The Time Paradox Page 4

  I’m not surprised they’re quivering, she thought. And that’s only the beginning.

  As she flew, she worked on her problem: how to get four humans out of the blast zone in as many minutes.

  Until recently she would have had a second problem: the building itself. According to the fairy Book, fairies were forbidden to enter human buildings without an invitation. This was a ten-thousand-year-old hex that still had a little sting, causing nausea and loss of power to anyone who defied it. The law was an anachronism and a serious impediment to LEP operations, so after a series of public debates and a referendum, the hex had been lifted by demon warlock No1. It had taken the little demon five minutes to unravel a hex that had stumped elfin warlocks for centuries.

  Back to the original problem. Four large humans. Big explosion imminent.

  The first human was easy enough and the obvious choice. He was blocking the others and wore nothing but a towel and a tiny security guard’s cap, which perched on top of his skull like a nutshell on the head of a bear.

  Holly grimaced. I have to get him out of my sight as soon as possible, or I may never forget this image. That Mud Man has more muscles than a troll.

  Troll! Of course.

  There had been several additions to the Recon kit while Holly had been in Limbo, most invented and patented by Foaly, naturally. One such addition was a new clip of darts for her Neutrino. The Centaur called them anti-gravity darts, but the officers called them floaters.

  The darts were based on Foaly’s own Moonbelt, which generated a field around whatever was attached to it, reducing the earth’s gravitational pull to one fifth of normal. The Moonbelt was useful for transporting heavy equipment. Field officers quickly adapted the belt to their own specialized needs, attaching their prisoners to the pitons, which made them much easier to handle.

  Foaly had then developed a dart that had the same effect as his Moonbelt. The dart used the fugitive’s own flesh to conduct the charge that rendered him almost weightless. Even a troll seems less threatening when it is bobbing in the breeze like a balloon.

  Holly slipped the clip from her belt, using the heel of one hand to ram it into the Neutrino.

  Darts, she thought. Back to the Stone Age.

  The big security guard was square in her sights, his lip wobbling petulantly.

  No need for laser sights with this Mud Man, she thought. I could hardly miss.

  And she didn’t. The tiny dart pricked the man’s shoulder, and he quivered for a moment until the antigravity field encircled him.

  “Ooh,” he said. “That’s a little . . .”

  Then Holly landed beside him, grasped his pale thigh, and hurled him into the sky. He went faster than a popped balloon, leaving a trail of surprised O’s in his wake.

  The remaining men hurriedly finished pulling on their pants; two tripped in their haste, banging heads before crashing to the ground. Plates of tomato-and-mozzarella rolls were batted aside; bottles of beer went spinning across the tiles.

  “My sandwiches,” said one man, even as he struggled with his purple jeans.

  No time for panic, thought Holly, silent and invisible among them. She ducked low, avoiding pale swinging limbs, and quickly loosed off three more darts.

  A strange calm descended on the sauna as three grown men found themselves floating toward a hole in the roof.

  “My feet are—” began the bespectacled man.

  “Shut up about your feet!” shouted sandwich man, swiping at him with a fist. The motion sent him spinning and bouncing like a pinball.

  Foaly overrode Holly’s MUTE.

  “D’Arvit, Holly. You have seconds. Seconds! Get out of there now! Even your suit armor will not stop an explosion of this magnitude.”

  Holly’s face was red and sweating in spite of her helmet’s climate control.

  Seconds left. How many times have I heard that?

  No time for subtleties. She lay flat on her back, tapping the readout on her Neutrino to select concussion beams, and fired a wide pattern blast straight up.

  The beam bore the men aloft, as a fast-flowing river would bear bubbles, bouncing them off the walls and each other before finally popping them through the still-sparking circle in the roof.

  The last man out looked down as he left, wondering absently why he was not gibbering in panic. Surely flying was grounds for hysteria?

  That will probably come later, he decided. If there is a later for me.

