The Eternity Code

by Eoin Colfer

  “It’s not a question of decency. It just can’t be done.”

  Artemis drummed his fingers on the gurney. Thinking. “I want to talk to Foaly,” he said finally.

  “I speak for the People, Fowl,” said Holly testily. “We don’t take orders from humans.”

  “Please, Holly,” said Artemis. “I can’t just let him go. It’s Butler.”

  Holly couldn’t help herself. After all, Butler had saved all their hides on more than one occasion.

  “Very well,” she said, fishing a spare com-set from her belt. “But he’s not going to have any good news for you.”

  Artemis hooked the speaker over one ear, adjusting the mike stem so it wound across his mouth.

  “Foaly? Are you listening?”

  “Are you kidding?” came the reply. “This is better than human soap operas.”

  Artemis composed himself. He would have to present a convincing case, or Butler’s last chance was gone.

  “All I want is a healing. I accept that it may not work, but what does it cost to try?”

  “It’s not that straightforward, Mud Boy,” replied the centaur. “Healing isn’t a simple process. It requires talent and concentration. Holly is pretty good, I grant you, but for something like this, we need a trained team of warlocks.”

  “There’s no time,” snapped Artemis. “Butler has already been under too long. This has to be done now, before the glucose is absorbed into his bloodstream. There is already tissue damage to the fingers.”

  “Maybe his brain, too?” suggested the centaur.

  “No. I got his temperature down in minutes. The cranium has been frozen since the incident.”

  “Are you sure about that? We don’t want to bring Butler’s body back, and not his mind.”

  “I’m sure. The brain is fine.”

  Foaly didn’t speak for several moments.

  “Artemis, if we agree to try this, I have no idea what the results would be. The effect on Butler’s body could be catastrophic, not to mention his mind. An operation of this kind has never been attempted on a human.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you, Artemis? Do you really? Are you prepared to accept the consequences of this healing? There could be any number of unforeseeable problems. Whatever emerges from this pod is yours to care for. Will you accept this responsibility?”

  “I will,” said Artemis, without hesitation.

  “Very well, then it’s Holly’s decision. Nobody can force her to use her magic, it’s up to her.”

  Artemis lowered his eyes. He could not bring himself to look at the LEP elf.

  “Well, Holly. Will you do it? Will you try?”

  Holly brushed the ice from Butler’s brow. He had been a good friend to the People. “I’ll try,” she said. “No guarantees, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Artemis’s knees almost buckled with relief, then he was in control again. Time enough for weak knees later. “Thank you, Captain. I realize this could not be an easy decision to make. Now, what can I do?”

  Holly pointed to the rear doors. “You can get out. I need a sterile environment. I’ll come get you when it’s over. And whatever happens, whatever you hear, don’t come in until I call.”

  Holly unclipped her helmet camera, suspending it from the cryo pod’s lid to give Foaly a better view of the patient. “How’s that?”

  “Good,” replied Foaly. “I can see the whole upper body. Cryogenics. That Fowl is a genius, for a human. Do you realize that he had less than a minute to come up with this plan? That’s one smart Mud Boy.”

  Holly scrubbed her hands thoroughly in the medi-sink. “Not smart enough to keep himself out of trouble. I can’t believe I’m doing this. A three-hour healing. This has got to be a first.”

  “Technically it’s only a two-minute healing, if he got the brain down to below zero straightaway. But . . .”

  “But what?” asked Holly, rubbing her fingers briskly with a towel.

  “But the freezing interferes with the body’s own biorhythms and magnetic fields, things even the People don’t understand fully. There’s more than skin and bone at stake here. We have no idea what a trauma like this could do to Butler.”

  Holly stuck her head under the camera. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Foaly?”

  “I wish we had time for discussion, Holly, but every second costs our old friend a couple of brain cells. I’m going to talk you through it. The first thing we need to do is take a look at the wound.”

  Holly peeled off several cold packs, unzipping the foil suit. The entry wound was small and black. Hidden in the center of a pool of blood, like a flower’s bud. “He never had a chance. Right under the heart. I’m going to zoom in.”

