The Time Paradox (8 page)

Butler snorted. “Are you kidding?”

Artemis did not smile. “Perhaps you have not noticed, Butler. I rarely
kid
.”

“As you say, young master. You are not a kidder. Maybe someday, eh?”

“Perhaps when I find my father.”

“Yes. Perhaps then. Anyway, to answer your question: this is your
father’s
car, and there have been more prisoners in this trunk than you’ve had birthdays. Mafiya, Triad, Yakuza, Tijuana Cartel, Hells Angels. You name the gang, and a couple of them have spent a night in this trunk. In fact, your father had it specially modified. There’s air-conditioning, a stay-cool light, soft suspension, and even drinking water.”

“Is it secure? Remember, our captives already broke into the manor.”

Butler closed the trunk. “Titanium lock, reinforced trunk door. No way out whatsoever. Those two are staying in there until we let them out.”

“Excellent,” said Artemis, sliding into the Bentley’s rear seat. “Just give me a moment to do this one little thing, then let’s forget about them and concentrate on the lemur.”

“Excellent,” echoed Butler, and then under his breath, “Monkey business. My favorite.”

Even though Holly was ten pounds lighter than Artemis, she came to her senses before him. She was glad to be awake, as her dream had been terrible. While she was asleep, her knees and elbows struck the metal walls of the Bentley trunk, and she had imagined herself in an LEP submarine.

Holly lay huddled in the dark, swallowing and blinking to conquer the phobia. Her mother had been mortally injured in a metal box, and now she was inside one.

And it was thoughts of her mother that finally calmed Holly. She opened her eyes and explored the confined space with her vision and fingertips. It didn’t take long to find the bubble light set into the steel wall. She snapped it on to find Artemis stretched beside her, and the sloping metal sheeting of a trunk door curling down past his arm. Her own borrowed shoes rested on the shining curve of a wheel arch. They were inside a vehicle.

Artemis groaned, twitched, and opened his eyes.

“Sell the Phonetix shares,” he blurted, then remembered Butler and the darts. “Holly. Holly?”

Holly patted his leg. “It’s okay, Artemis,” she said in Gnommish, in case the car was bugged. “I’m here. Where else could I be?”

Artemis shifted onto his side, flicking back the dense black hair obscuring his features, and spoke in the fairy tongue.

“We received the same dosage of tranquilizer, and yet you, the lighter person, are awake first. Magic?”

The side of Holly’s face was thrown into deep shadow by the bubble light. “Yes. N
^o
1’s signature magic is powerful stuff.”

“Powerful enough to get us out of here?”

Holly spent a minute exploring the trunk’s surface, running her fingertips along each weld in the metal. Finally she shook her head, silver wig sparkling. “Not a weak spot I can find. Even the air-conditioning vent is completely flush. No way out.”

“Of course not,” said Artemis. “We’re inside the Bentley. The trunk is a steel box with a titanium lock.” He breathed the cool air deeply.“How can this have happened? Everything is different. Butler was supposed to have deposited the cage in my study. Instead he creeps in through the bedroom and sedates us both. Now we don’t know where we are, or indeed where the lemur is. Do they have it already?”

Holly pressed one ear to the trunk door. “I can tell you where we are.”

Outside, the sounds of snuffling and snoring animals drifted on the air.“We’re close to animals. A park, I would guess, or a zoo.”

“Rathdown Park,” exclaimed Artemis. “And that fact tells us they do not, in fact, have the lemur. The schedule and situation have changed.”

Holly was thoughtful. “We are not in control of this situation anymore, Artemis. Perhaps it’s time to admit defeat and return home, when your younger self brings us back to the manor.
Perhaps
you can discover a cure in the future.”

Artemis had been expecting this suggestion. “I considered that. The lemur is still our best option, and we are just a few feet away from it. Give me five minutes to get us out of here.”

Holly was understandably dubious. “Five minutes? Even the great Artemis Fowl might have trouble breaking out of a steel box in five minutes.”

Artemis closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to ignore his cramped surroundings and the sheaves of hair brushing his cheeks, and the itch of bristles on his chin.