  In the steam of the sauna, it seemed to him that there was a small humanoid shape lying on the floor. A diminutive figure with wings, which leaped to its feet, then sped toward the flying men.

  It’s all true, thought the man. Just like Lord of the Rings. Fantasy creatures. All true.

  Then the island exploded, and the man stopped worrying about fantasy creatures and began worrying about his trousers, which had just caught fire.

  * * *

  With all four men in the air, Holly decided that it was time to get herself as far from the supposed island as possible. She jumped from a squatting position, engaged her wings in the air, and shot into the morning sky.

  “Very nice,” said Foaly. “You know they’re calling that move the Hollycopter, don’t you?”

  Holly drew her weapon, urging the weightless men farther away from the island with short bursts.

  “Busy staying alive, Foaly. Talk later.”

  Foaly said. “Sorry, friend. I’m worried. I talk when I’m worried. Caballine thinks it’s a defense mechanism. Anyway, the Hollycopter. You did the same takeoff during that rooftop shoot-out in Darmstadt. Major . . . I mean . . . Commander Kelp caught it on video. They’re using the footage in the academy now. You wouldn’t believe how many cadets have broken their ankles trying the same trick.”

  Holly was about to insist that he please shut up when Shelly ignited his methane cells, decimating his old shell and sending tons of debris hurtling skyward. The shock wave took Holly from below like a giant’s punch, sending her pinwheeling. She felt her suit flex to avoid the impact, the tiny scales closing ranks like the shields of a demon battalion. There was a slight hiss as her helmet plumped the safety bags protecting her brain and spinal cord. The screens in her visor flickered, jumped, then settled.

  The world spun by her visor in a series of blues and grays. The Artificial Horizon in her helmet did several revolutions, end over end, though Holly realized that in actuality she was the one revolving, and not the display.

  Alive. Still alive. My odds must be getting short.

  Foaly broke in on her thoughts. “. . . heart rate is up, though I don’t know why. One would think you’d be used to these situations by now. The four humans made it, you will be delighted to know, since you risked your life and my technology to save them. What if one of my floaters had fallen into human hands?”

  Holly used a combination of gestures and blinks to fire short bursts from several of her wings’ twelve engines, wrestling back control of her rig.

  She opened her visor to cough and spit, then answered his accusation.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking. And all LEP equipment is fitted with remote-destruct. Even me! So the only way your precious floaters were ever going to fall into human hands was if your technology failed.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Foaly, “I need to get rid of those darts.”

  Below was pandemonium. It seemed as though half of Helsinki’s inhabitants had already managed to launch themselves in various crafts, and a veritable flotilla was heading toward the explosion site, led by a coast guard vessel, two powerful outboards churning at its stern, nose up for speed. The kraken itself was obscured by smoke and dust, but charred fragments of its shell rained down like volcanic ash, coating the decks of the boats below and draping a dark blanket over the Baltic Sea.

  Twenty yards to Holly’s left, the floating men bobbed happily in the air, riding the last ripples of explosive shock, pants hanging in tattered ruins from their waists.

  “I am surprised,” sa
id Holly, zooming in on the men. “No screaming or wetting themselves.”

  “A little drop of relaxant in the dart.” Foaly chuckled. “Well, I say a little drop. Enough to have a troll missing his mommy.”

  “Trolls occasionally eat their mothers,” commented Holly.

  “Exactly.”

  Foaly waited until the men had dropped to within ten feet of the ocean’s surface, then remote-detonated the tiny charge in each dart. Four small pops were followed by four loud splashes. The men were in the water no more than a few seconds before the coast guard reached them.

  “Okay,” said the centaur, obviously relieved. “Potential disaster averted, and our good deed done for the day. Kick up your boots and head back for the shuttle station. I have no doubt that Commander Kelp will want a detailed report.”

  “Just a second, I have mail.”

  “Mail! Mail! Do you really think this is the time? Your power levels are down, and the rear panels of your suit have taken a severe pasting. You need to get out of there before your shield fails altogether.”

