The Storm of Echoes Page 4

  The Genealogists leaned forward on either side of Elizabeth.

  “What is the winner of the top prize doing in a role so unworthy of her?” lamented the man.

  “You single-handedly revolutionized the Memorial’s database,” continued the woman. “Your talents are totally wasted here, citizen!”

  Unexpressive as Elizabeth was, she was visibly disconcerted to be the focus of their attention like this. She got up to stand to attention and give them the obligatory greeting: “Knowledge serves peace!” But they indicated for her to sit back down by laying their hands on her shoulders.

  “Don’t put yourself out for us, young dame. Just tell us whether you have considered our proposal.”

  “It’s just that I haven’t had time to—”

  “A mere ‘yes’ will suffice,” said the woman.

  “It’s right up your street,” said the man.

  “And you will be doing a great service to the city!” they concluded, in unison.

  Ophelia had no idea what they were talking about, but was grateful not to be Elizabeth, whose cheeks had suddenly gained some color. Now that she could see the Genealogists close up, she noticed the strange texture of their skin, under the golden powder they covered it in, as if they suffered from permanent goose pimples. They were Tactiles. She knew nothing about this variant of Pollux’s family power.

  “En fait, my first choice was the post of personal assistant to Lady Helen,” Elizabeth explained to them, respectfully. “Without her I would be on the street, I owe her every one of my stripes.”

  The Genealogists exchanged a knowing look.

  “A très moving story, citizen, but your work at the observatory will also concern Lady Helen. You couldn’t be more useful to her than by accepting this offer!”

  Elizabeth’s composed mask cracked. Ophelia’s glasses turned briefly to the young Pharoan girl, who, staring intently at her babouches, was pretending to stay out of the conversation. Ophelia could easily guess her role in this surprise encounter. The Pharoans’ charm enabled them gently to modify the emotions of others, so as to win their trust. They generally worked in a medical setting, to calm patients down, but that was clearly not this one’s function.

  “You shouldn’t decide right now.”

  Ophelia hadn’t managed to hold back this warning, seeing Elizabeth overcome with indecision, but she instantly regretted it. The Genealogists, who hadn’t so much as glanced at her until now, had both just turned towards her in one fluid movement. Their eyelashes were also tinted gold.

  “Did you have something to say, mademoiselle?” the man asked, while perusing her false papers.

  “Some change you would like to make to your file, perhaps?” the woman suggested, stroking the form.

  They aroused such a visceral dislike in Ophelia that she drew back. Since her marriage to Thorn, during which they had shared their family powers, she had inherited some Dragons’ claws. And although hers weren’t malign, they played tricks on her when she got angry. The Genealogists didn’t know her, but she knew them. They didn’t seek the good of the city, they sought to become what Eulalia Gonde had herself become. Ophelia needed to remain just an insignificant little foreigner in their eyes, otherwise she would cause problems, as much for Thorn as for herself.

  She swallowed both saliva and pride and calmed her claws.

  “No.”

  “So?” the Genealogists persisted, returning to Elizabeth. “Do you accept our offer, citizen?”

  “My lady, my lord, I . . . I would be honored to.”

  The woman plucked a contract from her cleavage and unrolled it on the counter. The man offered Elizabeth a fountain pen.

  She signed.

  “Good girl.”

  With these words, which they each whispered in one of Elizabeth’s ears, the Genealogists moved off, hand in hand, their golden cloaks fluttering behind them, followed, at a good distance, by the young Pharoan girl. Ophelia realized that her mouth had gone dry in their presence.

  Elizabeth wiped her forehead, to which her hair was sticking.

  “I . . . maybe I was a bit too quick to sign.”

  “What was it about, that offer?” Ophelia asked her.

  There was a sudden chorus of complaints. Now that the Genealogists were far away, all those waiting in her queue were losing patience. The old Diviner threatened to trigger a storm. As for Elizabeth, she was still totally shaken.

  “It’s confidential, I can’t talk about it. I really did sign too quickly.”

  She kept blinking with such bewilderment that Ophelia felt sorry for her.

  “That Pharoan made sure of that.”

  “I hope, for you sake, that you aren’t insinuating that there was some kind of manipulation going on,” Elizabeth warned her, sternly returning her papers to her. “We’re talking about the Lords of LUX. That’s an extremely serious accusation, particularly coming from a person whose file isn’t in order. You’re going to have to face a tribunal.”

  Without giving Ophelia time to react, the Forerunner leaned over the counter and applied a stamp to the middle of her forehead.

  “I’m kidding. Everything is in order for now. You’ve just a medical examination to get through and you can go home.”

  THE HOME

  “At least you’re not ordinary.”

  Perched on a stool, Ophelia considered the blurred face of the doctor in front of her. She had had to take her glasses off for the checkup, so all she could see clearly of him were two eyes shining in the half-light. Several makeshift consulting rooms had been set up in the reprographics department, on the first floor of the Memorial. Ophelia was there in her underwear, surrounded by mimeographs, cyclostyles, and roneos. Without her reader’s gloves, placed on an automaton’s tray with the rest of her things, she felt vulnerable.

