The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  She pointed her finger straight at Ophelia, who blinked without understanding. Octavio’s pupils constricted as soon as he, in turn, stared at her and was dazzled.

  “Eulalia, your stamp . . . it’s turned white.”

  THE CHOSEN ONES

  Ophelia examined her reflection in the nearest window. The Alchemist ink on her forehead hadn’t just changed from black to white. It was glowing like a full moon. Even when she placed her hand over it, light escaped between her gloved fingers.

  “What is . . .”

  Her question was drowned out by a trumpet-loud voice:

  “Public announcement! This is to inform our fellow citizens that residents who are foreign . . . foreign bearing a white stamp are requested to go forthwith . . . forthwith to the municipal amphitheater. Public announcement!”

  While the instruction and its echoes boomed out incessantly across the district, Ophelia turned her glasses in all directions. People had emerged from dwellings and stationary vehicles to gather around the post of every loudspeaker. Although this crowd of the curious formed a blurred mass amidst the sea of clouds, Ophelia did pick out a panicking man whose forehead was as luminous as her own.

  Octavio took her aside, to be heard above the blare of the loudspeakers.

  “Don’t you worry. It’s a mere formality.”

  “I don’t want to go there.”

  “You have to. Civil disobedience would mean breaking the law. I’m sure it’s vraiment nothing serious. Not that long ago, you were still an apprentice virtuoso. I’ll come with you.”

  Octavio pushed back his black curtain of hair to look straight at Ophelia. She wondered why his eyes had turned purple, then realized it was her own glasses that had turned blue. He may have wanted to reassure her, but he had himself totally forgotten the miller’s wife outside the windmill, who was asking if she could get back to her work. And he paid no more attention to Hugo, whose chest telegraph had been churning out a relentless stream of communiqués since that first public announcement.

  Ophelia searched for Ambrose, but couldn’t locate him in the midst of all that chaos. She didn’t, however, miss any of the patrols posted on every street, who, on seeing her forehead, ordered her to go straight to the assembly point. Some Zephyrs had even been employed to disperse, with their great gusts of wind, the clouds obscuring any nooks and crannies in which possible rebels could be hiding.

  Octavio could say what he liked, Ophelia wasn’t remotely reassured. She had promised Thorn she would find a way of joining him at the Deviations Observatory; she had no time to waste on any more administrative procedures. She would have passed through the first mirror to appear, if there had been any on her path.

  Before long, she spotted, above the highest roofs, the towering structure of the municipal amphitheater. Its hundreds of arcades were a skillful alliance of stone, metal, glass, and vegetation. The colorful birds that flocked to nest there were like bees swarming around a hive. As the radio announcements continued to reverberate through the air, those being summoned poured from the four corners of the city and surged through the entrances to the amphitheater. Ophelia was amazed at their number. Among them were citizens from almost every ark, wearing the traditional garb imposed by the dress code: peplos, ribbons, boleros, feathers, veils, tartans, doublets, kimonos . . . Despite their differences, each one of them bore the same stamp and shared the same anxiety.

  Ophelia’s uneasiness intensified when it was her turn to pass through the doors. The family guard, whose noses resembled actual lions’ muzzles, sniffed her from head to toe. Why had Olfactories been posted at the entryways?

  “They are just taking precautions,” Octavio commented.

  All the same, Ophelia noticed that his circumflex eyebrows were now a frown. He presented himself as representing the Official Journal, and was greeted with the formal salutations generally reserved for the Lords of LUX. Even his automaton was entitled to more respect than Ophelia, who was obliged to turn out the pockets of her gown and show their contents.

  Next, they had to climb a maze of dark stairs, where the foreheads of the summoned glowed like a procession of lanterns. Even if Ambrose had followed them up to there, his wheelchair wouldn’t have been able to tackle all those steps.

  Ophelia squinted when, after a final set of stairs, she emerged into the sunlight. The tiers were all open-air. The amphitheater seemed even more imposing from the inside. It had the capacity to accommodate many more people than all those who had been summoned there today, and that was really saying something.

