The Fowl Twins Deny All Charges

by Eoin Colfer

  As a concession to the weather, Myles was wearing a white linen suit with a matching fedora hat and of course his Gloop tie, while Beckett wore Bermuda shorts and of course his Gloop tie, and flippers, as he intended to swim back to shore after the meeting.

  They waited for several minutes until Myles grew impatient, slamming his Fowltini glass on the table before crying out melodramatically, “For heaven’s sake, Commodore. I am wearing glasses with fairy-based technology in the lenses. I can see you.”

  There followed a brief speckling in the air accompanied by a sound reminiscent of a baby owl’s shriek, and Commodore Holly Short appeared in the wooden slatted chair facing Myles, the Opti-sequins of her green LEP uniform sparkling as they settled.

  “Sorry about the shrieking noise, Master Fowl,” she said. “My shield harmonics need tuning.”

  Lazuli’s shield did not need tuning, and so she appeared noiselessly at her superior’s shoulder, also dressed in LEP green.

  “Myles,” she said, and to Beckett, “Beck.”

  “Laz,” said Beckett, and once again: “Laz.”

  He said this twice to emphasize his affection, but also because Myles had requested that he not bowl over his pixel friend with one of his trademark hugs until they assessed the state of fairy-human relations, and not embracing Lazuli was causing the boy some distress.

  “I’m under no-hugging orders,” he explained.

  Me, too, mouthed Lazuli.

  “Commodore Short,” said Myles. “Specialist Heitz. How lovely to see you both.”

  Holly raised one eyebrow pointedly. She was very adept at eyebrow-raising, which could, in fact, cause problems when the smart visor of her flight helmet misinterpreted the motion as a head tilt and sent her off-course as a result.

  “Lovely to see you, too, boys,” she said. “I had hoped to see Whistle Blower, too.”

  “Whistle Blower is a free agent,” said Myles innocently. “He does as he pleases. We have no idea where he is.”

  “Really?” said Holly, and she directed the next questions to Beckett. “Is that true? You have no idea where the toy troll is?”

  Poor Beckett’s stress levels skyrocketed. “I have no ideas about anything,” he said vaguely. “That’s my policy.”

  “I see,” said Holly. “Nevertheless, it is nice to see you boys. Though I had hoped it would take a little longer for you to break our agreement.”

  Myles smiled thinly. “Not our agreement. Your agreement was with my parents. Believe me when I tell you, Commodore, that the Fowl Twins as a unit are very much finished with abiding by rules that we haven’t had a hand in drafting. Everything about your little agreement was misguided, stupid, or wrong. If I could, I would press charges against, or indeed sue, the Fairy People. If it hadn’t been for Beckett ‘breaking your rules,’ several thousand people would be dead, including myself, and where would the world be then? Bereft, that’s where.”

  “Beckett and Specialist Heitz would also be dead,” Holly pointed out.

  “That is true. And many people would be devastated, including myself. But if I died, the world would be denied my genius and would end several centuries ahead of schedule as a result. All because of your little ‘agreement.’”

  Lazuli glared at Myles, willing him to stop talking or at least be a little less like himself. The only way she could avoid demotion or outright expulsion from the LEP would be if Myles backed off from the not-so-veiled threats.

  Many people would be amused by a twelve-year-old making outlandish claims about his own future legacy, but Holly Short was not one of them. She had been involved in enough Fowl shenanigans to know better.

  “Myles, you know we’re being watched,” she said, a gentle warning in her tone. “There is a shuttle with an entire squadron of LEPtactical directly above us. We could mind-wipe you before you could so much as blink, then all this rhetoric would be forgotten. Perhaps we already have erased certain details from your brain.”

  Beckett laughed. “Sorry, Holly. You should know that you can’t outthink Myles. If anyone has been mind-wiped, it’s probably you.”

  This throwaway statement gave Holly pause. It would seem impossible, on the face of it, for Myles to turn fairy technology back on the fairies themselves, but the impossible was everyday for a Fowl.

  “Myles,” she said. “You wouldn’t.”

  Myles placed his fedora on the table and took a long drink from his Fowltini. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t, because it’s a barbaric procedure that could have a permanent effect on the subject. So I have decided that if the People ever attempt to mind-wipe Beckett or myself, there will be consequences.”

  “It sounds very much as though you are threatening us,” said Holly evenly. “That is hardly the basis for a friendly debriefing.”

  Myles had to laugh. “Friendly debriefing? I know from your own files that Foaly is working on a remote mind-wiping unit. So maybe your technicians are tuning into my brainwaves even now.”

  Directly overhead, a gnome technician paused the brainwave scanner.

  “Let me tell you what happens if you initiate that procedure,” said Myles. “Usually a magician never gives away his secrets, but in this case, there is nothing you can do about it, so I hope you’re recording this.”

