Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code

Blunt pointed a shaky finger. ‘You stay away from me. I killed you once, I can do it again.’

Butler laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Arno. I can’t be killed again. Anyway, death is no big deal, not compared to what comes after.’

‘What comes after. .’

‘There is a hell, Arno,’ said Butler. ‘I’ve seen it and, believe me, so will you.’

Blunt was utterly convinced; after all, Butler had appeared from nowhere.

‘I didn’t know,’ he sobbed. ‘I didn’t believe it. I never would have shot you, Butler. I was just following Spiro’s orders. You heard him give the order. I was just the metal man; that’s all I’ve ever been.’

Butler laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I believe you, Arno. You were just following orders.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But that’s not enough. You need to clear your conscience. If you don’t, I have to take you with me.’

Blunt’s eyes were red with tears. ‘How?’ he pleaded. ‘How do I do that?’

‘Confess your sins to the authorities. Leave nothing out, or I will be back.’

Blunt nodded eagerly. Prison was better than the alternative.

‘Remember, I will be watching. This is your one chance to save yourself. If you don’t take it, I will be back.’

Blunt’s teeth popped from his open mouth, rolling across the floor.

‘Don’ worry. I’ll confesh. I promish.’

Butler lifted the cam foil, concealing himself completely.

‘See that you do, or there’ll be hell to pay.’

Butler stepped into the corridor, stuffing the foil inside his jacket.

Seconds later, Sid Commons reappeared with a security badge.

He caught sight of Arno Blunt standing stunned in his cell.

‘What did you do, Butler?’ he said.

‘Hey, it wasn’t me. Check your tapes. He just went crazy, talking to thin air. Yelling how he wanted to confess.’

‘He wants to confess? Just like that?’

‘I know how it sounds, but that’s what happened. If I were you, I’d give Justin Barre a call over at Scotland Yard. I have a feeling that Blunt’s statement could clear up a lot of outstanding cases.’

Commons squinted at him suspiciously. ‘Why do I have a feeling that you know more than you’re telling?’

‘Search me,’ said Butler. ‘But feelings aren’t evidence, and your own surveillance tapes will prove that I never set foot in that room.’

‘Are you sure that’s what they’ll show?’

Butler glanced at the patch of air shimmering above Sid Commons’s shoulder.

‘I am positive,’ he said.

FOWL MANOR

The return trip from Heathrow took over an hour, thanks to some particularly strong turbulence and an easterly wind over the Welsh hills.

When Holly and Butler finally touched down in the grounds of Fowl Manor the LEP was busy humping their mind-wiping gear up the avenue, under cover of night.

Butler undipped himself from the Moonbelt, leaning against the trunk of a silver birch.

‘You OK?’ asked Holly.

‘Fine,’ replied the bodyguard, massaging his chest. ‘It’s this Kevlar tissue. Handy if you get shot with a small calibre, but it’s playing havoc with my breathing.’

Holly sheathed her mechanical wings. ‘It’s the quiet life for you from now on.’

Butler noticed an LEP pilot attempting to park his shuttle in the double garage, nudging the Bentley’s bumper.

‘Quiet life?’ he muttered, heading for the garage. ‘I wish.’

Once Butler had finished terrorizing the pixie pilot he made for the study. Artemis and Juliet were waiting for him. Juliet hugged her brother so tightly that the air was squeezed from his lungs.

‘I’m OK, little sister. The fairies have fixed it so that I will live to well over a hundred. I’ll still be around to keep an eye on you.’

Artemis was all business. ‘How did you fare, Butler?’

Butler opened a wall safe behind an air-conditioning vent.

‘Pretty well. I got everything on the list.’

‘What about the custom job?’

Butler laid out six small vials on the baize-covered desk.

‘My man in Limerick followed your instructions to the letter. In all his years in the trade, he’s never done anything like this. They’re in a special solution to stop corrosion. The layers are so fine that once they come into contact with the air they begin to oxidize right away, so I suggest we don’t insert them until the last possible moment.’

‘Excellent. In all probability, I am the only one who will need these, but, just in case, we should all put them in.’

Butler held the gold coin up by its leather thong. ‘I copied your diary and fairy files on to a laser minidisc, then brushed on a layer of gold leaf. It won’t stand up to close examination, I’m afraid, but molten gold would have destroyed the information on the disc.’

Artemis tied the thong round his neck. ‘It will have to do. Did you plant the false trails?’

‘Yes. I sent an e-mail that has yet to be picked up, and I hired a few megabytes on an Internet storage site. I also took the liberty of burying a time capsule in the maze.’

Artemis nodded. ‘Good. I hadn’t thought of that.’

Butler accepted the compliment, but he didn’t believe it. Artemis thought of everything.

Juliet spoke for the first time. ‘You know, Artemis. Maybe it would be better to let these memories go. Give the fairies some peace of mind.’

‘These memories are part of who I am,’ responded Artemis.

He examined the vials on the table, selecting two.

‘Now, everybody, it’s time to put these in. I’m sure the People are eager to wipe our minds.’

Foaly’s technical crew set up shop in the conference room, laying out a complex assembly of electrodes and fibre-optic cable. Each cable was connected to a plasma screen that converted brainwaves to actual binary information. In layman’s terms, Foaly would be able to read the humans’ memories like a book and edit out what shouldn’t be there.

Possibly the most incredible part of the entire procedure was that the human brain itself would supply alternative memories to fill the blank spots.

‘We could do the mind wipes with a field kit,’ explained Foaly, once the patients were assembled. ‘But field kits are just for blanket wipes. It would erase everything that’s happened over the past sixteen months.

That could have serious implications for your emotional development, not to mention your IQ. So, better we use the lab kit and simply erase the memories that pertain to the People. Obviously, we will have to erase the days you spent in fairy company completely. We can’t take any chances there.’

Artemis, Butler and Juliet were seated round the table. Technical gnomes swabbed their temples with disinfectant.

‘I’ve thought of something,’ said Butler.

‘Don’t tell me,’ interrupted the centaur. ‘The age thing, right?’

Butler nodded. ‘A lot of people know me as a forty-year-old man. You can’t wipe them all.’

‘Way ahead of you, Butler. We’re going to give your face a laser peel while you’re unconscious. Get rid of some of that dead skin. We even brought a cosmetic surgeon to give your forehead a Dewer injection to smooth out the wrinkles.’

‘Dewer?’

‘Fat,’ explained the centaur. ‘We take it from one area, and inject it into another.’

Butler was not enthused by the idea. ‘This fat. It doesn’t come from my behind, does it?’

Foaly shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Well, it doesn’t come from your behind.’

‘Explain.’

‘Research has shown that of all the fairy races, dwarfs have the greatest longevity. There’s a miner in Poll Dyne who is allegedly over two thousand years old. Haven’t you ever heard the expression “smooth as a dwarf’s bottom”?’