The Time Paradox Read online

  “That’s our last option. I don’t want our little friend breaking his neck on the way down. First we try gentle persuasion.”

  From his pocket, Artemis tugged a small ziplock bag containing an amber gel flecked with black and green.

  “My own concoction,” he explained. “The sifakas are from the Indriidae family of primates, which, as you know, is a strictly vegetarian family.”

  “Who wouldn’t know that?” wondered Butler, who had not exactly put away his pistol.

  Artemis unzipped the bag, releasing a sweet thick aroma that wound its way upward, toward the lemur.

  “Sap concentrate, with a potpourri of African vegetation. No lemur could resist this. But if this particular primate’s brain is stronger than his stomach, fire away. One shot, if you please, and avoid the head. The needle alone would probably be enough to crack that tiny skull.”

  Butler would have snorted, but the lemur was moving. It crawled along the branch, dipping its pointed nose to catch the odor, touching the smell with a darting pink tongue.

  “Hmm,” said the bodyguard. “That concoction won’t work on humans, I suppose.”

  “Ask me again in six months,” said Artemis. “I am doing some pheromone experiments.”

  The lemur scampered forward now, hypnotized by the glorious aroma. When the branch ran out, it dropped to the ground and hopped forward on two legs, fingers outstretched toward the bag.

  Artemis grinned. “This game is over.”

  “Maybe not,” said Butler. In the cage beside them, the long-haired boy was on his feet, and the female was making a very strange noise.

  The corona of magic around fourteen-year-old Artemis and Holly faded, and along with it went the dreamlike trance insulating Artemis’s mind.

  He was instantly alert. Holly had kissed him. Artemis backpedaled, jumping to his feet and spreading his arms wide to counteract the sudden dizziness.

  “Eh, thanks,” he said awkwardly. “That was unexpected.”

  Holly smiled, feeling a little embarrassed “Artemis. You’re okay. Any more healings and you’ll be nothing but scar tissue held together by magic thread.”

  Artemis thought that it would be nice to stay here and talk like this, but one cage over his future was escaping with his past.

  He understood immediately what had happened. Mulch’s nose had led them to the right place, but the cages were built like interlocking blocks, and so the lemur had been above them, but also in the next cage. He should have remembered that, if he had been here before. But Artemis had no memory of visiting the central compound. As far as he was aware, the park director had brought the lemur into a special viewing room. This was confusing.

  “Very well,” he said. “I see where we are . . .”

  He was thinking aloud, steadying his mind, trying to forget the kiss for now. Think about it later.

  Artemis rubbed the red sparks from his eyes, then turned as quickly as the post-healing vertigo would allow. There he was, his younger self, enticing the silky sifaka lemur with a bag of amber paste.

  Sap, I bet. Perhaps with a few twigs and leaves. Wasn’t I a clever boy.

  An immediate solution was needed. A fluid quick-fire plan. Artemis rubbed his eye sockets as if that could sharpen his mind.

  “Mulch, can you tunnel?”

  The dwarf opened his mouth to answer, but threw up instead.

  “I dunno,” he said finally. “My head’s a bit flippy floppy. Stomach too. That bash really shook me.” His belly made a sound like an outboard motor. “’Scuse me. I think I gotta ...”

  He did indeed gotta. Mulch crawled into a fern patch and let fly with the remainder of his stomach contents. Several leaves wilted on the spot.

  No use, thought Artemis. I need a miracle, or that lemur is gone and dead.

  He grabbed Holly’s shoulders. “Do you have any magic left?”

  “A little, Artemis. A few sparks, maybe.”

  “Can you talk to the animals?”

  Holly twisted her chin to the left until her neck bone clicked, checking the tank.

  “I could do that, anything except trolls. They don’t fall for that trick.”

  Artemis nodded, muttering to himself. Thinking.

  “Okay. Okay. I want you to scare that lemur away from me. The younger me. And I need confusion. Can you do that?”

  “I can try.”

  Holly closed her eyes, breathed deeply through her nose, filling her lungs, then threw her head back, and howled. It was a fantastic noise. Lions, apes, wolves, and eagles. They were all in there. The howl was punctuated by the staccato chatter of monkeys and the hiss of a thousand snakes.