  Holly nodded. They both knew she was recording.

  “When a mind-wipe is activated, it elicits a very specific Theta wave pattern. If NANNI detects this pattern in my brain, or Beckett’s brain, that in turn will trigger an info dump of everything I know about the Fairy People to every major news outlet in the world.”

  Lazuli was horrified. “Myles, do you know what you’re saying? You’re declaring yourself an enemy of the People.”

  Myles disagreed. “No, Lazuli. I am being up-front, which is more than your comrades in the LEP are doing.”

  “But we’re friends, Myles,” said Lazuli.

  “We are friends,” conceded Myles. “We three. And Commodore Short is friends with my brother. And yet here she is, prepared to mind-wipe us. This is all politics. And sadly, politics usually takes precedence over friendship.”

  Holly knew this to be true, though it was certainly not always to her liking, but the further up the ladder she climbed, the more necessary politics became.

  Perhaps I should climb back down the ladder, she thought. To a simpler time when it was just Artemis and me against the world.

  That was exactly the rung on which Lazuli now stood.

  Perhaps we do need the Fowl Twins, Holly realized. Myles is our ace in the hole, and Beckett is our wild card.

  “So, what are your demands, Myles?” she asked the suited twin. “You wouldn’t be a Fowl if you didn’t have demands.”

  Myles opened his hands to demonstrate they were empty. “No demands. I simply wish you to do what you have just this second decided to do. Let things continue as they are. We keep our memories and our ambassador. You can continue spying on us if it makes you feel better, but in my opinion, it’s a waste of a surveillance team’s time.”

  Holly nodded slowly while she considered. “I will run this past the council and get back to you.”

  “Through our ambassador?”

  “Precisely, boys,” said Holly, standing. “Through your ambassador.”

  “Excellent, Commodore,” said Myles, also rising to his feet. “And please tell Foaly that I fully expect him to start thinking about a Theta workaround. I have begun work on version two-point-oh, so I’ll be ready for him. In fact, it should be fun.”

  Holly suppressed a groan. The boy was right. Foaly would enjoy having a new Fowl to joust with.

  “I’ll tell him,” she said, and to Lazuli, “I’ll leave the actual debriefing to you, shall I, Specialist?”

  “Yes, Commodore,” said Lazuli, smiling because she had managed to hang on to her rank. “Thank you, Commodore.”

  “Don’t thank me, Specialist,” said Holly as her suit began shimmering. “I just made you responsible for the Fowl Twins.”

/>   Holly disappeared from regular view, and Lazuli stopped smiling as she realized the implications of what her boss had said.

  I just made you responsible for the Fowl Twins.

  It would be considerably less challenging to be responsible for the elements.

  She stopped worrying when Myles lifted his hug embargo, and Beckett in turn lifted Lazuli bodily from the boards, swinging her for several revolutions while humming the tune to the Regrettables’ theme song. This pirouetting lasted fully a half minute and left both parties exhausted on the deck.

  Myles gave Lazuli a few seconds to recover, then asked his first question. “Was Gveld’s body recovered?”

  “No,” said Lazuli. “They didn’t find Gundred, either.”

  “And the gold?”

  “The LEP recovered every bar. Apparently, Gundred wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “I imagine it will go back to the rightful owners?”

  “The family just has to file a claim,” said Lazuli. “It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.”

  “So General Horteknut recovered the hoard after all.”

  “I suppose she did, although the remaining Reclaimers will end up incarcerated.”

  It didn’t take long for Myles to absorb this information, because Lazuli was really only confirming what he had already surmised.

  Lazuli had a question of her own. “Do your parents know you’re on board the yacht?”

  “Of course,” said Beckett. “They’re belowdecks in the state room, doing trance-yoga. It helps them relax after we’ve had one of our incidents.”

  Lazuli had to smile at Myles’s sheer gall, scheduling a debriefing while his parents were exercising downstairs.

  “Mother and Father are far too predictable,” said Myles. “Though I suspect my brother and I will be under the microscope from now on.”

  “I suspect that, too,” said Lazuli. “An electron microscope.”

  “What we need to do in order to placate our superiors is find a mission that will benefit all parties, human and fairy.”

  Lazuli sat in the chair facing Myles. Her LEP uniform cast a sparkle that reached her eyes. “And I bet you have a suggestion, Myles.”

  “Actually, Specialist Heitz, I do.”

  Lazuli looked out over the shimmering sea for a moment and wondered how many millions of gold credits Myles’s suggestion would cost. She wondered how many times her magic would be initiated by imminent death. She wondered if Whistle Blower would ever lose his mistrust of the LEP officers who had been trying to tag him all his life. She wondered whether Myles would ever grow smart enough to realize that smarts weren’t everything and that he would be lost without Beckett, who would in turn be in deep trouble without herself.

  So many questions in a life she wouldn’t trade for anything.

