The Memory of Babel

by Christelle Dabos

  “It’s rather you who were there at the same time as me,” Octavio remarked, haughtily. “I go there every Sunday.” He bit his lip, as though hesitating to reveal any more. “I was visiting my sister.”

  Ophelia had been ready for all sorts of revelations, but certainly not that one. “You have a sister?”

  “She’s called Second. She is . . . different. She always has been.”

  Octavio turned abruptly from the window to look straight at Ophelia, defying her to mock him.

  She had no desire to do so. “I, too, have a little sister who is different. She barely speaks, but she knows exactly how to make herself understood, all the same. There’s no shame in that.”

  She realized, just as she was confiding this, that she’d been talking as Ophelia, and no longer as Eulalia. At least her sincerity had the merit of calming Octavio, whose fists had relaxed on his thighs.

  “And your father?” she asked, cautiously. “Does he also forbid you from seeing your sister?”

  “En fait, I haven’t spoken to him in years. He left my mother shortly after Second was born. As my parents saw it, giving birth to an imperfect child cast dishonor on all of Pollux’s descendants. My mother finally decided that the best place for Second was this observatory, where they can study her case. So my sister serves the city in her own way.”

  “You disapprove.”

  Ophelia had only made a simple observation, but it was like a slap in the face to Octavio, who glared at her with renewed defiance, his golden chain swinging from his eyebrow.

  “It’s not for me to approve or disapprove. My mother has always placed herself at the service of family interest.”

  Ophelia wiped her glasses on the equally dusty sleeve of her uniform. To what extent was Octavio aware of the forces actually hiding behind this “family interest”? He’d been endowed with phenomenal powers of observation, but as soon as Lady Septima was involved, he became blind.

  “Anyhow, I wasn’t asking for your opinion,” he added, straightening up, stiffly, on the bench. “The fact is that my mother deems it preferable that Second and I live our lives separately. All I ask of you is to say nothing to her of my visits, unless she asks you questions, directement.”

  “I will say nothing to her,” Ophelia promised. Even if she does ask me any.”

  They both went quiet. During this awkward silence, all that could be heard was the beating of the birds’ wings, the grating of sand against the windows, and the snoring of the third passenger. Ophelia couldn’t shake off the unpleasant feeling of a presence behind her back, but however often she turned around, there was no one on that bench.

  “The conservatoire students are all using their last day off to make a final effort,” Octavio suddenly resumed. “And you, you visit Mediana. I never got the feeling you were on such good terms with her.”

  Ophelia shrugged. “I can’t see the point of revising, since there’s no actual exam to become an aspiring virtuoso. Lady Helen and Sir Pollux judge us on our overall performance.”

  “I was told that Mediana is no longer able to communicate. What did you want from her?”

  Ophelia sensed Octavio’s insistent stare on her. She wasn’t going to shake him off just like that. “I’m trying to figure out who did that to her and why. I presume that you, like your mother, are going to tell me that there’s nothing to figure out.”

  “You presume wrong. I believe that we’re all in danger. My mother included.”

  Ophelia stopped rubbing her glasses to put them back, dirtier than ever, on her nose. Octavio’s eyebrows had gone from circumflex accents to grave ones. He looked very serious.

  “Professor Wolf,” she recalled. “You knew that he had been threatened. You warned me that it could happen to me, too.”

  “I didn’t know it, but I supposed it. What happened to Mademoiselle Silence and Mediana only confirmed my suspicions. There’s someone who is taking malicious pleasure in mistreating those who get too involved with the Memorial.”

  “Fearless-and-Almost-Blameless?”

  “Bien sûr, who else? That agitator flouts our most sacred laws with his incitement. He implants in people’s minds what the Lords of LUX have strived to purge for decades: unwholesome, aggressive, and degrading ideas. It’s that individual who should find himself in the Deviations Observatory.”

  Octavio had spoken with supreme composure, but Ophelia wasn’t fooled. His eyes were glowing red as if, through the sides of the carriage and the miles of clouds, he were pursuing Fearless in person. He was consumed from within by embers just waiting to burst into flame.

