Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian (18 page)

We set off the famous time-stop at Fowl Manor with a series of you guys.

Foaly froze. A time-stop!

He could set off a time-stop, and everyone inside would be stuck there until the battery ran out.

But time-stops required complicated calculations and precise vectors. You couldn’t set off a time-stop in the suburbs.

Normally, no. But these were not normal circumstances.

It would need to be concentrated. Almost pure magic, with a diameter no wider than the property itself.

“I see you looking at that magic battery,” said the nav-bot. “You’re not thinking of setting off a time-stop, are you, dude? You need a few dozen permits before you can do that.”

Foaly synched the battery’s timer with the nav computer, something Holly couldn’t have done in a million years.

“No,” he said. “I’m not setting it off. You are.”

Caballine’s hide was scorched and there were bite marks on her hind legs, but she would not allow herself to give up. More than a dozen goblins surrounded her now, gnashing the air, their eyeballs rolling wildly, being driven crazy by something. There were more on the roof, chewing their way through, and every window and door was a mass of wriggling bodies.

I never got to say good-bye, thought Caballine, determined to take down as many of these lizards as possible before they buried her under sheer numbers.

Good-bye, Foaly, I love you,
she thought, hoping the sentiment would somehow reach him.

Then her husband crashed his van through the side of the house.

The nav-bot understood his instructions immediately.

“It’s an insane plan,” said the artificial intelligence. “But it’s what I would do.”

“Good,” said Foaly, settling himself into the passenger seat harness. “Because you’ll be doing it.”

“I love you, dude,” said the little bot, a gelatinous tear rolling down its cheek.

“Calm down, program,” said Foaly. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

Caballine didn’t really understand what happened next until her mind had time to flick through the images. Her husband’s work van jackknifed into the house, swatting half a dozen goblins. The driver’s door was open with its harness extended, and Caballine did not have time to register this before she was scooped up, backward, and dumped facedown into the hindquarter’s cradle.

“Hi, honey,” said Foaly, an attempt at jauntiness that was belied by the nervous sweat on his brow.

The van’s conduit section was torn asunder as the rear section braked and the front careened on through the opposite wall.

“My house!” said Caballine into the padded seating, as masonry thunked against the doors and sparks fizzled on the windshield.

Foaly had intended to manually steer the front section to a gradual halt a safe distance from the house, but battered vehicles are unpredictable, and this one insisted on flipping onto its side and skidding into the yard, dipping its wheel into the family compost heap, which contained several of Foaly’s ancestors.

The goblins were flummoxed for a moment; then their poor tortured senses picked up the hated sonic signature on Caballine’s hand, and their heads turned toward the van’s front section. There were so many goblins on the house now that it resembled one giant, green-scaled creature. Each goblin inflated its chest to hurl a fireball.

“Nice rescue. Shame it wasn’t a total success,” said Caballine. “But I appreciate the gesture.”

Foaly helped her up. “Wait for it,” he said.

Before a single fireball could be launched, a bolt of blue magic burst through the rear section of the van, shot twenty feet straight up, then mushroomed into a hemisphere of gelatinous ectoplasm that dropped neatly over the Foaly residence.

“I take it back,” said Caballine. “That was a spectacular rescue.”

Foaly had just sealed Caballine’s hand inside a hazmat glove and assured the assembled neighbors that the emergency was past when the time-stop fizzled out, revealing a large group of docile goblins.

“Foaly!” shouted Caballine. “The blue force field is dead.”

“Don’t worry,” said Foaly. “Your hand was driving them crazy, but I smothered the signal. We’re safe now.”

Caballine shielded her husband with her own body as the goblins wandered, dazed, from the ruins of her house. “They’re still criminals, Foaly.”

“They’ve done their time,” said Foaly. “That was a concentrated time-stop. Almost a hundred percent pure. Five seconds for us was five years for them.”

“So they’re rehabilitated?” asked Caballine.

