PART THREE The Third Age of Rapture
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all “We died at such a place”; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
15
Persephone, Infirmary
1957
“So… if I volunteer to be a test subject for these plasmid experiments,” said the man with the scars on his wrists, “I’ll be let out of here…” Carl Wing shrugged. “Sure, I got that part—but won’t I just end up locked up in some other place in Rapture?”
Sofia Lamb hesitated. She was sitting with a therapy subject in the small, overlit, metal-walled Persephone infirmary, and as the lank-haired, nervous little man in the prisoner’s jumpsuit looked trustingly at her, she suddenly wanted a cigarette. She’d given up smoking, but right now she would’ve paid a great many Rapture dollars for a single smoke. But he was looking at her with his sad green eyes, and she had to respond. “Um—ye-es, in a way,” she admitted, remembering to smile. “You’ll be in a… a research facility. But you’ll be able to help the cause, there, in time—it will give your life meaning. You did say, Carl, that you felt like your life was meaningless, that you had no identity here in Persephone. That…”
The words died on her lips. She just couldn’t go on. It all sounded so hollow. She was proposing to play Sinclair’s game and send this man to be an experimental subject. And she thought about Eleanor—her own child, the subject of experiments somewhere in Rapture…
I’ve lost my way, Sofia realized.
She’d been working with other prisoners in Persephone, partly to get the warden, Nigel Weir, to trust her—and partly to indoctrinate the “patients” with her philosophy. She was creating moles who would be activated when she sent them the prearranged signal, as part of her scheme to escape Persephone and overthrow Ryan…
The therapy sessions with Persephone prisoners under the auspices of working for the warden had seemed necessary. Part of the deal was prepping some of them for Sinclair’s experiments.
But abruptly—it had become unbearable. And as she realized that, another realization swept over her like water crashing through a collapsing seawall. The moment has come.
She cleared her throat and said, “Carl—we’re going to change course here, you and I. You won’t have to volunteer for… experiments. If you want to help our cause, then simply go to your cell and wait till the doors unlock and you hear the signal we talked about. ‘The butterfly is taking wing.’ Then… head for the guard’s tower. Overwhelm anyone who tries to stop you.”
He gaped at her. “The tower? Really? When did you decide—?”
She shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Just now! I felt the movement of the body—the True Body of Rapture! Truth is in the body, Carl! The body is speaking to me—speaking through me!—and it is declaring that the day has come. Now go—and don’t speak of this to anyone! Wait for the signal!”
He nodded eagerly, his eyes shining.
She went to the door, called for the guard, and had Carl escorted back to his cell. She didn’t need an escort herself—she had a pass that allowed her to move freely from one part of Persephone to another, so long as she didn’t try to leave the facility.
But today, she decided, as she strode down the corridor, she would become the one issuing passes—she would make the move for which she’d long prepared. She prepared for this day—but she hadn’t felt ready, till this moment. It wasn’t just Carl or the others like him. It was the thought of Eleanor—the painful fact of Sinclair and his scientists warping the girl’s powerful but innocent mind. She could bear it no longer.
Sofia looked at her watch—Simon Wales, the most enthusiastic of her highly placed converts, should be coming for his visitation now. Perfect—and no coincidence. The true body of Rapture had planned it all. The body is truth; truth is in the body.
Would Simon have the courage to do as she asked? Many times he’d claimed he would do anything… anything… she asked of him. Today that claim would be tested.
She arrived at her cell, leaving the door open, in keeping with her special privileges—the same privileges that made it possible for her to receive Simon Wales here. He arrived in under a minute, looking fatigued but resolute.
“Dr. Lamb!” His eyes seemed feverish; he was dressed in a priest’s garb, she noticed, complete with collar, and he’d grown out his beard. The butterfly-shaped broach he wore clipped to his shirt pocket was a bit out of place—but it signified that he had emerged from the cocoon to become one of Lamb’s flock. A flock of butterflies—but butterflies with wings of razor-sharp steel.
“Have you become a priest, Simon?” Sofia asked, glancing up the corridor toward the other cells.
“I’m a priest of your church, Dr. Lamb,” he said hoarsely. He ducked his head in submission to her.
“Then you are ready to do anything for the cause of the body?”
His head snapped up, his eyes glinting hotly, his hands clutching and fisting. “I am!”
“The day has come! I cannot wait any longer. Thinking about Eleanor… and all that I’ve had to do here… I simply can’t wait another moment.”
“But—Sinclair is here; I saw him go into the Persephone control tower! Shouldn’t we wait till he’s gone home?”
“It doesn’t matter. Warden Weir will send him out at the first sign of trouble.” She smiled. “The warden too awaits my signal.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’ll take this pass from me.” She took it from around her neck and hung it over his. “Go to the tower; show the camera the pass. They’ll unlock the tower. You’ll step inside and shoot the guards there—then throw the Emergency Cell Unlock switch… we’ve already discussed its whereabouts!”
“I remember!” he said, licking his lips.
“When the cell doors pop open—and the cellblock doors with them—you’ll get on the public address system and announce, ‘The butterfly is taking wing!’ That’ll be the signal—”
His voice quivered with hushed excitement as he said, “Yes—oh thank God—the signal to set you free!”
“I will take Persephone over—but I won’t leave here immediately, till we have complete control of the area. We’ll send for our followers to surround the area and protect us. When the time comes, I’ll go to find Eleanor. Meanwhile—this place will change from being my jail to being my fortress.”
“And the gun?”
“The gun you’ll need is hidden in the utilities locker. You remember the combination?”
“I do!”
She squeezed his hand. “Then go!”
He turned and rushed from the cell, showing not a flicker of hesitation. He would either die in the control tower—or he would do the job. Simon was no gunman—but he’d been practicing, as per her orders, and with a little luck and the element of surprise…
Sofia waited tensely on the edge of her bunk, wringing her hands. Thinking about Eleanor.
Within ten minutes, the other cell doors suddenly clanged open, released from within the tower. A uniformed Persephone guard looked around in confusion. “What the hell is going on?”
Simon’s voice boomed from the Persephone public address: “The butterfly takes wing! You know what to do! The butterfly takes wing!”
The prisoners responded with the gleeful howls of men suddenly set free, their long pent-up fury expanding like a released spring.
She listened to the scuffling turmoil as the prisoners rushed from their cells and swarmed over the guards. She winced as shots were fired—but Sinclair’s prison constables were quickly overwhelmed. There was some shouting, hooting, two more gunshots—screams. Inarticulate cries of triumph. An alarm warbled—and suddenly cut off.
Sofia took a deep breath and stood up, deciding it was safe to come out of her cell. She stepped into the corridor—was met by Simon Wales, who was grinning with wolfish delight as he rushed up to her. A pistol smoked in his right hand; his left hand was red with blood.
“We have Persephone!” he crowed. “Sinclair has fled, the guards with him—the ones we didn’t kill! Weir is still here, but he says he’ll take your orders! It’s all yours, Dr. Lamb! You’re in control of Persephone!”
Hephaestus
1957
Bill McDonagh hummed along to the Andrews Sisters song playing over the PA system as he tightened the salinity sieve. The song suddenly switched off, replaced by Andrew Ryan’s sonorous voice—one of Ryan’s canned speeches.
“What is the greatest lie ever created?” said Ryan over the public address, in his deepest intonation. There was a treacherous intimacy in that voice, like a quietly angry father. “What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? Dictatorship? No! It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built. Altruism.”
Bill sighed to himself. He was no great believer in charity. But if people wanted to extend a helping hand, that was their business. Ryan’s fierce rejection of altruism had been there all along. Lately, with a whole class in Rapture suffering, it was starting to grate…
“Whenever anyone wants others to do their work,” Ryan went on, “they call upon their altruism. ‘Never mind your own needs,’ they say. ‘Think of the needs of…’ of—whomever! Of the state. Of the poor. Of the army. Of the king. Of God. The list goes on and on.”
“Right,” Bill muttered. “And so do you, Mr. Ryan. Go on and on, that is…” He glanced over at Pablo Navarro, working across the room with a clipboard. Might be a mistake, saying that kind of thing out loud. But Pablo seemed focused on writing down heat readings.
From the speakers near the ceiling, almost from the very air, Ryan went inexorably on: “My journey to Rapture was my second exodus. In 1919 I fled a country that had traded despotism for insanity. The Marxist revolution simply traded one lie for another. And so, I came to America, where a man could own his own work—where a man could benefit from the brilliance of his own mind, the strength of his own muscles, the might of his own will.”
Now that view, Bill thought, using a tiny screwdriver to adjust the filter, was something he could appreciate. It was a view that had helped bind him to Andrew Ryan: a man being judged on what he’d achieved, what he could do—not on class, religion, race. Sure they were going through a rough time in Rapture, but he still had faith that Ryan’s grand vision would see them through…
Quiet rage simmered in Andrew Ryan’s voice as he went on, “I thought I’d left the parasites of Moscow behind me. I had thought I had left the Marxist altruists to their collective farms and their five-year plans. But, as the German fools threw themselves on Hitler’s sword for the good of the Reich, the Americans drank deeper and deeper of the Bolshevik poison, spoon-fed to them by Roosevelt and his New Dealers. And so, I asked myself, in what country was there a place for men like me? Men who refused to say yes to the parasites and the doubters. Men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate. And then one day the happy answer came to me, my friends: there was NO country for people like me. And THAT was the moment I decided… to build one. Rapture!” Ryan finished his speech, and the music came back on. Cheerful boogie-woogie played.
“Yeah, he decided to build Rapture,” Navarro said wryly as he came over to write down readings on the meters near Bill. “He built it, and he gave us the come hither, acting like it’d belong to us too. But it’s all his, really, Bill. You ever notice that?”
Bill shrugged, glancing nervously at the door. This was pretty seditious talk, the way things were lately. “Mr. Ryan did use his own money to build Rapture,” he said, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. “My way of thinkin’, we’re all leasin’ space from ’im here, Pablo. Some have bought space. But Mr. Ryan still owns most of Rapture, mate—he has a right to think like Rapture belongs to him…”
“Yipped like a true lap dog,” Navarro muttered, walking away.
Bill stared after him. “Pablo,” Bill called out. “Mind what you say to me. Or I’ll crack you one across the beezer.”
Pablo Navarro turned to him—gave a little twisted smile. And simply walked out of the room…
Frank Fontaine’s Office, Neptune’s Bounty, Rapture
1957
Late night in Rapture. Frank Fontaine sat at his desk in a cone of yellow light, writing busily, chuckling to himself now and then. A forgotten cigarette, going out, spiraled smoke from a seashell ashtray. A pint of bourbon stood beside the ashtray; he’d used it to sweeten the cup of coffee that had long ago gone cold.
Fontaine worked with pen, paper, and an open book, poring over the account by John Reed of the lives of Soviet idealists—a book he’d had to smuggle into Rapture—and he was getting lots of juicy material for his Atlas pamphlets. Just a paraphrase here, a change in terminology there, and presto: he’d soon have the Atlas manifesto.
Of course, he’d borrowed from Sofia Lamb too. She still had her followers. With luck, they’d become his followers. When the time came…
Hearing a soft whistling, Fontaine glanced up nervously toward the door. One of his guards was strolling by the window of his office, tommy gun in hand, whistling a tune to himself.
Getting jumpy. He poured a little more bourbon into the coffee, took in a mouthful, and grimaced.
He set to scribbling again. “Who is Atlas? He is the people! The will of the people in the form of…”
The sound of the door opening prompted him to close the notebook. He didn’t want anybody to know about Atlas who didn’t have to…
It was Reggie, closing the door behind him. “Well boss, we done it. Up in Apollo Square. Three of ’em!”
“Three! They all good and dead? Or just shot up a little?”
Reggie nodded, tapped a cigarette from a pack. “They’re dead, boss. Three dead cops, laying side by side.” He lit the cigarette and flicked the match so that a little trail of smoke arced to the ashtray.
“Cops?” Fontaine snorted. “Those half-assed constables aren’t cops. They’re bums with badges.”
“Far as I’m concerned, all cops are bums with badges. Anyhow, we nailed ’em. They never knew what hit ’em. I shot two of ’em myself.” He blew smoke at the lightbulb. “Boss—I don’t like to question your, uh, strategy—hell, you own a big piece of this wet ol’ town. But are you sure hitting these constables is going to get you what you want?”
Fontaine didn’t respond immediately. He knew what Reggie was really asking: What is the strategy?
Fontaine reached into a drawer, found a tumbler, poured Reggie a drink. “Have a drink. Relax.”
Reggie took the glass, sat in the little chair opposite the desk, raised his drink to Fontaine. “Cheers, boss.” He gulped half of it. “Whew! Needed that drink. I don’t like shooting guys in the back… Don’t sit right with me…”
Fontaine grinned. “Just imagine how Ryan’ll react to it! He’ll know it was me. But he won’t be able to prove it. It’s just enough, though—to give him the excuse he needs. I can almost hear his speech to the council now…”
“You sound like you want Ryan to come after you, boss.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I want to go out, guns blazing. Because that’ll open up a whole new playground for me. You know me, Reggie—you know I can’t stay Fontaine forever.”
“First time I heard you say it since you been here.”
“I haven’t got the muscle to take over Rapture—without Rapture’s help. Without its people helping me, Reggie.”
“You got some kind of revolution t’ing in mind?”
“Civil war—and revolution. I’m pushing Ryan with the smuggling—rubbing it in his face. I gave him his chance to let me have Rapture my way. He didn’t go for it. Now, we bait the trap. See, people stand by him because he’s the shining example, right? But if he breaks all his own rules, does a corporate takeover… acts like a dictator… that’ll turn people against him. And they’ll need someone to guide them. You get it? I haven’t got the power to hold him off for long any other way. So I dig a hole, cover it up… and let him rush into it.”
“But you could end up getting killed in this little war, boss.”
“I’m counting on it. Frank Fontaine has to die. But… I’ll still be here, Reggie.”
Reggie laughed softly and raised his glass. “Here’s to you, boss. You’re the one! You sure as hell are!”
Apollo Square
1957
The lights were dimming for evening over the coliseum-sized space of Apollo Square. The enormous four-faced clock hanging from the center of the ceiling showed eight o’clock, as Andrew Ryan said, “This simply cannot continue.” His voice was low, and grating.
Bill nodded. “Right enough, guv,” he said softly. He was thinking of the hangings.
But Ryan probably meant the chaos that had been surging up lately, in Apollo Square and Pauper’s Drop. In other parts of Rapture.
Pistols holstered under their coats, Andrew Ryan, Bill McDonagh, Kinkaide, and Sullivan stood together just inside the opening of a passageway that led out into Apollo Square. Karlosky was behind them, down the corridor, watching the back way; Head Constable Cavendish and Constable Redgrave were standing a few paces to the right and left, both carrying tommy guns. Rising up the brass-trimmed art-deco ornamented walls to either side of the doorway were the sleek sculptures that had once reminded Bill of hood ornaments: elongated, silver figures of muscular men reaching for the sky with rocketlike verticality, and holding up the ceiling in the process. To the left yellow lettering on a scarlet banner read:
THE GREAT CHAIN IS GUIDED BY YOUR HANDS
But it was the hanged men, across from them, that captivated their attention…
Ryan was making his monthly inspection of Rapture. “We’ve had repair crews in ’ere, working on leaks,” Bill said, “and the constables did a good job of protecting them. Nicking mad splicers, bunging ’em in the Dingley Dell. But it’s getting right crowded in there. And in the morgue. I mean, just take a butcher’s at that, hard to…” He chuckled to himself. He’d almost used the Cockney “rhyming slang,” “hard to Adam and Eve,” meaning “hard to believe,” but that would be a pretty confusing expression in Rapture. “Hard to believe it’s come to this.”
Standing in an open space, just inside the farther doors, was a crude wooden platform and on it a T-shaped gallows made of planks pulled up from around Rapture. Bill had seen the gaping holes where the planks had been the day before. From each arm of the T, a man’s body hung.
Apollo Square stank too. It stank of dead bodies. There were five of them Bill could see, four men and a woman, the corpses scattered widely about the big room, sprawled awkwardly in brown puddles of dried blood. And there were the two hanged men, slowly turning on the ropes at the far side of the big room.
The tram tracks were intact; there was no train at the moment. As far as Bill knew, the trains were still running. At Artemis Suites, faces peered out at them from the darkened recesses of the doorway. Trash lay about the square, some of it stirring in the ventilator breeze. Music played from somewhere, so distorted Bill couldn’t make out what it was at first—then he recognized Bessie Smith. She seemed to be asking to be sent to the electric chair.
Laughter cackled mockingly from the ceiling. Bill looked up to see a spider splicer creeping across, upside down beside the big windows.
“Maybe you can bring him down, Cavendish,” Sullivan said, glowering up at the splicer. “I don’t know how good that tommy gun is at this range, but…”
“No!” Ryan said suddenly. “It is not against the law to use ADAM. It is not against the Rapture law to walk on walls or ceilings so long as you don’t damage them. If he breaks a serious law—shoot him down. But we’re not going to shoot them like rabid dogs out of hand. Some of them are employable, eh Kinkaide?”
Kinkaide sighed and shook his head doubtfully. “Employable? Only sometimes, Mr. Ryan. Offer ’em ADAM, they can be persuaded to use the Telekinesis, move the bigger Metro parts about for us. But they get distracted and fight too much. Couple of them were supposed to be moving pipes into place, ended up throwing them at each other like spears. One of them impaled, right through. Took a long time to get the pipe clean afterward.”
Ryan shrugged. “ADAM will be controlled, in time.” He paused thoughtfully, then went on: “As for the rogue splicers, we will only kill those we have to kill. We’re going to control them, and we’re going to have some strict rules. We will end the vigilantism; we will end the vandalistic graffiti; we will stop people from getting into lunatic fights with one another. We won’t tolerate these oafs blasting out flames without thinking—disruptive fires starting. Burned up one of my splendid new curtains at the Metro station!”
“How do we get rogue splicers under control, guv?” Bill asked.
He took a deep breath, his face hardening with determination: “For starts—we are going to enforce a curfew. We’ll require identification cards at checkpoints. We will increase the presence of security turrets and security bots at key points… Ah, speak of the mechanical devil… daemon ex machina…” He smiled wryly.
Two security bots whirred around the edges of the voluminous room, flying side by side, miniature self-guiding helicopters, each about the size of a fire hydrant but blockier, with built-in guns. They made Bill nervous—he never trusted the bots not to shoot him, since they were mere machines, even though he and the others here wore identification “flashers” that told the bots they were friends.
He ducked as the robots flew by, always afraid their whirring copter blades would slice into him if they came too close. The choppering security bots continued on their way, circling the big room, watching for anyone who might threaten Ryan and his entourage.
Then the full import of Ryan’s words began to sink in. “’Ere, guv—did you say curfews? Checkpoints? You mean—all over Rapture?” Hadn’t Ryan always claimed that that was the kind of thing the Communist dictators pulled?
“Yes,” Ryan said, gazing balefully at the bodies twisting on the gallows. “Everyone will have an ID card. They must restrict themselves to authorized areas, and the ID cards will tell us where they’re supposed to be. There’ll be a curfew until further notice. We’ll have to institute the death penalty for more crimes. We can all see for ourselves how tough the situation is. And we’re losing population. We’ll have to recruit new people to catch up… meanwhile, we’ve got to get things stabilized. We’ll have to set up a serious large-scale raid to take Fontaine down. We’re going to destroy him this time. And take over his business—for the good of Rapture. Run it responsibly…”
Bill was stunned. “Take over Fontaine’s business? But—doesn’t that kind of run against the whole spirit of Rapture?”
Ryan frowned. “Sometimes we have to fight to protect that spirit, Bill! Look what happened—right here in Apollo Square. Three constables shot dead! We’re going to see to it that all enemies of Rapture are caught—and punished!”
Bill felt disoriented, almost dizzy. Ryan was sounding more like Mussolini than a man who advocated pushing out the limits of human freedom. “You plan to take over Fontaine’s plasmid business—by force? That’s not exactly the free market at its best, Mr. Ryan.”
“No. No it isn’t. But Fontaine’s threatening Rapture with destruction! The whole colony will fall apart if we don’t act, Bill. He wants chaos! He wants it because, for a demagogue of his sort, preying on the weaknesses of the masses, chaos is opportunity. Chaos is the fertile ground where the likes of Fontaine will sow the seeds of power! Lamb’s followers thrive on it too!”
“I concur,” said Kinkaide, nodding. “We’ve had enough chaos. You have to draw into some prescribed limits sometimes. Time to get tough. To take the offensive.”
Bill found himself wondering if Ryan’s shift into the offensive might be exactly what Fontaine wanted. Were they playing into Frank Fontaine’s hands?
