by Eoin Colfer
“See what I mean?” said Artemis weakly. The centaur was going to blow it. Spiro’s suspicions must not be aroused at this stage.
Spiro glared at the Cube as though it were an underling.
“Are you gonna give me attitude, Mister?”
The Cube did not reply.
“You have to address it by name,” explained Artemis. “Otherwise it would answer every question within hearing distance of its sensors.”
“And what is its name?”
Juliet often used the expression duh. Artemis never used such colloquialisms himself, but it would have been apt at this particular moment.
“Its name is Cube.”
“Okay, Cube. Are you going to give me attitude?”
“I will give you whatever it is in my processor’s capacity to give.”
Spiro rubbed his palms with childish glee, jewelry flashing like ripples in a sunset sea.
“Okay, let’s try this baby out. Cube, can you tell me, are there any satellites monitoring the building?”
Foaly was silent for a moment. Artemis could imagine him calling up his sat-track information on a screen. “Just one at the moment, though judging from the ion trails, this building has been hit with more rays than the Millennium Falcon.”
Spiro shot Artemis a glance.
“His personality chip is faulty,” explained the boy. “That’s why I discontinued him—it. We can fix that at any time.”
Spiro nodded. He didn’t want his very own technological genie growing the personality of a gorilla.
“What about that group, the LEP, Cube?” he asked. “They were monitoring me in London. Are they watching?”
“The LEP? That’s a Lebanese satellite TV network,” said Foaly, following Artemis’s instructions. “Game shows mostly. Their footprint doesn’t reach this far.”
“Okay, forget about them, Cube. I need to know that satellite’s serial number.”
Foaly consulted his screen.
“Ah&Let me see. U.S., registered to the Federal Government. Number ST1147W.”
Spiro clenched both fists. “Yes! Correct. I happen to already have that information myself. Cube, you have passed my test.”
The billionaire danced around the laboratory, reduced to childish displays by his greed.
“I’m telling you, Arty, this has taken years off me! I feel like putting on a tuxedo and going to the prom.”
“Indeed.”
“I don’t know where to start. Should I make my own money? Or should I rip off somebody else’s?”
Artemis forced a smile. “The world is your oyster.”
Spiro patted the Cube gently. “Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. And I’m going to take every pearl it has to offer.”
Pex and Chips arrived at the vault door, guns drawn.
“Mr. Spiro!” stammered Pex. “Is this some kind of drill?”
Spiro laughed. “Oh, look. Here come the cavalry. An eternity too late. No, this is not a drill. And I would dearly love to know how little Artemis here got past you two!”
The hired muscle stared at Artemis as though he had just appeared from nowhere. Which for their mesmerized brains, he had.
“I don’t know, Mr. Spiro. We never saw him. You want I should take him outside for a little accident?”
Spiro laughed, a short nasty bark. “I got a new word for you two dumbbells. Expendable. You are and he isn’t, just yet. Get it? So just stand there and look dangerous, otherwise I may replace you with two shaved gorillas.”
Spiro gazed into the Cube’s screen, as though there were nobody else in the room. “I reckon I’ve got twenty years left in me. After that the world can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I have no family, no heirs. There’s no need to build for the future. I’m going to suck this planet dry, and with this Cube I can do whatever I want to whoever I want.”
“I know the first thing I’d do,” said Pex. His eyes seemed surprised that the words were coming out of his mouth.
Spiro froze. He wasn’t used to being interrupted in mid-rant.
“What would you do, dumbbell?” he said. “Buy yourself a booth at Merv’s Rib ’n’ Roast?”
“No,” said Pex. “I’d stick it to those Phonetix guys. They’ve been rubbing Spiro Industries’ nose in it for years.”
It was an electric moment. Not only because Pex had actually had an idea, but because it was actually a good one.
The notion lit a thoughtful spark in Spiro’s eyes.
“Phonetix. I hate those guys. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to destroy that bunch of secondrate phone freaks. But how?”