  Ophelia wondered if he was aware of this, but the question that came to her lips was completely different:

  “Have you ever read E. G.’s books?”

  She instantly regretted her imprudence. Too often, her curiosity impelled her to ask the right questions to the wrong people.

  “Those old children’s tales?” Octavio asked, with astonishment. “I browsed through them when I was a kid. You’ll find the entire collection at the Memorial.”

  Either he was a great actor, or he was unaware of the fate Mademoiselle Silence had reserved for those books.

  “And what did you think of The Era of Miracles?”

  “It’s not the best book in the collection. It’s a tale that describes the beginnings of the new world. That ‘E. G.’ was an author of no great originality. Why are you interested in those books? Surely Sir Henry hasn’t asked you to evaluate them, has he?”

  At this mention of Thorn, Ophelia felt a sudden crack between her ribs. She focused on the metallic rumbling of the birdtrain, to allow the pain to pass.

  “And what if we paid a visit to Professor Wolf?” she suddenly suggested. “We could ask him whether, yes or no, Fearless used scare tactics on him.”

  “Together?”

  Octavio seemed completely taken aback. Ophelia was no less so. Before this moment, she’d never envisaged associating with the son of a Lord of LUX, but, on reflection, it wasn’t such a crazy idea. Octavio had more influence than she did; maybe he would open doors that would have remained closed to her. Starting with Professor Wolf’s.

  “Yes, together.”

  THE RED

  They alighted at the next station to take a public gondola. The Zephyr sailing it had enough experience to channel the wind and bring them across the sea of clouds with no turbulence, but Ophelia was still relieved to return to terra firma. Professor Wolf’s neighborhood was unpaved, and wind and sand became so intermingled, they formed burning fumaroles. The sun was now reduced to nothing more than a pale moon in the middle of the sky. So suffocating was the atmosphere, there were neither passersby nor dodos in the streets.

  Ophelia crossed the courtyard of the building, a sleeve pressed to her nose to avoid breathing in the dust. Her glasses seemed to be smeared in volcanic soot. She could only just make out the foliage-shrouded facade before her. The ground-floor door’s knocker didn’t strike of its own accord at her approach, as it had on her first visit. For such a paranoid door, this was unexpected.

  Indicating to Octavio to stand clearly in view of the spyhole, she gave three cautious little knocks.

  “Professor Wolf?”

  She didn’t feel proud to be visiting him once again. This Animist, cantankerous as he might be, had helped her to procure some reader’s gloves. And she, she had thanked him by rummaging in his wastepaper basket. So it was no surprise to see the door remain closed.

  “Professor Wolf?” she insisted. “We need to speak to you, it’s very important.”

  Ophelia pressed her ear to the door. She heard not a sound from inside the apartment.

  “His landlady assured me that he never left his home,” she said. “Try your luck, he may think better of you.”

  Octavio did no such thing. He moved back a few steps. With hair reddened with dust, and
frock coat flapping in the wind, he was studying the building’s facade with great concentration, as the red glow of his eyes intensified.

  “Pointless,” he finally declared. “He’s not at home.”

  “You can see through walls?”

  “If I adapt my vision, I can detect the radiation of warm-blooded creatures. There’s nothing of that sort here.”

  “So we’re stuck,” she sighed.

  Octavio frowned as he slowly swiveled around, this time scanning the cloud of dust. “And surrounded,” he muttered.

  It took a moment for Ophelia to see them herself: white figures were emerging from all four corners of the courtyard. Each one carried a gun.

  “Prohibited items,” Octavio remarked, disdainfully. “The powerless have fallen pretty low.”

  A roar of laughter greeted this statement. It reverberated across the walls of the old buildings, as though coming from all directions at once. Ophelia tensed, from head to toe. To her knowledge, only one man was endowed with vocal cords that powerful. Fearless’s form detached itself from the red blizzard as he moved calmly toward them. He wasn’t armed. He didn’t need to be. The giant saber-toothed tiger served as his escort.