Atrium, near Fontaine Futuristics
1958
“Hey there, fellas,” said the cheerful voice on the PA system. Frank Fontaine listened to it abstractedly as he walked across Fontaine Futuristics, to Training and Extraction. “You know that nine out of ten ladies prefer the athletic man? Why stay on the sidelines when the new SportBoost line of plasmid tonics can turn you into the jock you’ve always wanted to be? Come and visit us at the Medical Plaza for a free two-hour trial. You’ll appreciate the difference; she will too…”
Fontaine struggled inwardly to banish the squirming discomfort, the trapped feeling that rose up in him when he walked up to a restricted area. No reason to feel trapped. He had two good bodyguards with him—you needed two, nowadays—there was Reggie, and there was Naz: the grinning, swarthy splicer looking like a mad Jesus with his long greasy hair and curly brown beard. He wore stained fishery-worker coveralls, his twitchy hands fiddling with that curved fish gutter he liked to carry. Naz was proof you could train a splicer, keep them in hand. Sort of. He was big on the SportBoost plasmid. Took way too much of it—but it kept him alert.
Fontaine knew he should feel safe. Lately, though, the closer he got to the Little Sisters, the more trapped he felt. The public-address announcement coming on at that moment wasn’t helping. The woman’s soothing voice was saying:
“The Little Sisters Orphanage: In troubled times, give your little girl the life that she deserves. Boarding and education free of charge! After all, children ARE the future of Rapture.”
Orphanages. It had suited his sense of irony, and maybe fed his bitterness, to create an orphanage.
Signaling Reggie and Naz to wait out in the hallway, he went through the double doors, the security bots rising up in the air at his approach. The bots scanned him and drifted away, whirring to themselves.
A few strides more and automatic turrets, looking like swivel chairs equipped with guns, swung to take him out, recognized his flashers, and settled back down.
Fontaine went down the hall to the little nursery-like cells where the girls were kept awaiting implantation—and harvesting. He looked through the window in the door and saw two children playing with a wooden train set on the floor of the rose-colored room. The “Little Sisters” developed a strangely uniform look, in their little pinafores, their faces and bodies remarkably similar thanks to a side effect of the sea-slug implantation. The sea slugs were like tapeworms inside them…
They’re not human anymore, he told himself.
After all, if you cut one of those kids, they instantly stopped bleeding. Cut off one of their little fingers, and the finger grew back, like she was some kind of lizard. The ADAM repaired them. That wasn’t human—they were superhuman, almost. They didn’t seem to get any older, either. They were in some weird state of growth stasis.
Brigid Tenenbaum came drifting up to him. She had that ghostly look about her again, like a stiff ventilator breeze might blow her away. Maybe he needed to resume their sexual relationship. But she was the one making excuses lately. Which was fine with him.
She looked through the window at the little girls. “They seem… okay,” he remarked. “I always worry we’re gonna get an inspection in here, people are gonna think, ‘Oh, them poor little tykes.’ But they don’t seem unhappy.”
Tenenbaum only grunted. Staring through the window, she took a cigarette from a pocket of her white lab smock and a holder from another pocket, united them, and put the holder in her mouth. Fontaine lit it for her with his platinum lighter. She blew the smoke into the air… but still said nothing. The hollowness in her eyes, the gauntness in her cheeks, making Fontaine think she was not so far from a “little sister” herself.
He went on, mostly to fill the silence: “But then we get people so broke in Rapture now they just turn their kids over to us.”
“The children are not… unhappy, as such,” Tenenbaum said, her speech carrying cigarette smoke slowly into the air. “Not in the usual sense of unhappy children. They barely remember family. Their minds—their minds are strange. The ADAM, the sea-slug connection—these make them strange. I find being around them very…” She cleared her throat. There was a wet gleaming in her eyes. “… very uncomfortable. Even with… with those things implanted in their bellies, they are still children. They play and sing. Sometimes they look at me…” She swallowed. “… And they smile.”
He glanced at her. Was she cracking up? “You get paid good, Brigid. Times are hard in Rapture. You want to continue to get that research funding, just accept what you gotta do for the check.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Or she didn’t care. She just kept smoking, sucking through the holder, and gazing dreamily through the window at the two little girls, holding the smoke till her words carried it out. “They do not act so—unhappy. The Little Sisters. But—in their souls, they… Germans say ‘schmerzensschrei.’ They ‘feel the pain.’”
“Their souls! No such thing as souls.” He snorted.
“There are stories people on plasmids are seeing ghosts in Rapture…”
“Ghosts!” He shook his head disdainfully. “Lunatics! Where are you and Suchong in battling the side effects of the plasmids?” It was a key question for Fontaine—he figured the time would come when he’d need to use plasmids personally. Maybe a lot of them.
She didn’t respond. Fontaine felt a flare of anger, took her shoulder, turned her sharply to face him. “You listening to me, Tenenbaum?”
She looked quickly away, stepping back, refusing to meet his eyes. Her voice was monotone, with perhaps a trace of amusement. “Are you trying to frighten me, Frank? I have been to hell in my time.” She got all dreamy again. “I did not find tormentors there. More like kindred spirits… but these children—” She looked through the window again. “They awaken something in me.”
“Something—like what?”
She shook her head. “I do not wish to speak of it. Ah—you wish to know about… side effects? Yes. ADAM acts like a benign cancer. Destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. This instability—it transfers amazing properties, but…” She sighed. “It is also what causes damage. The users, they need more and more ADAM. From a medical standpoint—catastrophic. But—you are a businessman.” She gave her peculiar little smile. “If you take away side effects—not addictive, perhaps. Not addictive, you don’t sell so much.”
“Yeah. But we need two strains of the stuff. The best stuff—for people like me, when the time comes. And the regular plasmids for everyone else. You work on that, Tenenbaum.”
She shrugged. She stared at the children, becoming dreamy again. After a moment, she murmured, “One of the children—she sat on my lap. I push her off…” She touched the glass of the window, before going on, letting smoke drift slowly from her mouth as she looked languorously through the glass. “… I push her off, I shout, ‘Get away from me!’ I can see the ADAM oozing out of the corner of her mouth!” She closed her eyes. Remembering. “Her filthy hair hanging in her face, dirty clothes, that dead glow in her eye… I feel—hatred.” Her voice broke. “Hatred, Frank. Like I never felt before. Bitter, burning fury. I can barely breathe. But Frank…” She opened her eyes and looked at him, for one surprising instant. “Then I know—it is not this child I hate.”
With that, Brigid Tenenbaum turned suddenly on her heel and strolled distractedly away, back toward the lab, trailing cigarette smoke behind her.
Fontaine stared after her. She was cracking up. Maybe he should have her taken out. But she was too valuable. And Ryan would be making his move. Everything was almost in place…
“Mr. Fontaine?”
He jumped a bit, startled by Suchong’s voice. Turning to the scientist as he bustled up from the other direction. “Christ, Suchong, you don’t need to sneak up on people like that.”
“Suchong is sorry.”
“The hell you are. Listen—what’s going on with Tenenbaum? She losing it or what?”
“Losing… it?” Looking the same as ever, each hair in place, his glasses polished, Suchong gazed placidly through the window at the sight that had so moved Tenenbaum. It was as if he were looking into a cage containing lab rats, which was, of course, just what he was doing. “Ah. Perhaps so. Suchong sometimes thinks she loses… objectivity.”
“Speaking of nutty females—you follow up on that one I told you about? For that special project?” This was what he’d mainly come here for today.
Suchong glanced up and down the hall. None of the assistants were in earshot. This was top secret. “Yes.” His voice was barely audible. “You were clever to put the listening device in this Jolene woman’s rooms. She spoke to one of her friends, a woman named Culpepper. This woman Culpepper, she tries to educate Jasmine. Talks to her about Ryan. To convince her he is the great tyrant, and so on.”
“Yeah, Reggie told me; he went over the transcripts. You think he doesn’t tell me everything first? Culpepper’s turned against Ryan. And Jasmine Jolene’s pregnant. Or maybe I should say Mary Catherine’s pregnant—that’s her real name. So—did you make her the offer?”
He bowed. “Tenenbaum made offer—she accepts! Money. So she doesn’t need Ryan to live. In exchange for the fertilized egg. Ryan’s baby! She came to lab, Tenenbaum extracted diploid zygote!”
“The what? Oh—basically, the kid, right? Prefetus?”
Suchong bowed. “Mr. Fontaine has it exactly.”
“We got someone to bear the kid?”
Suchong blinked. “Who can bear kids? I cannot bear them. The kids, they—”
“Suchong—I mean someone to have the baby, and turn it over to us!”
“All is arranged!”
“So Ryan’s bloodline, his, what do you call it—”
“His DNA. Yes. When new vita chambers work, when security is DNA specific—Ryan’s DNA will protect your… subject.”
“You think the project is doable in the short term, Suchong?” Fontaine pressed. “I mean, making it—what was it you called it?”
“Accelerated development. Child growing faster. And then—the conditioning…”
“That’s the important part. The conditioning. Brainwashing. Kid has to respond to cues, like you said. You can do that?”
“Yes. I believe so. My experiments confirm it. Suchong use the reward system of brain, condition the organism, the human offspring—to do anything! Anything you desire of them!”
“Anything? On cue? I mean—even something the guy’d never ever normally do? That’s what we need, see. I need to know I can use this kid against Ryan when the time comes.”
“I believe so—yes!” Suchong’s eyes were shining. Conditioning, mind control—that was his meat. It was what he gloried in. “Especially if I have him very young.”
“Okay, say you’ve got him as a kid—and let’s say he’s got a puppy. Kids love dogs. You could make him kill his own dog? I mean, a cute little puppy, one he really loved—could you make him kill it with his bare hands? That’d be the real test…”
Suchong nodded, showing his teeth in a grin—very unusual for him. “Yes! Wonderful, is it not?”
“Yeah, if it works.” Fontaine felt a giddiness himself. It was a real grifter’s ace—a primo con. Maybe the best bunko of all. One that would take years to unfold. But that was the beauty of it. The time lag would make it something Ryan would never expect. This way, if the Atlas project didn’t pan out… he had another way to get at Ryan.
He already had wealth and control over a great deal of Rapture. But to have a conditioned little puppet, waiting to do his bidding—it was a thrilling thought. A con carried out by life itself…
Persephone, Infirmary 1957
“So… if I volunteer to be a test subject for these plasmid experiments,” said the man with the scars on his wrists, “I’ll be let out of here…” Carl Wing shrugged. “Sure, I got that part—but won’t I just end up locked up in some other place in Rapture?”
Sofia Lamb hesitated. She was sitting with a therapy subject in the small, overlit, metal-walled Persephone infirmary, and as the lank-haired, nervous little man in the prisoner’s jumpsuit looked trustingly at her, she suddenly wanted a cigarette. She’d given up smoking, but right now she would’ve paid a great many Rapture dollars for a single smoke. But he was looking at her with his sad green eyes, and she had to respond. “Um—ye-es, in a way,” she admitted, remembering to smile. “You’ll be in a… a research facility. But you’ll be able to help the cause, there, in time—it will give your life meaning. You did say, Carl, that you felt like your life was meaningless, that you had no identity here in Persephone. That…”
The words died on her lips. She just couldn’t go on. It all sounded so hollow. She was proposing to play Sinclair’s game and send this man to be an experimental subject. And she thought about Eleanor—her own child, the subject of experiments somewhere in Rapture…
I’ve lost my way, Sofia realized.
She’d been working with other prisoners in Persephone, partly to get the warden, Nigel Weir, to trust her—and partly to indoctrinate the “patients” with her philosophy. She was creating moles who would be activated when she sent them the prearranged signal, as part of her scheme to escape Persephone and overthrow Ryan…
The therapy sessions with Persephone prisoners under the auspices of working for the warden had seemed necessary. Part of the deal was prepping some of them for Sinclair’s experiments.
But abruptly—it had become unbearable. And as she realized that, another realization swept over her like water crashing through a collapsing seawall. The moment has come.
She cleared her throat and said, “Carl—we’re going to change course here, you and I. You won’t have to volunteer for… experiments. If you want to help our cause, then simply go to your cell and wait till the doors unlock and you hear the signal we talked about. ‘The butterfly is taking wing.’ Then… head for the guard’s tower. Overwhelm anyone who tries to stop you.”
He gaped at her. “The tower? Really? When did you decide—?”
She shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Just now! I felt the movement of the body—the True Body of Rapture! Truth is in the body, Carl! The body is speaking to me—speaking through me!—and it is declaring that the day has come. Now go—and don’t speak of this to anyone! Wait for the signal!”
He nodded eagerly, his eyes shining.
She went to the door, called for the guard, and had Carl escorted back to his cell. She didn’t need an escort herself—she had a pass that allowed her to move freely from one part of Persephone to another, so long as she didn’t try to leave the facility.
But today, she decided, as she strode down the corridor, she would become the one issuing passes—she would make the move for which she’d long prepared. She prepared for this day—but she hadn’t felt ready, till this moment. It wasn’t just Carl or the others like him. It was the thought of Eleanor—the painful fact of Sinclair and his scientists warping the girl’s powerful but innocent mind. She could bear it no longer.
Sofia looked at her watch—Simon Wales, the most enthusiastic of her highly placed converts, should be coming for his visitation now. Perfect—and no coincidence. The true body of Rapture had planned it all. The body is truth; truth is in the body.
Would Simon have the courage to do as she asked? Many times he’d claimed he would do anything… anything… she asked of him. Today that claim would be tested.
She arrived at her cell, leaving the door open, in keeping with her special privileges—the same privileges that made it possible for her to receive Simon Wales here. He arrived in under a minute, looking fatigued but resolute.
“Dr. Lamb!” His eyes seemed feverish; he was dressed in a priest’s garb, she noticed, complete with collar, and he’d grown out his beard. The butterfly-shaped broach he wore clipped to his shirt pocket was a bit out of place—but it signified that he had emerged from the cocoon to become one of Lamb’s flock. A flock of butterflies—but butterflies with wings of razor-sharp steel.
“Have you become a priest, Simon?” Sofia asked, glancing up the corridor toward the other cells.
“I’m a priest of your church, Dr. Lamb,” he said hoarsely. He ducked his head in submission to her.
“Then you are ready to do anything for the cause of the body?”
His head snapped up, his eyes glinting hotly, his hands clutching and fisting. “I am!”
“The day has come! I cannot wait any longer. Thinking about Eleanor… and all that I’ve had to do here… I simply can’t wait another moment.”
“But—Sinclair is here; I saw him go into the Persephone control tower! Shouldn’t we wait till he’s gone home?”
“It doesn’t matter. Warden Weir will send him out at the first sign of trouble.” She smiled. “The warden too awaits my signal.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’ll take this pass from me.” She took it from around her neck and hung it over his. “Go to the tower; show the camera the pass. They’ll unlock the tower. You’ll step inside and shoot the guards there—then throw the Emergency Cell Unlock switch… we’ve already discussed its whereabouts!”
“I remember!” he said, licking his lips.
“When the cell doors pop open—and the cellblock doors with them—you’ll get on the public address system and announce, ‘The butterfly is taking wing!’ That’ll be the signal—”
His voice quivered with hushed excitement as he said, “Yes—oh thank God—the signal to set you free!”
“I will take Persephone over—but I won’t leave here immediately, till we have complete control of the area. We’ll send for our followers to surround the area and protect us. When the time comes, I’ll go to find Eleanor. Meanwhile—this place will change from being my jail to being my fortress.”
“And the gun?”
“The gun you’ll need is hidden in the utilities locker. You remember the combination?”
“I do!”
She squeezed his hand. “Then go!”
He turned and rushed from the cell, showing not a flicker of hesitation. He would either die in the control tower—or he would do the job. Simon was no gunman—but he’d been practicing, as per her orders, and with a little luck and the element of surprise…
Sofia waited tensely on the edge of her bunk, wringing her hands. Thinking about Eleanor.
Within ten minutes, the other cell doors suddenly clanged open, released from within the tower. A uniformed Persephone guard looked around in confusion. “What the hell is going on?”
Simon’s voice boomed from the Persephone public address: “The butterfly takes wing! You know what to do! The butterfly takes wing!”
The prisoners responded with the gleeful howls of men suddenly set free, their long pent-up fury expanding like a released spring.
She listened to the scuffling turmoil as the prisoners rushed from their cells and swarmed over the guards. She winced as shots were fired—but Sinclair’s prison constables were quickly overwhelmed. There was some shouting, hooting, two more gunshots—screams. Inarticulate cries of triumph. An alarm warbled—and suddenly cut off.
Sofia took a deep breath and stood up, deciding it was safe to come out of her cell. She stepped into the corridor—was met by Simon Wales, who was grinning with wolfish delight as he rushed up to her. A pistol smoked in his right hand; his left hand was red with blood.
“We have Persephone!” he crowed. “Sinclair has fled, the guards with him—the ones we didn’t kill! Weir is still here, but he says he’ll take your orders! It’s all yours, Dr. Lamb! You’re in control of Persephone!”
Hephaestus 1957
Bill McDonagh hummed along to the Andrews Sisters song playing over the PA system as he tightened the salinity sieve. The song suddenly switched off, replaced by Andrew Ryan’s sonorous voice—one of Ryan’s canned speeches.
“What is the greatest lie ever created?” said Ryan over the public address, in his deepest intonation. There was a treacherous intimacy in that voice, like a quietly angry father. “What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? Dictatorship? No! It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built. Altruism.”
Bill sighed to himself. He was no great believer in charity. But if people wanted to extend a helping hand, that was their business. Ryan’s fierce rejection of altruism had been there all along. Lately, with a whole class in Rapture suffering, it was starting to grate…
“Whenever anyone wants others to do their work,” Ryan went on, “they call upon their altruism. ‘Never mind your own needs,’ they say. ‘Think of the needs of…’ of—whomever! Of the state. Of the poor. Of the army. Of the king. Of God. The list goes on and on.”
“Right,” Bill muttered. “And so do you, Mr. Ryan. Go on and on, that is…” He glanced over at Pablo Navarro, working across the room with a clipboard. Might be a mistake, saying that kind of thing out loud. But Pablo seemed focused on writing down heat readings.
From the speakers near the ceiling, almost from the very air, Ryan went inexorably on: “My journey to Rapture was my second exodus. In 1919 I fled a country that had traded despotism for insanity. The Marxist revolution simply traded one lie for another. And so, I came to America, where a man could own his own work—where a man could benefit from the brilliance of his own mind, the strength of his own muscles, the might of his own will.”
Now that view, Bill thought, using a tiny screwdriver to adjust the filter, was something he could appreciate. It was a view that had helped bind him to Andrew Ryan: a man being judged on what he’d achieved, what he could do—not on class, religion, race. Sure they were going through a rough time in Rapture, but he still had faith that Ryan’s grand vision would see them through…
Quiet rage simmered in Andrew Ryan’s voice as he went on, “I thought I’d left the parasites of Moscow behind me. I had thought I had left the Marxist altruists to their collective farms and their five-year plans. But, as the German fools threw themselves on Hitler’s sword for the good of the Reich, the Americans drank deeper and deeper of the Bolshevik poison, spoon-fed to them by Roosevelt and his New Dealers. And so, I asked myself, in what country was there a place for men like me? Men who refused to say yes to the parasites and the doubters. Men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate. And then one day the happy answer came to me, my friends: there was NO country for people like me. And THAT was the moment I decided… to build one. Rapture!” Ryan finished his speech, and the music came back on. Cheerful boogie-woogie played.
“Yeah, he decided to build Rapture,” Navarro said wryly as he came over to write down readings on the meters near Bill. “He built it, and he gave us the come hither, acting like it’d belong to us too. But it’s all his, really, Bill. You ever notice that?”
Bill shrugged, glancing nervously at the door. This was pretty seditious talk, the way things were lately. “Mr. Ryan did use his own money to build Rapture,” he said, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. “My way of thinkin’, we’re all leasin’ space from ’im here, Pablo. Some have bought space. But Mr. Ryan still owns most of Rapture, mate—he has a right to think like Rapture belongs to him…”
“Yipped like a true lap dog,” Navarro muttered, walking away.
Bill stared after him. “Pablo,” Bill called out. “Mind what you say to me. Or I’ll crack you one across the beezer.”
Pablo Navarro turned to him—gave a little twisted smile. And simply walked out of the room…
Frank Fontaine’s Office, Neptune’s Bounty, Rapture 1957
Late night in Rapture. Frank Fontaine sat at his desk in a cone of yellow light, writing busily, chuckling to himself now and then. A forgotten cigarette, going out, spiraled smoke from a seashell ashtray. A pint of bourbon stood beside the ashtray; he’d used it to sweeten the cup of coffee that had long ago gone cold.
