“You need a new shield amplifier, Foaly,” he said to a centaur who was
balanced awkwardly on a chair designed for humans. “I could see the shimmer
from the front porch. Call yourself a technical expert? How old is the one you’re
using?”
Foaly stamped a hoof, which was an irritated tic of his and the reason he never
won at cards. “Nice to see you too, Mud Boy.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know. Maybe four years.”
“Four. There, you see. What sort of number is that?”
Foaly stuck out his bottom lip. “What sort of number? There are types now,
Artemis? That amplifier is good for another hundred years. Maybe it could do with
a little tuning, but that’s all.”
Holly stood and walked lightly to the head of the table.
“Do you two have to start with the sparring right away? Isn’t that getting a
little clichéd after all these years? You’re like a couple of mutts marking territory.”
She laid two slim fingers on Artemis’s forearm. “Lay off him, Artemis. You know
how sensitive centaurs are.”
Artemis could not meet her eyes. Inside his left snow boot, he counted off
twenty toe-taps.
“Very well. Let’s change the subject.”
“Please do,” said the third fairy in the room. “We’ve come across from Russia
for this, Fowl. So if the subject could be changed to what we came here to discuss
. . .”
Commander Raine Vinyáya was obviously not happy being so far from her
beloved Police Plaza. She had assumed command of LEPgeneral some years
previously and prided herself on keeping a finger in every ongoing mission. “I
have operations to get back to, Artemis. The pixies are rioting, calling for Opal
Koboi’s release from prison, and the swear toad epidemic has flared up again.
Please do us the courtesy of getting on with it.”
Artemis nodded. Vinyáya was being openly antagonistic, and that was an
emotion that could be trusted, unless of course it was a bluff and the commander
was a secret fan of his, unless it was a double bluff and she really did feel
antagonistic.
That sounds insane, Artemis realized. Even to me.
Though she was barely forty inches tall, Commander Vinyáya was a formidable
presence and someone that Artemis never intended to underestimate. While the
commander was almost four centuries old in fairy years, she was barely middleaged,
and in any terms she was a striking figure: lean and sallow, with the
reactive feline pupils occasionally found in elfin eyes, but even that rarity was not
her most distinctive physical characteristic. Raine Vinyáya had a mane of silver
hair that seemed to trap any available light and send it rippling along her
shoulders.
Artemis cleared his throat and switched his focus from numbers to the project,
or, as he liked to think of it, THE PROJECT. In the end, when it came down to it,
this was the only plan that mattered.
Holly punched his shoulder gently.
“You look pale. Even paler than usual. You okay, birthday boy?”
Artemis finally succeeded in meeting her eyes—one hazel, one blue—framed
by a wide brow and a slash of auburn fringe, which Holly had grown out from her
usual crew cut.
“Fifteen years old today,” muttered Artemis. “Three fives. That’s a good thing.”
Holly blinked.
Artemis Fowl muttering? And no mention of her new hairstyle— usually
Artemis picked up on physical changes straight away.
“I . . . ah . . . I suppose so. Where’s Butler? Scouting the perimeter?”
“No. No, I sent him away. Juliet needed him.”
“Nothing too serious?”
“Not serious but necessary. Family business. He trusts you to look after me.”
Holly’s lips tightened as though she had tasted something sour.
“He trusts somebody else to shepherd his principal? Are you sure this is Butler
we’re talking about?”
“Of course. And anyway, it’s better that he’s not here. Whenever my plans go
awry, he’s close at hand. It’s vital, imperative, that this meeting go ahead and
that nothing goes wrong.”
Holly’s jaw actually dropped in shock. It was almost comical to see. If she
understood Artemis correctly, he was blaming Butler for the failure of previous
schemes. Butler? His staunchest ally?
“Good idea. Let’s go ahead, then. The four of us should get this show on the
road.”
This from Foaly, who had spoken the dreaded number with no thought for the
consequences.
Four. Very bad number. The absolute worst. Chinese people hate the number
four because it sounds like their word for death.
