Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian (16 page)

By the time the entire mess was traced back to software error, Caballine had been confined to a gel cell for over three hours. She had missed her mother’s birthday party and was extremely anxious to throttle the person responsible for the mix-up. Foaly was told by Commander Kelp in no uncertain terms to get down to the holding cells and take responsibility for his foul-up.

Foaly trudged down there, ready to spout one of a dozen standard excuses, all of which evaporated when he came face-to-face with Caballine in the hospitality suite. Foaly didn’t meet many centaurs, and he certainly would never bump into one as beautiful as Caballine, with her chestnut eyes, strong wide nose, and glossy hair down to her waist.

“Just my luck,” he blurted, without thinking. “That’s just typical of my luck.”

Caballine had herself all psyched up to tear metaphorical strips off the hide of whatever imbecile had been responsible for her incarceration—and perhaps actual strips, too—but Foaly’s reaction gave her pause, and she decided to give him one chance to dig himself out of the hole he was in.

“What is just typical of your luck?” she said, regarding him frankly, letting him know that his answer better be a good one.

Foaly knew the pressure was on and so thought carefully before answering.

“It’s just typical of my luck,” he said eventually, “that I finally meet someone as beautiful as you, and all you want to do is kill me.”

This was a pretty good line, and, judging by the misery in Foaly’s eyes, there was also more than a grain of truth in it.

Caballine decided to take pity on the dejected centaur before her and dial down her antagonism a few notches, but it was too early to let Foaly off the hook completely.

“And why wouldn’t I want to kill you? You think I look like a criminal.”

“I don’t think that. I would never think that.”

“Really? Because the algorithm that identified me as a goblin bank robber is based on your thought patterns.”

This lady is smart, Foaly realized. Smart and gorgeous.

“True,” he said. “But I imagine there were secondary factors involved.”

“Such as?”

Foaly decided to go for broke. He felt an attraction toward this centaur that was short-circuiting his brain. The closest he could come to describing the sensation was a sustained low-level electrical shock, like the ones he inflicted on volunteers in his sleep-deprivation experiments.

“Such as, my machine is incredibly stupid, because you are the opposite of a goblin bank robber.”

Caballine was amused but not won over just yet.

“Which is?”

“Which is a non-goblin customer making a deposit.”

“Which is what I am, dummy.”

Foaly flinched. “What?”

“Dummy. Your machine is a dummy.”

“Yes. Absolutely. I will have it disassembled immediately and reassembled as a toaster.”

Caballine bit her lip and could have conceivably been holding back a smile.

“That’s a start. But you still have a long way to go before we’re done here.”

“I understand. If you have any capital crimes in your past, I could wipe them from your record. In fact, if you’d like to disappear altogether, I could arrange that.” Foaly rethought this last sentence. “That sounded like I was going to have you killed, which I totally am not. The last thing I would ever do is have you killed. Quite the opposite.”

Caballine took her handbag from the back of a chair and slung it across her fringed blouse. “You are quite fond of opposites, Mr. Foaly. What is the opposite of having me killed?”

Foaly met her gaze for the first time. “Keeping you happy and alive forever.”

Caballine moved to leave, and Foaly thought,
Stupid donkey. You blew it
.

But she stopped at the threshold and threw Foaly a lifeline.

“I do have a parking ticket that I did pay, but your machines seem to have it in for me, and they swear I didn’t. You could have a look at that.”

“No problem,” said Foaly. “Consider it done and that machine compacted.”

“I’m going to tell all my friends about this,” said Caballine, already leaving the room, “when I see them at the Hoovre Gallery launch this weekend. Do you like art, Mr. Foaly?”

Foaly stood there for a full minute after she was gone, staring at the spot where Caballine’s head had been when she’d last spoke. Later on, he had to rewind the suite’s surveillance footage to make sure Caballine had kind of, sort of, asked him on a date.

And now they were married, and Foaly considered himself the luckiest dummy in the world and, even though the city was mired in a crisis the likes of which had never before been visited on the subterranean metropolis, he had no hesitation in taking a moment to check on his gorgeous wife, who would probably be at this moment at home worrying about him.

Caballine, he thought, I will be with you soon.

Since their wedding ritual, Foaly and his wife had shared a mental bond like the one often experienced by twins.

I know she is alive, he thought.

But that was all he knew. She could be hurt, trapped, distressed, or in danger. Foaly did not know. And he had to know.

