Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - the time paradox

Mulch Diggums was waiting for them inside the holographic bush at the shuttle port’s concealed entrance. In spite of a thick coating of mud, his smug expression was easy to read.

‘You won’t be needing an Omintool, Captain,’ he said. ‘I got the door open all on my lonesome.’

Holly was more than surprised. The shuttle port’s main door needed a twenty-digit code, plus palm-print scan, and she knew that Mulch was about as technologically minded as a stink worm. Not that Holly wasn’t relieved, as she had anticipated a thirty-minute slog resetting the log once she’d opened the door herself.

‘So… tell me.’

Mulch pointed down the corridor towards the subterranean escalator. A small figure was spreadeagled on the ramp, his head covered in a blob of shining goo.

‘Commander Root and his heavy mob have cleared out. Only one security guard left.’

Holly nodded. She knew where Julius Root had gone. Back to Haven to wait for her report from Hamburg.

‘He was on his rounds up here when I tunnelled in, so I swallowed him briefly and gave him a lick of dwarf spit. Everyone reacts differently to the phlegm helmet. This little pixie tried to escape. Slapped the sensor, spouted the code, then staggered around a bit before the sedative got him.’

Artemis pressed past into the access tunnel.

‘Perhaps our luck is finally turning,’ he said, certain he could feel Holly staring daggers into the back of his head.

‘A pity he didn’t open the lock-up,’ sighed Mulch. ‘Then I could have double-crossed you two and made off with the shuttle.’

Artemis froze. ‘Shuttle?’

He braved Holly’s hostile gaze to ask. ‘A shuttle, Holly. Do you think we could still beat my younger self to Morocco?’

Holly’s eyes were flat and her tone was neutral. ‘It’s possible. It depends on how long it takes me to cover our tracks.’

The shuttle was what LEP pilots would call a snowgood, as in snowgood for anything but the recycling smelter. Butler, Artemis knew, would have been more straightforward in his assessment of the vehicle.

He could hear the big bodyguard’s voice in his head. I have driven some heaps in my time, Artemis. But this pig is …

‘… is barely out of the Stone Age,’ murmured Artemis, then chuckled ruefully.

‘Another joke, Mud Boy?’ asked Holly. ‘You’re really on fine form today. What is it this time? Did you tell some poor trusting fool that they caused a plague?’

Artemis hung his head wearily. This could go on for years.

Mulch had stumbled across the shuttle when he’d tunnelled to the port wall and wind-blasted a sheet of metal cladding from a service-tunnel wall. He knew the panel would be loose, because he had utilized this point of entry on previous visits. The shuttle had been up on blocks and under a lube-tent and so Mulch could not resist a little peek. Lo and behold, a tunnel scraper, in for refitting. Just the thing for hopping around the People’s network of subterannean access tunnels. It had been a simple matter for Holly to reverse the clunky shuttle back down the monorail to the tunnel access hatch.

Meanwhile, Artemis had been covering their tracks, removing all traces of their visit to the shuttle port — wiping video crystals and replacing the lost time with loops. There wasn’t much he could do about the unconscious sprite or the loader’s worth of LEP hardware they had helped themselves to from the lock-up, but Mulch had had no problem taking credit for those.

‘Hey, I’m already public enemy number one,’ he had said. ‘It’s not as if I can go any higher on the list.’

So now they were seated inside the tunnel scraper, which was slotted into a launching bracket, drawing a few minute’s charge from the coupling dock before they dropped into the abyss. Holly spent the time falsifying a report for the tunnel authorities.

‘I’m telling them that this shuttle’s paddle has been upgraded as per the service order and that the ship has been requested by the north African shuttle port to do a supply artery declogging. It’s a drone flight, so they won’t be looking for any personnel on board.’

Artemis was determined to give the mission every chance of success, in spite of the bridges he had burned. So, if a question had to be asked, he would ask it.

‘Will that work?’

Holly shrugged. ‘I doubt it. There’s probably a smart missile waiting for us on the other side of that door.’

‘Really?’

‘No. I’m lying. Not nice, is it?’

Artemis shook his head miserably. He would have to think of some way to make it up to Holly. At least partially.

‘Of course it will work. For now, at least. By the time Police Plaza puts all of this together, we should have returned to the future.’

‘And we can fly without a paddle?’

Holly and Mulch shared a guffaw and a few words in Gnommish that were too fast for Artemis to catch. He did think he heard the word cowpóg, which translated as moron.

‘Yes, Mud Boy. We can fly without a paddle, unless you’re planning to scrape some residue from the tunnel walls. Usually we leave that to the robots.’

Artemis had forgotten how cutting Holly could be with people she wasn’t fond of.

Mulch sang a few bars of the old human song ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”. He crooned at Holly, clutching an imaginary microphone in his fist.

Holly was not smiling now. ‘You’re about to lose all feeling in your legs, Diggums, if you don’t shut it.’

Mulch noticed Holly’s expression and realized that now was not the best time to be needling her.

Holly decided it was time to terminate the conversation. She remote-opened the access hatch and withdrew the docking clamps.

‘Buckle up, boys,’ she said, and dropped the small craft into a steep dive down an enormous hole, like dropping a peanut into the mouth of a hungry hippo.

TEN-year-old Artemis was about as miserable as Butler could remember seeing him, except for perhaps the time he had lost a science prize to an Australian postgraduate. The bodyguard glanced in the mirror of the rented Land Rover, and saw that his young charge was sitting in a puddle of perspiration, his expensive suit virtually dissolving on his spare frame.

A perforated box sat belted on the seat beside Artemis. Three black fingers poked from one of the holes as the captured lemur explored his prison.

Artemis has barely looked at the creature. He is trying to objectify it. It is no small thing to cause the extinction of a species, even to save one’s father.

Artemis, meanwhile, was cataloguing the causes of his misery. A missing father and a mother teetering on the brink of nervous collapse were numbers one and two. Followed by a team of Arctic explorers running up expenses in a Moscow hotel room, doubtless living on room service, caviar with everything. Damon Kronski figured high on the list too. A repulsive man, with repellent ideals.

The local airport, Fez Saïss, had been closed and so Butler had been forced to detour the Learjet to Mohammed V International in Casablanca and rent a Land Rover there. And not a modern Land Rover either. This one belonged in the last millennium and had more holes than a block of Gruyère cheese. The air-conditioning had spluttered its last over a hundred miles ago and the seat padding was worn so thin that Artemis felt like he was sitting on a jackhammer. If the heat didn’t bake him, the vibration would shake him to death.

Still, in spite of all these things, a thought struck Artemis, causing the corner of his mouth to twitch in a half smile.