The Time Paradox (26 page)

“No. Our paths did not cross.”

Butler staggered to the bedroom door, Artemis hot on his heels. “Opal is controlling him, though he’s making her work for it. We need to secure them both right now.”

It took them several minutes to reach the security booth, with Butler pulling himself along the walls, and by that time Opal was already gone. Artemis ran to the window just in time to see the blocky rear end of a vintage Mercedes take the bend in the driveway. A small figure bounced on the backseat. Two bounces, the first time it was Opal, the second Miss Imogen Book.

Already her power returns, realized Artemis.

Butler loomed above him, panting. “This isn’t over yet.”

Artemis did not respond to the comment. Butler was simply stating the patently obvious.

Then the engine noise increased in volume and pitch.

“Gear change,” said Butler. “She’s coming back.”

Artemis felt a chill pass over his heart, though he had been expecting it.

Of course she’s coming back, he thought. She will never have another chance like this one. Butler can barely walk. Holly and N
^o
1 will be diminished for hours, and I am a mere human. If she retreats now, Jayjay will be free of her forever. Soon Foaly’s squad will arrive from Tara and whisk the little lemur underground. For perhaps five minutes, Opal has the upper hand.

Artemis planned quickly. “I need to take Jayjay away from here. So long as he is in the manor, everyone is in danger. Opal will kill us all to cover her tracks.”

Butler nodded, sweat running in rivulets through the lines on his face. “Yes. We can make it to the Cessna.”

“
I
can make it to the Cessna, old friend,” corrected Artemis. “I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal.”

It was a sensible tactic, and Butler knew it was coming before Artemis said it. He was in such bad shape that he would slow Artemis down. Not only that but the manor would be wide open for any of Opal’s thralls to stroll in and exact her revenge.

“Very well. Don’t take her over seven thousand feet, and watch the flaps: they’re a bit sticky.”

Artemis nodded as if he didn’t know. Giving instructions comforted Butler.

“Seven thousand. Flaps. Got it.”

“Would you like a gun? I have a neat Beretta.”

Artemis shook his head. “No guns. My aim is so bad that even with Holly’s eye to help me, I would probably only succeed in shooting off a toe or two. No, all I need is the bait.” He paused. “And my sunglasses.”

CHAPTER 15

The Fowl family
currently had three aircrafts. A Lear jet and Sikorsky helicopter, which were hangared at the nearby airport, and a small Cessna that lived in a small garage workshop beside the high meadow on the northern border of the estate. The Cessna was several years old and would have been recycled some time ago, had Artemis not taken it on as a project. His aim was to make it carbon neutral
and
cost effective, a goal that his father heartily approved of.

“I have forty scientists working on the same problem, but my money is on you,” he had confided to his son.

And so Artemis coated the entire body of the craft with lightweight superefficient solar panels, like NASA’s prototype flying wing—the Helios. Unlike the Helios, Artemis’s Cessna could still fly at its normal speeds
and
take passengers. This was because Artemis had removed the single engine and installed smaller ones to turn the main propeller, the four extra props on the wings, and the landing gear. Most of the metal in the skeleton had been stripped out and replaced with a lightweight polymer. Where the fuel tank had been now sat a small battery.

There were still a few adjustments to make, but Artemis believed his ship was skyworthy. He hoped so. There was a lot riding on the soundness of the little craft. He sprinted from the kitchen door, across the courtyard, and toward the high meadow. With any luck Opal would not realize he was gone until she saw the plane taking off. Of course,
then
he wanted her to see him. Hopefully he could draw her away long enough for LEP reinforcements to arrive.

Artemis felt the tiredness in his legs before he had gone a hundred yards. He had never been the athletic type, and the recent time-stream jaunts had done nothing for his physique, even though he had concentrated hard on his muscles during the trips, willing himself to tone up. A little mind-over-matter experiment that sadly had not yielded any results.

The old farm gate to the meadow was closed, so Artemis scaled it rather than struggle with the heavy bolt. He could feel the heat from the simian’s body high inside his jacket, and its little hands were tight on his neck.

Jayjay must be safe, he thought. He must be saved.

The garage doors were sturdier than they looked, and were protected with a keypad entry system. Artemis tapped in the code and threw open the doors wide, flooding the interior with the deep orange rays of the early evening sun. Inside, nestled in a horseshoe of benches and tool trolleys, was the modified Cessna, hooked up to a supplementary power cable. Artemis snapped the cable from its socket on the fuselage and clambered into the cockpit. He strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, remembering briefly when he had first flown this plane solo.

Nine years old. I needed a booster seat.

The engines started immediately and virtually silently. The only noise came from the whirring of the propellers and the clicks of switches as Artemis ran through his preflight check.

