The Time Paradox (29 page)

Commander Trouble Kelp himself led the Retrieval team to dig Opal Koboi out of the rubble. They inflated a distortion bubble over the work zone, so they could fire up the shuttle’s lasers without fear of discovery.

“Hurry up, Furty,” Trouble called over an open channel. “We have one hour until sunrise. Let’s get that megalomaniacal pixie out of there and back into her own time.”

They were lucky to have a dwarf on the team. Normally dwarfs were extremely reluctant to work with the authorities, but this one had agreed so long as he didn’t have to work any of the hundred-and-ninety-odd dwarf holy days, and if the LEP paid his exorbitant consultant fees.

In a situation like this one, dwarfs were invaluable. They could work rubble like no other species. If you needed to dig something out alive, then dwarfs were the ones to do it. All they needed to do was let their beard hairs play over a surface, and they could tell you more about what was going on under that surface than any amount of seismic or geological equipment.

Currently, Trouble was monitoring Furty Pullchain’s progress through the kraken debris on the feed from his helmet cam. The dwarf’s limbs were a shade paler than usual in the night-vision filter. One hand directed a nozzle of support foam that coated the tunnel wall at stress points, and the other reached in under his beard to rehinge his jaw.

“Okay,
Commander
,” he said, managing to make the rank sound like a insult. “I made it to the spot. It’s a miracle I’m alive. This thing is as steady as a house of cards in a hurricane.”

“Yeah, whatever, Furty. You’re a marvel. Now, pull her out and let’s get belowground. I have a captain I need to discipline.”

“Keep yer acorns on, Commander. I’m readin’ the beacon loud and clear.”

Trouble fumed silently. Maybe Holly Short was not the only one who would have to be disciplined.

He followed the live feed, watching Furty scoop aside the rock, weed, and shell fragments covering Holly’s suit.

Except there was no suit. Just a helmet with its flashing tracer beacon.

“I come all this way for a helmet?” said Furty, aggrieved. “Ain’t no pixie here, just the smell of one.”

Trouble sat up straight. “Are you sure? Could you be in the wrong spot?”

Furty snorted. “Yep. I’m at the
other
buried LEP helmet. ’Course I’m sure.”

She was gone. Opal had disappeared.

“Impossible. How could she escape?”

“Beats me,” said Furty. “Maybe she squeezed through a natural tunnel. Them pixies are slippery little creatures. I remember one time when I was a sprog. Me and Kherb, my cousin, broke into a—”

Trouble cut him off. This was serious. Opal Koboi was loose in the world. He put a video call in to Foaly at Police Plaza.

“Don’t tell me,” said the centaur, running a hand down his long face.

“She’s gone. She left the helmet so the beacon would draw us in. Any vitals from her suit?”

Foaly checked his monitor. “Nothing. It was loud and clear until five minutes ago. I thought it was a suit malfunction.”

Trouble took a breath. “Put out an alert. Priority one. I want the guards tripled on
our
Koboi in Atlantis. It would be just like Opal to bust herself out.”

Foaly got to it. One Opal Koboi had almost managed to take over the world. Two would probably shoot for the entire galaxy.

“And call Holly,” continued Commander Kelp. “Inform the captain that her weekend leave is canceled.”

Artemis Fowl awoke in his own bed, and for a moment red sparks danced before his eyes. They sparkled and twinkled hypnotically before chasing their own tails out of existence.

Red sparks, he thought. Unusual. I have seen stars before, but never sparks.

The ten-year-old boy stretched, grabbing handfuls of his own duvet. For some reason he felt more content than usual.

I feel safe and happy.

Artemis sat bolt upright.

Happy? I feel happy?

He couldn’t remember feeling truly happy since his father had disappeared, but on this morning his mood was bordering on cheerful.

Perhaps it was the deal with the Extinctionists. My first major chunk of profit.

No. That wasn’t it. That particular transaction had left Artemis feeling sick to the pit of his stomach. So much so that he couldn’t think about it and would probably never dwell on the past few days again.

So what could account for this feeling of optimism? Something from the dream he’d been having. A plan. A new scheme that would bring enough profit to fund a hundred Arctic expeditions.

That was it. The dream. What had it been about?

It was just out of reach. The images already fading.

A crafty smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

Fairies. Something about fairies.

available now

Conor Broekhart was a remarkable boy, a fact that became evident very early in his idyllic childhood. Nature is usually grudging with her gifts, dispensing them sparingly, but she favored Conor with all she had to offer. It seemed as though all the talents of his ancestors had been bestowed upon him: intelligence, strong features, and grace.

Conor was fortunate in his situation, too. He was born into an affluent community where the values of equality and justice were actually being applied—on the surface, at least. He grew up with a strong belief in right and wrong that was not muddied by poverty or violence. It was straightforward for the young boy. Right was Great Saltee, wrong was Little Saltee.

