Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - the time paradox

THEFowl family currently had three aircraft. A Learjet and a Sikorsky helicopter, were hangared at the nearby airport, and a small Cessna, which lived in a small garage workshop beside the high meadow on the northern border of the estate. The Cessna was several years old and would have been recycled some time ago had Artemis not taken it on as a project. His aim was to make it carbon-neutral and cost-effective, a goal which his father heartily approved of.

‘I have forty scientists working on the same problem, but my money is on you,’ he had confided to his son.

And so Artemis coated the entire body of the craft with lightweight super-efficient solar panels, like NASA’s prototype flying wing, the Helios. Unlike the Helios, Artemis’s Cessna could still fly at its normal speeds and take passengers. This was because Artemis had removed the single engine and installed smaller ones to turn the main propeller, the four extra props on the wings and the landing gear. Most of the metal in the skeleton had been stripped out and replaced with a lightweight polymer. Where the fuel tank had been now sat a small battery.

There were still a few adjustments to make, but Artemis believed his ship was skyworthy. He hoped so. There was a lot riding on the soundness of the little craft. He sprinted from the kitchen door across the courtyard and towards the high meadow. With any luck Opal would not realize he was gone until she saw the plane taking off. Of course then he wanted her to see him. Hopefully, he could draw her away long enough for LEP reinforcements to arrive.

Artemis felt the tiredness in his legs before he had gone a hundred metres. He had never been the athletic type and the recent time-stream jaunts had done nothing for his physique, even though he had concentrated hard on his muscles during the trips. Willing himself to tone up. A little mind-over-matter experiment that sadly had not yielded any results.

The old farm gate to the meadow was closed, so Artemis scaled it rather than struggle with the heavy bolt. He could feel the heat from the simian’s body high inside his jacket and its little hands were tight on his neck.

Jayjay must be safe, he thought. He must be saved.

The garage doors were sturdier than they looked and protected with a keypad entry system. Artemis tapped in the code and threw the doors wide, flooding the interior with the deep orange rays of the early-evening sun. Inside, nestled in a horseshoe of benches and tool trolleys, was the modified Cessna, hooked up to a supplementary power cable. Artemis snapped the cable from its socket on the fuselage and clambered into the cockpit. He strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, remembering briefly when he had first flown this plane solo.

Nine years old. I needed a booster seat.

The engines started immediately and virtually silently. The only noise came from the whirring of the propellers and the clicks of switches as Artemis ran through his preflight check.

The news was generally good. Eighty per cent power. That gave the small plane a range of several hundred miles. Easily enough to lead Opal on a merry dance along the Irish coast. But the flaps were sticky and the seals were old.

Don’t take her over three thousand metres.

‘We’re going to be fine,’ he said to the passenger inside his jacket. ‘Absolutely fine.’

Was this the truth? He could not be certain.

The high meadow was wide and long and sloped gently upwards to the estate wall. Artemis nudged the Cessna from her hangar, swinging the nose in a tight turn to give himself maximum runway. Under ideal circumstances, the five-hundred-metre stretch of grass was more than ample for a take-off. But there was a tailwind and the grass was a few centimetres longer than it should be.

Despite these considerations, we should be OK. I have flown in worse conditions than these.

The take-off was textbook. Artemis pulled back on the nosewheel at the three-hundred-metre mark and comfortably cleared the north wall. Even at this low altitude he could see the Irish Sea to the west, black with scimitars of sunlight slicing across the wave tips.

He was tempted, for the merest fraction of a moment, just to flee, but he didn’t.

Have I changed utterly? Artemis asked himself. He realized that he was running out of palatable crimes. Not so long ago, nearly all crime had been acceptable to him.

No, he decided. There were still people who deserved to be stolen from, or exposed, or dropped in deep jungle with only flip-flops and a spoon. He would just have to put more effort into finding them.

Artemis activated the wing cameras. There was one such person on the avenue below. A megalomaniac, cold-hearted pixie. Opal Koboi. Artemis could see her striding towards the manor, jamming Holly’s helmet down over her ears.

I was afraid of that. She thought to take the helmet. A most valuable tool.

Still, he had no alternative but to attract her attention. The lives of his family and friends were at stake. Artemis took the Cessna down thirty metres, following Opal’s path to the manor. She may not hear the engine, but the sensors in Holly’s helmet would throw up a dozen red lights.

On cue, Opal stopped in her tracks, throwing her gaze skywards, capturing the small plane in her sights.

Come on, Opal, thought Artemis. Take the bait. Run a thermal.

∗

Opal strode purposefully towards the manor until she snagged the toe of one LEP boot under the heel of another.

Stupid tall elf, she thought furiously, righting herself. When I am queen — no — when I am empress, all tall fairies will have their legs modified. Or, better still, I will have a human pituitary gland grafted to my brain so that I shall be the tall one. A giant among fairies, physically and mentally.

She had other plans too: an Opalesque cosmetic face mould that could give any of her adoring fans the Koboi look in seconds. A homeopathic hoverchair covered in massage bars and mood sensors that would read her humour and spray whatever scents were needed to cheer her up.

But those plans could wait until she was empress. For now the lemur was her priority. Without its brain fluid, it could take years to accomplish her plans. Plus magic was so much easier than science.

Opal slotted Holly’s helmet on to her head. Pads inside the helmet automatically inflated to cradle her skull. There was some coded security, which she contemptuously hacked with a series of blinks and hand movements. These LEP helmets were not half as advanced as the models in her R amp;D department.

Once the hemet’s functions were open to her, the visor’s display crystals fizzled and turned scarlet. Red alert! Something was closing in. A 3D radar sweep revealed a small craft overhead, and recogniton software quickly pegged it as a human-built Cessna.

She quickly selected the command sequence for a thermal scan and the helmet infra-red detector analysed the electromagnetic radiation coming from inside the aircraft. There was some waffle from the solar panels but the scan isolated an orange blob in the pilot’s seat. One passenger only. The helmet’s biometric reader conveniently identified the pilot as Artemis Fowl, and dropped a 3D icon over his fuzzy figure.

‘One passenger,’ murmured Opal. ‘Are you trying to decoy me away from the house, Artemis Fowl? Is that why you fly so low?’

But Artemis Fowl knew technology, he would anticipate thermal-imaging.

‘What do you have up your sleeve?’ wondered the pixie. ‘Or perhaps up your shirt.’