The Time Paradox (22 page)

“I got stuff in that compound,” he repeatedly told the mass huddled behind him. “Expensive stuff. And I ain’t leaving it behind.”

Most of the rest had
expensive stuff
too, and now that Kronski was catatonic in the souk, and his guards seemed to have fled with their sparkling booty, this seemed the best time to reclaim their belongings and head for the airport.

Much to Kirkenhazard’s relief, the compound appeared to be utterly deserted, though the gelatinous group was spooked several times by night shadows jumping in the Moroccan wind.

I ain’t never shot nothing with an empty gun, he thought. But I don’t imagine it’s too effective.

They reached the door to the main hall, which hung from its frame on a single hinge.

“Okay, folks,” said Kirkenhazard. “There ain’t no porters around to carry our stuff, so you got to hump it yourselves.”

“Oh, my lord,” said Contessa Irina Kostovich, and swooned into the arms of a Scottish oil baron.

“Gather whatever you can, and we meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

The contessa was muttering something.

“What was that?” asked Kirkenhazard.

“She said she has a pedicure booked for the morning.”

Kirkenhazard held up a hand, listening. “No. Not that. Does anyone else hear rumbling?”

The animals charged through the open cage doors with savage glee, hopping, jumping, flying, and sliming. Lions, leopards, various monkeys, parrots, gazelles, hundreds of creatures all with one idea in mind:
Escape.

Opal was not amused.

“I cannot believe you did that, Mud Person. I will wring your brain out like a sponge.”

Artemis ducked his head low, not caring at all for the brain/sponge imagery. If he avoided Opal’s regal stare, then she could not
mesmerize
him. Unless her augmented powers allowed her access to the brain without the conduit of the optic nerve.

Even if he had not ducked, he would have been shielded by the tide of creatures that engulfed him, snapping, buffeting, and kicking.

This is ridiculous, he thought as a monkey’s elbow drove the air from his lungs. If Opal does not get me, the animals will. I need to direct this stampede.

Artemis squatted behind one of the operating tables, pulling out the tiger’s anaesthetic drip as he passed, and squinted through the spokes of passing legs for an appropriate animal.

Opal roared at the creatures in an amalgamation of their tongues. It was a piercing sound and split the animal phalanx down the center so that it flowed around her. As the herd passed, Opal took potshots with pulsing blasts of energy that erupted from her fingers, and scythed through entire rows of creatures, knocking then senseless to the ground. Cages tumbled like building blocks, refrigerators spewed their contents across the tiles.

My distraction is being chopped down, thought Artemis. Time for an exit.

He spied a set of hooves stomping toward him, and steadied himself for a jump.

It’s a quagga, he realized. Half horse, half zebra, and there hasn’t been one in captivity for a hundred years. Not exactly a thoroughbred stallion, but it will have to do.

The ride was a little rougher than Artemis was accustomed to on the Fowl Arabians. No steadying stirrups, no creaking saddle, no snapping reins. Not to mention the fact that the quagga was unbroken and scared out of its wits.

Artemis patted its neck.

Ludicrous, he thought. This entire affair. A dead boy escaping on an extinct animal.

Artemis grabbed tufts of the quagga’s mane and tried to direct it toward the open doorway. It bucked and kicked, whipping its striped head around to nip at Artemis with strong, square teeth. He dug in his heels and held on.

Opal was busy protecting herself from a wave of animal vengeance. Some of the larger predators were not as cowed as their cousins, and decided that the best way to remove the threat posed by Opal Koboi was to eat her.

The tiny pixie twirled like a demonic ballerina, shooting blasts of magical energy that ballooned at her shoulders, gathered force in roiling spheres at her elbows, and shot forth with liquid pulsations.

Artemis had never seen anything like it. Stricken animals simply froze in midair, their momentum utterly drained, dropping to the ground like statues, immobile but for their terrified rolling eyes.

She is powerful indeed. I have never seen a force like this. Opal must never be allowed to capture Jayjay.

Opal was running out of magic. Her bolts fizzled out or spiraled off target like errant squibs. She abandoned them and drew two pistols from her belt. One was immediately batted from her hand by the tiger that had lumbered to join the fray, but Opal did not submit to hysteria and quickly thumbed that other gun to a broad-spread setting and slashed the barrel from side to side as she fired, releasing a fan of silver energy.