Foaly picked his way around the small fires and piles of rubble that were all that was left of his family home.

“As rehabilitated as they’ll ever be,” he said, guiding confused goblins toward the remaining posts of his front gate. “Go home,” he told them. “Go to your families.”

There wasn’t much left of the van’s rear section, just the bones of a chassis and some mangled tread. Foaly poked his head inside the door frame and a voice said:

“Dude, I’ve missed you. It’s been a long time. How did we do?”

Foaly smiled and patted a coms box. “We did good,” he said, and then added, “Dude.”

Myles had grown suddenly exhausted after his ordeal with Gobdaw and was tucked into bed with his laminated copy of the periodic table clutched to his chest.

“Possession can take a lot out of a person,” said Holly. “Believe me, I know. He’ll be fine in the morning.”

The three sat around Artemis’s desk like a war council, which in a very real way they were.

Butler took inventory. “We have two fighters and no weapons.”

Artemis felt he should object. “I can fight if need be,” he said, not even convincing himself.

“We have to presume the worst about Mulch,” continued Butler, ignoring Artemis’s limp objection. “Though he does have a way of spectacularly cheating death.”

“What’s our objective, specifically?” asked Holly. This question was directed at Artemis, the planner.

“The Berserker Gate. We need to shut it down.”

“What are we going to do? Write a harsh letter?”

“Normal weapons won’t penetrate Opal’s magic; in fact, she would absorb the energy. But if we had a super-laser, it might be enough to overload the gate. It would be like putting out a fire with an explosion.”

Holly patted her pockets. “Well, what do you know? I seem to have left my super-laser in another pocket.”

“Even you can’t build a super-laser in an hour,” said Butler, wondering why Artemis was even bringing this up.

For some reason, Artemis looked suddenly guilty. “I might know where there is one.”

“And where would that be, Artemis?”

“In the barn, attached to my solar glider Mark Two.”

Now Butler understood Artemis’s embarrassment. “In the barn where we set up the gym? Where you are supposed to be practicing your self-defense routines?”

“Yes. That barn.”

In spite of the situation, Butler felt disappointed. “You promised me, Artemis. You said that you needed privacy.”

“It’s so boring, Butler. I tried, really, but I don’t know how you do it. Forty-five minutes punching a leather bag.”

“So you worked on your solar plane instead of keeping your promise to me?”

“The cells were so efficient that there was juice left over, so in my spare time I designed a lightweight super-laser and built it from scratch.”

“Of course. Who doesn’t need a super-laser in the nose of their family plane?”

“Please, girls,” said Holly. “Let’s put the BFF fight on hold for later, okay? Artemis, how powerful is this laser?”

“Oh, about as powerful as a solar flare,” said Artemis. “At its most concentrated it should have enough force to put a hole in the gate, without injuring anyone on the grounds.”

“I really wish you had mentioned this before.”

“The laser is untested,” said Artemis. “I would never unleash this kind of power unless there was absolutely no alternative. And from what Myles told us, we have no other card to play.”

“And Juliet doesn’t know about this?” asked Holly.

“No, I kept it to myself.”

“Good. Then we might have a chance.”

Butler outfitted them all in camouflage gear from his locker, and even forced Artemis to endure the application of waxy stripes of black and olive makeup on his face.

“Is this really necessary?” asked Artemis, scowling.

“Completely,” said Butler, energetically applying the stick. “Of course, if you would stay here and allow me to go, then you and Myles could relax in your favorite loafers.”

Artemis put up with the dig, correctly assuming that Butler was still a little miffed about the super-laser deception.

“I must come along, Butler. This is a super-laser, not a point-and-shoot toy. An entire activation system is involved, and there is no time to teach you the sequence.”

Butler slung a heavy flak jacket over Artemis’s thin shoulders. “Okay. If you must go, then it’s my job to keep you safe. So, let’s make a deal: If you do not voice all the withering comments about the weight or uselessness of this jacket that are no doubt swirling in that big brain of yours, then I will not mention the super-laser episode again. Agreed?”

