Artemis Fowl: the time paradox

entire affair, so I dropped out of the stream a few days early and took my time getting to know your group. Mother, father, Butler.’

‘Where is my mother?’ shouted Artemis, anger punching through his calm exterior, like a hammer through ice.

‘Why I’m right here, darling,’ said Opal in Angeline’s voice. ‘I am really sick and I need you to go into the past and fetch a magic monkey for me.’ She laughed mockingly. ‘Humans are such fools.’

‘So this is not some kind of shape-shifting spell?’

‘No, idiot. I was perfectly aware that Angeline would be examined. Shape-shifting spells are only skin deep, and even an adept such as myself can only hold one for short periods.’

‘This means that my mother is not dying?’ Artemis knew the answer, but he had to be certain.

Opal ground her teeth, torn between impatience and the desire to explain the brilliance of her plan.

‘Not yet. Though soon the damage to her systems will be irreversible. I have possessed her from a distance. An extreme form of the mesmer. With power like mine, I can manipulate her very organs. Imitating Spelltropy was child’s play. And once I have little Jayjay I can open my own hole in time.’

‘So you are nearby? Your real self?’

Opal had had enough of questions. ‘Yes, no. What does it matter? I win, you lose. Accept it, or everyone dies.’

Artemis edged towards the door. ‘This game is not over yet.’

Footsteps outside and a strange rhythmic squeaking. A wheelbarrow, Artemis guessed, though he did not have much experience with gardening aids.

‘Oh, I think this game is over now,’ said Opal slyly.

The heavy door bounced in fits as it was butted from the outside. Butler pushed the trolley into the room, stumbling after it, hunched and shivering.

‘He is strong, this one,’ said Opal, almost in admiration. ‘I mesmerized him, but still he refused to kill your friends. The stupid man’s heart almost burst. It was all I could do to force him to construct the barrel and fill it with fat.’

‘To smother fairy magic,’ Artemis guessed.

‘Obviously, idiot. Now, the game is absolutely over. Finished. Butler is my ace in the hole, as you humans might say. I hold all the aces. You are alone. Give me the lemur and I will go back to my own time. Nobody has to suffer.’

If Opal gets the lemur, then the entire planet will suffer, thought Artemis.

Opal snapped her fingers. ‘Butler, seize the animal.’

Butler took a single step towards Artemis, then stopped. Shudders racked his broad back, and his fingers were claws wringing an invisible neck.

‘I said get the animal, you stupid human.’

The bodyguard dropped to his knees, pounding the floor, trying to drive the voice from his head.

‘Get the lemur now!’ shrieked Opal.

Butler had enough strength for three words. ‘Go… to… hell.’

Then he clutched at his arm and collapsed.

‘Oops,’ said Opal. ‘Heart attack. I broke him.’

Stay focused, Artemis ordered himself. Opal may hold all the aces, but perhaps there is a hole in one of those aces.

Artemis tickled Jayjay under the chin.

‘Hide, little friend. Hide.’

And with that he tossed the lemur towards a chandelier suspended from the ceiling. Jayjay flailed in the air, then latched on to a glass strut. He pulled himself nimbly into the light, hiding behind sheets of dangling crystal.

Opal immediately lost interest in Artemis, concentrating on levitating Angeline’s body to the level of the chandalier. With a squeal of frustration she realized that such remote elevation was beyond even a being of her power.

‘Doctor Schalke!’ she called, and somewhere her real mouth was calling it too. ‘Into the bedroom, Schalke!’

Artemis filed this information, then ducked below Opal to his mother’s bedside. A mobile defibrillator cart was parked among the row of medical equipment ranged around the four-poster, and Artemis quickly switched it on, dragging the entire contraption to the limit of its lead to where Butler had collapsed.

The bodyguard lay face up, hands thrown back as though there were an invisible boulder on his chest. His face was stretched with the effort of moving the great stone. Eyes closed, sweat sheened, teeth clenched.

He unbuttoned Butler’s shirt, exposing a barrel chest, hard with muscle, scars and tension. A cursory examination told him that there was no heartbeat. Butler’s body was dead; only his brain was left alive.

‘Hold on, old friend,’ murmured Artemis, trying to keep his mind focused.

He pulled the defibrillator paddles from their holsters, peeling back their disposable safety covers, leaving a thin coating of conductive gel on the contact surfaces. The paddles seemed to grow heavier as he waited for the unit to charge, and by the time the go light flashed green, they felt like rocks in his hands.

‘Clear!’ he called to no one in particular, then positioned the paddles firmly on Butler’s chest and hit the shock button under his thumb, sending 360 joules of electricity into his bodyguard’s heart. Butler’s body arched, and the sharp smell of burning hair and skin assailed Artemis’s nostrils. Gel crisped and sparked, burning twin rings where the pads had made contact. Butler’s eyes flew open and his massive hands gripped Artemis’s shoulders.

Is he still Opal’s slave?

‘Artemis,’ breathed Butler, but then frowned in confusion. ‘Artemis? How?’

‘Later, old friend,’ said the Irish boy brusquely, mentally progressing to the next problem. ‘Just rest for now.’

This was not an order he would have to repeat. Butler sank immediately into exhausted unconsciousness, but his heart beat strongly inside his chest. He had not been dead long enough to have suffered brain damage.

Artemis’s next problem was Opal, or more specifically how to get her out of his mother’s body. If she did not vacate soon, Artemis had no doubt that his mother would not recover from the ordeal.

Gathering his nerve with several deep breaths, Artemis switched his full attention to his mother’s hovering body. She was twirling below the chandelier as though suspended from it, clawing at Jayjay, who appeared to be taunting her by waving his hind quarters in her direction.

Can this situation get any more surreal?

Just then Doctor Schalke entered the room, brandishing a pistol that seemed too large for his delicate hands.

‘I am here, you creature. Though I must say I don’t like your tone. I may be spellbound, but I am not an animal.’

‘Do shut up, Schalke. I can see I will have to fry a few more of your brain cells. Now, please. Fetch that lemur!’

Schalke pointed four fingers of his free hand towards the chandelier. ‘The lemur is at a considerable height, yes? How do you suggest I fetch him? Perhaps I could shoot him dead?’

Opal swooshed low, arms and legs twirling like a harpy. ‘No!’ she shrieked, striking him around the head and shoulders. ‘I would shoot a hundred of you, a thousand, before I let you harm one hair of that creature’s fur. He is the future. My future! The world’s future!’

‘Indeed,’ said the doctor. ‘Were I not mesmerized, I suspect I should be yawning.’

‘Shoot the humans,’ commanded Opal. ‘The boy first, he is the most dangerous.’

‘Are you certain? The man mountain looks more dangerous to me.’

‘Shoot the boy!’ howled Opal, frustration sending tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Then Butler and then yourself.’

Artemis swallowed. This was cutting things a bit fine; his accomplice had better get a move on.

‘Very well,’ said Schalke, fiddling with the safety on Butler’s Sig Sauer. ‘Anything to escape these theatrics.’