The news was generally good. Eighty percent power. That gave the small plane a range of several hundred miles. Easy enough to lead Opal on a merry dance along the Irish coast. But the flaps were sticky and the seals were old.

Don’t take her over seven thousand feet.

“We’re going to be fine,” he said to the passenger inside his jacket. “Absolutely fine.”

Was this the truth? He could not be certain.

The high meadow was wide and long, and sloped gently upward to the estate wall. Artemis nudged the Cessna from her hangar, swinging the nose in a tight turn to give himself maximum runway. Under ideal circumstances the five-hundred-yard grass runway was more than ample for a takeoff. But there was a tailwind, and the grass was a few inches longer than it should have been.

Despite these considerations we should be okay. I have flown in worse conditions than this.

The takeoff was textbook. Artemis pulled back on the nosewheel at the three-hundred-yard mark and comfortably cleared the north wall. Even at this low altitude he could see the Irish sea to the west, black with scimitars of sunlight slicing across the wave tips.

He was tempted, for the merest fraction of a moment, just to flee, but he didn’t.

Have I changed utterly? Artemis asked himself. He realized that he was running out of palatable crimes. Not so long ago, nearly all crime had been acceptable to him.

No, he decided. There were still people who deserved to be stolen from, or exposed, or dropped in the deep jungle with only flip-flops and a spoon. He would just have to put more effort into finding them.

Artemis activated the wing cameras. There was one such person on the avenue below. A megalomaniacal, cold-hearted pixie. Opal Koboi. Artemis could see her striding toward the manor, jamming Holly’s helmet down over her ears.

I was afraid of that. She thought to take the helmet. A most valuable tool.

Still, he had no alternative but to attract her attention. The lives of his family and friends were at stake. Artemis took the Cessna down a hundred feet, following Opal’s path to the manor. She may not hear the engine, but the sensors in Holly’s helmet would throw up a dozen red lights.

On cue, Opal stopped in her tracks, throwing her gaze skyward and capturing the small plane in her sights.

Come on, Opal, thought Artemis. Take the bait. Run a thermal.

Opal strode purposefully toward the manor until she snagged the toe of one LEP boot under the heel of another.

Stupid tall elf, she thought furiously, righting herself. When I am queen . . . No . . . when I am empress, all tall fairies will have their legs modified. Or better still, I will have a human pituitary gland grafted to my brain so that I shall be the tall one. A giant among fairies, physically and mentally.

She had other plans too: An Opalesque cosmetic face mold that could give any of her adoring fans the Koboi look in seconds. A homeopathic hoverchair covered in massage bars and mood sensors that would read her humor and spray whatever scents were needed to cheer her up.

But those plans could wait until she was empress. For now the lemur was her priority. Without its brain fluid, it could take years to accomplish her plans. Plus, magic was so much easier than science.

Opal slotted Holly’s helmet onto her head. Pads inside the helmet automatically inflated to cradle her skull. There was some coded security, which she contemptuously hacked with a series of blinks and hand movements. These LEP helmets were not half as advanced as the models in her R&D department.

Once the helmet’s functions were open to her, the visor’s display crystals fizzled and turned scarlet. Red alert! Something was closing in. A 3-D radar sweep revealed a small craft overhead, and recognition software quickly pegged it as a human-built Cessna.

She quickly selected the command sequence for a thermal scan, and the helmet infrared detector analyzed the electromagnetic radiation coming from inside the aircraft. There was some waffle from the solar panels, but the scan isolated an orange blob in the pilot’s seat. One passenger only. The helmet’s biometric reader conveniently identified the pilot as Artemis Fowl, and dropped a 3-D icon over his fuzzy figure.

“One passenger,” murmured Opal. “Are you trying to decoy me away from the house, Artemis Fowl? Is that why you fly so low?”

But Artemis Fowl knew technology; he would anticipate thermal imaging.

“What do you have up your sleeve?” wondered the pixie. “Or perhaps up your shirt.”

She magnified Artemis’s heart and discovered a second heat source superimposed over the first, distinguishable only by a slightly cooler shade of red.

Even at that desperate moment, Opal could not help but admire this young human, who had attempted to mask the lemur’s heat signature with his own.

“Clever. But not ingenious.”

And he would need to be ingenious to defeat Opal Koboi. Bringing back the second Artemis had been a neat trick, but she should have caught it.

I was defeated by my own arrogance, she realized. That will not happen again.

The helmet automatically tuned into the Cessna’s radio frequency, and so Opal sent Artemis a little message.

“I am coming for the lemur, boy,” she said, a pulse of magic setting the suit’s wings aflutter. “And this time there will be no
you
to save
you
.”

Artemis could not feel or see the various waves that probed the Cessna, but he guessed that Opal would use the helmet’s thermal imager to see how many hot bodies were on the plane. Perhaps she would try X-ray too. It would seem as though he was trying to hide Jayjay’s heat signature with his own, but that was a transparent ploy and should not fool Opal for more than a heartbeat. When the pixie was satisfied that her prize was escaping, then how could she not follow?