It is an easy matter now to pluck some events from Conor’s early years and say,
There it is. The boy who became the man. We should have seen it.
But hindsight is an unreliable science, and in truth, there was perhaps a single incident during Conor’s early days at the palace that hinted at his potential.

The incident in question occurred when Conor was nine years old and roaming the serving corridors that snaked behind the walls of the castle chapel and main building. His partner on these excursions was the Princess Isabella, one year his senior and always the more adventurous of the two. Isabella and Conor were rarely seen without each other, and often so daubed with mud, blood, and nothing good that the boy was barely distinguishable from the princess.

On this particular summer afternoon, they had exhausted the fun to be had tracking the source of an unused chimney and had decided to launch a surprise pirate attack on the king’s apartment.

“You can be Captain Crow,” said little Conor, licking some soot from around his mouth. “And I can be the cabin boy that stuck an ax in his head.”

Isabella was a pretty thing, with an elfin face and round brown eyes, but at that moment she looked more like a sweep’s urchin than a princess.

“No, Conor. You are Captain Crow, and I am the princess hostage.”

“There is no princess hostage,” declared Conor firmly, worried that Isabella was once again about to mold the legend to suit herself. In previous games, she had included a unicorn and a fairy that were definitely not part of the original story.

“Of course there is,” said Isabella belligerently. “There is because I say there is, and I am an actual princess, whereas
you
were born in a balloon.” Isabella intended this as an insult, but to Conor being born in a balloon was about the finest place to be born.

“Thank you,” he said, grinning.

“That’s not a good thing,” squealed Isabella. “Dr. John says that your lungs were probably crushed by the alti-tood.”

“My lungs’re better than yours. See!” And Conor hooted at the sky to show just how healthy his lungs were.

“Very well,” said Isabella, impressed. “But I am still the princess hostage. And you should remember that I can have you executed if you displease me.”

Conor was not unduly concerned about Isabella having him executed, as she ordered him hung at least a dozen times a day and it hadn’t happened yet. He was more worried that Isabella was not turning out to be as good a playmate as he had hoped. Basically, he wanted someone who would play the games he fancied playing, which generally involved flying paper gliders or eating insects. But lately Isabella had been veering toward dress-up and kissing, and she would only explore chimneys if Conor agreed to pretend that the two of them were the legendary lovers Diarmuid and Gráinne, escaping from Fionn’s castle.

Needless to say, Conor had no wish to be a legendary lover. Legendary lovers rarely flew anywhere, and hardly ever ate insects. “Very well,” he moaned. “You are the hostage princess.”

“Excellent, Captain,” Isabella said sweetly. “Now, you may drag me to my father’s chamber and demand ransom.”

“Drag?” said Conor hopefully.

“Play drag, not real drag, or I shall have you hung.”

Conor thought, with remarkable wit for a nine-year-old, that if he had actually been hung every time Isabella had ordered it, his neck would be longer than a Serengeti giraffe’s. “Play drag, then. Can I kill anyone we meet?”

“Absolutely anyone. Not Papa, though, until after we see how sad he is.”

Absolutely anyone.
That’s something, thought Conor, swishing his wooden sword, thinking how it cut the air like a gull’s wing.

Just like a wing.

The pair proceeded across the barbican, she oohing and he
arr
ing, drawing fond but also wary looks from those they passed. The palace’s only resident children were well liked, not at all spoiled, and mannerly enough when their parents were nearby; but they were also light fingered and would pilfer whatever they fancied on their daily quests. One afternoon, a particular Italian gold leaf artisan had turned from the cherub he was coating to find his brush and tray of gold wafers missing. The gold turned up later, coating the wings of a week-dead seagull, which
someone
had tried to fly from the Wall battlements.

They crossed the bridge into the main keep, which housed the king’s residence, office, and meeting rooms. And this would generally be where the pair would have been met with a good-natured challenge from the sentry. But the king himself had just leaned out the window and sent the fellow running to catch the Wexford boat and put ten shillings on a horse he fancied in the Curracloe beach races. The palace had a telephone system, but there were no wires to the shore as yet, and the booking agents on the mainland refused to take bets over the semaphore.

For two minutes only, much to the princess and pirate’s delight, the main keep was unguarded. They strode in as though they owned the castle. “Of course, in real life, I
do
own the castle,” confided Isabella, never missing a chance to remind Conor of her exalted position.

“Arrrr,” said Conor, and meant it.

The spiral staircase ascended through three floors, all packed with cleaning staff, lawyers, scientists, and civil servants; but through a combination of infant cunning and luck, the pair managed to pass the lower floors to reach the king’s own entrance, impressive oak double doors with half of the Saltee flag and motto carved into each one.
Vallo Parietis
, read the legend.
Defend the Wall.
The flag was a crest bisected vertically into crimson and gold sections, with a white blocked tower stamped in the center.

The door was slightly ajar. “It’s open,” said Conor.

