The Time Paradox (6 page)
Holly recognized this mood.
“He has a plan,” she said to Foaly.
The centaur pulled a long face, which wasn’t difficult. “Why am I not surprised?”
Holly took advantage of Artemis’s distraction to seal her helmet and speak privately to Foaly. She walked to the window and peered out at the estate through a gap in the curtains. The sinking sun wavered behind tree branches, and clumps of dahlias flashed red and white like fireworks.
Holly allowed herself time for a sigh, then focused on the situation.
“There’s more at stake here than Artemis’s mother,” she said.
Foaly switched off the television so that Artemis could not hear him.
“I know. If there is an outbreak, it could be a disaster for fairies. We don’t have any antidote left, remember?”
“We need to interview Opal Koboi. She must have kept records somewhere.”
“Opal always kept her most valuable formulae in her head. I think she was caught off guard by the jungle fire; she lost all her donors in one fell swoop.”
Koboi Industries had attracted the Madagascan lemurs by setting a sonix box in the Tsingy of Bemaraha. Virtually every lemur on the island had responded to the box’s call, and they had all been wiped out by an unfortunate lightning fire. Luckily, the fairies had already treated most of their infected, but fifteen more fairies had died in quarantine wards.
Artemis stopped pacing and cleared his throat loudly. He was ready to share his plan, and he wanted the fairies’ complete attention.
“There is a relatively simple solution to our problem,” he said.
Foaly reactivated the television, his face filling the flat screen.
“
Our
problem?”
“Come, Foaly, don’t pretend to be obtuse. This is a fairy plague that has mutated and spread to humans. You have no antidote and no time to synthesize one. Who knows how many cases of Spelltropy are incubating right now?”
Including my own, thought Artemis. I used magic on my mother, so therefore I probably have the disease.
“We will quarantine the manor,” responded Foaly. “So long as no one uses magic on your mother, we can contain this.”
“I seriously doubt that my mother is patient zero. That is simply too much of a coincidence. There are other cases out there, who knows how far along.”
Foaly grunted, his version of conceding a point. “So tell me, Artemis, what is this
relatively simple solution
?”
“I go back in time and save the lemur,” said Artemis, smiling brightly as though he had suggested a pleasant summer dip.
Silence. Complete silence for several moments, broken eventually by a strangled whinny from Foaly.
“Go back ...”
“. . . in time, ” completed Holly incredulously.
Artemis sat in a comfortable armchair, steepled his fingers, and nodded once.
“Present your arguments, please. I am ready.”
“How can you be so smug?” wondered Holly. “After all the tragedy we have seen, after all the havoc your plans have wreaked.”
“I am determined, not smug,” corrected Artemis. “There is no time for prudence here. My mother has hours left, and the Fairy People don’t have much more.”
Foaly was still gaping. “Do you have any idea how many constitution committee meetings we would have to sit through just to allow us to bring this issue to a Council meeting?”
Artemis wagged a finger dismissively. “Irrelevant. I have read the People’s constitution. It does not govern humans or demons. If N
o
1 decides to help me, technically you have no legal power to stop him.”
Holly joined the discussion. “Artemis, this is lunacy. Time travel was outlawed for a reason. The potential repercussions for the slightest interference could be catastrophic.”
Artemis smiled mirthlessly. “Ah yes, the trusty
time paradox
. If I go back in time and kill my grandfather, then shall I cease to exist? I believe, as Gorben and Berndt did, that any repercussions are already being felt. We can only change the future, not the past or present. If I go back, then I have already been back.”
Holly spoke kindly; she felt sorry for Artemis. Angeline’s illness reminded her painfully of her own mother’s final days.
“We cannot interfere, Artemis. Humans must be allowed to live their lives.”
Artemis knew that to ram home his next argument he should stand and theatrically deliver the accusation, but he could not. He was about to play the cruelest trick of his life on one of his closest friends, and the guilt was almost unbearable.
“You have already interfered, Holly,” he said, forcing himself to meet her eyes.
The words made Holly shiver; she buzzed up her visor. “What do you mean?”
“You healed my mother. Healed her and damned her.”
Holly took a step back, raising her palms as though to ward off blows.
“Me? I . . . What are you saying?”
