CHAPTER 9
DADDY’S GIRL

The Zito Earth Farm; The Messina Province, Sicily

Opal’s plan to bring the human and fairy worlds together was one of simplicity in its execution, but genius in its conception. She simply had made it easier for a human to do what he was already thinking of doing. Almost every major energy company in the world had a core probe file, but their ideas were all hypothetical, considering the amount of explosives needed to blast through the crust, and the iron necessary to get the probe through the mantle.

Opal picked Giovanni Zito from her list of prospective puppets because of two things: Zito had a large fortune, and land directly above a huge high-grade hematite orebody.

Giovanni Zito was a Sicilian engineer and a pioneer in the field of alternative power sources. A committed environmentalist, Zito developed ways of generating electricity without stripping the land or destroying the environment. The invention that had made his fortune was the Zito solar-mill. A windmill with solar panels for blades, making it many times more efficient than conventional mills.

Six weeks earlier, Zito had returned from an environmental summit in Geneva, where he had delivered the keynote address to ministers of the European Union. By the time he reached his villa on the shores of the Strait of Messina, the sunset was dropping orange blobs in the water, and Giovanni was exhausted. Talking to politicians was difficult. Even the ones who were genuinely interested in the environment were hamstrung by the ones in the pockets of big business. The polluticians, as the media had nicknamed them.

Giovanni ran himself a bath. The water was heated by solar panels on his roof. In fact, the entire villa was self-sufficient when it came to power. There was enough juice in the solar batteries to keep the house hot and lit for six months. All with zero emissions.

After his bath, Zito wrapped himself in a dressing gown and poured a glass of Bordeaux, settling into his favorite armchair.

Giovanni took a long draft of wine, willing the day’s tension to evaporate. He cast his eyes over the familiar row of framed photographs on his wall. Most were magazine covers celebrating his technological innovations, but his favorite one, the one that made him famous, was the Time magazine cover that showed a younger Giovanni Zito astride a humpback whale, with a whaling ship looming over them both. The unfortunate creature had strayed into shallow waters and could not dive. So Zito had leaped from a conservationists’ dinghy onto the creature’s back, thus shielding it from the whalers’ harpoons. Someone on the dinghy had snapped a photo, and that photo had become one of the most famous media images of the last century.

Zito smiled. Heady days. He was about to close his eyes for a quick nap before dinner, when something moved in the shadows in the corner of the room. Something small, barely the height of the table.

Zito sat straight up in his chair. “What’s that? Is somebody there?”

A lamp flicked on to reveal a small girl perched on a log stool. She held the lamp cord in her hand and seemed not in the least afraid or upset in any way. In fact the girl was calm and composed, regarding Zito as if he were the intruder.

Giovanni stood. “Who are you, little one? Why are you here?”

The girl fixed him with the most incredible eyes. Deep brown eyes. Deep as a vat of chocolate.

“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 closer 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.”

Mulch was, as usual, eating something. Nobody knew what, as he had emptied the food locker over an hour since. Nobody really wanted to ask either. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“No, it isn’t,” agreed Artemis. “Which is why the ironclad probe theory has never been put into practice, until now. The original idea belongs to a New Zealander, Professor David Stevenson. It is quite brilliant, actually, if impractical. Encase a reinforced probe in a hundred million tons of molten iron. The iron will sink through the crack generated by the explosive, even closing the crack behind it. Within a week the probe will reach the core. The iron will be consumed by the outer core, and the probe will gradually disintegrate. The entire process is even environmentally sound.”

The projection put Artemis’s words into pictures.

“How come the iron doesn’t un-melt?” asked Mulch.

Artemis raised a long thin eyebrow. “Un-melt? The orebody’s sheer size stops it from solidifying.”

Holly stood, stepping into the projection itself and studying the orebody. “Foaly must know all about this. Humans couldn’t keep something so big a secret.”

“Indeed,” said Artemis, opening a second holographic projection. “I ran a search on the onboard database and found this: Foaly ran several computer simulations over eighty years ago. He concluded that the best way to deal with the threat was to simply broadcast misinformation to whatever probe was being sent down. As far as the humans were concerned, their probe would simply sink through a couple hundred miles of various low-grade ore, and then the orebody would solidify. A resounding and very expensive failure.”

The computer simulation showed the information being broadcasted from Haven to the metal-encased probe. Aboveground, cartoon human scientists scratched their heads and tore up their notes.

“Most amusing,” said Artemis.

Butler was studying the hologram. “I’ve been on enough campaigns to know that there is a big hole in that strategy, Artemis,” he said.

“Yes?”

Butler struggled to his knees and traced the probe’s path with a finger. “Well, what if the probe’s journey brought it into contact with one of the People’s chutes? Once that metal punctures that chute, it’s on an express ride to Haven.”

Artemis was delighted at his bodyguard’s astuteness. “Yes. Of course. Which is why there is a supersonic attack shuttle on standby twenty-four hours a day, to divert the molten mass if the need arises. All human probe projects are monitored, and if any are judged to pose a threat, they are quietly sabotaged. If that doesn’t work, the LEP geological unit drills in under the molten mass and diverts it with some shaped charges. The orebody follows the new path blown for it, and Haven is safe. Of course, the mining shuttle has never been used.”

“There’s another problem,” added Holly. “We have to factor in Opal’s involvement. She obviously has helped Giovanni Zito drill through the crust, possibly with a fairy laser. We can presume she has upgraded the probe itself so that Foaly’s false signals will not be accepted. So her plan must be to bring that probe into contact with the People. But how?”