Fontaine worked with pen, paper, and an open book, poring over the account by John Reed of the lives of Soviet idealists—a book he’d had to smuggle into Rapture—and he was getting lots of juicy material for his Atlas pamphlets. Just a paraphrase here, a change in terminology there, and presto: he’d soon have the Atlas manifesto.
Of course, he’d borrowed from Sofia Lamb too. She still had her followers. With luck, they’d become his followers. When the time came…
Hearing a soft whistling, Fontaine glanced up nervously toward the door. One of his guards was strolling by the window of his office, tommy gun in hand, whistling a tune to himself.
Getting jumpy. He poured a little more bourbon into the coffee, took in a mouthful, and grimaced.
He set to scribbling again. “Who is Atlas? He is the people! The will of the people in the form of…”
The sound of the door opening prompted him to close the notebook. He didn’t want anybody to know about Atlas who didn’t have to…
It was Reggie, closing the door behind him. “Well boss, we done it. Up in Apollo Square. Three of ’em!”
“Three! They all good and dead? Or just shot up a little?”
Reggie nodded, tapped a cigarette from a pack. “They’re dead, boss. Three dead cops, laying side by side.” He lit the cigarette and flicked the match so that a little trail of smoke arced to the ashtray.
“Cops?” Fontaine snorted. “Those half-assed constables aren’t cops. They’re bums with badges.”
“Far as I’m concerned, all cops are bums with badges. Anyhow, we nailed ’em. They never knew what hit ’em. I shot two of ’em myself.” He blew smoke at the lightbulb. “Boss—I don’t like to question your, uh, strategy—hell, you own a big piece of this wet ol’ town. But are you sure hitting these constables is going to get you what you want?”
Fontaine didn’t respond immediately. He knew what Reggie was really asking: What is the strategy?
Fontaine reached into a drawer, found a tumbler, poured Reggie a drink. “Have a drink. Relax.”
Reggie took the glass, sat in the little chair opposite the desk, raised his drink to Fontaine. “Cheers, boss.” He gulped half of it. “Whew! Needed that drink. I don’t like shooting guys in the back… Don’t sit right with me…”
Fontaine grinned. “Just imagine how Ryan’ll react to it! He’ll know it was me. But he won’t be able to prove it. It’s just enough, though—to give him the excuse he needs. I can almost hear his speech to the council now…”
“You sound like you want Ryan to come after you, boss.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I want to go out, guns blazing. Because that’ll open up a whole new playground for me. You know me, Reggie—you know I can’t stay Fontaine forever.”
“First time I heard you say it since you been here.”
“I haven’t got the muscle to take over Rapture—without Rapture’s help. Without its people helping me, Reggie.”
“You got some kind of revolution t’ing in mind?”
“Civil war—and revolution. I’m pushing Ryan with the smuggling—rubbing it in his face. I gave him his chance to let me have Rapture my way. He didn’t go for it. Now, we bait the trap. See, people stand by him because he’s the shining example, right? But if he breaks all his own rules, does a corporate takeover… acts like a dictator… that’ll turn people against him. And they’ll need someone to guide them. You get it? I haven’t got the power to hold him off for long any other way. So I dig a hole, cover it up… and let him rush into it.”
“But you could end up getting killed in this little war, boss.”
“I’m counting on it. Frank Fontaine has to die. But… I’ll still be here, Reggie.”
Reggie laughed softly and raised his glass. “Here’s to you, boss. You’re the one! You sure as hell are!”
Apollo Square 1957
The lights were dimming for evening over the coliseum-sized space of Apollo Square. The enormous four-faced clock hanging from the center of the ceiling showed eight o’clock, as Andrew Ryan said, “This simply cannot continue.” His voice was low, and grating.
Bill nodded. “Right enough, guv,” he said softly. He was thinking of the hangings.
But Ryan probably meant the chaos that had been surging up lately, in Apollo Square and Pauper’s Drop. In other parts of Rapture.
Pistols holstered under their coats, Andrew Ryan, Bill McDonagh, Kinkaide, and Sullivan stood together just inside the opening of a passageway that led out into Apollo Square. Karlosky was behind them, down the corridor, watching the back way; Head Constable Cavendish and Constable Redgrave were standing a few paces to the right and left, both carrying tommy guns. Rising up the brass-trimmed art-deco ornamented walls to either side of the doorway were the sleek sculptures that had once reminded Bill of hood ornaments: elongated, silver figures of muscular men reaching for the sky with rocketlike verticality, and holding up the ceiling in the process. To the left yellow lettering on a scarlet banner read:
But it was the hanged men, across from them, that captivated their attention…
Ryan was making his monthly inspection of Rapture. “We’ve had repair crews in ’ere, working on leaks,” Bill said, “and the constables did a good job of protecting them. Nicking mad splicers, bunging ’em in the Dingley Dell. But it’s getting right crowded in there. And in the morgue. I mean, just take a butcher’s at that, hard to…” He chuckled to himself. He’d almost used the Cockney “rhyming slang,” “hard to Adam and Eve,” meaning “hard to believe,” but that would be a pretty confusing expression in Rapture. “Hard to believe it’s come to this.”
Standing in an open space, just inside the farther doors, was a crude wooden platform and on it a T-shaped gallows made of planks pulled up from around Rapture. Bill had seen the gaping holes where the planks had been the day before. From each arm of the T, a man’s body hung.
Apollo Square stank too. It stank of dead bodies. There were five of them Bill could see, four men and a woman, the corpses scattered widely about the big room, sprawled awkwardly in brown puddles of dried blood. And there were the two hanged men, slowly turning on the ropes at the far side of the big room.
The tram tracks were intact; there was no train at the moment. As far as Bill knew, the trains were still running. At Artemis Suites, faces peered out at them from the darkened recesses of the doorway. Trash lay about the square, some of it stirring in the ventilator breeze. Music played from somewhere, so distorted Bill couldn’t make out what it was at first—then he recognized Bessie Smith. She seemed to be asking to be sent to the electric chair.
Laughter cackled mockingly from the ceiling. Bill looked up to see a spider splicer creeping across, upside down beside the big windows.
“Maybe you can bring him down, Cavendish,” Sullivan said, glowering up at the splicer. “I don’t know how good that tommy gun is at this range, but…”
“No!” Ryan said suddenly. “It is not against the law to use ADAM. It is not against the Rapture law to walk on walls or ceilings so long as you don’t damage them. If he breaks a serious law—shoot him down. But we’re not going to shoot them like rabid dogs out of hand. Some of them are employable, eh Kinkaide?”
Kinkaide sighed and shook his head doubtfully. “Employable? Only sometimes, Mr. Ryan. Offer ’em ADAM, they can be persuaded to use the Telekinesis, move the bigger Metro parts about for us. But they get distracted and fight too much. Couple of them were supposed to be moving pipes into place, ended up throwing them at each other like spears. One of them impaled, right through. Took a long time to get the pipe clean afterward.”
Ryan shrugged. “ADAM will be controlled, in time.” He paused thoughtfully, then went on: “As for the rogue splicers, we will only kill those we have to kill. We’re going to control them, and we’re going to have some strict rules. We will end the vigilantism; we will end the vandalistic graffiti; we will stop people from getting into lunatic fights with one another. We won’t tolerate these oafs blasting out flames without thinking—disruptive fires starting. Burned up one of my splendid new curtains at the Metro station!”
“How do we get rogue splicers under control, guv?” Bill asked.
He took a deep breath, his face hardening with determination: “For starts—we are going to enforce a curfew. We’ll require identification cards at checkpoints. We will increase the presence of security turrets and security bots at key points… Ah, speak of the mechanical devil… daemon ex machina…” He smiled wryly.
Two security bots whirred around the edges of the voluminous room, flying side by side, miniature self-guiding helicopters, each about the size of a fire hydrant but blockier, with built-in guns. They made Bill nervous—he never trusted the bots not to shoot him, since they were mere machines, even though he and the others here wore identification “flashers” that told the bots they were friends.
He ducked as the robots flew by, always afraid their whirring copter blades would slice into him if they came too close. The choppering security bots continued on their way, circling the big room, watching for anyone who might threaten Ryan and his entourage.
Then the full import of Ryan’s words began to sink in. “’Ere, guv—did you say curfews? Checkpoints? You mean—all over Rapture?” Hadn’t Ryan always claimed that that was the kind of thing the Communist dictators pulled?
“Yes,” Ryan said, gazing balefully at the bodies twisting on the gallows. “Everyone will have an ID card. They must restrict themselves to authorized areas, and the ID cards will tell us where they’re supposed to be. There’ll be a curfew until further notice. We’ll have to institute the death penalty for more crimes. We can all see for ourselves how tough the situation is. And we’re losing population. We’ll have to recruit new people to catch up… meanwhile, we’ve got to get things stabilized. We’ll have to set up a serious large-scale raid to take Fontaine down. We’re going to destroy him this time. And take over his business—for the good of Rapture. Run it responsibly…”
Bill was stunned. “Take over Fontaine’s business? But—doesn’t that kind of run against the whole spirit of Rapture?”
Ryan frowned. “Sometimes we have to fight to protect that spirit, Bill! Look what happened—right here in Apollo Square. Three constables shot dead! We’re going to see to it that all enemies of Rapture are caught—and punished!”
Bill felt disoriented, almost dizzy. Ryan was sounding more like Mussolini than a man who advocated pushing out the limits of human freedom. “You plan to take over Fontaine’s plasmid business—by force? That’s not exactly the free market at its best, Mr. Ryan.”
“No. No it isn’t. But Fontaine’s threatening Rapture with destruction! The whole colony will fall apart if we don’t act, Bill. He wants chaos! He wants it because, for a demagogue of his sort, preying on the weaknesses of the masses, chaos is opportunity. Chaos is the fertile ground where the likes of Fontaine will sow the seeds of power! Lamb’s followers thrive on it too!”
“I concur,” said Kinkaide, nodding. “We’ve had enough chaos. You have to draw into some prescribed limits sometimes. Time to get tough. To take the offensive.”
Bill found himself wondering if Ryan’s shift into the offensive might be exactly what Fontaine wanted. Were they playing into Frank Fontaine’s hands?
Atrium, near Fontaine Futuristics 1958
“Hey there, fellas,” said the cheerful voice on the PA system. Frank Fontaine listened to it abstractedly as he walked across Fontaine Futuristics, to Training and Extraction. “You know that nine out of ten ladies prefer the athletic man? Why stay on the sidelines when the new SportBoost line of plasmid tonics can turn you into the jock you’ve always wanted to be? Come and visit us at the Medical Plaza for a free two-hour trial. You’ll appreciate the difference; she will too…”
Fontaine struggled inwardly to banish the squirming discomfort, the trapped feeling that rose up in him when he walked up to a restricted area. No reason to feel trapped. He had two good bodyguards with him—you needed two, nowadays—there was Reggie, and there was Naz: the grinning, swarthy splicer looking like a mad Jesus with his long greasy hair and curly brown beard. He wore stained fishery-worker coveralls, his twitchy hands fiddling with that curved fish gutter he liked to carry. Naz was proof you could train a splicer, keep them in hand. Sort of. He was big on the SportBoost plasmid. Took way too much of it—but it kept him alert.
Fontaine knew he should feel safe. Lately, though, the closer he got to the Little Sisters, the more trapped he felt. The public-address announcement coming on at that moment wasn’t helping. The woman’s soothing voice was saying:
“The Little Sisters Orphanage: In troubled times, give your little girl the life that she deserves. Boarding and education free of charge! After all, children ARE the future of Rapture.”
Orphanages. It had suited his sense of irony, and maybe fed his bitterness, to create an orphanage.
Signaling Reggie and Naz to wait out in the hallway, he went through the double doors, the security bots rising up in the air at his approach. The bots scanned him and drifted away, whirring to themselves.
A few strides more and automatic turrets, looking like swivel chairs equipped with guns, swung to take him out, recognized his flashers, and settled back down.
Fontaine went down the hall to the little nursery-like cells where the girls were kept awaiting implantation—and harvesting. He looked through the window in the door and saw two children playing with a wooden train set on the floor of the rose-colored room. The “Little Sisters” developed a strangely uniform look, in their little pinafores, their faces and bodies remarkably similar thanks to a side effect of the sea-slug implantation. The sea slugs were like tapeworms inside them…
They’re not human anymore, he told himself.
After all, if you cut one of those kids, they instantly stopped bleeding. Cut off one of their little fingers, and the finger grew back, like she was some kind of lizard. The ADAM repaired them. That wasn’t human—they were superhuman, almost. They didn’t seem to get any older, either. They were in some weird state of growth stasis.
Brigid Tenenbaum came drifting up to him. She had that ghostly look about her again, like a stiff ventilator breeze might blow her away. Maybe he needed to resume their sexual relationship. But she was the one making excuses lately. Which was fine with him.
She looked through the window at the little girls. “They seem… okay,” he remarked. “I always worry we’re gonna get an inspection in here, people are gonna think, ‘Oh, them poor little tykes.’ But they don’t seem unhappy.”
Tenenbaum only grunted. Staring through the window, she took a cigarette from a pocket of her white lab smock and a holder from another pocket, united them, and put the holder in her mouth. Fontaine lit it for her with his platinum lighter. She blew the smoke into the air… but still said nothing. The hollowness in her eyes, the gauntness in her cheeks, making Fontaine think she was not so far from a “little sister” herself.
He went on, mostly to fill the silence: “But then we get people so broke in Rapture now they just turn their kids over to us.”
“The children are not… unhappy, as such,” Tenenbaum said, her speech carrying cigarette smoke slowly into the air. “Not in the usual sense of unhappy children. They barely remember family. Their minds—their minds are strange. The ADAM, the sea-slug connection—these make them strange. I find being around them very…” She cleared her throat. There was a wet gleaming in her eyes. “… very uncomfortable. Even with… with those things implanted in their bellies, they are still children. They play and sing. Sometimes they look at me…” She swallowed. “… And they smile.”
He glanced at her. Was she cracking up? “You get paid good, Brigid. Times are hard in Rapture. You want to continue to get that research funding, just accept what you gotta do for the check.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Or she didn’t care. She just kept smoking, sucking through the holder, and gazing dreamily through the window at the two little girls, holding the smoke till her words carried it out. “They do not act so—unhappy. The Little Sisters. But—in their souls, they… Germans say ‘schmerzensschrei.’ They ‘feel the pain.’”
“Their souls! No such thing as souls.” He snorted.
“There are stories people on plasmids are seeing ghosts in Rapture…”
“Ghosts!” He shook his head disdainfully. “Lunatics! Where are you and Suchong in battling the side effects of the plasmids?” It was a key question for Fontaine—he figured the time would come when he’d need to use plasmids personally. Maybe a lot of them.
She didn’t respond. Fontaine felt a flare of anger, took her shoulder, turned her sharply to face him. “You listening to me, Tenenbaum?”
She looked quickly away, stepping back, refusing to meet his eyes. Her voice was monotone, with perhaps a trace of amusement. “Are you trying to frighten me, Frank? I have been to hell in my time.” She got all dreamy again. “I did not find tormentors there. More like kindred spirits… but these children—” She looked through the window again. “They awaken something in me.”
“Something—like what?”
She shook her head. “I do not wish to speak of it. Ah—you wish to know about… side effects? Yes. ADAM acts like a benign cancer. Destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. This instability—it transfers amazing properties, but…” She sighed. “It is also what causes damage. The users, they need more and more ADAM. From a medical standpoint—catastrophic. But—you are a businessman.” She gave her peculiar little smile. “If you take away side effects—not addictive, perhaps. Not addictive, you don’t sell so much.”
“Yeah. But we need two strains of the stuff. The best stuff—for people like me, when the time comes. And the regular plasmids for everyone else. You work on that, Tenenbaum.”
She shrugged. She stared at the children, becoming dreamy again. After a moment, she murmured, “One of the children—she sat on my lap. I push her off…” She touched the glass of the window, before going on, letting smoke drift slowly from her mouth as she looked languorously through the glass. “… I push her off, I shout, ‘Get away from me!’ I can see the ADAM oozing out of the corner of her mouth!” She closed her eyes. Remembering. “Her filthy hair hanging in her face, dirty clothes, that dead glow in her eye… I feel—hatred.” Her voice broke. “Hatred, Frank. Like I never felt before. Bitter, burning fury. I can barely breathe. But Frank…” She opened her eyes and looked at him, for one surprising instant. “Then I know—it is not this child I hate.”
With that, Brigid Tenenbaum turned suddenly on her heel and strolled distractedly away, back toward the lab, trailing cigarette smoke behind her.
Fontaine stared after her. She was cracking up. Maybe he should have her taken out. But she was too valuable. And Ryan would be making his move. Everything was almost in place…
“Mr. Fontaine?”
He jumped a bit, startled by Suchong’s voice. Turning to the scientist as he bustled up from the other direction. “Christ, Suchong, you don’t need to sneak up on people like that.”
“Suchong is sorry.”
“The hell you are. Listen—what’s going on with Tenenbaum? She losing it or what?”
“Losing… it?” Looking the same as ever, each hair in place, his glasses polished, Suchong gazed placidly through the window at the sight that had so moved Tenenbaum. It was as if he were looking into a cage containing lab rats, which was, of course, just what he was doing. “Ah. Perhaps so. Suchong sometimes thinks she loses… objectivity.”
“Speaking of nutty females—you follow up on that one I told you about? For that special project?” This was what he’d mainly come here for today.
Suchong glanced up and down the hall. None of the assistants were in earshot. This was top secret. “Yes.” His voice was barely audible. “You were clever to put the listening device in this Jolene woman’s rooms. She spoke to one of her friends, a woman named Culpepper. This woman Culpepper, she tries to educate Jasmine. Talks to her about Ryan. To convince her he is the great tyrant, and so on.”
“Yeah, Reggie told me; he went over the transcripts. You think he doesn’t tell me everything first? Culpepper’s turned against Ryan. And Jasmine Jolene’s pregnant. Or maybe I should say Mary Catherine’s pregnant—that’s her real name. So—did you make her the offer?”
He bowed. “Tenenbaum made offer—she accepts! Money. So she doesn’t need Ryan to live. In exchange for the fertilized egg. Ryan’s baby! She came to lab, Tenenbaum extracted diploid zygote!”
“The what? Oh—basically, the kid, right? Prefetus?”
Suchong bowed. “Mr. Fontaine has it exactly.”
“We got someone to bear the kid?”
Suchong blinked. “Who can bear kids? I cannot bear them. The kids, they—”
“Suchong—I mean someone to have the baby, and turn it over to us!”
“All is arranged!”
“So Ryan’s bloodline, his, what do you call it—”
“His DNA. Yes. When new vita chambers work, when security is DNA specific—Ryan’s DNA will protect your… subject.”
“You think the project is doable in the short term, Suchong?” Fontaine pressed. “I mean, making it—what was it you called it?”
“Accelerated development. Child growing faster. And then—the conditioning…”
“That’s the important part. The conditioning. Brainwashing. Kid has to respond to cues, like you said. You can do that?”
“Yes. I believe so. My experiments confirm it. Suchong use the reward system of brain, condition the organism, the human offspring—to do anything! Anything you desire of them!”
“Anything? On cue? I mean—even something the guy’d never ever normally do? That’s what we need, see. I need to know I can use this kid against Ryan when the time comes.”
“I believe so—yes!” Suchong’s eyes were shining. Conditioning, mind control—that was his meat. It was what he gloried in. “Especially if I have him very young.”
“Okay, say you’ve got him as a kid—and let’s say he’s got a puppy. Kids love dogs. You could make him kill his own dog? I mean, a cute little puppy, one he really loved—could you make him kill it with his bare hands? That’d be the real test…”
Suchong nodded, showing his teeth in a grin—very unusual for him. “Yes! Wonderful, is it not?”
“Yeah, if it works.” Fontaine felt a giddiness himself. It was a real grifter’s ace—a primo con. Maybe the best bunko of all. One that would take years to unfold. But that was the beauty of it. The time lag would make it something Ryan would never expect. This way, if the Atlas project didn’t pan out… he had another way to get at Ryan.
He already had wealth and control over a great deal of Rapture. But to have a conditioned little puppet, waiting to do his bidding—it was a thrilling thought. A con carried out by life itself…
16
Rapture Central Control
August 1958
“What’s wrong, Mary?” Jim asked, in that calm way of his. “You look like you’ve just heard some terrible news!”
“Capital punishment in Rapture!” Mary replied, worriedly. “This isn’t what I signed up for!”
