The Storm of Echoes

by Christelle Dabos

  “The observatory?” queried Elizabeth, astonished. “They got rid of us, they certainly didn’t want to see us return.”

  Lazarus winked at her from the cockpit.

  “Ne t’inquiète pas, I have my contacts over there. We’ll be safe there. After all, I’m their favorite automaton-supplier.”

  Ophelia couldn’t help but admire the old man’s nerve in relying on the true to disguise the false. The bump kept growing on his forehead; he owed it to Ophelia, and yet continued to behave like the victor. Much as she repeated to herself that they must combine forces to save what could still be saved, she didn’t trust him one bit. Over there, at the observatory, they would be on his territory.

  That, at any rate, was what Ophelia was thinking as she spotted the colossus, in the midst of swirling clouds. She was still thinking it as the Lazaropter landed on the crown of his head, on a landing platform she hadn’t known existed until then. She was still thinking it when Lazarus made them take a secret lift, descending directly into the skull of the statue. She intended to reassess her situation only once inside the directors’ apartments.

  Entwined on a boardroom chair, a couple was gorging on saffron cakes.

  “Now, finally, we are reunited!” the Genealogists gleefully declared, as one.

  PLENTY

  Rain, mingled with sunlight, was tapping on the rose windows that served as the colossus’s eyes. The drops’ shadows played across the smiles of the Genealogists. They were embracing so passionately, they became one and the same body. Their golden glow eclipsed the world around them, so much so that it took Ophelia a moment to realize that they weren’t alone in the directors’ apartments.

  Pollux’s guards were emptying the bookcases of their contents. Inmates’ files, medical imaging, it was all coming out. They had stopped everything, ready to seize the bayonet rifles slung across their shoulders, as soon as the secret door to the lift had opened on to Lazarus, Ophelia, Thorn, Ambrose, Elizabeth, and Walter. They were just waiting for the Genealogists’ order.

  With a casual shake of his slice of cake, the man indicated to them to continue clearing, while the woman licked her fingers.

  “What a lovely surprise to be visited by you!”

  “We were starting to feel a little lonely here.”

  “There’s not a living soul left in this establishment.”

  “Not an observer.”

  “Not a collaborator.”

  “Not a subject.”

  “No one.”

  Ophelia glanced through the nearest rose window. Down below, the cloisters and gardens were, indeed, deserted. Where had the man with the dimple gone? And beetle woman? And the other inverts? And Second? And the Knight?

  Beside her, Thorn betrayed no emotion, but it seemed to Ophelia that his watch had stopped ticking in his pocket. He had wanted to beat these Genealogists to it, having made, and then broken, a deal with them, and he had failed. The electrical tingling from his claws that Ophelia had finally got used to had suddenly stopped. Just the thought that he, after so many brushes with death, might be afraid made her feel panic-stricken.

  Ambrose himself seemed scared, as he stroked the scarf to calm his increasing anxiety.

  There was something threatening in the air, like a smell of gas. Something terrible was going to happen here, but what?

  As for Lazarus, he looked neither surprised nor concerned by the Genealogists’ intrusion into his observatory. As usual, with thumbs tucked under frock-coat lapels, he was excessively confident.

  Simultaneously, the Genealogists turned their eyes on Elizabeth, who instantly drew back a step.

  “It’s a relief to see you safe and sound, virtuoso.”

  “Making you board that long-distance airship was an insult to your talent.”

  “Lady Septima showed herself to be vraiment unworthy of her position.”

  “Because of her, the uprisings became widespread in Babel.”

  “Indeed, she’s paying the price as we speak.”

  “Our fine fellow citizens threw her into the void.”

  “The harder they fall!” they crowed, in unison.

  Ophelia found them inhuman. Even when they smiled, no wrinkle disturbed the smooth gold of their skin, thanks, probably, to their family power. She thought of Lady Septima, plunging relentlessly toward the abyss that had swallowed up her son.

