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.”