Almost worse than saying the number four was the fact that there were only
four people in the room. Commander Trouble Kelp had apparently not been able
to make it. In spite of their historic dislike for each other, Artemis wished the
commander were here now.
“Where is Commander Kelp, Holly? I thought he was attending today. We
could use the protection.”
Holly stood at the table, ramrod straight in her blue jumpsuit, acorn cluster
glittering on her chest.
“Trouble . . . Commander Kelp has enough to deal with in Police Plaza, but
don’t worry. There’s an entire squadron of LEPtactical hovering overhead in a
shielded shuttle. Not even a snow fox could make it in here without a singed tail.”
Artemis shucked off his snow jacket and gloves. “Thank you, Captain. I am
encouraged by your thoroughness. As a matter of interest, how many fairies are
there in an LEP squadron? Exactly?”
“Fourteen,” replied Holly, one jagged eyebrow raised.
“Fourteen. Hmm. That is not so . . .” Then a lightbulb moment. “And a pilot, I
presume?”
“Fourteen including the pilot. That’s enough to take on any human squadron
you care to throw at them.”
For a moment it seemed as though Artemis Fowl would turn around and flee
the meeting that he himself had requested. A tendon tugged at his neck, and one
forefinger tapped the chair’s wooden headrest. Then Artemis swallowed and
nodded with a nervousness that escaped from him like a canary from a cat’s
mouth before being swallowed back down.
“Very well. Fourteen will have to do. Please, Holly, sit. Let me tell you about
the project.”
Holly backed up slowly, searching Artemis’s face for the cockiness that usually
dwelled in his smirk lines. It was not there.
Whatever this project is, she thought, it’s big.
Artemis placed his case on the table, popped it open, and spun the lid to
reveal a screen inside. For a moment his delight in gadgetry surfaced, and he
even managed a faint grin in Foaly’s direction. The grin stretched his lips no more
than an inch.
“Look. You’ll like this little box.”
Foaly snickered. “Oh my stars! Is that . . . could that possibly be . . . a laptop?
You have shamed us all with your brilliance, Arty.”
The centaur’s sarcasm drew groans from everyone.
“What?” he protested. “It’s a laptop. Even humans can’t expect anyone to be
impressed by a laptop.”
“If I know Artemis,” said Holly, “something impressive is about to happen. Am
I right?”
“You may judge for yourself,” said Artemis, pressing his thumb against a
scanner on the case.
The scanner flickered, considering the proffered thumb, then flashed green,
deciding to accept it. Nothing happened for a second or two, then a motor inside
the case buzzed as though there were a small satisfied cat stretching in the case’s
belly.
“Motor,” said Foaly. “Big deal.”
The lid’s reinforced metal corners suddenly detached, blasting away from the
lid with a squirt of propellant, and suckered themselves to the ceiling.
Simultaneously, the screen unfolded until it was more than three feet square with
speaker bars along each edge.
“So it’s a big screen,” Foaly said. “This is just grandstanding. All we needed
were a few sets of V-goggles.”
Artemis pressed another button on the case, and the metal corners suckered
to the ceiling revealed themselves to be projectors, spewing forth streams of digidata
that coalesced in the center of the room to form a rotating model of the
planet Earth. The screen displayed the Fowl Industries company logo surrounded
by a number of files.
“It’s a holographic case,” said Foaly, delighted to remain unimpressed. “We’ve
had those for years.”
“It is not a holographic case—the case is completely real,” corrected Artemis.
“But the images you will see are holographic. I have made a few upgrades to the
LEP system. The case is synced with several satellites, and the onboard
computers can construct real-time images of objects not inside the sensors’
range.”
“I’ve got one of those at home,” mumbled the centaur. “For my kids’ game
console.”
“And the system has smart interactive intelligence so I can construct or alter
models by hand, so long as I’m wearing V-gloves,” Artemis went on.
Foaly scowled. “Okay, Mud Boy. That is good.” But he couldn’t help adding the
P.S.: “For a human.”
Vinyáya’s pupils contracted in the light from the projectors. “This is all very
pretty, Fowl, but we still don’t know the point of this meeting.”
