Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [85]
“Maybe just five minutes,” said Jerbal Argon, tapping in the door’s security code.
Foaly clopped past him and plonked his briefcase on the table. Opal swung gently in the draft from the doorway. And it did seem to be Opal. Even this close, with every feature in focus, Foaly would have sworn that this was his old adversary. The same Opal who had competed with him for every prize at college. The same Opal who had very nearly succeeded in having him blamed for the goblin uprising.
“Get her down from there,” he ordered.
Argon positioned a bunk below the harness, complaining with every step. “I shouldn’t be doing physical labor,” he moaned. “It’s my hip. No one knows the pain I’m in. No one. The warlocks can’t do a thing for me.”
“Don’t you have staff to do this sort of thing?”
“Normally, yes,” said Argon, lowering the harness. “But my janitors are on leave. Both at the same time. Normally I wouldn’t allow it, but good pixie workers are hard to find.”
Foaly’s ears pricked up. “Pixies? Your janitors are pixies?”
“Yes. We’re quite proud of them around here, minor celebrities, you know. The pixie twins. And of course they have the highest respect for me.”
Foaly’s hands shook as he unpacked his equipment. It all seemed to be coming together. First Chix, then the strange device on Julius’s chest, now pixie janitors who were on leave. He just needed one more piece of the puzzle.
“What is it you have there?” asked Argon anxiously. “Nothing that could cause any damage.”
Foaly tilted the unconscious pixie’s head backward. “Don’t worry, Argon. It’s just a Retimager. I’m not going in any farther than the eyeballs.”
He held open the pixie’s eyes one at a time, sealing the plunger like cups around the sockets. “Every image is recorded on the retinas. This leaves a trail of microscratches that can be enhanced and read.”
“I know what a Retimager is,” snapped Argon. “I do read science journals occasionally, you know. So you can tell what the last thing Opal saw was. What good will that do?”
Foaly connected the eyepieces to a wall computer. “We shall see,” he said, endeavoring to sound cryptic rather than desperate.
He opened the Retimager’s program on the plasma screen, and two dark images appeared.
“Left and right eyes,” explained Foaly, toggling a key until the two images overlapped. The image was obviously a head from a side angle, but it was too dark to identify.
“Ooh, such brilliance,” gushed Argon sarcastically. “Shall I call the networks? Or should I just faint in awe?”
Foaly ignored him. “Lighten and enhance,” he said to the computer.
A computer-generated paintbrush swabbed the screen, leaving a brighter and sharper picture behind it.
“It’s a pixie,” muttered Foaly. “But still not enough detail.” He scratched his chin. “Computer, match this picture with patient Koboi, Opal.”
A picture of Opal flashed up on a separate window. It resized itself and revolved until the new picture was at the same angle as the original. Red arrows flashed between the pictures, connecting identical points. After a few moments the space between the two pictures was completely blitzed with red lines.
“Are these two pictures of the same person?” asked Foaly.
“Affirmative,” said the computer. “Though there is a point zero five percent possibility of error.”
Foaly jabbed the PRINT button. “I’ll take those odds.”
Argon stepped closer to the screen, as though in a daze. His face was pale, and growing paler as he realized the implications of the picture.
“She saw herself from the side,” he whispered. “That means ...”
“There were two Opal Kobois,” completed Foaly. “The real one, that you let escape. And this shell here, which can only be ...”
“A clone.”
“Precisely,” said Foaly, plucking the hard copy from the printer. “She had herself cloned, and then your janitors waltzed her right out of here under your nose.”
“Oh dear.”
“Oh dear hardly covers it. Maybe now would be a good time to call the networks, or faint in awe.”
Argon took the second option, collapsing