  “Tell me your suggestion,” she said to Myles, who knew his pixel ally was hooked.

  He smiled and said, “Well, Specialist Heitz, I would very much like to know where General Horteknut got her hands on a clone of me. Not a particularly well put together clone, but put together nonetheless.”

  “That is a very good question, Heitz,” said Holly’s voice in Lazuli’s earpiece. “Permission to pull on that thread is granted. And just to annoy Myles, tell him that, technically, it was a copy, not a clone.”

  “Of course, technically, it was a copy, not a clone,” continued Myles. “I am trying to keep it simple for people listening who might not know the difference.”

  “Do you mean me?” said Beckett, who seemed to be trying to rip up one of the decking boards. “Are you keeping things simple for me?”

  “No, Beck,” said Myles. “You run on instinct, and instinct is the evolution of intelligence, which means you are the smartest person on, or indeed above, this boat.”

  Beck abandoned his destructive efforts. “Finally Myles says something right. That deserves a wrist bump.”

  Myles held out his wrist and Beckett rushed to bump it.

  “Laz, come on,” Beckett said. “Regrettables’ salute. You’re a Regrettable.”

  Lazuli wasn’t sure she should join in until Myles commented, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, dear brother, do not involve the specialist in our immature practices.”

  Which Lazuli was perfectly aware was a form of reverse psychology, and also Myles’s way of welcoming her into the inner circle without appearing overly sentimental.

  “That,” she said, raising her wrist for a triple bump, “is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Myles did not dispute the comment, which was tantamount to accepting it. The three Regrettables bumped wrists, and Lazuli felt that in spite of being the Fowls’ fairy liaison, she was also part of this group of adventurers.

  She also could have sworn she felt a tiny electrical zap at the point of contact.

  “The Regrettables, the Regrettables,” Beckett sang, and the other two joined in:

  “We’re completely unforgettable,

  We love our fruits and vegetables,

  That’s cuz we’re Regrettables.”

  Which was obviously the Regrettables’ theme song.

  Oh dear, thought Myles. That fruits and vegetables line really must go. Such a lazy rhyme.

  But he said nothing and sang along with the repeat.

  Childerblaine House, St. George Island

  Some five hundred miles directly south of the Regrettables’ reunion sing-along, there was a man in a brass tub who was less than happy with how the entire Horteknut-hoard affair had worked out. Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, the Duke of Scilly, reclined in his saltwater bath of electric eels and read from a thin strip of paper tape that ran through a ticker machine that had originally transmitted stock price information over telegraph lines. The duke had adapted it as a low-tech way of receiving secret messages from Ishi Myishi, his friend and collaborator. The ticker-tape message was coded in twentieth-century stock-market terminology so as to appear utterly harmless, but it didn’t really matter, because there was not an intelligence agency in the world that monitored telegraph lines. And just to make entirely certain that his secret messages were not somehow leaked, Lord Teddy shredded the tape as he read, feeding the scraps of paper to his eels.

  Sometimes the old ways are best, Teddy, the duke often told himself.

  But today, as the trained electric eels tightened his epidermis with low-voltage shocks, Teddy was not so much enamored by the machine as angered by the message it conveyed.

  The blasted Fowl Twins have survived. How is this possible?

  Of course, such is the reserve of the British royal family that Teddy’s fury showed only in a curling of his toes, which were modestly hidden underwater.

  “I don’t know why you’re surprised, Teddy old man,” the duke told himself. “Those infernal twins have more lives than a bag of cats.”

  Teddy switched off his machine and considered.

  “Never send a copy to do a clone’s work,” he declared after a moment’s thought.

  For he himself was a clone, as his original body had been cooked inside a ball of cellophane, thanks to little Myles Fowl and his twisty schemes (see LEP file: The Fowl Twins). The new body was taking some getting used to—there was a certain deterioration between thought and action—but he was getting there, and Teddy had heard rumors of a magical rite performed in India that might speed up the process.

  Six months, Teddy thought. Half a year and I will be tip-top and ready to exact bloody and prolonged revenge.

  This notion calmed Teddy considerably, and so he lay back in his tub, uncurled his toes, and began to plot….

  EOIN COLFER is the author of the New York Times best-selling Artemis Fowl series, which was adapted into a major motion picture from the Walt Disney Studios, and its spin-off, The Fowl Twins. He also wrote the critically acclaimed WARP trilogy, and many other titles for young readers and adults, including Highfire, Iron Man: The Gauntlet, Airman, Half Moon Investigations, Eoin Colfer’s Legend of…books, The Wish L
ist, Benny and Omar, and Benny and Babe. In 2014, he was named Ireland’s laureate for children’s literature. He lives with his wife and two sons in Dublin, Ireland. To learn more, visit www.eoincolfer.com. He is also on Twitter and Instagram @EoinColfer.