“Oh, I don’t know,” said Foaly. “Human loggers seem to be getting through the rain forests a lot quicker than that.”
“Those on the fringes of the law move faster than those bound by it, which is where I come in.”
Foaly crossed his front legs, which is not easy for a centaur in a chair. “Do tell. I am all ears.”
“I shall,” said Artemis. “And I would be grateful if you would stifle the usual expressions of horror and disbelief until I conclude. Your cries of astonishment every time I present an idea are most tiresome and they make it difficult to keep track of the word count.”
“Oh my gods!” exclaimed Foaly. “Unbelievable.”
Raine Vinyáya threw the centaur a warning look. “Stop acting the bull troll, Foaly. I’ve come a long way for this and my ears are very cold.”
“Should I pinch one of the centaur’s nerve clusters to keep him quiet?” asked Holly with barely a grin. “I have studied centaur incapacitation, as well as human, if we happen to need it. I could knock out everybody here with one finger or a sturdy pencil.”
Foaly was eighty percent sure that Holly was bluffing, but all the same he covered the ganglia over his ears with cupped fingers.
“Very well. I’ll keep quiet.”
“Good. Proceed, Artemis.”
“Thank you. But keep your sturdy pencil at the ready, Captain Short. I have a feeling that there could be some disbelief on the way.”
Holly patted her pocket and winked. “2B hard graphite, nothing better for a quick organ rupture.”
Holly was joking, but her heart wasn’t in it. Artemis felt that her comments were camouflage for whatever anxiety she was feeling. He rubbed his brow with a thumb and forefinger, using the gesture as cover to sneak a peek at his friend. Holly’s own brow was drawn in and her eyes narrow with worry.
She knows, realized Artemis, but what Holly knew, he could not say exactly. She knows that something is different, that the even numbers have turned against me. Two twos are four fairies spitting bad luck on my plans.
Then Artemis reviewed this last sentence, and for a second its lunacy was clear to him and he felt a fat coiled snake of panic heavy in his stomach.
Could I have a brain tumor? he wondered. That would explain the obsessions, the hallucinations, and the paranoia. Or is it simply obsessive-compulsive disorder? The great Artemis Fowl felled by a common ailment.
Artemis spared a moment to try an old hypnotherapist’s trick.
Picture yourself in a good place. Somewhere you were happy and safe.
Happy and safe? It had been a while.
Artemis allowed his mind to fly, and he found himself sitting on a small stool in his grandfather’s workshop. His grandfather looked a little sneakier than Artemis remembered, and he winked at his five-year-old grandson and said, Do you know how many legs are on that stool, Arty? Three. Only three, and that’s not a good number for you. Not at all. Three is nearly as bad as four, and we all know what four sounds like in Chinese, don’t we?
Artemis shuddered. This sickness was even corrupting his memories. He pressed the forefinger and thumb of his left hand together until the pads turned white. A trigger he’d taught himself to elicit calm when the number panic grew too strong. But the trigger was working less and less recently, or in this case not at all.
I am losing my composure, he thought with quiet desperation. This disease is winning.
Foaly cleared his throat, puncturing Artemis’s dream bubble. “Hello? Mud Boy? Important people waiting, get a move on.”
And from Holly. “Are you okay, Artemis? Do you need to take a break?”
Artemis almost laughed. Take a break during a presentation? If I did that, I might as well go and stand beside someone wearing an i’m with crazy T-shirt.
“No. I’m fine. This is a big project, the biggest. I want to be sure that my presentation is perfect.”
Foaly leaned forward until his already unsteady chair teetered dangerously. “You don’t look fine, Mud Boy. You look . . .” The centaur sucked his bottom lip, searching for the right word. “Beaten. Artemis, you look beaten.”
Which was the best thing he could have possibly said.
Artemis drew himself up. “I think, Foaly, that perhaps you do not read human expressions well. Perhaps our faces are too short. I am not beaten by any manner or means. I am considering my every word.”
“Maybe you should consider a little faster,” advised Holly gently. “We are quite exposed here.”
Artemis closed his eyes, collecting himself.
Vinyáya drummed the table with her fingers. “No more delays, human. I am beginning to suspect that you have involved us in one of your notorious plans.”
“No. This is a genuine proposal. Please, hear me out.”
“I’m trying to. I want to. I came a long way for that exact purpose, but all you do is show off with your suitcase.”
Artemis raised his hands to shoulder level, the movement activating his V-gloves, and tapped the glacier.
“What we need to do is cover a significant area of the world’s glaciers with a reflective coating to slow down the melt. The coating would have to be thicker around the edges, where the ice is thawing more rapidly. Also it would be nice if we could plug the larger sinkholes.”
“A lot of things would be nice in a perfect world,” said Foaly, once again making smithereens of his promise to keep quiet. “Don’t you think your people would get a tad upset if little creatures popped out of the ground in spaceships and started carpeting Santa’s grotto with reflective foil??
?
“They . . . we . . . would. And that is why this operation has to be carried out in secret.”
“Secretly coat the world’s glaciers? You should have said.”
“I just did say, and I thought we agreed that you would hold your peace. This constant haranguing is tiresome.”
Holly winked at Foaly, twirling a pencil between her fingers.
“The problem with coating the icebergs has always been how to deploy the reflective blanket,” continued Artemis. “It would seem that the only way to do it would be to roll the stuff out like carpet, either manually or from the rear of some kind of customized snow crawlers.”
“Which is hardly a stealth operation,” said Foaly.
“Exactly. But what if there were another way to lay down a reflective covering, a seemingly natural way.”
“Work with nature?”
“Yes, Foaly. Nature is our model; it should always be.”
The room seemed to be heating up as Artemis drew closer to his big reveal.
“Human scientists have been struggling to make their reflective foil thin enough to work with, yet strong enough to withstand the elements.”
“Stupid.”
“Misguided, centaur. Not stupid, surely. Your own files—”
“I considered the foil idea briefly. And how did you see my files?”
This was not a real question. Foaly had long since resigned himself to the fact that Artemis Fowl was at least as talented a hacker as he himself was.
“The basic idea is sound. Fabricate a reflective polymer.”
Foaly chewed his knuckles. “Nature. Use nature.”
“What is the most natural thing up here?” said Artemis, giving a little hint.
“Ice,” said Holly. “Ice and . . .”
“Snow,” whispered the centaur almost reverentially. “Of course. D’Arvit, why didn’t I . . . Snow, isn’t it?”
Artemis raised his V-gloved hands, and holographic snow rained upon them.
“Snow,” he said, the blizzard swirling around him. “No one would be surprised by snow.”
Foaly was on his feet. “Magnify,” he ordered. “Magnify and enhance.”
Artemis tapped a holographic flake, freezing it in midair. With a couple of pinches he enlarged the ersatz flake until its irregularity became clear. It was irregularly regular, a perfect circle.