Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code

‘These units cost almost a million pounds apiece,’ Doctor Constance

Lane informed Artemis, as they sat in the stark white surgery. A cylindrical cryo pod was strapped to a trolley between them.

‘The vans are custom-made in Munich, specially armoured too. This thing could drive over a landmine and come out smiling.’

For once, Artemis was not interested in gathering information.

‘That’s very nice, Doctor, but can it go any faster? My associate’s time is running out. It has already been one hundred and twenty seven-minutes.’

Constance Lane tried to frown, but there wasn’t enough slack skin across her brow.

‘Two hours. Nobody has ever been revived after that long. Then again, no one has ever been revived from a cryogenic chamber.’

The Knightsbridge traffic was, as usual, chaotic. Harrods was running a one-day sale, and the block was crowded with droves of tired customers on their way home. It took a further seventeen minutes to reach En Fin’s delivery entrance and, as promised, there were no policemen present, except one. Detective Inspector Justin Barre himself was standing sentry at the rear door. The man was huge, a descendant of the Zulu nation, according to Butler. It was not difficult to imagine him at Butler’s side in some faraway land.

Incredibly, they found a parking space, and Artemis climbed down from the van.

‘Cryogenics,’ said Barre, noting the vehicle’s inscription. ‘Do you think you can do anything for him?’

‘You looked in the freezer then?’ said Artemis.

The officer nodded. ‘How could I resist? Curiosity is my business.

I’m sorry I checked now; he was a good man.’

‘Is a good man,’ insisted Artemis. ‘I am not ready to give up on him yet.’

Barre stood aside to admit two uniformed Ice Age paramedics.

‘According to my men, a group of armed bandits attempted to rob the establishment, but they were interrupted by an earthquake. And if that’s what really happened, I’ll eat my badge. I don’t suppose you can throw any light on the situation?’

‘A competitor of mine disagreed with a business strategy. It was a violent disagreement.’

‘Who pulled the trigger?’

‘Arno Blunt. A New Zealander. Bleached hair, rings in his ears,

tattoos on his body and neck. Most of his teeth are missing.’

Barre took a note. ‘I’ll circulate the description to the airports. You never know, we might catch him.’

Artemis rubbed his eyes.

‘Butler saved my life. The bullet was meant for me.’

‘That’s Butler all right,’ said Barre, nodding. ‘If there’s anything I can do. .?’

‘You’ll be the first to know,’ said Artemis. ‘Did your officers find anyone on the scene?’

Barre consulted his notebook. ‘Some customers and staff. They all checked out, so we let them go. The thieves escaped before we arrived.’

‘No matter. Better I deal with the culprits myself.’

Barre made a concerted effort to ignore the activity in the kitchen behind him.

‘Artemis, can you guarantee this is not going to come back to haunt me? Technically, we’re looking at a homicide.’

Artemis looked Barre in the eye, which was quite an effort.

‘Detective Inspector, no body, no case. And I guarantee that by tomorrow Butler will be alive and kicking. I shall instruct him to call you, if that would set your mind at rest.’

‘It would.’

The paramedics rolled Butler past on a trolley. A frosting of ice covered his face. Tissue damage was already turning his fingers blue.

‘Any surgeon who could fix this would have to be a real magician!’

Artemis glanced downwards.

‘That’s the plan, Detective Inspector. That’s the plan.’

Doctor Lane administered glucose injections in the van.

‘These are to stop the cells collapsing,’ she informed Artemis, massaging Butler’s chest to circulate the medication. ‘Otherwise the water in his blood will freeze in spikes and puncture the cell walls.’

Butler was lying in an open cryo unit, with its own gyroscopes. He had been dressed in a special silver freezer suit, and cold packs were heaped on his body like sachets of sugar in a bowl.

Constance was unaccustomed to people actually paying attention when she explained the process, but this pale youth absorbed facts faster than she could present them.

‘Won’t the water freeze anyway? Glucose can’t prevent that.’

Constance was impressed. ‘Why, yes it will. But in small pieces, so it can float safely between cells.’

Artemis jotted a note in his hand-held computer. ‘Small pieces, I understand.’

‘The glucose is only a temporary measure,’ continued the doctor.

‘The next step is surgery; we need to completely wash out his veins, and replace the blood with a preservative. Then we can lower the patient’s temperature to minus thirty degrees. We’ll have to do that back at the institute.’

Artemis shut down his computer. ‘No need for that. I just need him held in stasis for a few hours. After that it won’t make any difference.’

‘I don’t think you understand, young man,’ said Doctor Lane.

‘Current medical practices have not evolved to the point where this kind of injury can be healed. If I don’t do a complete blood substitution soon, there will be severe tissue damage.’

The van jolted as a wheel crashed into one of London’s numerous potholes. Butler’s arm jerked and, for a moment, Artemis could pretend he was alive.

‘Don’t worry about that, Doctor.’

‘But. .’

‘A hundred thousand pounds, Constance. Just keep repeating that figure to yourself. Park the mobile unit outside and forget all about us. In the morning we’ll be gone. Both of us.’

Doctor Lane was surprised.

‘Park outside?You don’t even want to come in?’

‘No, Butler stays outside,’ said Artemis. ‘My. . ah. . surgeon, has a problem with dwellings. But may I enter for a moment to use your phone? I need to make a rather special phone call.’

LONDON AIRSPACE

The lights of London were spread out below Holly like the stars of some turbulent galaxy. England’s capital was generally a no-fly area for Recon officers, because of the four airports feeding planes into the sky.

Five years ago, Captain Trouble Kelp had narrowly missed being impaled by a Heathrow-JFK airbus. Since then, all flight plans involving airport cities had to be cleared personally by Foaly.

Holly spoke into her helmet mike.

‘Foaly. Any flights coming in I should know about?’

‘Let me just bring up the radar. OK, let’s see. I’d drop down to five hundred feet if I were you. There’s a 747 coming in from Malaga in a couple of minutes. It won’t hit you, but your helmet computer could interfere with its navigation systems.’

Holly dipped her flaps until she was at the correct altitude.

Overhead, the giant jet screamed across the sky. If it hadn’t been for Holly’s sonic filter sponges, both her eardrums would have popped.

‘OK. One jet full of tourists successfully avoided. What now?’

‘Now we wait. I won’t call again unless it’s important.’

They didn’t have to wait long. Less than five minutes later Foaly broke radio silence.

‘Holly. We got something.’

‘Another probe?’

‘No. Something from Sentinel. Hold on, I’m sending the file to your helmet.’

A sound file appeared in Holly’s visor. Its wave resembled a seismograph’s readout.

‘What is it, a phone tap?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Foaly. ‘It’s one of a billion throwaway files that

Sentinel sends us every day.’

The Sentinel system was a series of monitoring units that Foaly had piggybacked to obsolete US and Russian satellites. Their function was to monitor all human telecommunications. Obviously, it would be impossible to review every phone call made each day. So the computer was programmed to pick up on certain key words. If, for example, the words ‘fairy’, ‘haven’ and ‘underground’ appeared in a conversation, the computer would flag the call. The more People-related phrases that appeared, the more urgent the rating.