The tiger was the first to drop, with a look on its face that said
Not again
. Several more followed, cut off in midscreech, howl, or hiss.

Artemis hauled back on the quagga’s spiked mane, jumping it onto an operating table. The beast snorted and complained but did as it was bid, skittering the length of one table and leaping across to the next.

Opal loosed a shot in their direction, but it was absorbed by a brace of condors.

The door was directly before them, and Artemis feared the quagga would falter. But no, it butted through to the corridor connecting the lab to the holographic flame chamber.

Artemis quickly opened the control panel in his stolen network goggles and chose the ramp setting.

It took maddening moments for the platform to extend itself, and for those seconds Artemis rode the quagga around in circles to take its mind off dislodging the unwelcome rider on its back and to make them both a more difficult target if Opal followed them through the corridor.

An eagle swooped by, its feathers raking Artemis’s cheek. A muskrat clambered along his torso, hopping to the rising platform.

There was light above. The sickly wavering beams of a faulty strip light. But light nevertheless.

“Come on, girl,” said Artemis, feeling very much the cowboy. “Yee-haw.”

The Extinctionists gathered aroun Tommy Kirkenhazard’s raised finger, listening intently as if the noise emanated from inside the finger.

“Ah, I don’t hear nothing,” admitted Tommy. “I must have been dreaming. After all, it’s been a stressful night for human-lovers.”

Then the lodge burst open, and the Extinctionists were utterly engulfed in a sea of beasts.

Kirkenhazard went down under a couple of Chacma baboons, vainly pulling the trigger on his empty gun and shouting over and over: “But we killed you, darn it. We killed you.”

Though there would be no fatalities in the compound that night, eighteen people were hospitalized with bites, skin burns, broken bones, and various infestations. Kirkenhazard fared the worst. The baboons ate his gun and the hand holding it, and then turned the unfortunate man over to a groggy tiger, who found himself waking in a very bad mood.

Not one of the Extinctionists noticed a small, dark craft rising silently from behind one of the chalets. It flew across the central park and scooped up a long-haired youth from the back of what looked like a small striped donkey. The craft spun in a tight arc like a stone in a sling, then hurtled into the night sky as though it had to be somewhere in a real hurry.

Pedicures, and indeed all spa treatments, were canceled for the next day.

Opal was desolate to find that, on top of everything else, her boots were ruined.

“What is that stain?” she demanded of Mervall and his recently liberated twin, Descant.

“Dunno,” muttered Descant, who was still a bit moody from his time in the cage.

“It’s a dropping of some kind,” volunteered Mervall quickly. “Judging from the size and texture, I would say one of the big cats got a little nervous.”

Opal sat on a bench and extended the boot. “Pull it off, Mervall.”

She placed her sole on Mervall’s forehead and pushed until he tumbled backward, clutching the dropping-laden footwear.

“That Mud Boy. He knows about my lemur. We must follow him. He is tagged, I take it.”

“Oh yes,” confirmed Mervall. “All the newcomers are sprayed on landing. There’s a radioactive tracer in his every pore right now. Harmless, but there’s nowhere on this planet that he can hide from us.”

“Good. Excellent, in fact. I think of everything, do I not?”

“You do, mistress,” droned Descant. “Brilliant, you are. Astounding is your fabulosity.”

“Why, thank you, Descant,” said Opal, as ever oblivious to sarcasm. “And I thought you’d be upset after the pigpen. Fabulosity isn’t a word, by the way. In case you’re thinking of writing how wonderful I am in your diary.”

“Point taken,” Descant said seriously.

Opal offered her other foot to Mervall. “Good. Now set the self-destructs on this place and let’s get the shuttle prepped. I want to find this human and kill him immediately. We were too nice last time, with the leeches. This time, immediate death.”

Mervall winced. He was holding two boots covered in tiger droppings, and he’d prefer to wear those than be in that human’s shoes.

Artemis lay flat on his back in the cargo hold, wondering it he could possibly have dreamed the past few minutes. Superleeches, sleeping tigers, and a grumpy quagga.