  Elizabeth had told her that her papers were in order for now. It was that “for now” that worried her. What would happen if she was deemed not to conform to the requirements of the Babelian administration? Daylight was fading behind the windows, and Ophelia was seriously starting to wonder whether she’d ever see the end of this census. She wanted to get back to Thorn so they could start doing their research together.

  “May I go? I’m expected elsewhere.”

  The doctor drew closer. As a Visionary, his eyes, luminous as lightbulbs, were worth all the medical-imaging equipment combined. He hadn’t touched Ophelia once since she had entered, not even to take her pulse, but there was something disturbing about his way of looking.

  “Have you been the victim of an accident, Mademoiselle Eulalia?” he asked, studying her file.

  He had pronounced the word “accident” with a particular intonation that wasn’t just a matter of the Babelian accent.

  Ophelia frowned. Was he referring to the traces of cuts scattered over her body since the Seers had poured broken glass over her while she was taking a shower? Or to the scar on her cheek, dating further back, which she owed to Thorn’s half-sister? Or to her bones, which had suffered multiple fractures in recent years?

  She realized that it was in her interest not to come across as someone of fragile health. Her forehead bore Elizabeth’s stamp, but she would only truly feel out of trouble once she was out of here.

  “A few,” she replied, evasively. “That never stopped me doing what I had to do.”

  The doctor nodded. Ophelia then noticed that it was her lower abdomen that he was examining with the least discretion.

  “I was thinking of an accident of . . . a particular kind,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Mademoiselle Eulalia, according to your file, you’re not matrimonially committed. Can you confirm that to me?”

  “That’s my private life.”

  She didn’t appreciate one bit the way this conversation was going. In fact, she didn’t appreciate any of what she had been put
through since she had been forcibly taken to the Memorial. The Babel administration was invading her privacy more and more, and the intrusive approach of this doctor was too much for her.

  “I’m going to put my clothes back on.”

  “You’re suffering from a malformation, mademoiselle.”

  Ophelia, who had got off the stool to grab her things from the automaton, slowly sat down again. She put her gloves and then glasses back on, as if that would enable her to hear better.

  The doctor’s eyes shone more brightly as he studied her, not without a certain fascination.

  “I’ve observed some curious things in my time, but never anything comparable. It’s rather as if all the parts of your body had . . . je ne sais pas . . . turned back on themselves. I have no idea what kind of accident could cause that to happen.”

  A mirror accident, Ophelia replied in her head. The very first one. The one that had released the Other.

  “I also don’t know how you manage to coordinate your movements,” continued the doctor, his eyes going out like lamps. “You must have been young when that happened to you, your organism has managed to repair itself almost entièrement. Almost,” he stressed with a very paternal kindliness. “Do you see what I’m getting at, dear girl?”

  “I’m inverted. I know, I’ve already been—”

  “You will never be able to have children,” he interrupted her. “It’s physically impossible for you.”

  Ophelia watched the doctor filling in her file. She understood the words he had just used, but they made absolutely no sense to her. She could think of no other reply than:

  “May I go?”

  “You should make an appointment at the Deviations Observatory. They won’t be able to do anything for you, but they will undoubtedly be interested in studying you close up. They specialize in cases such as yours. Get dressed,” he added, with an offhand gesture. “We’re done here.”

  Ophelia had to make several attempts at fastening her sandals, as if her hands could no longer agree on anything. She went out, to let the next person take her place. The first floor of the Memorial was heaving with men and women waiting their turn. Seeing all those foreheads branded with a stamp made Ophelia feel as if she were in an abattoir. The family guard was herding all those who had passed their medical examination toward the exit. Ophelia had no intention of allowing herself to be locked inside another birdtrain.

  She must isolate herself. Now.

  There was neither staircase nor lift at the Memorial, but she was used to the artificial gravity of its transcendiums. Discreetly, she slipped into a vertical corridor, which took her away from the crowd, and then hid in the toilets. Apart from a monkey lapping water from a sink, she was, at last, alone.

  Ophelia looked hard at herself in one of the mirrors. She no longer feared seeing something there that didn’t exist, as had happened to her that morning at the glazing-and-mirror store. She feared what she couldn’t see and that really did exist.

  She placed a hand on her stomach with care, as if she risked further damaging herself by pressing too hard. Not content with tearing apart the world, the Other had also torn apart her body. So why did she no longer feel anything, all of a sudden? There was no howl of outrage within her, only silence.

  “I never imagined myself as a mother and Thorn detests children,” she muttered, looking her reflection straight in the face. “So there’s no problem.”

  She clambered awkwardly up on to the sink, thought “home,” and dived into her reflection.

  Ophelia was diverted. Literally. On entering the Memorial mirror, she had expected to reemerge through the mirror in Lazarus’s house. Instead of which, she had the sensation of falling, dizzyingly, incomprehensibly, as though she were falling from down below to up above.

  Everything had become blurred.

  Images.

  Sounds.

  Her thoughts.