The ARClight Foaly had dispatched to check on Caballine had been built especially for that purpose and knew exactly where to go. Foaly had months ago painted a corner of the kitchen ceiling with a laser that would attract the bug from hundreds of miles away if need be.

Foaly shunted the other ARClight feeds to the main situation room, where Mayne could monitor them, and then concentrated on Caballine’s bug.

Fly, my pretty. Fly.

The modified dragonfly zipped through Police Plaza’s vent system and out over the city, darting through the chaos that permeated the streets and buildings. Fires flared in the piazza and on the freeway. The billboards that lined every street had been reduced to carbonized frames, and floodwater filled the sunken open-air amphitheater as far as Row H.

Mayne can handle that for five minutes, thought Foaly.
I am coming, Caballine.

The ARClight buzzed beyond the central plaza to the southern suburb, which had more of a rural feel. Genetically modified trees grew in small copses, and there were even controlled amounts of woodland creatures that were carefully monitored and released aboveground when they multiplied to nuisance levels. The dwellings here were modest, less modern in their architecture, and outside the evacuation zone. Foaly and Caballine lived in a small split-level with adobe walls and curved windows. The color scheme was autumnal throughout, and the décor had always been a little
back to nature
for Foaly’s taste, though he would never have dreamed of mentioning it.

Foaly pulled his V-board toward him and expertly controlled the little bug with numerical coordinates, though it would have been easier to use a joystick, or even voice control. It was ironic that someone who was responsible for so many technological breakthroughs still preferred to use an ancient virtual keyboard that he had made from a window frame when he was in college.

The top half of the door was ajar, and so Foaly had his ARClight dip inside the lobby, which was decorated with woven wall hangings depicting great moments in centaurian history, such as the discovery of fire by King Thurgood, and the accidental discovery of penicillin by the stable hand Shammy Sod, whose name had entered the popular vernacular to mean an extremely lucky person, for example:
He’s won the lottery for the second time, the shammy sod.

The dragonfly whirred along the corridor to find Caballine sitting on her yoga blanket, staring at the cell phone in her hand. She looked shaken but unhurt, and was scrolling through the menus on her screen, looking for a network.

You will have no luck there, my love, thought Foaly, then sent a text to her phone directly from the ARClight.

There’s a little dragonfly watching over you,
said the text. Caballine read it and raised her face, searching for the bug. Foaly set the eyes flashing green to help her. Foaly’s wife raised her hand, and the bug swooped down to land on her finger.

“My clever husband,” she said, smiling. “What is happening to our city?”

Foaly sent another message, and made a mental note to add a voice box to the next version of the ARClights.

You are safe at home. We have had some major explosions, but all is under control.

Caballine nodded. “Will you be home soon?” she asked the bug.

Not soon. It could be a long night.

“Don’t worry, honey. I know they need you. Is Holly okay?”

I don’t know. We’ve lost contact, but if anyone can look after herself, it’s Holly Short.

Caballine lifted her finger and the dragonfly hovered before her face. “You need to look after yourself, too, Mr. Technical Consultant.”

I will,
texted Foaly.

Caballine took a ribboned box from the low table. “While I’m waiting for you, I will open this lovely gift that someone sent to me, you romantic centaur.”

Back in the lab, Foaly felt a stab of jealousy. A gift? Who would have sent a present? His jealousy was quickly trumped by anxiety. After all, this was the day of Opal Koboi’s great revenge, and there was no one the pixie hated more than him.

Don’t open it,
he sent quickly.
I did not send it, and bad things are happening.

But Caballine did not need to open the box, for it was both time- and DNA-coded, and as soon as she touched it, the omni-sensor on the side scanned her finger and set the opening mechanism whirring. The lid pinged away from the box, spinning away to slap the wall, and inside was…nothing. Literally nothing. A black absence that seemed to repel ambient light.

Caballine peered into the box. “What is this?” she asked. “One of your gizmos?”

Which was as much as Foaly heard, because the blackness—or whatever it was—shorted out the ARClight, leaving Foaly ignorant as to his wife’s fate.

“No!” he blurted. “No. No.”

Something was happening. Something sinister. Opal had decided to target Caballine specifically to torture him. He was sure of it. The pixie’s accomplice, whoever it was, had mailed his wife this seemingly innocuous box, but it was far from harmless; Foaly would bet his two hundred plus patents on it.

What has she done?

The centaur agonized over the question for about five seconds, until Mayne stuck his head into the room.

