Ophelia’s eyes met those of her reflection in a broken pane of glass leaning against the wall. She considered for a moment her tinted glasses, her long, knotty plait, her twitching scarf, and was struck by the obvious: “I look far too much like me.”
It had been hard for Ophelia to convince Aunt Rosaline not to accompany her, explaining again and again that together they would attract too much attention. But what if someone recognized her anyhow?
She started nibbling at the seams of her reader’s gloves. Theoretically, it was highly unlikely that God had anticipated her arrival on Babel. She had followed that trail based on the slightest of clues: the golden mimosa, the headless soldier, and the old school. It was those three visions, triggered by reading Farouk’s Book, that had led her here.
Three visions of which Ophelia had spoken only to Thorn.
According to her research, and unless she was mistaken, it was on Babel that the whole story had begun. The big story: that of the family spirits, the Books, God, and the Rupture. Maybe Ophelia could have penetrated those mysteries by following Archibald on his quest, but she would have had no chance of finding Thorn on LandmArk. No, if Thorn had reached the same conclusions as she had, and had succeeded in leaving the Pole—two things that Ophelia deemed him perfectly capable of doing—he had inevitably come to Babel.
Abruptly, she stopped nibbling her gloves, suddenly remembering that she had just the one pair left. “The fact remains, I look too much like me,” she repeated, shaking her glasses to rid them of color.
Now the Doyennes had let her escape, God would soon be informed of the fact. If he had planted some Guardians on Babel, as he undoubtedly had, they would surely receive a wanted-person notification with a precise description. Ophelia would have to play it carefully to go unnoticed. She couldn’t stop being nearsighted or small, but as for the rest . . .
She rummaged around the place and soon found some shears for trimming hedges. With resolve, she ineptly cut off her plait, which fell to the floor as heavily as a sheaf of hay. Ophelia checked the result in the broken pane and felt as if she now had a cohort of question marks sticking out of her head. Her hair, freed of its weight, had sprung into curls in all directions. She’d been growing it since childhood, but, curiously, when she threw that part of herself into a bag full of weeds, she felt nothing in particular. Nothing, apart from a sudden feeling of lightness. As though it weren’t her hair she’d just cut, but the tie that bound her to her old life.
Next, she hid her coat under a pile of aprons; if it really was summer on Babel, she wouldn’t need it. As Ophelia untied her scarf, it put up a fierce resistance.
“You’re too recognizable. Don’t be silly, I’m not abandoning you here. You’ll stay with me, inside the bag.” Ophelia released the straps of the knapsack Fox had given her. It contained dry biscuits, a siphon of sparkling water, and several items slipped in by Aunt Rosaline. As she stuffed the scarf into the bag, she let fall the false identity papers Archibald had made for her at the Compass Rose—back there, you could get absolutely anything falsified.
“My name is Eulalia,” Ophelia repeated, while studying her papers. “I’m an Animist of the eighth degree and I’ve never set foot on my ark of origin.” It would be credible as long as she avoided going into details. She knew from her great-uncle that she had a few distant cousins scattered on other arks.
She instantly felt a pang of guilt: she had left members of her own family without a word of explanation. She hoped, all the same, that they weren’t too worried.
“My name is Eulalia,” Ophelia repeated, pensively. Why Eulalia? When Archibald had asked her to choose a new name for herself, that one had come spontaneously to her lips. The more she thought about it, the more she deemed her choice ill-advised. The name sounded far too similar to her own.
Ophelia sought a more comfortable position for herself, between two sacks of grain. What about Thorn, she wondered, closing her eyes. Had he managed to create a new identity for himself after his escape? Was he at least living in decent conditions? Did he have enough to eat, he who had so little appetite?
She jumped when a burst of light hit her right in the face. She’d dozed off without even realizing it. Shielding her eyes, she saw, through the gaps between her fingers, the mechanical guide leaving the shed. The sun was streaming in through the door. Ophelia grabbed her knapsack and advanced into the light. She’d barely set foot outside before the heat took her breath away. In dispersing, the fog had unveiled a jungle of colors, an inextricable mix of leaves and springs, humus and fruits, birds and insects.
Although the wild beauty of the botanical gardens was spectacular, Ophelia couldn’t appreciate it for long: assailed by unusual scents, she was hit with a sneezing fit that continued as she followed the mechanical guide through the ferns. Even without a coat, she was sweltering. The clammy air stuck to her skin and soaked her dress in perspiration. The wintry grayness of Anima was a long way away!
Through the tall grasses, Ophelia glimpsed the strange silhouettes of marsupials she’d only ever seen in books. The screeches of the monkeys, in the foliage, were like nothing she’d heard before.
“Where is the way out?” she asked the mechanical guide.
“THE TOUR OF POLLUX’S BOTANICAL GARDENS BEGINS AT THE ARBORETUM,” it responded, walking straight on. “PLEASE KEEP TOGETHER.”
Ophelia decided to give it the slip. As she was searching for the way she came across other mannequins who were clearing hedges and scraping moss from the paths’ paving stones, stopping only to oil their joints. Each time she questioned them, they replied, “SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE,” and then, “ALL ROADS LEAD TO BABEL,” which wasn’t much help to her. There must be some Babelians here who weren’t automatons, surely?
Ophelia went up some stone stairs that were dripping with bougainvillea. The higher she got, the more she gauged the scale of the gardens. They were divided into several levels, each one a veritable symphony of plants, trees, flowers, and fruits. At the lower levels, wisps of fog still clung to the palm trees.
It seemed incredible to think that, only yesterday, she was hanging around her bedroom in her nightdress. She’d spent so much time immobile, only venturing out to get croissants from the local baker for the family breakfast, that her muscles were already seizing up.
What concerned her more was the absence of mimosa. God’s past was, in one way or another, linked to that tree. Ophelia had never encountered one in her life, but, since she’d had that vision of the tree, she’d researched it. Mimosas could be recognized by their clusters of golden flowers, and they grew only on very few arks. If the geographical guide hadn’t been spouting nonsense, Babel should be one of those.
Ophelia finally found the botanical gardens’ gates, majestic as those of an oriental palace. As she went through them, she felt as if she were leaving one world for another. A bridge as wide as a boulevard linked the gardens to a public market. Over there, a huge crowd undulated like a river between the stalls’ tents. Some elephants and giraffes towered over the swarm of men, women, and automatons, as if this were the most natural of cohabitations.