  Holly closed her visor, using the helmet’s filters to magnify Butler’s wound. “There are fibers trapped in there. Kevlar, I’d say.”

  Foaly groaned over the speakers. “That’s all we need. Complications.”

  “What difference do fibers make? And this really is not the time for jargon. I need plain Gnommish.”

  “Okay. Surgery for morons it is. If you poke your fingers into that wound, the magic will reproduce Butler’s cells, complete with their new strands of Kevlar. He’ll be dead, but completely bulletproof.”

  Holly could feel the tension creeping up her back. “So, I need to do what?”

  “You need to make a new wound, and let the magic spread from there.”

  Oh great, thought Holly. A new wound. Just slice him open. “But he’s as hard as rock.”

  “Well then, you’re going to have to melt him down a little. Use your Neutrino 2000, low setting, but not too much. If that brain wakes up before we want it to, he’s finished.”

  Holly drew her Neutrino, adjusting the output to minimum. “Where do you suggest I melt?”

  “The other pectoral. Be ready to heal—that heat is going to spread rapidly. Butler needs to be healed before oxygen gets to his brain.”

  Holly pointed the laser at the bodyguard’s chest. “Just say the word.”

  “In a bit closer. Six inches approximately. A two-second burst.”

  Holly raised her visor, taking several deep breaths. A Neutrino 2000 being used as a medical instrument. Who would have thought it? Holly pulled her trigger to the first click. One more click would activate the laser. “Two seconds.”

  “Okay. Go.”

  Click. An orange beam of concentrated heat spilled from the Neutrino’s snout, blossoming across Butler’s chest. Had the bodyguard been awake, he would have been knocked unconscious. A neat circle of ice evaporated, rising to condense on the surgery’s ceiling.

  “Now,” said Foaly, his voice high-pitched with urgency. “Narrow the beam and focus it.”

  Holly manipulated the gun controls expertly with her thumb. Narrowing the beam would intensify its power, but the laser would have to be focused at a certain range to avoid slicing right through Butler’s body. “I’m setting it for six inches.”

  “Good, but hurry, that heat is spreading.”

  The color had returned to Butler’s chest and the ice was melting across his body. Holly pulled the trigger again, this time carving a crescent-shaped slit in Butler’s flesh. A single drop of blood oozed from between the wound’s edges.

  “No steady flow,” said Foaly. “That’s good.”

  Holly holstered her weapon. “Now what?”

  “Now get your hands in deep, and give it every drop of magic you’ve got. Don’t just let it flow, push the magic out.”

  Holly grimaced. She never liked this bit. No matter how many healings she performed, she could never get used to sticking her fingers into other people’s insides. She lined her thumbs up, back to back, and slid them into the incision.

  “Heal,” she breathed, and the magic scurried down her fingers. Blue sparks hovered over Butler’s wound, then disappeared inside like shooting stars diving behind the horizon.

  “More, Holly,” urged Foaly. “Another shot.”

  Ho
lly pushed again, harder. The flow was thick at first, a roiling mass of blue streaks, then as her magic ebbed, the flow grew weaker. “That’s it,” she panted. “I have barely enough left to shield on the way home.”

  “Well, then,” said Foaly. “Stand back until I tell you. Because all hell is about to break loose.”

  Holly backed up to the wall. Nothing much happened for several moments, then Butler’s back arched, throwing his chest into the air. Holly heard a couple of vertebrae groaning.

  “That’s the heart started,” noted Foaly. “The easy bit.”

  Butler flopped back into the pod, blood flowing from his most recent wound. The magical sparks knitted together, forming a vibrating lattice over the bodyguard’s torso. Butler hopped on the gurney like a bead in a rattle, as the magic reshaped his atoms. His pores vented mist as toxins were expelled from his system.

  The coating of ice dissolved instantly, causing clouds of steam and then rain as the water particles condensed on the metal ceiling. Cold packs popped like balloons, sending crystals ricocheting around the surgery. It was like being in the center of a multicolored storm.

