The Time Paradox (21 page)

“Foul,” he said, repeating the word over and over. “Foul, foul. Fowl, Fowl.”

Holly crawled to her knees, coughing and spitting onto the dry sand. Her entire being felt battered and bruised from back to spirit. She looked at Kronski’s expression and realized that there was no point in asking him questions. The president of the Extinctionists was beyond logical conversation for the time being.

Possibly for good, she thought. I don’t see him leading any international organizations for a while.

Holly noticed something. One of Kronski’s lenses had completely shattered, revealing the eyeball underneath. The iris was a strange violet, almost the same shade as the spectacles had been, but this was not what caught Holly’s attention. The edge of the retina was ragged, as though it had been nibbled on by tiny sclera fish.

This man has been
mesmerized
, Holly realized. A fairy is controlling him.

She climbed to her feet and hobbled one-shoed down the nearest alley, the voices of squabbling greed fading behind her.

If a fairy is involved, then nothing is as it seems. And if nothing is as it seems, then perhaps Artemis Fowl still lives.

Mervall Brill winked at himself in the chrome door of a body freezer.

I am a handsome chap, he thought. And this lab coat covers the paunch rather well.

“Brill!” called Opal from her office. “How is that brain fluid coming?”

Merv jumped. “Just sucking him dry now, mistress.”

The pixie put his weight behind the trolley with its human cargo, trundling it down a short corridor to the lab itself. Being stuck in this tiny facility with Opal Koboi was no picnic. Just the three of them for weeks on end, draining the fluids from endangered species. Opal could afford to hire a thousand lab assistants to work for her, but she was uberparanoid about secrecy. Opal’s level of paranoia was such that she had begun to suspect plants and inanimate objects of spying on her.

“I can grow cameras!” she had shrieked at the Brill brothers during one briefing. “Who’s to say that despicable centaur Foaly hasn’t succeeded in splicing surveillance equipment to plants? So get rid of all the flowers. Rocks, too. I don’t trust them. Sullen little
blëbers
.”

So the Brill twins had spent an afternoon scouring the facility for anything that might contain a bug. Even the recycling toilet scent blocks had to go, as Opal was convinced they were photographing her when she used the facilities.

Still, though, Mistress Koboi is right to be paranoid, Merv admitted as he barged through the lab double doors. If the LEP ever found out what she was doing here, they would lock her up forever and a day.

The double doors led to a long triple-height laboratory. It was a place of misery. Cages were stacked to the ceiling, each one filled with a trapped animal. They moaned and keened, rattling their bars, butting the doors. A robot food-pellet dispensing machine whirred along the network, spitting gray pellets into the appropriate cages.

The center island was a series of operating pallets. Scores of animals lay sedated on the tables, secured, like Artemis, with rigid octobonds. Artemis caught sight of a Siberian tiger, paws in the air and bald patches shaved into its skull. On each patch there sat what looked like a tiny slice of liver. As they passed, one of the slices made a squelching sound, and a tiny light emitting diode on its ridge flashed red.

Merv stopped to peel it off, and Artemis saw to his horror that the thing’s underside was spiked with a dozen dripping spines.

“Full to the brim, Mr. Super Genetically Modified Leech Mosquito thing. You are a disgusting abomination, yes you are. But you sure know how to siphon brain fluid. I’d say you’re due for a squeezing.”

Merv pumped a foot pedal to open a nearby fridge and finger-tinkled the beakers inside until he found the right one.

“Here we go. SibTig BF.”

He placed the beaker on a chrome work surface, then squeezed the leech like a sponge until it surrendered its bounty of brain fliud. Afterward the leech was casually tossed into the trash.

“Love you lots,” said Mervall, returning to Artemis’s pallet. “Miss you loads.”

Artemis saw everything though the slit of an open eye. This was a depraved, horrible place, and he had to get out of here.

Holly will come for me, he thought, and then:
No, she won’t. She’ll think I’m dead.

This realization chilled his blood.

I went into the flames.

He would have to save himself, then. It would not be the first time. Stay alert; a chance will come and you must be ready to take it.

Mervall found room on the operating section and parked Artemis neatly in it.