“Face it, Artemis,”said Holly impatiently.“We’re stuck. Even Mulch Diggums would probably struggle with a lock like that if he happened to stroll by.”

Artemis’s brow flickered, irritated by this interruption, but then a smile spread across his face, made eerie by the stark lighting.

“Mulch Diggums strolling by,” he whispered. “What are the chances of that?”

“Zero,” said Holly. “Absolutely none. I would bet my pension on it.”

At that moment something, or someone, tapped on the trunk door from the outside.

Holly rolled her eyes. “No. Not even you . . .”

Artemis’s smile was smug beyond belief. “Just how large is your pension?”

“I do not believe it. I
refuse
to believe it. It is impossible.”

More taps on the door now, followed by a delicate scraping and a muted swearword.

“What a guttural voice,” said Artemis. “Very like a dwarf’s.”

“It could be Butler,” argued Holly, irritated by Artemis’s self-satisfied expression.

“Swearing in Gnommish. Hardly.”

More metallic noises from the outside world.

Shhhnick. Chunk. Clackack.

And the trunk’s lid swung upward, revealing a slice of starry night with the glinting silhouette of a gigantic pylon behind it. A bedraggled head popped into the space, features smeared with mud and worse. This was a face that only a mother could love, and then perhaps only if her sight were failing. The dark close-set eyes peered out from above a dense beard that shivered slightly, like seaweed in a current. The creature’s teeth were large, square, and not made any more appealing by the large insect wriggling between two molars.

It was, of course, Mulch Diggums.

The dwarf snagged the unfortunate insect with his tongue, then chewed it delicately.

“Ground beetle,” he said with relish. “
Leistus montanus.
Nice bouquet, solid earthy shell; then once the carapace cracks, a veritable explosion of flavors on the palate.”

He swallowed the unfortunate creature, then funneled a mighty burp though his flapping lips.

“Never burp when you’re tunneling,” he advised Artemis and Holly as casually as though they were sitting around a café table. “Dirt coming down, air coming up. Not a good idea.”

Holly knew Mulch well. This chitchat was simply for distraction while he took a peek around.

“And now to business,” said the dwarf finally, discarding the dead beard hair he had used to pick the lock. “I seem to have a human and an elf trapped in a car. So I ask myself, should I let ’em out?”

“And what do you answer yourself?” asked Artemis with barely contained impatience.

Mulch’s black pebble eyes danced in the moonlight. “So, the Mud Boy understands Gnommish. Interesting. Well, understand
this
, human. I let you out as soon as I get my money.”

Ah, thought Holly. There is money involved. Somehow these two have set up a deal.

Holly had endured her prison for long enough. Mulch is not yet my friend, she thought. So there’s no need to be polite.

She drew a knee to her chin, tugging on it with both hands for an extra pound of elastic force.

Mulch realized what she was about to do. “Hey, elf. No—”

Which was as far as he got before his face was batted with the trunk door. The dwarf tumbled backward into the hole he had climbed out of, sending up an
oof
of wind and dirt.

Holly clambered over Artemis to the fresh air. She gulped down great gasps, chest out, face to the sky.

“Sorry,” she said between breaths. “That space is tiny. I don’t like tiny.”

“Claustrophobic?” asked Artemis, rolling from the trunk.

Holly nodded. “I used to be. I thought I had overcome it. Lately, though . . .”

There was a commotion in the dwarf hole. A blue riot of swearing, and a scuffling in the earth.

Holly quickly recovered herself and leaped into the pit, tackling Mulch before he could unhinge his jaw and disappear.

“He could be useful,” she grunted, bundling the protesting dwarf up the incline. “And he has already seen us, so the damage has been done.”

“That’s a pincer hold,” exclaimed Mulch. “You’re LEP.”

He twisted around, snagging Holly’s wig with his beard hair. “I
know
you. Holly Short.
Captain
Holly Short. One of Julius Root’s pet rottweilers.” Suddenly the dwarf’s already creased brow wrinkled further in confusion. “But this is impossible.”

Before Artemis could instruct Holly not to ask, she went ahead and did it.

“Why is it impossible, Mulch?”