Now it was Chips’s turn. “I hear they’re working on a new top-secret communicator. Super-life battery, or something.”
Spiro did a double take. First Pex, now Chips. Next thing you knew, they’d be learning to read. Nevertheless&
“Cube,” said Spiro. “I want you to access the Phonetix database. Copy the schematics for all their projects in development.”
“No can do, bossman. Phonetix is operating on a closed system. No Internet connection whatsoever in their R and D Department. I have to be on site.”
Spiro’s euphoria disappeared. He rounded on Artemis.
“What is he talking about?”
Artemis coughed, clearing his throat. “The Cube cannot scan a closed system unless the omni-sensor is actually touching the computer, or at least close by. Phonetix is so paranoid about hackers that their research and development lab is completely contained. Buried under several floors of solid rock. They don’t even have e-mail. I know because I’ve tried to hack it myself a few times.”
“But the Cube scanned the satellite, didn’t it?”
“The satellite is broadcasting. And if it’s broadcasting, the Cube can trace it.”
Spiro toyed with the links of his ID chain. “So, I’d have to go to Phonetix.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Artemis. “It’s a lot to risk for the sake of a personal vendetta.”
Blunt stepped forward. “Let me go, Mr. Spiro. I’ll get those plans.”
Spiro chewed on a handful of vitamin supplements from a dispenser on his belt.
“It’s a nice idea, Arno. Good work. But I am reluctant to hand control of the Cube over to anyone else. Who knows what temptation they might yield to? Cube, can you disable the Phonetix alarm system?”
“Can a dwarf blow a hole in his pants?”
“What was that?”
“Eh¬hing. Technical term. You wouldn’t understand it. I have already disabled the Phonetix system.”
“What about the guards, Cube? Can you disable them?”
“No problemo. I could remote activate the internal security measure.”
“Which is?”
“Tanks of vapor inside the air vents. Sleeping gas. Illegal, by the way, according to Chicago State Law. But clever, no aftereffects, untraceable. The intruder comes to in lock-up two hours later.”
Spiro cackled. “Those paranoid Phonetix boys. Go ahead, Cube, knock ’em out.”
“Night night,” said Foaly, with a glee that seemed all too real.
“Good. Now, Cube, all that stands between us and the Phonetix blueprints is an encrypted computer.”
“Don’t make me laugh. They haven’t invented a unit of time short enough to measure how long it will take me to crack the Phonetix hard disk.”
Spiro clipped the Cube onto his belt. “You know something? I’m starting to like this guy.”
Artemis made one last sincere-sounding attempt to contain the situation. “Mr. Spiro, I really don’t think that this is a good idea.”
“Of course you don’t,” laughed Jon Spiro, jangling toward the door. “That’s why I’m bringing you along.”
Phonetix research and development laboratories, Chicago’s industrial sector
Spiro selected a Lincoln Town Car from his extensive garage. It was a nineties model with fake registration. He often used it as a getaway vehicle. It was old enough to be unremarkable, a
nd even if the police did get a shot of the plates, it wouldn’t lead them anywhere.
Blunt parked opposite the Phonetix R&D lab’s main entrance. A security guard was visible at his desk behind the glass revolving door. Arno pulled a pair of fold-up binoculars from the glove compartment. He focused on the guard.
“Sleeping like a baby,” he announced.
Spiro clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good. We have less than two hours. Can we do it?”
“If this Cube is as good as he says he is, then we can be in and out in fifteen minutes.”
“It’s a machine,” said Artemis coldly. “Not one of your steroid-munching associates.”
Blunt glanced over his shoulder. Artemis sat in the backseat, squashed between Pex and Chips.
“You’re very brave all of a sudden.”
Artemis shrugged. “What have I got to lose? After all, things can hardly get worse.”
There was a regular door beside the revolving one. The Cube remote activated the buzzer, admitting the band of intruders to the lobby. No alarms sounded, and no platoon of security guards came rushing to detain them.
