The Memory of Babel

by Christelle Dabos

  A shadow was forming all around Mommy: a shadow bristling with claws, claws even scarier than those on the bearskin hanging on the rack in the library. The shadow was as terrifying as Mommy was beautiful.

  “Where is she?” she asked, calmly. “Where is Ophelia?”

  Great-Godmother turned around from the window and exchanged a look with Godfather, who winked at her.

  “You can ask the question again and again,” he said to Mommy, “the answer will remain the same. She made us promise not to reveal it to anyone. Not even to you. Isn’t the specialty of the Web to protect its secrets?”

  “Your clan disowned you, Archie.” Mommy had spoken these words very affectionately, but Victoria saw the shadow bristling with claws spread wider. Godfather burst out laughing. So he couldn’t see it, Mommy’s fearsome shadow?

  “Touché!” he said, throwing the pile of envelopes onto a coffee table. “And yet, whether you like it or not, dear friend, I will keep that secret preciously. Ophelia asked me to give you just one single message. A promise. She will find Thorn.”

  The shadow around Mommy disappeared like a puff of smoke. She pressed both hands on the harp strings to silence them. That silence was almost as loud as a scream. And yet, Mommy was as calm as usual. “There was a time when I had mastered the rules of the game perfectly, even if learning them could prove a cruel lesson. The rules are no longer the same today. The new clans impose their reforms on us, and the servants complain behind their masters’ backs. I avoid the court like one of the disgraced; I’ve dismissed all those who served me. As for our Lord . . . he does try, you understand? He really tries, and they, they all take advantage of him. He’s continually harassed by his ministers. I haven’t seen him for weeks, and yet, I remain here and I write to him every day. Do you know why, Archie? Because he needs it. He needs me, and maybe even more, he needs his daughter. But the truth is, I’m terrified,” Mommy added, in an even softer voice. “I’m terrified because the world I thought I knew is but a cog among thousands of others, within a mechanism that is beyond me. That mechanism stole Thorn from me. I refuse to let it get hold of my daughter. The universe beyond these walls has become too dangerous for us. Stay here, please. Don’t leave us all alone, my daughter and me.”

  Victoria could feel, in her other body, on the next floor, a sob rising to her throat. She understood nothing of this conversation, but part of her sensed, dimly, that Mommy was unhappy, and that it was, in a way, because of Father.

  Father was terrifying. Far more terrifying than Twit. Far more terrifying than Mommy’s shadow. On the rare occasions Victoria had seen him, he’d not had a single word, a single gesture, a single glance for her.

  Father didn’t love her.

  Leaping from his chair with two pirouettes, Godfather emptied the dregs of a carafe into a glass. “By cutting my thread, the Web condemned me to eternal solitude. Honestly, you might be used to it, but I don’t know how you can put up with staying here, day after day. Immobility has become intolerable to me!”

  Godfather guffawed, as if he’d just said something very funny, and Victoria thought how he himself would have made the best father in the world.

  He drank half of his glass, then offered the other half to Mommy. “I have many vices; ingratitude is not one of them. I lost my whole family, but I’ve gained another one in exchange. You had every right to choose a new guardian for your daughter, and you kept me, despite everything. Believe it or not, what I do today I do also for you, for Victoria, for Ophelia, and, even if it galls me to say it, for Thorn. And for you, too, Madam Rosaline.”

  Godfather winked again at Great-Godmother, who rolled her eyes, although Victoria found her at once much less yellow and much more pink. He then took off his big, holey hat, mumbling, “Ladies!” and left the drawing room with a little jig.

  Victoria suddenly longed to leave her other body in the bedroom and follow Godfather out of the house, to go with him to see the real trees and the real birds.

  “He’s not entirely wrong,” Great-Godmother suddenly said, in her funny accent. “You’re not alone, Berenilde. I’ve just crossed half the arks to be back with you, and I have the firm intention of imposing my company on you. But just look at this weather!” she said, with exasperation, slapping her hand on the window. “It’s more depressing in your place than inside a pickle jar. You going to have to buck up, starting with a good sweep. What would Mr. Thorn say if he found your manor shrouded in dust?”

