The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  It wasn’t just the shadows Ophelia was seeing. She was also seeing the echoes.

  The pince-nez worn by the observers worked like a photographic negative, revealing what couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. The shadows and echoes disappeared as soon as Ophelia removed the lens. She would have gladly taken it away with her, but the damaged glass broke up in her hands.

  So, everything had a shadow. Even better, the shadows and the echoes were different manifestations of one and the same phenomenon.

  It was a good start.

  Ophelia visited the laboratories, one by one, in search of answers. In them she found turned-off stills, slates scrawled with equations, scales like those used for post, and a number of other measuring instruments. Her increased clumsiness and Cosmos’s bite didn’t make the task of opening every drawer any easier for her. The scientific notebooks were unfathomable.

  Two words kept cropping up: “aerargyrum” and “crystallization.” She had no idea what their significance was, but she fell on a photograph of Cosmos inside a report. She leafed through it. Every line corresponded to a date, but the comment written was always the same:

  “Subject unsuitable for crystallization and not reclaimed by family. Kept in protocol I.”

  Ophelia looked at the appendices. They featured a few photographs similar to those she had found in the directors’ apartments. On each one, she could see a shadow separating from Cosmos’s body, as if another version of him had stepped a little to one side. Attached to the photographs were dozens of drawings in which she recognized, not without surprise, Second’s signature style. They were actually sketches rather than drawings, and all depicted the same dark silhouette. At the base of each image, a collaborator had recorded the date.

  Did Second see people’s shadows, then? Supposing that were the case, in what way were her drawings important? After all, the Deviations Observatory already knew how to capture the shadows in photographs.

  Ophelia hurriedly searched for her own report. She found it in a separate cabinet. It was less voluminous than Cosmos’s, given her recent arrival on the Alternative Program. At first, it was same daily appraisal:

  “Subject unsuitable for crystallization and not reclaimed by family. Kept in protocol I.”

  However, Ophelia got a shock when she saw that the comment had changed recently:

  “Subject suitable for crystallization and not reclaimed by family. Kept provisionally in protocol I. Soon forecasted for protocols II and III.”

  She checked the appendices. The photographs were, nevertheless, the same as those she had already seen, showing a separation between her body and her shadow. Nothing new. At first it was the same with Second’s sketches, but the most recent ones had become totally different. Hastily scribbled, the shadow was starting to split up, as if scissors had been viciously applied to its shoulder area, and its arm was about to come off.

  Ophelia had never seen anything like that through the lens. Was Second foreseeing what the photographs and the pince-nez didn’t yet show?

  Ophelia thought of that nail. She thought of that picture of her covered in red crayon, she thought of that old woman, and she thought of that monster.

  A sudden change in the lightbulbs’ output reminded her to be vigilant. She would have to take advantage of the next power cut to leave the laboratories without being seen. Time was short.

  As she went back to investigating, a desk caught her eye, due to the state it was in. Dozens, hundreds of notes were scrawled across every centimeter of slate and partition. The cubicle’s owner had even written straight onto the precious-wood counter. To which the maintenance staff had reacted, on a memo left nearby: “So paper’s just for marsupials, is it?”

  Ophelia examined the notes close up. In places, she recognized the writing so characteristic of the Books. Arrows and circles had been drawn in chalk in an attempt to find meaning in all these arabesques, without great success, judging by all the crossings out.

  Elizabeth’s decoding work.

  The Genealogists had manipulated her specifically for this task, but why were the Books of such interest to them? Because they held the secret to the family spirits’ immortality? And what about the Deviations Observatory? What exactly did it expect from this decoding? What did it have to do with the shadows and echoes? What did it have to do with the Horn of Plenty?

  At this rate, Ophelia wouldn’t have found a real answer between now and the fifth strike of the gong. She felt as if her mind was as partitioned as the laboratories: she could still see only the parts, never the machinery.

  Enough.

  Eulalia Gonde had passed her memory on to the Other, who had, in turn, passed it on to Ophelia. The time had come for her to put it to good use. She took a chair and sat before a blackboard that Elizabeth had covered in code. A language formerly invented by Eulalia.

  A language invented by me, Ophelia corrected, taking a deep breath.

  She was going to use it to trigger a new vision. She stared doggedly at the writing, forcing herself not to think anymore of the time passing, or her own impatience, or the future, or the past. Only of the chalk marks facing her. It was no different from reading an object.

  Forgetting oneself the better to remember.

  A flash tore through her head. This migraine, which had never really left her since entering the observatory, was suddenly hitting the high notes. Ophelia had the paradoxical sensation of rising up from her chair while falling from high above. The chalk on the blackboard turned into a stratosphere, then into a scattering of clouds, then into an old world, then into a city scarred by bombardments, then into an old district being rebuilt, then into a little pedestal table on which two porcelain cups shine out.

  Eulalia grips hers with her thinner hands. She holds the gaze of the caretaker on the other side of the table. Tortoiseshell glasses against steel spectacles. He has seriously aged since the last time. The scarf end of his turban still hides his jaw—what’s left of it, at least. His face, like Babel itself, is ravaged by war.