Artemis was committed to the lie now, and covered his guilt with a sudden burst of anger.
“You healed my mother after the siege.
You
must have given her Spelltropy.”
Foaly came to his friend’s defense. “Not possible, that healing was years ago. Spelltropy has a three-month incubation period, and it never varies by more than a few days.”
“And it
never
affects humans,” Artemis countered. “This is a new strain. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Holly’s face was slack with shock and guilt. She believed Artemis’s words, though Artemis himself knew that he must have given his mother the disease when he adjusted her memory.
Father must have it too. Who gave it to me? And why am I not sick?
There were so many puzzles, but now was not the time to unravel them.
Now
he needed to find the antidote, and to ensure fairy aid, he must play on their supposed guilt in this matter.
“But I’m clean,” protested Holly. “I was tested.”
“Then you must be a carrier,” said Artemis flatly. He turned his gaze on the centaur’s image. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”
Foaly was taken aback by Artemis’s bluntness. “If this truly is a new strain, then yes, it’s possible,” he admitted. “But you can’t draw any conclusions from supposition . . .”
“Normally I would agree.
Normally
I would have the luxuries of time and objectivity. But my mother is dying, and so I have neither. I must go back to save the lemur, and you are honorbound to help me, and if you won’t help, then at least you must promise not to hinder my efforts.”
The fairies were silent. Holly was lost in thought about what she might have done. Foaly was racking his considerable brain for responses to Artemis’s arguments. He found none.
Holly removed her helmet and walked awkwardly to Angeline Fowl’s bedside. Her legs felt strangely numb and the feeling was spreading.
“My mother died—poisoned by humans. It was an accident, but that didn’t keep her alive.” Tears dripped from her eyes. “I wanted to hunt those men down. I hated them.” Holly wrung her hands. “I’m sorry, Artemis. I didn’t know. How many others have I infected? You must hate me.”
Take it back, thought Artemis.
Tell the truth now or your friendship can never be the same.
Then,
No. Be strong. Mother must live
.
“I don’t hate you, Holly,” said Artemis softly.
I hate myself, but the deception must continue.
“Of course none of this is your fault, but you
must
let me go back.”
Holly nodded, then wiped her brimming eyes. “I will do more than let you go, I will escort you. A sharp pair of eyes and a quick gun hand will prove useful.”
“No, no, no,” shouted Foaly, increasing the screen’s volume with each negative. “We can’t simply alter the past whenever we feel like it. Perhaps Holly should save her mother, or bring Commander Julius Root back from the dead! This is totally unacceptable.”
Artemis pointed a finger at him. “This is a unique situation,” he said. “You have a plague about to erupt, and we can stop it here. Not only that, but you can reintroduce a species that was thought to be extinct. I may have caused one lemur to die, but Opal Koboi gathered the rest together for the lightning fire. The People are as guilty as I am. You harvested a living creature’s brain fluid to save yourselves.”
“We . . . we were desperate,” argued Foaly, horrified that he would actually stutter.
“Exactly,” said Artemis triumphantly. “You were willing to do anything. Remember how
that
felt, and ask yourself if you want to go through it again.”
Foaly dropped his gaze, thinking back. That time had been a waking nightmare for the fairies. The use of magic had been suspended, and the lemurs were already extinct by the time a court order forced Opal to reveal the source of her antidote. He had worked sleeplessly to develop an alternative cure, but without success.
“We thought we were invincible. The only disease left was man.” The centaur made up his mind. “The lemur must be alive,” he stated. “The brain fluid can be stored for brief periods, but once it becomes inert, the fluid is useless. I was developing a charged container but . . .”
“This time you will succeed,” Artemis assured him. “You will have a live subject and laboratory conditions. You can clone a female.”
“Cloning is illegal, generally,” mused Foaly. “But in extinction cases, exceptions have been made. . . .”
Holly’s helmet beeped, drawing her attention to a craft landing in the driveway. She hurried to the window in time to see a slight shimmer cast a shadow on the moonlit driveway.
It must be a rookie pilot, thought Holly crossly. He hasn’t activated his shadow lights.
“The shuttle’s here,” she informed Artemis.
“Tell the pilot to park around the back, in one of the stables. The doctor’s assistant is making calls from my father’s office. I don’t want her going for a walk and bumping into a shielded fairy craft.”