  “I have to read this one, Foaly. It’s important.”

  The mail icon flashing in Holly’s visor was tagged with Artemis’s signature. Artemis and Holly color-coded their mail icons. Green was social, blue was business, and red was urgent. The icon in Holly’s visor pulsed a bright red. She blinked at the icon, opening the short message.

  Mother dying, it read. Please come at once. Bring No1.

  Holly felt a cold dread in her stomach, and the world seemed to lurch before her eyes.

  Mother dying. Bring No1.

  The situation must be desperate if Artemis was asking her to bring the powerful demon warlock.

  She flashed back to the day, eighteen years ago, when her own mother had passed away. Almost two decades now, and the loss was still as painful as a raw wound. A thought struck her.

  It’s not eighteen years. It’s twenty-one. I’ve been away for three.

  Coral Short had been a doctor with LEPmarine, who patrolled the Atlantic, cleaning up after humans, protecting endangered species. She had been mortally injured when a particularly rancid-looking tanker they were shadowing accidentally doused their submarine with radioactive waste. Dirty radiation is poison to fairies, and it had taken her mother a week to die.

  “I will make them pay,” Holly had vowed, crying at her mother’s bedside in Haven Clinic. “I will hunt down every last one of those Mud Men.”

  “No,” her mother had said with surprising force. “I spent my career saving creatures. You must do the same. Destruction cannot be my legacy.”

  It was one of the last things she would ever say. Three days later, Holly stood stone-faced at her mother’s recycling ceremony, her green dress uniform buttoned to the chin, the omnitool that her mother had given her as a graduation present in its holster on her belt.

  Saving creatures. So Holly applied to Recon.

  And now Artemis’s mother was dying. Holly realized that she didn’t think of Artemis as a human anymore, just as a friend.

  “I need to go to Ireland,” she said.

  Foaly did not bother to argue, as he had sneaked a peek at this urgent mail on Holly’s screen.

  “Go. I can cover for you here for a few hours. I could say you’re completing the Ritual. As it happens, there’s a full moon tonight and we still have a few magical sites near Dublin. I’ll send a message to Section Eight. Maybe Qwan will let No1 out of the magi-lab for a few hours.”

  “Thanks, old friend.”

  “You’re welcome. Now go. I’m going to get out of your head for a while and monitor the chatter here. Maybe I can plant a few ideas in the human media. I like the idea of an underground natural gas pocket. It’s almost the truth.”

  Almost the truth.

  Holly couldn’t help applying the phrase to Artemis’s mail. So often the Irish boy manipulated people by telling them almost the truth.

  She chided herself silently. Surely not. Even Artemis Fowl would not lie about something this serious.

  Everyone had their limits.

  Didn’t they?

  CHAPTER 3

  ECHOES OF MAGIC

  Artemis senior assembled his troops in Fowl Manor’s conference room, which had originally been a banqueting hall. Until recently the soaring Gothic arches had been hidden by a false ceiling, but Angeline Fowl had ordered the ceiling to be removed and the hall restored to its original double-height glory.

  Artemis, his father, and Butler sat in black leather Marcel Breuer chairs around a glass-topped table with space for ten more people.

  Not so long ago there were smugglers seated at this table, thought Artemis. Not to mention crime lords, hackers, insider traders, counterfeiters, black marketers, and cat burglars. The old family businesses.

  Artemis Senior closed his laptop. He was pale and obviously exhausted, but the old determination shone brightly in his eyes.

  “The plan is a simple one. We must seek out not just a second opinion, but as many opinions as possible. Butler will take the jet and go to China. No time for official channels, so perhaps you could find a strip where immigration is a little lax.”

  Butler nodded. “I know just the place. I can be there and back in two days, all going well.”

  Artemis Senior was satisfied. “Good. The jet is fueled and ready. I have already organized a full crew and an extra pilot.”

  “I just need to pack a few things, then I can be on my way.”

  Artemis could imagine what kinds of things Butler would pack, especially if there were no officials at the airstrip.

