The Last Guardian

by Eoin Colfer

  Foaly beeped open the front loading doors and backed up to the cab, waiting for the extendable harness to buzz out and cradle his equine torso. The harness cinched around him, beeping all the while, then lifted the centaur backward into the cab. Once the beetle-wing doors had folded down, the van’s sensors detected Foaly’s proximity and started its own engines. It took a few seconds to mount up and get going in this vehicle, but it would take a lot longer to try and climb into the automobile with six limbs and a tail, which some equinologists considered a seventh limb, or at least an appendage.

  Foaly pulled a steering wheel out of its slot on the dash and put his hoof to the metal, screaming out of his parking spot.

  “Home!” Foaly shouted into the nav system bot suspended on a gel string before his face. He had, in a moment of vanity, shaped the bot’s face in his own image.

  “The usual route, handsome?” said the system bot, winking fondly at Foaly.

  “Negative,” replied Foaly. “Ignore usual speed and safety parameters. Just get us there as quickly as possible. All normal behavioral restraints are lifted on my authority.”

  If the bot had had any hands, it would have rubbed them. “I have been waiting a long time to hear that,” it said, and took over control of the vehicle.

  Something was happening to the beautifully inlaid little box in Caballine’s hand. It seemed as though a tiny thundercloud was roiling inside there. The thing vibrated like a beehive, but there was absolutely no sound. But there was something, a feeling that set her teeth on edge and made her eyes water, as though invisible nails were being dragged down a mental blackboard.

  Crazy, I know, but that’s how it feels.

  She flung the box away from her, but not before the tiny thundercloud flowed from the container and coated her hand. The box rolled beneath the coffee table—a petrified giant flat toadstool that Holly had once called so stereotypical it makes me want to scream—and it lay there emitting whatever it was that had set Caballine’s nerves on edge.

  “What is it, darling?” she turned to ask the little ARClight, but it lay dead on the floor, a tiny wisp of smoke curling from its head.

  The box did that, she guessed. Whatever this thing was, it hadn’t come from Foaly, because it felt somehow wrong. And now the wrongness was on her hand. Caballine was not in any way a skittish centaur, but she felt a premonition of danger that almost buckled her legs.

  Something bad is about to happen. Even worse than all the bad things that have happened today.

  Many fairies would have fallen to pieces under the weight of such ominous circumstances, but if the universe expected such a reaction from Caballine Wanderford Paddox Foaly, then the universe was about to be surprised, for one of the characteristics that had drawn Foaly to his bride-to-be was her fighting spirit. And she did not sustain this spirit with the power of positive thinking alone. Caballine had achieved the level of blue sash in the ancient centaurian martial art of Nine Sticks, which included the head and tail as weapons. She often worked out in the LEP gymnasium with Holly Short, and indeed had once accidentally kicked Holly through a rice-paper wall when the image of an old boyfriend had suddenly popped into her head.

  Caballine trotted to a locked tall cupboard in the bedroom and instructed it to open. Inside was her blue sash, which she quickly draped across her chest. The sash would be of no practical use if attackers were on the way. What would help was the long whippy bamboo pole next to it, which whistled as it cut the air and could, in the right hands, skin the hide from a troll’s back.

  The texture of the pole against her palm soothed Caballine, to the point where she felt a little foolish standing there in full Nine Sticks regalia.

  Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m just overreacting.

  Then the front door exploded.

  Foaly’s navigation system drove like a maniac, cackling with a glee that Foaly could not remember programming into it. And even though Foaly was consumed with nightmarish visions of Caballine in the clutches of fire-breathing goblins, he could not help but take notice of the devastation that streaked by the window—clouds of thick smoke, and flares of orange and blue flame blurred by the van’s manic speed. LEP officers picked through rubble and wreckage looking for survivors, and smoke pillars rose from a dozen familiar landmarks.

  “Take it easy,” he said, slapping the nav-bot. “I won’t be much use to Caballine if I arrive dead.”

  “Chill, old dude,” said the tiny bot-head. “It’s not like you’re going to be much use anyway. Caballine knows Nine Sticks. What are you going to do? Throw a keyboard?”