Mulch did not reply, but his eyes betrayed him, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at a scuffed Tekfab backpack. Holly deftly spun the dwarf around and opened the bag’s main compartment.

“Quite a treasure trove we have here,” she said, rummaging in the backpack. “Medi-kit, rations, adhesive com-pads. And look, an old omnitool.” Then she recognized the inscription laser etched into the base. “It’s
my
old omnitool.”

In spite of their years of friendship, Holly turned the full force of her anger on Mulch.

“Where did you get this?” she shouted. “How did you get it?”

“A present,” offered Mulch lamely. “From my . . . eh . . .” He squinted to read the writing on the base. “From my mother. She always called me Holly because of my, erm, prickly personality.”

Holly was angrier than Artemis had ever seen her. “Tell me, Diggums. The truth!”

Mulch thought about fighting. It was in the curve of his fingers and the baring of his teeth, but the moment passed quickly, and the dwarf’s natural passive nature surfaced.

“I stole all this stuff from Tara,” he admitted.“I’m a thief, aren’t I? But in my defense, I had a difficult childhood, which led to low self-esteem, which I projected onto others and punished them by stealing their possessions. So in a very real way, I am the victim here. And
I
forgive
me
.”

Mulch’s trademark waffle reminded Holly of the friend he would become, and her anger evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. She traced the laser inscription with a fingertip.

“My mother gave me this,” she said quietly. “Most reliable omnitool I ever had. Then, one night in Hamburg, my fugitive locked himself in a car. So I reached for my omnitool and it was gone. The target was apprehended by humans; I lost my first fugitive; and Commander Root had to send in an entire team of techies to clean up. It was a disaster. And all this time it was you.”

Mulch was puzzled. “All this time? I stole this from a belt in a locker in Tara
an hour ago
. I
saw
you there. What’s going on here . . . ?” Then Mulch blinked and clapped his hairy palms. “Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.”

Holly realized that she had said too much. “That’s ridiculous.”

The dwarf was actually doing a little jig now. “No. No, it all adds up. You’re talking about
future
events in the
past
tense. You sent back a note so that I would come and rescue you here and now.” Mulch clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. “What you’re doing is so much more illegal than anything I could ever do. Imagine the reward I would get for turning you over to Julius Root.”

“Sent back a note?” scoffed Holly. “That’s absurd, isn’t it, Artemis?”

“Most certainly,” said Artemis. “But if someone were to send back a note from the future, when and where would they send it to?”

Mulch jerked a thumb toward Holly. “There’s a junction box beside her locker. Looked like it hadn’t been touched for years. I was checking it out because sometimes they have valuable tech in ’em. Not this one, though, just an envelope addressed to me. And inside a note asking me to come to this place and set you free.”

Artemis smiled. Satisfied. “I imagine there was an incentive offered for our rescue?”

Mulch’s beard hair crackled. “A large incentive. No . . . a
stupendous
incentive.”

“Stupendous, eh? Very well, you shall have it.”

“When?” asked Mulch hungrily.

“Soon. I just need you to do me one more favor.”

“I knew it,” said the dwarf, through grinding teeth. “Never do the job until you see the cash. Why should I trust you?”

Artemis took a step forward, eyes narrow behind a curtain of dark hair. “You don’t need to trust me, Mulch. You need to be afraid of me. I am a Mud Boy from your future, and I could be in your past too, if you choose not to cooperate. I found you once, I could certainly do it again. The next time you break into a car trunk, there could be a gun and a badge waiting for you.”

Mulch felt apprehension tingling in his beard hair, and his beard hair was rarely wrong. As his grandmother used to say:
Trust the hair, Mulch. Trust the hair.
This human was dangerous, and he had enough trouble in his life already.

“Okay, Mud Boy,” he said grudgingly. “One more favor. And then you’d better have a stupendous amount of gold for me.”

“I will. Fear not, my pungent friend.”

The dwarf was deeply offended. “Don’t call me
friend
. Just tell me. What. You. Want. Done.”

“Simply follow your nature and dig us a tunnel. I need to steal a lemur.”

