Chapter Thirteen

Somewhere in Ireland

While Artemis was flying off to the land of Switzerland, home of hot chocolate and big banks, Captain Holly Short was facing her own problems. "D'Arvit!" she said for the tenth time. "Where the hell did Foaly get to?" She was flying in a large circle over his last location. If he had worn a locator, they could have tracked him back to wherever the Animal Control van had taken him. Unfortunately, Foaly had become even more paranoid after the Eternity Cube encounter, and was convinced that wearing a locator would allow a hidden cabal of traitors inside the LEP to find him. He was always tracking down conspiracy theories now.
"I hate to say it," Root said over the communications link from the Ops booth, "but that horse might have been onto something with his latest theory."
"If he had agreed to wear a locator," Holly snarled, "we'd have him by now."
"Oh, don't worry, Captain," Root said in a low voice. "When you get him back here, I'm going to shove a locator up his furry little—"
"Open channel, Commander," she said hurriedly, although there was no doubt about what he meant to say. She kept flying in a widening spiral. "I'm looking at another two hours or so of fuel, less if I want to get back on these," she said. "I'm going to backtrack, see where he went and what he was looking for. If I know Foaly, he'll escape and get right back on task."
"Well, he logged a request to scan the Mud Man archives shortly before he left," Root replied. "That's strange, he was looking at music. He compared it to something...damn! I hate all these buttons!" She heard crashing noises and a long string of swear words that would make a sprite blush. "He was comparing it to that piece I conducted a couple days ago. That's really strange. Now what was he—D'Arvit! Holly, what's it mean when the computer says 'Page cannot be found, 404 Error?'"
"Press the green circle," she said. "That should reload it."
"'Page not found, 404—' Hey! This is a Mud Man Internet page! This is pathetic! I CAN'T BELIEVE WE RELY ON THIS CRAP!"
"Calm down, Commander," she suggested. "What's it say under the 404 part?"
"Server cannot connect. He's trying to reach a page called www dot music dot com slash Rackham slash sheetmusic dot html. Does that mean anything to you? Can you understand it?"
"Perfectly," she lied. "I'll have to find a public terminal to connect to it. It won't be a minute."

Twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds later, Holly was ready to admit defeat. "The only terminals I can see are inside of dwellings," she reported. "And we're running out of time. You know what we have to do."
"No," he stated.
"I can't see any way around it. We need—"
"DON'T SAY IT!" he roared. "I WILL NOT GO CRAWLING BACK—"
"He's an expert," she argued, but he kept ranting, unhearing.
"–TO THAT SON OF A STINK WORM—"
"He's already lost his magic," she argued.
"FOR THE FOURTH TIME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
Holly waited patiently for him to calm down—as much as possible for Root to be calm, anyway. "Are you done?"
He sighed, a rush of air over the link. "That's insubordination, Short," he said, but it was without feeling. "And now you've got a carefully though out argument that'll knock down all of my objections, right." It wasn't a question.
"Three words, Commander. We need him," she said simply.
"All right," he said. "Go get him."

