The Life of Gaia

CHAPTER 11: Second Mirror

He looked at himself in the dressing room mirror as he fixed his hair: the comb passed through that gray ocean without encountering knots. It was beautiful, like his face marked by the labors of the years. Someone knocked at the door, and his assistant cautiously entered the room. He warned him that they would begin in a few minutes and went back out of the room. The administrator adjusted the cuffs of his jacket as a buzz of excited voices leaked from the room next door. A smile of satisfaction crept across his lips. 

It was time to celebrate the end of an era.

*******

Aries was tied to a red velvet chair on a stage. Further down, dozens of formally dressed men and women were toasting and celebrating as if she were not there. Behind the stained glass window that formed the front wall, illuminated by a few spotlights, she could see the silhouette of the dark blue jungle strewn with endless gray objects. Those who had taken her called it the "Night Sky Jungle" because, they said, they had replicated the entire starry sky on the ground. 

A young man with large eyeglasses on his nose ran through the crowd, knocked on a door at the side of the stage, and, after looking out to say something and closing it, called everyone present to attention. Every single person changed instantly. They had all arrived in the course of the evening, some by plane, some by boat, and had begun to fill that facility with a certain air of expectation. Now, that expectation was about to be repaid. 

The girl watched the young man jump off the stage and walk away to a corner of the room as the light slowly faded in intensity, leaving a single circle of light beside her at a long microphone that emerged from the floor like a thorn. It seemed to her that her breath was the only thing making noise in the room. 

Then, in the doorway that had been opened, a silhouette she had learned to recognize very well stood out. Accompanied by the roar of applause from the audience, the administrator reached with great stride to the microphone next to her. He wore a red jacket that matched the shape of his broad shoulders, and a black tie ran down his neck like a snake's tongue. Aries trembled at the sight of that perpetually shadowed face, which gave her an indecipherable look. Then, when silence had fallen again, he cleared his throat and operated the microphone.

*******

Immediately after saying goodbye to Zantas, I broke into a run in the direction of the dome where I hoped my sister would be. Rows and rows of missiles flanked me like an army waiting for the general's orders to leave, and the damp grass bent weakly under the weight of my footsteps. A quarter of an hour passed before I could make out something inside the structure: it seemed to me that a large part of the main facade was transparent, for I saw figures moving in a large hall. Even at that distance, I could hear their voices overlapping and crossing each other in conversations I did not understand. 

I had to dodge the light from a couple of spotlights, but eventually I was able to cross the entire clearing without being seen. The main entrance was closed by a heavy red door from which I decided to keep my distance, and the sounds of the party, which by now had become crisp, came from the second floor. Walking through the bushes that flanked it, I also passed the staircase, and began to walk around the dome in search of an alternative entrance. 

At one point I heard the sound of hinges creaking: I ducked with a leap behind one of the pillars that supported the structure. Looking out to see if he could help me, I saw a man in a crumpled tailcoat and a wine glass in his hand staggering in front of an open door. I waited until he had stepped away before running through the doorway and sneaking inside.