Holly climbed down the cab ladder. ‘Polly Little. That’s me.’
Holly landed running, her boots crunching on pebbles of crushed pavement.
‘Mulch,’ she said. ‘Doodah is coming your way. Be careful. He’s a lot more dangerous than we thought.’
Dangerous? Maybe, maybe not. He hadn’t killed her when he’d had the chance. It would seem that the pixie had no stomach for murder.
Doodah’s stunt with the multimixer had caused chaos in the plaza. Traffic police, nicknamed Wheelies, were pouring in and civilians were pouring out. Holly counted at least six LEPtraffic magna-bikes and two cruisers. She was keeping her head down, when one of the traffic officers hopped off his bike and grabbed her shoulder.
‘Did you see what happened, missy?’
Missy? Holly was tempted to twist the hand on her shoulder and flip the officer into a nearby recycler. But this was not the time for outrage – she needed to redirect his attention.
‘Why, thank goodness you’re here, Officer,’ she twittered in a voice at least an octave higher than her normal tones. ‘Over there, by the multimixer. There’s blood everywhere.’
‘Blood!’ exclaimed the Wheelie, delighted to hear it. ‘Everywhere?’
‘Absolutely everywhere.’
The traffic cop dropped Holly’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, missy. I’ll handle it from here.’
He strode purposefully towards the multimixer, then turned back.
‘Excuse me, missy,’ he said, recognition glimmering in his eye, just out of reach. ‘Don’t I know you?’
But the hooded elf had disappeared.
Ah well, thought the Wheelie. I should probably go and look at the blood everywhere.
Holly ran towards Crystal Street, though she felt sure there was no need for haste. Doodah had either decided that there was too much heat on him to reveal his bolt-hole, or Mulch had him. Either way it was out of her control. Once again, she lamented the loss of LEP backup. In her Recon days, all it would have taken was a quick order into her helmet microphone, and every street in the area would be cordoned off.
She skirted a street-cleaning robot, turning on to Crystal. The narrow street was a service lane for the main shopping plaza, and consisted mostly of delivery bays. The rest of the units were rented out for storage. Holly was surprised to find Doodah directly in front of her, rummaging in his pocket, presumably for the access chip to his unit. Something must have held him up for a minute. Maybe he had ducked behind a crate to avoid the Wheelies. Whatever. She had another shot at him.
Doodah looked up, and all Holly could do was wave.
‘Morning,’ she said.
Doodah shook a tiny fist at her. ‘Don’t you have better things to do, elf? All I do is smuggle a few fish.’
The question cut Holly deeply. Was this really the best way to help the People? Surely Commander Root had wanted more from her? In the past few months she had gone from top priority surface operations, to chasing down fish smugglers in a back alley. That was quite a drop.
She showed Doodah her hands. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt, so stand perfectly still.’
Doodah chuckled. ‘Hurt? By you? Not likely.’
‘No,’ said Holly. ‘Not by me. By him.’ She pointed at the patch of mud under Doodah’s feet.
‘Him?’ Doodah looked down suspiciously, suspecting a trap. His suspicions were absolutely correct. The ground beneath his feet fizzled slightly as the surface earth shivered and bounced.
‘What?’ said Doodah, lifting one foot. He would doubtless have stepped off the patch, if he’d had time. But what happened next, happened very quickly.
The ground did more than just collapse; it was sucked from below Doodah with a sickening slurping sound. A hoop of teeth cut through the earth, followed by a huge mouth. There was a dwarf on the other end of the mouth, and he breached the ground like a dolphin jumping, driven apparently by gas from his rear end. The ring of teeth closed round Doodah, swallowing him to the neck.
Mulch Diggums, for of course it was he, settled back into his tunnel, taking the unfortunate pixie with him. Doodah, it has to be said, did not look quite so cocky as he had a second ago.
‘A d-dwarf,’ he stammered. ‘I thought your People didn’t like the law.’
‘Generally, they don’t. But Mulch is an exception. You don’t mind if he doesn’t answer you himself; he might accidentally bite your head off.’
Doodah squirmed suddenly. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘I imagine he’s licking you. Dwarf spittle hardens on contact with air. As soon as he opens his mouth, you’ll be locked up tight as a chick in an egg.’
Mulch winked at Holly. It was about as much as he could gloat at the moment, but Holly knew that he would spend the next several days boasting about his skills.
Dwarfs can tunnel through kilometres of earth. Dwarfs have jet-powered rear ends. Dwarfs can produce two litres of rock spittle every hour. What have you got? Besides a famous face that keeps blowing our cover?
Holly peered into the hole, the toe of one boot hooked over the edge. ‘OK, partner. Good job. Now, can you please spit out the fugitive.’
Mulch was happy to oblige. He hawked Doodah on to the lane’s surface, then clambered up himself, rehingeing his jaw.
‘This is disgusting,’ moaned Doodah, as the viscous spittle solidified on his limbs. ‘It stinks too.’
‘Hey,’ said Mulch, injured. ‘The smell is not my fault. If you rented storage in a cleaner lane…’
‘Oh yeah, stinky? Well, this is what I think of you.’ Doodah attempted a pixie hex gesture, but fortunately the rock spittle froze his arm before he could complete it.
‘OK, you two. Cut it out,’ said Holly. ‘We have thirty minutes to get this little guy to the LEP before the spittle loosens up.’
Mulch peered over her shoulder towards the mouth of the lane. He turned suddenly pale underneath his coating of wet earth, and his beard hair bristled nervously.
‘You know something, partner,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’re going to need thirty minutes.’
Holly turned away from her prisoner. There were half a dozen elves blocking the entrance to the lane. They were LEP, or something very like it. They wore plain clothes with no markings or insignia of any kind. They were official, though. The heavy artillery cradled in their elbows attested to that. Holly noticed with some relief that none of the guns were pointed at her or Mulch.
One of the elves stepped forward, popping the visor on her helmet.
‘Hello, Holly,’ she said. ‘We’ve been looking for you all morning. How’ve you been?’
Holly swallowed a relieved sigh. It was Wing Commander Vinyáya, a long-time supporter of Holly and Julius Root. Vinyáya had blazed the trail for all females in the forces. In a five-hundred-year career she had done everything from leading a Retrieval team to the dark side of the moon, to heading up the liberal vote on the fairy Council. In addition to this, she had been Holly’s flight instructor in the Academy.
‘Fine, Commander,’ said Holly.
Vinyáya nodded at the solidifying mass of rock spittle.
‘Keeping busy, I see.’
‘Yes. That’s Doodah Day. The fish smuggler. Quite a catch.’