The rest of the Hall turned out to be as deserted as the Forerunners’ dormitory. Ophelia encountered no one in the refectory, where she made do with the remains of some cereal; or in the cloakroom, where she looked for a new uniform; or in the communal showers, where she hurriedly soaped herself. She checked the noticeboard, but the mechanical arm had written no instruction in chalk. She was almost certain she was supposed to be somewhere else, but she didn’t know where.
For an information specialist, it was a great start.
As she was roaming the walkways, in search of someone to advise her, Ophelia couldn’t help but think of Ambrose. She imagined him alone, surrounded by his father’s automatons, waiting for news of her. He must really think her the queen of ingratitude, a profiteer ready to leave one benefactor for another offering more. Ophelia would have readily improvised using a mirror to pay him a flying visit—although the distance was probably too great—but she hadn’t yet found a single one at the Good Family. Helen seemed very keen not to encourage vanity among her students.
In fact, it wasn’t such a bad thing. Strong as the temptation might be, it was better not to reveal that she was a mirror visitor. She’d already taken enough of a risk in revealing her talent for reading objects.
Ophelia finally found some other apprentice virtuosos in the amphitheater where she’d had her assessment the previous day. All was so silent that, when she had pushed open the door, she had at first thought the place deserted. She saw no lecturer on the rostrum, but all the students were busy writing. They were wearing earphones. No one looked up from their shorthand as Ophelia, as unobtrusively as possible, tried to find herself a place on the top tier.
Once seated, she understood that a radio was incorporated within each unit. She slipped on some earphones, heard nothing, twiddled a few knobs, still heard nothing. When she asked her neighbors how to use her radio, they gestured to her to be quiet. With perseverance, she finally found the frequency modulator and succeeded in catching some broadcasts. Dozens of broadcasts, each on a different frequency. They were exclusively university lectures recorded live in the city’s academic institutions; how could she know which one she was supposed to follow?
Ophelia lowered the sound and stopped trying. She had come to Babel to do research, not to study. She wiped away the trickle of sweat already running down her neck, resisting the urge to take off her too-tight frock coat. She studied the apprentices sitting in front of her, one by one. Thorn was not among them, but that in itself wasn’t surprising. If he had reached here in advance of her, as she supposed, she would be more likely to find him among the aspiring virtuosos; going by stripes on uniforms, there wasn’t one of them in this amphitheater.
At first, Ophelia had thought the silence total, but that wasn’t the case. Above the scratching of fountain pens on paper, above the rustling of voices in earphones, above the chirring of the cicadas outdoors, she could hear some whispering. It was going on in the row below hers. Apprentices were leaning over to each other, allowing glimpses of nervous expressions. Ophelia wouldn’t have paid them much attention had the word “Memorial” not suddenly reached her. She switched the sound of her radio off, and, without removing her earphones, leant forward slightly on her desk.
They were all speaking with the same accent, very different to that of Babel, but just as musical:
“I had a premonition. Didn’t I tell you that, yesterday?”
“Shut up. We all had a premonition. The trouble is, we should have foreseen what, where, and who, but didn’t manage to do so.”
“It’s surely not that serious, is it? It’s just a rumor. They always exaggerate, do rumors.”
“Oh sí? And why have today’s readings all been canceled?”
“No complaints from me. I can’t see a book anymore without feeling nauseous.”
“You’re forgetting the automaton.” The apprentice had pronounced it “owtomatin,” but Ophelia, who was leaning further and further on her desk, immediately understood the allusion to Sir Henry. “He’ll make us work twice as long to catch up.”
“You don’t find it a bit too much of a coincidence? The little new girl turning up, and this incident at the Memorial?”
“Basta. She’s watching us.”
At these words, all the whisperers replaced their earphones and returned to their shorthand. All apart from a pretty, boyish girl who turned around, unashamedly, to stare at Ophelia with obvious curiosity. On her face, illuminations shone like inlays on a carnival mask.
A sonorous voice immediately boomed across the amphitheater with the force of a rumble of thunder: “Apprentice Mediana, eyes forward.”
The boyish girl returned nonchalantly to her work, and Ophelia pretended to do the same, not without glancing at the gramophone horn that was fixed to the ceiling. She hadn’t noticed it, that one, no more than she’d noticed the periscope that turned its cyclops eye now to the right, now to the left. She had taken the absence of a lecturer as evidence of trust, a sign that the conservatoire treated its students as responsible young people. Big mistake. They were all under surveillance.
As soon as the voice from the horn announced the end of the radio lessons, much later on, Ophelia hurried to catch up with the whisperers on the stairs outside. Now they were standing, she could see the wings pinned to their boots. As she’d suspected when listening to them, they were all Forerunners.
“I’m ‘the little new girl,’” she said, introducing herself with sarcasm. “Forgive me for inviting myself to your confab, but I believe mention was made of m—”
“Sorry about your glasses,” one of them suddenly interrupted her.
“Pardon?” The remark so threw Ophelia that she missed a step and descended the rest of the marble staircase on her backside. The Forerunners stepped over her, one after the other, without a glance. Now she herself could only half-see them; she’d lost one of her lenses in her fall. As she was feeling around for it on the steps, her body humiliatingly sore, an illuminated hand held out what she was looking for.
“Mediana, of the second division of the company of Forerunners,” the boyish girl formally introduced herself. “But that you already knew, didn’t you? My cousins’ predictions cause almost as many accidents as they prevent. Beware, signorina, they do take advantage somewhat.”
Her accent made her pronounce each word with a sensual purr. Cautiously, Ophelia took back her lens. “The Forerunners are all from your family?”
“A good number of them. We, the Seers of The Serenissima, have information in the blood.”
“Ah. And you can see the future, too, Mediana?”
“No, with me it’s more the past. A bit like you, little reader, but our skill is different.”
So, noted Ophelia to herself, Mediana, as a Forerunner worthy of the name, already knew what her family power was.