"Artemis Fowl 02 - The Arctic Incident" - читать интересную книгу автора (Colfer Eoin)

Artemis shrugged. 'I suppose after what I did, I can't really expect any consideration.'
'That's right. You can't.'
'Well then,' sighed Artemis. 'I don't suppose I have a choice.'
Holly smiled. 'That's right, Fowl, you don't.'
'Shall we go?' Artemis's tone was meek, but his brain was sparking off ideas. Maybe co-operating with the fairies wasn't such a bad idea. They had certain abilities after all.
'Why not?' Holly turned to Butler. 'Drive south. Stay on the back roads.'
'Tara, I presume. I often wondered where exactly the entrance to El was.'
'Keep wondering, Mud Boy,' muttered Holly. 'Now, sleep. All this deduction is wearing me out.'



CHAPTER 4: FOWL IS FAIR

DETENTION CELL 4, POLICE PLAZA, HAVEN CITY, THE LOWER ELEMENTS

ARTEMIS woke in the LEP interrogation room. He could have been in any police interview room in the world. Same uncomfortable furniture, same old routine. Root jumped right in. 'OK, Fowl, start talking.' Artemis took a moment to get his bearings. Holly and Root were facing him across a low plastic-topped table. A high-watt bulb shone directly into his face.
'Really, Commander. Is this it? I expected more.' 'Oh there's more. Just not for criminals like you.' Artemis noted that his hands were shackled to the chair.
'You're not still upset about last year, are you? After all, I won. That is supposed to be that, according to your own Book.'
Root leaned forward until the tip of his cigar was centimetres from Artemis's nose. 'This is an entirely different case, Mud Boy. So don't give me the innocent act.'
Artemis was unperturbed. 'Which one are you? Good Cop or Bad Cop?'
Root laughed heartily, the tip of his cigar drawing patterns in the air. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop! Hate to tell you this, Dorothy, but you ain't in Kansas any more.' The commander loved quoting The Wizard of Oz. Three of his cousins were in the movie.
A figure emerged from the shadows. It had a tail, four legs, two arms and was holding what looked like a pair of common kitchen plungers.
'OK, Mud Boy,' said the figure. 'Just relax and this might not hurt too much.'
Foaly attached the suction cups to Artemis's eyes and the boy immediately fell unconscious.
'The sedative is in the rubber seals,' explained the centaur. 'Gets in through the pores. They never see it coming. Tell me I'm not the cleverest individual in the universe.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Root innocently. 'That pixie Koboi is one pretty sharp female.'
Foaly stamped a hoof angrily. 'Koboi? Koboi? Those wings of hers are ridiculous. If you ask me, we're using far too much Koboi technology these days. It's not good to let one company have all the LEP's business.'
'Unless it's yours, of course.'
СIТm serious, Julius. I know Opal Koboi from my days at university. She's not stable. There are Koboi chips in all the new Neutrinos. If those labs go under, all we'd have left are the DNA cannons in Police Plaza and a few cases of electric stun guns.'
Root snorted. 'Koboi just upgraded every gun and vehicle in the force. Three times the power, half the heat emission. Better than the last statistics from your lab, Foaly.'
Foaly threaded a set of fibre-optic cables back to the computer.
'Yes, well, maybe if the Council would give me a decent budget ..."
'Quit your moaning, Foaly. I saw the budget for this machine. It better do more than unblock the drains.'
Foaly flicked his tail, highly offended.
'This is a Retimager, I'm considering going private with this baby.'
'And it does what exactly?'
Foaly activated a plasma screen on the holding-cell wall.
'You see these dark circles? These are the human's retinas. Every image leaves a tiny etching, like a photo negative. We can feed whatever pictures we want into the computer and search for matches.'
Root didn't exactly fall to his knees in awe. 'Isn't that handy.'
'Well, yes, it is actually. Observe.'
Foaly called up an image of a goblin, cross-referencing it with the Retimager's database.
'For every matching point we get a hit. About two hundred hits is normal. General shape of the head, features and so on. Anything significantly above that and he's seen that goblin before.'
One eighty-six flashed up on the screen.
'Negative on the goblin. Let's try a Softnose.'
Again, the count was under two hundred.
'Another negative. Sorry, Captain, but Master Fowl here is innocent. He's never even seen a goblin, much less traded with the B'wa Kell.'
'They could have mind-wiped him.'
Foaly removed the seals from Artemis's eyes. 'That's the beauty of this baby. Mind-wipes don't work. The Retimager operates on actual physical evidence. You'd have to scrub the retinas.'
'Anything on the human's computer?'
'Plenty,' replied Foaly. 'But nothing incriminating. Not a single mention of goblins or batteries.'