  Mommy let out a little laugh, and seemed the first to be surprised. “He would refuse point-blank to come in.”

  Victoria returned to being the Other-Victoria in bed. She yawned and closed her eyes, worn out by her too-heavy body. Outside, the rain had stopped. If Great-Godmother really could bring back the sun, it was worth staying at home a little longer.

  THE GLOVES

  A violent gust of wind shook the ladder. Ophelia dropped the spent bulb she had just unscrewed from the top of the lamp. She clung to the rungs, waiting for the squall to stop, before pulling a new one out of her haversack. Bulbs from Heliopolis contained the light in its pure state. They required neither firing by gas nor powering by electricity, and they didn’t burn the fingers when handled. They were screwed on merely to prevent them breaking at the first gust of wind. The city had adopted them with the same enthusiasm it had shown toward the transcendiums from Cyclope. With her eyes shut tight to avoid being dazzled, Ophelia handled the bulbs carefully so as not to break them all—she had no desire to be even more indebted to the Good Family. Every hour she lost on extra chores wasn’t being devoted to her apprenticeship. And she didn’t have much time left.

  “Apprentice Eulalia, quicken your pace.”

  Ophelia turned to look at the megaphone at the top of the watchtower. There was a whole team of supervisors observing every corner of the conservatoire using the network of periscopes, and they were ruthless.

  Ladder under arm, she walked along the wall to the next lamp, reciting her last radio lesson out loud. Phenomenology, epistemology, biblioteconomy, synchrony, diachrony . . . every time she went to the amphitheater and put on her earphones, it was as if she were putting a funnel into each ear through which a stream of unpronounceable words poured. Far from feeling increasingly erudite, she felt even more ignorant. Anima’s museum hadn’t prepared her for this.

  And yet those lessons were feasible when compared with those given by Lady Septima. Ophelia spent hours in the laboratory doing endless readings to hone her skills, sometimes to the point of feeling nauseous, but her teacher was never satisfied: “Your hands lack precision.”

  She energetically screwed the dazzling bulb into its lamp. She had three days left to prove to all of them that she was fit to join one of Sir Henry’s groups. She would practice all night if necessary, but she would achieve her goal!

  The wind carried the distant sound of the gong. Dawn, at last.

  “Apprentice Eulalia, your chore is completed!” the voice from the megaphone announced. “Please return to your division.”

  Ophelia climbed down her ladder, not sorry that was over. But she couldn’t resist a final look at the sea of clouds above the wall. The lofty tower of the Memorial, perched on the edge of its tiny ark, was barely visible in the crystalline limpidity of the morning.

  Eighteen days already. Eighteen days since Mademoiselle Silence had met her death over there, and no one even mentioned it anymore. The city’s Official Journal had concluded that it was an accident; the rumors had stopped; and the reading groups had resumed. The matter was considered closed.

  But not for Ophelia. A woman had died in dubious circumstances shortly after her arrival in Babel, at the location central to her search; this couldn’t be a mere coincidence. Had Ophelia not been retained at the conservatoire by the internal rules, she would have already gone over there. A little more patience. She would access the Memorial’s Secretarium in the end, and, at t
he same time, the answers she was seeking.

  Ophelia walked along the covered arcades, where remnants of fog lingered between the columns, and then passed under the portico of the Hall of Residence. The apprentices were already debating on the walls and ceilings of the atrium. Here, perpetual disagreement reigned, with some forever suspecting others of stealing their ideas. As soon as tempers were rising, the Hall’s megaphone would request calm, and everyone would obediently dive back into their work. It sometimes seemed to Ophelia that the conservatoire of virtuosos was more about taming than education.

  She went to the cloakroom to swap her overalls for her uniform, and was confronted with a group of Totemists all getting undressed. Her sister Agatha, who subscribed to the Gazette of Fashion Across the Arks, had once told her, between cheeky giggles, that the women and men of Totem had the world’s most beautiful bodies. Without being a specialist in the subject, Ophelia had to agree. The Totemists greeted her with smiles as bright as their skin was dark; she did her best to return them without seeming embarrassed. The Good Family was a co-educational establishment right down to the basics of daily life. Either one put one’s modesty aside or one surrendered one’s place to someone else.

