Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [6]
“You’re right of course, Mother. I’ve been meaning to do it for some time. Butler has a sister I believe would be perfect for the position. I think I’ve mentioned her. Juliet?”
Angeline frowned. “Juliet? Yes, the name does seem familiar. Well, anyone would be better than that silly girl we have now. When can she start?”
“Straight away. I’ll have Butler fetch her from the lodge.”
“You’re a good boy, Artemis. Now, give Mummy a hug.”
Artemis stepped into the shadowy folds of his mother’s robe. She smelled perfumed, like petals in water. But her arms were cold and weak.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered, and the sound sent goose bumps popping down Artemis’s neck. “I hear things. At night. They crawl along the pillows and into my ears.”
Artemis felt that lump in his throat again.
“Perhaps we should open the curtains, Mother.”
“No,” his mother sobbed, releasing him from her grasp. “No. Because then I could see them, too.”
“Mother, please.”
But it was no use. Angeline was gone. She crawled to the far corner of the bed, pulling the quilt under her chin.
“Send the new girl.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Send her with cucumber slices and water.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Angeline glared at him with crafty eyes. “And stop calling me Mother. I don’t know who you are, but you’re certainly not my little Arty.”
Artemis blinked back a few rebellious tears. “Of course. Sorry, Moth—Sorry.”
“Hmmm. Don’t come back here again, or I’ll have my husband take care of you. He’s a very important man, you know.”
“Very well, Mrs. Fowl. This is the last you’ll see of me.”
“It had better be.” Angeline froze suddenly. “Do you hear them?”
Artemis shook his head. “No. I don’t hear any—”
“They’re coming for me. They’re everywhere.”
Angeline dived for cover beneath the bedclothes. Artemis could still hear her terrified sobs as he descended the marble staircase.
The Book was proving far more stubborn than Artemis had anticipated. It seemed to be almost actively resisting him. No matter which program he ran it through, the computer came up blank.
Artemis hard-copied every page, tacking them to the walls of his study. Sometimes it helped to have things on paper. The script was like nothing he’d seen before, and yet it was strangely familiar. Obviously a mixture of symbolic and character-based language, the text meandered around the page in no apparent order.
What the program needed was some frame of reference, some central point on which to build. He separated all the characters and ran comparisons with English, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, and with Cyrillic texts, even with Ogham. Nothing.
Moody with frustration, Artemis sent Juliet scurrying when she interrupted with sandwiches, and moved on to symbols. The most frequently recurring pictogram was a small male figure. Male, he presumed, though with the limited knowledge of the fairy anatomy he supposed it could be female. A thought struck him. Artemis opened the ancient languages file on his Power Translator and selected Egyptian.
At last. A hit. The male symbol was remarkably similar to the Anubis god representation on Tutankhamen’s inner-chamber hieroglyphics. This was consistent with his other findings. The first written human stories were about fairies, suggesting that their civilization predated man’s own. It would seem that the Egyptians had simply adapted an existing scripture to suit their needs.
There were other resemblances. But the characters were just dissimilar enough to slip through the computer’s net. This would have to be done manually. Each Gnommish figure had to be enlarged, printed, and then compared with the hieroglyphs.
Artemis felt the excitement of success thumping inside his rib cage. Almost every fairy pictogram or letter had an Egyptian counterpart. Most were universal, such as the sun or birds. But some seemed exclusively supernatural and had to be tailored to fit. The Anubis figure, for example, would make no sense as a dog god, so Artemis altered it to read king of the fairies.
By midnight, Artemis had