I N F E R N O
- Dim Aldebaran -
Chapter Nine
:i:
Juliet had the debilitating habit of seeing through Artemis' moods; debilitating because the result was a massive loss of self esteem.
"So," she began, passing him the teapot, "you look antsy today."
He poured the hot water into the waiting teacup. "'Antsy'," he replied, "is a thoroughly crude Americanism. I suggest you use a more appropriate word before accusing me of a nonexistent mood."
She accepted the teapot's return and returned it to the kitchen, replying over her shoulder, "Fine. You look 'antsy' in an American sort of way. Mind telling me why?"
"I talked to Medea this morning."
He heard a laugh from the kitchen, and he scowled down at his Darjeeling. Juliet would think a nuclear holocaust amusing. "Talked to Medea?" she mocked, returning with a tray of toast, "talked to Medea? Why not 'communicated', or 'corresponded'?" She set the tray down in front of Artemis. "So unprofessional of you."
His tempter rose with the steam of his tea. "'Talk' is a very professional word. For example: we are 'talking' now."
"But this is personal," Juliet countered, returning to the kitchen for marmalade. She continued on, her voice drifting through the open door, "In fact, this is so personal, I'd even like to use the word—'chatting'." She giggled at her own wit.
"Au contraire," Artemis said to the kitchen, "you are a chef preparing her employee's breakfast in a purely professional capacity."
"If it was in a professional capacity," Juliet countered, returning with a pitcher of marmalade for him and OJ for herself, "I wouldn't bother getting up at five in the morning to cater to your little whims."
"If it wasn't in a professional capacity, you wouldn't be paid so well."
Juliet scowled, and sat down opposite Artemis. They were using the informal breakfast room, furnished with small, café style tables and wicker chairs. The room looked out across the grounds through a series of large sliding windows and doors, currently in place to prevent the dawn coolness from sapping Artemis of his wit. When retracted, the room was continuous with a small balcony similarly furnished.
Artemis looked out across the view; dawn was breaking over the grounds. The hedges of the garden maze, usually a deep green comparable to a rather opaque emerald, had peach highlights on them, as if someone had liberally splashed the place with Juliet's orange juice.
His eyes focused on one cell in particular; it was not until Juliet noted this fixation that he turned his gaze away from the rose garden. "My talk with Medea," he began, "resulted in some more information."
"I'm sure it has," Juliet said, sipping her orange juice. She winked over her rim of cup.
Artemis decided to play the adult and ignore her. "I used this information to create some more specific search terms," he continued on, a note of self satisfaction entering his voice. "We're narrowing in on her."
"Oh, good."
He scowled. "You should be more interested in this."
"It's not that interesting."
"It's your job."
"You know perfectly well that I can quit anytime I bloody well please," she countered. "I'm only doing this out of sisterly affection."
No, Artemis said to himself, you're doing this because you're a Butler at heart, and you know it. But he kept the words to himself, and continued on with his languid breakfast.
The rest of it passed between them with what Juliet would refer to as 'chatting'—the status of the hydroponics orange trees, the ingredients of the homemade marmalade, the crack on the pitcher from whence it came (which Artemis attributed to her carelessness, and Juliet to his bad habit of making himself breakfast.)
Holly joined them once the sun had risen sufficiently that the room was shadowed by the Manor's eaves, not wishing for her magic to bleach from her bones. She took the chair between the two of them, after stacking some pillows on the seat so she was at eye level with the two humans. After nearly falling into the marmalade pitcher in her attempt to reach the toast, she let loose a small tempest of Gnommish swear words.
Artemis flinched at the gratuities. "Was that necessary?"
"Completely," Holly snapped, but before she had a chance to upend the contents of the pitcher onto his head, Juliet intervened:
"Artemis, your Gnommish lessons were shoddy. I never learned those words."
Artemis sipped his tea. "That was the Atlantean dialect, if I'm not mistaken, which did not seem necessary at the time considering our… target would not be the city fairy sort. Mostly, however, it was to avoid unnecessary confusion on your part."
