Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code

Holly shrugged. ‘I’m not exactly sure. That’s Foaly’s area.’

Artemis took the spare com set from his pocket, hooking the speaker wire over his ear. ‘Any theories, Foaly?’

‘I can’t be sure,’ the centaur replied. ‘But I’m guessing that Holly’s magic wasn’t enough. Some of Butler’s own life force was needed for the healing. About fifteen years’ worth by the looks of it.’

‘Can anything be done?’

‘Afraid not. A healing can’t be undone. If it’s any consolation, he’ll probably live longer than he would have done naturally. But there’s no reclaiming his youth and, what’s more, we can’t be sure about the state of his mind. The healing could have wiped his brain cleaner than a magnetized disk.’

Artemis sighed deeply. ‘What have I done to you, old friend?’

‘No time for that,’ said Holly briskly. ‘You should both get out of here. I’m sure all the commotion will have attracted attention. Do you have transport?’

‘No. We flew over on a public flight. Then took a taxi from Heathrow.’

Holly shrugged. ‘I’d like to help, Artemis, but I’ve already given up enough time here. I’m on a mission. An extremely important mission and I have to get back to it.’

Artemis stepped away from the cryo unit.

‘Holly, about your mission. .’

Captain Short turned slowly.

‘Artemis. .’

‘You were probed, weren’t you? Something got past Foaly’s defences?’

Holly pulled a large sheet of camouflage foil from her surveillance backpack.

‘We need to go somewhere to talk. Somewhere private.’

The following forty-five minutes were something of a blur for Artemis. Holly wrapped both humans in the camouflage foil and clipped them on to her Moonbelt. The belt effectively reduced their weight to one fifth of the Earth’s norm.

Even then it was a struggle for her mechanical wings to hoist the three of them into the night sky. Holly had to open the throttle wide just to bring them five hundred feet above sea level.

‘I’m going to shield now,’ she said into her mike. ‘Try not to thrash about too much. I don’t want to have to cut one of you loose.’

Then she was gone, and in her place hovered a slightly shimmering,

Holly-shaped patch of stars. The vibrations rattled through the belt links, shaking Artemis’s teeth in his head. He felt like a bug in a cocoon, trussed up in foil, with only his face exposed to the night air. Initially, the experience was almost enjoyable, riding high above the city, watching the cars flicker along the motorways. Then Holly picked up a westerly wind and threw them into the air currents over the sea.

Suddenly Artemis’s universe was a maelstrom of cutting winds, buffeting passengers and startled birds. Beside him, Butler hung limply in his makeshift foil truss. The foil absorbed the local colours, reflecting the dominant hues. It was by no means a perfect recreation of the surroundings, but certainly good enough for a night flight over the sea to Ireland.

‘Is this foil invisible to radar?’ said Artemis into the headset. ‘I don’t want to be mistaken for a UFO by some eager Harrier jump-jet pilot.’

Holly considered it. ‘You’re right. Maybe I should take us down a bit, just in case.’

Two seconds later, Artemis deeply regretted breaking radio silence:

Holly tilted her wing rig into a steep dive, sending the three of them hurtling towards the midnight waves below. She pulled up at the last moment, when Artemis could have sworn the skin was about to peel away from his face.

‘Low enough for you?’ asked Holly, with the barest hint of humour in her voice.

They skimmed the wave tops, spray sparking against the camouflage foil. The ocean was rough that night, and Holly followed the water patterns, dipping and climbing to match the swell’s curve. A school of humpbacked whales sensed their presence and broke through the storm foam, leaping fully thirty metres across a trough before disappearing beneath the black water. There were no dolphins. The small mammals were taking shelter from the elements in the inlets and coves along the Irish coast.

Holly skirted the hull of a passenger ferry, flying close enough to feel the engine’s pulse. On deck, scores of passengers vomited over the railings, narrowly missing the invisible travellers below.

‘Charming,’ muttered Artemis.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Holly’s voice, out of thin air. ‘Almost there.’

They passed Rosslare’s ferry terminal, following the coastline northwards, over the Wicklow mountains. Even in his disorientated state,

Artemis could not help but marvel at their speed. Those wings were a fantastic invention. Imagine the money that could be made for a patent like that. Artemis stopped himself. Selling fairy technology was what had got Butler hurt in the first place.

They slowed sufficiently for Artemis to make out individual landmarks. Dublin squatted to the east, an aura of yellow light buzzing over its highway system. Holly skirted the city, heading for the less populated north of the county. In the centre of a large dark patch sat a single building, painted white by external spotlights: Artemis’s ancestral home, Fowl Manor.

FOWL MANOR, DUBLIN, IRELAND

‘Now, explain yourself,’ said Holly, once they had floated Butler safely to bed.

She sat on the great stairway’s bottom step. Generations of Fowls glared down at her from oil portraits on the walls. The LEP captain activated her helmet mike and switched it to loudspeaker.

‘Foaly, record this, would you? I have a feeling we’re going to want to hear it again.’

‘This entire incident began at a business meeting this afternoon,’ began Artemis. ‘Go on.’

‘I was meeting Jon Spiro, an American industrialist.’ Holly heard keys being tapped in her ear. Undoubtedly Foaly was running a background check on this Spiro character.

‘Jon Spiro,’ said the centaur, almost immediately. ‘A shady character, even by human standards. Mud Man security agencies have been trying to put this guy away for thirty years. His companies are eco-disasters. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg: industrial espionage, abduction, blackmail, mob connections. You name it, he’s gotten away with it.’

‘That’s the chap,’ said Artemis. ‘So, I set up a rendezvous with Mister Spiro.’

‘What were you selling?’ interrupted Foaly. ‘A man like Spiro doesn’t cross the Atlantic for tea and muffins.’

Artemis frowned. ‘I wasn’t actually selling him anything. But I did offer to suppress some revolutionary technology, for a price, of course.’

Foaly’s voice was cold: ‘What revolutionary technology?’

Artemis hesitated for a beat. ‘Do you remember those helmets Butler took from the Retrieval squad?’

Holly groaned. ‘Oh no.’

‘I deactivated the helmets’ auto-destruct mechanisms and constructed a cube from the sensors and chips: the C Cube, a mini-computer. It was a simple matter to install a fibre-optic blocker so that you couldn’t take control of the Cube if you detected it.’

‘You gave fairy technology to a man like Jon Spiro?’

‘I quite obviously didn’t give it to him,’ snapped Artemis. ‘He took it.’

Holly pointed a finger at the youth. ‘Don’t bother playing the victim, Artemis. It doesn’t suit you. What did you think? That Jon Spiro was going to walk away from technology that could make him the richest man on the face of the planet?’

‘So it was your computer that pinged us?’ said Foaly.

‘Yes,’ admitted Artemis. ‘Unintentionally. Spiro asked for a surveillance scan, and the Cube’s fairy circuits picked up LEP satellite beams.’

‘Can’t we block any future probes?’ asked the LEP captain.