  “What will you do, Father?” he asked.

  “I am going to England,” said Artemis Senior. “I can take the helicopter to London City Airport, and from there a limousine to Harley Street. There are several specialists I can talk to, and it will be far more efficient to send me there than to bring them all here. If any can shed even the most feeble ray of light on your mother’s situation, then I will pay them whatever it takes to get them back here. Buy out their practices, if necessary.”

  Artemis nodded. Wise tactics. Still, he would expect no less from the man who had successfully run a criminal empire for more than two decades, and a humanitarian one for the past few years.

  Everything Artemis Senior did now was ethical, from his fair-trade clothes company to his shares in Earth-power, a consortium of like-minded businessmen who were building everything from renewable fuel cars to geothermal rods and solar panels. He had even had the Fowl cars, jet, and helicopter fitted with advanced emission filters to lighten the family’s carbon footprint.

  “I shall remain here,” announced Artemis, without waiting to be told. “I can coordinate your efforts, set up a Webcam so that the Harley Street specialists can see Mother, supervise Dr. Schalke and Miss Book, and also conduct my own Internet search for possible cures.”

  Artemis Senior half smiled. “Exactly, son. I hadn’t thought of the Webcam.”

  Butler was anxious to leave, but he had a point to make before going. “I am not comfortable with Artemis being left alone. A genius he may be, but he is still a habitual meddler and a magnet for trouble.” The bodyguard winked at Artemis. “No offense, young sir, but you could turn a Sunday picnic into an international incident.”

  Artemis accepted the accusation graciously. “None taken.”

  “That thought has occurred to me,” said Artemis Senior, scratching his chin. “But there is nothing for it. The nanny has agreed to take the twins to her cottage in Howth for a couple of days, but Arty is needed here, and so he will have to fend for himself.”

  “Which will not be a problem,” said Artemis. “Have a little faith, please.”

  Artemis Senior reached across the table, covering his son’s hand with his own. “Faith in each other is all we have now. We have to believe that saving your mother is possible. Do you believe it?”

  Artemis noticed one of the upper windows swinging slowly ajar. A leaf curled into the room, riding a swirling br
eeze, then the window seemed to close itself.

  “I absolutely believe it, Father. More with every minute.”

  Holly did not reveal herself until Artemis Senior’s modified Sikorsky S-76C had lifted off from the rooftop heliport. Artemis was busy rigging a Webcam at the foot of his mother’s bed when the elf shimmered into view with her hand on his shoulder.

  “Artemis, I am so sorry,” she said softly.

  “Thanks for coming, Holly,” said Artemis. “You got here quickly.”

  “I was aboveground, in Finland, chasing a kraken.”

  “Ah yes, Tennyson’s beast,” said Artemis, closing his eyes and remembering a few lines from the famous poem.

  “Below the thunders of the upper deep;

  Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

  His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep,

  The Kraken sleepeth.”

  “Sleepeth? Not anymore. Watch the news headlines later. There was a natural gas explosion, apparently.”

  “I would guess that Foaly is up to his old spin-doctoring tricks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not many kraken left now,” commented Artemis. “Seven, by my reckoning.”

  “Seven?” said Holly, surprised. “We’re only tracking six.”

  “Ah, yes, six. I meant six. New suit?” he asked, changing the subject a little too quickly.

  “Three years more advanced than the last one,” replied Holly, filing the kraken tidbit for investigation at a later time. “It has autoarmor. If the sensors feel something big coming, the entire suit flexes to cushion the blow. It saved my life once today already.”

  A message icon beeped in Holly’s helmet, and she took a moment to read the short text.

  “No1 is on the way. They’re sending the Section Eight shuttle. No way to contain this now, so whatever we need to do has to be done fast.”

  “Good. I need all the help I can get.”

  Their conversation petered out as Angeline Fowl’s deathly illness completely occupied their thoughts. She radiated pallor, and the smell of lilies hung yellow in the air.