  Old dude? thought Foaly, wishing now that he had never given the bot an experimental personality chip, wishing even more that the chip did not have his own personality. But the bot was right. What was he going to do? It would be tragic indeed if Caballine were killed trying to save him. Suddenly Foaly felt like an aquaphobic lifeguard. Was he bringing anything of use to this situation?

  The nav-bot seemed to read his mind, which was impossible; but Foaly resolved to patent it just in case he had accidentally invented a telepathic robot.

  “Play to your strengths, dude,” it said.

  Of course, thought Foaly. My strengths. What are my strengths? And where are they?

  They were, of course, in the back of the van, where he stored a thousand half-finished and quasi-legal experiments and replacement parts. When Foaly thought about it, he realized that there were things in his truck capable of blowing a hole in the time stream if they ever bumped together, so he had decided long ago not to think about it, as the alternative was to clean out his van.

  “Keep driving,” he instructed the nav-bot, wriggling out of his harness and backing across the small bridge that linked the cab to the rear carriage. “I need to look in the back.”

  “Mind your head, dude,” said the bot gleefully, a second before hurtling over a humpbacked bridge outside of a pixie dental care facility built in the shape of a giant molar.

  That personality chip must be corrupted, thought Foaly. I would never be so reckless, and I would absolutely never call anyone “dude.”

  When the front door exploded, Caballine’s reaction was fury. Firstly because the house’s front door was antique rosewood and had been responsibly sourced from Brazil, and secondly because the door had been open and only a moron would feel the need to blow up something that was already ajar. Now the door would have to be reconstituted, and it would never be the same, even if they could find all the splinters.

  Caballine stormed into the lobby to find a crazed goblin slithering into the house on all fours, smoke leaking from its flat nostrils, its lizardlike head thrashing from side to side as though there were a hornet in its skull.

  “How dare you!” said Caballine, dealing the lizard-like creature a blow to the side of its head that literally knocked the goblin out of its skin, which it had been on the point of shedding.

  Well, that was upsetting, she thought, believing the assault to be over, when a second goblin appeared in the blackened doorway, head weaving in the same disconcerting manner as the first. Two more began pawing at the window, and something began scrabbling inside the garbage disposal.

  Don’t tell me. Another goblin.

  Caballine turned her back on the goblin in the doorway and dealt him a double-barreled kick with her hind legs that knocked a puff of smoke from his open mouth and sent him flying backward over the boundary wall as though yanked by a bungee cord. She simultaneously punctured holes in the window with two lightning jabs of her bamboo, dislodging the goblins from a windowsill that had just been painted. Through the cracked pane she saw dozens of goblins converging on the property and felt something close to real panic.

  I hope Foaly doesn’t come home, she thought, bending her knees in a fighter’s stance. I don’t think I can rescue us both.

  Foaly rummaged around the van, looking for something, anything, that could save his beloved.

  Even if I could call for help, he thought, everybody
is up to their necks in one disaster or other. It’s up to me.

  The van was a jumble of clutter, the shelves piled high with robot casings, specimen jars, incubators, power sources, and bionic body parts.

  But no weapons. Not one single gun.

  He found a jar of bio-hybrid eyes, which glared at him, and a specimen jar full of some kind of liquid specimen that he could not remember collecting.

  “Any luck?” asked the nav-bot from a gel speaker adhered to a wall panel.

  “Not yet,” said Foaly. “How long till we get there?”

  “Two minutes,” replied the bot.

  “Can’t you shave a minute off that time?”

  “I could, if I run over a few pedestrians.”

  Foaly considered it. “No. Better not. Wasn’t there a plasma cannon back here somewhere?”

  “No. You donated that to the orphanage.”

  Foaly did not waste time wondering why he would have donated a plasma cannon to an orphanage but instead kept digging through the junk in the van.

  If I had an hour I could assemble something, but two minutes?

  Fiber optics. Inside-outers. Voodoo mannequins. Cameras.

  Nothing useful.

  At the very back of the van Foaly found an old obsolete lithium-ion magic battery that he should have drained years ago. He patted the large cylinder fondly.

  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.”

  Fowl Manor

  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.”