Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl. The Opal Deception

Foaly ran the tape through a few filters without result. The strange blurred section refused to be sharpened, cloned or shifted. That in itself was unusual. If the blurred spot was just computer glitchery, Foaly should have been able to do something about it. But the indistinct patch stood its ground, repelling everything Foaly threw at it.

You may have the high-tech ground covered, thought the centaur. But what about good old low-tech?

Foaly zoomed the footage on to moments before the explosion. The blurred patch had transferred itself to Julius’s chest, and indeed at times the commander appeared to be looking at it. Was there an explosive device under there? If so, then it must have been remotely detonated. The jammer signal was probably sent from the same remote. The detonation command would override all other signals, including the jammer. This meant that for perhaps a thousandth of a second before detonation, whatever was on Julius’s chest would become visible. Not long enough for the fairy eye to capture, but a camera would see it just fine.

Foaly fast forwarded to the explosion and then began to work his way backwards, frame by frame. It was agonizing, watching his friend being reassembled by the reversed film. The centaur tried to ignore it, concentrating on the tape. The flames shrank from orange plumes to white shards, eventually containing themselves inside an orange mini-sun. Then, for a single frame, something appeared. Foaly flicked past it, then returned.

There! On Julius’s chest, right where the blur used to be. A device of some kind.

Foaly’s fingers jabbed the enlarge tool. A thirty-centimetre-square metal panel was secured to Julius’s chest with octo-bonds. It had been picked up by the camera for a single frame. Less than one-thousandth of a second, which was why it had been missed by the investigators. On the face of the panel was a plasma screen. Someone had been communicating with the commander before he died. That someone had not wanted to be overheard, hence the audio jammer. Unfortunately, the screen was now blank, as the detonation signal that disrupted the jammer would also have disrupted the video.

I know who it is, thought Foaly. It’s Opal Koboi, backjrom limbo. But he needed proof. The centaur’s word was worth about as much to Ark Sool as a dwarf’s denial that he had passed wind.

Foaly glared at the live feed from the Argon Clinic. There she was. Opal Koboi, still deep in her coma. Apparently.

How did you do it? How could you swap places with another fairy?

Plastic surgery wouldn’t do it. Surgery couldn’t change DNA. Foaly opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a piece of equipment that resembled two miniature kitchen plungers.

There was only one way to find out what was going on here. He would have to ask Opal directly.

When Foaly arrived at the clinic, Doctor Argon was reluctant to allow him into Opal’s room.

‘Miss Koboi is in a deep state of catatonia,’ said the gnome peevishly. ‘Who knows what effect your devices will have on her psyche? It’s difficult, well-nigh impossible, to explain to a lay fairy what damage intrusive stimuli may have on the recovering mind.’

Foaly whinnied. ‘You had no trouble letting the TV networks in. I suppose they pay better than the LEP. I do hope you are not beginning to view Opal as your personal possession, Doctor. She is a state prisoner, and I can have her moved to a state facility any time I like.’

‘Maybe just five minutes,’ said Jerbal Argon, tapping in the door’s security code.

Foaly clopped past him, plonking his briefcase on the table. Opal swung gently in the draught from the doorway. And it did seem to be Opal. Even this close, with every feature in focus, Foaly could 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 at every step. ‘I shouldn’t be doing physical labour,’ 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 backwards. ‘Don’t worry, Argon. It’s just a Retimager. I’m not going in any further than the eyeballs.’

He held the pixie’s eyes open, one at a time, sealing the plunger-like cups around the sockets. ‘Every image is recorded on the retinas. This leaves a trail of micro-scratches 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, endeavouring 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 per cent 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 to the floor in a limp heap. The sudden evaporation of his dreams of fame and fortune were too much to handle all at once.

Foaly stepped over him and then galloped all the way to Police Plaza.

E7, SOUTHERN ITALY

Opal Koboi was having a hard time being patient. She had used up every last drop of her patience in the Argon Clinic. And now she wanted things to happen on her command. Unfortunately, a hundred million tonnes of haematite will only sink through the Earth at five metres per second and there isn’t a lot anybody can do about it.

Opal decided to pass the time by watching Holly Short die. That cretinous captain. Who did she think she was, with her crew cut and cute bow lips? Opal glanced at herself in a reflective surface. Now there was real beauty. There was a face that deserved its own currency, and it was quite possible that she would soon have it.

‘Mervall,’ she snapped. ‘Bring me the Eleven Wonders disk. I need something to cheer me up.’

‘Right away, Miss Koboi,’ said Merv. ‘Would you like me to finish preparing the meal first, or bring you the disk directly?’

Opal rolled her eyes at her reflection. ‘What did I just say?’

‘You said to bring you the disk.’

‘So what do you think you should do, my dearest Mervall?’

‘I think I should bring you the disk,’ said Merv.

‘Genius, Mervall. Pure genius.’

Merv left the shuttle’s kitchenette, ejecting a disk from the recorder. The computer would have the film on its hard drive, but Miss Koboi liked to have her personal favourites on disk so she could be cheered up, wherever she happened to be.

Highlights from the past included her father’s nervous breakdown, the attack on Police

Plaza and Foaly bawling his eyes out in the LEP operations booth.

Merv handed the disk to Opal.

‘And?’ said the tiny pixie.

Merv was stumped for a moment, then he remembered. One of Opal’s new commandments was that the Brill brothers should bow when they approached their leader. He swallowed his pride and bowed low from the waist.

‘Better. Now, weren’t you supposed to be preparing dinner?’

Merv retreated, still bowing. There had been a lot of pride-swallowing going on around here in the last few hours. Opal was unhappy with the level of service and respect provided by the Brill brothers, and so she had drawn up a list of rules. These directives included the aforementioned bowing, never looking Opal in the eyes, going outside the shuttle to pass wind and not thinking too loudly within three metres of their employer.

‘Because I know what you are thinking,’ Opal had said in a low, tremulous voice. ‘I can see your thoughts swirling around your head. Right now, you’re marvelling at how beautiful I am.’

‘Uncanny,’ gasped Merv, while traitorously wondering if there was a cuckoo flitting about his head at that very moment. Opal was going seriously off the rails with all this changing her species and world domination. He and Scant would have deserted her by now if she hadn’t promised that they could have Barbados when she was queen of the Earth. That and the fact that, if they deserted her now, Opal would add the Brill brothers to her vengeance list.

Merv retreated to the kitchen and continued with his efforts to prepare Miss

Koboi’s food without actually touching it. Another new rule. Meanwhile, Scant was in the cargo bay, checking the detonator relays on the last two shaped charges. One for the job, and one back-up. The charges were about the size of melons but they would make a much bigger mess if they exploded. He checked that the magnetic relay pods were secure on the casings. The relays were standard mining sparker units that would accept the signal from the remote detonator and send a neutron charge into the bellies of the charges.

Scant winked at his brother through the kitchen doorway.

Merv pursed his lips in silent imitation of a cuckoo. Scant nodded wearily. They were both getting tired of Opal’s outrageous behaviour. Only the prospect of drinking pina coladas on the beach in Barbados kept them going.