Holly relayed the instructions, and they waited tensely for the shuttle to maneuver to the back of the house. It seemed like a long wait, silent but for the rasp of Angeline’s labored breathing.
“N
o
1 might not be able to do it,” said Foaly almost to himself. “He is a young warlock, with barely any training. Time travel is the most difficult of magics.”
Artemis did not offer a comment. There was no point. All his hopes rested on N
o
1.
He does it, or Mother dies.
He took Angeline’s hand, stroking the rough parchment skin with his thumb.
“Hold on, Mother,” he whispered. “I will only be a second.”
CHAPTER 5
The little demon
known as N
o
1 cut a strange figure waddling down the LEP shuttle’s gangplank. A small, stocky individual with gray armored plates and short limbs, he looked a little like a miniature upright rhino-ceros with fingers and toes, except for the head. The head was pure gargoyle.
I wish I had a tail, thought N
o
1.
In actual fact he did have a tail, but it was stubby and not good for much except making snow fans in Haven City’s artificial weather park.
N
o
1 consoled himself with the observation that at least his tail didn’t dangle down into the toilet. Some of the Hybras demons had trouble adjusting to the new-fangled seats on the recycling lounges in Haven. He had heard horror stories. Apparently there had been three emergency reattachments this month alone.
The transition from Limbo to normal time had been difficult for all demons, but there were many more positives than negatives. Restrictions imposed under the old tribal leader were now being lifted. Demons could eat cooked food if they felt like it. Family units were taking hold again. Even the most belligerent demons were a lot more relaxed with their mothers around. But it was difficult to shake off ten millennia of human-hating, and many of the buck demons were undergoing therapy or were on mood pills to stop them hopping a shuttle to the surface and chomping on the first human limb they saw.
Not N
o
1, though, who had no limb-chomping ambitions whatsoever. He was something of an anomaly among demons. N
o
1 loved everyone, even humans, especially Artemis Fowl, who had saved them all from the deathly dreariness of Limbo, not to mention Leon Abbot, the psychopathic ex–tribe leader.
So when the call came through to Section 8 that Artemis needed him, N
o
1 had strapped himself into the division’s shuttle and demanded to be taken aboveground. Commander Vinyáya had agreed because disagreeing could lead to all sorts of magical tantrums from the fledgling warlock. Once, in a fit of frustration, he had accidentally shattered the magnifying wall of the city’s huge aquarium. Fairies were still finding minnows in their toilet ponds.
You can go
, Vinyáya had told him.
But only if you take a squad of guards to hold your hand every step of the way.
Which did not literally mean
hold his hand
, as N
o
1 had found out when he tried to link with the captain of the guard.
“But, Commander Vinyáya said,” he had objected.
“Stow the hand, demon,” ordered the captain. “There’ll be no hand-holding on my watch.”
And so N
o
1 appeared to approach Fowl Manor alone, though he was flanked by a dozen shielded fairies. Halfway up the avenue he remembered to shroud his real appearance with a shape-shifting spell. Any human who happened to be looking down the driveway would now see a small boy in flowing, flowered robes strolling toward the front door. This was an image N
o
1 had seen in a human movie from the last century, and he thought it was appropriately nonthreatening.
Miss Book happened to appear at the doorway just as N
o
1 reached it. The sight of him stopped the nurse-publicist in her tracks. She tugged off her glasses as though they were feeding false information to her eyes.
“Hello there, little boy,” she said, smiling, though she probably would not have been so jolly had she been aware of the twelve plasma rifles pointed at her head.
“Hi,” said N
o
1 cheerily. “I love everyone, so no need to feel threatened.”
Miss Book’s smile faltered. “Threatened? Of course not. Are you looking for someone? Are you playing dress-up?”
Artemis appeared at the doorway, interrupting the conversation.
“Ah . . . Ferdinand, where have you been?” he said, quickly shepherding N
o
1 past the nurse. “This is the gardener’s boy, Ferdinand,” he explained. “A dramatic type. I’ll summon his father to collect him.”
“Good idea,” said Miss Book doubtfully. “I know your mother’s room is sealed, but don’t let him upstairs all the same.”
