Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - the time paradox

Artemis the elder stepped back, instinctively terrified. Some primal part of his brain interpreted this message as fear and pain. His skin crawled and he had to fight his every instinct not to run and hide.

Artemis the younger reached down to the lemur, dangling the ziplock bag in front of his twitching nose. The lemur laid the pads of its fingers on Artemis’s wrist.

I have him, thought the Irish boy. The money for the expedition is mine.

Then a wall of unholy sound blasted him like a force-ten wind. Young Artemis staggered back, dropping the bag of paste, suddenly irrationally terrified.

Something wants to kill me. But what? Every animal in the world, it sounds like.

The park’s residents were thoroughly spooked too. They screeched and chattered, rattling their cages, hurling themselves against the bars. Monkeys tried repeatedly to leap across the moats surrounding their islands. An eight-hundred-kilo Sumatran rhino charged the heavy doors to its compound, rattling the hinges with each attack. A red wolf snarled and snapped, an Iberian lynx hissed, slashing the air, and a snow leopard chased its tail, flicking its head and mewling anxiously.

Butler could not help but shift his focus.

‘It’s the female creature,’ he stated. ‘Making some kind of sound. It’s riling these animals up. I’m a bit disturbed myself.’

Artemis did not take his gaze from the lemur. ‘You know what to do,’ he said.

Butler knew. If there is an obstacle preventing the completion of a mission, remove the obstacle. He strode quickly to the bars, poked the pistol’s muzzle through the mesh and put a dart into the female’s shoulder.

She stumbled backwards, her fantastic orchestra of animal sounds squawking to a halt.

Butler felt a shudder of guilt, which almost caused him to misstep on his way to Artemis’s side. Twice now he had tranked this girl, or whatever she was, without having any idea what the chemicals were doing to her non-human system. His only consolation was that he had loaded small-dosage darts as soon as he had secured the night watchman. She shouldn’t be out too long. A few minutes tops.

The lemur was spooked now. Tiny hands tickling the space before him. The sap cocktail was tempting, but there was danger here of the worst kind and the urge to live was overriding the desire for a tasty treat.

‘No,’ said Artemis, seeing fear cloud the creature’s eyes. ‘It’s not real. There is no danger.’

The little simian was not convinced, as if it could read the boy’s intention in the sharp angles of his face.

The silky sifaka squeaked once, as though pin-pricked, then scampered along Artemis’s arm, over his shoulder and out through the cage door.

Butler lunged for the tail, but missed by a hair. He closed his fingers into a fist.

‘Perhaps it’s time to admit defeat on this one. We are dangerously unprepared and our adversaries have… abilities we know nothing about.’

His charge’s reply was to hurry after the lemur.

‘Artemis, wait,’ sighed Butler. ‘If we must proceed, then I will take the lead.’

‘They want the lemur,’ Artemis panted as he ran. ‘And so it becomes more valuable than it was. When we catch the animal, then we are in a position of power.’

Catching the animal was easier said than done. The lemur was incredibly agile and found purchase on the smoothest of surfaces. It darted without a wobble along a metal railing, leaping three metres to the lower branches of a potted palm and from there jumping to the compound wall.

‘Shoot!’ hissed Artemis.

It occurred to Butler briefly that he did not care for Artemis’s expression — almost cruel, his brow creased where a ten-year-old’s brow should not have creases — but he would worry about that later; for now he had an animal to sedate.

Butler was quick but the silky sifaka was quicker. In a flash of fur it scaled the wall and dropped outside into the night, leaving a blurred white jet stream in its wake.

‘Wow,’ said Butler, almost in admiration. ‘That was fast.’

Artemis was not impressed by his bodyguard’s choice of words. ‘Wow? I think this merits more than a wow. Our quarry has escaped and with it the funds for my Arctic expedition.’

At this point Butler was fast losing interest in the lemur. There were other less ignoble ways to raise funds. Butler shuddered to think of the ribbing he would have to endure if an account of this night somehow made it to Farmer’s Bar in LA, which was owned by one ex-blue-diamond bodyguard and frequented by many more.

But, in spite of his distaste for the mission, Butler’s sense of loyalty forced him to share a fact that the park director had mentioned earlier when Artemis was busy studying the alarm system.

‘There is something that I know, which you may not know,’ he said archly.

Artemis was not in the mood for games. ‘Oh, really. And what would that be?’

‘Lemurs are tree creatures,’ replied Butler. ‘That little guy is spooked and he’s going to climb the biggest tree he can find, even if it isn’t actually a tree. If you see what I mean.’

Artemis saw immediately, which wasn’t difficult as the huge structures cast a lattice of moon shadows over the entire compound.

‘Of course, old friend,’ he said, his frown crease disappearing. ‘The pylons.’

Things were going disastrously wrong for Artemis the elder. Mulch was injured, Holly was unconscious again- feet sticking out of the dwarf’s hole — and he himself was fast running out of ideas. The deafening clamour of a hundred endangered species going berserk was not helping his concentration.

The animals are going ape, he thought. Then: What a time to develop a sense of humour.

All he could do was prioritize.

I need to get Holly out of here, he realized. That is the most important thing.

Mulch moaned, rolling on to his back, and Artemis saw that there was a bleeding gash on his forehead.

He stumbled to the dwarf’s side. ‘I imagine you’re in great pain,’ he said. ‘It’s to be expected with such a laceration.’ Bedside manner was not one of Artemis’s strong suits. ‘You will have a rather large scar, but then looks are not really important to you.’

Mulch squinted at Artemis through a narrowed eye. ‘Are you trying to be funny? Oh, my God, you’re not. That was actually the nicest thing you could think of to say.’

He dabbed at his bloody forehead with a finger. ‘Ow. That hurts.’

‘Of course.’

‘I will have to seal it. You know all about this dwarf talent, I suppose.’

‘Naturally,’ said Artemis, keeping a straight face. ‘I’ve seen it a dozen times.’

‘I doubt it,’ grunted Mulch, plucking a wiggling beard hair from his chin. ‘But I don’t have much choice, now do I? With the LEP elf in dreamland, I won’t be getting any magical help from that quarter.’

Artemis heard a rustling in the undergrowth at the rear of the cage. ‘You’d better hurry it up. I think the gorilla is overcoming its fear of fairies.’

Wincing, Mulch introduced the beard hair to his gash. It took off like a tadpole, poking through the skin, stitching the flaps together. Though he groaned and shuddered, Mulch managed to stay conscious.

When the hair had finished its work, and the wound was tied up tighter than a fly in a ball of spider’s web, Mulch spat on his hand and rubbed the gooey mess on to the wound.

‘All sealed,’ he proclaimed, then upon seeing the glint in Artemis’s eye: ‘Don’t get any ideas, Mud Boy. This only works on dwarfs, and, what’s more, my beard hair only works on me. You poke one of my lovelies into your skin and all you’ll get is an infection.’