LOS ANGELES, USA

 

MULCH Diggums was, in fact, outside the apartment of an Oscar-winning actress.

Of course, she didn't know he was there.

And, naturally, he was up to no good. Once a thief, always a thief.

Not that Mulch needed the money. He'd done very well out of the Artemis Fowl Affair. Well enough to take out a lease on a penthouse apartment in Beverly Hills. He'd stocked the apartment with a Pioneer entertainment system, a full DVD library and enough beef jerky to last a lifetime. Time for a decade of rest and relaxation.

But life is not like that. It refuses to curl up and sit quietly in a corner. The habits of several centuries would not go away. Halfway through the James Bond Collection, Mulch realized that he missed the bad old days. Soon the penthouse suite's reclusive occupant was taking midnight strolls. These strolls generally ended up inside other people's homes.

Initially Mulch just visited, savouring the thrill of defeating sophisticated Mud Man security systems. Then he began to take trophies. Small things — a crystal goblet, an ashtray, or a cat if he was peckish. But soon Mulch Diggums began to crave the old notoriety and his pilferings grew larger. Gold bars, goose egg diamonds, or pit bull terriers if he was really famished.

The Oscar thing began quite by accident. He nabbed one as a curiosity on a midweek break to New York. Best original screenplay. The following morning he was front page news coast to coast. You'd think he'd ripped off a medical convoy instead of a gilded statuette. Mulch, of course, was delighted. He'd found his new nocturnal pastime.

In the next fortnight, Mulch filched best soundtrack and best special effects Academy Awards. The tabloids went crazy. They even gave him a nickname: the Grouch, after another well-known Oscar. When Mulch read that one, his toes wriggled for joy. And dwarf toes wriggling are quite a sight. They are as nimble as fingers, double-jointed and the less said about the smell the better. Mulch's mission became clear. He had to assemble an entire set.

Over the next six months, the Grouch struck all across the United States. He even made a trip to Italy to collect a best foreign-language film award. He had a special cabinet made, with tinted glass that could be blacked out at the touch of a button. Mulch Diggums felt alive again.

Of course, every Oscar winner on the planet trebled their security, which was just the way Mulch liked it. There was no challenge in breaking into a shack on the beach. High rise and high-tech. That's what the public wanted. So that's what the Grouch gave them. The papers ate it up. He was a hero. During the daylight hours, when he couldn't venture outside, Mulch busied himself writing the screenplay of his own exploits.

Tonight was a big night. The last statuette. He was going for a best actress award. And not just any old best actress. Tonight's target was the tempestuous Jamaican beauty, Maggie V. This year's winner for her portrayal of Precious, a tempestuous Jamaican beauty. Maggie V had stated publicly that if the Grouch tried anything in her apartment, he would get a lot more than he had bargained for. How could Mulch resist a challenge like that?

The building itself was easy to locate, a ten-storey block of glass and steel just off Sunset Boulevard, a midnight stroll south of Mulch's own home. So one cloudy night, the intrepid dwarf packed his tools, preparing to burglarize his way into the history books.

Maggie V was on the top floor. There was no question of going up the stairs, lift or shaft. It would have to be an outside job.

In preparation for the climb, Mulch had not had anything to drink in two days. Dwarf pores are not just for sweating, they can take in moisture too. Very handy when you are trapped in a cave-in for days on end. Even if you can't get your mouth to a drink, every centimetre of skin can leech water from the surrounding earth. When a dwarf was thirsty, as Mulch was now, his pores opened to the size of pinholes and began to suck like crazy. This could be extremely useful if, say, you had to climb up the side of a tall building.

Mulch took off his shoes and gloves, donned a stolen LEP helmet and began to climb.

 

CHUTE E93

 

Holly could feel the commander's glare crisping the hairs on the back of her neck. She tried to ignore it, concentrating on not dashing the Atlantean ambassador's shuttle against the walls of the Arctic chute.

