The closer Ophelia got to the weightless globe, the more she gauged its giant proportions. The red-gold coating of the earth’s crust dipped wherever there were oceans, and defined in relief the contours of continents. The reinforced door that Octavio opened, somewhere within a southern sea, was a perfectly respectable size, and yet it gave the impression of being a tiny keyhole.
Ophelia went through it, to the other side.
All that her imagination had conjured up of this inaccessible sanctuary was immediately shattered. The interior of the Secretarium was an identical copy of the interior of the Memorial. Galleries, served by transcendiums, were tiered in rings around a well of natural light. There was even, suspended between its atrium and its cupola, a terrestrial globe that was the exact replica of the one containing it. The architects had designed the entire place like a nest of dolls!
In the galleries to the right, thousands of antiquities glimmered from the length of glass-fronted cabinets, illuminated by the cold bulbs of Heliopolis. In the galleries to the left, entire rows of cylinders turned on their axles, humming continuously. Ophelia knew that, around each cylinder, a punched card was rolled, and that each punched card replicated a document. The whole complex combination of cogs and gears resembled the workings of a hurdy-gurdy.
“It’s true that you’re coming here for the first time,” commented Octavio, who was closely observing her every reaction. “The Secretarium, like the Memorial, is divided into two twin parts: the rare collections are stored in the eastern hemisphere, and the database in the western hemisphere.”
“And this?” she asked, pointing at the globe floating above them. “A second Secretarium?”
In spite of herself, Ophelia had broken her self-imposed silence.
“Just a decorative globe,” answered Octavio. “Ah, here comes the head of your division.”
She felt a surge of hope on seeing that Elizabeth was, indeed, crossing the atrium in their direction. She appeared more solemn than ever to her. Her tawny hair rose like a cape with her every step, and her face was even less expressive than usual.
“Anything new?” Elizabeth had addressed this question solely to Octavio.
“Nothing to report. No one entered the Memorial, or exited it, with the exception of Apprentice Eulalia.”
“Very good. Let’s go.”
Ophelia followed them, battling the vertigo that had beset her. Maybe it was the oppressiveness of the clouds over the cupolas, but she was starting to feel short of air. It wasn’t her descent into the catacombs that was behind this summons. It was something else that was even more serious.
Thorn’s watch, afflicted by her nervousness, snapped its cover from inside a pocket of her toga. The question was no longer whether Mediana had betrayed her, but to what extent.
They stopped in front of a compressed-air door. “We are not authorized to enter with you,” Elizabeth explained, after opening it. “All that takes place in there is highly confidential. Good luck.”
“Luck doesn’t exist,” Octavio chipped in, coldly. “We alone are the authors of our destiny. But that,” he added, in a hushed voice, “Apprentice Eulalia already knows.”
Ophelia knew nothing at all, and that was precisely the problem. With wary steps, she entered an austere room, seemingly designated for consulting documents. It boasted, as its sole piece of furniture, a large lectern made of precious wood, over which Lady Septima was leaning.
“The door,” she ordered.
Ophelia turned the steering-wheel-shaped handle until the lock clicked. It was so cold inside, she felt as if she were locking herself into an ice store. Her bare feet, in their sandals, started tingling, painfully, all over.
“Step forward.” Lady Septima had issued this command without hesitation. Calm and distant, as ever. Slowly, she turned eyes blazing like two beacons in the dimly lit room toward Ophelia. “Do you like jigsaw puzzles?”
Ophelia blinked. This wasn’t the interrogation she’d prepared herself for. Cautiously, she approached the manuscript on the lectern that Lady Septima was indicating to her. It was old, judging by its state of decay. The faded letters running across the page, in the few legible parts, were those of an unknown language.
It was the pages of notes lying on the other leaf of the lectern that particularly caught her attention. “Mediana’s translation,” she acknowledged. “Why are you asking me about this, rather than her?”
Lady Septima didn’t reply. Ophelia then felt every muscle in her body, which she’d been clenching since her birdtrain journey, relax to the point of making her unsteady. The anger she’d built up against Mediana evaporated in an instant.
“What’s happened to her?”
Lady Septima dropped the grin that had been stretching her mouth, ridding her face of any trace of personal feeling. “A division almost entirely composed of Seers, and not one among them capable of seeing the future of their own cousin. They bring shame on all the Frontrunners. In short,” she said, rallying herself with a lift of the chin, “Sir Henry demands to be provided with a replacement at a moment’s notice. Even if I have serious reservations about you, one has to admit that you are the fittest candidate for this work. The least incapable, anyway. You will have to prove yourself worthy of the honor that LUX is granting you, Apprentice Eulalia. I’m going to inform Sir Henry of your arrival,” she added, marching off. “You can cast a look at the manuscript, but do not, for any reason, touch it. Handling a document of this value is done according to a protocol that you have not yet mastered.”
Lady Septima entered a lift at the back of the room; it rose with a grinding of gearwheels as soon as she operated the lever.
Once alone, Ophelia leaned with both hands on the lectern and stared at length at the manuscript without seeing it. Waves of conflicting emotions crashed within her, making her glasses turn every possible shade.
Relief. Incredulity. Exultation. Distress.
Distress? After all Mediana had put her through, was it really possible that Ophelia felt concerned about her fate? She had become a Forerunner in order to find herself exactly where she stood right now; her real research could finally begin. She should have been overjoyed, so why was she terrified?
It was an imperious click-click from within her toga that distracted her from her turbulent thoughts. Ophelia tugged on the chain of her watch in order to examine it. Now, the cover wouldn’t stop opening and closing, as if in the grip of an epileptic fit. Click-click! Click-click! Click-click!
“Alright, calm down,” Ophelia muttered, as much to herself as to the watch. She blocked the cover with her thumb, but the hands immediately took over, spinning around in a frenzied waltz. At regular intervals, they all stopped at once, pointing, again and again, at the same time.
Thirty minutes and thirty seconds past six.