  “You need to get in there now!” said Foaly in Holly’s ear.

  “What?”

  “Get in there. The magic is spreading up his spinal column. Hold his head still for the healing, or any damaged cells could be replicated. And once something’s been healed, we can’t undo it.”

  Great, thought Holly. Hold Butler still. No problem. She battled her way through the debris, cold-pack crystals popping against her visor. The human’s frame continued thrashing in the cryo pod, shrouded by a cloud of steam.

  Holly clamped a hand on either side of Butler’s head. The vibrations traveled the length of her arms and through her body.

  “Hold him, Holly. Hold him!”

  Holly leaned across the pod, placing the weight of her body on the bodyguard’s head. In all the confusion, she couldn’t tell if her efforts were having any effect whatsoever.

  “Here it comes!” said Foaly in her ear. “Brace yourself!”

  The magical lattice spread along Butler’s neck and across his face. Blue sparks targeted the eyes, traveling along the optic nerve, into the brain itself. Butler’s eyes flew open, rolling in their sockets. His mouth was reactivated too, spewing out long strings of words in various languages. None of which made any sense.

  “His brain is running tests,” said Foaly. “Just to check that everything’s working.”

  Each muscle and joint was tested to its limit; rolling, swiveling, and stretching. Hair follicles grew at an accelerated rate, covering Butler’s normally shaven dome with a thick growth of hair. Nails shot out of his fingers like tiger claws and a raggedy beard snaked from his chin.

  Holly could only hang on. She imagined that this was how it must feel to be a rodeo cowboy straddling a particularly bad-tempered bull.

  Eventually the sparks dissipated, spiraling into the air like the embers on a breeze. Butler calmed and settled, his body sinking into six inches of water and coolant. His breathing was slow and deep.

  “We did it,” said Holly, sliding off the pod onto her knees. “He’s alive.”

  “Don’t start celebrating just yet,” said Foaly. “There’s still a long way to go. He won’t regain consciousness for a couple of days at least, and even then who knows what shape his mind will be in. And of course, there’s the obvious problem.”

  Holly raised her visor. “What obvious problem?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Captain Short was almost afraid to look at whatever lay in the pod. Grotesque images crowded her imagination. What kind of misshapen mutant human had they created? The first thing she noticed was Butler’s chest. The bullet hole itself had completely disappeared, but the skin had darkened, with a red line amid the black. It looked like a capital I.

  “Kevlar,” explained Foaly. “Some of it must have replicated. Not enough to kill him, thankfully, but enough to slow down his breathing. Butler won’t be running any marathons with those fibers clinging to his ribs.”

  “What’s the red line?”

  “At a guess, I’d say dye. There must have been writing on the original bulletproof jacket.”

  Holly glanced around the surgery. Butler’s vest lay discarded in a corner. The letters FBI were printed in red across the chest. There was a small hole in the center of the I.

  “Ah, well,” said the centaur. “It’s a small price to pay for his life. He can pretend it’s a tattoo. They’re very popular among Mud Men these days.”

  Holly had been hoping the Kevlar-reinforced skin was the “obvious problem” Foaly had been referring to. But there was something else. The something else became immediately apparent when her gaze landed on the bodyguard’s face. Or more accurately, the hair sprouting from his face.

  “Oh, gods,” she breathed. “Artemis is not going to like this.”

  Artemis paced the yard while his bodyguard underwent magical surgery. Now that his plan was actually in progress, doubts began to chew at the edges of his mind like slugs on a leaf. Was this the right thing to do? What if Butler wasn’t himself? After all, his father had been undeniably different on the day he had finally come back to them. He would never forget that first conversation. . . .

  Excerpt from Artemis Fowl’s diary, disk 2 (encrypted)

  The doctors in Helsinki were determined that they would pump my father full of vitamin supplements. He was just as determined that they wouldn’t. And a determined Fowl usually gets his way.

  “I am perfectly fine,” he insisted.“Please allow me some time to reacquaint myself with my family.”