  Ophelia realized, from the way Elizabeth’s dirty fingernails were digging into the edge of her uniform sleeves, that she shared her terror. Her eyelids had lifted like blinds as she followed the comings and goings of the guards, carrying off boxes full of the private lives of hundreds of patients. The Genealogists had taken advantage of the chaos to take over this place, always out of bounds to them, by force. Babel was on its knees, and yet its highest dignitaries remained there, ensconced in a chair that didn’t belong to them.

  “The family spirits,” Elizabeth said, with difficulty. “They are all at the Memorial to deal with the crisis. Why are you not with them?”

  Of everyone in this room, Ophelia would never have thought that she would be the one to stand up to the Genealogists.

  They rose up, as one.

  “Because, henceforth, that task is incumbent upon you.”

  “Babel needs an exemplary and dedicated citizen.”

  “Just as Sir Pollux needs us, today more than ever.”

  “Someone must serve as his living memory, and ensure that he knows, along with all the other family spirits, his true status.”

  “So here you are, elevated to the ranks of the Lords of LUX!”

  Incredulous, Elizabeth gazed at the sun the Genealogists had just pinned to her chest. Ophelia could have sworn that it was the very badge that Thorn had returned to Lady Septima. This wasn’t promotion; it was alienation.

  “An airship is moored in the enclosure,” said the man.

  “Take it, and see you at the Memorial,” said the woman.

  “Maintenant,” they said, together.

  Pollux’s guards, who had just emptied out the last bookcase, formed a guard of honor up to the door, while still clutching boxes. A mapped-out path. Elizabeth had never liked either the pressure of responsibility or the limelight. This new title seemed like a bad joke.

  With a final glance back at Ophelia, she left the apartments, followed by her armed escort.

  After her departure, only five guards remained: two posted at the entrance to the apartments; two in front of the secret lift; and a final one watching over the still absurdly cheerful Lazarus, as if he posed the greatest threat among them. It was still five rifles too many to contemplate escape. Ophelia could tell, from the way Thorn’s long fingers were quivering, that he was assessing all the options for turning the situation around. Since they had exited the lift, he had stopped either looking at her or coming near her, just like when he had wanted everyone to think that his fiancée meant nothing to him. She was, herself, avoiding raising her glasses in his direction, for fear of triggering an explosion of the noxious gas building up around them.

  The Genealogists suddenly focused all their attention on Ambrose. Even their eyes were venomous. He winced when the woman, with a swish of silk, leant over his wheelchair. A tiger confronting an antelope.

  “What a fascinating deformity . . . You’re not ordinary, my boy, and I don’t just mean your limbs.”

  “Father?” he called out, softly.

  Lazarus, with a rifle still trained on him, smiled at Ambrose from a distance.

  “Don’t worry about a thing. It will all work out for the best.”

  “It will all work out for the best,” repeated the woman.

  She stroked Ambrose’s palms, tracing every line on them, and soon both of their arms were covered in goose bumps. As she used her Tactile power to explore this unknown skin, the woman’s eyebrows suddenly relaxed, as if
she had found what she was looking for. Slowly, sensually, she slid her golden fingers under Ambrose’s hair, under the scarf, which bristled at her touch, and under the collar of the white tunic.

  Ophelia understood too late what was about to happen. Ambrose hiccupped with surprise; a simple hiccup. The next moment, nothing was left of him in the wheelchair, apart from the scarf, blindly thrashing about, and a ray of sunlight dotted with rain.

  Gone, like a puff of smoke.

  The woman now held, between thumb and index finger, an old silver plate on which there was a microscopic inscription: the code that, for decades, had kept an echo anchored in matter, and that she had removed like a simple label.

  Everything had happened so fast, Ophelia hadn’t had time to breathe, and still couldn’t catch her breath now. Her lungs, heart, blood were frozen.

  “Dear, oh dear,” sighed Lazarus. “You have damaged the code. Was that vraiment necessary?”