  Ophelia suddenly realized that someone was holding her hand, firmly. She felt herself being pulled, step by step, through some indefinable setting. She tried to concentrate on each fragment of reality her senses grasped. There was a statue. The statue of the headless soldier. The statue of the headless soldier when he still had his head. So she was back on the forecourt of the Memorial, at the time when it wasn’t yet the Memorial.

  The military academy.

  By associating words with objects, their contours became more precise. The building she was moving toward didn’t yet have the majestic appearance that the architects of Babel had given it later, much later, but it was already imposing. All that blue and gold surrounding it, that was sea and mimosa. An island. Ophelia could almost smell that heady scent, half-salty, half-sweet. Almost. Her nose was blocked, she was struggling to breathe.

  Steps. The woman holding her hand now made her move up toward the entrance. A woman? Yes, that voice whispering to her to hurry up definitely belonged to a woman. She was speaking to her in a language that wasn’t her own, but that Ophelia could have understood had everything not been so distorted by the general haziness.

  The woman made her sit down in what she supposed was a hall; the surroundings were too blurry for Ophelia to be sure. She felt as if she were in a watercolor painting on which a glass of water had been spilt. She was pretty shocked to notice that her own feet no longer touched the ground. Had she shrunk? And where had the woman gone? Ophelia could no longer feel her hand gripping her own, but her voice was still reaching her from afar. It was no longer to her that she was speaking now. By really applying herself, Ophelia finally managed to translate the conversation she was hearing into comprehensible words:

  “And then, I’ve already got all my children to look after, how am I, like, supposed to feed another one? And then me husband has gone off to war, what am I, like, supposed to do, me, with no money? And then, don’t get me wrong, she’s hard-working, polite, and clever with it! Very clever. Yes, yes, she speaks the language perfectly. Several of them, in fact. Her favorite pastime is inventing new ones, believe it or not! And then she goes and types it all up for you, like a grown-up. She does have mood swings, that I can’t deny, but the poor girl . . . She lost her parents, her brothers, her sisters, her uncles, her aunts, her cousins—all deported! Family of printers, I believe. Must have printed something they shouldn’t have, and what’s more, that’s no joke over there. Miracle she managed to survive it. What? Gonde. No, no, not God! Gonde, with an ‘n’ in the middle. Yes, it’s a name from where she’s from, everyone round here made the same mistake. So, I know you’re looking for children with . . . how do you, like, say it, again? Children with great potential, that’s it. I’m no expert, like you all are, but that girl, there, she’s got lots to offer, and she only wants to help out with the war effort.”

  Ophelia looked up when someone approached her. It wasn’t the woman anymore, but a man. Even though Ophelia couldn’t see him clearly, there was something familiar about him. Instinctively, she understood that she had to go with him, so duly followed him through a maze of stairs that were as hazy as everything else. The man marched in a military way, wore a turban, muttered strangely to himself. Ophelia knew him, she was sure of it. By focusing her attention on him and not on herself, just as she would when reading an object, he became clearer. The fabric of his turban was being used, not very successfully, to conceal his lower face, where a ghastly wound, evidently recent and not fully healed, had obliterated part of his jaw. The old caretaker. The old caretaker who wasn’t yet old.

  Ophelia was then led into a place, on the very top floor, that gave her a bittersweet feeling. She was going to spend many, very many, nights here.

  Home.

  Boys and girls of all ages gathered around her, curious and wary at the same time. Orphans, like Ophelia. She couldn’t see any of their faces but could hear their questions.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Where do you come
from?”

  “Are you a spy?”

  “Did you see the war?”

  Ophelia heard herself replying to them very seriously, in a voice that was hers without being hers:

  “My name is Eulalia and I’m going to save the world.”

  The orphans all disappeared in a cloud of dust. Ophelia coughed again and again, swallowing cobwebs as soon as she tried to breathe in. She had collapsed onto a wooden floor and its splinters were piercing her skin.

  Dazed, she glanced at the mirror from which she had fallen. The vision she’d just had was already fading. The mother, the caretaker, the orphans, they had all been contained in the tiniest fraction of a second, the duration of a simple mirror passage.

  It had been nothing like a hallucination this time. She had witnessed a scene that had actually taken place, several centuries ago.

  Ophelia got back up on her feet. The mirror, hanging in the air, was the sole item of furniture in the room. No door, no window. A small opening in the ceiling was all that allowed a thin shaft of light to enter. She knew this place. It was a secret room, entirely contained within a floating globe in the center of the Secretarium, which itself floated in the center of Babel’s Memorial.

  She moved closer to the hanging mirror, which reflected back a dusty image of her. Just as on her first visit there, she could make out the ghostly contours of the wall on which it had once been hung. Ophelia knew, having already read this mirror, that Eulalia Gonde had lived here at a time when she hadn’t yet become God. She saw once again that little woman, who so resembled her while still being so different, busy typing up her stories for children. Ophelia understood now that this room represented much more than a writing place for Eulalia Gonde. Prior to being the peace school where she had brought up the family spirits, the Memorial had been the military orphanage where she had spent her childhood.

  Home.

  That was what Ophelia had wished for before passing through the mirror in the toilets. And it had brought her here, awakening in her that other memory that wasn’t her own.