Holly swore again as she spilled orange juice all over the table. Artemis flinched again, and Juliet grinned. "See? I didn't know that one either." She rose, going to the kitchen and returning with a washcloth. "Now I have to clean the table, so I have an excuse to use it. So—"
Holly grinned maliciously into what orange juice had made it into her cup as Artemis winced again. "Delicate ears, Mud Boy?"
"Mud Man," Artemis corrected idly, and changed the topic. "Where's Dom?"
"Debugging the camera system," Juliet replied. "Evidently, something got into it remotely last night."
He blinked, and asked abruptly, "Do either of you own laser pens?"
Holly shook her head, more at the sloppy dressing of her toast than at him. Juliet, on the other hand, nodded exuberantly. "Yeah! I got this really cool one in Chicago, remember? I stole it from Spiro's reception desk—"
"Besides that?"
Juliet shook her head. "I don't think so. Why?"
Artemis sipped his tea. "Two peculiar things happened to me last night. First, in the gardens, I found that a rose—one stained from my… arterial spurt—was missing. Second, I found this laser pen in that very garden, balanced on the statuette that I had hidden behind, the beam directed at chest level." He drew the laser pen from his pocket; it was encased in a Ziploc bag.
"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Holy asked suddenly, her bad mood sharpening her words to an edge. "That could have been your life—"
"Do you recall my question regarding laser pen possession?"
They both nodded.
"I initially thought that it was a prank—one in particularly bad taste, which is not below either of you."
Holly and Juliet rose in protest; Artemis waited patiently for him to heed the dismissive wave of his hand. "To no matter, now. Clearly, the pen was planted. How shall we proceed?"
"Laser pen first," Juliet replied neatly, and continued headlong: "Did you check for fingerprints?"
"I dusted it, yes—there wasn't even a partial print, though, truth be told, I didn't expect anything. Even an amateur would wear gloves."
"What type of gloves?"
"Latex, by the residue—disposable. The 'UniSeal' brand, to be specific, though that only tells us the price."
"What about the laser pen type?"
He grimaced. "I did a search. It appears to the 'dollar store' sort—cheap, brandless, and thus thoroughly untraceable."
"What about footprints?"
"On gravel paths and a trimmed lawn? Pointless. It would be impossible to detect even shoe size."
Juliet threw her hands up in despair. "Fine. If you've already checked everything, why bother to ask us?"
"Because occasionally, people other than you offer ideas." He looked pointedly at Holly.
Holly glared at her toast after some marmalade slid off the back end, falling to her plate with a dull plop. Temporarily giving up on the prospect of a nonresistant breakfast, she set the toast down. "Why—" She hesitated, then began again. "Why a laser pen?"
Artemis' lips curled. "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking."
"Something you don't know!" Juliet crowed triumphantly, and somewhat inappropriately.
"There are plenty of things I don't know," Artemis corrected, setting his tea down. "I am perfectly willing to admit that. I am not so arrogant as to claim expertise in an area in which I am deficient."
Juliet grinned like a kindergarten jack-o-lantern—wide, sloppy, and in very bad taste. It was difficult to believe, at times like these, that she was in her mid twenties. "You rarely admit being 'deficient', actually. You want to keep up the appearance of being a perfect know-it-all—you just hate the idea of appearing utterly clueless."
"You would be a terrible psychologist," Artemis commented lightly. Before Juliet could rebuttal, he steered the topic back on course. "But we digress. The laser pen, if you will?"
Holly swirled the contents of her cup, glaring at the orange juice in general as it sloshed around. "What do you think of it?"
Artemis paused, collecting his thoughts. "I can see no particular symbolism of the laser pen itself, except possibly as a reminder of a laser sight. Its placement in the rose garden indicates that, if it was a goad, it was directed at the… events that occurred therein. Why such a clumsy attempt at a provocation would be made, I'm not certain. Why would anyone wish to attract the wrath of the Fowl dynasty?"
"And…?"
A glare was sent Juliet's way. "To be perfectly blunt, it makes no sense to me."
"So?" Holly asked, slicing her toast viciously with a knife.
Artemis blinked at Holly's abrupt comment. "What do you mean?"
Holly glared at him sullenly. "So what if it makes no sense?"