“Of course not,” said Artemis. “I’ll send him out the back way.”
“Good,” said the nurse. “I just need a breath of fresh air, then I will come to check on your mother.”
“Take your time,” said Artemis. “I can read the instruments.”
I designed a few of them, he thought.
As soon as Miss Book disappeared around the corner, Artemis escorted his demon friend up the stairs.
“We’re going upstairs,” objected N
o
1 mildly. “Didn’t that young lady tell you not to allow me upstairs?”
Artemis sighed. “How long have you known me, N
o
1?”
N
o
1 nodded craftily.“Ah, I see. Artemis Fowl
never
does what he is told to do.”
Holly greeted N
o
1 on the landing, but refused to hug him until he dropped the shape-shifting spell.
“I hate the feel of those things,” she said. “It’s like hugging a wet sponge.”
N
o
1 pouted. “But I enjoy being Ferdinand. Humans smile at me.”
Artemis assured him that there was no surveillance in his study, and so the demon warlock waited until the door was closed behind them, then banished the spell with a click of his fingers. Ferdinand unraveled and fell from N
o
1’s body in a flurry of sparks, leaving the small gray demon warlock wearing nothing but a wide grin.
Holly hugged him tightly.“I knew you would come. We need you desperately.”
N
o
1 stopped smiling. “Ah, yes. Artemis’s mother. Does she want a magical cure?”
“That’s the last thing she wants,” said Holly.
Once the situation was explained to N
o
1, he immediately agreed to help.
“You are in luck, Artemis,” said the little demon, wiggling his eight fingers. “I did a module on time travel last week for the warlock diploma course I’m taking.”
“Small class, I bet,” commented Artemis dryly.
“Just me,” admitted N
o
1. “And Qwan, of course, my teacher. Apparently I am the most powerful warlock Qwan has ever seen.”
“Good,” said Artemis. “Then transporting us all into the past shouldn’t pose any problems for you.”
Foaly had projected himself onto five of Artemis’s various monitors.
“All?”
spluttered each image. “All! You can’t take N
o
1 with you.”
Artemis was not in the mood for argument. “I need him, Foaly. End of discussion.”
Foaly looked as though his head would bulge through the screens. “It is most certainly not
end of discussion
. Holly is an adult, she can make her own decision, but N
o
1 is little more than a child. You cannot jeopardize him on one of your missions. A lot of hopes rest on that little demon. The future of the fairy families.”
“None of us will have a future if N
o
1 doesn’t bring us to the past.”
“Please stop,” said N
o
1. “All this arguing is making me dizzy. There is no time for it.”
Artemis’s face was red, but he held his tongue, unlike Foaly, who kept shouting, but at least he muted the screens.
“Foaly needs to vent,” explained Holly. “Or he gets headaches.”
The three waited until the centaur calmed himself, then N
o
1 spoke. “In any event, I cannot go with you, Artemis. That’s not how it works.”
“But you transported us from Limbo.”
“Qwan did that. He is a master, I am but an apprentice. And anyway, we had no desire to go
back
to Limbo. If you wish to return
here
, I need to stay as a marker.”
“Explain,” said Artemis tersely.
N
o
1 spread his arms wide. “I am a beacon,” he declared. “A shining supernova of power. Any magic I release into the ether will be attracted back to me. I send you into the past, and you will snap back to me like puppies on a leash.” N
o
1 frowned, not happy with his simile. “One of those retractable leashes.”
“Yes, we get it,” said Artemis. “How long will it take to weave the spell?”
N
o
1 chewed his lip for a moment. “About as long as it takes you two to remove your clothing.”
“Hurkk,” said Artemis half-choking with surprise.
“D’Arvit,” swore Holly.
“I think we all know what D’Arvit means,” said N
o
1. “But
hurkk
is not English. Unless you meant
hark
, which means
to remember something from the past
. Which I suppose could be relevant. Or perhaps you were speaking Dutch, and then
hurk
would translate as squat.” N
o
1 paused for a wink. “Which means
squat
to me.”
Artemis leaned close to the demon’s cornet-shaped ear. “Why do we need to take our clothes off?”
“That is a very good question,” said Holly into the other ear.