Artemis launched a third holographic animation, shutting down the first two. This 3-D rendering portrayed Zito’s Earth Farm and the underlying crust and mantle.

“This is what I think,” he said. “Zito, with Opal’s help, liquefies his orebody here. It begins to sink at a rate of sixteen feet per second toward the earth’s core, taking accurate readings, thanks to Koboi’s upgrades. Meanwhile, Foaly thinks his plan is working perfectly. Now, at a depth of one hundred and six miles, the metal mass comes within three miles of this major chute, E7, which emerges in southern Italy. They run parallel for one hundred and eighty-six miles, then diverge again. If Opal were to blow a crack between these two tunnels, the iron would follow the path of least resistance and flow into the chute.”

Holly felt the strength leave her limbs. “Into the chute, and straight down to Haven.”

“Exactly,” said Artemis. “This particular chute runs in a jagged westerly diagonal for twelve hundred miles, coming within five hundred yards of the city itself. With the speed the orebody will build up in free fall, it will slice off a good half of the city. Everything that’s left will be broadcasting signals for the world to hear.”

“But we have blast walls,” objected Holly.

Artemis shrugged. “Holly, there isn’t a force on earth powerful enough to stop a hundred million tons of molten hematite in free fall. Anything that gets in the way will be obliterated. Most of the iron will curve around and follow the tunnel, but enough will continue straight down to cut right through the blast walls.”

The shuttle’s occupants watched Artemis’s computer simulation in which the molten orebody smashed through Haven City’s defenses, allowing all the fairy electronic signals to be picked up by the probe.

“We are looking at a fifty-eight percent casualty rate,” said Artemis. “Possibly more.”

“How can Opal do this without Foaly’s sensors picking her up?”

“Simple,” replied Artemis. “She merely plants a shaped charge in E7 at a depth of one hundred and five miles, detonating it at the last minute. That way, by the time Foaly detects the explosion, it will be too late to either disarm it or do anything about it.”

“So we need to remove that charge.”

Artemis smiled. If only it were that simple. “Opal will not take any chances with the charge. If she left it on the chute wall for any amount of time, a tremor could shake it free, or one of Foaly’s sensors could pick it up. I’m sure the device is well shielded, but one leak in the plating could have it broadcasting like a satellite. No, Opal will not position the charge until the last minute.”

Holly nodded. “Okay. So we wait until she plants it, then we disarm it.”

“No. If we wait in the chute, then Foaly will pick us up. If that happens, Opal will not even venture down the chute.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Not really. We may delay her for a few hours, but remember, Opal has a two-hundred-mile window to plant the charge. She can wait for the LEP to arrest us and still have ample time to complete her mission.”

Holly knuckled her eyes. “I don’t understand this. Surely everyone must know by now that Opal has escaped. Surely Foaly can put this all together.”

Artemis closed his fist. “There’s the rub. That single point is the essence of this entire situation. Foaly obviously doesn’t know that Opal has escaped. She would be the first person checked after the goblin general’s escape.”

“She was checked. I was there. When Scalene escaped, Opal was still catatonic. There’s no way she could have planned it.”

“And yet, she did,” mused Artemis. “Could that Opal have been a double?”

“Not possible. They run DNA checks every day.”

“So the Opal under surveillance had Koboi’s DNA, but little or no brain activity.”

“Exactly. She’s been that way for a year.”

Artemis thought silently for over a minute. “I wonder how far cloning technology has developed underground?”

He crossed briskly to the main computer terminal and called up LEP files on the subject.

“‘The mature clone is identical to the original in every way, except that its brain functions are limited to life support,’” he read. “‘In greenhouse conditions, it takes one to two years to grow a clone to adulthood.’” Artemis stepped away from the computer, clapping his hands. “That’s it. That’s how she did it. She induced that coma so that her replacement would not be noticed. This is impressive stuff.”

Holly pounded a fist into her palm. “So even if we did survive the attempts on our lives, all talk of Opal’s escape would be seen as the ravings of the guilty.”

“I told Chix Verbil that Opal was back,” said Mulch. “That’s okay though, because he already thinks I’m raving.”

“With Opal on the loose,” continued the Irish youth, “the entire LEP would be on the lookout for a plot of some kind. But with Opal still deep in her coma . . .”

“There is no cause for alarm. And this probe is simply a surprise, and not an emergency.”

Artemis shut down the holographic projection. “So we’re on our own. We need to steal that final charge and detonate harmlessly above the parallel stretch. Not only that, but we need to expose Opal so she cannot simply put her plan into action all over again. Obviously to do this we need to find Opal’s shuttle.”

Mulch was suddenly uncomfortable. “You’re going after Koboi? Again? Well, best of luck. You can just drop me off at the next corner.”

Holly ignored him. “How long do we have?”

There was a calculator on the plasma screen, but Artemis didn’t need it. “The orebody is sinking at a rate of sixteen feet per second. That’s eleven miles per hour. At that speed it would take approximately nine and a half hours to reach the parallel stretch.”

“Nine hours from now?”

“No,” corrected Artemis. “From detonation, which was almost two hours ago.”

Holly walked rapidly into the cockpit and strapped herself into the pilot’s chair. “Seven and a half hours to save the world. Isn’t there some law that says we get at least twenty-four?”

Artemis strapped himself into the copilot’s chair. “I don’t think Opal bothers with laws,” he said. “Now, can you talk while you fly? There are a few things I need to know about shuttles and charges.”