Artemis stepped into the hologram and inserted his hands into two V-gloves
floating over Australia. The gloves were slightly transparent with thick tubular
digits and an unsophisticated polystyrene-look render. Once again the briefcase’s
sensor flickered thoughtfully before deciding to accept Artemis’s hands. The
gloves beeped softly and shrank to form a second skin around his fingers, each
knuckle highlighted by a digi-marker.
“Earth,” he began, ignoring the impulse to open his notes folder and count the
words. He knew this lecture by heart.
“Our home. She feeds us, she shelters us. Her gravity prevents us from flying
off into space and freezing, before thawing out again and being crisped by the
sun, none of which really matters, as we would have long since asphyxiated.”
Artemis paused for laughter and was surprised when it did not arrive. “That was a
little joke. I read in a presentation manual that a joke often serves to break the
ice. And I actually worked icebreaking into the joke, so there were layers to my
humor.”
“That was a joke?” said Vinyáya. “I’ve had officers court-martialed for less.”
“If I had some rotten fruit, I would throw it,” added Foaly. “Why don’t you do
the science and leave the jokes to people with experience?”
Artemis frowned, upset that he had ad-libbed, and now could not be certain
how many words were in his presentation. If he finished on a multiple of four that
was not also a multiple of five, that could be very bad. Perhaps he should start
again? But that was cheating, and the number gods would simply add the two
speeches together and he’d be no better off.
Complicated. So hard to keep track, even for me.
But he would continue because it was imperative that THE PROJECT be
presented now, today, so that THE PRODUCT could go into fabrication
immediately. So Artemis contained the uncertainty in his heart and launched into
the presentation with gusto, barely stopping to draw breath, in case his courage
deserted him.
“Man is the biggest threat to Earth. We gut the planet of its fossil fuels then
turn those same fuels against the planet through global warming.” Artemis
pointed a V-finger at the enlarged screen, opening one video file after another,
each one illustrating a point. “The world’s glaciers are losing as much as six feet
of ice cover per annum, that’s half a million square miles in the Arctic Ocean
alone in the past thirty years.” Behind him the video files displayed some of the
consequences of global warming.
“The world needs to be saved,” said Artemis. “I realize now, finally, that I
must be the one to save it. This is why I am a genius. My very raison d’être.”
Vinyáya tapped the table with her index finger. “There is a lobby in Haven,
which has quite a lot of support, that says roll on global warming. The humans
will wipe themselves out and then we can take back the planet.”
Artemis was ready for that one. “An obvious argument, Commander, but it’s
not just the humans, is it?” He opened a few more video windows and the fairies
watched scenes of scrawny polar bears stranded on ice floes, moose in Michigan
being eaten alive by an increased tick population, and bleached coral reefs devoid
of all life.
“It’s every living thing on or underneath this planet.”
Foaly was actually quite annoyed by the presentation. “Do you think we
haven’t thought about this, Mud Boy? Do you think that this particular problem
has not been on the mind of every scientist in Haven and Atlantis? To be honest,
I find this lecture patronizing.”
Artemis shrugged. “How you feel is unimportant. How I feel is unimportant.
Earth needs to be saved.”
Holly sat up straight. “Don’t tell me you’ve found the answer.”
“I think so.”
Foaly snorted. “Really? Let me guess: wrap the icebergs, maybe? Or shoot
refracting lenses into the atmosphere?
How about customized cloud cover? Am I getting warm?”
“We are all getting warm,” said Artemis. “That is the problem.” He picked up
the Earth hologram with one hand and spun it like a basketball. “All of those
solutions could work, with some modifications. But they require too much
interstate cooperation, and, as we all know, human governments are not good at
sharing their toys. Perhaps, in fifty years’ time, things might change, but by then
it will be too late.”
Commander Vinyáya had always prided herself on an ability to read a
situation, and her instincts were loud in her ears like the roar of Pacific surf. This
was a historic moment: the very air seemed electric.
“Go on, human,” she said quietly, her words buoyed by authority. “Tell us.”
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