Holly pressed a few buttons. “Around the back it is. Scanning for alarms. Found two and a sneaky third. Motion sensors, if I’m not mistaken. Only one alarm is being remotely monitored, and the other two are self-contained. Should I disable the remote alarm?”
“Yes, Holly, please disable the alarm. Anybody home?”
Holly checked the thermal imaging. “One warm body. Top floor.”
Artemis sighed, relieved. “Good. Just Mother. She will have taken her sleeping tablets by now. Little me can’t be back yet.”
Holly set the shuttle down as gently as she could, but the gears were stripped and the suspension bags were drained. There were dents in the stabilizers, and the gyroscope was spinning like a weather vane. The landing gear stripped a channel of cobblestones from the courtyard surface, tumbling them like bricks of turf before the plow.
Artemis gathered Jayjay in his arms.
“Are you ready for more adventures, little man?”
The lemur’s round eyes were filled with anxiety, and he looked to Mulch for reassurance.
“Always remember,” said Mulch, tickling the creature’s chin, “that you are the smart one.”
The dwarf found an old duffel bag and began stuffing the remaining contents of the fridge inside.
“No need for that,” said Holly. “The ship is yours. Take it, dig up your booty, and fly far away. Dump this heap in the sea and live off your earnings for a few years. Just promise me that you won’t sell to humans.”
“Only the junk,” said Mulch. “And did you say that I could keep the shuttle?”
“Actually, I’m asking you to scrap it. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
Mulch grinned. “I’m a generous person. I could do you a favor.”
Holly smiled back. “Good. And remember, when we meet again, none of this ever happened, or it probably won’t.”
“My lips are sealed.”
Artemis squeezed past him. “Now, there’s something I would pay to see. Mulch Diggums with his mouth closed.”
“Yes, nice meeting you too, Mud Boy. I look forward to robbing you in the future.”
Artemis shook his hand. “I look forward to it myself, believe it or not. We will have some fine times.”
Jayjay reached out for a handshake. “You look after the human, Jayjay,” said Mulch seriously. “He’s a bit dim, but he means well.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Diggums.”
“Later, Master Fowl.”
Opal was on her third round of the Gola Schweem meditative circle chant when Mervall burst into her private chamber.
“We found the shuttle, mistress,” he panted, clutching a flexi-screen to his chest. “They went supersonic for barely a minute over the Mediterranean. But it was enough.”
“Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa,” intoned Opal, finishing her chant. “Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs.”
Mervall proferred the flexi-screen. “Red dot. East coast.”
“Military?”
“No, surprisingly. It’s a residence. No defenses whatsoever.”
Opal climbed out of her snuggle-me chair. “Good. Run a few scans. Warm up the cannons and get me down there.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“And Mervall?”
“Mistress?”
“I think little Descant has a crush on me. He told me earlier that I was very phototractive. Poor little simpleton. Could you tell him that I am unavailable? If you don’t, I shall have to have him killed.”
Merv sighed. “I shall tell him, mistress. I feel sure he will be disconnipted.”
Artemis found himself scratching Jayjay’s head as they moved through the manor.
“Be calm, little chap. No one can hurt you now. We’re safe.”
Holly was behind him on the stairs, guarding the rear, two fingers rigidly extended. The fingers were not a loaded weapon, but they could break bones with enough momentum behind them.
“Come on, Artemis. No1 is weaker now, so we have to jump soon.”
Artemis stepped around a weight-sensitive pad on the twelfth step. “Nearly there. Seconds away.”
His study was exactly as he had left it, the wardrobe still open, a scarf drooping from the top shelf like an escaping snake.
“Good,” said Artemis, his confidence growing. “This is the spot. The exact spot.”
Holly was panting. “About time. I’m having trouble holding on to the signal. It’s like running after a smell.”
Artemis put an arm around her shoulder. A group of three; tired, hungry, but excited.
Holly’s shoulders shook with an exhaustion and tension she had kept hidden until now.
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
“Me too,” admitted Artemis. “Then I realized that I couldn’t die, not in this time.”
“I presume you’re going to explain that to me.”
“Later. Over supper. Now can we open the time stream, friend?”
There was a sudden swish as the bay window curtain slid back. Young Artemis and Butler were there, both wearing foil suits. Butler unzipped his suit to reveal a large gun strapped across his chest.
“What was that about a time stream?” asked ten-year-old Artemis.
Mulch Diggums was burying a gold coin as a sacrifice to Shammy, the dwarf god of good fortune, when the earth exploded underneath him, and he found himself straddling the blade of a shuttle icebreaker prow.
I never even heard that coming, he thought. And then:
So much for Shammy.
Before he
could gather himself sufficiently to figure up from down, Mulch found himself tumbled to the base of a silver ash tree, with the barrel of a Neutrino restricting the movement of his Adam’s apple. His beard hairs instinctively realized that the gun was not friendly, and twined themselves around the barrel.
“Nice shuttle,” said Mulch, playing for time until the stars in his vision flickered out.“Whisper engine, I’m guessing.”
Three pixies stood before him. Two males and a female. Generally, pixies were not very threatening creatures, but the males were armed and the female had a look in her eyes.
“I bet,” said Mulch, “that you would set the world on fire just to watch it burn.”
Opal tapped the suggestion into a small electronic notepad on her pocket computer.
“Thanks for that. Now, tell me everything.”
I’ll resist for a minute, then feed her some misinformation, thought Mulch.
“I’ll tell you nothing, pixie she-devil,” he said, Adam’s apple knocking nervously against the gun barrel.
“Oooh,” said Opal, stamping with frustration. “Isn’t anyone afraid of me?”
She stripped off a glove and placed a thumb on Mulch’s temple. “Now, show me everything.”
And with a few remaining sparks of ill-gotten magic, she sucked every memory of the past few days from Mulch’s brain. It was an extremely unpleasant sensation, even for someone used to expelling large amount of material from his person. Mulch gibbered and bucked as the last few days were vacuumed from his head. When Opal had what she wanted, the dwarf was left unconscious in the mud.
He would wake up an hour later with the starter chip for an LEP shuttle in his pocket and no idea how he’d gotten there.
Opal closed her eyes and flicked through her new memories.
“Ah,” she said, smiling. “A time stream.”
“There isn’t time for this,” insisted Artemis. “I think there is,” argued ten-year-old Artemis. “You have broken into my house again; the least you can do is explain that time stream comment. Not to mention the fact that you are alive.”
Artemis the elder flicked his hair away from his face.
“You must recognize me now. Surely.”