Jim’s voice was almost jolly. “Now hold on there, pretty lady! The only people who face capital punishment in Rapture are smugglers, and that’s because they put everything we’ve worked for at risk. Imagine if the Soviets found out about our wonderful city, or even the U.S. government! Our secrecy is our shield!”
“A little capital punishment is a small price to pay to protect all of our freedoms.”
“Now you’re talking, Mary!”
Andrew Ryan switched off the recording, leaned back in his desk chair, turned to look at Bill McDonagh, eyebrows raised. “What do you think? What’s the first thought in your mind, hearing that, eh?”
“Well sir…”
Bill no longer felt he could say what he really thought. Especially when his first thoughts were: I think you’re looking mighty old, Mr. Ryan. Old and tired. And you smell like you’ve been at the martinis again… And that bit of propaganda is depressing…
He looked around at Ryan’s office—it seemed big, echoingly empty. He wished he had Wallace or Sullivan with him. Someone to back him up. It was getting harder to show enthusiasm for Ryan’s new direction.
“Go on,” Ryan urged him. “Spit it out.”
Bill shrugged. “We have the death penalty now, guv—I reckon people have to get used to it… Hard to ignore with people hanging from gallows. Council’s divided… Maybe it’s time to ease up on it…”
Ryan had two tape recorders on his desk—the smaller one, purchased, ironically, from Fontaine’s company. He smiled coldly, reached for the small recorder, hit Record, and intoned, “The death penalty in Rapture! Council’s in an uproar. Riots in the streets, they say! But this is the time for leadership. Action must be taken against the smugglers. Any contact with the surface exposes Rapture to the very world we fled from. A few stretched necks are a small price to pay for our ideals…” He hit the button, switching off the tape recorder, and turned to Bill with satisfaction. “There you are, Bill. I summed up my feelings about it—and recorded it for posterity. Have you been using your recorder? Rapture will define the direction of civilization for all the world, in time—and history will want to know what happened here!”
Bill nodded—without much enthusiasm. “I’ve been recording the odd comment, guv, like you suggested. Next one might have to be about this raid we’re planning on Fontaine Futuristics. What are we going to do with the bloody thing once we have it?”
Ryan’s face went blank. “That’s for me to decide. In my own good time.”
“I just think, ’ere—we can’t just take over another man’s business by force! We become bleedin’ hypocrites, guv’nor! That’s… like, what do they call it—nationalization! It’ll take Rapture in another direction—opposite where we set out to go.”
Ryan looked at him frostily. “Bill. It’s true that I prize your… outspokenness. And I prize individuality. But I also prize loyalty. Whatever I decide—I hope I can count on your loyalty…”
Bill looked at the floor. He thought about Elaine. And their daughter. “Yes sir. Of course—you can count on that. I’m all loyalty, me. That’s Bill McDonagh—straight through.”
But as Ryan turned back to the tape recorder to play the service announcement once more, Bill wondered. Could he really stomach Ryan taking over Fontaine’s business? There were already curfews, ID cards. How much closer to fascism could they get before they had gone into a complete, mad reversal of everything Ryan claimed to believe in?
“A little capital punishment is a small price to pay to protect all of our freedoms.”
“Now you’re talking, Mary!”
Ryan switched the tape recorder off and sat back, frowning thoughtfully. “I really have to make a decisive move against Fontaine. He’s going to new extremes—I’ve reason to believe he’s interfering in my private life. Jasmine! She was a real comfort to me, you know, Bill. We’re both grown men here. You understand. But she’s moved out of the snug little place I gave her. I know that Fontaine has his hands in this. Perhaps even putting listening devices in her apartment.”
“Hmmm…” Bill tried to keep his face expressionless. Privately, he thought Ryan sounded like a paranoid, imagining things.
“He continues his smuggling. We have secret Christian groups forming, a result of those blasted Bibles. Letters may be going out from Rapture. He’s selling weapons to Lamb’s bunch too! I thought I had an understanding with Fontaine—but he’s gone too far. While I was buying fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. He’s become too powerful—and that makes him too dangerous. For all of us. The Great Chain is pulling away from me, Bill. It’s time to give it a tug…”
“Right,” Bill said, resigned to it. “When’s this great, glorious raid coming about anyway, guv’nor?”
“Oh—two days. The twelfth, if all’s well. Sullivan and I have organized a large cadre to carry it out—heavily armed. But we’re not telling them where they’re going till we get there.”
“Well maybe I can help, guv. What’s the strategy?”
“I’m telling as few people as possible about that—no need for that hurt look, Bill; it’s not that I don’t trust you. But if Jasmine’s place was bugged—what else might be? You could be overheard talking about it to me, or Sullivan. We’re going to keep this under wraps. The fewer know about it, the better. We must try to be more… secure about it this time. And hope they’re not waiting for us when we get there…”
Fontaine Futuristics, Lab 25
1958
“Quite astonishing, the rate at which the child is growing,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, staring at the toddler lying in the transparent bubbling incubator.
“Yes,” muttered Dr. Suchong, as he pored over the biochemical extract results on the clipboard in his hands. “Mr. Fontaine will be quite pleased. Also—may have implications for all mankind. Children—so vile. This one… not child for long…”
They were in a cramped laboratory space lit by a yellow bulb—the door doubly locked, the air stale, smelling heavily of chemicals and hormones and electrical discharge.
The naked little boy floated on the lozenge-shaped incubator on a table between them, his sleeping face above the liquid. The child was in a kind of trance within the thick fluids.
Little “Jack” seemed older than he was—and that was as per schedule. The accelerated-growth program was really remarkable. Perhaps Suchong was right—it could lead, someday, to entirely sidestepping the need for a childhood in future children. They could be grown with fantastic acceleration and taught with conditioning—as this child was being taught. Flickering lights, recorded voices, electrodes sparking his brain imbued him with the basics of learning—the ability to walk, memories of imaginary parents—that would have taken years to accumulate normally. He was a tabula rasa—anything they wished to imprint on him could be pressed into the yielding tissues of his young brain… just as Frank Fontaine had requested. She had heard Fontaine refer to young Jack here as “the ultimate con.” The backdoor entrance into the well-protected fortress that was Ryan. Jack had been, after all, taken from Jasmine Jolene’s uterus, extracted as a tiny embryo that was just twelve days past being a mere zygote…
“I must complete the W-Y-K conditioning,” Suchong muttered, setting the clipboard on the table. “The child must be set in bathysphere soon, sent to the surface… Mr. Fontaine has a boat waiting already…”
She frowned. “What is this W-Y-K?”
Suchong glanced over at her in rank suspicion. “You test me? You know I am not to tell you everything about conditioning!”
“Oh yes—I forgot. Scientific curiosity is strong in me, Suchong.”
“Hmph, woman’s curiosity, that is more to the point…” Suchong tinkered with a valve, increasing the flow of a hormone into the incubator. The child twitched in response… its legs kicked…
What, she wondered, were they doing to this child?
And then she wondered: Why are such thoughts troubling me?
But they’d troubled her increasingly. Their work with the little girls; this work with this child. It was beginning to stir memories in her. Her childhood. Her parents. Kind faces…
Moments of love…
It was as if all the exposure to children called to some child locked within her own breast. A child who wanted to be set free.
Set us all free, whispered the child.
She shook her head. No. Sympathy, caring for laboratory subjects—that was a scientific hell she would not enter.
Unless, perhaps—she was already there…
Neptune’s Bounty
1958
“Crikey, how many men d’we have here?” Bill asked, a bit awed by the numbers of heavily armed men massing in front of the broad, steel-walled corridor outside Neptune’s Bounty.
Bill was carrying a tommy gun; Sullivan had a pistol in his right hand, a hand radio in his left. Cavendish had a shotgun in one hand and the Rapture version of a search warrant in the other. “Lot of buggers for a raid, Chief, innit?” Bill asked. “We really need all these blokes?”
Sullivan muttered, “Yeah. We do. And there’s a lot more moving in on Fontaine Futuristics.”
“Fontaine Futuristics—what, at the same moment?”
“Same time. Boss’s orders.” He shook his head, his unhappiness as clear as his wide scowl. “Let’s face it, these aren’t exactly bloodthirsty desperadoes we’re talking about. Rapture’s full of poets, artists, and tennis players, not hired gorillas. But Fontaine… he seems to have a whole segment of Rapture in his pocket.”
“So where’s Fontaine? We want this raid to work, we’d better take him down personally.”
“That’s the plan: word is he’s here today, somewhere in the fisheries—maybe on the wharf, up to something in their supply boat. Anyway, it’s not just a raid,” Sullivan confided, in a low voice, as Cavendish opened the doors and they followed the double column of men down the wooden corridor toward the wharf. “It’s an all-out assault… a military assault on Frank Fontaine and everyone around him.”
“How planned is it, Chief? Remember what happened last time. Maybe we should’ve spent more time setting the bloody thing up?”
“It’s planned, all right. We’ve got two waves of men going in here, two more waves ready at Fontaine Futuristics. But Ryan wanted to keep it under wraps as much as we could. Trouble is, you tell more than two people about something, maybe even just one, and ten always seem to find out about it. And Fontaine’s got all kinds of splicers on his pay, cuts them free plasmids in return for info. So I’m not sure if…” He shook his head. “I’m—just not sure.”
A crackle on the little portable shortwave Sullivan held in his left hand. “In position,” came the voice over the radio.
Sullivan spoke into the radio. “Right. Move ahead when I give the designation ‘Now.’” He changed frequencies and spoke to another team. “This is the chief. You ready up there?”
“Ready to hit Futuristics…”
“Goddamnit, don’t say that name on the radio, just—never mind. Just count to thirty—and take the initiative, hit ’em. We’re moving ahead, here.”
Sullivan glanced at his watch, nodded to himself, looked around, made a hand signal to the others—and then they stalked up to the Securis door. He nodded to Cavendish, who swung it open, held the heavy door for the two lines of grim-faced men at ready—and shouted, “Now!”
And with a shared howl the men rushed through the door. Behind the rushing ranks—shouting in excitement, guns raised—came Sullivan, Head Constable Cavendish, Constable Redgrave, and Bill, all of them storming down onto the water-flanked wooden peninsula of the wharf toward the small tugboatlike vessel tied up there.
And suddenly the splicers were everywhere.
Some of them were literally dripping from the ceiling—spider splicers dropping down, slicing with their curved fish-gutting knives as they came, so that five men in Ryan’s attack force fell within seconds, spouting scarlet blood from their slashed-through necks, headless bodies stumbling over their own heads rolling about underfoot. Bill had to step sharp to keep from stomping a man’s still-twitching face. A splicer turned from its victim and slashed at Bill but he had the tommy gun ready and squeezed off a quick up-angled burst, blowing the top of the splicer’s head off.
Someone nearby stopped running—and turned into a statue, coated with ice. A lobbed grenade blew up the splicer that had done the freezing—but more were coming.
Like demons out of the Bible, they are, Bill thought.
“Yippee ti-yi-yo!” howled a splicer, somewhere above. “Gene Autry’s riding to the rescue!”
A prolonged rattle of machine-gun fire, and a spider splicer screamed and fell from the ceiling. A ball of fire roared from a figure dimly seen in the shadows near the far corners of the wharf, the splicer up to his waist in water. Bill winced from the heat as the ball of fire burned meteorically past, striking a man behind him in the face, scream burbling as his face boiled away. Bill fired his tommy gun at the silhouette near the wall as another fireball raced toward him, streaming black smoke. He saw the spider splicer jerk and fall with machine-gun bullets, blood splashing against the wall as a fireball went into a spiral, seeming to lose control of its direction when the spider splicer died. It veered crazily above him and then down again and hissed itself out in the water.
A thudding rattling banging booming of gunshots—shotguns thundering, machine guns clattering, pistols snapping off shots—as rising gunsmoke clouded the scene, making it all the more like hell. The blue smoke reflected red muzzle flashes and bomb blasts, explosives chucked from ceilings, from behind pylons, from under the wharfs, blowing Ryan’s men into flinders, the splicers shrieking nonsense and mockery—
Lots of them. And they’d been waiting, expecting them. They’d been done over—Bill was sure of that.
A man in front of Bill went rigid and jerked about like a marionette dangled by a palsied hand, electrocuted by a lightning-throwing plasmid. As he fell, Bill fired a burst past him at the splicer: a black-haired, dark-eyed woman in shorts. She was half-hidden behind a stub of pylon, aiming her electrically sparking hand at Bill. But the tommy gun split her chest and face asunder, and she fell backward into the water, which was clouding up with crimson billows—the blood of fallen men and women; human and rogue splicer.
God, Bill thought. Ryan’s got me killing women! Oh lord, forgive me. What would Elaine think of me now?
But a woman spider splicer on the ceiling fired a pistol at him, the bullet grazing his ribs, and he returned fire without hesitating—because he had to. The woman leapt from view.
On the deck of the little boat tied up near the wharf was a wild-eyed, patchy-haired woman pushing a baby carriage with one hand. She reached into the carriage, snatching out a hand grenade of some kind, tossing it in the air. Cavendish rushed her…
The bomb stopped in midair, then came arcing telekinetically toward him—and he threw himself down behind a stack of fish-reeking wooden crates. The crates caught most of the explosion, sending splinters rocketing like javelins—and someone behind him wailed in pain.
Bill got to his knees and peered through the smoke in time to see the woman’s head vanish in a cloud of pink and gray in the near-point-blank double-barrel shotgun blast fired by Cavendish. The woman sagged—
But someone else stepped from the small cabin of the little tugboatlike vessel—Frank Fontaine himself.
Fontaine had a revolver clutched in his hand, was grimacing and wild-eyed as he fired it almost randomly at them—who did he think he was, John Wayne? Didn’t seem like Fontaine’s style.
“I’ll take you all down with me!” shouted Fontaine. “You’ll never bring Frank Fontaine down without a fight!”
There was something weirdly theatrical about the way the man did it.
Fontaine reached into his coat, drew another revolver, and now he had one in each hand, was firing with both, his teeth bared, his eyes wild. A constable went down, shot through the neck by one of Fontaine’s rounds.
A splicer cackled in murderous delight. “That’s it, make ’em spout pretty, Frank!”
Bill took a shot at Fontaine and missed.
A constable rushed from a cloud of gunsmoke, shouting at Fontaine—and Fontaine dodged back behind the superstructure, circled it, came around behind the constable, shot the man in the back of his head. Then Fontaine dropped his pistol and scooped up the fallen constable’s tommy gun—turned and fired both his guns, a pistol in his left hand, the machine gun in his right.
Bill noticed Cavendish slipping through the water, wading, head low, toward the boat. Bill fired at Fontaine to try and distract him from Cavendish, who’d slipped around to the back of the boat—then Bill had to flatten as Fontaine loosed a burst his way. Bullets strafed just over his head.
“If Frank Fontaine goes down, you’re all goin’ down with me!” Fontaine shouted.
Then Cavendish stepped around the superstructure of the vessel and shoved his shotgun in Fontaine’s belly and—grinning—pulled the trigger, blasting Frank Fontaine off the boat, back into the water. The shotgun blast nearly cut him in half.
Cavendish turned to them and shouted in triumph, waving the shotgun over his head. “I done it! I got Frank Fontaine!” Then he ducked behind the pilothouse of the boat to avoid a bomb flying at him. Bill lost sight of him behind the smoky explosion, ducking as a blade flashed by. He turned and fired his tommy gun at the blade-flinging splicer, who ducked for cover.
Bill spotted Sullivan farther down the wharf, backing up from a leadhead. The gun-toting splicer was a barefoot man in overalls leaping about the wharf with unnatural agility, seeming to dodge Sullivan’s bullets—moving so fast Sullivan couldn’t get a bead. Leaping, the leadhead fired at Sullivan, who caught a round in his left shoulder and staggered with the impact.
Bill was already tracking the splicer with his weapon, and he fired the last of his rounds, shattering the splicer’s head as its body twisted from the top of a pylon and fell through the thick gunsmoke to splash awkwardly into the water.
Sullivan, grimacing with pain, turned to Bill with a look of gratitude. “Come on, retreat goddammit! It’s an ambush!”
Cavendish came rushing out of the smoke, coughing out, “Sullivan—I got Fontaine!”
“Just retreat, goddammit, there’s too many splicers!”
A short spear of ragged wood flew by, and Sullivan turned to fire his pistol at a leering splicer. Bill jumped over the bodies of two men, stepping up beside Sullivan, and used the butt of his tommy gun to knock down a babbling splicer who was slashing a curved blade at Sullivan’s face. Sullivan turned, stumbling up the wharf, and Bill followed close behind, pausing only once to duck a passing fireball.
A swag-bellied spider splicer in stained underwear, its face a welter of ADAM scars, clambered buglike on all fours along the wall above the door. Doggish yelping sounds rang in their ears as they ran toward the exit, the splicer alternating barks with phrases like, “Mommy, daddy, baby! Mommy, daddy, baby! Folks’re all here! Blood in my ears!” Sullivan fired at him and missed. The spider slicer pointed a pistol down at them just as Redgrave stepped into view. From behind a pylon he fired his shotgun, blowing the splicer off the wall. The body spun heavily past them and bounced off the nearest pylon to splash into the water.
Sullivan, staggering now, led the way through the door, back into the corridor. And then they were through the door—Sullivan, Bill, Constable Redgrave, followed closely by Cavendish and several other men, one of them with his clothes on fire from a splicer fireball; another with an eye missing, the socket smoking from a lightning strike; and two others staggering with gunshot wounds…
Bill gave the grinning Cavendish points for nerve as he and Redgrave posted themselves at the open door, firing to cover the retreat, blasting at splicers through the doorway. Bullets pinged and Electro Bolt blasts crackled from the metal doorframe. Bill took a pistol from a collapsed constable and fired it almost point-blank into the upside-down face of a spider splicer coming across the ceiling from nowhere… The man dropped like a dying bat…
“Come on, keep moving!” Sullivan yelled. “Back!”
Then Sullivan’s Special Weapons Backup Team was there, coming from the rear of the corridor, the planned second wave; they rushed between Sullivan and Bill, charging the pursuing splicers: nine constables with chemical throwers, icers, flamethrowers—clumsy weapons spewing corrosive acid, frozen entropy, and burning chaos into the onrushing splicers.
Sullivan had kept the backup team in reserve, afraid they’d hurt his own troops with their imprecise weapons. They were a bloody welcome sight to Bill now. Ryan’s new weapons wreaked havoc on the splicers, making heads pop open like popcorn, faces slide off skulls in bubbling acid…
Stomach writhing in horror, Bill took Sullivan’s good arm, helping him get back up the corridor. He called for Redgrave to give them cover. Sullivan was bleeding heavily from the shoulder wound, and they had to get him to the infirmary.
His feet slipped in Sullivan’s blood; men screamed and begged not to be left behind. Guns cracked and flames roared. On and on they went… and somehow found that they’d made it to the Metro. They’d gotten out safely.
But as they went, Sullivan grunting with pain, Bill thought: But maybe there is no escape for us. Not as long as we’re in Rapture.
Rapture Central Control August 1958
“What’s wrong, Mary?” Jim asked, in that calm way of his. “You look like you’ve just heard some terrible news!”
“Capital punishment in Rapture!” Mary replied, worriedly. “This isn’t what I signed up for!”
Jim’s voice was almost jolly. “Now hold on there, pretty lady! The only people who face capital punishment in Rapture are smugglers, and that’s because they put everything we’ve worked for at risk. Imagine if the Soviets found out about our wonderful city, or even the U.S. government! Our secrecy is our shield!”
“A little capital punishment is a small price to pay to protect all of our freedoms.”
“Now you’re talking, Mary!”
Andrew Ryan switched off the recording, leaned back in his desk chair, turned to look at Bill McDonagh, eyebrows raised. “What do you think? What’s the first thought in your mind, hearing that, eh?”
“Well sir…”
Bill no longer felt he could say what he really thought. Especially when his first thoughts were: I think you’re looking mighty old, Mr. Ryan. Old and tired. And you smell like you’ve been at the martinis again… And that bit of propaganda is depressing…
He looked around at Ryan’s office—it seemed big, echoingly empty. He wished he had Wallace or Sullivan with him. Someone to back him up. It was getting harder to show enthusiasm for Ryan’s new direction.
“Go on,” Ryan urged him. “Spit it out.”
Bill shrugged. “We have the death penalty now, guv—I reckon people have to get used to it… Hard to ignore with people hanging from gallows. Council’s divided… Maybe it’s time to ease up on it…”
Ryan had two tape recorders on his desk—the smaller one, purchased, ironically, from Fontaine’s company. He smiled coldly, reached for the small recorder, hit Record, and intoned, “The death penalty in Rapture! Council’s in an uproar. Riots in the streets, they say! But this is the time for leadership. Action must be taken against the smugglers. Any contact with the surface exposes Rapture to the very world we fled from. A few stretched necks are a small price to pay for our ideals…” He hit the button, switching off the tape recorder, and turned to Bill with satisfaction. “There you are, Bill. I summed up my feelings about it—and recorded it for posterity. Have you been using your recorder? Rapture will define the direction of civilization for all the world, in time—and history will want to know what happened here!”
