Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [41]
As soon as Juliet’s footsteps had faded, Holly began smashing the bed into the concrete. That was the thing about fairy bonds. The instructions had to be given eye to eye, and they had to be very precise. Just saying there was no need to do a thing wasn’t specifically forbidding an elf to do it. And another thing, Holly had no intention of escaping from the house. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t mean to get out of her cell.
Artemis had added yet another monitor to the bank. This one was linked to a camera in Angeline Fowl’s attic room. He spared a moment to check on his mother. Sometimes it bothered him having a camera in her room; it seemed almost like spying. But it was for her own good. There was always the danger that she could hurt herself. At the moment she was sleeping peacefully, having swallowed the sleeping pill that Juliet had left on her tray. All part of the plan. A vital part.
Butler entered the control room. He was clutching a fistful of fairy hardware and rubbing his neck.
“Tricky little blighters.”
Artemis looked up from the monitor bank.
“Any problems?”
“Nothing major. These little batons pack quite a punch, though. How’s our prisoner?”
“Fine. Juliet is getting her something to eat. I’m afraid Captain Short is going a bit stir-crazy.”
On the screen, Holly was smashing her cot into the concrete.
“It’s understandable,” noted the manservant. “Imagine her frustration. It’s not as if she can tunnel her way out.”
Artemis smiled.“No. The entire estate is built on a bed of limestone. Not even a dwarf could tunnel his way out of here. Or in.”
Wrong, as it happened. Dead wrong. A landmark moment for Artemis Fowl.
The LEP had procedures for emergencies like this one. Admittedly these did not include the Retrieval Squad getting hammered by a lone enemy. Still, that just made the next step all the more urgent, especially with the faintest of orange tinges creeping into the sky.
“Are we good to go?” roared Root into his mike, as though it wasn’t whisper-sensitive.
Good to go, thought Foaly, busy wiring the last dish on a watchtower. These military types and their catchphrases. Good to go, Lock and load, I don’t know but I’ve been told. So insecure.
Aloud he said, “No need to shout, Commander. These headsets could pick up a spider scratching in Madagascar.”
“And is there a spider scratching in Madagascar?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. They can’t really—”
“Well, stop changing the subject, Foaly, and answer the question!”
The centaur scowled. The commander took everything so literally. He plugged the dish’s modem lead into his laptop.
“Okay. We’re . . . good to go.”
“About time, too. Right, flip the switch.”
For the third time in as many moments, Foaly gritted his horsey teeth. He was indeed the stereotypical unappreciated genius. Flick the switch, if you don’t mind. Root didn’t have the cranial capacity to appreciate what he was trying to do here.
Stopping time wasn’t just a matter of pressing the on button, there was a series of delicate procedures that had to be performed with utmost precision. Otherwise the stop zone could end up as just so much ash and radioactive slop.
While it was true that fairies had been stopping time for millennia, these days, with satellite communication and the Internet, humans were liable to notice if a zone just dropped out of time for a couple of hours. There was an age when you could throw a blanket stoppage over a whole country and the Mud People would simply think the gods were angry. But not anymore. Nowadays the humans had instruments for measuring anything, so if there was any time-stopping to be done, it had better be fine-tuned and precise.
In the old days, five elfin warlocks would form a pentagram around the target and spread a magic shield over it, temporarily stopping time inside the enchanted enclosure.
This