The Opal Deception (Artemis Fowl 4)

Hardly modern syntax, thought Artemis. But definitely English. Now, how does a demon exiled in Limbo learn to speak English?

The air buzzed with power, and white electrical bolts crackled around the creature, slicing holes in space.

A temporal rent. A hole in time.

Artemis was not overly awed by this; after all, he had seen the Lower Elements Police actually stop time during the Fowl Manor siege. What did concern him was that he was likely to be whisked away with the creature, in which case the chances of him being returned to his own dimension were small. The chances of him being returned to his own time were minuscule.

He tried to call out to Butler, but it was too late. If the word late can be used in a place where time does not exist.

The rent had expanded to envelop both him and the demon. The architecture and population of Barcelona faded slowly like spirits, to be replaced first by a purple fog, then a galaxy of stars. Artemis experienced feverish heat, then bitter cold. He felt sure that if he materialized fully he would be scorched to cinders, then his ashes would freeze and scatter across space.

Their surroundings changed in a flash, or maybe a year; it was impossible to tell. The stars were replaced by an ocean, and they were underneath it. Strange deep-sea creatures loomed from the depths, luminous tentacles scything the water all around them. Then there was a field of ice, then a red landscape, the air filled with fine dust. Finally they were looking at Barcelona again. But different. The city was younger.

The demon howled and gnashed its pointed teeth, abandoning all attempts to speak English. Luckily, Artemis was one of two humans in any dimension who spoke Gnommish, the fairy language.

“Calm yourself, friend,” he said. “Our fate is sealed. Enjoy these beautiful sights.”

The demon’s howl ceased abruptly, and he dropped Artemis’s hand.

“Speak you fairy tongue?”

“Gnommish,” corrected Artemis. “And better than you, I might add.”

The demon fell silent, regarding Artemis as though he were some kind of wondrous creature. Which, of course, he was. Artemis, for his part, spent what could possibly be the last few moments of his life observing the scene before him. They were materializing at a building site. It was the Casa Milà, but not yet completed. Workmen swarmed across scaffold erected at the front of the building, and a swarthy bearded man stood scowling at a sheet of architectural drawings.

Artemis smiled. It was Gaudí himself. How amazing.

The scene solidified, colors painting themselves brighter. Artemis could smell the dry Spanish air now, and the heavy tangs of sweat and paint.

“Excuse me?” said Artemis in Spanish.

Gaudí looked up from the drawings, and his scowl was replaced with a look of utter disbelief. There was a boy stepping from thin air. Beside him a cowering demon. The brilliant architect absorbed every detail of the tableau, committing it to his memory forever.

“Sí?” he said hesitantly.

Artemis pointed to the top of the building. “You’ve got some mosaics planned for the roof. You might want to rethink those. Very derivative.”

Then boy and demon disappeared.

Butler had not panicked when a creature had stepped out a the hole in time. Then again, he was trained not to panic, no matter how extreme the situation. Unfortunately, nobody else at the Passeig de Gràcia intersection had attended Madam Ko’s Personal Protection Academy, and so they proceeded to panic just as loudly and quickly as they could. All except the curly-haired girl and the two men with her.

When the demon appeared, the public froze. When the creature disappeared, they unfroze explosively. The air was rent with the sounds of shouting and screaming. Drivers abandoned their cars, or simply drove them into store windows to escape. A wave of humans withdrew from the point of materialization as though repelled by an invisible force. Again, the girl and her companions bucked the trend, actually running toward the spot where the demon had shown up. The man with the crutches displayed remarkable agility for one who was supposedly injured.

Butler ignored the pandemonium, concentrating on his right hand. Or rather, where his right hand had been a second earlier. Just before Artemis fizzled into another dimension, Butler had managed to get a grip on his shoulder. Now the disappearing virus had claimed his own hand. He was going wherever Artemis had gone. He could still feel his young charge’s bony shoulder in his grip.

Butler fully expected his arm to disappear, but it didn’t. Just the hand. He could still feel it in an underwater pins-and-needles kind of way. And he could still feel Artemis.

“No, you don’t,” he grunted, tightening his invisible grip. “I’ve put up with too much hardship over the years for you to vanish on me now.”

And so Butler reached down through the decades and yanked his young charge back from the past.

Artemis didn’t come easy. It was like dragging a boulder through a sea of mud, but Butler was not the kind of person who gave up easily, either. He planted his feet and put his back into it. Artemis popped out of the twentieth century and landed sprawling in the twenty-first.

“I’m back,” said the Irish boy, as if he had simply returned from an everyday errand. “How unexpected.”

Butler picked his principal up and gave him a perfunctory examination.

“Everything is in the right place. Nothing broken. Now, Artemis, tell me, what is twenty-seven multiplied by eighteen point five?”

Artemis straightened his suit jacket. “Oh, I see, you’re checking my mental faculties. Very good. I suppose it’s conceivable that time travel could affect the mind.”

“Just answer the question!” insisted Butler.

“Four hundred and ninety-nine point five, if you must know.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

The giant bodyguard cocked his head to one side. “Sirens. We need to get out of this area, Artemis, before I’m forced to cause an international incident.”

He hustled Artemis to the other side of the road, to the only car still idling there. Maria looked a little pale, but at least she had not abandoned her clients.

“Well done,” said Butler, flinging open the rear door. “Airport. Stay off the highway as much as possible.”

Maria barely waited until Butler and Artemis were belted before burning rubber down the street, ignoring the traffic lights. The blond girl and her companions were left on the roadside.

Maria glanced at Artemis in the mirror. “What happened out there?”

“No questions,” said Butler curtly. “Eyes on the road. Drive.”

He knew better than to ask questions himself. Artemis would explain all about the strange creature and the shining rift when he was ready.

Artemis remained silent as the limousine swung down toward Las Ramblas and from there into the labyrinthine back streets of downtown Barcelona.

“How did I get here?” he said eventually, musing aloud. “Or rather, why aren’t we there? Or why aren’t we then? What anchored us to this time?” He looked at Butler. “Are you wearing any silver?”

Butler grimaced sheepishly. “You know I never usually wear jewelry, but there is this.” He shot one cuff. There was a leather bracelet on his wrist with a silver nugget in the center. “Juliet sent it to me. From Mexico. It’s to ward of f evil spirits, apparently. She made me promise to wear it.”

Artemis smiled broadly. “It was Juliet. She anchored us.” He tapped the silver nugget on Butler’s wrist. “You should give your sister a call. She saved our lives.”

As Artemis tapped his bodyguard’s wristband, he noticed something about his own fingers. They were his fingers, no doubt about it. But different, somehow. It took him a moment to realize what had happened.

He had, of course, done some theorizing on the hypothetical results of interdimensional travel, and concluded that there could possibly be some deterioration of the original, as with a computer program that has been copied once too often. Streams of information could be lost in the ether.

As far as Artemis could tell, nothing had been lost, but now the index finger on his left hand was longer than the second finger. Or more accurately, the index finger had swapped places with the second finger.

He flexed the fingers experimentally.

“Hmm,” noted Artemis Fowl. “I am unique.”

Butler grunted.

“Tell me about it,” he said.