“It’s quite simple,” said N
o
1. “I am not so skilled as Qwan. And even
with
Qwan overseeing the last transfer, you two managed to switch an eye each, which was probably because someone was focusing on stealing magic. If you take clothes or guns in there, they could become a part of you.” The demon raised a stiff finger. “Lesson number one of time transfers,” he stated. “Keep it simple.
It’s going to take all of your concentration just to reassemble your bodies.
And
you will be thinking for the lemur too.”
N
o
1 noticed both Artemis’s and Holly’s awkward expressions and took pity on them.
“I suppose you could keep one thing, if you must. A small garment, but make sure it’s your color, because you could be wearing it for a really long time.”
Though they both knew that this was no time for modesty, neither Artemis nor Holly could suppress a blush. Holly covered her embarrassment by tearing off her Shimmer Suit as quickly as possible.
“I’m keeping the one-piece,” she said belligerently, daring N
o
1 to argue. The
one-piece
looked similar to a swimsuit but was padded on the shoulders and back to support a wing rig. There were also heat and kinetic panels that could absorb energy from the wearer to power the suit.
“Okay,” said N
o
1. “But I would advise you to remove the pads and any other electronics.”
Holly nodded, tearing the pads from their Velcro strips.
Artemis gathered Holly’s things. “I will put your helmet and suit in the safe, just to be certain they are secure. No need to take chances with the People’s technology.”
“Now you’re thinking like a centaur,” Foaly piped up.
It took only a minute to hide the fairy gear, and when he returned from the safe room, Artemis took off his shirt and trousers carefully, hanging them in his wardrobe. He placed his loafers on a shoe rack alongside several similar black pairs, and one brown, for casual days.
“Nice underwear,” snickered Foaly from the screen, momentarily forgetting the gravity of the situation.
Artemis was wearing a pair of red Armani boxer shorts, which were pretty much the same color as his face.
“Can we get on with it?” he snapped. “Where do you need us to stand?”
“Wherever you need to be,” replied N
o
1 simply. “It’s far easier for me if you take off and land at the same point. It’s hard enough shooting you down a wormhole faster than the speed of light without worrying about location too.”
“We are in the right location,” said Artemis. “This is where we need to be.”
“You need to know
when
you want to arrive,” added N
o
1. “The temporal coordinates are as important as the geographical ones.”
“I know when.”
“Very well,” said N
o
1, rubbing his hands together. “Time to send you on your way.”
Holly remembered something. “I haven’t completed the Ritual,” she said. “I’m low on magic, and without weapons, that could be a problem. We don’t have an acorn.”
“Not to mention a bend in the river,” added Artemis.
N
o
1 smirked. “Those things
could
be problems. Unless . ..”
A spiral rune on the demon’s forehead glowed red and spun like a Catherine wheel. It was hypnotizing.
“Wow,” said Holly. “That’s really . . .”
Then a pulsing beam of crimson magic blasted from the center of the rune, enveloping Holly in a cocoon of light.
“Now you’re full to the brim,” said N
o
1, bowing low. “Thank you very much. I’m here all week. Don’t forget to tip your goblins and bury those acorns.”
“Wow,” said Holly again when her fingertips stopped buzzing. “That’s a neat trick.”
“More than you know. That’s my own signature magic. The N
o
1 cocktail, if you like, which makes you a beacon in the time stream.”
Artemis shuffled self-consciously. “How long do we have?”
N
o
1 gazed at the ceiling while he ran some calculations. “Three hundred years . . . No, no, three days. Holly can bring you back at any point before that simply by making herself open to my power, but after three days the link grows weaker.”
“Is there anything we can do about that?”
“Let’s face facts: all-powerful I may be, but I’m a novice at this, so taking off from where you landed is vital. If you go beyond three days, then you are stuck in the past.”
“If we do get separated, couldn’t Holly come back and get me?” wondered Artemis.
“No, she could not,” said N
o
1. “It would be impossible for you to meet at a point neither of you had experienced. This is a one-time deal only. It will take everything I have to hold you together for this trip. Any more and your atoms would lose their memory and simply forget where it is they are supposed to go. Both of you have already been in the time stream twice. I can transport objects forever and a day, but living beings break down without a warlock in the stream to shield them.”
Holly asked a very pertinent question. “N
o
1, have you done this before?”