  She opened the locker labeled with her name, unfolded her screen, and took off her work overalls. How she longed to put her gloves back on! She had only one pair, so, to preserve them, she didn’t wear them to do her chores. All contact with objects, however fleeting, clouded her perception with a chaotic array of visions. Even when it was her personal effects, she inevitably plunged back into her own past, her old emotions, her obsolete thoughts.

  As she put on her uniform, she focused on the present, and realized she was having less and less difficulty doing up her buttons. This frock coat, which had constricted her stomach when she arrived, now allowed her to breathe freely: she had lost weight, and it wasn’t just down to the obligatory laps of the stadium or the vegetarian food in the canteen. There was something else, in this conservatoire, on this entire ark, that hollowed out her body and put her into a permanent state of stress.

  Ophelia quickly checked that that there was no one but her left in the cloakroom. The Totemists had gone. She emptied her locker of all her exercise books—a real jumble of notes—and removed the false bottom protecting the opening to her hiding place. With her belongings continually disappearing, she’d finally taken drastic measures.

  The gloves were no longer there.

  She rummaged deeper, banging herself in the process. Her false identity papers were there, and Thorn’s malfunctioning watch, but her gloves, which she knew for certain she had put away here before leaving, had vanished. “There are all sorts of torment,” Mediana had warned her.

  Ophelia closed the locker door. This time, it was too much.

  “Nothing to do with us.”

  All the Seers had chanted these five words in unison the very moment Ophelia had entered the dormitory, before even letting her ask her question. They always anticipated her reactions, and that wasn’t the least annoying of their little habits. They were all getting ready with even more care than usual, glossing their goatees with brilliantine, and polishing the wings on their boots. Ophelia had learnt more about personal grooming in two weeks around these boys than in all her years surrounded by women.

  “Where are my gloves?” she asked all the same.

  “Is that blame I detect in your voice, signorina?”

  Ophelia looked up at the ceiling, where Mediana was doing endless gymnastic exercises. “My mattress, my uniform, my boots, my notebooks—all that, I put down to a dubious sense of humor. My gloves, that’s theft. If you’re afraid of competition, fight cleanly.”

  “Keep it down,” Mediana said, extending her long, supple body. “You’re going to put Zen off.”

  She indicated a woman, delicate as an oriental doll, leaning over her desk. Her pretty, porcelain hands were exerting pressure around a musical box that was visibly shrinking, and whose tune was getting higher and higher. She stopped only once the musical box was the size of a thimble and produced a buzzing like that of an insect. Then, reversing the process, she widened her hands as if carefully stretching an invisible elastic band. The box began to mushroom.

  Ophelia aside, Zen was the only Frontrunner in the division not to belong to Mediana’s family. She was a Colossus from Titan and, as such, could modify the mass and size of objects. She specialized in making micro-documents, a very useful skill for the storing of information, and trained endlessly to miniaturize increasingly complex objects. Zen would have been the best in her field had she not been afflicted with an overanxious nature: the slightest irritant completely threw her.

  “I need my gloves,” Ophelia insisted, her voice hard. “They were made of very rare, very special leather, the only sort capable of shielding my power.”

  Mediana pushed out like a spring to free herself from the ceiling’s gravity, and landed in front of Ophelia with a graceful somersault. With the countless illuminations covering her skin, she looked like an acrobat primed for a display. “You may have lost them. Want me to look into your past?”

  Ophelia shrank away when Mediana wanted to place a hand on the nape of her neck. Her cousins could foresee, at short notice, all that they were about to witness, but her power was even more indiscreet. She could tune into the memory, conscious or repressed, of anyone whose backbone she touched. She was the Forerunner par excellence, from whom no secret was safe.

  “I did not lose them,” Ophelia said, categorically.

  “On Babel, dishonesty is severely punished by law. When it comes to making accusations, Apprentice Eulalia, best to think twice.”

