The Fowl Twins

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

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Text copyright © Eoin Colfer 2020

Cover illustration © Petur Antonsson

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Eoin Colfer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008324865

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008324889

Version: 2020-09-30

Praise for the Fowl Twins:

‘Lots of high-tech gadgetry, thrilling danger and unexpected turns as Eoin Colfer delivers his distinctive brand of mayhem. Don’t miss it’

Mail

‘Colfer is a hugely entertaining writer who unravels his plot at breakneck speed while never stinting on the detail’

Telegraph

‘Colfer’s playfulness is in full swing’

Observer

‘A highly entertaining ride’

Bookseller

For twins everywhere

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for the Fowl Twins:

Dedication

Need to Know

1. Why Artemis is an Idiot

2. Sky-High Lazuli

3. Deliveroo

4. The Wrist Bump

5. The Parting Ritual

6. The Rat or the Scar

7. Separation Anxiety

8. Just Spitballing Here

9. The Irish Backstop Backstory

10. The Pipsqueak

11. Flashcon

12. No Innocent Humans

13. Imminent Death

14. Noughts and Crosses

15. Blood on the Rocks

16. Silly Troll

17. Stay Cool

18. A Toxic Relationship

19. Dwelf Arrival

Epilogue

Epilogue Postscript

Keep Reading …

Books by Eoin Colfer

About the Publisher

MOST FAIRIES ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE NAME Artemis Fowl. In fact, the young human’s exploits are referenced in a cautionary nursery rhyme taught in fairy preschools. The most famous version of the rhyme goes like this:

Never fall foul

Of Artemis Fowl,

For wise as an owl

Is he.

He wrestled a troll

And stole fairy gold,

Then frightened

The LEP.

Commander Trouble Kelp of the Lower Elements Police once petitioned, at an education summit, to have this rhyme removed from the curriculum on the grounds that:

1 It had not, in fact, been Artemis Fowl who’d wrestled the troll, but rather his bodyguard, Butler (see LEP file: Artemis Fowl).

2 There was only anecdotal evidence to support the claim that the LEP had been frightened at the Fowl Manor siege. Some of the operatives had been slightly anxious perhaps, but hardly frightened, and (Trouble was really grasping at straws here) …

3 According to zoologists, owls are really not so wise, and are actually less trainable than common pigeons, so it is factually incorrect to present the owl as a symbol of wisdom.

This argument drew, appropriately enough, hoots of laughter from the assembly.

Unfortunately for Commander Kelp, he himself was obliged to recite the rhyme as part of his petition, and by the second line the entire congress was reciting it along with him. Shortly thereafter, much to the commander’s irritation, a show of hands dictated that the Artemis Fowl nursery rhyme remain on the school syllabus.

And, while it was true that Artemis Fowl’s first interaction with the fairy folk had been less than auspicious, it had at least prompted the Council to push through updates to their security protocols, including the lifting of a centuries-old hex forbidding fairies to enter human dwellings uninvited, and the striking of a law requiring them to carry a copy of the Fairy Book at all times. Even so, there was many a relieved mutter when Artemis and his bodyguard, Butler, embarked on a five-year scientific expedition to Mars, with one indiscreet Council member (who forgot to turn off her microphone after an interview) quipping that she felt ‘sorry for any aliens out there who might cross the Fowl boy’s path’, which was a little harsh considering Artemis had saved the entire world from the megalomaniacal pixie, Opal Koboi, temporarily sacrificing his own life in the process.

But, as is often the case when one criminal mastermind launches himself into space, there is another ready to take his place, and in this instance the replacement mastermind was Artemis’s own younger brother Myles, who was, if anything, even more condescending towards the world than Artemis had been when he lived in it. On Myles’s blog, Myles to Go, he regularly disparaged noted scientists with comments like:

Leonardo knew about as much about flying machines as I know about boy bands.

Or:

Regarding Einstein’s devotion to the big-bang theory, please. His version of the theory has more hypotheticals than the televisual show of the same name and is almost as funny.

This comment did not endear him to Albert Einstein’s legions of fans.

He also skewered humanity in general on the blog, through a series of editorials, including the scathing ‘Dear Internet: One Billion Hysterical Opinions Do Not Carry the Weight of a Single Fact’.

The comments following this article ran into the tens of thousands, without one smiley face in the bunch.

Fortunately for social media’s blood pressure, Myles’s acerbic nature was tempered somewhat by the presence of his twin brother, Beckett, who was of a sunnier disposition. Or, as Myles often put it: ‘Where I see the dispersion of light in water droplets, Beck sees a rainbow.’ Though he could never stop himself from qualifying this remark with, ‘Although anyone who has so much as flipped through a meteorology text can tell you that there is no bow involved.’ This remark demonstrated that Myles Fowl had about as much of a sense of humour as a Vulcan, and that he was possibly in the top five per cent of smug people on the planet and in the top one per cent of smug twelve-year-olds overall.

