“And what’s next? You’re going to denounce me, perhaps? The law forbids the possession of weapons, not historic artifacts.” Exasperated by his neck brace, which prevented him from leaning with ease, the professor pulled the drawer out of its chest and emptied the contents onto a table. “War,” he continued, lowering his voice, “is generally associated with the notion of the border. The Rupture totally shattered the borders, but did wars cease for all that? For your information, little lady, peace is a purely theoretical concept. There are, and there always will be, conflicts, whatever semblance they take. You need only go out there, dressed in your provocative uniform, to see it for yourself.”
Ophelia thought back to the powerless who had stared at her with a mix of disdain and envy.
For the first time in a long while, she felt as if she had before her someone sensible to talk to. The disappointment she had felt on meeting him disappeared. “I agree with you.”
As he extracted a measuring tape from the jumble on his table, Professor Wolf knitted his thick, black brows and produced the faintest of sardonic smiles. “Well I never. A distant member of my family, a reader what’s more, turns up at my place and shares my vision of the world. My lucky day, it would seem!”
“You don’t believe me,” Ophelia responded. “Since I crossed your threshold, you haven’t believed me for a single moment. Why?”
The professor unrolled the measuring tape with a sudden flourish, as if it were a whip. “I told you, little lady, it’s war out there. An Animist father, a powerless mother: I’ve never been accepted by any community. My entire existence is a web of conflict, so my principle is to consider every human being as a potential adversary. Your hand at my eye level,” he instructed, drily.
Ophelia lifted her arm to allow him to take her measurements, but it wasn’t an easy process: the measuring tape, also contaminated by its owner’s wariness, was wriggling to avoid touching a perfect stranger.
“So, the old world intrigues you?” Professor Wolf asked, without dropping his sarcastic tone. “Perhaps reading a few of my fossils would interest you?”
Ophelia bit her tongue. The tape was gripping her hand so tight, it was bruising her skin. “Fossils can’t be read,” she replied, “any more than raw materials and living organisms can. I really am who I claim to be. If you really want to put me to the test, set me a less obvious trap.”
The professor’s face creased into a mocking smile, and then he wrote out the measurements on telegram paper. The simple act of writing was an amazing feat, with his neck brace preventing him from tilting his head. Ophelia had the, perhaps misguided, feeling that she’d just scored a point.
“I want to join Sir Henry’s reading groups at the Memorial. I was told that you yourself are doing research over there?”
The professor’s pencil slipped on the paper. To Ophelia’s surprise, his hand had started to shake. “I was doing some,” he corrected, between his teeth.
“Why did you stop?”
“For a reason that concerns only me.”
“You must still know the place well.”
“Enough never to set foot in there ever again.”
Professor Wolf scowled, as if he’d said too much. He rolled his telegram inside a cylinder, which he slid into the compartment of a tube, and pulled a lever; the telegram was instantly sucked into the pipe. “There. I’ve sent the order for your gloves to my personal supplier. He will get directly in touch with the Good Family to deliver them to you in a few days’ time. Satisfied?”
Ophelia hesitated. There were questions she was dying to ask, on the Secretarium in particular, but persisting would just make this man even more suspicious than he already was. “Could you lend me an old pair you don’t use anymore? I’ve been reading everything I touch since this morning, I can’t last several days like this.”
Professor Wolf pursed his lips, as if about to refuse point-blank, but then, with an exasperated sigh, changed his mind. “Give me a moment. Just don’t touch anything.”
He went up some stairs that were as creaky as he was, leaving Ophelia alone in the middle of the collections. She walked along the military weapons, stopping before the warm breeze from the fan. She got a slight shock when she came across a dusty mirror fixed to the wall. She hadn’t looked at herself in a mirror since entering the conservatoire. It took her a few seconds to get used to this little woman in uniform, with cheeks like peaches and curls like question marks. Without her invasive long hair, prim dress, and old scarf—her heart sank, painfully, at that thought—she barely recognized herself. Showing herself openly to the world was her best disguise. A disguise even more effective than Mime’s livery, behind which she had long hidden in the Pole.
As Ophelia went up to an old photograph of an archaeological site, she scared a wastepaper basket, which leapt aside to avoid her. It couldn’t have been emptied for a long time, as it was overflowing with balls of paper, some of which spilt onto the floor. Ophelia hastily picked them up, but one gave her such a shock, it took her breath away.
Fear. Pure fear. Professor Wolf’s fear.
Ophelia looked at the crumpled letter she’d dropped to the floor like a hot potato. If Professor Wolf had contaminated this paper with his fear, it meant he’d been wearing gloves when he’d touched it; no experienced reader would handle a letter with their bare hands, unless they wanted to assure themselves of the honesty of its sender.
In other circumstances, she would never have permitted herself to go any further, but her curiosity this time was stronger than her conscience. Before realizing what she was doing, she smoothed out the paper in the weak light from the shutters.
Dear colleague,
I was sad to hear of your accident. That fall in the stairs could have broken your neck entirely! It’s fortunate, for you as for all of us, that you emerged unscathed. I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you soon at the Memorial at the academic meetings: your research may not meet with everyone’s approval, but it is no less of fundamental interest to our discipline.
On that subject, I studied the sample you sent me. Its composition is fascinating! Dating it caused me problems, but my evaluation ended up reaching the same conclusion as yours. May I ask you from which document your sample was taken?
Please accept, dear colleague, my sincere good wishes,
Signed: your devoted friend and colleague
Ophelia’s fingers were shaking with the terror Professor Wolf had felt on reading these lines. She didn’t understand the reason, and she didn’t get time to look deeper into it. The man’s steps could be heard on the stairs.
She crumpled the paper and threw it into the basket, but her clumsiness made her miss her target completely.