When fourteen-year-old Artemis had a moment to consider things, sometime in between scaling pylons and outwitting murderous Extinctionists, he realized that there were a lot of unanswered questions about his mother’s illness. He had supposedly given her Spelltropy, but who had passed it to him? Holly’s magic had permeated his body in the past, but she herself was hale and hearty. Why wasn’t she sick? Or for that matter, how had Butler escaped infection? He had been healed so many times that he must be half-fairy by now.
And of all the thousands of humans healed, mesmerized or wiped every year, his mother was the one to fall ill. The mother of the only human on Earth who could do something about it. Very coincidental. Too coincidental by far.
So, either someone had deliberately infected his mother, or the symptoms were being magically duplicated. Either way, the result was the same:Artemis would travel back in time to find the antidote. The lemur, Jayjay.
And who would want Jayjay found as much as Artemis did? The answer to that question lay in the past. Opal Koboi, of course. The little primate was the last ingredient in her magical cocktail. With his brain fluid in her bloodstream, she would be literally the most powerful person on the planet. And if Opal couldn’t nab Jayjay in her own time, she would get him in the future. Whatever it took. She must have followed them back through the time stream, jumped out early, and organized this whole affair. Presumably once she had Jayjay’s brain fluid, navigating her way back would not be a problem.
It was confusing even for Artemis. Opal wouldn’t even be in his present if he hadn’t gone back in time. And he had only gone back in time because of a situation she had created. It had been Artemis’s own attempts to cure his mother that had led Opal to infect her.
But one thing he now felt sure of was that Opal was behind this. She was behind them and in front of them. Chasing their group into her own clutches. A time paradox.
There are two Opals in this equation, thought Artemis. I think there should continue to be two Artemis Fowls.
And so a plan began to take shape in his mind.
Once the young Artemis had been apprised of all the details and convinced of their accuracy, he had at once agreed to accompany them to the future, in spite of Butler’s vocal objection.
“It’s my mother, Butler,” he said simply. “I must save her. Now I charge you to stay by her side until I return. Anyway, how could they hope to succeed without me?”
“How indeed,” Holly Short had wondered, then taken more pleasure than was necessary in watching that arrogance drain from the boy’s features when the time stream opened in front of them, like the maw of some great computer-generated serpent.
“Chin up, Mud Boy,” she’d said as Artemis the younger watched his arm dissolve. “And watch out for quantum zombies.”
The time stream had been difficult for Artemis the elder. Any other human would have been torn apart by such repeated exposure to its particular radiation, but Artemis held himself together by sheer willpower. He focused on the high end of his intellect, solving unprovable theorems with large cardinals and composing an ending for Schubert’s unfinished Symphony No 8.
As he worked, Artemis sensed the odd derisive comment from his younger self.
More B minor? Do you really think so?
Had he always been this obnoxious? How tiresome. Little wonder people in general did not like him.
The Present
Back in his own time, in his own house, Artemis the elder paused only to grab some clothes from the wardrobe before quickly exiting his study, warning Foaly and No1 to keep silent with a simple shhh. He moved quickly along the corridor toward the dumbwaiter shaft adjacent to the second-floor tea room. This was not the most direct route to the security center, in fact the route was circuitous and awkward, but it was the only possible way to pass through the house undetected.
Butler believed he had every square inch of the manor, apart from the Fowl’s private chambers, under surveillance, but Artemis had long since worked how to travel through the house without being picked up on camera. This route involved hiding in corners, walking on furniture, traveling in dumbwaiters, and tilting a full-length mirror to just the right angle.