'So, all this time, you knew Mulch Diggums was alive?'

Holly nudged the starboard thruster to avoid a missile of half-melted rock. 'Not for sure. Foaly just had this theory.'

The commander wrung an imaginary neck. 'Foaly! Why am I not surprised?'

Artemis smirked from his seat in the passenger area.

'Now, you two, we need to work together as a team.'

'So tell me about Foaly's theory, Captain,' ordered Root, belting himself into the co-pilot's seat.

Holly activated a static wash on the shuttle's external cameras. Positive and negative charges dislodged the sheets of dust from the lenses.

'Foaly thought Mulch's death a bit suspicious, given that he was the best tunnel fairy in the business.'

'So why didn't he come to me?'

'It was just a hunch. With respect, you know what you're like with hunches, Commander.'

Root nodded grudgingly. It was true, he didn't have time for hunches. It was hard evidence, or get out of my office until you've got some.

'The centaur did a bit of investigating in his own time. The first thing he realized was that the gold recovered was a bit light. I negotiated for the return of half the ransom and, by Foaly's reckoning, the cart was about two dozen bars short.'

The commander lit one of his trademark fungus cigars. He had to admit it sounded promising: gold missing, Mulch Diggums within a hundred miles. Two and two make four.

'As you know, it's standard procedure to spray any LEP property with solinium-based tracker, including the ransom gold. So, Foaly runs a scan for solinium, and he picks up hot spots all over Los Angeles. Particularly at the Crowley Hotel in Beverly Hills. When he hacks into the building computer, he finds the penthouse resident is listed as one Lance Digger.'

Root's pointy ears quivered. 'Digger?'

'Exactly,' said Holly, nodding. 'A bit more than coincidence. Foaly came to me at that point, and I advised him to get some satellite photos before taking the file to you. Except ...'

'Except Mister Digger is proving very elusive. Am I right?'

'Dead on.'

Root's colouring went from rose to tomato. 'Mulch, that rascal. How did he do it?'

Holly shrugged. 'We're guessing he transferred his iris-cam to some local wildlife, maybe a rabbit.Then collapsed the tunnel.'

'So the life signs we were reading belonged to some rabbit.'

'Exactly. In theory.'

'I'll kill him,' exclaimed Root, pounding the control panel. 'Can't this bucket go any faster?'

 

LOS ANGELES

 

Mulch scaled the building without much difficulty. There were external closed-circuit cameras, but the helmet's ion filter showed exactly where these cameras were pointed. It was a simple matter to crawl along the blind spots.

Within an hour, the dwarf was suckered outside Maggie V's apartment on the tenth floor. The windows were triple glazed with a bulletproof coating. Movie stars. Paranoid, every one of them.

Naturally, there was an alarm point sitting on top of the pane and a motion sensor crouching on a wall like a frozen cricket. Only to be expected.

Mulch melted a hole in the glass with a bottle of dwarf rock polish, used to clean up diamonds in the mines. Humans actually cut diamonds to shine them. Imagine. Half the stone down the drain.

Next, the Grouch used the helmet's ion filter to sweep the room for the motion sensor's range. The red ion-stream revealed that the sensor was focused on the floor. No matter. Mulch intended going along the wall.

Pores still crying out for water, the dwarf crept along the partition, making maximum use of a stainless-steel shelving system that almost completely surrounded the main sitting room.

The next step was to find the actual Oscar. It could be hidden anywhere, including under Maggie V's pillow, but this room was as good a place to start as any. You never knew, he might get lucky.

Mulch activated the helmet's X-ray filter, scanning the walls for a safe. Nothing. He tried the floor; humans were getting smarter these days. There, under a fake zebra rug, a metal cuboid. Easy.

The Grouch approached the motion sensor from above, very gently twisting the neck until the gadget was surveying the ceiling. The floor was now safe.