“We have something from the ARClights. I think I should push it across to your screens.”

Foaly stamped a hoof. “Not now, stupid pony. Caballine is in danger.”

“You need to see this,” said Mayne, standing his ground.

Something in his nephew’s tone, a bite of steel that hinted at the centaur this boy would become, made Foaly look up. “Very well. Shunt it across.”

The screens immediately came to life with overhead shots of Haven from dozens of angles. Each shot was black and white except for clusters of red dots.

“The dots are the escaped goblin sleeper/seekers,” explained Mayne. “The ARClights can detect their radiation signatures but not activate them.”

“But this is good news,” said Foaly irritably. “Send the coordinates to the agents on the ground.”

“They were moving randomly, but seconds ago they all changed direction, at exactly the same time.”

Foaly knew then what Opal had done, how her weapon had gotten past the courier’s security scans. She had used a sonix bomb.

“And they’re headed for my house,” he said.

Mayne swallowed. “Exactly. Just as fast as they can run. The first group will arrive in less than five minutes.”

At this point Mayne was talking to thin air, as Foaly had already galloped out through the side door.

Myles Fowl sat behind Artemis’s desk in the mini office chair that his big brother had given to him as a birthday present. Artemis claimed it was custom-built, but actually the chair came from Elf Aralto, the famous design store that specialized in beautiful yet practical furniture for elves.

Myles was ratcheted up high, sipping his favorite beverage: acai juice from a martini glass. Two ice cubes, no straw.

“This is my favorite drink,” he said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin monogrammed with the Fowl motto,
Aurum potestas est
. “I know that because I am me again and not a fairy warrior.”

Artemis sat facing him in a similar but larger chair. “So you keep saying, Myles. Should I call you Myles?”

“Yes, of course,” said Myles. “Because that is who I am. Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course I do, little man. I know my own brother’s face when I see it.”

Myles toyed with the stem of his martini glass. “I need to talk with you alone, Arty. Can’t Butler wait outside for a few moments? It’s family talk.”

“Butler is family. You know that, brother.”

Myles pouted. “I know, but this is embarrassing.”

“Butler has seen it all before. We have no secrets from him.”

“Couldn’t he just step outside for a minute?”

Butler stood silently behind Artemis, arms folded in an aggressive manner, which is not difficult to do with forearms the size of baked hams and sleeves that creak like old chairs.

“No, Myles. Butler stays.”

“Very well, Arty. You know best.”

Artemis leaned back in his chair. “What happened to the Berserker inside you, Myles?”

The four-year-old shrugged. “He went away. He was driving my head; then he left.”

“What was his name?”

Myles rolled his eyeballs upward, checking out his own brain. “Erm…Mr. Gobdaw, I believe.”

Artemis nodded like someone with a great deal of knowledge on the subject of this Gobdaw person would. “Ah yes, Gobdaw. I have heard all about Gobdaw from our fairy friends.”

“I think he was called Gobdaw the Legendary Warrior.”

Artemis chuckled. “I am sure he would like you to think that.”

“Because it’s true,” said Myles, with a slight tension around his mouth.

“That’s not what we heard, is it, Butler?”

Butler did not answer or gesture in any way, but somehow he gave the impression of a negative response.

“No,” continued Artemis. “What we heard from our fairy sources was that this Gobdaw person is a bit of a joke, to be frank.”

Myles’s fingers squeaked on the neck of his glass. “Joke? Who says that?”

“Everybody,” said Artemis, opening his laptop and checking the screen. “It’s in all the fairy history books. Here it is, look. Gobdaw the Gullible, they call him, which is nice because of the alliteration. There’s another article that refers to your Berserker friend as Gobdaw the Stinkworm, which I believe is a term used to describe a person who gets blamed for everything. We humans would call that a fall guy, or a scapegoat.”

Myles’s cheeks were rosy red now. “Stinkworm?

Stinkworm, you say? Why would I…why would Gobdaw be called a stinkworm?”

“It’s sad, really, pathetic, but apparently this Gobdaw character was the one who convinced his leader to let the entire Berserker unit get themselves buried around a gate.”

“A
magical
gate,” said Myles. “That protected the fairy elements.”

“That is what they were told, but in truth the gate was nothing more than a pile of stones. A diversion leading nowhere. The Berserkers spent ten thousand years guarding rocks.”

Myles kneaded his eyes. “No. That’s not…no. I saw it, in Gobdaw’s memories. The gate is real.”