This jacket is really cutting into my shoulders, thought Artemis. And it’s so heavy that I could not outrun a slug.

But he said, “Agreed.”

Once Artemis’s security system assured them that their perimeter was clear, the group snuck in single file from the office, out of the kitchen, across the yard, and slipped into the alley between the stables.

There were no sentries, which Butler found strange. “I don’t see anything. Opal must know by now that we escaped her pirates.”

“She can’t afford to commit more troops,” whispered Holly. “The gate is her priority, and she needs to have as many Berserkers watching her back as possible. We are secondary at this point.”

“That will be her undoing,” gasped Artemis, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. “Artemis Fowl will never be
secondary.
”

“I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?” said Holly.

“That is different. And
I thought
we were on a mission.”

“True,” said Holly, then she turned to Butler. “This is your backyard, old friend.”

“That it is,” said Butler. “I’ll take point.”

They crossed the estate with cautious speed, wary of every living thing that crossed their path. Perhaps the Berserkers inhabited the very worms in the earth, or the oversized crickets that flourished on the Fowl grounds and sawed their wings in the moonlight, sounding like an orchestra of tiny carpenters.

“Don’t step on the crickets,” said Artemis. “Mother is fond of their song.”

The crickets, which had been nicknamed Jiminies by Dublin entomologists, were seen all year round only on the Fowl Estate, and they could grow to the size of mice. Artemis now guessed this was an effect of the magical radiation seeping through the earth. What he could not have guessed was that the magic had infected the crickets’ nervous systems with a degree of sympathy for the Berserkers. This did not manifest itself in bunches of crickets sitting in circles around miniature campfires telling stories of valiant elfin warriors, but in an aggression toward whatever threatened the Berserkers. Or, simply put: If Opal didn’t like you, then the crickets didn’t care for you much either.

Butler dropped his foot slowly toward a cluster of crickets, expecting them to move out of his path. They did not.

I should crush these little guys, he thought. I do not have time to play nice with insects.

“Artemis,” he called over his shoulder, “these Jiminies are giving me attitude.”

Artemis dropped to his knees, fascinated. “Look, they display no natural prudence whatsoever. It’s almost as if these crickets don’t like us. I should really conduct a study in the laboratory.”

The biggest bug in the cluster opened its lantern jaws wide, jumped high, and bit Artemis on the knee. Even though the bug’s teeth did not penetrate his thick combat pants, Artemis fell backward in shock and would have landed flat on his backside had Butler not scooped him up and set off running with his principal tucked under his arm.

“Let’s leave that lab study for later.”

Artemis was inclined to agree.

The crickets followed, pistoning their powerful hind legs to fling themselves into the air. They jumped as one, a bustling green wave that mirrored Butler’s path exactly. More and more crickets joined the posse, pouring from dips in the landscape and holes in the earth. The wave crackled as it moved, so tightly were the crickets packed.

At least these ones can’t fly, thought Butler, or there would be no escape.

Artemis found purchase and ran on his own two feet, wiggling out from Butler’s grip. The big cricket was still clamped to his knee, worrying the combat material. Artemis slapped at it with his palm, and it felt like hitting a toy car. The cricket was still there, and now his hand was sore.

It was difficult even for Artemis to think in these circumstances, or rather it was difficult to pluck a sensible thought from the jumble zinging off his cranial curves.

Crickets. Murderous crickets. Flak jacket heavy. Too much noise. Too much. Insane crickets. Perhaps I am delusional again.

“Four!” he said aloud, just to be sure. “Four.”

Butler guessed what Artemis was doing. “It’s happening, all right. Don’t worry, you’re not imagining it.”

Artemis almost wished that he were.

“This is serious!” he shouted over the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.

“We need to get to the lake,” said Holly. “Crickets don’t swim so well.”

