Suddenly, the Tickers festival struck her as pretty tame!
She’d barely begun crossing the bridge before her head was spinning from the aroma of spices. Dazzled by the sun, which was already high in the sky, she gazed all around her. Instinctively, her hand gripped the shoulder strap of her knapsack: the bridge she was on straddled the void. Ophelia had read, in her geographical guide, that Babel was splintered into several minor arks, but that hadn’t prepared her for the spectacle unfolding before her. A multitude of floating islands bathed in a sea of unbelievably white clouds. Some were large enough to harbor a town. Others had hardly enough space to build a house. Architecture and vegetation were as one, as if the plants and stones were interwoven. The closest minor arks were linked to each other by a network of bridges and aqueducts; the furthest away were served by flying machines that Ophelia would have struggled to identify—they looked like winged trains.
She dived headlong into the crowd, and was immediately assailed by the cries of merchants, and a succession of fabrics, jewelry, lentils, beans, eggs, pimentos, melons, mangoes, bananas, and all manner of produce she didn’t recognize. Her stomach was telling her she’d soon have to think about finding a meal.
“Could you direct me to this place, please?” she asked, showing her postcard to anyone she passed. With her small voice being drowned out by the surrounding hubbub, she asked her question increasingly loudly, without ever receiving a reply. Were these people ignoring her deliberately? They continued to look straight ahead, never lowering their eyes toward her.
Disconcerted, Ophelia went over to a fountain in which pink flamingos dipped their stilts. She dampened a handkerchief to cool her face, and downed a gulp of sparkling water. There, sitting on the edge of the fountain and stroking the scarf at the bottom of the bag, she took a moment to look closely at the market. The variety of skin tones, shapes, and accents was that of a cosmopolitan population; here, there wasn’t just one, but several families. And yet they all seemed to form a single people in which Ophelia’s role was that of intruder.
She decided not to linger any longer on this square. A patrol of men and women was cleaving the crowd. They wore breastplates over their tunics, and their spiked helmets, extended by neck-flaps, gave them a military appearance. They cast around them looks that, without being obviously menacing, were most disturbing: their pupils shone like gold. This supernatural glimmer betrayed their family power: eyesight so sharp that even a fly couldn’t have escaped it.
Ophelia preferred not to deal with them. All that was close to authority was likely to be close to God. She crossed the market in the opposite direction and spotted a tram that ran on compressed air and was about to depart. It was plastered with advertising posters featuring a sun with the word “LUX” written in capital letters. The locals entered by punching tickets in a machine. Ophelia checked there was no inspector and hastened to board herself. She hadn’t even caught her breath when a passenger rose from his seat to push her gently back onto the pavement. “Don’t take it personally, mademoiselle,” he apologized, politely. “You’ve not punched your ticket, you’re not respecting the rules, I’m just doing my duty as a citizen.”
“Listen, I absolutely have to get myself to there,” Ophelia explained, brandishing her postcard. “Could you at least tell me how . . . ” The door closed automatically, putting an end to the conversation. Ophelia’s dismay turned into panic when she felt herself leaving along with the tram. The strap of her knapsack had got trapped in the door! She tugged on her bag with all her might, stumbled forward, was dragged the length of the pavement, until she could do nothing but let go.
“No!” she gasped, seeing the tram hurtle off on the tracks, bouncing her bag as it went.
The scarf was still inside it.
THE WHAXI
Ophelia had run alongside the tracks at full speed. Soaked in sweat, covered in scratches, and stymied by a stitch in her side, she felt as if her lungs were on fire. After a bridge and a few streets, the tracks forked. Which branch had the tram taken? Which way had it gone? She looked around in all directions, searching for some indication. Nothing but a deafening maelstrom of locals, omnibuses, rickshaws, bicycles, animals, and automatons swirling around. When she raised her glasses, Ophelia felt giddy. The whole neighborhood had been conceived as a giant stairway, with each step being another street invaded by people and plants.
Despite the hubbub, Ophelia felt alone as never before. How would she get her scarf back? How would she reach Thorn? How could she have thought for one moment that she was ready to embark on such an expedition on her own? Aunt Rosaline, Archibald, Gail, and Fox had all recommended that she wait a little before rushing off, but she had heeded only her own impatience.
“Please,” she shouted toward a rickshaw. “I’m looking for the tram that comes from the market.” She had addressed the driver, but realized, when it lowered a faceless head in her direction, that it was a mannequin. Its passenger, dozing under the vehicle’s awning, replied, sleepily, instead: “You should ask your questions to a guide, young lady.”
“A guide?”
The passenger half-opened an eye, and his bulbous nose, in which a ring shone, suddenly inhaled, as though trying to sniff Ophelia from afar. “A public signaling guide. You’ll find one at every crossroads. And since you’re clearly not from around here, I’ll give you some advice: dress yourself appropriately.”
Ophelia watched the rickshaw move off. Her little gray dress wasn’t exactly spotless, granted, but she was hardly going around stark naked. In the middle of the crossroads, she noticed a large statue-automaton with its eight arms all pointing in different directions; that had to be a public signaling guide.
“Er . . . the tram depot?” Ophelia asked it. Getting no response, she noticed a winding key, like that of a music box, inserted in the statue’s pedestal. She freed the key from the encroaching foliage, and turned it several times.
“ASK ME A QUESTION,” instructed the statue.
“The terminus of the market tram?”
“FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD.”
“The lost-property office?”
“A GOOD DAY STARTS WITH A GOOD NIGHT.”
“The XXIInd Interfamilial Exhibition?”
“A BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH.”
“Thanks anyhow.”
Disheartened, Ophelia leant against the pedestal of the statue. Her sole possessions were now Thorn’s watch and the old postcard. She no longer had either identity papers or a change of clothes, and her poor scarf was again on its lonesome in this unfathomable city.
And what if someone found the bag, Ophelia wondered, furiously rubbing her eyelids. And what if someone handed it in to Pollux’s family guard? And what if God learnt that an animated scarf had been found on Babel? She’d only just arrived, but Ophelia felt she’d already jeopardized all her chances.