Mulch Diggums was a happy dwarf. His toes had hardly stopped wiggling since the judge said "Innocent." He did what Artemis said, and had been playing it safe. After all, it would be very embarrassing to be arrested barely a week after he had been cleared of all charges. He found himself a little hole in the ground, bought some gray-market Mud Man DVD's, and waited.
It was had, though. The valuables just waiting to be relieved of their owners by him cried out to him. But dwarfs are very stubborn, and despite his thievery, Mulch was an honest dwarf. Perhaps saving Artemis' life had brought that out in him.
But now, as his security system alerted him of the LEP officer barging up his walk, he was seriously worried. Maybe the Mud Man hadn't done as good of a job on the warrant as he thought. He considered escaping. No, that would make it look like there was something to hide. It was probably another cop trying to crack down on the DVD imports. He sniggered. A losing battle, that. Even Root had some human movies, as well as Foaly. If the officer tried to rattle his chain, he'd just inform them of that fact. He felt his confidence returning.
"Whaddaya want?" he asked the officer as he opened the door. "If it's about the DVD's, I got nothing to say. They're legal, or close enough." He peered at the badge. Hey, wait a minute, you're—you can't be—not—"
"Hello, Mulch," Holly Short said, as she flipped up her visor.
"Crap," he said. "And the day was going so well. I'm going out on a limb, but am I right to assume that this isn't old home week?"
"You always were the intelligent one, Mulch," she said dryly. "Get some wings. I know you've got a pair in there somewhere."
He adopted an innocent expression, but it called Social Services and was taken away, so he settled for his usual grimace. "Why, you should know I've gone straight, Officer," he said. "Didn't that Kelp kid there tell you I had none after he searched my home? For the seventy-eighth time?"
"Fine, then," she said, smiling like a big cat about to pounce. "You can ride shotgun. Hold on tight, my grip's a little weak."
"Wait," he said, quivering. "Now that you mention it..."
"Can the theatrics and get going," she said. "You're going to help the LEP in a little job."
He scrambled into the house to grab a pair of shining new Foaly Factor wings.
"How did you get these?" an astonished Captain Short asked him.
"If you really must know, your pompous centaur friend asked me to field test them a week ago. Something about obesity-proofing them," he grumbled.
She laughed. "Sounds like you and Root have something in common."
"Yeah, we both own DVD's," he said. "Now can we get on with it?"

A shot time later (no pun intended), they were aloft over Ireland. "Now," Mulch said, "is there a specific house you want, or will any one do?"
Holly was shocked again. "How did you know?"
He shrugged. "I'm not an idiot. This is the same thing you wanted in the whole Fowl incident. You need something in a dwelling. I go in because I have no magic to lose. Two and two makes three."
"Actually, it makes four," she informed him.
"Ah, so that's why those tax people wanted to speak to me..."

Another bit later, The two were on the ground, Mulch in camo-foil. "Hurry up, Diggums," Short snapped. "Foaly's time is running out." Dirt flew into the air from the garden that Mulch had deemed an acceptable entry point. She stood back. She didn't want to make the same mistake Butler had in watching a dwarf dig. She wondered where Butler was now.

Mulch looked around at the well decorated home. He had emerged in a basement closet. No burglar alarms that he could see. Typical Mud Man mentality, not expecting a belowground attack. He stolidly walked past the cabinet with the Lord of the Rings movies in it. He was here for an entirely different purpose. Holly had filled him in as they flew.
He made his way to the small home office. Ah, there was a top of the line computer there! The HP Pavilion, with a wireless printer, scanner, and modem. He quickly accessed the Internet browser and punched in the address that Holly had given him. Hmm. Sheet music, and lots of it. He quickly transferred it to a floppy, hoping the owner didn't notice that it was missing.
The clicking of a key in a lock alerted him. The owner was coming! He quickly hid the disk under the closest object—a bowl of cat food. He saw the foyer door open, then close. No one walked in. His pulse quickened. It must be a fairy. "Holly?" he called out tentatively.
The first thing he saw when the fairy unshielded was the Chain Lightning blaster leveled at his head. It was powerful, even better than the old tribarreled Neutrinos. Survivors said that it was like getting hit by a bolt of lightning—not that there were ever many survivors from a shot like that. And now, the business end of the gun was pointing at him.
One can imagine what the goals were for the designer of the Lightning. "Make it mean," they said. "Make sure everyone knows that there is a right end, and a wrong end, and that they are at the wrong end. Make sure everyone knows exactly what it was for."
Mulch's eyes traveled past the deadly piece of technology to the fairy aiming it, but he wasn't prepared for what he saw. "You!" he cried.
"Me," they replied. Then a searing bolt of pain ripped across Mulch's frame, and all he could think of was one thing: it couldn't be them. It couldn't be them. It couldn't...