  “Your first blasted leave in four years,” he growled into his scarf. “And it’s me you want to see?”

  Eulalia nodded.

  “You’re looking rough. Like you’re my age.”

  Eulalia nodded again. Yes, she must have lost at least half of her life expectancy. You only get out what you put in. She regrets nothing.

  “I heard about the orphanage.”

  “There’s nothing left to say about it. A blasted bomb killed the kids. Everyone quit the island. Including me. A caretaker without a school, makes no blasted sense.”

  Eulalia understands him, inside out. She feels as if her family has been snatched away from her for the second time.

  “We’ll reopen it,” she promises him. “Just you and me.”

  The caretaker sits with military stillness, but his hands shake on either side of his cup.

  “I’ll have snuffed it before they let you return to civilian life.”

  He glances furtively at the soldiers standing to attention outside, beside the bar’s door. Since Eulalia has been working at the observatory, for the Project, she can’t go anywhere without having them hot on her heels. It’s not her life they’re protecting, contrary to her superiors’ claim, but what she might divulge.

  “We’re going to reopen the school,” she insisted. “A completely different school for . . . for completely different children. But I must know: are you with me?”

  The caretaker watches her drinking her tea without touching his own.

  “How can I say no? You’ve always been my blasted favorite.”

  Eulalia knows it. At the orphanage, all the kids were scared of him, except her. While the others played at war, she visited him in his lodge to talk about universal peace, and tell him stories in which the deserters were heroes.

  Eulalia ignores the soldiers, who keep shoot
ing nervous looks at her from the bar’s entrance. All that counts is her friend. An old man who, like her, has nothing left to lose.

  “I don’t have . . . I don’t have the permission, and I don’t intend, to tell you about the Project. I’ll never tell you what I’ve seen, what I’ve . . . what I’ve heard, what I’ve been part of, all that the Project has changed in me. What I can tell you is that they’re on the wrong . . . wrong track at the observatory.”

  Her residual stammer makes the caretaker frown. She knows it would take her weeks, maybe even months of therapy to get the better of it, and the doctors warned her she could never be totally free of making slips of the tongue. A small price to pay, there, too.

  She tilts her glasses up at the small patch of sky above them. The bar’s roof is being repaired. The workmen’s hammers aren’t ideal for conversation, but they’re not ideal for eavesdroppers, either.

  “My superiors think only of peace for the city, a peace entailing new . . . new wars. One must think bigger. Much bigger. I have a plan.”

  The caretaker says nothing, but Eulalia knows he is listening to her very seriously. He has always listened to her. It’s for that reason, too, that she has chosen him.

  “We won’t be alone. I’ve . . . Let’s say that I’ve sort of met someone. An extraordinary person. Who has transformed my vision of the world. Transformed me. Taught me that there exists . . . that there exists something other, that’s even more extraordinary. It goes beyond anything you can imagine, anything I, myself, imagined, and yet I’ve never been short on imagination.”

  Eulalia can feel herself quivering with elation merely from evoking the Other. He has become so close to her that she detects his presence on every reflective surface around—the bar’s copperware, the tea in her cup, even the lenses of her own glasses. He is her, and she is him. They are singular and plural.

  “So what is it, this plan?”

  There’s no irony in the caretaker’s question. Eulalia’s fervor is such that she’s ignited a spark in his eyes. He’s known her since her very first day at the orphanage, but she knows he’s never really considered her a child. Today, he looks at her as if she were his mother, as if she were the mother of all humanity.

  Eulalia likes this look.

  “To save the world. And this time, I know how.”

  At the door of the bar, a soldier indicates the clock to her. Her leave is already over. She will have to return to the observatory and obey orders, but not for much longer. Oh no, not for much longer.

  As she’s laying a banknote on the table, she takes the chance to lean forward discreetly:

  “I need only three small things: echoes, words, and some compensation.”

  The caretaker’s surprised face goes back to being chalk on the blackboard. Ophelia blinks, no longer daring to breathe, still immersed in Eulalia Gonde’s memory. Ramifications and new connections multiply in her migraine-afflicted mind, opening doors to inner rooms she had no idea even existed.

  She could see the mechanics.

  Ophelia knew she had to leave this place right now, get back to her room, and wait for nightfall to meet up with Thorn again in the directors’ apartments, as agreed. First, she wanted to make sure of one last thing. She borrowed a magnifying glass from a collaborator’s drawer, and randomly picked one of the faulty objects in boxes. A pan that, from its nauseating smell, had contained one of the gross tarts they served them daily in the refectory. She examined it from every angle. She had to strain her eyes, on top of the magnifying glass, finally to find what she was looking for: microscopic characters inlaid in the metal, almost like those in the Books.

  Yes, Ophelia could finally see them, those mechanics.

  The Horn of Plenty produced nothing.

  It converted echoes into matter.

  And it did so thanks to a code.

  Ophelia put the tart pan and the magnifying glass back where she had found them. She was starting to collect the pieces of the puzzle, but she would sort them out once she was far from here. First she had to think of a way to distract the attention of the two collaborators in the corridor, in case she couldn’t count on another power cut.