Mulch dropped to the rug, testing the surface with his tactile toes. No pressure pads sewn into the rug's lining. He rolled back the fake skin, revealing a hatch in the wooden floor. The joins were barely visible to the naked eye. But Mulch was an expert and his eyes weren't naked, they were aided by LEP zoom lenses.

He wormed a nail into the crack, flipping the hatch. The safe itself was a bit of a disappointment. Not even lead-lined; he could see right into the mechanism with the X-ray filter. A simple combination lock. Only three digits.

Mulch turned the filter off. What was the point in breaking a see-through lock? Instead he put his ear to the door, jiggling the dial. In fifteen seconds the door was open at his feet.

The Oscar's gold plating winked at him. Mulch made a big mistake at that moment. He relaxed. In the Grouch's mind he was already back in his own apartment, swigging from a two-litre bottle of ice-cold water. And relaxed thieves are destined for prison.

Mulch neglected to check the statuette for traps, plucking it straight from the safe. If he had checked he would have realized that there was a wire attached magnetically to the base. When the Oscar was moved, a circuit was broken allowing all hell to break loose.

 

CHUTE E93

 

Holly set the auto-pilot to hover at three thousand metres below the surface. She slapped herself on the chest, releasing the harness, and joined the others in the rear of the shuttle.

'Two problems. Firstly, if we go any lower, we'll be picked up on the scanners, presuming they're still operating.'

'Why am I not looking forward to number two?' asked Butler.

'Secondly, this part of the chute was retired when we pulled out of the Arctic.'

'Which means?'

'Which means the supply tunnels were collapsed. We have no way into the chute system without supply tunnels.'

'No problem,' declared Root. 'We blast the wall.'

Holly sighed. 'With what, Commander? This is a diplomatic craft. We don't have any cannons.'

Butler plucked two concussor eggs from a pouch on his Moonbelt. 'Will these do? Foaly thought they might come in handy.'

Artemis groaned. If he didn't know better, he'd swear the manservant was enjoying this.

 

LOS ANGELES

 

'Uh oh,' breathed Mulch.

In a matter of moments, things had gone from rosy to extremely dangerous. Once the security circuit was broken, a side door slid open admitting two very large German shepherds. The ultimate watchdogs. They were followed by their handler, a huge man covered in protective clothing. It looked as though he were dressed in doormats. Obviously the dogs were unstable.

'Nice doggies,' said Mulch, slowly unbuttoning his bum-flap.

 

CHUTE E93

 

Holly nudged the flight controls, inching the shuttle closer to the chute wall.

'That's as near as we get,' she said into her helmet mike. 'Any closer and the thermals could flip us against the rock face.'

Thermals?' growled Root. 'You never said anything about thermals before I climbed out here.'

The commander was spread-eagled on the port wing, a concussor egg jammed down each boot.

'Sorry, Commander, someone has to fly this bird.' Root muttered under his breath, dragging himself closer to the wing-tip. While the turbulence was nowhere as severe as it would have been on a moving aircraft, the buffeting thermals were quite enough to shake the commander like dice in a cup. All that kept him going was the thought of his fingers tightening around Mulch Diggums's throat.

'Another metre,' he gasped into the mike. At least they had communications, the shuttle had its own local intercom. 'One more metre and I can make it.'

'No go, Commander. That's your lot.'

Root risked a peek into the abyss. The chute stretched on forever, winding down to the orange magma glow at the Earth's core. This was madness. Crazy. There must be another way. At this point, the commander would even be willing to risk an over-ground flight.

Then Julius Root had a vision. It could have been the sulphur fumes, stress or even lack of food. But the commander could have sworn Mulch Diggums's features appeared before him, etched into the rock face. The face was sucking on a cigar and smirking.

His determination returned in a surge. Bested by a criminal. Not likely.

Root clambered to his feet, drying sweaty palms on his jumpsuit. The thermals plucked at his limbs like mischievous ghosts.

'Ready to put some distance between us and this soon-to-be hole?' he shouted into the mike.

