“I am not from here, madame. I couldn’t have known . . . ”
Helen made a gesture of annoyance. Her fingers were so huge, the draft sent all the papers on the desk flying. “Of course you should have known. That is the whole difference between the amateur and the professional. Ignorance, when one possesses a power such as yours, is an unacceptable fault. So my role will be to remedy that.”
Ophelia, who was squeezing her hands ever tighter, suddenly relaxed her grip. “You are accepting me as a virtuoso?”
A mechanical arm opened a drawer, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to Ophelia. It was an official document of enrolment to the conservatoire. Helen’s lips curled into an ogress’s grin that revealed a horrifying number of teeth. “I am not welcoming you into the Good Family, young lady. I will do so in three weeks’ time, if you are still among us by then. You will have to do a great, great deal of catching up before even hoping to become a Forerunner.”
THE TRADITION
Ophelia was in such a hurry to tell Ambrose the good news that she slipped on the doorstep of the administration department. The tide of clouds had turned into a downpour, the steps into a cascade. The smell from the vegetation, already strong in the sun, had become heady in the rain.
“Where are you going, apprentice?”
She raised her glasses, streaked with water, toward the figure standing at the top of the entrance steps, under the glass canopy. It was the student who had accompanied her to Helen’s office. Squalls were making the panels of her frock coat flap like silver-embroidered standards. She pointed to the arcaded gallery adjoining the administrative building. “We’re going that way. All the conservatoire’s outbuildings are linked by covered walkways. We’ll be sheltered.”
“It’s just that I have to get back to town,” said Ophelia, whose toga was becoming more drenched by the second. “I wouldn’t want to miss the last birdtrain.”
“You’re coming with me. You’re to undergo an initial assessment. It’s the tradition.”
The rain fell even harder on the cobblestones, smothering the voice and silhouette of the student. Ophelia had to resign herself to trekking back up the stairs, against the flow of the water. “Now? But I’ve only just been accepted.”
“You’re starting your probationary period. You must not leave the conservatoire premises for the next three weeks, except with Lady Helen’s special permission. Without it, she will consider you to have given up, and you won’t be given a second chance. Having said that, if you want to go home,” the student said, turning on her heels, “no one here’s going to stop you.”
Ophelia followed her along the walkway. She’d barely had a chance to feel jubilant, and already she’d been brought back down to earth. So she’d have to remain three whole weeks on this little ark? Couldn’t she do her research at the Memorial’s Secretarium before this time limit?
And Ambrose, she suddenly thought, wringing out the soaked panels of her toga, wouldn’t he worry when she didn’t return? “It’s somewhat of a prison-like approach.”
“Hmm?” The student half-turned, as if surprised to find Ophelia behind her. “You signed an agreement, apprentice. Lady Helen is offering you board, lodgings, and a future. Tradition requires that, in exchange, you follow her instructions without asking questions.”
Ophelia reflected that she should have read the agreement more carefully before signing it. She wiped her glasses and looked at the student’s profile, emerging from her long, tawny hair. Livid complexion, half-closed eyelid, fixed eyebrow, nondescript nose, flat mouth: her face was like her voice, devoid of expression. This impassivity contrasted with the flamboyance of her freckles. She was on the tall side, very slender, and her fitted frock coat emphasized her lack of curves. The complete opposite of Ophelia.
“Are you an apprentice, too? You haven’t told me your name.”
“Hmm?” went the student, roused from her reverie. “I’m called Elizabeth. From today onwards, we’re rivals, you and I. Sworn enemies, one might say.”
During the silence that ensued, Ophelia had ample time to hear the rain beating down on the glass of the arcade.
“I’m joking,” Elizabeth finally added, a few steps later. “I’m an aspiring virtuoso, which places me, hierarchically, above the apprentices. We’ll be neither rivals nor enemies. I’m in charge of the second division of Forerunners. If you have any questions, it’s to me that you must address them. Congratulations, in fact.”