The barn was built on a hilltop overlooking a lake known as the Red Pool because of the way it glowed at sunset when viewed from the manor’s drawing room bay window. The effect was spectacular, as though the flames of Hades lurked below fresh water. By day, a playground for ducks; but by night, the gateway to hell. The idea that a body of water could have a secret identity had always amused Artemis, and it was one of the few subjects on which he allowed his imagination free rein. Now the lake simply seemed like a safe haven.

I’ll probably be dragged straight down by the weight of this flak jacket.

Holly crowded him from behind, elbowing him repeatedly in the hip.

“Hurry!” she said. “Get that glassy look off your face. Remember, there are killer crickets after us.”

Artemis picked up his feet, trying to run fast like he had seen Beckett do so often—on a whim it seemed, as though running for half a day took no particular effort.

They raced across a series of garden plots that had been sectioned off with makeshift fences of shrub and posts. Butler barged through whatever blocked their way. His boots kicked new potatoes from their beds, clearing a path for Artemis and Holly. The crickets were not impeded by barriers, simply buzz-sawing through or flowing around with no discernible loss of pace. Their noise was dense and ominous, a cacophony of mutters. Scheming insects.

The lead crickets nipped at Holly’s boots, latching on to her ankles, grinding their pugnacious jaws. Holly’s instinct told her to stop and dislodge the insects, but her soldier’s sense told her to run on and bear the pinching. To stop now would surely be a fatal mistake. She felt them piling up around her ankles, felt their carapaces crack and ooze beneath her boots. It was like running on Ping-Pong balls.

“How far?” she called. “How far?”

Butler answered her by raising two fingers.

What was that? Two seconds? Twenty seconds? Two hundred yards?

They ran through the gardens and down the plowed hill toward the water’s edge. The moon was reflected in the surface like the white of a god’s eye, and on the far side was the gentle ski-slope rise of Artemis’s runway. The crickets were on them now, waist high for Holly. They were swarming from every corner of the estate.

We never had a cricket problem, thought Artemis. Where have they all come from?

They felt the bites on their legs like tiny burns, and running became next to impossible with a writhing skin of crickets coating each limb.

Holly went down first, then Artemis, both believing that this must surely be the worst possible way to die. Artemis had stopped struggling when a hand reached down through the electric buzzing and hauled him free of the morass.

In the moonlight he saw a cricket clamped to his nose, and he reached up to crush it with his fingers. The body crunched in his fist, and for the first time Artemis felt the adrenaline rush of combat. He felt like squashing all of these crickets.

Of course it was Butler who had rescued him, and as he dangled from the bodyguard’s grip, he saw Holly hanging from Butler’s other hand.

“Deep breath,” said Butler, and he tossed them both into the lake.

Five minutes later, Artemis arrived gasping at the other side minus one flak jacket, about which he felt sure Butler would have something to say—but it had been either ditch the jacket or drown, and there wasn’t much point in being bulletproof at the bottom of a lake.

He was relieved to find that he was flanked by Holly and Butler, who seemed considerably less out of breath than he himself was.

“We lost the crickets,” said Butler, causing Holly to break down in a splutter of hysterical giggles, which she stifled in her sopping sleeve.

“We lost the crickets,”
she said. “Even you can’t make that sound tough.”

Butler rubbed water from his close-cropped hair. “I am Butler,” he said, straight-faced. “Everything I say sounds tough. Now, get out of the lake, fairy.”

It seemed to Artemis that his clothes and boots must have absorbed half the lake, judging by their weight as he dragged himself painfully from the water. He often noticed actors on TV ads exiting pools gracefully, surging from the water to land poolside, but Artemis himself had always been forced to climb out at the shallow end or to execute a sort of double flop that left him on his belly beside the pool. His exit from the lake was even less graceful, a combined shimmy-wiggle that would remind onlookers of the movements of a clumsy seal. Eventually Butler put him out of his misery with a helping hand beneath one elbow.

“Up we come, Artemis. Time is wasting.”

Artemis rose gratefully, sheets of night-cold water sliding from his combat pants.