Mulch nodded as though lemur-napping was the most natural thing in the world.

“And from whom are we stealing it?”

“From me.”

Mulch frowned, then the penny dropped. “Ah . . . time travel throws up all sorts of twists, doesn’t it?”

Holly slipped the omnitool into her pocket. “Tell me about it,” she said.

CHAPTER 7

The Fowl Bentley was protected by a fingerprint scanner, and a keypad that required an eight-digit code. The code was changed every month, and so it took Artemis a few seconds to mentally rewind almost eight years and remember the right set of numbers.

He slid across the front seat’s tan leather upholstery and pressed his thumb to a second scanner tucked behind the steering wheel. A spring-loaded compartment slid smoothly from the dash. It was not a large compartment, but big enough to hold a clip of cash, platinum credit cards, and a spare cell phone in its cradle.

“No gun?”said Holly, when Artemis emerged from the car, though one of Butler’s guns would be clunky in her fingers.

“No gun,” confirmed Artemis.

“I wouldn’t be able to hit an elephant with one of Butler’s pistols even if I had one.”

“Elephants are not the quarry this evening,” said Artemis, speaking in English now that they were out of the trunk. “Lemurs are. At any rate, as we could hardly shoot at our opponent on this particular adventure, perhaps it’s better that we are unarmed.”

“Not really,” said Holly. “I may not be able to shoot you or the lemur, but I bet that more
opponents
will turn up. You have a knack for making enemies.”

Artemis shrugged. “Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.”

“Genius
and
robbing stuff,” Mulch chimed in from his perch on the lip of the car trunk. “Take it from one who knows, nobody likes a smart thief.”

Artemis drummed his fingers on the fender.

“We have certain advantages. Elfin magic. Digging talents. I have almost eight more years of experience in the art of mischief-making that the other Artemis does not have.”

“Mischief-making?” Holly scoffed. “I think you’re being a little gentle on yourself. Grand larceny is closer to the mark.”

Artemis stopped drumming. “One of your fairy powers is speaking in tongues, correct?”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” responded Holly.

“Just how many tongues can you speak in?”

Holly smiled. She knew Artemis’s devious mind well enough to realize exactly where he was going with this.

“As many as you want.”

“Good,” said Artemis. “We need to split up. You take the aboveground route into Rathdown Park, Mulch and I travel underground. If we need a distraction, use your gift.”

“It would be a pleasure,” said Holly, and immediately turned translucent, as though she were a creature of purest water. The last thing to go was her smile.

Just like the Cheshire cat.

Artemis remembered a few lines from
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,
”
said Alice
.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat
.
“We’re all mad here.
”

Artemis glanced at the pungent dwarf searching his living beard for stored insects.

We’re all mad here too, he thought.

Holly approached the main door of Rathdown institute with care even though she was shielded. The People had thought themselves invisible to Butler once before and had paid with trauma and bruises. She would not underestimate the bodyguard, and the fact that he was once again her enemy set her stomach churning with nervous acid.

The human clothes jumped and scratched along her frame. They were not built for shielding, and in a matter of minutes they would shake to pieces. miss my Neutrino, she thought, looking at the reinforced steel door with the dark unknown beyond it. And I miss Foaly and his satellite linkups.

But at heart Holly was an adventurer, and so the idea of quitting never even occurred to her.

It was difficult to operate mechanisms while shielded, so Holly powered down for the few seconds necessary to jimmy the door with her omnitool. It was an old model, but Holly’s mother had paid an extra few ingots for upgrades. The standard omnitool would open any door operating on a simple mechanical lock and key system. This one could short electronic locks too, and even deactivate simple alarms.

But that shouldn’t be necessary, she thought. As far as Artemis remembers, he turned off all the alarms.

The thought didn’t give much comfort. Artemis had been wrong about this trip already.

In less than five seconds the omnitool did its job and vibrated gently, like a cat purring at its own cleverness. The heavy door swung open silently under the lightest touch, and Holly buzzed up her shield.

Stepping into the Rathdown institute, Holly felt more mission anxiety than she had in years.

I’m a rookie again. Some kid straight out of the academy, she realized. My mind is experienced, but my body is overruling it.