Bill nodded—without much enthusiasm. “I’ve been recording the odd comment, guv, like you suggested. Next one might have to be about this raid we’re planning on Fontaine Futuristics. What are we going to do with the bloody thing once we have it?”
Ryan’s face went blank. “That’s for me to decide. In my own good time.”
“I just think, ’ere—we can’t just take over another man’s business by force! We become bleedin’ hypocrites, guv’nor! That’s… like, what do they call it—nationalization! It’ll take Rapture in another direction—opposite where we set out to go.”
Ryan looked at him frostily. “Bill. It’s true that I prize your… outspokenness. And I prize individuality. But I also prize loyalty. Whatever I decide—I hope I can count on your loyalty…”
Bill looked at the floor. He thought about Elaine. And their daughter. “Yes sir. Of course—you can count on that. I’m all loyalty, me. That’s Bill McDonagh—straight through.”
But as Ryan turned back to the tape recorder to play the service announcement once more, Bill wondered. Could he really stomach Ryan taking over Fontaine’s business? There were already curfews, ID cards. How much closer to fascism could they get before they had gone into a complete, mad reversal of everything Ryan claimed to believe in?
“A little capital punishment is a small price to pay to protect all of our freedoms.”
“Now you’re talking, Mary!”
Ryan switched the tape recorder off and sat back, frowning thoughtfully. “I really have to make a decisive move against Fontaine. He’s going to new extremes—I’ve reason to believe he’s interfering in my private life. Jasmine! She was a real comfort to me, you know, Bill. We’re both grown men here. You understand. But she’s moved out of the snug little place I gave her. I know that Fontaine has his hands in this. Perhaps even putting listening devices in her apartment.”
“Hmmm…” Bill tried to keep his face expressionless. Privately, he thought Ryan sounded like a paranoid, imagining things.
“He continues his smuggling. We have secret Christian groups forming, a result of those blasted Bibles. Letters may be going out from Rapture. He’s selling weapons to Lamb’s bunch too! I thought I had an understanding with Fontaine—but he’s gone too far. While I was buying fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. He’s become too powerful—and that makes him too dangerous. For all of us. The Great Chain is pulling away from me, Bill. It’s time to give it a tug…”
“Right,” Bill said, resigned to it. “When’s this great, glorious raid coming about anyway, guv’nor?”
“Oh—two days. The twelfth, if all’s well. Sullivan and I have organized a large cadre to carry it out—heavily armed. But we’re not telling them where they’re going till we get there.”
“Well maybe I can help, guv. What’s the strategy?”
“I’m telling as few people as possible about that—no need for that hurt look, Bill; it’s not that I don’t trust you. But if Jasmine’s place was bugged—what else might be? You could be overheard talking about it to me, or Sullivan. We’re going to keep this under wraps. The fewer know about it, the better. We must try to be more… secure about it this time. And hope they’re not waiting for us when we get there…”
Fontaine Futuristics, Lab 25 1958
“Quite astonishing, the rate at which the child is growing,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, staring at the toddler lying in the transparent bubbling incubator.
“Yes,” muttered Dr. Suchong, as he pored over the biochemical extract results on the clipboard in his hands. “Mr. Fontaine will be quite pleased. Also—may have implications for all mankind. Children—so vile. This one… not child for long…”
They were in a cramped laboratory space lit by a yellow bulb—the door doubly locked, the air stale, smelling heavily of chemicals and hormones and electrical discharge.
The naked little boy floated on the lozenge-shaped incubator on a table between them, his sleeping face above the liquid. The child was in a kind of trance within the thick fluids.
Little “Jack” seemed older than he was—and that was as per schedule. The accelerated-growth program was really remarkable. Perhaps Suchong was right—it could lead, someday, to entirely sidestepping the need for a childhood in future children. They could be grown with fantastic acceleration and taught with conditioning—as this child was being taught. Flickering lights, recorded voices, electrodes sparking his brain imbued him with the basics of learning—the ability to walk, memories of imaginary parents—that would have taken years to accumulate normally. He was a tabula rasa—anything they wished to imprint on him could be pressed into the yielding tissues of his young brain… just as Frank Fontaine had requested. She had heard Fontaine refer to young Jack here as “the ultimate con.” The backdoor entrance into the well-protected fortress that was Ryan. Jack had been, after all, taken from Jasmine Jolene’s uterus, extracted as a tiny embryo that was just twelve days past being a mere zygote…
“I must complete the W-Y-K conditioning,” Suchong muttered, setting the clipboard on the table. “The child must be set in bathysphere soon, sent to the surface… Mr. Fontaine has a boat waiting already…”
She frowned. “What is this W-Y-K?”
Suchong glanced over at her in rank suspicion. “You test me? You know I am not to tell you everything about conditioning!”
“Oh yes—I forgot. Scientific curiosity is strong in me, Suchong.”
“Hmph, woman’s curiosity, that is more to the point…” Suchong tinkered with a valve, increasing the flow of a hormone into the incubator. The child twitched in response… its legs kicked…
What, she wondered, were they doing to this child?
And then she wondered: Why are such thoughts troubling me?
But they’d troubled her increasingly. Their work with the little girls; this work with this child. It was beginning to stir memories in her. Her childhood. Her parents. Kind faces…
Moments of love…
It was as if all the exposure to children called to some child locked within her own breast. A child who wanted to be set free.
Set us all free, whispered the child.
She shook her head. No. Sympathy, caring for laboratory subjects—that was a scientific hell she would not enter.
Unless, perhaps—she was already there…
Neptune’s Bounty 1958
“Crikey, how many men d’we have here?” Bill asked, a bit awed by the numbers of heavily armed men massing in front of the broad, steel-walled corridor outside Neptune’s Bounty.
Bill was carrying a tommy gun; Sullivan had a pistol in his right hand, a hand radio in his left. Cavendish had a shotgun in one hand and the Rapture version of a search warrant in the other. “Lot of buggers for a raid, Chief, innit?” Bill asked. “We really need all these blokes?”
Sullivan muttered, “Yeah. We do. And there’s a lot more moving in on Fontaine Futuristics.”
“Fontaine Futuristics—what, at the same moment?”
“Same time. Boss’s orders.” He shook his head, his unhappiness as clear as his wide scowl. “Let’s face it, these aren’t exactly bloodthirsty desperadoes we’re talking about. Rapture’s full of poets, artists, and tennis players, not hired gorillas. But Fontaine… he seems to have a whole segment of Rapture in his pocket.”
“So where’s Fontaine? We want this raid to work, we’d better take him down personally.”
“That’s the plan: word is he’s here today, somewhere in the fisheries—maybe on the wharf, up to something in their supply boat. Anyway, it’s not just a raid,” Sullivan confided, in a low voice, as Cavendish opened the doors and they followed the double column of men down the wooden corridor toward the wharf. “It’s an all-out assault… a military assault on Frank Fontaine and everyone around him.”
“How planned is it, Chief? Remember what happened last time. Maybe we should’ve spent more time setting the bloody thing up?”
“It’s planned, all right. We’ve got two waves of men going in here, two more waves ready at Fontaine Futuristics. But Ryan wanted to keep it under wraps as much as we could. Trouble is, you tell more than two people about something, maybe even just one, and ten always seem to find out about it. And Fontaine’s got all kinds of splicers on his pay, cuts them free plasmids in return for info. So I’m not sure if…” He shook his head. “I’m—just not sure.”
A crackle on the little portable shortwave Sullivan held in his left hand. “In position,” came the voice over the radio.
Sullivan spoke into the radio. “Right. Move ahead when I give the designation ‘Now.’” He changed frequencies and spoke to another team. “This is the chief. You ready up there?”
“Ready to hit Futuristics…”
“Goddamnit, don’t say that name on the radio, just—never mind. Just count to thirty—and take the initiative, hit ’em. We’re moving ahead, here.”
Sullivan glanced at his watch, nodded to himself, looked around, made a hand signal to the others—and then they stalked up to the Securis door. He nodded to Cavendish, who swung it open, held the heavy door for the two lines of grim-faced men at ready—and shouted, “Now!”
And with a shared howl the men rushed through the door. Behind the rushing ranks—shouting in excitement, guns raised—came Sullivan, Head Constable Cavendish, Constable Redgrave, and Bill, all of them storming down onto the water-flanked wooden peninsula of the wharf toward the small tugboatlike vessel tied up there.
And suddenly the splicers were everywhere.
Some of them were literally dripping from the ceiling—spider splicers dropping down, slicing with their curved fish-gutting knives as they came, so that five men in Ryan’s attack force fell within seconds, spouting scarlet blood from their slashed-through necks, headless bodies stumbling over their own heads rolling about underfoot. Bill had to step sharp to keep from stomping a man’s still-twitching face. A splicer turned from its victim and slashed at Bill but he had the tommy gun ready and squeezed off a quick up-angled burst, blowing the top of the splicer’s head off.
Someone nearby stopped running—and turned into a statue, coated with ice. A lobbed grenade blew up the splicer that had done the freezing—but more were coming.
Like demons out of the Bible, they are, Bill thought.
“Yippee ti-yi-yo!” howled a splicer, somewhere above. “Gene Autry’s riding to the rescue!”
A prolonged rattle of machine-gun fire, and a spider splicer screamed and fell from the ceiling. A ball of fire roared from a figure dimly seen in the shadows near the far corners of the wharf, the splicer up to his waist in water. Bill winced from the heat as the ball of fire burned meteorically past, striking a man behind him in the face, scream burbling as his face boiled away. Bill fired his tommy gun at the silhouette near the wall as another fireball raced toward him, streaming black smoke. He saw the spider splicer jerk and fall with machine-gun bullets, blood splashing against the wall as a fireball went into a spiral, seeming to lose control of its direction when the spider splicer died. It veered crazily above him and then down again and hissed itself out in the water.
A thudding rattling banging booming of gunshots—shotguns thundering, machine guns clattering, pistols snapping off shots—as rising gunsmoke clouded the scene, making it all the more like hell. The blue smoke reflected red muzzle flashes and bomb blasts, explosives chucked from ceilings, from behind pylons, from under the wharfs, blowing Ryan’s men into flinders, the splicers shrieking nonsense and mockery—
Lots of them. And they’d been waiting, expecting them. They’d been done over—Bill was sure of that.
A man in front of Bill went rigid and jerked about like a marionette dangled by a palsied hand, electrocuted by a lightning-throwing plasmid. As he fell, Bill fired a burst past him at the splicer: a black-haired, dark-eyed woman in shorts. She was half-hidden behind a stub of pylon, aiming her electrically sparking hand at Bill. But the tommy gun split her chest and face asunder, and she fell backward into the water, which was clouding up with crimson billows—the blood of fallen men and women; human and rogue splicer.
God, Bill thought. Ryan’s got me killing women! Oh lord, forgive me. What would Elaine think of me now?
But a woman spider splicer on the ceiling fired a pistol at him, the bullet grazing his ribs, and he returned fire without hesitating—because he had to. The woman leapt from view.
On the deck of the little boat tied up near the wharf was a wild-eyed, patchy-haired woman pushing a baby carriage with one hand. She reached into the carriage, snatching out a hand grenade of some kind, tossing it in the air. Cavendish rushed her…
The bomb stopped in midair, then came arcing telekinetically toward him—and he threw himself down behind a stack of fish-reeking wooden crates. The crates caught most of the explosion, sending splinters rocketing like javelins—and someone behind him wailed in pain.
Bill got to his knees and peered through the smoke in time to see the woman’s head vanish in a cloud of pink and gray in the near-point-blank double-barrel shotgun blast fired by Cavendish. The woman sagged—
But someone else stepped from the small cabin of the little tugboatlike vessel—Frank Fontaine himself.
Fontaine had a revolver clutched in his hand, was grimacing and wild-eyed as he fired it almost randomly at them—who did he think he was, John Wayne? Didn’t seem like Fontaine’s style.
“I’ll take you all down with me!” shouted Fontaine. “You’ll never bring Frank Fontaine down without a fight!”
There was something weirdly theatrical about the way the man did it.
Fontaine reached into his coat, drew another revolver, and now he had one in each hand, was firing with both, his teeth bared, his eyes wild. A constable went down, shot through the neck by one of Fontaine’s rounds.
A splicer cackled in murderous delight. “That’s it, make ’em spout pretty, Frank!”
Bill took a shot at Fontaine and missed.
A constable rushed from a cloud of gunsmoke, shouting at Fontaine—and Fontaine dodged back behind the superstructure, circled it, came around behind the constable, shot the man in the back of his head. Then Fontaine dropped his pistol and scooped up the fallen constable’s tommy gun—turned and fired both his guns, a pistol in his left hand, the machine gun in his right.
Bill noticed Cavendish slipping through the water, wading, head low, toward the boat. Bill fired at Fontaine to try and distract him from Cavendish, who’d slipped around to the back of the boat—then Bill had to flatten as Fontaine loosed a burst his way. Bullets strafed just over his head.
“If Frank Fontaine goes down, you’re all goin’ down with me!” Fontaine shouted.
Then Cavendish stepped around the superstructure of the vessel and shoved his shotgun in Fontaine’s belly and—grinning—pulled the trigger, blasting Frank Fontaine off the boat, back into the water. The shotgun blast nearly cut him in half.
Cavendish turned to them and shouted in triumph, waving the shotgun over his head. “I done it! I got Frank Fontaine!” Then he ducked behind the pilothouse of the boat to avoid a bomb flying at him. Bill lost sight of him behind the smoky explosion, ducking as a blade flashed by. He turned and fired his tommy gun at the blade-flinging splicer, who ducked for cover.
Bill spotted Sullivan farther down the wharf, backing up from a leadhead. The gun-toting splicer was a barefoot man in overalls leaping about the wharf with unnatural agility, seeming to dodge Sullivan’s bullets—moving so fast Sullivan couldn’t get a bead. Leaping, the leadhead fired at Sullivan, who caught a round in his left shoulder and staggered with the impact.
Bill was already tracking the splicer with his weapon, and he fired the last of his rounds, shattering the splicer’s head as its body twisted from the top of a pylon and fell through the thick gunsmoke to splash awkwardly into the water.
Sullivan, grimacing with pain, turned to Bill with a look of gratitude. “Come on, retreat goddammit! It’s an ambush!”
Cavendish came rushing out of the smoke, coughing out, “Sullivan—I got Fontaine!”
“Just retreat, goddammit, there’s too many splicers!”
A short spear of ragged wood flew by, and Sullivan turned to fire his pistol at a leering splicer. Bill jumped over the bodies of two men, stepping up beside Sullivan, and used the butt of his tommy gun to knock down a babbling splicer who was slashing a curved blade at Sullivan’s face. Sullivan turned, stumbling up the wharf, and Bill followed close behind, pausing only once to duck a passing fireball.
A swag-bellied spider splicer in stained underwear, its face a welter of ADAM scars, clambered buglike on all fours along the wall above the door. Doggish yelping sounds rang in their ears as they ran toward the exit, the splicer alternating barks with phrases like, “Mommy, daddy, baby! Mommy, daddy, baby! Folks’re all here! Blood in my ears!” Sullivan fired at him and missed. The spider slicer pointed a pistol down at them just as Redgrave stepped into view. From behind a pylon he fired his shotgun, blowing the splicer off the wall. The body spun heavily past them and bounced off the nearest pylon to splash into the water.
Sullivan, staggering now, led the way through the door, back into the corridor. And then they were through the door—Sullivan, Bill, Constable Redgrave, followed closely by Cavendish and several other men, one of them with his clothes on fire from a splicer fireball; another with an eye missing, the socket smoking from a lightning strike; and two others staggering with gunshot wounds…
Bill gave the grinning Cavendish points for nerve as he and Redgrave posted themselves at the open door, firing to cover the retreat, blasting at splicers through the doorway. Bullets pinged and Electro Bolt blasts crackled from the metal doorframe. Bill took a pistol from a collapsed constable and fired it almost point-blank into the upside-down face of a spider splicer coming across the ceiling from nowhere… The man dropped like a dying bat…
“Come on, keep moving!” Sullivan yelled. “Back!”
Then Sullivan’s Special Weapons Backup Team was there, coming from the rear of the corridor, the planned second wave; they rushed between Sullivan and Bill, charging the pursuing splicers: nine constables with chemical throwers, icers, flamethrowers—clumsy weapons spewing corrosive acid, frozen entropy, and burning chaos into the onrushing splicers.
Sullivan had kept the backup team in reserve, afraid they’d hurt his own troops with their imprecise weapons. They were a bloody welcome sight to Bill now. Ryan’s new weapons wreaked havoc on the splicers, making heads pop open like popcorn, faces slide off skulls in bubbling acid…
Stomach writhing in horror, Bill took Sullivan’s good arm, helping him get back up the corridor. He called for Redgrave to give them cover. Sullivan was bleeding heavily from the shoulder wound, and they had to get him to the infirmary.
His feet slipped in Sullivan’s blood; men screamed and begged not to be left behind. Guns cracked and flames roared. On and on they went… and somehow found that they’d made it to the Metro. They’d gotten out safely.
But as they went, Sullivan grunting with pain, Bill thought: But maybe there is no escape for us. Not as long as we’re in Rapture.
17
Fontaine Futuristics
1958
“Turns out that report about the Little Sisters Orphanage was—” Sullivan paused, shaking his head sadly. “Well—it was all true.”
They stood outside the “nursery,” looking through the window in the door. A little bare-footed, dark-haired girl in a tattered frock was huddled on a bed, in a corner, staring into space and sucking her thumb.
Ryan let out a long, slow breath. “She’s got a sea slug in her—and she’s producing ADAM?”
“Yep. Apparently, the slugs didn’t produce the stuff fast enough. And using the girls worked to increase the production.” The disgust dripped from Sullivan’s voice.
“Indeed. You’ve confirmed this with Suchong?”
“Yes sir. You want to ask him, we’ve got him under house arrest, just down the hall.” He gave out a sickly grin. “Poetic justice. They’re locked up together, him and Tenenbaum, in one of the rooms they had the kids in.”
“I’ll have a word with them.” Ryan turned away from the door.
“Mr. Ryan?”
Ryan looked at him, frowning. “Yes?”
“What about the kids locked up in there? Do we let ’em out?”
“They are, I believe, actually orphans, yes?”
“Uh—yeah. One way or another.”
“Orphans will need somewhere to stay. Perhaps when we find another way to… to produce ADAM efficiently, we’ll arrange for them to be… adopted. Until then…” He shrugged. “They’re better off here.”
Ryan could see that Sullivan was disappointed by that response. “What do you want from me, Sullivan? These kids will be of use. In time… Well, we’ll see. Do you think we could proceed with our inspection now—Chief?”
“Sure.” Sullivan avoided his eyes. His voice was hoarse. “This way, Mr. Ryan. They’re down the hall…”
Just two doors down, Sullivan unlocked a nearly identical cell. When Sullivan opened the door, Ryan had to step back from the reek of an overflowing chamber pot in the corner of the nursery. Toys were scattered on the floor along with tin plates of half-eaten food.
Brigid Tenenbaum was huddled on the cot in the corner, just like the little girl in the previous cell, but with a buttoned lab coat instead of a frock. She was gnawing a knuckle and the expression on her face was the same as the child’s.
Suchong stood with his back to the door, writing on the wall with crayon in Korean ideograms. He had covered several square yards with the enigmatic writing.
“Suchong!” Ryan barked.
Dr. Yi Suchong turned to Ryan—and he saw that one of the lenses of Suchong’s glasses had been knocked out. There was a purplish mark across that side of his face, and his lip was split.
“Doctor Suchong tried to escape when we raided the place,” Sullivan explained blandly. “Had to crack him one with a truncheon.”
Suchong bowed. “Suchong sorry about writing on walls. A little dissertation. No paper to write on.”
“And what’s the dissertation on?” Ryan asked, nostrils quivering from the stench of the chamber pot.
“Accumulation of harvestable ADAM in splicers,” Suchong said. “Possible methods of extraction.”
“I see. Would you two like to be released from these… quarters?”
Tenenbaum sat up, still gnawing her knuckle, looking at him attentively. Suchong only bowed.
“Then,” Ryan went on, “I’m going to need a loyalty oath. And the understanding that breaking that oath is agreeing to execution. We are in extreme times. Extreme measures are necessary.”
“And…” Tenenbaum’s voice came in a croak. “The Little Sisters?”