  “Take your seats quietly, mesdames et messieurs!” the loudspeakers exhorted at regular intervals.

  Ophelia had no desire to obey them. She had just noticed the airships moored in the arena, like dormant whales. They were of a kind exclusive to Babel, combining technological innovation and interfamilial know-how. The LUX sun emblem glinted like gold on their fuselages.

  “The long-distance airships,” murmured Octavio. “Pourquoi ici? I don’t understand a thing anymore.”

  “Mademoiselle Eulalia?”

  Ophelia shaded her eyes from the sun. She had barely sat down on the scorching stone of a tier when a silhouette against the light had leant over her shoulder. It had black, watery eyes, a large pointed nose, and shaggy hair. The “assistant” badge shone out on its Memorialist’s uniform.

  “Blaise!”

  “I thought I’d recognized your smell in the crowd.”

  Of all the Olfactories that Ophelia had met up to now, Blaise was definitely the only one whose acute sense of smell didn’t irritate her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in surprise, looking, in vain, for a stamp on his forehead. “You’re a Son of Pollux. Don’t tell me that you, too, have been summoned?”

  Blaise’s smile became even more bashful.

  “En fait, I’m accompanying my . . . er . . . my friend.”

  If Ophelia hadn’t expected to meet Blaise in this amphitheater, she was even more surprised to see Professor Wolf there, as indicated by Blaise, standing behind him. Black suit, black gloves, black glasses, black goatee; his hat, also black, was tilted in such a way as to block the glow of his stamp. He was the only Animist that Ophelia had encountered in Babel; unlike her, he was born there. His spectacles slid, on their own, down his nose to allow him to scrutinize both her and Octavio.

  “Well, well,” he grunted. “And there was I, hoping never to have anything to do with you ever again.”

  This statement didn’t stop him from sitting down to the left of Hugo, whose stomach let out a “LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, BUT DON’T DISPENSE WITH THY FENCE.” Wolf’s rigidity, accentuated by his wooden neck brace, rivaled that of the automaton.

  “Professor, your summons must be a mistake,” Octavio said to him. “You may not be a descendant of Pollux, but you are still a native of Babel. According to our information, at the Official Journal, only recent arrivals are affected by these measures.”

  “They carried out a search of my home and fell on my collection of arm—”

  “Of forbidden items,” corrected Blaise, beside him, with an anxious glance at the neighboring tiers.

  Mockingly, Professor Wolf raised his hat, to dazzle him with his forehead.

  “What, you fear I’m going to be informed against, again? Let me remind you that my landlady has already taken care of that. It’s what’s brewing here, today, that doesn’t smell too good.”

  Just as he was grunting these words, bird excrement plopped right on top of his luminous stamp. Convinced that he was responsible for this latest sign of bad luck, Blaise apologized profusely and helped Wolf to clean himself up, knocking his dark glasses sideways with an accidental jab of the elbow. When, with a sigh, Wolf put his hat back on, Ophelia noticed that his face had lost some of its hardness.

  The last time she had spoken to him, he was hiding up on the roofs in the
neighborhood of the powerless. At the time, he was running from what he feared most in the world, and, as Ophelia now understood, that wasn’t just the old sweeper of the Memorial, who had come right into his home to terrify him. Here, in the middle of this crowd, swelling by the minute along the tiers, he seemed to be battling an acute attack of misanthropy that only Blaise’s presence could soothe.

  Ophelia found herself envying the pair of them. She also had a bad feeling about what awaited them, but whatever that might be, she would have to face up to it without Thorn. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of this public summons at the opposite end of Babel.

  “Your attention, s’il vous plaît.”

  This voice, amplified by the loudspeakers in the amphitheater, sounded unpleasantly familiar to Ophelia’s ears. Octavio’s hands tightened on his knees. The anxious whispering fell silent, from tier to tier. The face of a woman, enlarged, had just been projected on to the fuselage of each airship floating above the arena. Her eyes, with their impressive acuity, seemed to probe every soul.