Spiro strode down the corridor, emboldened by his newfound technological friend and the thought of finally putting Phonetix out of business. The security elevator put up no more resistance to the Cube than a picket fence would to a tank, and soon Spiro and Co. were riding the eight floors down to the sunken laboratory.
“We’re going underground,” chortled Pex. “Down where the dinosaur bones are. Did you know that after a million billion years, dinosaur dung turns into diamonds?”
Usually a comment like that would have been a shooting offense, but Spiro was in a good mood.
“No, I didn’t know that, Pex. Maybe I should pay your wages in dung.”
Pex decided that it would be better for his finances if he just kept his mouth shut from then on.
The lab itself was protected by a thumbprint scanner. Not even gel. It was a simple matter for the Cube to scan the fingerprint on the plate, then project it back onto the sensor. There wasn’t even a key-code backup.
“Easy,” crowed Spiro. “I should have done this years ago.”
“A little credit would be nice,” said Foaly, unable to hide his pique. “After all, I did get us in here and disable the guards.”
Spiro held the box before him. “Not crushing you into scrap metal, Cube, is my way of saying thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” grumbled Foaly.
Arno Blunt checked the security-monitor bank. Throughout the facility, guards lay unconscious, one with half a ham sandwich stuffed in his mouth.
“I gotta admit it, Mr. Spiro. This is beautiful. Phonetix is even gonna have to foot the bill for the sleeping gas.”
Spiro glanced toward the ceiling. Several camera lights winked red in the shadows.
“Cube. Are we gonna have to raid the video room on our way out?”
“It ain’t gonna happen,” said Foaly, the method actor. “I wiped your patterns from the video.”
Artemis was suspended by the armpits between Pex and Chips.
“Traitor,” he muttered. “I gave you life, Cube. I am your creator.”
“Yeah, well maybe you made me too much like you, Fowl. Aurum Est Potestas. Gold ls Power. I’m just doing what you taught me.”
Spiro patted the cube fondly. “I love this guy. He’s like the brother I never had.”
“I thought you had a brother,” said Chips, puzzled, which was not unusual for him.
“Okay,” said Spiro. “He’s like a brother I actually like.”
The Phonetix server was located in the center of the lab, a monolithic hard drive with pythonlike cables rippling out to various workstations.
Spiro unclipped his new best friend from his belt.
“Where do you need to be, Cube?”
“Just pop me down on the lid of the server, and my omni-sensor will do the rest.”
Spiro complied, and in seconds schematics were flickering across the C Cube’s tiny screen.
“I have them,” crowed Spiro, his hands two fists of triumph. “That’s the last snide e-mail with stock prices I get from these guys.”
“Download complete,” said Foaly smugly. “We have every Phonetix project for the next decade.”
Spiro cradled the Cube against his chest.
“Beautiful. I can launch our version of the Phonetix phone before they do, make myself a few extra million before I release the Cube.”
Arno’s attention was focused on the security monitors.
“Eh, Mr. Spiro. I think we have a situation here.”
“A situation?” growled Spiro. “What does that mean? You’re not a soldier anymore, Blunt. Speak English.”
The New Zealander tapped a screen as if that would change what he was seeing.
“I mean we have a problem. A big problem.”
Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.
“What have you done, Fowl? Is this some kind of&”
The accusation died before it could be completed. Spiro had noticed something.
“Your eyes. What’s wrong with your eyes? They don’t match.”
Artemis treated him to his best vampire smile.
“All the better to see you with, Spiro.”
In the Phonetix lobby, the sleeping security guard suddenly regained her senses. It was Juliet. She peeped out from under the brim of a borrowed cap to make sure Spiro had not left anyone in the corridor.
Following Artemis’s capture in Spiro’s vault, Holly had flown them both to Phonetix to initiate plan B.
Of course there had been no sleeping gas; for that matter there had only been two guards. One was taking a restroom break and the other was doing the rounds of the upper floors. Still, Spiro wasn’t to know that. He was busy watching Foaly’s family of sim security snoring all over the building, thanks to a video clip on the Phonetix system.