Suchong frowned and shot her a warning look.
Ryan shrugged. “They will continue here—we need the… the commodity. In time we’ll find some other way. But it seems you and Fontaine left us with this one for now… And, after all, the children have nowhere to go.”
Sullivan muttered something inaudible. Ryan looked at him. “Something to say, Chief?”
“Oh—no, Mr. Ryan.”
“Very good. Set a guard on this place—but let these two go to their previous quarters and clean up. And see that Suchong gets new glasses.”
Fort Frolic, Poseidon Plaza
1958
Stepping out into Poseidon Plaza, Diane McClintock realized she felt no thrill—felt nothing at all—about winning so much money in the Sir Prize Games of Chance Casino.
She fished in her purse for cigarettes, and it took some looking because her purse was stuffed with the Rapture dollars she’d won, quite improbably, on the higher-priced slot machines. She’d had an amazing run of luck, and it meant nothing to her. It felt like mockery somehow. She couldn’t spend the money on Park Avenue, in New York, where she longed to be.
She lit a cigarette, lingering outside the casino, reluctant to go home. The whirring slots and the agitated people wandering from one game to the next—they were better than no companions. She knew she could spend time with one of Andrew’s friends. But they were hard to bear, after all that’d happened…
“Miss?” It was a woman in a blue dress, a blue velvet cap; she had mousy brown hair, large dark eyes. She clutched a handbag to her. “Miss, my name’s Margie. I was wondering… if you could spare us a donation?”
“Who’s us?” Diane asked, blowing smoke at the ornate ceiling. “You seem to be out here alone. Need money for kids at home?”
“No, I… no. I’m with Atlas’s people…”
“Atlas! I’ve heard about him. Also heard about Robin Hood. I don’t believe in him either.”
“Oh Atlas is real, ma’am…
“Yeah? What’s he like? A good man?”
“Oh yes. I trust him, even more than Doctor…” She broke off, glancing around.
Diane smiled. “More than Doctor Lamb? If that’s who you were going to mention, I don’t blame you for clamming up, Margie. Got traded from one radical ball team to another, huh?”
“I guess you could say that. When she got arrested, I needed someone to… it doesn’t matter. What’s important is, we’re collecting money to help the poor around Rapture. Atlas, he buys canned goods and stuff with it, hands it out…”
Diane snorted. “All this talk of a poor underclass around Rapture. Exaggerated, from what I hear.”
The girl shook her head. “I was there! I had to… to do some pretty awful things. You know. Just to keep going.”
“Really? Is it that bad? There wasn’t any other kind of, um, work?”
“No ma’am.”
“Andrew says there’s plenty of…” Diane let it trail off, seeing the fear on the girl’s face. “Anyway. Donations. Sure—here.” She took a wad of cash from her purse and handed it over. “More power to anyone who pisses off Andrew. But don’t tell anyone it came from me.”
“Oh—thank you!” Margie put the money in her handbag, took out a leaflet. “Read this—it’ll tell all about him…” And then she hurried off into the shadows.
Diane looked at the leaflet’s heading.
YES, SOMEONE CARES! ATLAS KNOWS IT FEELS AS IF NO ONE IN RAPTURE CARES! FIGHT FOR ATLAS! FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE WORKINGMAN…
Diane smiled, imagining Andrew Ryan’s reaction to seeing the leaflet. She crumpled it up and threw it away. But the words loitered in her mind.
Yes, someone cares…
Apollo Square
1958
“I wish Ryan would take down that fucking gallows,” Bill McDonagh said as he and Wallace walked by, grimacing at the reek of the dangling corpses. Four bloated, purple-faced bodies, turning slowly in four nooses. Looked like new ones, since last time. It was bloody depressing.
Bill was going to be glad to get his meeting with Sullivan over and hurry home to Elaine and Sophie tonight. A man didn’t feel much like taking a turn in Rapture with this kind of bleakness setting the black dog to snapping at his heels.
“What I can’t figure is,” said Roland Wallace, as he and Bill walked across the trash-strewn floor of Apollo Square, “how Fontaine got all those splicers there to wait for the constables? They’re too loony to recruit—aren’t they?”
Bill chuckled grimly. “You forget, mate, those buggers’ll do anything for ADAM.”
Wallace grunted. “You have a point. So Fontaine bribed them with ADAM. Show up there, take on whoever comes—and the survivors get plenty more…”
“That’s ’ow I figure it, right enough… Here, what’s all this then?”
A big crowd was gathered in front of Artemis Suites—where a man stood on the steps, addressing them.
“Must be that fellow calls himself Atlas,” Wallace said, his voice hushed.
“Oh right—I’ve seen the pamphlets.”
“Started with pirate-radio messages, got people all worked up. Followers leaving graffiti about…” Curious, Bill and Wallace paused on the outskirts of the crowd to listen to Atlas.
At least seventy-five people—most of them seeming to be still human, ostensibly, or not yet far into ADAM—were gathered around this Atlas. He wore maintenance workers’ coveralls. Just one of the people. The man sounded vaguely familiar—but looking closer, Bill decided he didn’t know him. Couldn’t have forgotten a bloke like that, almost movie-star handsome with his lush golden-brown hair and cleft chin.
“Now back home in Dublin we had a saying,” bellowed Atlas, in something like an Irish brogue. “May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat! Isn’t that what’s happened to us, here? You bet it is, boyo! We’ve been eaten alive, twice! First by Rapture and then by Ryan! There’s no craik here, no fun for the workingman, for that is reserved for the swells and their spoiled bettys up in Olympus Heights! Come and start life anew in Rapture, he said! But that was the cat talking to the mouse and the devil talking through the cat!”
Hoots of agreement from the crowd.
“Aye!” Atlas went on, his voice carrying over all Apollo Square. “We have been lied to, and lied to again! They told us it was all free market here—but what happens? Ryan takes over Fontaine Futuristics! Takes it by force, he does! He starts in with curfews and blockades—turns the place into a police state!”
An approving roar at that. Ryan’s hypocrisy hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“We were lured here!” Atlas bellowed. “Lured from a slum in Queens or Dublin or Shanghai or London—to a smaller slum under frigid water! Moving up, we are, right? Moving from living four in a room to living twenty in a room! It’s theft—theft of our future, boyo! Theft of our hope! But there is another way—a way to real hope! A share-the-wealth program! Why should them hypocrites be allowed to accumulate a hundred times, two hundred times, what a workingman earns—when they get it ’cause of our hard work! We work while they sit up there in their penthouses drinking champagne and puffing cigars—imported cigars we ain’t allowed to have! Why shouldn’t every family be given a basic allowance—a thousand, two thousand Rapture dollars, to live on!” Roars of approval at that. His voice rose, and rose again, with every word. “Why should the wealth of Rapture belong only to a greedy few? Now tell me THAT!”
Fists popped up—but they were shaking in agreement. Someone started chanting. “Atlas, Atlas!”
And all the crowd took it up. “Atlas, Atlas, Atlas!”
Atlas had to thunder the words out to be heard over the rising chant. “And if it’s got to come to a fight—armed with ADAM and armed with guns—then so be it!”
“Atlas, Atlas, Atlas, Atlas!”
“Like he’s been taking notes from Sofia Lamb,” Bill said in a low aside to Roland Wallace. “But he’s got his own style. More the workingman’s daddy…”
“Why—he’s Huey P. Long!” Wallace said.
“What, that bloke from Louisiana?”
“No—I mean, he’s borrowing from Long’s playbook. The Kingfish they called him, down there in Baton Rouge, king of the southern rabble-rousers. The Kingfish talked exactly like this. Except for the Irish accent. And Atlas tossed in a little Bolshevism…”
Bill shook his head, puzzling over it. “Strange I ’aven’t seen this bloke Atlas before. Been ’ere for years, thought I’d seen every wanker in this big leaky tank of a town.”
Wallace gave him a poke in the ribs with an elbow. “Bill—look up there!”
Bill looked at the ceiling, saw spider splicers creeping across it upside down, coming from three directions—converging right above him and Wallace.
He looked around the edges of the square and saw the telekinetic splicer who’d killed Greavy. She was watching from the wall near the entrance to Artemis Suites.
“They’re closing in on us, Bill.”
“Right; we’ll take the better part of valor and back off—fast. Come on, mate!”
They hurried back the way they’d come. They’d go the long way, through the checkpoint—they both had their ID cards—and then through the transparent passages between buildings to another bathysphere entrance to get where they were going. Or they wouldn’t get there at all.
The splicers didn’t seem intent on pursuing them out of Apollo Square. Which confirmed Bill’s suspicion that they were somehow working for Atlas. They were remaining as his bodyguards…
A word popped into Bill’s mind as they hurried through the passage, striding under a passing pod of dolphins. It was a simple, one-syllable word, summing up what he felt was coming from the inevitable confrontation between this new Kingfish and Andrew Ryan. War.
More killing. More war. More danger for Elaine and Sophie.
Something had to be done to stop it. Somehow it had to be defused…
A frightening notion came to him. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But it lingered, whispering to him…
Ryan Industries / Fontaine Futuristics
1958
“I really must get around to taking that sign down,” Ryan said as he and Karlosky walked under the words Fontaine Futuristics. “It’s Ryan Plasmids now.”
They passed through the double doors and walked across the polished floors, past the sculpture of Atlas holding up the world.
He glanced at his watch. He was half an hour behind time—the lights would dim for evening soon. The message from Suchong had been urgent: a crisis in ADAM production…
Ryan ignored the lab workers hurrying past, clipboards in hand, and hurried up the stairs, Karlosky close beside him. He rarely worried about splicers or assassins with Karlosky around—the man had eyes in the back of his head. He wondered if plasmids could make that literally possible.
They went through the sterilization air locks to find Suchong and Tenenbaum in a steamy lab, working over a sea slug in a bubbling tank. Frowning in concentration, Tenenbaum was using a pipette to draw an orange fluid from the sea slug’s horny tail. Ryan noticed that her hair didn’t seem to have been washed in days and her lab coat was splashed with stains, her nails black. There were blue circles under her eyes.
Suchong glanced up as they entered and gave them each a short bow. Tenenbaum withdrew the pipette and released its contents into a test tube. Ryan stepped closer to inspect the sea slug—the creature quivered in its bath of seawater, but otherwise seemed almost lifeless.
Ryan pointed at the sea slug. “Surely that’s not the last one?”
Suchong sighed. “We have a few others in a suspension. But they are almost gone. The fighting of the raid, all the chaos—we lost them. Damage to the tanks. If only you’d warned us…”
“Couldn’t risk that. You haven’t exactly earned my trust, Suchong, working for Fontaine.”
Suchong inclined his head in something that passed for regret. “Ah. Suchong very sorry. Grave mistake to work for Fontaine. I should have known—the intelligent man work for men with more guns. Always the better policy. I will not make that mistake again. You have my loyalty, Mr. Ryan.”
“Do I? We’ll see. Well, you sent for me and I can see the problem for myself. No sea slugs, no ADAM. Any suggestions, Doctor? What are we to do for ADAM? We have all these lunatic ADAM addicts running about… a whole industry could collapse. I’ve taken over the plasmids business—built the Hall of the Future to extol them. But if we run out of them—it’s all for nothing.”
Tenenbaum looked up from the test tube. “There is a way, Mr. Ryan. Until we can learn to breed more slugs…”
“And that is?”
“Many men are dying and dead in Rapture. But before they die, there is a… how would you say it, a stage in their metabolism of plasmids… in which they create a refined ADAM inside them. It is deposited in the torso. And we believe…”
She looked at Suchong, who nodded at Ryan. “Yes. It can be harvested. From the dead.”
Karlosky grunted and shook his head. But said nothing. Ryan glanced at him. It was hard to startle Karlosky, but it seemed they’d done it.
Ryan looked back at the sea slug. “You can get ADAM from the dead?”
Suchong removed his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “Yes. But there is a certain way to do this—the ADAM must be sensed, and drawn up into the syringe properly—and correctly transported. Little Sisters are best suited for that process…”
Tenenbaum shook her head. “But the girls are already… damaged. If we sent them to do the harvesting—who will protect them? They are…” She glanced at Ryan, then quickly away. “They are worth a lot of money. They will not trust ordinary guards… and we cannot trust ordinary men with them.”
“So for that,” Suchong said, “we have developed hybrids, our cyborg sea workers. Gil Alexander has made great progress with the Alpha Series—Augustus Sinclair has, ah, leased out this Johnny Topside from Persephone. Subject Delta—he is bonded with the girl we took from the Lamb woman. Eleanor Lamb.”
“Bonded?” Ryan asked, not sure he liked the sound of it.
“The girls are to be bonded to the Alpha creatures. They are to be… surrogate fathers. Little ones call them big daddies. Most charming. The girls will be conditioned to work closely with them.”
Tenenbaum made a small sound of acknowledgment. “They do seem to need something, some symbol of adulthood they can feel comfortable with…”
The conversation was getting ever more peculiar. Ryan wasn’t sure he understood what they were planning.
But he knew a solution was needed. And he liked the neatness of harvesting ADAM from the dead. It closed the circle, somehow: an unexpected link in the Great Chain.
“What exactly will you need from me?” he asked, finally.
Near Fighting McDonagh’s Bar
1958
This won’t look too good, Sullivan thought. Me being in charge of law enforcement in Rapture—and being the drunkest son of a bitch in Rapture tonight…
He stood outside McDonagh’s tavern, swaying, wondering how late it was. Long after midnight—lights had already been turned down. Couldn’t even make out his watch.
How much money had he lost at the card table, in the back room? Four hundred Rapture dollars at least. Poker. His downfall. Shouldn’t have drunk so much. Might’ve folded some of those hands before they got expensive. Maybe Shouldn’t have gotten in the game…
But his old gambling bugaboo was back—and with a vengeance. Only way he could get his mind off the mess that Rapture was becoming—and his failure to keep the splicers at bay. He was sure Ryan was starting to look at him like he was a useless old drunk.
Maybe he needed to get married. Get married again, a nice warm wife to keep him in line.
He shuddered. A wife. How do guys like McDonagh do it?
He sighed and started off toward the stairs. He just had his hand on the metal door to the ramp when he heard a boom from behind it and a keen whistling sound.
Rogue splicers.
The corridor was twisting around from the booze and his mouth was paper dry. Too drunk to deal with this. “Gotta get backup…” He licked his lips and put his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket. But then again—he was top cop. Had to show it. “Fuck backup.”
He drew his gun, opened the door, took two steps through—and was slammed in the chest by the force of a Sonic Boom plasmid. The sonic shock wave made him stagger back painfully hard against the doorframe. A leering, goggle-eyed splicer in a ragged T-shirt was crouched behind a tumble of crates. “Gotcha big-badge! Or should I say big ass!” He pointed his hand to fire off another Sonic Boom, but Sullivan, sobering fast, slipped back through the door, taking cover to one side—and a cackling made him look up, through the doorway, to see a female splicer clinging flylike to the ceiling, wearing only yellowed underwear and a brassiere, her long dirty hair hanging down like Spanish moss. She was pointing one grimy hand down at the Sonic Boomer and twirling her finger—a whistling sound became a windy roaring and a small cyclone appeared, whirling bits of trash, picking up the empty crates to smash them against the metal walls. “Ha ha haaaa!” she cackled. “Care to go for a spin!”
The Sonic Boomer yelled and tried to scramble clear, but the expanding Cyclone Trap plasmid caught him, jerked him off his feet, spun him like a ragdoll in the air—and dropped him with a thump. He yelled in outrage as the spider splicer giggled.
Completely out of their gourds, Sullivan thought.
“Two plasmids from one lunatic,” Sullivan muttered, trying to get a bead on her in the dim corridor with his gun. She suddenly dropped down, landing catlike, and spun to face him. “Puppet cop, cop it, pup! That’s you!” She made a gesture, and suddenly a second splicer appeared, almost her twin, in front of her and to one side. Sullivan fired convulsively—and the bullet simply passed through the flickering image.
A third plasmid. “Target dummy.”
She cackled again—and then looked startled, her eyes widening. She looked down to see a curved fish-gutting knife blade protruding under her breastbone, spurting blood. She toppled forward, dying, and the Sonic Boomer who’d stabbed her from behind leered… and gestured—Wham—Sullivan was flung to skid down the ramp on his back…
Dazed, he lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, gasping for air—then he sat up… and looked through the open door, about four paces off at what he thought was the splicer, sneaking around in the shadows.
Sullivan got up, dusted himself off, put his gun in his pocket, and said, “Screw this.”
He turned and walked back to the bar.
Hall of the Future
1958
Diane McClintock was on one of her long, solitary walks through Rapture. She knew it was dangerous. She had a gun in her purse.
She had four cocktails in her, too, and she didn’t much care about the danger. She was heading somewhere, in a roundabout way. Pauper’s Drop. But she couldn’t bring herself to go there directly. She was afraid Andrew might be watching her, through the cameras; through his agents. She had to take the roundabout route so he’d never guess she was hoping to get a close look at the man they called Atlas…
She strolled through the museum, the new Hall of the Future, with its videotaped displays glorifying plasmids—all quite ironic, considering some of the horrors plasmids had brought.
She passed onward. Footsteps echoing, she wandered through the livid colored light of Rapture; she rambled past pistons pumping mysteriously in wall niches, past the steaming pool of the baths, under iridescent panes of crystal, through high-ceilinged atriums of brass and gold and chrome, vast chambers that seemed as grandiose as any palace ballroom. A palace, that’s what Rapture seemed to her, an ornate palace of Ryanium and glass, swallowed by the sea—which was ever so slowly digesting it.
And sometimes it seemed to Diane that everyone in Rapture had already died. That they were all ghosts—the ghosts of royalty and servants. She remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s sunken city. She’d read all of Poe in trying to educate herself to impress Andrew and the others. Again and again she’d returned to The City in the Sea. She remembered Poe’s lines—some seemed especially apt now…
Resignedly beneath the sky.
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
She sighed, and she walked onward, her head throbbing. Still half-drunk.
Acting as if she went toward Pauper’s Drop on a whim, she passed through the transparent corridor, and the metal door. Down a flight of steps…
Sullen-eyed tramps lolled against the walls of the buildings, under intricate scrawls of graffiti. They lay about smoking, drinking, talking—and looking at her with an unsettling interest.
Maybe it was time to take refuge in the Fishbowl Café. It looked civilized enough.
She hurried into the café, sat in a booth by the dusty window, and ordered coffee from the frowzy, gum-chewing waitress who already had the pot in her hand. “Sure, honey,” the waitress said, giving her brown curls a toss. “You want some pie? It’s seapalm pie, but they put a lotta sugar in it, not too bad…”
“No, thank you,” Diane murmured, wondering if she could ask this woman about Atlas…
The waitress bustled off to deal with a thuggish-looking man at the other end of the row of booths.
Diane McClintock sipped coffee, looking out the window, hoping the caffeine would stop the thudding in her head.
Risky being here. She could easily fall into the hands of rogue splicers. But her depression had been whispering to her lately, It might be better if they got you…
Still, Rapture was in a time of relative peace, with Fontaine dead. She hoped it would last.
Atlas was said to come to Pauper’s Drop pretty regularly. He moved about undercover—he was “wanted for questioning” by Sullivan’s bunch. He was on the track to end up in Persephone for sure.
Why am I here? she wondered. But she knew. She wanted to see this man for herself. Her encounter with Margie outside Sir Prize, the woman’s sincerity, had planted a seed.
Andrew would hate her for coming. But that was part of why she was here. Atlas was a man with something Andrew Ryan was missing—a real heart.
She was startled from her fumination by a commotion outside. Several men with shotguns were shouting at the crowd of unemployed. They seemed to be getting them organized into a line. To her surprise, the ragtag crowd passively lined up…
Then a man came striding onto the scene, followed by several others carrying large baskets. The man in the lead somehow drew all eyes to himself. He was a handsome figure of a man with a fine head of hair, a mustache, a cleft chin, and broad shoulders. He dressed like a workingman—with a white shirt, sleeves rolled up; suspenders; simple work trousers; boots. But he carried himself like a man in charge. Yet there was no harsh edge of authority about him. His expression was kindly, compassionate, as he took a basket from the man behind him, began quietly passing out things to the people in line. The first one, a woman with gray-streaked hair and a lined face, a tattered frock, took a package, and Diane could read the woman’s trembling lips: “Thank you. Oh thank you…”
He spoke briefly to her, patted her arm, and then passed on to the next in line, personally handing out a pair of shoes; a sack that seemed to brim with canned goods.
Could this really be Atlas?
The waitress came to Diane’s tables, asked in a bored voice, “You want some more of what passes fer coffee around here, honey, or what?”