Beckett was, in many respects, his sibling’s total opposite and, had they not been related, it seemed unlikely that they would have enjoyed each other’s company, but in the way of twins the boys loved and protected each other even unto death, and occasionally beyond.

For Beckett’s part, he safeguarded Myles using his physicality, a sphere in which Myles had about as much prowess as a piece of sod; he was forever tripping over footpaths and falling up stairs, which is almost a skill. On one occasion, a group of Albert Einstein devotees rushed Myles at the school gate, brandishing hardback copies of The Meaning of Relativity, and Beckett dispatched them by stuffing several sticks of gum into his mouth and cartwheeling towards them while chewing noisily. He did this because Myles had once told him that people with high IQs tend to suffer from misophonia, which is a visceral reaction to certain sounds, the number-one culprit being loud chewing. Beckett’s gum trick sent the Einstein disciples packing, but it also disoriented Myles, who walked into a gate and had to have stitches in his forehead as a result. So a mixed outcome all in all.

Beckett was an inherent optimist and saw the good in every person and the beauty in every blade of grass. He was also somewhat of a savant when it came to acrobatics and could easily have led a circus troupe, had he so wished. This skill translated neatly to combat situations. For instance, Beckett had mastered the infamous cluster punch, which most martial-arts masters did not even believe existed. The beauty of the cluster punch was that it temporarily paralysed the victim without causing any real pain. This particular talent was one that Beckett could expect to use often, considering the family to which he belonged. In fact, the Fowl twin kept a tally of his victories, and by his reckoning he had, to date, incapacitated twenty-seven special-forces officers, eleven burglars, a small carful of clowns, six drunken Dublin men who had swum out to the Fowls’ Dalkey Island residence after a stag night, five bullies whom he caught picking on smaller children, three big-game poachers and, in a display of cosmic humour, an intrusive journalist named Partridge who had concealed himself in a pear tree.

Myles, on the other hand, had never actually landed a real blow on an enemy, though he did once manage to punch himself in the buttock during a wrestling session with his brother and had been known to accidentally tie his own shoelaces together. Myles solved the shoelace problem simply by wearing leather loafers whenever possible, which nicely complemented his trademark black suits, and he solved the buttock problem by resolving never to throw a punch again, unless Beckett’s life depended on it.

In the past year, the Fowl Twins had initiated what had come to be known in LEP files as the Second Cycle of Modern Fowl Adventures. Modern because the archives did contain several mentions of Myles and Beckett’s ancestors and their People-related shenanigans. So far, the twins had managed to rescue a miniature troll named Whistle Blower from a certain Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, the Duke of Scilly, who intended to extract the troll’s venom, which, under strict laboratory conditions, could be used to extend a human’s life span. (More on that reprehensible individual later.) The boys were also instrumental in the partial crippling of ACRONYM, a shadowy intergovernmental organisation whose mission was to hunt down fairies using any possible means, the less humane the better, and in doing so Myles and Beckett put themselves squarely in the sights of the fairy Lower Elements Police, who had assigned Lazuli Heitz, a pixie-elf hybrid, or pixel, as Fowl Ambassador. Myles was perfectly aware that the pixel actually served as a parole officer of sorts, whereas Beckett didn’t care what Lazuli’s job was; he was simply delighted to have a new blue friend.

As we join the twins, it is the summer of their thirteenth year; that is to say they are twelve, and the boys have completed their primary-education cycle. Myles has also recently been conferred a doctorate in biology from University College Dublin, writing his thesis on the theory that the womb’s amniotic fluid can act as a shared brain between multiple babies, which would go some way towards explaining the bonds between many twins, while Beckett has finally managed to finish reading his first chapter book, entitled Alien Pooping Boy. Beckett admired this alien boy’s ability to poop through his finger, a talent that cracked up the blond twin each time he read about it. Beckett had sworn a vow that Alien Pooping Boy was the only book he would ever read unless the publisher released a sequel. He had even written an email to the publishing house in which he suggested the title for any second book should be Alien Pooping Boy Goes Number Two, which Myles had to admit was in keeping with the spirit of the first novel.