She was speaking in a distant voice, without a shadow of a smile. Even the melodious Babel accent fell flat from her mouth.
“And what is your family power, Elizabeth, if it’s not indiscreet to ask?”
“Hmm? I don’t have one.”
Ophelia’s eyebrows twitched. “I was told that the powerless were very rare here.”
“I’m currently their sole representative at the conservatoire. I had only two predecessors: Howard Harper and Lazarus.”
“Lazarus, as in the Lazarus of the automatons? I didn’t know he’d been a virtuoso.” Ambrose had neglected to tell her, which raised a new question. Why had he tried to discourage her from joining the Good Family when his own father had followed that path?
“Everyone should know that. Particularly a Forerunner. Let’s hurry up now, apprentice.”
Ophelia couldn’t have been keener to do so, but of the two of them, it was Elizabeth who walked slower. The aspiring virtuoso was forever slowing down to pull a notebook out from her frock coat and jot things down in it, which she always ended up crossing out, while muttering between her teeth. This young girl was certainly a queer fish.
Ophelia soon noticed that Elizabeth was far from an isolated case. A cohort of shaven-headed Cyclopeans was running along the ceiling of the galleries while loudly reciting physics formulae. A young Totemist girl was walking straight ahead, nose in a book, cloaked in a swarm of mosquitoes, buzzing around her but never biting her. There was even an old man conjuring up electric arcs between his fingers while sniggering in a rather senile way.
All of these people wore the same midnight-blue-and-silver uniform. Were they all, then, future virtuosos?
Elizabeth climbed a series of stairs leading to a particularly imposing residence. Built all on the vertical, it hugged the edge of the ark, and its ramparts, spreading like wings of stone, served as a frontier between land and sky. Gigantic sculpted elephant heads, incorporated in the building’s facade, looked so stern that they prompted not a smile.
“This is the Hall of Residence,” explained Elizabeth, scribbling something new in her notebook. “It’s where you will sleep, wash, take your meals, and do your chores. Don’t expect to find automatons to clean for you; there’s a whole load of them for the Sons of Pollux, but Lady Helen insists that, here, we do everything for ourselves.”
Ophelia looked up high enough to crick her neck. The Hall of Residence was designed like the Memorial, but more modest in size: it had a vast atrium around which the stories circled like a planet’s rings. Floors, walls, and ceilings were all turned into rooms. The apprentices up on high were debating some aspect of rhetoric with their heads upside down; those down below were calling for silence to concentrate on their homework. Some were pushing trolleys of laundry along the vertical corridors, others were carrying out unfathomable experiments in cubicles reserved for practical work. The whole atmosphere was buzzing, like a beehive, resonating with accents from the four corners of the world.
Ophelia’s chest tightened. Even here, even now, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for the tallest and least talkative of them all. And what if Thorn had taken the very same path as her? If he had used the Good Family to infiltrate the corridors of the Memorial?
“Does the conservatoire have many virtuosos?” she asked Elizabeth.
“Hmm? Yes, rather. There’s the company of Forerunners, the company of Lawyers, the company of Scribes, the
company of Guardians, and plenty of others, too. Each company is made up of two divisions: the Godchildren of Helen here, and the Sons of Pollux over there.” Elizabeth had indicated, to underline the last word, a large balcony that enabled one to make out, through several layers of rain, the cliff of the neighboring ark.
“Why live separately if we’re following the same apprenticeship?”
“Because it’s the tradition.”
Ophelia wondered whether conservatoire students received a bonus every time they repeated this mantra. Elizabeth was chewing her pencil rubber, dreamily, eyes lost in her notebook, long hair following her undulating walk. In the experiment cubicle of a topsy-turvium, there was a puff of smoke and exclamations, to which she paid no attention whatsoever. She didn’t seem that keen to make conversation.
That wasn’t the case for Ophelia. “It was a poster in the Memorial that brought me here. I discovered they wanted Forerunners for their reading groups. I’d like to apply. I’m certain it would be right up my alley.”
