species.
Saving a species would give me a certain satisfaction, and no child has ever won the prize before, not even the great Artemis Fowl.'
Something had been puzzling No.1. 'Aren't you a little young to be studying other species? And you're a girl too. That pony offer made by the magic voice box sounded pretty good.'
Minerva had obviously come across this attitude before. 'Times are changing, demon,' she snapped. 'Children are a lot smarter than they used to be. We're writing books, mastering computers, tearing apart scientific myths. Did you know that most scientists won't even acknowledge the existence of magic? Once you add magic into the energy equation, nearly all the current laws of physics are shown to be seriously flawed.'
'I see,' said No.1, not convincing anyone.
'I am exactly the right age for this project,' added Minerva. 'I am young enough to believe in magic and old enough to understand how it works.
When I present you in Stockholm, and we put forward our thesis on time travel and magic as elemental energy, it will be a historic moment. The world will have to take magic seriously, and make ready for the invasion!'
'There is no invasion,' protested No.1.
Minerva smiled as a kindergarten teacher would at a fibbing child. 'I know all about it. Once Abbot's warrior personality became dominant, he told us about the Battle of Taillte and how the demons would return and wage a terrible war with the Mud Men, as he called us. There was a lot of blood and hacking of limbs involved.'
No.1 nodded. That sounded like Abbot.
'That's what Abbot believed, but things have changed.'
'I explained that to him. I explained that he had been flitting through time and space for ten thousand years, and that we had come a long way since then. There are more of us than there used to be, and we didn't use crossbows any more.'
'You didn't? You don't?'
'You saw Mister Kong's gun. That's only a tiny example of the kind of weaponry we have. Even if your entire pride of demons arrived all together, armed to the teeth, it would take about ten minutes to have you all locked up.'
'Is that what you're going to do? Lock us up?'
'That was the plan, yes,' admitted Minerva. 'As soon as Abbot realized that the demons could never beat us, he changed his tactics. He voluntarily explained the mechanics of the time tunnel to me and in return I gave him books to read and old weapons to examine. After a few days' reading, he asked to be called Abbot, after General Leon Abbot in the book. I knew that once I presented Leon Abbot in Stockholm, it would be easy to get funding for an international task force. Whenever a demon popped up, we could tag him with silver and house him in an artificial demon community for study. Central Park Zoo was my preferred location.'
No.1 ran the word zoo through his new lexicon. 'Aren't zoos for animals?'
Minerva gazed at her feet. 'Yes. I am rethinking that, especially having met you. You seem quite civilized, not like that Abbot creature. He was an animal. When he arrived, we tended his wounds, nursed him back to health, and all he could do was try to eat us. We had no choice but to restrain him.'
'So, you're not going to lock us up in a zoo any more?'
'Actually, I don't have a choice. Judging by my calculations, the time tunnel is unravelling at both ends and deteriorating along the shaft.
Soon, any calculations will be unreliable and it will be impossible to predict where or when demons will materialize. I'm afraid, Number
One, that your pride doesn't have long left before it disappears altogether.'
No.1 was stunned. This was more information than anyone could absorb in one day. For some reason the demoness with the red markings flashed into his mind. 'Isn't there any way to help? We are intelligent beings, you know. Not animals.'
Minerva stood and paced, stretching one of her corkscrew curls.
'I have been giving this some thought. There's nothing that can be done without magic, and Abbot told me the warlocks all died in the transition.'
'It's true,' said No.1. He did not mention that he might be a warlock himself. Something told him that this was valuable information and it was not a good idea to reveal too much valuable information to a person who had tied you to a chair. He had said too much already.
'Maybe if Abbot had known about the time spell, he wouldn't have been so eager to get back to Hybras,' mused Minerva. 'Papa told him that there was a silver chip in his arm, and that very night he dug it out with his nails and disappeared. We have the whole thing on tape. I have wondered every day if he managed to make it home.'
'He made it,' said No.1. 'The time spell took him right back to the beginning. He never said anything about this place. Just turned up with the book and the crossbow, claiming to be our saviour. It was all lies.'
'Well then,' sighed Minerva, and she seemed genuinely sorry. 'I don't have a single idea about how to save the pride. Maybe your little friend in the next room can help when she wakes up.'
'What little friend?' asked No.1, puzzled.
'The one who knocked out Bobo, my brother. The little creature we captured trying to rescue you,' explained Minerva. 'Or, more accurately, trying to rescue an empty golf bag. She looks like a magical creature.
Maybe she can help.'
Who would want to rescue a golf bag? wondered No.1.
The door opened a crack, and Juan Soto's head appeared in the gap.
'Minerva?'
'Not now,' snapped Minerva, waving at the man to go away.
'There's a call for you.'
'I'm not available. Take a number.'
The security guard persisted; he stepped into the room, one hand cupped over the mouthpiece of a cordless phone.
'I think you might want to talk to this person. He says his name is Artemis Fowl.'
Minerva gave So to her full attention.
'I'll take it,' she said, reaching for the phone.
The LEP recon field helmet is an amazing piece of equipment. The Section 8 field helmet, on the other hand, is a miracle of modern science. To compare the two would be akin to comparing a flintlock to a laser-sighted sniper rifle.
Foaly had taken full advantage of his almost unlimited budget to indulge his every tech-head fantasy and stuff the helmet with every piece of diagnostic, surveillance, defence and just plain cool equipment he could cram in there.
The centaur was vocally proud of the entire package. But if forced to pick just one add-on to brag about, he would go for the bouncing bags every time.
Bouncing bags in themselves were not a recent addition. Even civilian helmets had gel bags in between their outer and inner shells, which provided a bit of extra buffering in case of a crash. But Foaly had replaced the helmet's rigid outer shell with a more yielding polymer and then swapped the electro-sensitive gel for tiny electro- sensitive beads.
The beads could be controlled with electronic pulses to expand, contract, roll or group, providing the helmet with a simple but highly effective propulsion system.
This little marvel can't fly but it can bounce wherever you want it to,
Foaly had said earlier, when Holly was signing out her equipment. Only commanders get the flying helmets. I wouldn't recommend them though, the engine's field has been known to straighten perms. Not that I'm saying you have a perm. Or need one for that matter.
While No.1 was being interrogated by Minerva, Foaly was flexing his fingers over the remote controls for Holly's Section 8 helmet. At the moment, the helmet was locked in a wire mesh strongbox at the rear of the security office.
Foaly liked to sing a little ditty while he worked. In this instance the song was the Riverbend classic: 'If It