'Bet on it, Commander,' responded Holly. 'Soon as we have you back in the hold, we're out of here.'

'OK. Standby.'

Root fired the piton dart from his belt. The titanium head sank easily into the rock. The commander knew that tiny charges inside the dart would blow out two flanges securing it inside the face. Five metres. Not a great distance to swing on a piton cord. But it wasn't the swing really. It was the bone-crushing drop and the lack of handholds on the chute wall.

Come on, Julius, sniggered the Mulch edifice. Let's see what you look like splattered against a wall.

'You shut your mouth, convict,' roared the commander. And he jumped, swinging into the void.

The rock face rushed out to meet him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Root ground his back teeth against the pain. He hoped nothing was broken, because after the Russian trip, he didn't even have enough magic left to make a daisy bloom, never mind heal a fractured rib.

The shuttle's forward lights picked out the laser burns where the LEP tunnel dwarfs had sealed the supply chute. That weld line would be the weak spot. Root slotted the concussor eggs along two indents.

'I'm coming for you, Diggums,' he muttered, crushing the capsule detonators embedded in each one. Thirty seconds now.

Root aimed a second piton dart at the shuttle wing. An easy shot, he made this kind of thing in his sleep in the sim-range. Unfortunately, the simulators didn't have thermals fouling things up at the last moment.

Just as the commander fired his dart, the edge of a particularly strong whirlpool of gas caught the shuttle's rear, spinning it forty degrees anti-clockwise. The dart missed by a metre. It spun into the abyss, trailing the commander's lifeline behind it. Root had two options: he could rewind the cord using his belt winch, or he could jettison the piton and try again with his spare. Julius unhooked the cord; it would be faster to try again. A good plan, had he not already used his spare to get them out from under the ice. The commander remembered this half a second after he'd cut loose his last piton.

'D'Arvit,' he swore, patting his belt for a dart which he knew wouldn't be there.

'Trouble, Commander?' asked Holly, her voice strained from wrestling with the controls.

'No pitons left, and the charges are set.'

There followed a brief silence. Very brief. No time for lengthy think-tanks. Root glanced at his moonomenter. Twenty-five seconds and counting.

When Holly's voice came over the headset, it was not bursting with enthusiasm or confidence.

'Er ... Commander. You wearing any metal?'

'Yes,' replied Root, puzzled. 'My breastplate, buckle, insignia, blaster. Why?'

Holly nudged the shuttle a shade closer. Any nearer was suicide.

'Put it like this. How fond are you of your ribs?'

'Why?'

'I think I know how to get you out of there.'

'How?'

'I could tell you, but you're not going to like it.'

'Tell me, Captain. That's a direct order.'

Holly told him. He didn't like it.

 

LOS ANGELES

 

Dwarf gas. Not the most tasteful of subjects; even dwarfs don't like to talk about it. Many a dwarf wife is known to scold her husband for venting gas at home and not leaving it in the tunnels. The fact is that, genetically, dwarfs are prone to gas attacks, especially if they've been eating clay in the mine. A dwarf can take in several kilos of dirt a second through his unhinged jaws. That's a lot of clay, with a lot of air in it. All this waste has to go somewhere. So it goes south. To put it politely, the tunnels are self-sealing.

Mulch hadn't eaten clay in months, but he still had a few bubbles of gas at his disposal when he needed them.

The dogs were poised to attack. Slobber hung in ribbons from their gaping jaws. He would be torn to pieces. Mulch concentrated. The familiar bubbling began in his stomach, pulling it out of shape. It felt as though a couple of gnome garbage wrestlers were going a few rounds in there. The dwarf gritted his teeth, this was going to be a big one.

The handler blew a football whistle. The dogs lunged forward like torpedoes with teeth. Mulch let go with a stream of gas, blowing a hole in the rug and propelling himself to the ceiling, where his thirsty pores anchored him. Safe. For the moment.

The German shepherds were particularly surprised. In their time they had chewed their ............