And then:
I better get this monkey quick, before adolescence kicks in.

Young Artemis had turned off the security on his way into the institute. It had been an easy thing to bypass all the alarms with the director’s pass card. Earlier in the day, when he had been given the guided tour, he had posed several complicated questions on the validity of the theory of evolution. The director, a committed evolutionist, had allowed Artemis’s arguments to distract him long enough to have his pocket picked by Butler. Once the pass card was in the bodyguard’s possession, he simply slotted it into a battery-powered card cloner in his breast pocket, and whistled a few bars of Mozart to cover the whirr of the machine.

Two minutes later all the information they needed was stored in the cloner’s memory, the director’s card was back in the man’s pocket, and Artemis suddenly decided that maybe evolution wasn’t a bad theory after all.

Though there are more holes in it than a Dutch dam made of Swiss cheese
, he had confided to Butler on the way home from Rathdown Park. Butler had been encouraged by this statement. It was almost a straightforward joke.

Later that evening young Artemis had popped a button camera into the air-conditioning duct at the rear of the Bentley.

All the better to keep an eye on our guests.

The female was interesting.
Fascinating
, in fact. The darts would wear off soon, and it would be intriguing to watch her reaction, much more so than that of the hirsute teenager, even though his broad forehead suggested intelligence and his general features had a lot in common with the Fowl family’s own. In fact, he reminded Artemis of an old photo he had once seen of his father as a boy, working on an archaeological dig in South America. Perhaps the male captive was a distant cousin hoping to claim some kind of birthright now that Father was missing. There was much to be investigated here.

The button camera was broadcasting to his cell phone and ten-year-old Artemis checked the screen occasionally as Butler guided him through Rathdown Park toward the lemur’s cage.

“Focus, Artemis,”chided the bodyguard.“One dastardly crime at a time.”

Artemis glanced up from his phone. “Dastardly, Butler?
Dastardly?
Honestly, we are not cartoon characters. I do not have a villainous laugh or an eye patch.”

“Not yet. Though you’ll have an eye patch soon enough if you don’t concentrate on the job at hand.”

They were passing underneath Rathdown Park’s aquarium through a Plexiglas tunnel that allowed scientists and the occasional visitor to observe the species housed in the million-gallon tank. The tank mimicked as far as possible the inhabitants’ natural environment. Different compartments had different temperatures and different vegetation. Some were salt water, others were fresh, but all housed endangered or rare creatures.

Tiny bulbs dotted the ceiling above, simulating stars, and the only other light came from the bioluminescence of an albino lantern shark, which shadowed Artemis and Butler along the tunnel until its snout bumped Plexiglas.

Artemis was more interested in his cell phone than the shark’s eerily glowing photophores.

Events were unfolding on his screen that were close to incredible. Artemis stopped in his tracks to fully absorb what he was seeing.

The Fowl Manor intruders had escaped the Bentley trunk with the help of an accomplice. Another nonhuman.

I am entering a new world here. These creatures are potentially more lucrative than a lemur. Should I abandon this venture and concentrate on the nonhumans?

Artemis maximized the volume on his handset, but the tiny microphone attached to the button camera could only pick up snatches of the conversation.

It was mostly in some alien tongue, but some of the talk was in English, and he heard the word
lemur
more than once.

Perhaps this lemur is more valuable than I realized. The animal is the bait that lures these creatures in.

A minute passed with only the small revolting dwarflike thing in the screen, perching its disproportionately large backside on the rim of the trunk; then the female appeared, only to promptly disappear, Rathdown Park’s famous pylons filling the screen where she had been.

Artemis tightened his grip on the phone.

Invisibility? The energy involved in creating a reflective field or needed to generate high-speed vibration must be incredible.

He quickly navigated the phone’s menu and activated the digital thermal imager, a decidedly nonstandard option, and was relieved to see the female creature’s form blossom on screen in warm tones.

Good. Not gone, just hard to see.

Keeping one eye on his phone, Artemis called to his bodyguard. “Butler, old friend. Slight change of plan.”

