The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl 6)

His father was on the landing now. Artemis knew that his secret life ended today. As soon as his mother got him alone, he would be explaining himself. Starting at the beginning. Abductions, uprisings, time jaunts, goblin revolutions. Everything.

Complete honesty, he thought.

Artemis Fowl shuddered.

Some hours later, the master bedroom had been transformed by the whirlwind known as Beckett Fowl. There were pizza boxes on the night table and tomato-sauce finger paintings on the wall. Beckett had stripped off his own clothes and dressed himself in one of his father’s T-shirts, which he had belted around his waist. He had applied a mascara mustache and lipstick scars to his face and was currently fencing with an invisible enemy, using one of his father’s old prosthetic legs as a sword.

Artemis was finishing his explanation of Angeline’s miraculous recovery. “And so I realized that Mother had somehow contracted Glover’s Fever, which is usually confined to Madagascar, so I synthesized the natural cure preferred by the locals and administered it. Relief was immediate.”

Beckett noticed that Artemis had stopped talking, and heaved a dramatic sigh of relief. He rode an imaginary horse across the room and poked Myles with the prosthetic leg.

“Good story?” he asked his twin.

Myles climbed down from the bed and placed his mouth beside Beckett’s ear.

“Artemis simple-toon,” he confided.

EPILOGUE

Hook Head

Commander Trouble Kelp himself led the Retrieval team to dig Opal Koboi out of the rubble. They inflated a distortion bubble over the work zone, so they could fire up the shuttle’s lasers without fear of discovery.

“Hurry up, Furty,” Trouble called over an open channel. “We have one hour until sunrise. Let’s get that megalomaniacal pixie out of there and back into her own time.”

They were lucky to have a dwarf on the team. Normally dwarfs were extremely reluctant to work with the authorities, but this one had agreed so long as he didn’t have to work any of the hundred-and-ninety-odd dwarf holy days, and if the LEP paid his exorbitant consultant fees.

In a situation like this one, dwarfs were invaluable. They could work rubble like no other species. If you needed to dig something out alive, then dwarfs were the ones to do it. All they needed to do was let their beard hairs play over a surface, and they could tell you more about what was going on under that surface than any amount of seismic or geological equipment.

Currently, Trouble was monitoring Furty Pullchain’s progress through the kraken debris on the feed from his helmet cam. The dwarf’s limbs were a shade paler than usual in the night-vision filter. One hand directed a nozzle of support foam that coated the tunnel wall at stress points, and the other reached in under his beard to rehinge his jaw.

“Okay, Commander,” he said, managing to make the rank sound like a insult. “I made it to the spot. It’s a miracle I’m alive. This thing is as steady as a house of cards in a hurricane.”

“Yeah, whatever, Furty. You’re a marvel. Now, pull her out and let’s get belowground. I have a captain I need to discipline.”

“Keep yer acorns on, Commander. I’m readin’ the beacon loud and clear.”

Trouble fumed silently. Maybe Holly Short was not the only one who would have to be disciplined.

He followed the live feed, watching Furty scoop aside the rock, weed, and shell fragments covering Holly’s suit.

Except there was no suit. Just a helmet with its flashing tracer beacon.

“I come all this way for a helmet?” said Furty, aggrieved. “Ain’t no pixie here, just the smell of one.”

Trouble sat up straight. “Are you sure? Could you be in the wrong spot?”

Furty snorted. “Yep. I’m at the other buried LEP helmet. ’Course I’m sure.”

She was gone. Opal had disappeared.

“Impossible. How could she escape?”

“Beats me,” said Furty. “Maybe she squeezed through a natural tunnel. Them pixies are slippery little creatures. I remember one time when I was a sprog. Me and Kherb, my cousin, broke into a—”

Trouble cut him off. This was serious. Opal Koboi was loose in the world. He put a video call in to Foaly at Police Plaza.

“Don’t tell me,” said the centaur, running a hand down his long face.

“She’s gone. She left the helmet so the beacon would draw us in. Any vitals from her suit?”

Foaly checked his monitor. “Nothing. It was loud and clear until five minutes ago. I thought it was a suit malfunction.”

Trouble took a breath. “Put out an alert. Priority one. I want the guards tripled on our Koboi in Atlantis. It would be just like Opal to bust herself out.”

Foaly got to it. One Opal Koboi had almost managed to take over the world. Two would probably shoot for the entire galaxy.

“And call Holly,” continued Commander Kelp. “Inform the captain that her weekend leave is canceled.”

Fowl Manor, Almost Eight Years Ago

Artemis Fowl awoke in his own bed, and for a moment red sparks danced before his eyes. They sparkled and twinkled hypnotically before chasing their own tails out of existence.

Red sparks, he thought. Unusual. I have seen stars before, but never sparks.

The ten-year-old boy stretched, grabbing handfuls of his own duvet. For some reason he felt more content than usual.

I feel safe and happy.

Artemis sat bolt upright.

Happy? I feel happy?

He couldn’t remember feeling truly happy since his father had disappeared, but on this morning his mood was bordering on cheerful.

Perhaps it was the deal with the Extinctionists. My first major chunk of profit.

No. That wasn’t it. That particular transaction had left Artemis feeling sick to the pit of his stomach. So much so that he couldn’t think about it and would probably never dwell on the past few days again.

So what could account for this feeling of optimism? Something from the dream he’d been having. A plan. A new scheme that would bring enough profit to fund a hundred Arctic expeditions.

That was it. The dream. What had it been about?

It was just out of reach. The images already fading.

A crafty smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

Fairies. Something about fairies.

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CHAPTER 1: THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE

Conor Broekhart was a remarkable boy, a fact that became evident very early in his idyllic childhood. Nature is usually grudging with her gifts, dispensing them sparingly, but she favored Conor with all she had to offer. It seemed as though all the talents of his ancestors had been bestowed upon him: intelligence, strong features, and grace.

Conor was fortunate in his situation, too. He was born into an affluent community where the values of equality and justice were actually being applied—on the surface, at least. He grew up with a strong belief in right and wrong that was not muddied by poverty or violence. It was straightforward for the young boy. Right was Great Saltee, wrong was Little Saltee.

It is an easy matter now to pluck some events from Conor’s early years and say, There it is. The boy who became the man. We should have seen it. But hindsight is an unreliable science, and in truth, there was perhaps a single incident during Conor’s early days at the palace that hinted at his potential.

The incident in question occurred when Conor was nine years old and roaming the serving corridors that snaked behind the walls of the castle chapel and main building. His partner on these excursions was the Princess Isabella, one year his senior and always the more adventurous of the two. Isabella and Conor were rarely seen without each other, and often so daubed with mud, blood, and nothing good that the boy was barely distinguishable from the princess.

On this particular summer afternoon, they had exhausted the fun to be had tracking the source of an unused chimney an