  The guards remaining in the room stared at an imaginary spot in front of them, without blinking, as though to convince themselves that they hadn’t seen a thing.

  The Genealogists, with the same gesture, indicated Walter to them.

  “Leave us, and take that automaton with you.”

  The guards obeyed. As they left the apartments with Walter, who allowed them to move him but sprayed them with toilet water, their faces betrayed their relief.

  As soon as the great ebony door was closed again, Ophelia felt something hard against both of her cheeks. Two golden pistols. With simultaneous pressure, they forced her to look up at Thorn.

  “Pollux’s guards are not the only ones authorized to bear preventive arms for peace,” the Genealogists informed him.

  “You made a very disappointing chief family inspector.”

  “We closed our eyes to all your little secrets.”

  “As long as you were on our side, in this observatory.”

  “But you abandoned your post for this little Animist.”

  Ophelia wasn’t really conscious of the two guns pointed at her, or the proximity of the Genealogists, whose golden hair was mingling with her own, or even of Thorn’s predatory stillness. All she could see was the absence beyond the scarf. Ambrose was there and, the next moment, not there anymore. He had welcomed her, guided her, fed her, sheltered her, advised her . . . and he was not there anymore.

  Without relaxing the pressure of her pistol, the woman threw the coded plate she had pulled off to Lazarus.

  “We are honored to meet the true creator of Project Cornucopianism.”

  “To be honest, professor, until recently, we didn’t deem you worthy of interest.”

  “Bien sûr, we knew that Eulalia Gonde had made you another of her servants.”

  “But at no time did we think you capable of being in competition with her.”

  “Recently, it became clear to us how much we had underestimated you.”

  Lazarus averted his eyes from the plate in his hands. The shadow of a smile was still there, lurking around his lips. Ambrose’s sudden disappearance hadn’t shaken him.

  “What made you change your mind?”

  Ophelia couldn’t see the Genealogists’ expressions because they were right beside her. She did, however, see Thorn tensing up, even in his eyes, when they pressed their two guns harder into her cheeks.

  “This little Animist, whom we came across by chance.”

  “During the census, at a counter in the Memorial.”

  “We had a quick look at her papers.”

  “‘Eulalia’ is vraiment not a common name in Babel.”

  “And it’s a name particularly loaded with significance.”

  “So we conducted a little inquiry into her.”

  “And learned that, in your absence, she lived in your home.”

  “And in that way discovered the existence of your supposed son.”

  “A son who featured nowhere on your genealogical branch.”

  “Whom you were very careful to conceal in your shadow.”

  “Of whom we finally found, thanks to perseverance, a trace in our archives.”

  “A mere powerless individual, born in your childhood neighborhood.”

  “A boarder, along with you, right here, in this observatory.”

  “And who hasn’t aged by even a single hair in forty years.”

  “Lady Septima, decidedly very misguided, expelled him without allowing us to meet him.”

  “Most fortunately,” they concluded together, “it’s you who returned to us!”

  Lazarus had placidly agreed with each of the Genealogists’ statements.

  “And how about you telling me what you expect of me, and my modest observatory?”

  The pistols shuddered with excitement against Ophelia’s jaws. She could no longer move a muscle.

  “Plenty!” replied the Genealogists.

  “The only type that really counts.”

  “Plenty of time.”

  “Immortality.”

  The scarf wouldn’t stop searching, deep in the wheelchair, for a body that was no longer there. Ophelia couldn’t take her eyes off it. These Genealogists hadn’t grasped at all what this Horn of Plenty was all about. They had obliterated Ambrose without knowing what he really was. They didn’t deserve immortality.

  They didn’t deserve life.

  Stuck in the vise of the pistols, Ophelia closed her eyes to connect with the Genealogists’ spinal cords. She didn’t want to push them back. She wanted to hurt them, to dig her claws into their flesh as deeply as her power allowed.

  She couldn’t.