Artemis banked starboard to keep Opal in the camera eye, and was satisfied to see a set of wings sliding from the slots in Holly’s suit.

The chase is on.

Time for the bait to pretend it is trying to escape.

Artemis peeled away from the estate, heading for the deep purple sea, opening the throttle wide, satisfied by the plane’s smooth acceleration. The batteries were channeling a steady supply of power to the engines without releasing one gram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

He checked the tail camera view and was not totally surprised to find the flying pixie in his monitor.

Her control over the magic is addled by the sedative, he guessed. Opal may have had barely enough power to jump-start the suit. But soon the dart’s aftereffects will peter out and then there may be lightning bolts flaring across my wing.

Artemis turned south, following the jagged coast. The clamor and bustle of Dublin’s high-rise apartment blocks, belching chimneys, and swarm of buzzing helicopters gave way to long stretches of gray rock shadowed by the north-south rail track. The sea pushed against the shore, folding its million fingers over sand, scrub, and shale.

Fishing boats chugged from buoy to buoy, trailing white sea-serpent wakes, sailors snagging lobster pots with long-handled gaffs. Fat clouds hung ponderously at twelve thousand feet, rain brewing in their bellies.

A peaceful evening, so long as no one looks up.

Though at this altitude, Opal’s blurred flying form could be mistaken for an eagle.

Artemis’s plan went smoothly for longer than he had hoped. He made sixty miles without interference from Opal. He allowed himself a glimmer of hope.

Soon, he thought. The LEP reinforcements will come soon.

Then his radio crackled into life. “Artemis? Are you there, Artemis?”

Butler. He sounded extremely calm, which he always did before he explained just how serious a situation was.

“Butler, old friend. I’m here. Tell me the good news.”

The bodyguard sighed into his microphone, a breaking wave of static.

“They’re not coming after the Cessna. You are not the priority.”

“N
^o
1 is,” said Artemis. “They need to get him below-ground. I understand.”

“Yes. Him and . . .”

“Say no more, old friend,” said Artemis sharply. “Opal is listening.”

“The LEP are here, Artemis. I want you to turn around and fly back.”

“No,” said Artemis firmly. “I will not put Mother at risk again.”

Artemis heard a strange creaking sound and surmised that Butler was strangling the microphone stalk.

“Very well. Another location, then. Someplace where we can dig ourselves in.”

“Very well, I am on a southerly heading anyway, so why not—”

Artemis didn’t complete his veiled suggestion, as his channel was blocked by a deafening burst of white noise. The squawk left a droning aftershock in his ears, and for a moment he allowed the Cessna to drift.

No sooner had he regained control than a thudding blow to the fuselage caused him to lose it again.

Several red lights flashed on the solar panel display-plane icon. At least ten panels had been shattered by the impact.

Artemis spared half a second to check the rear camera. Opal was no longer trailing behind him. No surprise there.

The pixie’s voice burst through the radio speakers, sharp with petulance and evil intent.

“I am strong now, Mud Boy,” she said. “Your poison is gone, flushed from my system. My power grows, and I am hungry for more.”

Artemis did not engage in conversation. All his skill and quick thinking would be needed to pilot the Cessna.

Opal struck again on the port wing, smashing her forearms into the solar panels and breaking them as a child would break sheets of ice in a pool, windmilling her arms gleefully, wings buzzing to keep pace. The plane bucked and yawed, and Artemis fought the stick to pull the craft level.

She’s insane, thought Artemis. Utterly insane.

And then:
Those panels are unique. And she calls herself a scientist.

Opal scampered along the wing, punching an armored fist into the fuselage itself. More panels were obliterated, and tiny fist-size dents buckled the polymer over Artemis’s shoulder. Tiny cracks ran along the dents, slit by the wind.

Opal’s voice was loud in the speaker. “Land, Fowl. Land and I may not return to the manor when I have finished with you. Land! Land!”

Each order to
land
was emphasized by another blow on the cockpit. The windshield exploded inward, showering Artemis with jagged chunks of Plexiglas.

“Land! Land!”

You have the product, Artemis reminded himself. So you have the power. Opal cannot afford to kill Jayjay.

The wind screamed in Artemis’s face, and the readings from his flight instruments made no sense, unless Opal was scrambling them with the LEP suit’s field. But Artemis still had a chance. There was fight left in this Fowl.

He pointed the nose downward, banking sharply left. Opal kept pace easily, tearing strips from the fuselage. She was a destructive shadow in the dimming dusk light.

Artemis could smell the sea.

I am too low. Too soon.

More red lights on the instrument panel. The power supply had been cut. The batteries were breached. The altimeter whirred and beeped.