Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [7]
A normal child would have abandoned the task long since. The average adult would probably have been reduced to slapping the keyboard. But not Artemis. This book was testing him, and he would not allow it to win.
The letters were right, he was certain of it. It was just the order that was wrong. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Artemis glared at the pages again. Each segment was bordered by a solid line. This could represent paragraphs or chapters, but they were not meant to be read in the usual left to right, top to bottom fashion.
Artemis experimented. He tried the Arabic right to left and the Chinese columns. Nothing worked. Then he noticed that each page had one thing in common—a central section. The other pictograms were arranged around this pivotal area. So, a central starting point, perhaps. But where to go from there? Artemis scanned the pages for some other common factor. After several minutes he found it. There was on each page a tiny spearhead in the corner of one section. Could this be an arrow? A direction?
Go this way? So the theory would be, start in the middle then follow the arrow. Reading in spirals.
The computer program wasn’t built to handle something like this, so Artemis had to improvise. With a craft knife and ruler, he dissected the first page of the Book and reassembled it in the traditional Western languages order—left to right, parallel rows. Then he rescanned the page and fed it through the modified Egyptian translator.
The computer hummed and whirred, converting all the information to binary. Several times it stopped to ask for confirmation of a character or symbol. This happened less and less as the machine learned the new language. Eventually two words flashed on the screen: File converted.
Fingers shaking from exhaustion and excitement, Artemis clicked Print. A single page scrolled from the LaserWriter. It was in English now. Yes, there were mistakes, some fine-tuning needed, but it was perfectly legible, and, more important, perfectly understandable.
Fully aware that he was probably the first human in several thousand years to decode the magical words, Artemis switched on his desk light and began to read.
THE BOOKE OF THE PEOPLE. BEING INSTRUCTIONS TO OUR MAGICKS AND LIFE RULES.
Carry me always, carry me well. I am thy teacher of herb and spell. I am thy link to power arcane. Forget me and thy magick shall wane.
Ten times ten commandments there be. They will answer every mystery. Cures, curses, alchemy. These secrets shall be thine, through me.
But, Fairy, remember this above all. I am not for those in mud that crawl. And forever doomed shall be the one, Who betrays my secrets one by one.
Artemis could hear the blood pumping in his ears. He had them. They would be as ants beneath his feet. Their every secret would be laid bare by technology. Suddenly the exhaustion claimed him and he sank back in his chair. There was so much yet to complete. Forty-three pages to be translated for a start.
He pressed the intercom button that linked him to speakers all over the house. “Butler. Get Juliet and come up here. There are some jigsaws I need you to assemble.”
Perhaps a little family history would be useful at this point.
The Fowls were, indeed, legendary criminals. For generations they had skirmished on the wrong side of the law, hoarding enough funds to become legitimate. Of course, once they were legitimate they found it not to their liking, and returned almost immediately to crime.
It was Artemis the First, our subject’s father, who had thrown the family fortune into jeopardy. With the breakup of communist Russia, Artemis Senior had decided to invest a huge chunk of the Fowl fortune in establishing new shipping lines to the vast continent. New consumers, he reasoned, would need new consumer goods. The Russian Mafia did not take too kindly to a Westerner muscling in on their market, and so decided to