  Artemis the elder stepped back, instinctively terrified. Some primal part of his brain interpreted this message as fear and pain. His skin crawled and he had to fight his every instinct not to run and hide.

  Artemis the younger reached down to the lemur, dangling the ziplock bag in front of its twitching nose. The lemur laid the pads of its fingers on Artemis’s wrist.

  I have him, thought the Irish boy. The money for the expedition is mine.

  Then a wall of unholy sound blasted him like a force-ten wind. Young Artemis staggered back, dropping the bag of paste, suddenly irrationally terrified.

  Something wants to kill me. But what? Every animal in the world, it sounds like.

  The park’s residents were thoroughly spooked too. They screeched and chattered, rattling their cages, hurling themselves against the bars. Monkeys tried repeatedly to leap across the moats surrounding their islands. A thousand-pound Sumatran rhino charged the heavy doors of its cage, rattling the hinges with each attack. A red wolf snarled and snapped, an Iberian lynx hissed, slashing the air, and a snow leopard chased its tail, flicking its head and mewling anxiously.

  Butler could not help but shift his focus.

  “It’s the female creature,” he stated. “Making some kind of sound. It’s riling these animals up. I’m a bit disturbed myself.”

  Artemis did not take his gaze from the lemur. “You know what to do,” he said to his bodyguard.

  Butler knew. If there is an obstacle preventing the completion of a mission, remove the obstacle. He strode quickly to the bars, poked the pistol’s muzzle through the mesh, and put a dart into the female’s shoulder.

  She stumbled backward, her fantastic orchestra of animal sounds squawking to a halt.

  Butler felt a shudder of guilt, which almost caused him to misstep on his way to Artemis’s side. Twice now he had tranq’ed this girl, or whatever she was, without having any idea what the chemicals were doing to her nonhuman system. His only consolation was that he had loaded small dosage darts as soon as he had secured the night watchman. She shouldn’t be out too long. A few minutes tops.

  The lemur was spooked now, tiny hands tickling the space before him. The sap cocktail was tempting, but there was danger here of the worst kind, and the urge to live was overriding the desire for a tasty treat.

  “No,” said Artemis, seeing fear cloud the creature’s eyes.“It’s not real. There is no danger.”

  The little simian was not convinced, as if it could read the boy’s intention in the sharp angles of his face.

  The silky sifaka squeaked once as though pinpricked, then scampered along Artemis’s arm, over his shoulder, and out the cage door.

  Butler lunged for the tail but missed by a hair. He closed his fingers into a fist.

  “Perhaps it’s time to admit defeat on this one. We are dangerously unprepared, and our adversaries have . . . abilities we know nothing about.”

  His charge’s reply was to hurry after the lemur.

  “Artemis, wait,” sighed Butler. “If we must proceed, then I will take the lead.”

  “They want the lemur,” Artemis panted as he ran. “And so it becomes more valuable than it was. When we catch the animal, then we are in a position of power.”

  Catching the animal was easier said than done. The lemur was incredibly agile and found purchase on the smoo
thest of surfaces. It darted without a wobble along a metal railing, leaping fully ten feet to the lower branches of a potted palm, and from there jumped to the compound wall.

  “Shoot!” hissed Artemis.

  It occurred to Butler briefly that he did not care for Artemis’s expression. Almost cruel, his brow creased where a ten-year-old’s brow should not have creases. But he would worry about that later, for now he had an animal to sedate.

  Butler was quick, but the silky sifaka was quicker. In a flash of fur it scaled the wall and dropped outside into the night, leaving a blurred white jet stream in its wake.

  “Wow,” said Butler, almost in admiration. “That was fast.”

  Artemis was not impressed by his bodyguard’s choice of words. “Wow? I think this merits more than a wow. Our quarry has escaped, and with it the funds for my Arctic expedition.”

  At this point Butler was fast losing interest in the lemur. There were other less ignoble ways to raise funds. He shuddered to think of the ribbing he would have to endure if an account of this night somehow made it to Farmer’s Bar in LA, which was owned by one ex-blue-diamond bodyguard and frequented by many more.