It would seem to the casual or even deliberate observer of LEP surveillance logs that the Fowl Twins had been following predictable behaviour patterns for the past several months with only minor deviations from their submitted timetables. These deviations could easily be explained by various family-related or after-school activities. For instance, the logs showed that Myles gave lectures at a coding dojo on the mainland, while Beckett attended an actual dojo, where he quickly rose to the top of the student heap. That is not a metaphor: Beckett piled the other students in a wriggling heap, then climbed to the top while singing ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’, which was one of his mother’s favourite songs.

But, even though the twins strayed from their daily paths occasionally, not once did they try to insert themselves in fairy affairs, nor did they ever miss a FaceTime debriefing with their fairy parole officer. Lazuli Heitz was so happy with their behaviour that she even arranged for a magical healing of the handprint scar tissue on Myles’s chest that she had accidentally inflicted on him. It was the least she could do, as in many ways Myles and Beckett were model prisoners.

Because, in fact, that is exactly what Myles and Beckett were: models.

NINE THOUSAND METRES OVER

THE ATLANTIC

MOST FLIGHT REGULATIONS DO NOT ALLOW children to fly planes on transatlantic routes. This is an eminently sensible rule, as young people in general do not have the temperament or training required to pilot a flying machine between continents. Not only that but juveniles typically lack the length of limb to reach either the pedals below or the array of controls overhead. Myles Fowl solved these problems simply by rerouting the controls of the Fowl Tachyon’s ecofriendly power-to-liquid (or PTL) jet fuel to his mobile phone and sitting on a booster seat in the cockpit so he could see out of the smart shield. Each time he strapped himself into the pilot’s chair, Myles looked forward to the day when his adolescent growth spurt would arrive and he no longer required the booster. Using the family’s genetic history and a personal growth chart, he calculated that this spurt should commence in six hundred and thirty days at midnight, give or take thirty minutes.

Beckett served as copilot, and he solved the pedals issue by wearing a pair of 1970s platform shoes that the online vendor Rocketman1972 had sworn once belonged to Elton John. Beckett overcame the controls problem by flicking the required switches with a long-handled reacher/grabber that he’d borrowed from the garden shed.

None of these workarounds were strictly necessary, as the Nano Artificial Neural Network Intelligence system, or NANNI, inhabiting Myles’s graphene smart eyeglasses could have flown the jet more competently than any top-gun pilot. But the twins enjoyed the experience, so NANNI had promised not to interfere unless the jet went into a steep nosedive, something that happened more often than one might think, especially when Beckett grew bored.

As the Fowl Tachyon passed over the emerald green of Cuba far below, Myles relinquished the jet’s controls to Beckett, who was without question the more intuitive pilot of the two, and launched into the latest in his ongoing series of lectures on his favourite subject, that being ‘Why Our Brother, Artemis, Is An Idiot’.

Myles cleared his throat, straightened his gold-threaded tie and initiated this oration with two audacious lies. ‘I hate to speak ill of the absent, Beck, but our brother Artemis is an idiot.’

Beckett adjusted the flaps with his grabber, though the lever was within his natural reach. ‘Artemis is not an idiot. He built a spaceship.’

‘Spaceship, indeed,’ said Myles scornfully. ‘Are you referring to the Artemis Interstellar? Which he modestly named after himself, by the way. That craft is barely more than a wind-up flying yo-yo. I would be embarrassed to breach the exosphere in such a contraption.’

‘Our big brother built an actual spaceship,’ insisted Beckett. ‘Idiots don’t build spaceships.’

Myles was far from finished with this latest effort to demean Artemis. ‘And Interstellar? What kind of a name is that? Technically speaking, which is the only way a scientist ought to speak, the entire human race is interstellar.’

This was perhaps a good point, but Beckett rarely cared enough about his twin’s arguments to engage for more than a sentence or two, so instead he moved to a related topic. ‘Is Arty in trouble, Myles?’

‘Of course not,’ said Myles, instantly softening, for there was absolutely nothing in the world that upset him more than his twin’s discomfort. This probably had something to do with the fact that Myles and Beckett were the world’s only documented set of conjoined dizygotic twins. ‘Artemis is not stupid enough to get into trouble,’ he explained. ‘I’m just saying that our older brother is not clever enough to be taken seriously as a scientist. At any rate, ignorance is bliss, as they say, and so Artemis would not realise he was in trouble even if that were the case.’

Beckett adjusted the jet’s tail elevators, plunging the Tachyon into a steep descent, which was absolutely his favourite kind. ‘All you had to say was no, Myles,’ he said. And then Beckett had his second serious thought in as many minutes. ‘Are we in trouble?’

Myles’s intestines attempted to tie themselves into a bow as the jet lost altitude at a rate of three thousand metres per minute, but he remained calm and considered his answer.

‘Definitely not,’ said Myles, who generally used the word definitely to overcompensate for a lie. ‘Today is merely reconnaissance. A flyover to get a feel for our target and take some photographs.’