Artemis laughed softly. “Gobdaw the Gullible. It’s a little cruel. There’s a rhyme, you know.”

“A rhyme?” rasped Myles, and rasping is unusual in four-year-olds.

“Oh yes, a schoolyard rhyme. Would you care to hear it?”

Myles seemed to be wrestling with his own face. “No. Yes, tell me.”

“Very well. Here goes.” Artemis cleared his throat theatrically.

“Gobdaw, Gobdaw,

Buried in the ground,

Watching over sticks and stones,

Never to be found.”

Artemis hid a smile behind his hand. “Children can be so cruel.”

Myles snapped in two ways. Firstly his patience snapped, revealing him to be in fact Gobdaw; and secondly his fingers snapped the martini glass’s stem, leaving him with a deadly weapon clasped in his tiny fingers.

“Death to the humans!” he squealed in Gnommish, vaulting onto the desk and racing across toward Artemis.

In combat, Gobdaw liked to visualize his strikes just before executing them. He found that it helped him to focus. So, in his mind he leaped gracefully from the lip of the desk, landed on Artemis’s chest, and plunged his glass stiletto into Artemis’s neck. This would have the double effect of killing the Mud Boy and also showering Gobdaw himself in arterial blood, which would help to make him look a little more fearsome.

What actually happened was a little different. Butler reached out and plucked Gobdaw from the air in mid-leap, flicked the glass stem from his grasp, and then wrapped him firmly in the prison of his meaty arms.

Artemis leaned forward in his chair. “There is a second verse,” he said. “But perhaps now is not the time.”

Gobdaw struggled furiously, but he had been utterly neutralized. In desperation, he tried the fairy
mesmer
.

“You will order Butler to release me,”
he intoned.

Artemis was amused. “I doubt it,” he said. “You have barely enough magic to keep Myles in check.”

“Just kill me, then, and be done with it,” said Gobdaw without the slightest quiver in his voice.

“I cannot kill my own brother, so I need to get you out of his body without harming him.”

Gobdaw sneered. “That’s not possible, human. To get me, you must slay the boy.”

“You are misinformed,” said Artemis. “There is a way to exorcise your feisty soul without damaging Myles.”

“I would like to see you try it,” said Gobdaw, with perhaps a glimmer of doubt in his eyes.

“Your wish is my command and so on and so forth,” said Artemis, pressing a button on the desk intercom. “Bring it in, would you, Holly?”

The office door swung open, and a barrel trundled into the room, seemingly under its own power, until Holly was revealed behind it.

“I don’t like this, Artemis,” she said, playing good cop, just as they had planned. “This is nasty stuff. A person’s soul might never get into the afterlife trapped in this gunk.”

“Traitorous elf,” said Gobdaw, kicking his little feet. “You side with the humans.”

Holly waltzed the barrel trolley into the center of the office, parking it on the wooden floor and not on one of the precious Afghan rugs that Artemis insisted on describing in great historical detail every time she visited the office.

“I side with the earth,” she said, meeting Gobdaw’s eyes. “You have been in the ground for ten thousand years, warrior. Things have changed.”

“I have consulted my host’s memories,” said Gobdaw sullenly. “The humans have almost succeeded in destroying the entire planet. Things have not changed so much.”

Artemis rose from his chair and unscrewed the barrel lock. “Do you also see a spacecraft that shoots bubbles from its exhaust?”

Gobdaw had a quick rifle through Myles’s brain. “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s made of gold, is it not?”

“This is one of Myles’s dream projects,” said Artemis slowly. “Merely a dream. The bubble jet. If you delve deeper into my brother’s imagination, you will find a robotic pony that does homework, and a monkey that has been taught to speak. The boy you inhabit is highly intelligent, Gobdaw, but he is only four. At that age there is a very fine line between reality and imagination.”

Gobdaw’s puffed-up chest deflated as he located these items in Myles’s brain. “Why are you telling me this, human?”

“I want you to see that you have been tricked. Opal Koboi is not the savior she pretends to be. She is a convicted murderer who has escaped from prison. She would undo ten thousand years of peace.”

“Peace!” said Gobdaw, then barked a laugh. “Peaceful humans? Even buried beneath the ground we felt your violence.” He wriggled in Butler’s arms, a mini Artemis with black hair and dark suit. “Do you call this
peace
?”

“No, and I apologize for your treatment, but I need my brother.” Artemis nodded at Butler, who hoisted Gobdaw over the open barrel. The little Berserker laughed.