  By gritting her teeth to extend her range, she could detect the nervous systems of Thorn and Lazarus, but not those of the Genealogists. Their skin was an impenetrable fortress.

  She opened her eyes wide, and they met those of Thorn, up above, telling her not to do anything. She understood now why he feared them. Killing and being killed wasn’t a problem for them.

  Their breath burnt her ears.

  “We don’t age visibly, but that’s merely a façade.”

  “Under our skin, our bodies die every second.”

  “We’re tired of wasting time.”

  “And we’re tired of searching this place.”

  Ophelia felt a glimmer of hope when, through the rose windows, she saw the LUX airship appear, but the craft continued its ascent and disappeared into the distance, in the direction of Babel’s Memorial. She couldn’t see how Elizabeth could have avoided obeying the Genealogists, but she felt abandoned, all the same.

  “I consent,” Lazarus declared, humbly bowing his head. “I will lead you to the Horn of Plenty. On one condition: we all go there together. Don’t give my partners any grief, alright?”

  The Genealogists indicated to Lazarus to lead them on, and to Thorn to follow them, and pushed Ophelia forward with their guns. She had to force the scarf to let go of the wheelchair, so as not to leave it behind. Clutching this writhing mass of wool to her chest made her feel as if it was her own heart that had burst out of it.

  She was under no illusion. As soon as the Genealogists were masters of the Horn of Plenty, they would get rid of all of them.

  Lazarus didn’t call the large lift in the antechamber. He made them go down the hidden stairway that Ophelia and Thorn had already used for their clandestine meeting. They all plunged deep into the statue, far from the sun and the rain. The flickering bulbs added their shadows to the spiderwebs.

  Lazarus sometimes took a turning to the right, sometimes a corridor to the left, whistling all the while. Wasn’t he getting them lost within the labyrinths of the observatory? Ophelia couldn’t have said whom, between him and the Genealogists, she trusted less. He claimed that Ambrose was important, but his sudden, grotesque disappearance made no difference to him. He would sacrifice his own partners wi
thout regret if need be.

  Even more insistently than the pistols, Ophelia could feel Thorn’s silent attention on her, as he continuously analyzed, quantified, evaluated, and recalculated.

  After endless meanderings, they reached an underground platform, where a train seemed always to have been waiting for them. When Ophelia climbed aboard, flanked by the pistols, she noticed that it had the same velvet-covered seats and lamps with shades as on her first journey. Would the destination be different this time?

  “I recommend that you sit down,” said Lazarus, doing so himself. “The gradient is steep.”

  No sooner had he uttered these words than the compartment door closed and they began their descent into the tunnel. Ophelia came from an ark where the carriages and trams occasionally just did as they pleased, but this train truly had a will of its own. Was it, too, an echo incarnate? With no choice but to sit between the Genealogists, she concentrated, in vain, on the guns hurting her ribs. Gold was a metal with a strong personality, even when faced with an Animist. It was easier to maneuver an airship than make these two weapons see reason.

  As she risked a quick glance through the train’s windows, she caught a smile on her own reflection. At first she thought it was a nervous rictus, before understanding that it wasn’t she who was smiling, but her echo. It was there. It was still following her. This vision lasted but a moment, and, very soon, the smile vanished from the window, but Ophelia felt surprisingly comforted by it.

  She hugged the scarf tight, and met Thorn’s intense gaze, from the seat opposite. He was as fiercely determined as she was to come through this. One way or another, they would find a solution. Together.

  A sudden jolt indicated that the train had stopped.

  At first, once she had alighted from the train, Ophelia couldn’t see a great deal, but she was hit by a very musty smell. It was like inhaling rock. It wasn’t dark here—quite the opposite. The more she blinked, the less Ophelia could take in the contours of this place. It was a cavern with a dizzyingly high roof. Its walls were riddled with galleries in which convoys of small trucks were forever coming and going. The size of the stalactites and stalagmites gave the feeling of having landed in the jaws of a Beast.