“The virtuosos are a true elite,” insisted Ambrose, who had boarded with her. “The Good Family is the conservatoire that everyone on Babel dreams of getting into. Believe me, mademoiselle, over there they only accept applicants with a unique talent. They’re highly selective.”
“They recruit Forerunners all year round, don’t they?”
“The Forerunners are the top specialists in information. And you . . . eh bien, you’re not the most well-informed person I know.”
Ophelia was only half-listening to him. Her attention was focused on the double ark, partly shrouded in wisps of the clouds that kept getting bigger on the other side of the window. The Good Family was such a huge conservatoire that, on its own, it took up two floating islands, linked by a bridge.
As the birdtrain neared the landing stage, Ophelia checked that she really did have her false papers on her. “I’ll entrust my bag to you,” she said to Ambrose. “It made me seem like a scruff at the Memorial, and I’d rather not repeat the experience.”
“Count on me, mademoiselle.”
Ophelia hesitated. She would have liked to take the adolescent’s inverted hands into her own, and tell him how grateful she was for the kindness he’d shown her from the start. She couldn’t. It was always like this with her—the slightest emotion, and she fell apart. “You are . . . a good whaxi driver.”
The statement drew a smile from Ambrose, a brief flash of white light against the bronze of his skin. “And you an unexpected client. Your bag and I, we’ll be waiting for you at my father’s. Good luck, mademoiselle.”
Once she’d alighted, Ophelia returned Ambrose’s wave; he was encouraging her through the window as the powerful beating of the chimeras’ wings carried him off.
The entrance to the Good Family was at the other end of the platform that served as a link between sky and land. It was framed by two statues that were so colossal, Ophelia had to shade her eyes from the blinding sun to make out their faces from the ground. A woman and a man. Probably Helen and Pollux.
She followed the seemingly endless paved path that led straight to the main building. This evoked a cathedral of the old world, with its filigree-carved façade, flying buttresses, and stained-glass rose window. It all had such majesty: the white dome of the observatory; the great marble stairs; the buildings styled like ancient temples; and even the stature of the hundred-year-old trees that shaded the path entirely. An army of automatons were busy maintaining the gardens and cleaning the windows. The conservatoire was an actual town in its own right. The students who frowned at Ophelia as she passed by all wore elegant midnight-blue uniforms, embellished with silver. Ambrose was right: this place wasn’t accessible to ordinary folk.
Once Ophelia had climbed the steps to the main building, she could read the motto on its pediment:
PRESTIGE AND EXCELLENCE
She had barely set foot on the marble floor of the reception hall before a man politely indicated that she should turn back. “Forgive me, young lady, but you can’t enter.”
“I’ve come regarding the request for applications.”
The man seemed disconcerted. He glanced warily at the white toga and Ophelia’s reddened skin before showing her back to the door. He pointed out to her, on the other side of the estate, the vast bridge that straddled the void. “You have come to the wrong ark, young lady. This is where Pollux’s virtuosos reside. You must go over to the building for Helen’s virtuosos.”
Ophelia really didn’t fancy any more walking. Her sandals hurt her feet, and her nape was roasting once again in the sun. No exotic illusion at the Pole’s court had ever made her this hot. She crossed the bridge, long and wide as an avenue, and reached the twin ark. It was as if the builders had duplicated here all the buildings on the other side, before stripping them, one by one, of their grandiose style. Marble had been replaced by rough stone, stained-glass windows by frosted glass, and no embellishment enhanced the overall appearance. There were no automatons, either.
If the buildings were made in the image of Babel’s family spirits, Pollux was king of the esthetes, and Helen queen of the ascetics.
Even the weather was less radiant, and Ophelia was soon engulfed in a rising tide of clouds that had appeared from nowhere. Hindered by steam clinging to her glasses, she struggled to find the stairs to the administration department.
On the pediment, the motto of Helen’s virtuosos differed from that of Pollux’s:
MAKING KNOWN AND KNOW-HOW
This time, Ophelia wasn’t turned away upon entering. An attendant at the reception examined her papers without a word. She then led her to a study room where two other applicants, a man and a young girl, were each bent over a desk.
The attendant supplied Ophelia with writing materials. “Copy out the different definitions of the word ‘definition.’ Find a synonym for each one, and copy out their definitions, too. It’s just a simple exercise to check your knowledge of the alphabet.”
Ophelia looked at the dictionary that had been handed to her. She would have preferred a glass of cold water.
As soon as the attendant had closed the study-room door, the man brought his desk closer to that of the adolescent girl. “And so, you were saying?”
“My mother forced me to come here,” the latter hissed, angrily turning the pages of her dictionary. “Me, I asked for nothing, I never ask for anything, I’m always the one who obediently does what is expected of her. And . . . and . . . ”
“And?” the man encouraged her.
“And my mother, she became a citizen solely on her own merit. Now she wants me to follow in her footsteps. To do better, even. She’s forever repeating to me that I must become a virtuoso, while, at the same time, calling me useless. And . . . and . . . ”
“And?”
Ophelia looked up from her dictionary, having lost her concentration. The man was still moving his desk closer to his young neighbor. He was eyeing her greedily, hanging on her every word, as though there was nothing in the world more fascinating than what she had to tell him.
“And apparently they give you a hard time here,” the adolescent continued, needing no encouragement. “And you have to study night and day, and even that’s never enough. And the more you apply yourself, the more they humiliate you. I’m fed up with being humiliated. No,” she added, sounding different, suddenly seeing the light. “I’m fed up with my mother. I’ve no reason to be here.”
With these words, the adolescent crumpled her sheet of paper and left the study room, slamming the door. Looking triumphant, the man put his desk back in its place and, sensing Ophelia’s flabbergasted eyes on him, blew her a kiss with his fingertips.