  The doctors withdrew, disarmed by his personality. I was surprised by this approach. Charm had never been my father’s weapon of choice. He had previously achieved his aims by bulldozing over anybody stupid enough to stand in his way.

  Father sat in the hospital room’s only armchair, his shortened leg resting on a footstool. My mother was perched on the armrest, resplendent in white Armani faux fur.

  Father caught me looking at his leg. “Don’t worry, Arty,” he said.“I’m being measured for a prosthesis tomorrow. Dr. Hermann Gruber is being flown in from Dortmund.”

  I had heard of Gruber. He worked with the German special Olympics squad. The best.

  “I’m going to ask for something sporty. Maybe with speed stripes.”

  A joke. That wasn’t like my father.

  Angeline ruffled her husband’s hair.

  “Stop teasing, darling. This is difficult for Arty, you know. He was only a baby when you left.”

  “Hardly a baby, Mother,” I said. “I was eleven. after all.”

  My father smiled at me fondly. Perhaps now would be an appropriate time for us to talk, before his good mood wore off to be replaced by the usual gruffness.

  “Father. Things have changed, since your disappearance. I have changed.”

  Father nodded solemnly.

  “Yes, you are right. We need to talk about the business.”

  Ah, yes. Back to business. This was the father I remembered.

  “I think you will find that the family bank accounts are healthy, and I trust you will approve of the stock portfolio. It has yielded an eighteen-percent return in the past financial year. Eighteen percent is quite exemplary in the current market. I haven’t failed you.”

  “I have failed you, son,” said Artemis senior, “if you think bank accounts and stocks are all that’s important. You must have learned that from me.”

  He pulled me close to him.

  “I haven’t been the perfect father, Arty, far from it. Too busy with the family business. I was always taught that it was my duty to carry on the Fowl empire. A criminal empire, as we both know. If any good has come out of my abduction, it’s that I have reassessed my priorities. I want a new life for us all.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. One of my most persistent memories was of Father repeatedly quoting the family motto, Aurum Est Potestas:“Go
ld Is Power.”And now, here he was, turning his back on Fowl principles. What had the magic done to him?

  “Gold isn’t all-important, Arty,” he continued. “Neither is power. We have everything we need right here. The three of us.”

  I was utterly surprised. But not unpleasantly so.

  “But, Father. You have always said . . . This isn’t you. You’re a new man.”

  Mother joined the conversation.“No, Arty. Not a new man. An old one. The one I fell in love with and married, before the Fowl empire took over. And now I have him back, we’re a family again.”

  I looked at my parents, how happy they were together. A family? Was it possible that the Fowls could be a normal family?

  Ice Age Cryogenics

  Artemis was yanked back to the present by a commotion from inside the Ice Age mobile unit. The mobile unit began to rock on its axles, blue light crackling from beneath the door.

  Artemis did not panic. He had seen healings before. Last year, when Holly had reattached her index finger, the magical fallout had shattered half a ton of ice. And that was for one little finger. Imagine the damage Butler’s system could do, repairing a critical injury.

  The pandemonium continued for several minutes, popping two of the van’s tires and completely wrecking the suspension. Luckily, the institute was locked up for the night, or Dr. Lane would certainly be adding automobile repairs to her bill.

  Eventually the magical storm subsided, and the vehicle settled like a roller-coaster car after the ride. Holly opened the rear door, leaning heavily against the frame. She was exhausted, drained. A sickly pallor glowed through her coffee-colored complexion.

  “Well?” demanded Artemis. “Is he alive?”

  Holly didn’t answer. A strenuous healing often resulted in nausea and fatigue. Captain Short took several deep breaths, resting on the rear bumper.

  “Is he alive?” repeated the youth.

  Holly nodded. “Alive. Yes, he’s alive. But . . .”

  “But what, Holly. Tell me!”

  Holly tugged off her helmet. It slipped from her fingers, rolling across the yard. “I’m sorry, Artemis. I did the best I could.”