The Arctic Incident

“Evening, Art,” said Mulch, saluting the doorman on his way to the elevator.

Art peered over the marble-topped desk.

“Ah, Mister Digger, it’s you,” he said slightly puzzled. “I thought I heard you passing below my sight line only moments ago.”

“Nope,” grinned Mulch. “First time tonight.”

“Hmm. The night wind, perhaps.”

“Maybe. You’d think they’d block up the holes in this building. All the rent I’m paying.”

“You would, indeed,” agreed Art. Always agree with the tenants: company policy.

Inside the mirrored elevator, Mulch used a telescopic pointer to push P for the penthouse. For the first few months he had jumped to reach the button, but that was undignified behavior for a millionaire. And besides, he was certain that Art could hear the thumping from the security desk.

The mirrored box rose silently, flickering past the floors toward the penthouse. Mulch resisted the urge to take the Academy Award out of his bag. Someone could board the elevator. He contented himself with a long drink from a bottle of Irish springwater, the closest to fairy pure it was possible to get. As soon as he had stowed the Oscar he would run a cold bath, and give his pores a drink. Otherwise he could wake up in the morning glued to the bed.

Mulch’s door was key coded. A fourteen-number sequence. Nothing like a bit of paranoia to keep you out of prison. Even though the LEP believed that he was dead, Mulch could never quite shake the feeling that one day Julius Root would figure it all out and come looking for him.

The apartment decor was quite unusual for a human dwelling. A lot of clay, crumbling rock, and water features. More like the inside of a cave than an exclusive Beverly Hills residence.

The northern wall appeared to be a single slab of black marble. Appeared to be. Closer inspection revealed a forty-inch flat-screen television, a DVD slot, and a tinted glass pane. Mulch hefted a remote control bigger than his leg, popping the hidden cabinet with another complicated key code. Inside were three rows of Oscars. Mulch placed Maggie V’s on a waiting velvet pad.

He wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.

“I’d like to thank the Academy,” giggled the dwarf.

“Very touching,” said a voice behind him.

Mulch slammed the cabinet door shut, cracking the glass pane.

There was a human youth beside the rockery. In his apartment! The boy’s appearance was strange even by Mud Man standards. He was abnormally pale, raven-haired, slender, and dressed in a school suit that looked as though it had been dragged across two continents. The hairs on Mulch’s chin stiffened. This boy was trouble. Dwarf hair is never wrong.

“Your alarm was amusing,” continued the boy. “It took me several seconds to bypass it.”

Mulch knew he was in trouble then. Human police don’t break into people’s apartments.

“Who are you, hu—boy?”

“I think the question here is, who are you? Are you reclusive millionaire Lance Digger? Are you the notorious Grouch? Or perhaps, as Foaly suspects, you are escaped convict Mulch Diggums?”

Mulch ran, the last vestiges of gas providing him with an extra burst of speed. He had no idea who this Mud Boy was, but if Foaly had sent him, then he was a bounty hunter of one kind or another.

The dwarf raced across the sunken lounge, making for his escape route. It was the reason he’d chosen this building. In the early nineteen-hundreds, a wide-bore chimney had run the length of the multistory building. When a central heating system had been installed in the fifties, the building contractor had simply packed the chute with dirt, topping it off with a seal of concrete. Mulch had smelled the vein of soil the second his real estate agent had opened the front door. It had been a simple matter to uncover the old fireplace and chip away the concrete. Voilà. Instant tunnel.

Mulch unbuttoned his back flap on the run. The strange youth made no attempt to follow him. Why would he? There was nowhere to go.

The dwarf spared a second for a parting shot.

“You’ll never take me alive, human. Tell Foaly not to send a Mud Man to do a fairy’s job.”

Oh dear, thought Artemis, rubbing his brow. Hollywood had a lot to answer for.

Mulch tore a basket of dried flowers from the fireplace and dived right in. He unhinged his jaw and was quickly submerged in the century-old clay. It was not really to his taste. The minerals and nutrients had long since dried up. Instead the soil was infused with a hundred years of burnt refuse and tobacco ash. But it was clay nevertheless, and this was what dwarfs were born to do. Mulch felt his anxiety melt away. There wasn’t a creature alive that could catch him now. This was his domain.