He felt the floor vibrate beneath him and knew that they were moving at several times the speed of sound. Suddenly the vibration disappeared, to be replaced by a far more sedate hum. They were slowing down!

Artemis hurried to the cockpit, where Holly was glaring at a readout as if she could change the information displayed there. Jayjay was in the copilot’s seat and seemed to be in charge of steering.

Artemis pointed at the lemur. “This may seem like a silly question, but is Jayjay . . .”

“No. Autopilot. And nice to see you alive, by the way. You’re welcome for the rescue.”

Artemis touched her shoulder. “Once again, I owe you my life. Now, I hate to move directly from gratitude to petulance, but why have we slowed down? Time is running out. We had three days, remember? There are only hours left.”

Holly tapped the readout. “We were pinged by something at the compound. Someone’s computers have downloaded our schematics. Can you tell me any more about that?”

“Opal Koboi,” said Artemis. “Opal is behind everything. She’s harvesting animal fluids to increase her own magic. If she gets her hands on Jayjay, she’ll be invincible.”

Holly did not have time to be incredulous. “That’s wonderful. Opal Koboi. I knew this little trip was missing a psychotic element. If Opal pinged us, then she’ll be on our tail in something a little more war-worthy than this clunker.”

“Shields?”

“Nothing much. We might fool human radar but not fairy scanners.”

“What can we do?”

“I need to keep us up here in the air lanes with all the human traffic. We stay subsonic and don’t draw attention to ourselves. Then at the last moment we make a break for Fowl Manor. It won’t matter if Opal sees us then, because by the time she catches us, we’ll be back in the time stream.”

Mulch Diggums poked his head through from the mail box. “Nothing much in here. A few gold coins. What say I keep them? And did I hear someone mention Opal Koboi?”

“Don’t worry about it. Everything is under control.”

Mulch guffawed. “Under control? Like Rathdown Park was under control. Like the leather souk was under control.”

“You’re not seeing us at our best,” Artemis admitted. “But in time you will come to respect Captain Short and me.”

Mulch’s expression doubted it. “I’d better go and look up
respect
in the dictionary, because it mustn’t mean what I think it means, eh, Jayjay?”

The lemur clapped his delicate hands and chattered with what sounded like laughter.

“It looks like you’ve found an intellectual equal, Mulch,” said Holly, returning to her instruments. “It’s a pity he isn’t a girl; then you could marry him.”

Mulch imitated shock. “Romance outside your species. Now
that’s
disgusting. What kind of weirdo would kiss someone when they weren’t even part of the same species?”

Artemis massaged his suddenly pounding temples.

It’s a long way to Tipperary, he thought. And then a few more miles to Dublin.

“A shuttle?” said Opal. “A fairy shuttle?”

The Koboi craft was hovering at an altitude of thirty miles, tipping the border of space. Starlight winked on the hull of their matte-black shuttle, and the earth hung below them wearing a stole of clouds.

“That’s what the sensors show,” said Mervall. “An old mining model. Not much under the hood, and zero firepower. We should be able to catch it.”

“Should?” said Opal, stretching an ankle to admire her new red boots. “Why should?”

“Well, we had her for a while. Then she went subsonic. I would guess their pilot is riding the human flight lanes until they feel safe.”

Opal smiled devilishly. She liked a challenge.

“Okay, let’s give ourselves every advantage. We have the speed and we have the weapons. All we need is to point ourselves in the right direction.”

“What an incrediferous idea.” Descant smirked.

Opal was pained. “Please, Descant. Use short words. Don’t force me to vaporize you.”

This was a hollow threat, as Opal had not been able to produce so much as a spark since the compound. She still had the basics—mind control, levitation, that kind of thing—but she would need some serious bed rest before she could muster a lightning bolt. The Brills did not need to know that, though.

“Here’s my idea. I ran the lab tapes through voice recognition and got a regional match. Whoever that Mud Boy is, he lives in central Ireland. Probably Dublin. I want you to get us down there as fast as you can, Descant, and when that mining shuttle drops out of the air lanes”— Opal closed her tiny fingers around an imaginary ant, squeezing the blood from its body—“We will be waiting.”

“Fabulicious,” said Descant.

The sun had risen and was sinking again by the time Holly had dragged the spluttering shuttle over the Fowl Estate wall.