  But in spite of his distaste for the mission, Butler’s sense of loyalty forced him to share a fact that the park director had mentioned earlier, when Artemis was busy studying the alarm system.

  “There is something that I know, which you may not know,” he said archly.

  Artemis was not in the mood for games. “Oh, really. And what would that be?”

  “Lemurs are tree creatures,” replied Butler. “That little guy is spooked, and he’s going to climb the biggest tree he can find, even if it isn’t actually a tree. If you see what I mean.”

  Artemis saw immediately, which wasn’t difficult, as the huge structures cast a lattice of moonshadows over the entire compound. “Of course, old friend,” he said, his frown-crease disappearing. “The pylons.”

  Things were going disastrously wrong for Artemis the elder. Mulch was injured, Holly was unconscious again, feet sticking out of the dwarf’s hole, and he himself was fast running out of ideas. The deafening clamor of a hundred endangered species going berserk was not helping his concentration.

  The animals are going ape, he thought. Then: What a time to develop a sense of humor.

  All he could do was prioritize.

  I need to get Holly out of here, he realized. That is the most important thing.

  Mulch moaned, rolling onto his back, and Artemis saw that there was a bleeding gash on his forehead.

  He stumbled to the dwarf’s side. “I imagine you’re in great pain,” he said. “It’s to be expected with such a laceration.” Bedside manner was not one of Artemis’s strong suits. “You will have a rather large scar, but then looks are not really important to you.”

  Mulch squinted at Artemis through a narrowed eye. “Are you trying to be funny? Oh my God, you’re not. That was actually the nicest thing you could think of to say.”

  He dabbed at his bloody forehead with a finger. “Ow. That hurts.”

  “Of course.”

  “I will have to seal it. You know all about this dwarf talent, I suppose.”

  “Naturally,” said Artemis, keeping a straight face. “I’ve seen it a dozen times.”

  “I doubt it,” grunted Mulch, plucking a wiggling beard hair from his chin. “But I don’t have much choice now, do I? With the LEP elf in dreamland, I won’t be getting any magical help from that quarter.”

  Artemis heard a rustling in the undergrowth at the rear of the cage. “You’d better hurry it up. I think the gorilla is overcoming his fear of fairies.”

  Wincing, Mulch introduced the beard hair to his gash. It took off like a tadpole, poking through the skin, stitching the flaps together. Though he groaned and shuddered, Mulch managed to stay conscious.

  When the hair had finished its work and the wound was tied up tighter than a fly in a ball of spiderweb, Mulch spat on his hand and rubbed the gooey mess onto the wound.

  “All sealed,” he proclaimed; then, upon seeing the glint in Artemis’s eye, “Don’t get any ideas, Mud Boy. This only works on dwarfs, and what’s more, my beard hair only works on me. You poke one of my lovelies into your skin, and all you’ll get is an infection.”

  The rustling in the undergrowth grew louder, and Artemis Fowl decided to forego further information, which for him was almost unheard of.

  “Time we were off. Can you seal the tunnel behind us?”

  “I can bring the whole lot down easy as pie. You’d better take the lead, though; there are better ways to go than being buried alive in . . . shall we say, recyclings. Need I say more?”

  There was no need to say another syllable. Artemis jumped into the hole, grabbed Holly’s shoulders, and began dragging her down the tunnel, past the blobs of luminous spittle, toward the proverbial light at the end. It was like traveling through space toward the Milky Way.

  The sounds of his own body were amplified. Gulping breath, drumming heartbeat, the bend and creak of muscle and sinew.

  Holly rolled along easily, her suit hissing on the rough surface like a nest of vipers. Or maybe there were snakes down here, the way Artemis’s luck was going.

  I am trying to do something good for a change, he reminded himself. And this is how the fates reward me. A life of crime was infinitely easier.

  Surface noise was amplified by the tunnel’s acoustics. The gorilla sounded furious now. Artemis could hear the slap of fists on chest and an enraged huffing.

  He realizes he has been tricked.

  His theorizing was cut short by Mulch’s appearance in the tunnel, the spittle bandage on his forehead casting a zombie glow on his face.

