Artemis Fowl - Colfer Eoin. Страница 22

Something cracked and the stinging stopped.

Suddenly there was a barrel under his chin. One of Retrieval had managed to get his weapon cocked.

'Freeze, Mud Boy,' droned a helmet-filtered voice. It was a serious-looking gun, liquid coolant bubbled along its length. 'Just give me a reason.'

Butler rolled his eyes. Different race, same macho clichйs. He slapped the fairy open-handed. To the little man it must have been like the sky falling on his head.

'That reason enough for you?'

Butler scrambled to his feet. Fairy bodies were scattered around him in various stages of shock and unconsciousness. Scared definitely.

Dead, probably not. Mission accomplished.

One little chap was faking though. You could tell by the way his tiny knees knocked together. Butler picked him up by the neck, finger and thumb easily meeting around the back.

'Name?'

'G-Grub…er, I mean Corporal Kelp.'

'Well, Corporal, you tell your commander that the next time I see armed forces coming in here, they'll be picked off by sniper fire. No darts either. Armour-piercing bullets.'

134'Yessir. Sniper fire. Got it. Seems fair.'

'Good. You are, however, permitted to remove your injured.'

'Most generous of you.'

'But if I see so much as the twinkle of a weapon on any of the medics, I might be tempted to detonate a few of the mines I have planted in the grounds.'

Grub swallowed, his pallor increasing behind the visor.

'Unarmed medics. Crystal clear.'

Butler set the fairy down, brushing his tunic with massive fingers.

'Now. Final thing. Listening?'

Furious nods.

'I want a negotiator. Someone who can make decisions. Not some no-ranker who has to run off back to base after every demand. Understood?'

'Fine. That is, I'm sure it will be fine. Unfortunately I'm one of those no-rankers. So, you see, I can't actually guarantee it will be fine…'

Butler was sorely tempted to drop-kick this little fellow back to his camp.

'Very well. I understand. Just…shut up!'

Grub almost agreed, then he clamped his mouth shut and nodded.

'Good. Now, before you go, collect all weapons and helmets and make a little pile right there.'

Grub took a deep breath. Ah well, may as well go out a hero.

'I can't do that.'

'Oh, really? And why not?'

Grub drew himself up to his full height. 'An LEP officer never relinquishes his weapon.'

Butler nodded.

'Fair enough. Thought I'd ask. Off you go then.'

Hardly able to believe his luck, Grub scurried back towards the command tower. He was the last fairy standing. Trouble was snoring in the gravel but he, Grub Kelp, had faced down the Mud Monster.

Wait until Mummy heard about this.

Holly sat on the edge of her bed, fingers curled around the metal base. She lifted slowly, taking the weight on her arms. The strain threatened to pop her elbows from their sockets. She held it for a second, and then slammed the frame into the concrete. A satisfying cloud of dust and splinters swirled around her knees.

'Good,' she grunted.

Holly eyed the camera. Doubtless they were watching her. No time to waste. She flexed her fingers, repeating the manoeuvre again and again, until the steel base left deep weals in her finger joints. With each impact more and more splinters popped from the fresh floor.

After several moments, the cell door burst open and Juliet fell into the room.

136'What are you doing?' she panted. 'Trying to knock the house down?'

'I'm hungry!' shouted Holly. 'And I'm fed up waving at that stupid camera. Don't you feed your prisoners around here? I want some food!'

Juliet's fingers curled into a fist. Artemis had warned her to be civil, but there was a limit.

'No need to get your knick…or whatever in a twist. So what do you fairies eat?'

'Got any dolphin?' Holly asked sarcastically.

Juliet shuddered.

'No, I don't, you beast!'

'Fruit then. Or vegetables. Make sure they're washed. I don't want any of your chemical poisons in my blood.'

'Ha ha, you're a riot, you are. Don't worry, all our produce is grown naturally.' Juliet paused on her way to the door. 'And don't you go forgetting the rules. No trying to escape from the house. And there's no need to break up the furniture either. Don't make me demonstrate my full nelson.'

As soon as Juliet's footsteps had faded, Holly began smashing the bed into the concrete. That was the thing about fairy bonds. The instructions had to be given eye to eye, and they had to be very precise. Just saying there was no need to do a thing wasn't specifically forbidding an elf to do it. And another thing, Holly had no intention of escaping from the house. That wasn't to say that she didn't mean to get out of her cell.

Artemis had added yet another monitor to the bank. This one was linked to a camera in Angeline Fowl's attic room. He spared a moment to check on his mother. Sometimes it bothered him having a camera in her room; it seemed almost like spying. But it was for her own good. There was always the danger that she could hurt herself. At the moment she was sleeping peacefully, having swallowed the sleeping pill that Juliet had left on her tray. All part of the plan. A vital part, as it happened.

Butler entered the control room. He was clutching a fistful of fairy hardware and rubbing his neck.

'Tricky little blighters.'

Artemis looked up from the monitor bank.

'Any problems?'

'Nothing major. These little batons pack quite a punch though.

How's our prisoner?'

'Fine. Juliet is getting her something to eat. I'm afraid Captain

Short is going a bit stir-crazy.'

On the screen, Holly was smashing her cot into the concrete.

'It's understandable,' noted the manservant. 'Imagine her frustration. It's not as if she can tunnel her way out.'

Artemis smiled.

'No.

The entire estate is built on a bed of limestone. Not even a dwarf could tunnel his way out of here. Or in.'

Wrong, as it happened. Dead wrong. A landmark moment for Artemis Fowl.

The LEP had procedures for emergencies like this one.

Admittedly these did not include the Retrieval Squad getting hammered by a lone enemy. Still, that just made the next step all the more urgent, especially with the faintest of orange tinges creeping into the sky.

'Are we good to go?' roared Root into his mike, as though it wasn't whisper-sensitive.

Good to go, thought Foaly, busy wiring the last dish on a watchtower. These military types and their catchphrases. Good to go, lock and load, I don't know but I've been told. So insecure.

Aloud he said, 'No need to shout, Commander. These headsets could pick up a spider scratching in Madagascar.'

'And is there a spider scratching in Madagascar?'

'Well…I don't know. They can't really — '

'Well, stop changing the subject, Foaly, and answer the question!'

The centaur scowled. The commander took everything so literally. He plugged the dish's modem lead into his laptop.

'OK. We're…good to go.'

'About time too. Right, flip the switch.'

For the third time in as many moments, Foaly gritted his horsy teeth. He was indeed the stereotypical unappreciated genius. Flick the switch, if you don't mind. Root didn't have the cranial capacity to appreciate what he was trying to do here.

Stopping time wasn't just a matter of pressing the on button: there was a series of delicate procedures that had to be performed with utmost precision. Otherwise the stop zone could end up as just so much ash and radioactive slop.

While it was true that fairies had been stopping time for millennia, these days, with satellite communication and the Internet, humans were liable to notice if a zone just dropped out of time for a couple of hours. There was an age when you could throw a blanket stoppage over a whole country and the Mud People would simply think the gods were angry. But not any more. Nowadays the humans had instruments for measuring anything, so if there was any time-stopping to be done, it had better be fine-tuned and precise.