  Ophelia clenched her jaws. What was Mediana really trying to tell her? That she had seen through her false identity? The tomboy was superior to her in height and muscles, but there was nothing threatening in her tone. She had the art of disguising every warning under a veneer of friendliness.

  “I just want my gloves back,” insisted Ophelia. “If you show goodwill, I will, too.”

  Mediana turned away, shrugging her shoulders, and, across the dormitory, everyone lost all interest in the subject.

  Ophelia felt her hands shaking. It had happened once to her, having to wait a whole day bare-skinned until the Anima glove-maker had fashioned her new pair. She’d almost gone mad. Wearing ordinary gloves had just made things worse, obliging her endlessly to read her own emotions as they seeped into the fabric.

  She wouldn’t be able to stay in Babel if she didn’t find a solution, fast.

  She jumped on hearing the Hall’s megaphones: “Examination of conscience! All companies are called to the gymnasium! Examination of conscience!”

  Zen buried her oriental doll’s face in her hands, groaning. The musical box, which she had just returned to its original size, was now totally out of tune. “That’d be right,” she moaned, “I’ve botched the decompression.”

  The Seers in the dormitory calmly finished sprucing up their uniforms, more elegant than ever. Of course, they had anticipated this surprise summons.

  Ophelia was so distraught at the loss of her gloves that she just followed the flow of apprentices through the gardens without even caring what the examination of conscience might entail. Around her, everyone was checking that their frock coats were correctly buttoned, collars turned down, company insignia in the right place. Ophelia had already been several times to the twin ark, for communal lessons with the other division of Forerunners, but it was the first time she was going inside the gymnasium. It was a huge stadium of glass and steel that bore no comparison to the muddy one in which she ran her daily laps.

  The companies lined up in serried ranks, Pollux’s virtuosos to the right, Helen’s virtuosos to the left, in almost perfect symmetry. Only Ophelia disrupted the visual harmony as she tried to find her way amid this maze of uniforms.

  “Over here, apprentice. Put yours
elf behind me.”

  It was Elizabeth who was indicating a place to her in the row of Forerunners. Ophelia positioned herself, avoiding flattening her hands against her trousers and succumbing to another uncontrollable reading.

  “I must speak to you urgently, Elizabeth. They’ve taken my reader’s gloves. Without them, I can no longer work in the right conditions . . . ”

  “I told you to be vigilant, apprentice.”

  Her tone was final. Ophelia silently contemplated the tawny hair that cloaked Elizabeth’s lanky figure. This aspiring virtuoso might be in charge of Helen’s Forerunners, but she never got involved in their disagreements. Ophelia wouldn’t find an ally in her, either.

  As she thought fast, desperately seeking a solution to her problem while stifled by the mugginess of the gymnasium, she detected the reddish glow of eyes out of a corner of her glasses. It was coming from the row of Pollux’s Forerunners, just to her right. She didn’t need to turn to know whose they were. Once again, as ever, it was Octavio, Lady Septima’s son. He had not spoken once to Ophelia, despite all the hours spent together in the laboratory, but he never missed a chance to look scornfully down at her—not the easiest task since he wasn’t very tall himself. Octavio’s powers of observation were superior to his mother’s, which was saying something. He could date any sample that passed under the rays of his eyes, and, apparently, had, so far, never made the slightest error when evaluating.

  Ophelia could have gladly done without his repeated signs of attention, particularly as there was nothing flattering about them. Octavio wasn’t looking at her in the way a young man might look at a young woman. He was keeping watch on her. If his being a Son of Pollux hadn’t obliged him to live in his own dormitory, Ophelia was convinced he would have spent his nights sitting at her bedside.

  Sometimes, she had the unpleasant feeling that it was God himself spying on her through those eyes.

  Carefully avoiding Octavio’s insistent stare, Ophelia took a look around. Her size forced her to stand on the tip of her boots to get an overview. The Good Family was gathered in its entirety: apprentices of all companies, first-degree candidates, second-degree candidates, specialization teachers, administrative staff. Also present were the Lords of LUX, their displays of gold decorations glinting in the light the glass let though, like veritable living suns. Lady Septima stood among them, small, silent, calm. Inexplicably imposing.