  “Gorilla coming,” he said as he gulped down lungfuls of air. “Gotta go.”

  Artemis heard twin thumps as the gorilla landed on the tunnel floor. The huge simian roared a challenge down the hole, and the noise grew in ferocity with every foot it traveled.

  Holly moaned, and Artemis pulled harder on her shoulders.

  Mulch sucked down air as fast as he could, bundling Artemis and Holly deeper into the tunnel. Twenty yards to go. They would never make it. The gorilla was advancing, pulverizing each spittle lantern as he passed it, roaring with bloodlust. Artemis swore he saw a flash of teeth.

  The tunnel seemed to shudder with each blow. Large sections collapsed. Mud and rock clattered down on Artemis’s head and shoulders. Dirt pooled in Holly’s eye sockets.

  Mulch’s cheeks ballooned, and he opened his lips the merest fraction to speak.

  “Okay,” he said in a helium voice. “The tank is full.”

  The dwarf gathered Artemis and Holly in his burly Popeye arms and vented every bubble of air in his body. The resulting jet stream propelled the group down the length of the tunnel. The trip was short, jarring, and confusing. The breath was driven from Artemis’s lungs, and his fingers were stretched to cracking, but he would not let go of Holly.

  He could not let her die.

  The unfortunate gorilla was blown head-over-rump by the windstorm and yanked back up the tunnel as though tethered to an elastic cable. It whooped as it went, digging its fingers into the tunnel wall.

  Artemis, Holly, and Mulch popped from the tunnel mouth, bouncing and skittering along the ditch in a tangle of limbs and torsos. The stars above them were speed-streaked, and the moon was a smear of yellow light.

  An old famine wall halted their progress, crumbling under the impact of three bodies.

  “For more than a hundred and fifty years this wall stood,” coughed Artemis. “Then we come along.”

  He lay on his back, feeling thoroughly defeated. His mother would die, and Holly would soon hate him when she worked out the truth.

  All is lost. I have no idea what to do.

  Then one of the notorious Rathdown pylons sharpened in his vision—more specifically, the figures clambering along its service ladder.

  The lemur has escaped, Artemis realized. And is climbing as
high as it can.

  A reprieve. There was still a chance.

  What I need to save this situation is a full LEP surveillance and assault kit. Perhaps I will have No1 send one back for me.

  Artemis disentangled himself from the others and decided that underneath the pillar’s cornerstone would be a secure spot. He tugged off the remaining stones stacked on top, then wiggled his fingers under the final boulder, and heaved. It came away easily, revealing nothing but worms and damp earth. No package from the future; for whatever reason that particular trick would only work once.

  So. No help. I must make do with what is available.

  Artemis returned to where Holly and Mulch lay. Both were moaning.

  “I think I split a gut getting rid of that wind,” said Mulch. “There was a bit too much fear in the mix.”

  Artemis’s nose wrinkled.

  “Will you be okay?”

  “Give me a minute and I’ll be plenty strong enough to carry that huge amount of gold you promised me.”

  Holly was groggy. Her eyes fluttered as she tried to pull herself together, and her arms flopped like fish out of water. Artemis did a quick pulse and temperature check. Slight fever but steady heartbeat. Holly was recovering, but it would be several minutes before she could control her mind or body.

  I must do this on my own, Artemis realized. No Holly, no Butler.

  Just Artemis versus Artemis.

  And perhaps an omnitool, he thought, reaching into Holly’s pocket.

  *** The Rathdown electricity pylons had been featured in Irish news headlines several times since their erection. Environmentalists protested vehemently that the appearance of the gigantic pylons blighted an otherwise beautiful valley, not to mention the possible detrimental effect the uninsulated power lines could have on the health of anyone or anything living below their arcs. The national electricity board had countered these arguments by pleading that the lines were too high to harm anything, and that to construct smaller pylons around the valley would blight ten times more land.

  And so a half dozen of these metal giants bridged Rathdown Valley, reaching a height of three hundred feet at their zenith. The pylon bases were often ringed by protesters, so much so that the power company had taken to servicing the lines by helicopter.