Taken somewhat aback, he replied, "People, and their actions, are logical: even if they initially appear to be irrational." He steepled his fingers; despite his abhorrence of psychologists, he enjoyed lecturing on psychology. "Emotional motives like pride, love, depression, greed—though they may seem unpredictable, they make sense. They combine in varying degrees to form complexes, which in turn determine the entire psyche of a particular being. They are thus predictable. I only need to determine the make up of this psyche, however complex: then, when her recent interactions with her environment are taken into account, like the influence of a family member, or a bribe, Medea will become predictable."
"Why?"
The bluntness of her question irritated him somewhat, as if it had somehow violated his perfect logic. "That's simply the way the mind works—actions are derived from thoughts, those thoughts are derived from the psyche, which are in turn derived by the reactions to the environment around them, and within them. Thus, if I know the environment, and I know the psyche, I can derive the thoughts and future actions: I can predict them."
"Why?"
He tapped his fingers on the table to the rhythm of a Wagner, somewhat testily. "Logic, the utilization of the mind, pure reason, rationality, take your pick—call me Hellenistic, but those are all vastly preferable to intuition as a method of conclusion."
Holly squinted at him over the rim of her cup; Juliet was thoroughly lost, and amused herself by picking at her nail polish. "How can you predict the actions of something infinitely complex?"
"People are not infinitely complex," Artemis countered. "Rather, they are relatively simple. Compare: there are laws that govern the universe; the universe makes sense. There are laws that govern the psyche; the psyche makes sense. I only need help with this initial derivation, and then she is 'solvable', in the sense of inputting variables into an equation and emerging with a solution, a prediction. Granted, I am no Hari Seldon: the complexes that make up her psyche are not complete, and are imperfect, but they are close enough that the estimate is the solution, rather like finding the area under the curve. You can use smaller and smaller rectangles, or you can find the asymptote of the derivation. It makes sense."
"Quantum makes sense?"
"It does to me," Artemis snapped, somewhat surprised Holly even knew the word. "Everyday, more and more laws are uncovered that govern the nuances of the quantum, the nuances of the very universe—more laws that come closer to the definitive Theory of Everything. Such laws exist; it is only a matter of time before we discover them. So it is with Medea."
"Even in what science has explained," Holly said eventually, "there are still anomalies."
Artemis frowned; his mind was getting an unexpected work out from an unexpected source. However, he put Holly's lack of understanding to his inarticulateness. He was used to expressing himself to his peers, not to the common mind. "There are, granted, things that remain enigmas in the circles of what we consider explained, but the basic laws are there, and the gist of the finer laws are there as well. Let me reiterate: these laws will come eventually. Even human scientists realize that the universe is almost entirely defined, and fairy scientists already have String Theory down pat."
"So," Holly said slowly, "though the universe itself is not entirely explained, people are?"
"Yes."
Holly leaned over and upended the marmalade pitcher over his head in one smooth move. "Were you able to predict that?"
It was too much: dripping in marmalade and proven wrong in one fell blow? Artemis was speechless, and Juliet, finally understanding something in the passage, giggled madly.
"That doesn't count!" Artemis protested after wiping marmalade from his eyes. "That wasn't premeditated—"
"Actually," Holly replied, "I've been thinking about doing that all morning. You see, I'm in a terrible mood, and I need an outlet. Predictable. Using a convenient, yet thoroughly satisfying device, also predictable. The moment of execution, however—" Holly grinned, for the first real time that morning. "Unpredictable. I could have made my point at any time."
"I had predicted it with sufficient time to close my eyes," he said stiffly. "So it was predictable."
"Liar," she said, and upended the orange juice over his head as well.
:i:
Well... er...
Sorry about the conversation between Holly and Artemis. I am truly, really, sincerely, the most inarticulate person in the world. I had all of this wonderful reasoning and logic laid out for Artemis, and I can't right it out. It's repetitious and terrible, and no amount of editing seems to be able to fix it. For that, I apologize. I hope that someone noticed that I was trying to mix thought provoking stuffwith humor, and maybe get a grin out of it.
Besides that... another transition chapter. I had intended to get into some good stuff - Artemis starting to narrow in on her - but I ended up having too much fun with Holly & Artemis and the OOC!Juliet. So, again, sorry. CC much appreciated, but are reviews are lovely too.