  Lady Septima. She was at once Octavio’s mother, an exceptional Visionary, and an influential member of LUX. For Ophelia, she had, above all, been a formidable teacher, who had exploited her object-reading talents while continually belittling them.

  “Thank you, to each one of you, for having responded to the summons,” she boomed. “Thank you, also, to Sir Pollux and Lady Helen, here present, for the trust . . . trust they have placed in us, the Lords of LUX, most humble servants of the city.”

  Ophelia turned to look in the same direction as everyone else. The twin family spirits were sitting, enthroned, high up in a stand, sheltered beneath a crimson canopy. They were too far away for her to see them clearly, but she did pick up flashes from the multiple lenses of Helen’s optical appliance. She could have sworn that they hadn’t really been given the choice to attend, either.

  “As you know,” continued Lady Septima’s enormous mouth on the fuselage of each airship, “Babel is going through a crisis. The recent landslide in the northwest of the city, and the disappearance of six minor arks, has greatly distressed . . . distressed all of us. Nothing indicates to us that such a catastrophe could reoccur, but it remains no less terrible a tragedy, and the outskirts of the city will, temporarily, be designated an uninhabitable zone. I invite you all to observe a minute’s silence . . . silence in memory of those we have lost, but also for those who have had to abandon their homes.”

  During this minute of silence, each summoned person was surely far more preoccupied with their own fate. Ophelia put it to good use by discreetly turning her glasses toward the stairwell they had arrived by. A security shutter had been lowered over it. A few glances around told her that all entrances to the tiers were closed.

  If they wanted to turn back, it was too late.

  “Today, the city needs you,” Lady Septima continued, solemnly. “Our fellow citizens must regain some stability. The stamps you all bear on your foreheads make you the chosen ones. You have been designated, from among so many others . . . so many others due to your great capacity for autonomy.”

  Feeling increasingly tense, Ophelia rubbed her forehead, which was casting a halo of light on the lenses of her glasses. She noticed that several of those summoned were, like her and Wolf, accompanied by people who didn’t bear the administrative stamp.

  “En effet, none of you is currently detained in the city by any obligation,” Lady Septima explained, articulating each syllable, “whether of a professional, conjugal, or parental nature. Babel has long sheltered you in its bosom, but it no longer has the space to harbor you. Thus, you are all requested to leave our ark as from today . . . as from today. Your possessions and properties have already been requisitioned by the city, and will be fairly redistributed among our fellow citizens. We do not doubt that you will be welcomed with open arms by your native arks. Your families will ensure that you are lacking in nothing once you’re there. Thank you to each one of you for thereby acting in the general interest. Would you now . . . now proceed to the aircraft by following the instructions you are given. Your stamps will be erased once you have boarded. On behalf of all the Lords of LUX, of Lady Helen and Lord Pollux, go in peace!”

  Lady Septima’s faces disappeared from the airships. The end of her speech was followed by such complete silence, you could hear everyone’s skin heating up in the sun. When the initial protests rose up, the loudspeakers released a piercing whistle that forced everyone to cover their ears:

  “Mesdames et messieurs, let everyone proceed quietly. The lower rows first. Those accompanying the travelers . . . travelers are requested to remain in their seats until the complete evacuation of the amphitheater.”

  The announcement was immediately replaced by background music, but turned up to full volume and distorted by the echoes, drowning out all voices. No one could speak to anyone anymore. The family guard circulated in the lower tiers, directing the men and women seated there to make their way to the convoy of airships. Each queue was methodically formed, subdivided, reoriented. A few people did attempt to show their distress. They shook their heads, beat their chests, pointed up at the sky, beyond the amphitheater’s walls, and their whole bodies seemed to scream, “home!” “friends!” “work!” The guards, resplendent in their armor, remained resolute. There were others who attempted to raise the security shutters on the exits, or even to pass for those accompanying by tying a scarf around their forehead; they were dispatched to the airship arena as a priority. From being hesitant, the movement of the crowd became resigned. So efficient was the organization that a first airship, already full, was soon taking off with a whirring of propellers.

