The Time Paradox

But at heart Holly was an adventurer, and so the idea of quitting never even occurred to her.

 

It was difficult to operate mechanisms while shielded, so Holly powered down for the few seconds necessary to jimmy the door with her omnitool. It was an old model, but Holly’s mother had paid an extra few ingots for upgrades. The standard omnitool would open any door operating on a simple mechanical lock and key system. This one could short electronic locks too, and even deactivate simple alarms.

 

But that shouldn’t be necessary, she thought. As far as Artemis remembers, he turned off all the alarms.

 

The thought didn’t give much comfort. Artemis had been wrong about this trip already.

 

In less than five seconds the omnitool did its job and vibrated gently, like a cat purring at its own cleverness. The heavy door swung open silently under the lightest touch, and Holly buzzed up her shield.

 

Stepping into the Rathdown institute, Holly felt more mission anxiety than she had in years.

 

I’m a rookie again. Some kid straight out of the academy, she realized. My mind is experienced, but my body is overruling it.

 

And then: I better get this monkey quick, before adolescence kicks in.

 

Young Artemis had turned off the security on his way into the institute. It had been an easy thing to bypass all the alarms with the director’s pass card. Earlier in the day, when he had been given the guided tour, he had posed several complicated questions on the validity of the theory of evolution. The director, a committed evolutionist, had allowed Artemis’s arguments to distract him long enough to have his pocket picked by Butler. Once the pass card was in the bodyguard’s possession, he simply slotted it into a battery-powered card cloner in his breast pocket, and whistled a few bars of Mozart to cover the whirr of the machine.

 

Two minutes later all the information they needed was stored in the cloner’s memory, the director’s card was back in the man’s pocket, and Artemis suddenly decided that maybe evolution wasn’t a bad theory after all.

 

Though there are more holes in it than a Dutch dam made of Swiss cheese, he had confided to Butler on the way home from Rathdown Park. Butler had been encouraged by this statement. It was almost a straightforward joke.

 

Later that evening young Artemis had popped a button camera into the air-conditioning duct at the rear of the Bentley.

 

All the better to keep an eye on our guests.

 

The female was interesting. Fascinating, in fact. The darts would wear off soon, and it would be intriguing to watch her reaction, much more so than that of the hirsute teenager, even though his broad forehead suggested intelligence and his general features had a lot in common with the Fowl family’s own. In fact, he reminded Artemis of an old photo he had once seen of his father as a boy, working on an archaeological dig in South America. Perhaps the male captive was a distant cousin hoping to claim some kind of birthright now that Father was missing. There was much to be investigated here.

 

The button camera was broadcasting to his cell phone and ten-year-old Artemis checked the screen occasionally as Butler guided him through Rathdown Park toward the lemur’s cage.

 

“Focus, Artemis,”chided the bodyguard.“One dastardly crime at a time.”

 

Artemis glanced up from his phone. “Dastardly, Butler? Dastardly? Honestly, we are not cartoon characters. I do not have a villainous laugh or an eye patch.”

 

“Not yet. Though you’ll have an eye patch soon enough if you don’t concentrate on the job at hand.”

 

They were passing underneath Rathdown Park’s aquarium through a Plexiglas tunnel that allowed scientists and the occasional visitor to observe the species housed in the million-gallon tank. The tank mimicked as far as possible the inhabitants’ natural environment. Different compartments had different temperatures and different vegetation. Some were salt water, others were fresh, but all housed endangered or rare creatures.

 

Tiny bulbs dotted the ceiling above, simulating stars, and the only other light came from the bioluminescence of an albino lantern shark, which shadowed Artemis and Butler along the tunnel until its snout bumped Plexiglas.

 

Artemis was more interested in his cell phone than the shark’s eerily glowing photophores.

 

Events were unfolding on his screen that were close to incredible. Artemis stopped in his tracks to fully absorb what he was seeing.

 

The Fowl Manor intruders had escaped the Bentley trunk with the help of an accomplice. Another nonhuman.

 

I am entering a new world here. These creatures are potentially more lucrative than a lemur. Should I abandon this venture and concentrate on the nonhumans?

 

Artemis maximized the volume on his handset, but the tiny microphone attached to the button camera could only pick up snatches of the conversation.

 

It was mostly in some alien tongue, but some of the talk was in English, and he heard the word lemur more than once.

 

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