  She didn’t get the chance.

  The small door she had arrived through had just opened, letting in a crowd of collaborators. They all unbuttoned their gray hoods to hang them on the pegs. Stumbling, Ophelia hid behind a cubicle. Why were they already back? Had Thorn’s inspection been completed sooner than planned?

  They were as silent among themselves as they were toward the inverts. Only their sandals made the polished floorboards squeak. For once, Ophelia felt lucky to be barefoot as she ran from one cubicle to the next to avoid being seen. Each collaborator returned to their personal laboratory.

  As steps approached, Ophelia darted into the nearest cubicle and crouched under a workbench. The collaborator she was actually trying to avoid walked in himself. She had gone and trapped herself. Crouching deep in her hiding place, she watched the gray habit’s silky folds caress the floor. A hand, also gloved in gray, grabbed the stool, but instead of putting it in front of the workbench, it placed it beside a partition.

  “It was no accident,” whispered the collaborator. “I don’t understand what happened, but it was certainement no accident.”

  He had the refined tone of a scholar. Ophelia was wondering whether he was talking to himself, when a muffled whisper replied to him from the other side of the partition:

  “It’s none of our business.”

  “Lady Septima’s daughter, she’s everyone’s business.”

  Ophelia almost banged her head on the workbench. Had something happened to Second?

  “Let’s hope, above all, that she hasn’t been too damaged,” said the other voice. “We need her. At least that incident cut short Sir Henry’s inspection. I found that intrusion très disagreeable.”

  The collaborator’s habit stirred. Bent double under the workbench, Ophelia edged forward very carefully to see him better. He was perched on his stool, with one ear pressed to the partition. His bald pate shone with sweat. If he could just stay in that position, Ophelia might be able to get out without being noticed.

  “Damaged?” he muttered, sadly, just as she was leaving her hiding place. “She’s still but a child.”

  “You are vraiment naïve, dear colleague,” replied the voice from the neighboring cubicle. “We will speak of it again in a few months’ time. Or rather, we won’t speak about it again. Speak to me again and, unfortunately, I will find myself obliged to denounce you to the management.”

  Ophelia dashed out of the laboratory. She hadn’t been discreet, the collaborator must have seen her. He would raise the alarm.

  There was no alarm, no shouting.

  Her relief was short-lived. Even if all the lightbulbs went out now, Ophelia would never be able to get out through the door without bumping into a whole group of collaborators. She needed another exit.

  At the back of the room, she spotted a yellow drape, above which was written, in big letters: OBSERVERS ONLY. She couldn’t recall having seen an entrance here on Thorn’s plan, but at least she shouldn’t find any collaborators on the other side.

  She slid along the partitions, ducking each time she passed in front of a workbench.

  A female collaborator was busy unloading a cart, on rails, that had just delivered a load of objects. It was the same junk that cluttered up all the trash cans, but the woman was handling it as if dealing with precious stones, and noting everything down, item by item, in an inventory register.

  Ophelia slipped behind her and dived behind the drape. She found a maze of badly lit steps, which she climbed up, came down, and stumbled back up again. Where had all these stairways come from? They didn’t feature on the plan.

  Finally, she emerged into a corridor.

  It was, in fact, much more than a corridor. It st
retched so far, its end couldn’t be seen, and its vault of lancet arches soared up tens of meters from the ground. Incense sticks produced a perfumed haze, pierced here and there by blades of light escaping through the stained-glass windows on high. A nave, all stone and glass.

  Ophelia found herself shivering.

  She passed a basin, resting on the shoulders of a buckling and grimacing statue. Was it an authentic font?

  She walked for a long time straight ahead, never glimpsing the end of the nave. It couldn’t be infinite, surely . . . The side aisles were punctuated by chapels, closed off by as many doors. An observer could be lurking behind each one of them. As, indeed, could the Horn of Plenty.

  The flagging was inlaid with giant golden letters.

  One step. EXPIATION.

  One step. CRYSTALLIZATION.

  One step. REDEMPTION.

  This place made Ophelia feel extremely uncomfortable. She was considering turning back when a voice froze her to the spot.

  “Benvenuta to the second protocol.”

  THE MISTAKE

  The words ricocheted for a long time around the sculpted stone of the nave. Ophelia searched for their source through the swirls of incense. She found it on one of the kneeling stools in the side aisles. A slight figure, deep in contemplation, was so totally still that it seemed at one with the wood and the velvet. Its profile, inlaid with illuminations, glimmered in the light from the stained-glass windows.

  Mediana.

  Ophelia’s first reflex was to check that Mediana was properly reflected in the sheen of the flagstones. That done, she still didn’t feel reassured. Although she had known that Mediana was also at the Deviations Observatory, put there by Lady Septima herself, she hadn’t thought of her once since being there. All this time, she had presumed she was a charge of some other department, with no connection to her own.

  “Is this it, the second protocol?” Ophelia asked, astonished, her eyes sweeping around the nave. “What are you doing here?”