  Seated in the higher tiers, Ophelia had watched all this while thinking at full speed.

  She turned to Octavio, who looked distraught, and then to Blaise, whose mouth had twisted into a tormented combination of incredulity and guilt, and finally to Wolf, who, behind a stoical front, had turned so pale that the white ink of his stamp blended into his skin.

  “No,” she said to all three of them.

  She didn’t need to make herself heard by them—her face spoke for her. No, she would not obey. She had already been forcibly repatriated to Anima once before; she wouldn’t be a second time. Her place was at the Deviations Observatory, by Thorn’s side, where the answers were to be found.

  She darted in the opposite direction to the procession already being marshaled by the family guard in this part of the amphitheater. She slipped between the summoned, into every gap her diminutive size allowed. She wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. If there had been someone there to call out to her, she wouldn’t have heard them anyway: the repeated instructions and musical interludes from the loudspeakers drowned out every sound.

  Tier after tier, Ophelia kept her eyes fixed on the great crimson canopy, billowing like a sail. She couldn’t see whether Helen and Pollux were still there, in its shade, but they alone could put an end to these expulsions.

  She was just about to reach the VIP stand when she was stopped in her tracks. A steel gauntlet had just gripped her arm. A guard. With a jerk of his chin, he silently commanded her to rejoin the nearest line. He was carrying no weapon—merely saying that word constituted an offense—but his grip was firm. Ophelia looked straight into his eyes and was surprised to detect suffering in them. His Acoustic’s ears were flattened, almost like an animal’s, to protect him from the loudspeakers’ cacophony. And yet his pain seemed to reside elsewhere. It was obeying his orders that grieved him. Ophelia then realized, like a punch in the stomach, that the Lords of LUX were endangering them all by making them board the airships.

  She hardened every muscle in her face to make herself clear to the guard through her flesh:

  “No.”

  One sandal after the other, she edged toward the stand, pulling with all her might on her steel-clamped arm. Violence was forbidden in Babel; that applied to this guard, too. If
he didn’t release his grip, he would dislocate her shoulder.

  He gave in.

  Ophelia dived into the stand. Before her, the two family spirits, as massive as the pillars holding up the canopy, were passively watching the evacuation.

  “Stop these embarkations!”

  She had drawn on all the breath left in her lungs to scream these words, and yet she couldn’t distinguish her own voice from those of the loudspeakers.

  Pollux turned from the arena. He had heard her. With his acute senses, statuesque physique, and paternal benevolence, he had the makings of a king. And yet the golden eyes he directed down at Ophelia expressed only powerlessness. He was incapable of the slightest initiative.

  She ignored him to address Helen, and only her:

  “Stop these embarkations,” she repeated, articulating each syllable. “The echoes are dangerous. They disrupt the navigation controls.”

  With a mechanical slowness, Helen rotated on the casters of her crinoline dress until she, in turn, was facing Ophelia. The optical appliance fixed to her elephantine nose began to raise certain lenses and lower others, adjusting her vision until she could make out Ophelia. The giant was herself somewhat painful to look at. So narrow was her wasp waist, between her more than ample hips and bust, she seemed about to snap at any moment.

  All that these twin family spirits had in common was the book they each carried, attached to their belt: two Books with pages as dark as their own skin.

  The guard, who had followed Ophelia into the stand and was visibly torn between what he should or shouldn’t do, sought to intervene. With a spiderlike movement, Helen gestured to him to leave her alone. Had she grasped the seriousness of the situation? Her enhanced hearing, which already struggled with the slam of a door or a loudly blown nose, was here being assailed from all directions.

  Ophelia pointed at the second airship as it was taking off.

  “Do you really agree with this? You are entitled to have your say, you are our godmother. I was myself one of your pupils.”