‘You said definitely,’ said Beckett.

‘We are possibly moving towards trouble, brother mine,’ admitted Myles. ‘But not today and, when we do, it certainly won’t be anything I can’t handle. And surely treasure is worth a little trouble.’

‘Trouble and treasure,’ said Beckett, levelling out before NANNI assumed flight control. ‘Great. Do you think I will get to cluster-punch anyone?’

‘I would think that cluster-punching is a distinct possibility, but you may only punch bad people,’ said Myles, smoothing back his lustrous black hair. ‘And only if they absolutely deserve it, which, to be fair, bad people often do.’

Beckett plucked another question from his seemingly endless supply. ‘And nobody we actually care about will be angry with us because we’re not where we’re supposed to be?’

Myles rolled his eyes. ‘Beck, everybody would be angry with us if they knew of our whereabouts. Positively furious, in fact. Lazuli would revoke our parole. Mother and Father would ground us, at the very least. Even Artemis would probably have the gall to lecture us from space.’

‘So why aren’t we where we’re supposed to be?’ wondered Beckett.

Myles defied the rules of air-travel safety to unclip his belt and stand.

‘Because we are Fowls,’ he declared, pointing a stiff finger skyward, melodrama being his weakness. ‘And Fowls always do the unexpected.’

Beckett thought about this and then deflated Myles’s moment with one of his trademark truisms. ‘Which is only to be expected.’

‘That is not accurate,’ Myles argued. ‘There are a finite number of expected actions in any situation, whereas there are an infinite number of actions that would be unexpected.’

‘But you know, in general,’ Beckett persisted, which was not like him unless he felt Myles would be irritated. ‘If you do loads of unexpected things, then unexpected loses its un. Which just leaves expected.’

Myles was perfectly aware that winning this debate would be more difficult than convincing a flat-earther that the globe was, in fact, a globe, so he was actually quite relieved when NANNI posted an alert on the lenses of his smart glasses, giving him a genuine reason to change the subject. Myles transferred the alert to the jet’s front windscreen and magnified it with an expanding pinch gesture.

‘Look, brother mine,’ he said, pointing to a streamlined cylinder streaking towards the plane. ‘There is a missile headed our way, and it has locked on to us.’

‘A missile!’ said Beckett gleefully. ‘Wonderful. We’ll get back to the argument you’re losing later.’

And, with the flick of a switch, he launched the Tachyon’s regular countermeasures without waiting for the order, as switch-flicking was one of his favourite pastimes. Beckett even had a plank fixed to the wall in the twins’ shared bedroom to which he had screwed various switches, and he would spend hours flicking them on and off, which sent Myles’s misophonia into overdrive.

But back to the countermeasures. Missile countermeasures are very popular, especially among pilots who are eager to remain alive, and those of the Tachyon took three forms.

Form the first was a burst of infrared flares that presented a heat-seeking missile with multiple targets, to trick it into blowing up something else super hot besides the jet engine it was aimed at because, despite the Tachyon’s impressive thermal shielding and bypass engines, it was inevitable that enough heat bloom would leak out for a sophisticated missile to lock on to.

The second countermeasure was a confetti of shredded aluminium, plastic and paper that, when released, could possibly bamboozle the radar lock of a missile.

And the third effort to confuse rockets was an electronic countermeasure pod in the jet’s nose cone that would jam the radar of the incoming seeker if the confetti failed.

These measures were nowhere near trustworthy enough for Myles, however, relying as they did on proximity, the missile’s own particular guidance system and fuel reserves. So Myles had, with NANNI’s considerable input, augmented the Tachyon’s countermeasure systems with two more of his own design.

The first of these were a half-dozen high-speed drones with holographic capabilities, which would project six alternate Fowl Tachyons into the sky for any remotely piloted missile to target, and the second was a pair of railguns that were capable of firing projectiles at speeds in excess of Mach 5. Myles’s railguns were concealed behind retractable panels on both wings. The starboard gun was a plasma model and fired hot ionised particles that would punch a hole through almost anything they encountered, and the port gun fired cyber weapons in the form of limpet pods that would clamp on to their target’s hull and assume control if possible and shut down all systems if not. Some months ago, Myles had presented Beckett with the acronym BCRYPTs for these ingenious pods. He’d informed his twin that BCRYPT stood for Ballistic Cyber Recon pods with Yottabyte Potential Transfer capabilities. Myles had also rather smugly explained that the acronym was something of an Easter egg for tech enthusiasts, as ‘bcrypt’ was the name of the robust algorithm employed after the infamous 2016 Yahoo hack.