  “How do you recognize a Lord’s son?” Fearless shouted to the assembled company. “It’s vrrraiment easy! It strolls around all high and mighty, makes its pretty boots jingle loud and clear, and still manages to play it condescending!”

  His voice was so loud, it rose above the storm, but when he stopped in front of Octavio, the latter made it clear that he wasn’t remotely impressed. He faced him without batting an eyelid, back straight and chin high, just as if there weren’t several guns pointed at him.

  “So you’re the man who calls himself Fearless-and-

  Almost-Blameless? I’m disappointed. I’ve often heard you bragging on the radio; I imagined you to be less ordinary.”

  A carnivorous smile briefly uncovered Fearless’s teeth. He might look like a puny, balding man, but there was a wild beast crouching within him, and it was no less fearsome than the Beast now growling beside him.

  Ophelia’s eyes darted in all directions. The building’s courtyard was a dead end; they were cornered. The billowing dust allowed brief glimpses, here and there, of the silhouettes of the armed men. Ophelia counted them. Four, six, eight . . . at least ten. Plus a giant tiger. She tilted her glasses up at the walls surrounding them; the few shutters she could make out were closed. There were doubtless people watching, eyes pressed between the slats, but none of them, not even the landlady, seemed inclined to get involved.

  Ophelia was starting to regret having dragged Octavio here. Thorn was right, she really did have a preternatural predisposition to disasters.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Fearless’s eyes barely registered her, as if she were insubstantial. Only Octavio was of interest to him.

  “That’s my question. You seem vrrraiment keen to chat with me. Unless, of course,” he added, with a mocking pout, “you fear I will contaminate you with my ‘unwholesome, aggressive, and degrading ideas’?”

  Octavio’s eyes blazed even more. “Those are my exact words. You spied on us?”

  “I’m going to tell you something, garçon. When one is an old pirate of the airwaves like me, one picks up little habits. I have a tendency to scatter my microphones here and there. You make me vrrraiment laugh, you Forerunners! You claim to know everything, but you know nothing. The censors are just siphoning out your brains!”

  Fearless was standing so close to Octavio that he spat the last word right in his face. He reveled in the disgust he aroused in him.

  “Did you threaten the lives of Professor Wolf, Mademoiselle Silence, and Apprentice Mediana?”

  Ophelia looked at Octavio with both admiration and exasperation. He had asked his question straight out, in a supercilious tone, as if he dictated the rules. He didn’t flinch when Fearless flicked at the gold chain that signified his filiation to Lady Septima.

  “You already see yourself as a Lord, but you’re not even a man. You’ll never be one as long as you haven’t shoved your fist into someone’s face. Did she never teach you that, your mommy? Too unwholesome, aggressive, and degrading for you? Admit it, though, you’re vrrraiment itching to do that right now!”

  Fearless’s voice produced such strong vibrations, Ophelia could even feel them in her stomach. He really couldn’t fear anyone, to insult a Son of Pollux like this, in the middle of a public place.

  Octavio took a handkerchief from his frock coat and wiped the spittle from his skin. “I won’t lower myself to respond to such provocation. I command you, you and these gentlemen, to face justice and, in future, behave like ‘decent citizens.’”

  Fearless’s burst of laughter sounded like an actual powder keg exploding. A moment later, he had returned to being deadly serious. He made a sign to his men to lower their arms, and then, in a flash, he ripped the chain off Octavio’s face. Ophelia heaved on seeing the blood spurt out.

  “You’ve vrrraiment got a nerve,” Fearless growled, with a look of disgust. “Do you have the slightest idea of the insult you’re inflicting on these people by strutting about in your fine uniform? Your future is all mapped out. They don’t have one, and do you know why? Because it’s the spoilt-rotten brats like you who end up governing the city. And it’s them, also, who choose to give work to machines rather than to ‘decent citizens.’”