“It’s open,
hostage princess
,” Isabella reminded him.

“Sorry, hostage princess. Let’s see what treasure lies inside.”

“I’m not supposed to, Conor.”

“Pirate Captain Crow,” said Conor, slipping through the gap in the door. As usual, Nicholas’s apartment was littered with the remains of a dozen experiments. There was a cannibalized dynamo on the hearth rug, copper wiring strands protruding from its belly.

“That’s a sea creature and those are its guts,” said Conor with relish.

“Oh, you foul pirate,” said Isabella.

“Stop your smiling, then, if I’m a foul pirate. Hostages are supposed to weep and wail.”

In the fireplace itself were jars of mercury and experimental fuels. Nicholas refused to allow his staff to move them downstairs. Too volatile, he had explained. Anyway, a fire would only go up the chimney.

Conor pointed to the jars. “Bottles of poison. Squeezed from a dragon’s bum. One sniff and you vaporate.” This sounded very possible, and Isabella wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not.

On the chaise longue were buckets of fertilizer, a couple of them gently steaming. “Also from a dragon’s bum,” intoned Conor wisely. Isabella tried to keep her scream behind her lips, so it shot out of her nose instead.

“It’s fert’lizer,” said Conor, taking pity on her. “For making plants grow on the island.”

Isabella scowled at him. “You’re being hanged at sundown. That’s a princess’s promise.”

The apartment was a land of twinklings and shining for a couple of unsupervised children. A stars-and-stripes banner was draped around the shoulders of a stuffed black bear in the corner. A collection of prisms and lenses glinted from a wooden box closed with a cap at one end; and books old and new were piled high like the columns of a ruined temple.

Conor wandered between these columns of knowledge, almost touching everything but holding back, knowing somehow that man’s dreams should not be disturbed.

Suddenly, he froze. There was something he should do. The chance might never come again. “I must capture the flag,” he breathed. “That’s what a pirate captain is supposed to do. Go to the roof so I can capture the flag and gloat.”

“Capture the flag and goat?”

“Gloat.”

Isabella stood hands on hips. “It’s pronounced goooaaat, idiot.”

“You’re supposed to be a princess. Insulting your subjects is not very princessy.”

Isabella was unrepentant. “Princesses do what they want; anyway, we don’t have a goat on the roof.”

Conor did not waste his time arguing. There was no winning an argument with someone who could have you executed. He ran to the roof door, swishing his sword at imaginary troops. This door, too, was open. Incredible good fortune. On the hundred previous occasions when Isabella and he had ambushed King Nicholas, every door in the place had been locked, and they had been warned, by stern-faced parents, never to venture onto the roof alone. It was a long way down.

Conor thought about it.

Parents? Flag?

Parents? Flag?

“Some pirate you are,” sniffed Isabella. “Standing around there scratching yourself with a toy sword.”

Flag, then.
“Arrr. I go for the flag, hostage princess.” And then in his own voice: “Don’t touch any of the experiments, Isabella. ’Specially the bottles. Papa says that one day the king is going to blow the lot of us to hell and back with his concoctions, so they must be dangerous.”

Conor went up the stairs fast, before his nerve could fail him. It wasn’t far, perhaps a dozen steps to the open air. He emerged from the confines of the turret stairwell onto the stone rooftop. From dark to light in half a second. The effect was breathtaking: azure sky with clouds close enough to touch. I was born in a place like this, thought Conor.

You are a special child,
his mother told him at least once a day.
You were born in the sky, and there will always be a place for you there.
Conor believed that this was true. He had always felt happiest in high places, where others feared to go.

He climbed on top of the parapet, holding tight to the flagpole. The world twirled around him, the orange sun hanging over Kilmore like a beacon. The sea glittered below him, more silver than blue, and the sky called to him as though he actually were a bird. For a moment he was bewitched by the scene, then the corner of the flag crept into his vision. Arrr, he thought. Yon be the flag. Pride of the Saltees.

The flag stood, perfectly rectangular, crimson and gold with its tower so white it glowed, held rigid by a bamboo frame so that the islands’ emblem would fly proud no matter what the weather. It struck Conor that he was actually standing on top of the very tower depicted by the flag. This might have caused a tug of patriotic pride in an older islander, but to a nine-year-old, all it meant was that his image should be included on the flag. I will draw myself on after I steal the flag, he decided.

Isabella emerged onto the rooftop, blinking against the sudden light. “Come down from the parapet, Conor. We’re playing pirates, not bird boy.”

Conor was aghast. “And leave the flag? Don’t you understand? I will be a famous pirate, more famous than Barbarossa himself.”

“That wall is old, Conor.”

“Pirate Captain Crow, remember.”

“That wall is old,
Conor
. It could fall down. Remember the slates came off the chapel during the storm last year?”

“What about the flag?”

“Forget the flag and forget the goat. I’m hungry, so come down before I have you hanged.”