Juliet lifted the desk phone and dialed three numbers.
Nine&one&one&
Spiro reached two fingers delicately into Artemis’s eye, plucking out the iris-cam. He studied it closely, noting the micro circuitry on the concave side.
“This is electronic,” he whispered. “Amazing. What is it?”
Artemis blinked a tear from his eye. “It’s nothing. It was never here. Just as I was never here.”
Spiro’s face twisted in sheer hatred. “You were here all right, Fowl, and you’ll never leave here.”
Blunt tapped his employer on the shoulder. An act of unforgivable familiarity.
“Boss, Mr. Spiro. You really need to see this.”
Juliet stripped off her Phonetix Security jacket. Underneath she wore a Chicago PD SWAT uniform. Things could get hairy in the R&D Lab, and it was her job to make sure that Artemis did not get hurt. She hid behind a pillar in the lobby and waited for the sirens.
Spiro stared at the lab’s security monitors. The pictures had changed. There were no more guards slumbering around the facility. Instead, the screens played a tape of Spiro and his cronies breaking into Phonetix. With one crucial difference. There was no trace of Artemis on the screen.
“What’s happening, Cube?” spluttered Spiro. “You said that we’d all be wiped from the tapes.”
“I lied. It must be the criminal personality I’m developing.”
Spiro smashed the Cube against the floor. It remained intact.
“Tough polymer,” said Artemis, picking up the microcomputer. “Almost unbreakable.”
“Unlike you,” retorted Spiro.
Artemis looked like a doll, between Pex and Chips. “Don’t you understand yet? You’re all on tape. The Cube was working for me.”
“Big deal. So we’re on tape. All I have to do is pay the security booth a visit and take the recordings.”
“It’s not going to be that simple.”
Spiro still believed that there was a way out.
“And why not? Who’s gonna stop me? Little old you?”
Artemis pointed to the screens. “No. Little old them.”
The Chicago PD brought everything they had, and a few things they had to borrow. Phonetix was the city’s biggest single employer, not to mention one of the top five subscribers to the Police Benevolent Fund. When the 911 call came in from their offices, the duty sergeant put out a citywide call.
In less than five minutes, there were twenty uniforms and a full SWAT team beating on the Phonetix doors. Two choppers hovered overhead and eight snipers lined the roofs of adjacent buildings. No one was leaving the area, unless they were invisible.
The Phonetix security guard had just returned from his rounds and noticed the intruders on the monitors. Shortly after that he noticed a group of Chicago PD tapping the door with their gun barrels.
He buzzed them in. “I was just about to call you guys,” he said. “There’s a buncha intruders in the vault. They musta tunneled in or somethin’, ’cause they didn’t come past me.”
The security guard on a restroom break was even more surprised. He was just finishing off the sports section of the Herald Tribune when two very serious-looking men in body armor burst into the cubicle.
“ID?” growled one, who apparently did not have the time for full sentences.
The security guard held up his laminated card with a shaking hand.
“Stay put, sir,” advised the other police officer. He didn’t have to say it twice.
Juliet slipped out from behind the pillar, joining the ranks of the SWAT team. She pointed her gun and roared with the best of them, and was instantly assimilated into the group. Their assault was cut short by a tiny problem. There was only one access point to the lab. The elevator shaft.
Two officers pried open the elevator door with crowbars.
“Here’s our dilemma,” said one. “We cut the power, then we can’t get the elevator up here. If we call the elevator up here first, then we tip off our intruders.”
Juliet shouldered herself to the front of the group.
“Excuse me, sir. Let me go down on the cables. I blow the doors and you cut the power.”
The commander did not even consider it. “No. Too dangerous. The intruders would have plenty of time to put a hundred rounds into the elevator. Who are you, anyway?”
Juliet took a small gripper from her belt. She clipped it onto the elevator cable and hopped into the shaft.