Elizabeth gave her a sidelong look. She had stopped walking and chewing her pencil. Her eyes had turned from vague to piercing as arrows. “Relinquish all your certainty.” Even her voice had changed, suddenly resonant, deeply concerned. “Who do you think you are, you who speak of our cause so lightly? Your talent is but a bent rod that will have to be straightened. Sir Henry’s reading groups demand a know-how that your hands don’t yet possess, that they will probably never possess.”
Ophelia clenched her fists so tight, her gloves creaked. It was the second time today that someone was knocking her professional pride, and she clearly wasn’t lacking in it. Over the top of her notebook, in the midst of the university hubbub, Elizabeth continued to study her, with neither hostility nor friendliness, as though expecting a rebellious reaction from her.
The young Animist released her breath and relaxed her clenched fists. She understood. A good citizen, and even more so a virtuoso, didn’t cling to what made him or her an individual. The interest of the group had to come before personal pride. “You’re right. The more I discover the world around me, the more I realize how little I know it.”
Elizabeth’s half-closed eyelids lowered even more, and Ophelia thought she caught a glimmer of satisfaction between her eyelashes.
“An admission for an admission: I, too, feel pride. I love the city, love the Memorial, and love the Good Family. I tend to expect others to demonstrate the same devotion. And to respect my work.”
“You work for the reading groups?”
Elizabeth stuck her notebook against Ophelia’s glasses. It was covered in a jumble of numbers and letters. “Algorithms, functions, iterative structures, conditional structures,” she translated. “It’s the reading groups that are working for me. I’m in charge of the new catalogue. The readers encode the database I’ve created, for Sir Henry’s use. Most of the Memorial’s ancient documents are neither dated nor authenticated, so we need faultless evaluations. I’m working right now on a system of perforated cards that would enable Sir Henry to deal efficiently with those myriad pieces of information.”
Ophelia lowered her eyes, despite herself. The lessons in humility suddenly made total sense. Elizabeth was perhaps not far from her in age, but she was ahead in a way not quantifiable in years.
“Lady Septima has three weeks to prepare you,” continued Elizabeth. “If you do exactly what she tells you, and toe the line with her, then you may have a chance of joining our ranks.”
“Lady Septima,” Ophelia repeated, trying to memorize the name. “I thought it was Sir Henry who was in charge of the reading groups.”
Elizabeth’s mouth suddenly twisted into a smile that struggled to find its place on her expressionless face. “He would be pretty incapable of doing so. Sir Henry is an automaton. He never leaves the Secretarium.”
Ophelia would have to get used to the idea: on Babel, automatons were members of society in their own right, and some of them could be called “Sir.” Just as she was about to ask some questions on the Secretarium—how one entered it, in particular—she changed her mind. Show too much curiosity, and she would end up arousing suspicion, and she’d lacked enough subtlety for today. “Thank you,” she said, instead.
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders, and went over to a noticeboard standing in the middle of the atrium. A mechanical arm was writing out words in chalk:
The apprentice Eulalia is expected at the interfamilial amphitheater.
“We didn’t hurry enough,” said Elizabeth. “You should already be in uniform. Quick, let’s get a move on,” she added, not hastening in the slightest.
She led Ophelia to the Hall’s cloakroom to find a uniform in her size, and unfolded a mechanical screen. The shirt, frock coat, trousers, and boots had so many fastenings, Ophelia couldn’t see the end of them. Her breathing was restricted the moment she buttoned up her frock coat; here was an outfit that didn’t leave much room for curves.
Elizabeth showed her the silver braiding on her midnight-blue sleeve. “Pay close attention to stripes. An apprentice virtuoso has only one band on his or her uniform. An aspiring virtuoso of the first degree, like me, has two bands. An aspiring virtuoso of the second degree has three bands. One band for each year at the conservatoire.”
Ophelia refrained from saying that she had no intention of staying that long. As soon as she had access to the Memorial’s Secretarium, or as soon as she had tracked down Thorn, ideally both of those, she would take her leave.