“What I’d really like…” Diane took a ten-dollar bill—with Ryan’s picture on it—and tucked it into the woman’s apron pocket. “Is to know if that man out there is who I think it is…”
The waitress looked around nervously, looked into her apron pocket, then nodded. With a lowered voice she said, “Him… he calls himself Atlas. Only t’ing I know: the lady lives down the hall from me wouldn’t have nothing to eat, weren’t for him. He’s helping people, that one. Gives out free stuff every week. Talks about a new order.”
The waitress hurried off, and Diane turned to stare out the window at the man called Atlas. He was gentle but powerful— the kind of man she truly wanted to meet…
She hesitated. Did she dare go out and talk to Atlas? Suppose Andrew were having her watched?
It was too late. There was shouting, an alarm on the concourse outside the café—constables were coming. Atlas waved at his charges—and then hurried off around the corner. Her chance was gone.
But she made up her mind. One way or another, she would meet this man…
She would stand face-to-face with Atlas.
Fort Frolic Shooting Gallery
1958
They were alone in the long, narrow shooting gallery, firing at man-shaped targets. The air smelled of gunsmoke; brass littered the floor. Bill stood just behind his wife, looking over her shoulder. “That’s it, love—take aim and shoot ’im right between the eyes.”
Elaine winced and lowered the revolver. “Do you have to put it that way, Bill? Between the eyes? It’s just a paper target…”
Bill McDonagh grinned ruefully. “Sorry, darlin’, but—you said you wanted this for self-defense! And those rogue splicers don’t play around—” He put his hand on her shoulder and added more gently, “If you’re going to defend yourself against them, you’ve got to shoot to kill. I know it’s bloody awful. It’s been hard for me to shoot at these blokes too…”
Elaine took a deep breath, raised the gun at the end of her arm, clasped it with both hands, and aimed at the silhouette at the other end of the shooting gallery.
She grimaced and squeezed the trigger, blinking as the gun went crack.
Bill sighed. She missed the target completely. “Right. This time, let out a long breath before you fire, squeeze the trigger gently, like, and—”
“Oh Bill…” Elaine lowered the gun, her lips quivering, eyes welling with tears. “This is so horrible. Having to… Mr. Ryan never said it’d be like this…”
Bill glanced at the door to see if anyone was listening. They seemed to be alone. But you never knew for sure anymore…
“Bill… it’s just… I can’t raise Sophie here, in a place where I have to…”
He put his arm around her. “I know, love. I know.”
She put her face on his shoulder and wept. “I want to leave Rapture…” she whispered.
“Elaine… darlin’… got to be careful where you talk like that…” He licked his lips, thinking, Listen to me. Turning into a craven bastard. “One thing at a time, love. Thing is—Fontaine’s gone but… word is, Atlas is making some kind of deal with the rogue splicers. He’s got a lot of ADAM stored up, somewhere. Got ’em workin’ for him. And he’s going to make some kind of move—he’s not just handing out food and pamphlets, love. All of us on this side of the fence—we’re going to have to defend ourselves. It’s more dangerous out there than ever…”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with a kerchief she took from his coat pocket. She took a deep breath and then nodded. “Sure, okay, Bill. I just hope you’re right about who we’ve got to shoot at.” She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “Far as I can tell—they might come at us from either side of the fence.” She cocked the gun. “I guess I’d better… be ready for anything.”
Elaine raised the gun and took aim at the paper outline. She let out a long, slow breath, centered the gunsights on the target’s head, and squeezed the trigger.
Bill McDonagh’s Flat
1958
It was Christmas Eve. Bill, Karlosky, and Redgrave sat around a card table in Bill’s living room, playing poker in the light from the Christmas tree. Two bottles, one nearly empty, stood beside a plate littered with cookie crumbs. Bill was beginning to feel he’d drunk too much. Sometimes the cards in his hand seemed to recede into the distance, and the room swiveled in his peripheral vision.
“Wonder if this Atlas is going to be the problem Mr. Ryan thinks,” Redgrave said, frowning over his cards. “All we got is rumors. That he’s working with the splicers, givin’ ’em ADAM. Where’s he get all that ADAM?”
“A lot of Fontaine’s supply seems to’ve done a vanishing act,” Bill said, trying to see his own cards. Were those diamonds or hearts? “When they raided his place—most of the stuff was gone. Ryan’s had Suchong hard at it making new stuff. Sometimes I wish he’d just let ’em…” He didn’t finish saying he wished plasmids would run out completely. Karlosky might report that to Ryan. And Ryan was not in a mood to have his policies questioned.
Redgrave raised the pot, Bill folded, and Karlosky called. Redgrave showed three aces.
Karlosky scowled at Constable Redgrave and threw down his cards. “You black bastard; you cheat me again!”
The black cop chuckled and scooped up the poker chips. “I beat you, that’s what I do, I beat you like an old rug…”
“Bah! Black son of a bitch!”
Shuffling the cards, Bill looked at Redgrave to see how he took Karlosky’s invective.
To his relief, he saw Redgrave looking gleeful, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he stacked his new chips. “Not surprised an ignorant Cossack son of a bitch like you can’t play poker… But a Russian not being able to hold his drink? That’s sad, man!”
“What!” Karlosky pretended to tremble with rage. “Not hold drink!”
He grabbed the unlabeled bottle—he had made the vodka himself from potatoes raised in Rapture hydroponics—and poured the transparent fluid into their glasses, slopping almost as much on the table. “Now! We see who can drink! A black bastard or a real man! Bill—you drink too!”
“Nah, I’m not a real man; I’m a married man! My wife’ll kick me ass if I come to bed any more bladdered’n I am…” He’d had three shots of the crude vodka—more than enough.
“He’s right about that!” Elaine said, scowling theatrically from the doorway to the bedroom. “I’ll kick him right out of bed!” But she laughed.
Bill watched as Elaine went to adjust an ornament on the Christmas tree, yawning in her terrycloth robe. It was a curious thing how he could look at his wife with her hair rumpled, her face without makeup, her feet bare under a terrycloth robe that was far from enticing boudoir wear, and still feel a deep desire for her. It wasn’t the vodka—he often felt that way seeing her about the flat.
“Is nice Christmas tree!” Karlosky said, toasting her.
The small Christmas tree was made out of wire and green paper, with a few colored lights—they were the only Christmas decoration Ryan allowed. No stars, no angels, no wise men, no baby Jesus. “A secular Christmas is a merry Christmas!” went the poster, put up in Apollo Square right before the holiday. The poster showed a winking dad dropping a Bible into a trashcan with one hand while handing his little girl a teddy bear with the other.
“Don’t stay up too late with these drunken louts, Bill!” Elaine said, rubbing her eyes, putting on a frown again.
“Ha!” Karlosky said, punching Redgrave playfully in the shoulder. “His wife whips him like little boy, eh!”
Bill laughed, shaking his head. “Sorry, love. We’re about done playing cards.”
Her look of mock disapproval vanished and she winked. “No, you guys go on and play your cards! Have fun. I just came out to tell you not to be too loud so you don’t wake up Sophie.”
Redgrave turned her a bright smile. “Ma’am, thank you for havin’ me to Christmas Eve supper. Means a lot to me!” He raised his glass to her.
“Glad you could be here, Constable Redgrave. Goodnight.”
“Da!” Karlosky said. “Happy holiday, Mrs.!” He turned fiercely to Redgrave. “Now—drink up, you black bastard!”
Redgrave laughed, and they drank their vodka, clinking their glasses together when they were done.
“Okeydokey!” Karlosky said, lowering his voice as Elaine went to bed, “we will play more cards, you lose money to me—and we see if you really can drink… black bastard!”
“Cossack devil! Pour me another!”
Kashmir Restaurant
1958
On New Year’s Eve, Bill McDonagh sat with his wife at a corner table of the luxurious restaurant, near the wall-high window looking out into the churning depths of the sea. They had taken off their silvery party masks and set them on the table next to the champagne bottle.
He glanced out the window. The illuminated skyscraper-style buildings, seen through a hundred yards of rippling seawater, seemed to shimmy to the music: a Count Basie swing number.
Bill winked at Elaine, and she returned him a strained smile. She was pretty in her pearl-trimmed, low-cut white gown, but, despite all the care she’d taken, she still looked a bit haggard. Elaine didn’t sleep well anymore. None of them did. Lately, a bloke trying to sleep in Rapture was always unconsciously listening for an alarm to go off or the sounds of a security bot taking on a rogue splicer.
It was chilly near the window. The tuxedo wasn’t much protection against the cold. But he didn’t want to sit any closer to the entourage waiting for Ryan to show up: a group at several tables near the fountain. Sander Cohen was wearing a feathery mask and babbling madly away at a bored-looking Silas Cobb. Diane McClintock, wearing a gold party mask edged in diamonds, sat stiffly at a small table reserved for her and Ryan—she sat there alone, watching the door and muttering into her tape recorder. Ryan had gone on an errand to Hephaestus and was going to give some kind of New Year’s address over the radio.
“Well, love…” Bill said, toasting his wife with the champagne glass. Trying to pretend he was enjoying himself. “In just a few minutes it’ll be 1959…”
Elaine McDonagh nodded slowly and forced another weak smile. The fear flared in her eyes, then dutifully hid itself again. She gave him the brave look that always tore at his heart. “It is! It’s almost New Year’s, Bill…” She looked at the other tables, filled with revelers in jeweled masquerade costumes and masks. They were waving noisemakers, laughing, talking loudly over the music, doing their best to celebrate. Her gaze took in the bunting, the banners, the circular hot-pink neon sign, specially made up for the party: Happy New Year 1959. “It’s funny, Bill—all these years down here… Sophie growing up without seeing the sun… now the war… and it’s almost 1959… Time passes all funny in Rapture, doesn’t it? It’s slow and fast both…”
Bill nodded. Elaine was increasingly homesick, and scared. But he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man who had taken him out of the loo and made him a real engineer. Sure, Ryan was giving way to hypocrisy—but he was only human. And maybe it was true that Rapture had to go through this transition period before getting back on track. They just had to clear out the Atlas types, the worst of the splicers, and Lamb’s followers.
He noticed Elaine staring around at the armed men, the constables standing guard near the walls. The guards weren’t wearing masquerade masks. Scores of gunmen, there to protect this exclusive gathering from rogue splicers.
Constable was the one job you could stand a good chance of getting, if you were out of work in Rapture—because the mortality rate for constables was so high.
Bill was glad to see Brenda bringing each constable a flute of champagne on a tray to get ready for midnight. Made it seem more festive.
A gun in one hand, a champagne glass in the other, he thought ruefully. That’s Rapture.
He had a pistol under his coat; Elaine had one in her pearl-beaded white purse.
“Do you think Sophie’s all right?” Elaine asked, toying with her glass, looking anxiously at the clock.
“Sure, she’ll be fine.”
“Bill, I want to go home as soon as we get past New Year’s Eve. Like at twelve-oh-five, okay? I don’t like to leave Sophie with the sitter long in this place… I don’t know if Mariska can use a gun, really. I mean, I left her one, but…”
“Don’t worry; we’ll leave a few minutes after midnight, love.”
The Count Basie song finished, and Duke Ellington started. Wearing their gawdy party masks, a half dozen couples were dancing in a cleared space between the tables, forced smiles held stiffly on their faces.
Bill wondered what music the rest of the world was listening to. Music in Rapture had to be outdated. There were rumors about something called rock ’n’ roll.
Trying to change Elaine’s mood, he took her hand, pulled her to her feet, got her dancing to the Duke Ellington number. They used to love going dancing together in New York…
Then the song stopped, simply cut off in midtune, and the countdown started, led by a giddy Sander Cohen: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”
Bill pulled Elaine close for the midnight kiss…
That’s when the explosion came. The doors exploded inward, knocking three constables like rag dolls into the center of the room. Bill shoved their table over for partial cover, pushed Elaine to the ground behind the tabletop, and covered her with his body. Machine-gun rounds ricocheted from the bulletproof windows to slam through tuxedos, to wound squealing women in their glittering finery. Elaine was screaming something about Sophie. Another bomb flew into the room and detonated—body parts spun overhead, spraying blood. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing as machine-gun bullets raked the room—as if the gunfire were part of the New Year’s Eve revelry. Screams… More gunshots…
Faces that seemed frozen, mocking: the invading splicers were wearing masquerade-party masks—domino masks, feathered masks, golden masks…
Andrew Ryan’s voice came from the public address, at that moment, as he made his New Year’s speech…
“Good evening, my friends. I hope you are enjoying your New Year’s Eve celebration; it has been a year of trials for us all. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city…”
Bill peered around the edge of the table, saw a splicer in a black mask yelling, “Long live Atlas!”
Another, running through the cloud of smoke at the shattered doors, bellowed: “Death to Ryan!”
“…It was your strength of will that brought you here, and with that strength you shall rebuild. And so, Andrew Ryan offers you a toast. To Rapture, 1959. May it be our finest year.”
“Diane!” Elaine shouted.
Bill turned to see Diane McClintock crawling past on her hands and knees, dazed face bloodied, her green dress had become red-stained rags. “Diane—get down!” he called.
Beyond her, some of the constables were ducking behind the bar—and grinning. Bill realized that some of them had been in on this. A security bot went whistling by overhead, firing at a thuggish splicer cartwheeling into the room. A nitro splicer in a fur-fringed white mask was throwing another bomb, which blew up on a table under which three men in tuxes crouched—their tuxedos and their flesh mingled wetly in the blast.
Bill hoped to God the rogue splicers had the common sense not to throw too many bombs near the windows. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, but they could only take so much.
“Come on, Elaine, we’re off!” he said gruffly, trying to get some steel into her spine. “And bring your purse.”
He tugged out his pistol, the two of them scrambling like doughboys under barbed wire till they were under one of the few tables still standing. A bleeding thuggish splicer was crawling by like a hungry alligator, laughing insanely, his mask down around his neck. ADAM scars crisscrossed the man’s face in livid pink that somehow matched the neon pink of the Happy New Year 1959 sign. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole in the crawling splicer’s neck as he sang croakily, “I’m a little hair, pulled off a chin, about to go into a spin, down the drain drain drain—!” Then he noticed Bill and Elaine—and whipped a hooked blade at Bill’s face. Bill shot him in the forehead.
The blade clattered on the floor. Elaine groaned at the sight of the dead man. They crawled onward.
Bill risked a look over his shoulder and saw a group of loyal constables, including Redgrave and Karlosky, firing above an overturned table at spider splicers crawling across the ceiling near the blown-open doors. A red-masked nitro splicer made a bomb fly through the air with the power of his mind—it flew past the table, then doubled back. Karlosky and Redgrave dove to the side, and the bomb went off. Redgrave rolled, wounded. A shotgun blasted nearby—Rizzo firing over a table at the nitro splicer. The splicer’s face vanished in a welter of red, and a grenade blew up in his hands, his body flying apart like a New Year’s party favor.
Bill crawled onward, one arm over Elaine, who crept along beside him alternately sobbing and cursing. They’d reached the swinging doors into the back kitchen. “Okay, kid,” he whispered in her ear. “On three we jump up and run through them doors. Watch out for my pistol, love, I might have to fire it. One, two—three!”
They were up and rushing through, Bill shouldering the door aside—and firing at a spider splicer hanging upside down from the low ceiling. Wounded, the splicer fell off onto the stove, clattering into pots of boiling water and lit gas burners. Shrieking in pain, the splicer flailed and tumbled off the stove and onto the floor.
Bill and Elaine rushed past into the rear hall. Bill turned left; a gun banged just beside him. He turned to see Elaine pointing her own pistol, its muzzle smoking, her face contorted with anger as a nitro splicer fell back, his head shot open. A grenade fell from his hands and bounced to the floor—
“Down!” Bill yelled, and dragged her behind a steel kitchen cart, covering her with his body—and then the bomb went off. The cart caught the blast and slammed into them with the shockwave, the steel cart cracking painfully into Bill’s right arm. “Ow, buggerin’ hell that hurts!”
“Bill—are you all right?” Elaine asked, coughing as the smoke cleared.
“I’m okay, except me bloody ears are ringing like a mad monk’s church bell! Come on, we got to get up, love!”
They made their way dizzily down the smoky hallway, eyes stinging. Gunfire rattled behind them and explosions shook the floor. Other people were running from the kitchen. He looked back and saw Redgrave stumbling along, wounded in the leg but game enough—Karlosky behind him, urging the wounded Redgrave along.
Rizzo was turning to fire behind them through the door at splicers Bill couldn’t see. A swishing sound—and Rizzo shrieked, the scream becoming a gurgle as a curved blade buried itself in his throat. Rizzo fell back, blood gushing over his tuxedo…
Bill fired at the door—a masked splicer jerked back. Elaine kept tugging on his arm, shouting about Sophie. He let her urge him through the emergency exit to the stairs, and they saw a group of white-faced, scared-looking constables a flight below, yelling up at them: “This way! Down here!”
Hoping they weren’t heading into a trap, Bill and Elaine went with the constables.
A blur of corridors, passages, a checkpoint, another, waving ID cards, an atrium, an elevator…
Time did indeed seem all funny, weirdly collapsed, a telescope snapped shut…
And then they were in their own flat, panting, Bill locking the door. Elaine with her purse in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Hello!” called Mariska Lutz, their sitter, from the next room. “Back already? Have a good time?”
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office
1959
“It makes me half-crazed to think of it,” Ryan said, voice trembling. He balled the report in his hands and threw it into a corner. “On New Year’s Eve! The cold-blooded treachery of it! They expected me to be there! It was an attack on me—but it was also an attack on the heart and soul of Rapture. Our most accomplished men and women were in that room, Bill, celebrating the new year. And at least six constables betrayed us! We’re lucky Pat Cavendish acted quickly—he shot most of the treasonous scum. But, by God, we must root out any other bad apples.”
He sounded bitter—but rational. Lately, Bill suspected that there was something twisted growing in Andrew Ryan…
Bill and Ryan sat alone in his office, Bill wishing someone were here to back him up. He had to say something Ryan wasn’t going to like.
Shifting in his chair, Bill rubbed his deeply bruised arm where the explosion had knocked the cart into him. His ears still rang a bit; Elaine was haunted by nightmares. “Mr. Ryan—this attack didn’t come out of the blue. It’s because you took out Fontaine. It’s a reaction to that, really. People are saying Rapture doesn’t mean what it used to—nationalizing a business… by force! It gave them the excuse to go a bit mad! That Atlas took the opportunity—lit the fuse of the whole bloody thing…”
Ryan snorted. “It’s not nationalization. I own most of Rapture anyway. I built it! I simply—acted for the best interests of the city! Atlas is just another babbling ‘Pravda,’ a tissue of lies he calls truth! If we let him take hold here, he’ll be another Stalin! The man wants to be dictator! If it’s war—why then so be it!”
“Mr. Ryan—I don’t think it’s a war we can win. It’s the math! Atlas just has too many of them rogue splicers. And too many rebels with him. We need to broker some kind of peace deal, guv—Rapture can’t take a revolution! This city is underwater, Mr. Ryan! It’s in the North Sea! It’s sitting on channels of hot lava! All of that is… oh, crikey, it’s volatile. We’re dying the death of a thousand cuts from leaks already—but one major leak in the wrong part of Hephaestus, and we could have a hell of an explosion. Suppose some of that icy water contacts the hot lava, in a pressurized area? The whole thing would go up! All this fighting risks exactly that kind of damage!”
Ryan looked at him, his gaze suddenly flat. His voice was flatter as he said, “And what do you suggest we offer them?” He closed his eyes and visibly shuddered. “Unions?”
“No, guv—a lot of these blokes worked for Fontaine. The others just want the ADAM. Crave it. Let’s hand over Fontaine Futuristics to Atlas’s lot. It’s not right to go against our principles—to nationalize, Mr. Ryan. We can take the high road, show ’em we stand for something! We can go back to the way we were and give up Fontaine Futuristics!”
“Give them…?” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “Bill—men died to take over the plasmids industry! They will not have died in vain.”
Bill didn’t believe for a moment that Ryan was concerned about who’d died in vain. That was just an excuse. Andrew Ryan wanted the plasmids industry. It was in his nature. He was a tycoon. And the plasmids industry was the biggest prize in this toy store.
“Ryan Industries owns Fontaine Futuristics now,” Ryan went on. “For the good of the city. In due time, I’ll break it up. But I’m not going to give it to that murdering parasite Atlas!”
“Mr. Ryan—we’ve got to stop this war. It’ll destroy us all… there’s no place to retreat to! If we won’t make peace with them—well, if that’s the case, I’ll have to submit my resignation from the council.”
Ryan looked at him sadly. “So you’re walking out on me too. The one man I trusted… betraying me!”
