Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

For Ciarán, who will hear many rugby stories

PROLOGUE ARTEMIS FOWL:

SO FAR, SO BAD

ARTEMIS was once an Irish boy who longed to know everything there was to know, so he read book after book until his brain swelled with astronomy, calculus, quantum physics, romantic poets, forensic science, and anthropology, among a hundred other subjects. But his favorite book was a slim volume that he’d never once read himself. It was an old hardback that his father often chose as a bedtime tale, entitled The Crock of Gold , which told the story of a greedy bucko who captured a leprechaun in a vain effort to steal the creature’s gold.

When the father had finished reading the last word on the last page, which was Fin , he would close the worn leather-bound cover, smile down at his son, and say, “That boy had the right idea. A little more planning and he would have pulled it off,” which was an unusual opinion for a father to voice. A responsible father, at any rate. But this was not a typically responsible parent- this was Artemis Fowl Senior, the kingpin of one of the world’s largest criminal empires. The son was not so typical either. He was Artemis Fowl II, soon to become a formidable individual in his own right, both in the world of man and the fairy world beneath it.

A little more planning, Artemis Junior often thought as his father kissed his forehead. Just a little more planning.

And he would fall asleep and dream of gold.

As young Artemis grew older, he often thought about The Crock of Gold . He even went so far as to do a little research during schooltime and was surprised to find a lot of credible evidence for the existence of the fairy folk. These hours of study and planning were nothing but lighthearted distractions for the boy until the day his father disappeared in the Arctic following a misunderstanding with the Russian Mafiya. The Fowl empire quickly disintegrated, with creditors crawling out of the woodwork and debtors burrowing into it.

It is up to me, Artemis realized. To rebuild our fortune and find Father.

So he dusted off the leprechaun folder. He would catch a fairy and ransom it back to its own people for gold.

Only a juvenile genius could make this plan a success , Artemis correctly concluded. Someone old enough to grasp the principles of commerce, yet young enough to believe in magic.

With the help of his more than capable bodyguard, Butler, twelve-year-old Artemis actually succeeded in capturing a leprechaun and holding it captive in Fowl Manor’s reinforced basement. But this leprechaun was a she not an it. And remarkably humanoid with it. What Artemis had previously thought of as temporarily detaining a lesser creature now seemed uncomfortably like abducting a girl.

There were other complications too: these leprechauns were not the hokey fairies of storybooks. They were high-tech creatures with attitude, members of an elite fairy police squad: the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Unit, or LEPrecon, to use their acronym. And Artemis had kidnapped Holly Short, the first female captain in the unit’s history. An act that had not endeared him to the well-armed fairy underworld.

But in spite of a niggling conscience and LEP attempts to derail his plan, Artemis managed to take delivery of his ill-gotten gold, and in return he released the elfin captain.

So, all’s well that ends well?

Not really.

No sooner had the earth settled from the first fairy- human standoff in decades than the LEP uncovered a plot to supply the goblin gangs with power sources for their softnose lasers. Number one suspect: Artemis Fowl. Holly Short hauled the Irish boy down to Haven City for interrogation, only to discover, to her amazement, that Artemis Fowl was actually innocent of something. The two struck an uneasy bargain, where Artemis agreed to track down the goblins’ supplier if Holly would help him to rescue his father from the Russian gang that held him prisoner. Both parties upheld their respective ends of the bargain, and in the process developed a respect and trust for each other that was underpinned by a shared sharp sense of humor.

Or at least this used to be the case. Recently, things have changed. In some ways he is as sharp as ever, but a shadow has fallen across Artemis’s mind.

Once upon a time, Artemis saw things that no one else could see, but now he sees things that are not there. .

Vatnajökull, Iceland

Vatnajökull is the biggest glacier in Europe, with an area of more than five thousand stark blue-white miles. It is, for the most part, uninhabited and desolate and, for scientific reasons, the perfect place for Artemis Fowl to demonstrate to the Fairy People how exactly he planned to save the world. Also, a little dramatic scenery never hurts a presentation.

One part of Vatnajökull that does see human traffic is the Great Skua restaurant on the shores of the glacier lagoon, which caters to groups of ice tourists from May to August. Artemis had arranged to meet the proprietor at this closed for the season establishment very early on the morning of September first. His fifteenth birthday.

Artemis steered his rented snowmobile along the lagoon’s rippling coastline, where the glacier sloped into a black pool dotted with a crazy-paving pattern of broken ice plates. The wind roared around his head like an excited crowd in a stadium, carrying with it arrowheads of sleet that peppered his nose and mouth. The space was vast and unforgiving, and Artemis knew that to be injured alone on this tundra would lead to a quick and painful death-or at the very least abject humiliation before the popping flashes of the tourist season’s tail end, which was slightly less painful than a painful death, but lasted longer.

The Great Skua’s owner-a burly Icelander in proud possession of both a walrus mustache with the wingspan of a fair-sized cormorant and the unlikely name of Adam Adamsson-stood in the restaurant’s porch, popping his fingers and stamping his feet to an imaginary rhythm and also finding the time to chuckle at Artemis’s erratic progress along the lagoon’s frozen shore.

“That was a mighty display,” said Adamsson when Artemis finally managed to ram the snowmobile into the restaurant’s decking. “Hell, harður maður . I haven’t laughed that hard since my dog tried to eat his reflection.”

Artemis smiled dourly, aware that the restaurateur was poking fun at his driving skills, or lack thereof. “Hmmph,” he grunted, dismounting the Ski-Doo as stiffly as a cowboy after three days on a cattle drive, whose horse had died, forcing him to ride the broadest cow in the herd.

The old man actually cackled. “Now you even sound like my dog.”

It was not Artemis Fowl’s habit to make undignified entrances, but without his bodyguard Butler on hand, he had been forced to rely on his own motor skills, which were famously unsophisticated. One of the sixth-year wits at St. Bartleby’s School, the heir to a hotel fortune, had nicknamed Artemis Left Foot Fowl , as in he had two left feet and couldn’t kick a football with either of them. Artemis had tolerated this ribbing for about a week and then bought out the young heir’s hotel chain. This choked the teasing off abruptly.

“Everything is ready, I trust?” said Artemis, flexing fingers inside his patented Sola-Gloves. He noticed that one hand was uncomfortably warm; the thermostat must have taken a knock when he’d clipped an ice obelisk half a mile down the coast. He tugged out the power wire with his teeth; there was not much danger of hypothermia, as the autumn temperature hovered just below zero.