“And he squeezes it into an impossible space. They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong. Mervall Brill is the king of trolley parking.” The pixie belched. “Which is not the future I had in mind for myself as a younger pixie.”

Then, somewhat moodily, he trawled a low-level aquarium with a perforated jug, until it was full of convulsing superleeches.

Oh no, thought Artemis. Oh, please.

And then he was forced to close his eyes as Mervall turned to face him.

Surely he will see my chest heaving. He will sedate me, and it will all be over.

But Mervall apparently did not notice. “Ooh, I hate you guys. Disgusting. I tell you something, human, if your subconscious can hear me, be glad you’re asleep, because you do
not
want to go through this awake.”

Artemis almost cracked then. But he thought of his mother, with less than a day left to her, and he kept silent.

He felt his left hand being tugged, and heard Mervall grunt.

“Stuck tight. Just a tick.”

The grip loosened, and Artemis tracked Mervall’s movement with his ears and nose. A brush of soft belly on his elbow. Breath blowing past his ear. Mervall was at his left shoulder, reaching across.

Artemis opened his right eye just enough to roll his pupil into the slit. There was an operating light directly overhead, craned in above the operating table on a thick flat chrome arm.

Chrome. Reflective.

Artemis watched Mervall’s actions in the surface. The pixie tapped the octobond’s touch-sensitive control pad, revealing a Gnommish keyboard. Then, singing a popular pixie pop song, he tapped in his password. One number with each beat of the chorus.

“‘Pixies rock hard!’” he sang. “‘Extreme pixie hard rock, baby.’”

Which seemed unlikely to Artemis, but he was glad of the song, as it gave him time to file Mervall’s pass code.

Mervall released one of the bonds, allowing him to extend Artemis’s forearm. Even if the human did happen to wake up, all he could do was flail.

“Now, my little leech, do your nasty work for Aunt Opal, and I will reward you by squeezing your innards into a bucket.” He sighed. “Why are all my best lines wasted on annelids?”

He plucked a leech from the jug, pinched it to make the spines stick out, then slapped it onto Artemis’s exposed wrist.

Artemis felt nothing but an immediate sense of wellbeing.

I’m being sedated, he realized. An old troll trick. Cheer you up before you die. It’s a good trick, and anyway, how bad can dying be? My life has been one trial after another.

Mervall was checking his chronometer. His brother had been in that recycling cage behind the galley for an awfully long time. That red river hog might decide to have himself a bite of pixie meat.

“I’ll just check,” he decided. “Be back before the leech is full. First blood, then brain. You should have complimented Mistress Opal’s boots, brother.”

And off he toddled down the center aisle, plucking the mesh of each cage as he passed, driving the animals wild.

“‘Pixies rock hard!’” he sang. “‘Extreme pixie hard rock, baby.’”

Artemis was finding it hard to motivate himself. It felt so easy lying on the pallet, just letting all his troubles run out of his arm.

When you decide to die, Artemis thought sluggishly, it doesn’t matter how many people want to kill you.

He did wish the animals would calm down. Their chattering and chirping were interfering with his mood.

There was even a parrot somewhere, squawking a phrase. “Who’s your mama?” it asked over and over again. “Who’s your mama?”

My mama is Angeline. She’s dying.

Artemis’s eyes opened.

Mama. Mother.

He lifted his free arm and bashed the unwelcome leech against one of the octobonds. It exploded in a spatter of mucus and blood, leaving half a dozen spines jutting from Artemis’s arms like the spears of tiny soldiers.

That’s going to hurt eventually.

Artemis’s throat was dry, his neck was twisted, and his vision was impaired, but even so, it took him barely a minute to activate the keypad with Mervall’s code and retract the bonds.

If these are alarmed, I’m in trouble.

But there was no siren. No pixies came running.

I have time. But not much.

He picked the spines from his skin, wincing not from pain, but from the the sight of the red-rimmed holes in his wrist. A rivulet of blood ran from each wound, but it was slow and watery. He would not bleed to death.

Coagulant in the spines. Of course.