She tackled the endless laces on her boots. Elizabeth’s boots were spurred with two little silver wings, at ankle level.
“That’s the emblem of the Frontrunners. You will get your wings if you complete your three weeks on probation.”
If, Ophelia noted, putting Thorn’s watch into a pocket of her frock coat. Not when.
“This assessment I have to undergo, what does it consist of?”
“Hmm? Oh, you’ll be put through all sorts of tests. It’s rather painful, many applicants can’t withstand it. Even though it remains rare, some die from it.” Elizabeth’s eyelids vaguely lifted on seeing Ophelia’s glasses turn yellow on her nose, and then she added, flatly: “I’m joking. There have never been either deaths or injuries. See it more as a game.”
Ophelia hadn’t been too sure until now, but this time she was certain: her heart rate didn’t appreciate Elizabeth’s sense of humor one bit. She closed the clasp on her belt, finally ready, and felt a lump in her throat. Throughout the day, she had tried not to think about it, to stay focused on all these new things she had to take in. Now that she could feel this strange garment on her, she couldn’t manage it anymore. She took a deep breath, trying to stifle the sudden emotion rising from deep inside her, but she couldn’t stop herself from seeing the scene repeated: the bag snatched away by the tram, and the scarf with it. Why had fate allowed her to get one back and not the other?
“Are you following me, apprentice?” Elizabeth called out, folding up the mechanical screen. “I’m taking you to your assessment.”
“Coming.” Ophelia coughed to clear her voice. Weakening was a luxury she couldn’t allow herself. She would require all her concentration to pass her tests.
Elizabeth left Ophelia at the door to the interfamilial amphitheatre. It was semicircular and its tiers could easily accommodate around a hundred people. That was a lot of seats for a single apprentice. A man in a toga guided her to the front row, where writing equipment already awaited her.
“It’s the tradition,” was all he said by way of instruction.
Ophelia dried up at the first question: List the methods of dating, relative and absolute, that you know. The rest of the questions were all along the same lines, on increasingly specialized concepts and historical methodologies, and there were entire pages of them. “See it more like a game.” Well, it was certainly nothing like a game of cards. She was starting to feel the effects
of her previous insomnia, and her empty stomach soon filled the amphitheatre with highly embarrassing rumbling sounds.
When she finally handed her work in, engulfed in the abyss of her own ignorance, the man in the toga asked her to follow him. Ophelia was shown into an elegant laboratory where an old lady asked her to remove her uniform—when she’d had such difficulty putting it on—and then examined her rigorously from head to toe, tongue included. She made her do a whole series of movements, sometimes with the right hand, sometimes the left, which Ophelia found baffling.
“It’s the tradition,” said the old woman. She then gave her a new outfit, plainer and looser than her uniform, and requested that she go to the stadium, outside, when she was ready.
Evening was closing in. It was becoming very dark and very humid when Ophelia got there. She couldn’t believe her ears when an instructor ordered her to run fifteen laps. “It’s the tradition.”
On Anima, the only sporting activities were swimming, dancing, and mountain climbing, and Ophelia had never done any of them. After just one lap, she felt as if her lungs were about to burst. Her tunic and hair were sticking to her as if she’d plunged fully dressed into a bath. The rain had stopped, the stadium had become a giant swamp populated by frogs. She had to finish her run at a limp, a stitch stabbing her in the side, under the disapproving eyes of the instructor. He made no comment, however, returned her uniform to her, and simply declared that the assessment was over.
Ophelia followed the path of the Chinese lanterns suspended along the walkway arcades, paying no attention to the moths bumping into her glasses. She felt in great need of a bath and a meal, but when she reached the Hall of Residence, a deafening silence reigned in the vast atrium. Everyone had long been in bed.
Taking a transcendium, she swung from the vertical position to the horizontal. Fatigue gave her a real impression of fighting against the terrestrial forces of attraction, as though, at any moment, she risked falling from the wall and crashing to the floor.
The Memory of Babel Page 9