“For millennia I was in the earth. Do you think Gobdaw fears imprisonment in a barrel?”

“You will not be imprisoned. A quick dunking is all that will be necessary.”

Gobdaw looked down between his dangling feet. The barrel was filled with a viscous, off-white liquid with congealed skin on its surface.

Holly turned her back. “I don’t care to watch this. I know what it feels like.”

“What is that?” asked Gobdaw nervously, feeling a cold sickness tipping at his toes from the
stuff’s
aura.

“That is a gift from Opal,” said Artemis. “A few years ago she stole a demon warlock’s power using that very barrel. I stored it in the basement, because you never know, right?”

“What is it?” Gobdaw repeated.

“One of two natural magic inhibitors,” explained Artemis. “Rendered animal fat. Disgusting stuff, I admit. And I am sorry to dunk my brother in it, because he loves those shoes. We dip him down, and the rendered fat traps your soul. Myles comes out intact, and you are held in limbo for all eternity. Not exactly the reward you expected for your sacrifice.”

Something fizzed in the barrel, sending out tiny electrical bolts. “What the
bleep
is that?” squeaked Gobdaw, panic causing his voice to shoot up an octave.

“Oh, that is the second natural magic inhibitor. I had my dwarf friend spit into the barrel just to give it that extra zing.”

Gobdaw managed to free one arm and beat it against Butler’s biceps, but he might as well have been beating a boulder for all the effect it had.

“I will tell you nothing,” he said, his little pointed chin quivering.

Artemis held Gobdaw’s shins so that they would drop cleanly into the vat. “I know. Myles will tell me everything in a moment. I am sorry to do this to you, Gobdaw. You were a valiant warrior.”

“Not Gobdaw the Gullible, then?”

“No,” admitted Artemis. “That was a fiction to force you into revealing yourself. I had to be certain.”

Holly elbowed Artemis out of the way. “Berserker, listen to me. I know you are bound to Opal and cannot betray her, but this human is going in the vat one way or another. So vacate his body and move on to the afterlife. There is nothing more you can do here. This is not a fitting end for a mighty Berserker.”

Gobdaw sagged in Butler’s arms. “Ten thousand years. So many lifetimes.”

Holly touched Gobdaw’s cheek. “You have done everything asked of you. To rest now is no betrayal.”

“Perhaps the human is toying with me. This is a bluff.”

Holly shuddered. “The vat is no bluff. Opal imprisoned me in it once. It was as though my soul grew sick. Save yourself, I beg you.”

Artemis nodded toward Butler. “Very well, no more delays. Drop him in.”

Butler shifted his grip to Gobdaw’s shoulders, lowering him slowly.

“Wait, Artemis!” cried Holly. “This is a fairy hero.”

“Sorry, Holly—there is no more time.”

Gobdaw’s toes hit the gunk, sending vaporous tendrils curling around his legs, and he knew in that instant that this was no bluff. His soul would be imprisoned forever in the rendered fat.

“Forgive me, Oro,” he said, casting his eyes to the heavens.

Gobdaw’s spirit peeled away from Myles and hovered in the air, etched in silver. For several moments it hung, seeming confused and anxious, until a dollop of light blossomed on its chest and began to swirl like a tiny cyclone. Gobdaw smiled then, and the hurt of the ages dropped from his face. The spinning light grew larger with each revolution, spreading its ripples to swallow Gobdaw’s limbs, torso, and finally, face, which at the moment of transition wore an expression that could only be described as blissful.

For the observers, it was impossible to look upon that ghostly face and not feel just a little envious.

Bliss, thought Artemis. Will I ever attain that state?

Myles shattered the moment by kicking his feet vigorously, sending ribbons of fat flying.

“Artemis! Get me out of here!” he ordered. “These are my favorite loafers!”

Artemis smiled. His little brother was back in control of his own mind.

Myles would not speak until he had cleaned his shoes with a wet wipe.

“That fairy ran through the mud in my shoes,” he complained, sipping a second glass of acai juice. “These are kidskin shoes, Arty.”

“He’s quite precocious,
n’est-ce pas
?” Artemis whispered from the side of his mouth.

“Look who’s talking,
plume de ma tante
,” Butler whispered right back at him.

Artemis picked Myles up and sat him on the edge of the desk. “Very well, little man. I need you to tell me everything you remember from your possession. The memories will soon begin to dissipate. That means…”