  Octavio refused the hand Ophelia had rushed to offer him. He straightened up, proudly, clenching his jaw so as not to cry out with pain. A lump of flesh was missing from his brow and his nostril was torn in two. His blood mingled with the dust on the ground, but its redness was nothing compared with that glowing in his eyes.

  “I can see it,” Fearless goaded him, twirling the gold chain around his fingers. “The violence that you so despise, its rumbling away inside you. You can cover it up all you like with your fine manners, it will always be there. You’re like me, deep down. A wild beast.”

  Octavio wiped his bloodied face just as he had removed the spittle shortly before: with an attitude full of superiority. “Do not compare me to you.”

  “That’s enough,” Ophelia whispered to him. “We’re going.”

  Fearless looked her up and down, without a word. The howling of the wind, scratching of the dust, and growling of the tiger took over during this brief silence.

  “That’s fine,” he finally decided. “I’ll let you clear off. On one condition.”

  His hand shot out, fast as an arrow. He grabbed Ophelia by the hair and forced her to her knees. She felt as if the skin of her scalp were about to tear.

  “Take off your uniform, lambkin.”

  She couldn’t see clearly anymore. Her glasses were dangling across her face. She wanted to get back on her feet, but Fearless forced her to stay on her knees. He was pulling her hair with an astonishingly strong grip for someone so slight.

  “Take off your uniform,” he repeated. “Frock coat, shirt, trousers, boots, tout! If you’re a good girl, I’ll leave you your reader’s gloves.”

  Ophelia wasn’t particularly modest. She dressed and undressed every day in the Good Family changing rooms. And yet, the thought of being forced to do so here, in such a position and in front of all these men, made her feel sick. Even Octavio was left speechless.

  “Take off your uniform,” Fearless roared, shaking her, “or I’ll ask my friends to see to it.”

  Ophelia’s vision blurred, and it wasn’t just down to nearsightedness. Why didn’t her claws repel this hand that was hurting her? Why were they never activated when she most needed them? The answer hit her right in the stomach. Because she was frightened. The claws were linked to her nervous system. Anger galvanized them; fear paralyzed them.

  Fearless had got it right. She was just a lamb. All the ordeals she’d endured in the Pole, far from hardening h
er, they had made her more fragile.

  Ophelia straightened her glasses with what dignity she still had, and unbuttoned her frock coat. Thanks to her incurable clumsiness, this simple daily activity always demanded great perseverance. Shaking didn’t help; Ophelia had to struggle with each button. She hoped Fearless wouldn’t notice—she had no desire to give him that satisfaction.

  The wind scratched at her bare arms when she let her shirt fall and was left in just a vest.

  “Your trousers.”

  Ophelia battled with nausea as she felt Fearless’s order vibrating the length of her spine. That voice hurt her even more than the fist pulling her hair. Just as her fingers were getting caught in the buckle of her belt, she was thrown by the exasperated sigh let out by Fearless.

  “I’m vrrraiment hoping the spectacle will be worth the wai . . . ”

  Fearless didn’t finish his sentence. Octavio had just hit him square on the jaw. There was a cracking of bone so loud, it seemed to come from both fingers and teeth. The strength of the punch threw them both to the ground. Quick as a flash, Octavio crouched over Fearless to pin him to the ground, and then brought his fists down on him again and again. His face had completely disappeared under a mass of black hair. His body was now just rage in its raw state, as wild as the elements all around him.

  The harder he hit, the more Fearless roared with laughter. “Splendid, garçon! Go for it! Let the wild beast out!”

  Ophelia leapt to her boots, but didn’t get a chance to intervene. The saber-toothed tiger, which until then had been still as a statue, stretched out like a spring; its enormous paw sent Octavio rolling into the haze. Ophelia ran over to him. He was curled up on the ground, red with dust and blood. The fire in his eyes had gone out. He had no obvious serious wound, but the blow had stunned him.

  Fearless’s voice crowed over the commotion of the wind: “He vrrraiment did it! Ha, ha, ha! He crossed the red line!”