Thorn turned from the consulting lectern. “One apoplectic attack within our ranks is what I call a regrettable incident. How would you describe a second one?”
“A regrettable coincidence, monsieur.”
They were both impenetrable, but Ophelia detected a tension that was gradually building. If Thorn’s expression remained inscrutable, that of Lady Septima betrayed disgust. At no moment had she deigned to look up at him, insisting on staring at his crippled leg. Did she even know that the man before her was endowed with a phenomenal memory and ferocious claws? He was two heads taller than her, but she saw him as a greenhorn who would forever be inferior to her, and not just due to their age difference. Ophelia realized that she behaved the same way with the old sweeper, Helen’s Forerunners, and even Mediana. All those who weren’t Pollux’s descendants were, for Lady Septima, merely the necessary parts for the smooth functioning of a machine, and it was advisable to replace them when they became deficient.
“We will have to increase the pace of the reading groups,” Thorn finally declared. “The Genealogists are growing impatient, and neither you nor I wish to see a surprise inspection by them. Particularly right now, with these sort of . . . coincidences.”
It was the second time the Genealogists had come up; if Ophelia had no idea who they were, she at least understood that they were at the apex of the LUX hierarchy. And that Thorn didn’t want to have dealings with them.
“All leave will be suspended until further notice,” Lady Septima said, banging her heels together. “The readings will start earlier and finish later.”
“As long as it’s not to the detriment of the detail. Your students still produce too many inaccuracies, and I’m not talking about the encoding errors.”
Lady Septima assented, but her face had hardened. Ophelia was suffering agonies. Thorn clearly didn’t realize that offending this representative of God, here and now, was the last thing that, in their position, they should be doing.
As was to be expected, Lady Septima sought someone on whom to take out her annoyance. She didn’t have to look far. “Apprentice Eulalia, are you just going to stay forever twiddling your thumbs? Stop causing me trouble and prove to Sir Henry that you will live up to his expectations.”
Ophelia felt as if her blood had suddenly stopped circulating through her body.
Thorn had finally turned toward her.
He had turned toward her and his eyes expressed nothing. Neither surprise nor bafflement. The neutral look that a stranger would direct at any other stranger.
“I will not disappoint you,” she declared.
Ophelia was relieved not to hear her voice crack. She even surprised herself by handling, without shaking too much, the attention being focused on her, as if she were no longer really herself. Because she was no longer really herself.
“I am Eulalia,” she repeated to herself, “and the man in front of me is Sir Henry.”
It was as simple as that.
Thorn’s long arm snatched Mediana’s notes from the lectern, and stretched to give them to Ophelia, covering the distance between them without needing to make even a step in her direction.
The automaton.
“You have three days to learn this translation off by heart, and be trained in the handling of ancient documents. After which you will come right here, every evening, after the reading groups. Three days—have I made myself quite clear, apprentice?”
Thorn’s words fell down on her like hailstones. He wouldn’t have been more convincing if they had never met. So much so, in fact, that, as she clutched the pages of notes in her hands, she was gripped by an overwhelming doubt.
Had he even recognized her?
THE SUSPICION
“I have nothing . . . to tell you.”
“She was . . . our colleague. I have the right . . . to know.”
“You’re . . . putting me off.”
Ophelia was running with some difficulty in the dust of the stadium. It was six o’clock in the morning, the least hot and least muggy time of the day, but her lungs were already on fire. It gave her meager comfort to see that Elizabeth, although used to the daily circuits, was struggling enormously to put one foot in front of the other. On her head, the aspiring virtuoso had an extraordinary radio-hat that was spluttering out the repeat of a scientific program; it was supposed to help her to maintain her rhythm, but the weight of it slowed her down more than anything.
“Where is Mediana?” Ophelia insisted. “Where have they . . . taken her?
“It’s confidential. I can’t . . . divulge . . . that information . . . to an apprentice.”
Unable to keep going, Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the track. She was bent double, panting, with one hand stopping her radio-hat from falling off, and the other pressing a stitch in her side. Her complexion, usually wan, had reddened so much that it merged with her freckles. From spending her days sitting in a chair, her nose buried in her code, she had ended up with the physical constitution of an old lady.
Ophelia had tracked her down to the stadium to get some answers. For three days now, she’d been confronted by a wall of silence in her dormitory, three days of getting strange looks from a distance, with no word of explanation. Her patience was starting to run out and Elizabeth was the only one, out of the whole company of Forerunners, who wouldn’t be able to shake her off.
“Can you at least tell me what happened?”
Elizabeth unfolded her body as if it were an awkward ironing board. With her mouth wide open, she tried to catch her breath with her head up, having failed to catch it head down. “I told you . . . and I repeat to you. Apprentice Mediana . . . left us . . . for health reasons.”
“That makes no sense. She was the healthiest of all of us.”
“Listen, apprentice.”
Ophelia was all ears, but she had to wait until Elizabeth was able to speak without suffocating herself.
“It’s me who found her, and I can assure you, she wasn’t in good health at all. I entered the Memorial through the service door, like every Sunday. Catalogue cards to improve. I punched holes all morning. When I went to the bathroom, I found her lying on the tiles. I don’t know how long she’d been there, but it wasn’t a pretty sight.” Elizabeth wiped her sleeve under her chin, which was dripping with sweat. “Muscles in spasm, convulsions, eyes rolled upwards,” she specified. “I alerted security. Lady Septima summoned you urgently, you know what followed better than I do.”
Ophelia looked at Elizabeth in the pallid early-morning light. The picture she’d just painted so little resembled the splendid, the indomitable Mediana that her impassivity struck Ophelia as incongruous. Elizabeth was moving the aerial around on her hat to lessen the hissing of the radio broadcast, as if nothing had happened.