The bodyguard knew better than to hope the lemur hunt was off. “We’re still on the trail of a little creature, though, I’ll bet.”

“Creatures,” said ten-year-old Artemis. “Plural.”

Fourteen-year-old Artemis was not enjoying the view. To distract himself he composed a haiku describing the sight before him.

Pale, shuddering globes

Churn their poisonous cargo

Bald heads in a bag

Mulch Diggums was not feeling quite so poetic. He stopped digging and rehinged his jaw.

“Could you please stop shining that flashlight on my backside? I blister easily. We dwarfs are extremely photosensitive, even to artificial light.”

Artemis had taken the flashlight from the Bentley’s breakdown kit and was following Mulch through a fresh tunnel to the lemur’s cage. The dwarf had assured him that the tunnel was sufficiently short for him to hold in the dirt and air until they reached the other end, making it safe for Artemis to be directly behind him.

Artemis averted the light for a few seconds, thinking that a bum blister was the last thing he wanted to see; but after a while the beam strayed back onto the pale, wobbling flesh once more.

“Just a quick question. If you can hold in all the diggings, then why does your bum-flap need to be open?”

Mulch was spitting large wads of dwarf phlegm onto the wall to shore up the tunnel.

“In case of emergency,” he explained, “I could swallow a buried lug of metal, or a strip of old tire. Now, those I would have to evacuate on the spot, annoying Mud Boy to the rear or not. No sense in ruining my trousers too, is there, dopey?”

“I suppose not,” said Artemis, thinking that with such a wide-bore loaded weapon pointed at him, he could bear being called
dopey
.

“Anyway,” continued the dwarf, hawking another wad at the wall, “you should consider yourself privileged. Not many humans have seen a dwarf working with spit. This is what you might call an ancient art. First you—”

“I know, I know,” interrupted Artemis impatiently. “First you excavate, then you strengthen the walls with your spittle, which hardens on contact with the air, providing it’s out of your mouth, obviously. And it’s luminous too, amazing material.”

Mulch’s behind wobbled in surprise. “How do you know these secrets?”

“You told me, or rather, you will tell me. Time travel, remember?”

The dwarf peered over his shoulders, eyes red in the glow of his spittle. “Just how close do we become?”

“Very close. We get an apartment together, and after a whirlwind courtship you marry my sister and honeymoon in Vegas.”

“I love Vegas,” said Mulch wistfully. Then, “Such snide wit. I can see how we might be friends. All the same, keep your comments to yourself, or we might have to see how funny you are covered in tunnel waste.”

Artemis swallowed hard, then moved the flashlight away from Mulch’s behind.

The plan was a simple one. They would tunnel underneath the compound and wait below the lemur’s cage for Holly to contact them on the short-range LEP adhesive communicator stuck to Artemis’s cheek, part of Mulch’s stash. From that point forward, the plan became fluid. Either they would pop up and grab the lemur while Holly caused consternation among the animals, or if young Artemis had already secured the lemur, Mulch would dig a hole under Butler and make it easier for Holly to relieve the boy of his prize.

All very straightforward, thought Artemis. Which is unusual for me.

“Okay, Mud Boy,” said Mulch, scooping a bulb-shaped hollow with his flat fingers. “We are here. X marks the monkey.”

“Lemur,” corrected Artemis automatically. “Are you certain you can distinguish this particular animal’s scent from all the others?”

Mulch held a hand to his heart in mock affront. “I? Certain? I am a dwarf, human. A dwarf nose can tell the difference between grass and clover. Between black hair and brown. Between dog poo and wolf poo.”

Artemis groaned. “I shall take that as a yes.”

“And so you should. Keep this up and I may choose not to marry your sister.”

“If I had a sister, I’m sure she would be inconsolable.”

They crouched in the hollow for several minutes, the park’s nighttime growls and snores drifting down through the clay. By some curious anomaly, once the sounds penetrated the tunnel’s coating of dwarf spittle, they were trapped inside and bounced off the walls in conflicting waves. Artemis felt as though he were literally in the lion’s den.

As if this wasn’t disturbing enough, he noticed that Mulch’s cheeks were glowing bright pink. All of them.