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Butler spied faeries on the security system and called his master.
“LEP?” Artemis asked.
“No. At a guess, I’d say...journalists.”
Artemis grinned. Exactly what he was hoping would happen in the wake of the goblin rebellion. He wiped the smile off his face before replying, though; Foaly had said he’d removed any tracking devices he’d had in Fowl Manor, but there was no point in giving the centaur any more information than necessary if he hadn’t. “I’m on my way. Try and see what they’re saying to one another; the more we know about them before we confront them, the better.” He hung up and headed for the security center.
When he got there he saw two elves on the screen, a female with a camera and a male with a microphone. “--because it’s my show, that’s why,” the male was saying.
By way of reply, the female stuck her tongue out.
“Brother and sister,” Butler whispered.
“Ah,” Artemis said.
“Anyway,” the male said before clearing his throat and signalling, presumably, for the female to start recording. “This is Prospero Puck of the Puck Report, reporting from the notorious Fowl Manor. It has been a week since the goblin uprising, and yet only I--”
The female cleared her throat.
“--and yet only I, along with my trusty camerawoman Ophelia, have been man enough to approach the property of the only Mud Man to have successfully kidnapped one of the People in thousands of years.”
Ophelia scowled at “man enough” but didn’t protest.
“The question on everyone’s mind is: can the leopard really change his spots? Has the Mud Boy gone from villain to hero? Let us find out.”
A wicked grin came to Artemis’ face. Oh, you’re going to find out, alright.
~ ~ ~
Prospero and Ophelia Puck were finishing their third circuit of the Fowl Manor, Prospero chattering inanely, when Ophelia noticed something had changed. She pointed at the object on the Fowl doorstep silently.
“Wait. I see something on the Fowl doorstep,” Prospero whispered dramatically. He approached. “I swear this wasn’t here before. It appears to be a bowl...of...milk?”
“It’s the traditional way to signal peaceable intent between our peoples, you know,” Artemis Fowl said, opening the door. “How might I help you?”
Prospero stared up at the Mud Boy. Ophelia stared at the mountain looming behind him; Butler had his hands out in a pacifying gesture, but she remembered what those hands had done to a troll. He noticed her gaze, and smiled wanly at her; she decided it was best to focus on what Prospero and Artemis were doing.
“I--that is--if you don’t mind--the thing is--” Artemis patiently waited while Prospero stumbled over his words, cruelly offering no help with a bemused half-smile on his face. “I’d like an interview, if you would be so kind.” In spite of herself, Ophelia admired the nerve it took her brother to ask this of what had been until recently had been the most notorious criminal in the underworld, and was technically still the most notorious one at liberty.
“An interview, you say?” Artemis said, as though tasting the concept experimentally. “An interesting idea; too bad it’s impossible.”
“What? Why?”
“For one thing, there’s the question of where; I’m not going to insult your intelligence by inviting you inside, somewhere else on the surface hardly seems more neutral, and I doubt they’d let me into the Lower Elements. I’d suggest doing it over the phone, but I haven’t got one that connects to the People’s networks--which also makes scheduling it rather problematic. Or were you thinking that we’d do it right here, right now? Unfortunately I already have plans for the night if that were the case. Specifically, ones that involve sleep.”
“I have a phone! Here,” Prospero said, tossing it to the Mud Boy.
Artemis nodded. “That certainly helps. Call me sometime--at a more reasonable hour, I mean--and we’ll schedule something. I make no promises of exclusivity, however.”
“But I gave you the phone.”
“And that warning was my thanks for it; I could have just said nothing and let you blab about our conversation, only to get scooped by a competitor,” Artemis said. “Well, I’d best be going. A pleasure to meet you, Mr…?”
“Puck. Prospero Puck. Of the Puck Report.”
“...Puck. Good night,” Artemis said and closed the door.
~ ~ ~
Artemis grinned. It had been like taking candy from a baby. He’d even convinced Prospero to not tell anyone about it (for a while), which hopefully would mean that it would be a while before the LEP found out about it.
Now it was time to steal something far more valuable than gold from the People.
~ ~ ~
“You...gave him...your phone,” Root repeated the words much later. It should not be possible for an Elfin face to get that red and yet, mindful of the fact that he couldn’t berate civilians the way he could with his own men, his voice was flat and emotionless.
“Y-yeah,” said Prospero. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Root was about to have an aneurysm. “Listen here, pu--uck,” (nice save) “you gave Artemis Fowl access to the People’s internet. He has since downloaded the entire patent library--which means that he now knows how to make all our technology and if for whatever reason he lacks the tools or resources necessary to do so, that’s okay because he has a roadmap of intermediary steps going back all the way to the steam engine. And apparently he has plans for that tech, since he also downloaded resource maps of the entire solar system. All this, before looking into our political situation and the power vacuum in the criminal world created by the dismantling of the B’wa Kell, almost as an afterthought.”
Ophelia paled. “My gods.”
“Yeah,” Root said, grinning not because he was happy but because he had successfully spread the misery about a bit. “And that’s not all. Do you know what else is freely available on our internet that’d be highly valuable to a Mud Man, particularly one with criminal inclinations?”
“What?” Prospero asked, dreading the answer.
~ ~ ~
Some time in the past, Artemis stared at what he had just found in stunned silence. Then he burst into giddy laughter. “Butler, if you wanted to know one state secret kept by one nation on Earth, what would it be?”
“...The state of North Korea’s nuclear program, I suppose.”
Artemis typed something into the Faerie phone. “Here you go.”
Butler looked down at it. “How?”
“It makes sense, when you think about it. Really, I should have thought of it myself, but that just goes to show how unused to the technology available to the People we are. Simply put, if there’s no way of information getting from there to out here, which there shouldn’t be, why shouldn’t the Lower Elements Intelligence dump everything they learn about us directly onto the internet and let enthusiasts--who don’t need to be paid, after all--deal with it for them?”
“So...the CIA, MI-6, the FBI…?”
“I can tell you what all of them are thinking in real time. Corporations, too; all our systems are open books to the People.” Artemis grinned. “This is going to be fun.”