Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - the time paradox

All magic has a price. When fairies shield, they sacrifice fine motor skills and clear thought. It is infinitely more difficult to do a jigsaw when your body is vibrating faster than a hummingbird’s wings, even if your brain could stop rattling for long enough to focus on the puzzle.

In the LEP Academy, Holly had picked up a tip from an Atlantean gym coach. It really helped to beat the shield-shakes if you sucked your lower abdominals in and up, strengthening your core. It gave you something to focus on and held your torso a little tighter.

Holly practised the exercise as she crossed the banquet floor towards the kitchen. When a frantic, butter-knife-wielding Extinctionist missed her by a shade, she thought that sometimes being invisible was more dangerous than being in plain sight.

The two guards on the door were actually growling at anyone who ventured too close. They were big, even for humans, and Holly was glad that no fine motor skill would be called for. Two quick jabs into the nerve cluster above the knee should be plenty to bring these guys down.

Simple, thought Holly, then, I shouldn’t have thought that. Whenever you think that, something goes wrong.

Of course she was dead right.

Someone started firing on Kronski’s guards. Silver darts streaked through the air, then punctured skin with a sickening thunk.

Holly knew instinctively who the shooter was, then her suspicions were confirmed when she spotted a familiar silhouette anchored in the roof beams.

Butler!

The bodyguard was draped in a desert blanket, but Holly identified him from the shape of his head and also from his unmistakable shooting position: left elbow cocked out a little more than most marksmen preferred.

Young Artemis sent him back to clear a path for us, she realized. Or maybe Butler made the decision himself.

Whichever it was, Butler was not helping as much as he hoped. With the guards dropping at the fire exit, the Extinctionists were piling over their fallen captors, desperate to be free of this building.

Caged Extinctionists, thought Holly. I’m sure Artemis appreciates that irony.

Just as Holly drew back her fists, the two guards at the kitchen door clutched their necks and pitched forward, unconscious before they hit the floor.

Nice shooting. Two shots in under a second from eighty metres out. With darts too, which are about as accurate as wet sponges.

She was not the only one to notice the unguarded door. A dozen hysterical Extinctionists rushed the portal, screaming like rock-band fans.

We need to exit this building. Now.

Holly turned towards Artemis, but he was lost in a clump of advancing Extinctionists.

He must be somewhere in there, she thought, then she was pinned by the mob, borne aloft and into the kitchen.

‘Artemis,’ she called, completely forgetting that she was still invisible. ‘Artemis!’

But he was nowhere to be seen. The world was a melee of elbows and torsos. Sweat and screams. Voices were in her ears and ragged breath on her face, and by the time she had disentangled herself from the pack, the banquet hall was virtually deserted. A few stragglers, but no Artemis.

The souq, she thought. I will find him in the souq.

Artemis tensed himself to run. As soon as Holly took the guards out of commission, he would sprint as fast as he could and pray that he didn’t trip and fall. Imagine, to endure all of this only to be defeated by a lack of coordination. Butler would be sure to say I told you so when they met in the afterlife.

Suddenly the pandemonium level jumped a few notches, and the screaming of the Extinctionists reminded Artemis of Rathdown Park’s panicked animals.

Caged Extinctionists, he thought. Oh, the irony.

The kitchen-door guards fell, clutching their throats.

Nice work, Captain.

Artemis bent low, like a sprinter waiting for the gun, then catapulted himself from his hiding place behind the dock.

Kronski hit him broadside with his full weight, tumbling them both through the railings into the dock. Artemis landed heavily on the baby chair and it collapsed underneath him, one of its arms raking along his side.

‘This is all your fault,’ squealed Kronski. ‘This was supposed to be the best night of my life.’

Artemis felt himself being smothered. His mouth and nose were jammed by sweat-soaked purple material.

He intends to kill me, thought Artemis. I have pushed him too far.

There was no time for planning and, even if there were time, this was not one of those situations where a handy mathematical theorem could be found to get Artemis out of his predicament. There was only only one thing to do: lash out.

So Artemis kicked, punched and gouged. He buried his knee in Kronski’s ample stomach and blinded him with his fists.

All very superficial blows which had little lasting effect, except one. Artemis’s right heel brushed against Kronski chest. Kronski didn’t even feel it. But the heel connected briefly with the oversized button on the remote control in the doctor’s pocket, releasing the dock trapdoor.

The second his brain registered the loss of back support, Artemis knew what had happened.

I am dead, he realized. Sorry, Mother.

Artemis fell bodily into the pit, breaking the laser beam with his elbow. There was a beep and half a second later the pit was filled with blue-white flame that blasted black scorch marks in the walls.

Nothing could have survived.

Kronski braced himself against the dock rails, perspiration dripping from the tip of his nose into the pit, evaporating on the way down.

Do I feel bad about what just happened? he asked himself, aware that psychologists recommended facing trauma head-on in order to avoid stress in later life.

No, he found. I don’t. In fact, I feel as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Kronski raised himself up with a great creaking and cracking of knees.

Now, where’s the other one? he wondered. I still have some weight to lose.

Artemis saw the flames blossom around him. He saw his skin glow blue with their light and heard their raw roar, then he was through, unscathed.

Impossible.

Obviously not. Obviously, these flames had more bark about them than bite.

Holograms?

The pit floor yielded beneath his weight with a hiss of pneumatics, and Artemis found himself in a sub-chamber looking up at heavy steel doors swinging closed above him.

The view from inside a swing-top bin.

A very high-tech swing-top bin, with expanding gel hinges. Fairy design, without a doubt.

Artemis remembered something Kronski had said earlier.

This is not how she said it would go …

She… she.

Fairy design. Endangered species. What fairy had been harvesting lemur brain fluid even before the Spelltropy epidemic?

Artemis paled. Not her. Please not her.

What do I have to do? he thought. How many times must I save the world from this lunatic?

He scrambled to his knees and saw he had been funnelled on to a padded pallet. Before he could roll off, Octobonds sprang from recessed apertures along the pallet’s steel rim, trussing him tighter than a tumbled rodeo cow. Purple gas hissed from a dozen overhead nozzles, shrouding the pallet.

Hold your breath, Artemis told himself. Animals don’t know to hold their breaths.

He held on until it felt as though his sternum would split, and then just as he was about to exhale and suck in a huge breath, a second gas was pumped into the chamber, crystallizing the first. It fell on to Artemis’s face like purple snowflakes.