
“The papers are in the bureau,” corrected Opal. “If you persist with this baby talk I will have to punish you.”
She wasn’t joking.
E7, Below the Mediterranean
Holly had to stay out of the major chutes on her way to the surface. Foaly had sensors monitoring all traffic through commercial and LEP routes. This meant navigating unlit meandering secondary chutes, but the alternative was being picked up by the centaur’s bugs and hauled back to Police Plaza before the job was done.
Holly negotiated stalactites the size of skyscrapers, and skirted vast craters teeming with bioluminescent insect life. But instinct was doing the driving. Holly’s thoughts were a thousand miles away, reflecting on the events of the past twenty-four hours. It seemed as though her heart was finally catching up with her body.
All her previous adventures with Artemis were almost like comic book escapades compared to their current situation. It had always been happy ever after before. There had been a few close calls, but everyone had made it out alive. Holly studied her trigger finger. A faint scar circled the base where it had been severed during the Arctic incident. She could have healed the scar or covered it with a ring, but she preferred to keep it where she could see it. The scar was part of her. The commander had been a part of her too. Her superior, her friend.
Sadness emptied her out, then filled her up again. For a while, thoughts of revenge had fueled her. But now, even the thoughts of dumping Opal Koboi into a cold cell could not light a spark of vengeful joy in her heart. She would keep going to ensure that the People were safe from humans. Maybe when that task was done, it would be time to take a look at her life. Maybe there were a few things that needed changing.
Artemis summoned everyone to the passenger area as soon as he had finished work on the computer. His new-old memories were giving him immense pleasure. As his fingers skimmed the Gnommish keyboard, he marveled at the ease with which he navigated the fairy platform. He marveled too at the technology itself, even though he was no stranger to it anymore. The Irish boy felt the same thrill of rediscovery that a small child feels when he has chanced upon a lost favorite toy.
For the past hour, rediscovery had been a major theme in his life. Having a major theme for an hour doesn’t seem like much, but Artemis had a catalog of memories all clamoring to be acknowledged. The memories themselves were startling enough: boarding a radioactive train near Murmansk, or flying across the ocean concealed beneath LEP cam-foil. But it was the cumulative effect of these memories that interested Artemis. He could literally feel himself becoming a different person. Not exactly the way he used to be, but clos
er to that individual. Before the fairies had mind-wiped him as part of the Jon Spiro deal, his personality had been undergoing what could be seen as positive change. So much so that he had decided to go completely legitimate and donate ninety percent of Spiro’s massive fortune to Amnesty International. Since his mind wipe, he had reverted to his old ways, indulging his passion for criminal acts. Now he was somewhere in the middle. He had no desire to hurt or steal from the innocent, but he was having difficulty giving up his criminal ways. Some people just needed to be stolen from.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the desire he felt to help his fairy friends, and the real sadness he felt at the loss of Julius Root. Artemis was no stranger to loss; at one time or another, he had lost and found everyone close to him. Julius’s death cut him just as deeply as any of these. His drive to avenge the commander and stop Opal Koboi was more powerful than any criminal urge he had ever felt.
Artemis smiled to himself. It seemed as though good was a more powerful motivation than bad. Who would have thought it?
The rest of the group gathered around the central holographic projector. Holly had parked the shuttle on the floor of a secondary chute close to the surface.
Butler was forced to squat on his hunkers in the fairy-sized ship.
“Well, Artemis, what did you find out?” asked the bodyguard, trying to fold his massive arms without knocking someone smaller over.
Artemis activated a holographic animation, which rotated slowly in the middle of the chamber. The animation showed a cutaway of the earth from crust to core. Artemis switched on a laser pointer and began his briefing.
“As you can see, there is a distance of approximately one thousand eight hundred miles from the earth’s surface to the outer core.”
The projection’s liquid outer core swirled and bubbled with molten magma.
“However, mankind has never managed to penetrate more than nine miles through the crust. To go any deeper would necessitate the use of nuclear warheads, or huge amounts of dynamite. An explosion of this magnitude could possibly generate huge shifts in the earth’s tectonic plates, causing earthquakes and tidal waves around the globe.”