Artemis zombie-walked across the lab, gradually straightening out the kinks. There were hundreds of eyes on him. The animals were silent now, noses, beaks, and snouts pressed against the wire mesh, waiting to see what would develop. The only sound came from the food-pellet robot zipping through its routine.

All I need to do is escape. No need for confrontation or saving the world. Leave Opal be, and run away.

But of course in the world of Artemis Fowl, things are rarely straightforward. Artemis donned network goggles he found hanging from a low peg, activated the V-board, and used Mervall’s password to log on to the network. He needed to know where he was and how to get out.

There were design plans to the entire facility stored on a desktop file. No security, no encryption. Why would there be? It wasn’t as if any of the humans above would wander down, and even if they did, humans could not read Gnommish.

Artemis studied the plans with care and growing anxiety. The facility consisted of a series of interconnected modules housed in ancient tunnels beneath the Extinctionists’ compound, but there were only two ways out. He could go out the way he had come in, which was not ideal, as it led straight back up to Kronski. Or he could choose the shuttleport on the lower level, which would mean stealing and piloting a shuttle. His chances of overriding complicated theft-prevention safeties before Opal had him vaporized were minimal. He would have to go up.

“Do you like my little laboratory?” said a voice.

Artemis stared past the goggle display. Opal stood before him, hands on hips.

“Quite a place, isn’t it?” she continued in English. “All these tunnels were just here, waiting for us. Perfect. As soon as I found them, I knew I had to have them, which is why I persuaded Dr. Kronski to move here.”

Information is power, thought Artemis. Don’t give her any.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am the future queen of this world, at the very least. You may refer to me as Mistress Koboi for the next five minutes. After that you may refer to me as
Aaaaarrrrgh
, hold your throat, die screaming, and so on.”

As pompous as I remember.

“I seem to be bigger than you, Mistress Koboi. And as far as I can see, you have no weapons.”

Opal laughed. “No weapons?” she cried, spreading her arms. “These creatures have given me all the weapons I need.” She stroked the sleeping tiger. “This big kitty augments my mind control. Those sea slugs focus my energy beams. A shot of liquidized dolphin fin mixed with just the right amount of cobra venom turns the clock back a hundred years.”

“This is a weapons factory,” breathed Artemis.

“Exactly,” said Opal, gratified that
someone
finally understood. “Thanks to these animals and their fluids, I have become the most powerful magician since the demon warlocks. The Extinctionists have been rounding up the creatures I need. Fools. Tricked by a cheap blast of holographic flames. As if I would kill these wonderful creatures before I drained their juices. You humans are such idiots. Your governments spend their fortunes looking for power, when all the time it is cavorting around your jungles.”

“That’s quite a speech,” said Artemis, wiggling his fingers, tapping the V-board that only he could see.

“Soon I will be—”

“Don’t tell me, soon you will be invincible.”

“No, actually,” said Opal, with admirable patience. “Soon I will be able to manipulate time itself. All I need is the ...”

And suddenly everything fell into place for Artemis. Everything about this whole affair. And he knew he would be able to escape.

“The lemur. All you need is the lemur.”

Opal clapped. “Exactly, you bright Mud Boy. That wonderful lemur brain fluid is the last ingredient I need for my magic boosting formula.”

Artemis sighed. “Magic boosting formula? Listen to yourself.”

Opal missed the mocking tone, possibly because she didn’t hear it a lot. “I had a whole bunch of lemurs before, but the LEP appropriated them to cure some plague, and I lost the rest in a fire. All my test subjects gone, and their fluids are quite impossible to replicate. There is
one
left, and I need him. He is my cloning model. With that lemur I will control time itself.” Opal stopped speaking for a moment, tapping her bow lips with a finger. “Wait a moment, human. What do you know of my lemur?” She took the finger away from her mouth and ignited a pulsing sphere of flame at its tip, melting her nail varnish. “I asked you, what do you know of my lemur?”

“Nice boots,” said Artemis, then selected an option on the goggle screen with a flick of his finger.

Are you sure you wish to open all the cages?
asked the computer.

The Extinctionists were sneaking back into the compound, led by the intrepid Tommy Kirkenhazard, who brandished his empty pistol with decidedly more bravado than he felt.