“I’ve got to show you how strongly I feel about this—we’ve got to make peace! It’s not just Atlas—suppose he makes a deal with Sofia Lamb? Her people are fanatics. Now she’s broken out, she’s twice as dangerous! Her mad little cult’ll have a go at us too! We have to stop this war, Mr. Ryan!”
Ryan slammed a fist onto the desk so hard the room echoed with it. “The war can be stopped by winning it! It can be won with superior might, Bill! We can do more and better splicing, use pheromones, keep control of our splicers… and have an unstoppable army of superhuman beings! We have the labs—oh yes, we’re short on ADAM now, it’s true.” He cracked his knuckles. “The Little Sisters we have left can’t produce enough ADAM. But there’s ADAM out there—in all those bodies. It lives on after the splicer dies! It can be harvested, Bill! And the Little Sisters are ideal for harvesting it. We can make this war work for us! War can be opportunity as well as catastrophe!”
Bill stared at him.
Ryan flapped his hand in dismissal. “It’s written on your face, Bill. You’ve left me. You’ve always been loyal. But I’m afraid you will be a disappointment—like so many others. So many who’ve turned their backs on the grand vision. So many who’ve betrayed Rapture. Who’ve soiled the glorious thing I’ve built with my two hands.” He shook his head. “The future of the world… betrayed!”
Bill knew he’d better turn this around, fast, if he hoped to ever see Elaine again. He could see that in Andrew Ryan’s eyes. Ryan had only to call Karlosky or one of his other men and give the order, and he’d be in a cell. They might have lost control of Persephone, but there was always a lockup to be found, or an air lock to be thrown out of.
He let out a long, slow breath—and then nodded. “You’re right, Mr. Ryan. I reckon I did lose faith. I’ll…” He licked his lips. Hoped he was playing this right. “I’ll give it a lot of thought. We’ll find a way.” He almost believed it himself.
Ryan leaned back in his chair and frowned, looking at him closely. But Bill could see Ryan wanted to believe him. He was a lonely man. He trusted few people.
“Very well, Bill. I need you. But you need to understand— we’re here now, in Rapture, and we’re committed. And we’re going to do this my way. I built Rapture. I’ll do whatever I have to—but I will not let the parasites tear down what I have built.”
Banker’s Row, near Apollo Square
1959
Oh bloody hell, thought Bill McDonagh, seeing Anna Culpepper standing near the largest of Rapture’s banks, up ahead. Bill was walking along beside Andrew Ryan that frightened morning—and he knew what Mr. Ryan would think when he heard her singing. He’d heard her, once, himself, warbling in her new role as protest songstress—amazed that she’d gone from taking part in the council to condemning Ryan Enterprises for the new economic depression gnawing at Rapture’s soul…
Anna was standing on the street corner, singing to the frantic crowd, acoustic guitar in her hands. The overhead lamp flashed a golden glint from her earrings and played across her curly black hair.
“While Rome burns, she fiddles,” Ryan growled, as Bill followed him down the passageway to within a few yards of the crowd surging around the First Bank of Rapture. Karlosky and two other bodyguards, big men in long coats, carrying Thompsons, were walking a couple of paces in front of Ryan. Two others followed. The memory of the New Year’s Eve attack was still fresh.
Each wall along the passageway had its line of muttering, scowling customers, most of them men in work clothes or rumpled suits, clutching paperwork and shifting from foot to foot as if they were in a long line for a urinal. A wispy-haired man in frayed seersucker was peering over the shoulders of the people in front of him, trying to see into the bank, shouting past a cupped hand through the open door. “Come on, come on, we want our money; stop stalling in there!”
There were murmurs when Ryan walked up. A few glared his way and elbowed one another, but no one wanted to be the first to confront him.
“You could shut the bank down, just temporary-like, Mr. Ryan,” Bill suggested in a whispered aside. “I mean—just for now, for a few days, till the hysteria’s over, and we can reassure people…”
“No,” Ryan said firmly as the bodyguards encircled him, facing outward, guns pointed at the ceiling—but ready to drop their gun muzzles on the crowd should it rush Andrew Ryan. “No, Bill—that would be interfering with the market. The fools have the right to withdraw their money.”
“But a run on banks, guv—could be disastrous…”
“It already is. And they’ll pay the price. The resulting market correction will send them scuttling for cover like rats from a hailstorm. I just wanted to know if it was true—see it with my own eyes. I can’t interfere.”
“We could try and talk to them right here…”
Ryan snorted. “Useless. I’ll address them on radio, try and talk sense. But there’s no use reasoning with a mob.”
Karlosky turned and spoke in low tones with Ryan, out the side of his mouth. “Let’s get you out of here, Mr. Ryan…”
“Yes, yes, we’ll go…” But Ryan lingered, staring at the gathering crowd, people stalking from the banks counting fistfuls of Rapture dollars as they went, more men rushing up the street, eager to withdraw their money. Word had gotten out that the war with Atlas and the splicers was going to destroy the banks, somehow—that they’d be targeted by the subversives. Bill wondered if Atlas himself had spread that rumor, deliberately sparking the run on the banks. A depression gave him a propaganda victory.
Ryan’s presence had quieted the crowd a little—the shouting and muttering had dropped to a droning murmur, and Bill could hear Anna Culpepper singing now. Something about Cohen—how “Ryan’s songbird” was really “Ryan’s stableboy.”
“I’ve heard about this Communist versifying,” Ryan said to Bill, with acid quietness, glowering at Culpepper. “Union songs, organizers singing ‘folk music’ about the workingman. As if a Red had even a passing acquaintance with working!”
Anna had spotted Ryan now—and Bill could see she was nervous. Her voice faltered as she looked at the armed bodyguards. But she licked her lips and resumed singing. Bill had to admire her courage.
“So Anna’s turned against me,” Ryan said. “I’d heard something of the sort. But to go this far… singing a musical score for a run on the banks! I suppose she thought she’d find sheep for Atlas’s flock here. Or perhaps she’s gone over to the other sheep—the Lamb cult…” He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here. I’ll see to it the little Red bird stops singing…”
Ryan Plasmids
1959
The little girl watched, big eyed, as the enormous metal man lumbered clankingly around the room, the sensors on its round metal head glowing. It was only a remote-controlled model, really—there was no man inside it. Brigid Tenenbaum puppeted the clanking caricature of a deep-sea diver around the room from a control panel overlooking the training area. She had to be careful not to misdirect the Big Daddy model—it could run over the little girl like a freight train.
Subject 13 was a small blond child in a pink pinafore, her large azure eyes fixed on the Big Daddy. It was all part of the conditioning process—the girl had been treated with a drug that made her more susceptible to bonding with the creature that would be her guardian in the dangerous urban wilderness Rapture had become.
“He’s big and strong,” the little girl chirped. “He’s funny too!”
“Yes,” Brigid said. “He is your big funny friend.”
“Can I play with him?” The child’s voice was a little fuzzy from the drug.
“Certainly…” Brigid made the Big Daddy model come to a sudden stop.
Then she moved a lever, causing its right arm to lift, its hand to outstretch—reaching out to the little girl.
There was something about the sight that stabbed Brigid Tenenbaum to the core…
Fontaine Futuristics 1958
“Turns out that report about the Little Sisters Orphanage was—” Sullivan paused, shaking his head sadly. “Well—it was all true.”
They stood outside the “nursery,” looking through the window in the door. A little bare-footed, dark-haired girl in a tattered frock was huddled on a bed, in a corner, staring into space and sucking her thumb.
Ryan let out a long, slow breath. “She’s got a sea slug in her—and she’s producing ADAM?”
“Yep. Apparently, the slugs didn’t produce the stuff fast enough. And using the girls worked to increase the production.” The disgust dripped from Sullivan’s voice.
“Indeed. You’ve confirmed this with Suchong?”
“Yes sir. You want to ask him, we’ve got him under house arrest, just down the hall.” He gave out a sickly grin. “Poetic justice. They’re locked up together, him and Tenenbaum, in one of the rooms they had the kids in.”
“I’ll have a word with them.” Ryan turned away from the door.
“Mr. Ryan?”
Ryan looked at him, frowning. “Yes?”
“What about the kids locked up in there? Do we let ’em out?”
“They are, I believe, actually orphans, yes?”
“Uh—yeah. One way or another.”
“Orphans will need somewhere to stay. Perhaps when we find another way to… to produce ADAM efficiently, we’ll arrange for them to be… adopted. Until then…” He shrugged. “They’re better off here.”
Ryan could see that Sullivan was disappointed by that response. “What do you want from me, Sullivan? These kids will be of use. In time… Well, we’ll see. Do you think we could proceed with our inspection now—Chief?”
“Sure.” Sullivan avoided his eyes. His voice was hoarse. “This way, Mr. Ryan. They’re down the hall…”
Just two doors down, Sullivan unlocked a nearly identical cell. When Sullivan opened the door, Ryan had to step back from the reek of an overflowing chamber pot in the corner of the nursery. Toys were scattered on the floor along with tin plates of half-eaten food.
Brigid Tenenbaum was huddled on the cot in the corner, just like the little girl in the previous cell, but with a buttoned lab coat instead of a frock. She was gnawing a knuckle and the expression on her face was the same as the child’s.
Suchong stood with his back to the door, writing on the wall with crayon in Korean ideograms. He had covered several square yards with the enigmatic writing.
“Suchong!” Ryan barked.
Dr. Yi Suchong turned to Ryan—and he saw that one of the lenses of Suchong’s glasses had been knocked out. There was a purplish mark across that side of his face, and his lip was split.
“Doctor Suchong tried to escape when we raided the place,” Sullivan explained blandly. “Had to crack him one with a truncheon.”
Suchong bowed. “Suchong sorry about writing on walls. A little dissertation. No paper to write on.”
“And what’s the dissertation on?” Ryan asked, nostrils quivering from the stench of the chamber pot.
“Accumulation of harvestable ADAM in splicers,” Suchong said. “Possible methods of extraction.”
“I see. Would you two like to be released from these… quarters?”
Tenenbaum sat up, still gnawing her knuckle, looking at him attentively. Suchong only bowed.
“Then,” Ryan went on, “I’m going to need a loyalty oath. And the understanding that breaking that oath is agreeing to execution. We are in extreme times. Extreme measures are necessary.”
“And…” Tenenbaum’s voice came in a croak. “The Little Sisters?”
Suchong frowned and shot her a warning look.
Ryan shrugged. “They will continue here—we need the… the commodity. In time we’ll find some other way. But it seems you and Fontaine left us with this one for now… And, after all, the children have nowhere to go.”
Sullivan muttered something inaudible. Ryan looked at him. “Something to say, Chief?”
“Oh—no, Mr. Ryan.”
“Very good. Set a guard on this place—but let these two go to their previous quarters and clean up. And see that Suchong gets new glasses.”
Fort Frolic, Poseidon Plaza 1958
Stepping out into Poseidon Plaza, Diane McClintock realized she felt no thrill—felt nothing at all—about winning so much money in the Sir Prize Games of Chance Casino.
She fished in her purse for cigarettes, and it took some looking because her purse was stuffed with the Rapture dollars she’d won, quite improbably, on the higher-priced slot machines. She’d had an amazing run of luck, and it meant nothing to her. It felt like mockery somehow. She couldn’t spend the money on Park Avenue, in New York, where she longed to be.
She lit a cigarette, lingering outside the casino, reluctant to go home. The whirring slots and the agitated people wandering from one game to the next—they were better than no companions. She knew she could spend time with one of Andrew’s friends. But they were hard to bear, after all that’d happened…
“Miss?” It was a woman in a blue dress, a blue velvet cap; she had mousy brown hair, large dark eyes. She clutched a handbag to her. “Miss, my name’s Margie. I was wondering… if you could spare us a donation?”
“Who’s us?” Diane asked, blowing smoke at the ornate ceiling. “You seem to be out here alone. Need money for kids at home?”
“No, I… no. I’m with Atlas’s people…”
“Atlas! I’ve heard about him. Also heard about Robin Hood. I don’t believe in him either.”
“Oh Atlas is real, ma’am…
“Yeah? What’s he like? A good man?”
“Oh yes. I trust him, even more than Doctor…” She broke off, glancing around.
Diane smiled. “More than Doctor Lamb? If that’s who you were going to mention, I don’t blame you for clamming up, Margie. Got traded from one radical ball team to another, huh?”
“I guess you could say that. When she got arrested, I needed someone to… it doesn’t matter. What’s important is, we’re collecting money to help the poor around Rapture. Atlas, he buys canned goods and stuff with it, hands it out…”
Diane snorted. “All this talk of a poor underclass around Rapture. Exaggerated, from what I hear.”
The girl shook her head. “I was there! I had to… to do some pretty awful things. You know. Just to keep going.”
“Really? Is it that bad? There wasn’t any other kind of, um, work?”
“No ma’am.”
“Andrew says there’s plenty of…” Diane let it trail off, seeing the fear on the girl’s face. “Anyway. Donations. Sure—here.” She took a wad of cash from her purse and handed it over. “More power to anyone who pisses off Andrew. But don’t tell anyone it came from me.”
“Oh—thank you!” Margie put the money in her handbag, took out a leaflet. “Read this—it’ll tell all about him…” And then she hurried off into the shadows.
Diane looked at the leaflet’s heading.
Diane smiled, imagining Andrew Ryan’s reaction to seeing the leaflet. She crumpled it up and threw it away. But the words loitered in her mind.
Yes, someone cares…
Apollo Square 1958
“I wish Ryan would take down that fucking gallows,” Bill McDonagh said as he and Wallace walked by, grimacing at the reek of the dangling corpses. Four bloated, purple-faced bodies, turning slowly in four nooses. Looked like new ones, since last time. It was bloody depressing.
Bill was going to be glad to get his meeting with Sullivan over and hurry home to Elaine and Sophie tonight. A man didn’t feel much like taking a turn in Rapture with this kind of bleakness setting the black dog to snapping at his heels.
“What I can’t figure is,” said Roland Wallace, as he and Bill walked across the trash-strewn floor of Apollo Square, “how Fontaine got all those splicers there to wait for the constables? They’re too loony to recruit—aren’t they?”
Bill chuckled grimly. “You forget, mate, those buggers’ll do anything for ADAM.”
Wallace grunted. “You have a point. So Fontaine bribed them with ADAM. Show up there, take on whoever comes—and the survivors get plenty more…”
“That’s ’ow I figure it, right enough… Here, what’s all this then?”
A big crowd was gathered in front of Artemis Suites—where a man stood on the steps, addressing them.
“Must be that fellow calls himself Atlas,” Wallace said, his voice hushed.
“Oh right—I’ve seen the pamphlets.”
“Started with pirate-radio messages, got people all worked up. Followers leaving graffiti about…” Curious, Bill and Wallace paused on the outskirts of the crowd to listen to Atlas.
At least seventy-five people—most of them seeming to be still human, ostensibly, or not yet far into ADAM—were gathered around this Atlas. He wore maintenance workers’ coveralls. Just one of the people. The man sounded vaguely familiar—but looking closer, Bill decided he didn’t know him. Couldn’t have forgotten a bloke like that, almost movie-star handsome with his lush golden-brown hair and cleft chin.
“Now back home in Dublin we had a saying,” bellowed Atlas, in something like an Irish brogue. “May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat! Isn’t that what’s happened to us, here? You bet it is, boyo! We’ve been eaten alive, twice! First by Rapture and then by Ryan! There’s no craik here, no fun for the workingman, for that is reserved for the swells and their spoiled bettys up in Olympus Heights! Come and start life anew in Rapture, he said! But that was the cat talking to the mouse and the devil talking through the cat!”
Hoots of agreement from the crowd.
“Aye!” Atlas went on, his voice carrying over all Apollo Square. “We have been lied to, and lied to again! They told us it was all free market here—but what happens? Ryan takes over Fontaine Futuristics! Takes it by force, he does! He starts in with curfews and blockades—turns the place into a police state!”
An approving roar at that. Ryan’s hypocrisy hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“We were lured here!” Atlas bellowed. “Lured from a slum in Queens or Dublin or Shanghai or London—to a smaller slum under frigid water! Moving up, we are, right? Moving from living four in a room to living twenty in a room! It’s theft—theft of our future, boyo! Theft of our hope! But there is another way—a way to real hope! A share-the-wealth program! Why should them hypocrites be allowed to accumulate a hundred times, two hundred times, what a workingman earns—when they get it ’cause of our hard work! We work while they sit up there in their penthouses drinking champagne and puffing cigars—imported cigars we ain’t allowed to have! Why shouldn’t every family be given a basic allowance—a thousand, two thousand Rapture dollars, to live on!” Roars of approval at that. His voice rose, and rose again, with every word. “Why should the wealth of Rapture belong only to a greedy few? Now tell me THAT!”
Fists popped up—but they were shaking in agreement. Someone started chanting. “Atlas, Atlas!”
And all the crowd took it up. “Atlas, Atlas, Atlas!”
Atlas had to thunder the words out to be heard over the rising chant. “And if it’s got to come to a fight—armed with ADAM and armed with guns—then so be it!”
“Atlas, Atlas, Atlas, Atlas!”
“Like he’s been taking notes from Sofia Lamb,” Bill said in a low aside to Roland Wallace. “But he’s got his own style. More the workingman’s daddy…”
“Why—he’s Huey P. Long!” Wallace said.
“What, that bloke from Louisiana?”
“No—I mean, he’s borrowing from Long’s playbook. The Kingfish they called him, down there in Baton Rouge, king of the southern rabble-rousers. The Kingfish talked exactly like this. Except for the Irish accent. And Atlas tossed in a little Bolshevism…”
Bill shook his head, puzzling over it. “Strange I ’aven’t seen this bloke Atlas before. Been ’ere for years, thought I’d seen every wanker in this big leaky tank of a town.”
Wallace gave him a poke in the ribs with an elbow. “Bill—look up there!”
Bill looked at the ceiling, saw spider splicers creeping across it upside down, coming from three directions—converging right above him and Wallace.
He looked around the edges of the square and saw the telekinetic splicer who’d killed Greavy. She was watching from the wall near the entrance to Artemis Suites.
“They’re closing in on us, Bill.”
“Right; we’ll take the better part of valor and back off—fast. Come on, mate!”
They hurried back the way they’d come. They’d go the long way, through the checkpoint—they both had their ID cards—and then through the transparent passages between buildings to another bathysphere entrance to get where they were going. Or they wouldn’t get there at all.
The splicers didn’t seem intent on pursuing them out of Apollo Square. Which confirmed Bill’s suspicion that they were somehow working for Atlas. They were remaining as his bodyguards…
A word popped into Bill’s mind as they hurried through the passage, striding under a passing pod of dolphins. It was a simple, one-syllable word, summing up what he felt was coming from the inevitable confrontation between this new Kingfish and Andrew Ryan. War.
More killing. More war. More danger for Elaine and Sophie.
Something had to be done to stop it. Somehow it had to be defused…
A frightening notion came to him. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But it lingered, whispering to him…
Ryan Industries / Fontaine Futuristics 1958
“I really must get around to taking that sign down,” Ryan said as he and Karlosky walked under the words Fontaine Futuristics. “It’s Ryan Plasmids now.”
They passed through the double doors and walked across the polished floors, past the sculpture of Atlas holding up the world.
He glanced at his watch. He was half an hour behind time—the lights would dim for evening soon. The message from Suchong had been urgent: a crisis in ADAM production…
Ryan ignored the lab workers hurrying past, clipboards in hand, and hurried up the stairs, Karlosky close beside him. He rarely worried about splicers or assassins with Karlosky around—the man had eyes in the back of his head. He wondered if plasmids could make that literally possible.
They went through the sterilization air locks to find Suchong and Tenenbaum in a steamy lab, working over a sea slug in a bubbling tank. Frowning in concentration, Tenenbaum was using a pipette to draw an orange fluid from the sea slug’s horny tail. Ryan noticed that her hair didn’t seem to have been washed in days and her lab coat was splashed with stains, her nails black. There were blue circles under her eyes.
Suchong glanced up as they entered and gave them each a short bow. Tenenbaum withdrew the pipette and released its contents into a test tube. Ryan stepped closer to inspect the sea slug—the creature quivered in its bath of seawater, but otherwise seemed almost lifeless.
Ryan pointed at the sea slug. “Surely that’s not the last one?”
Suchong sighed. “We have a few others in a suspension. But they are almost gone. The fighting of the raid, all the chaos—we lost them. Damage to the tanks. If only you’d warned us…”
“Couldn’t risk that. You haven’t exactly earned my trust, Suchong, working for Fontaine.”
Suchong inclined his head in something that passed for regret. “Ah. Suchong very sorry. Grave mistake to work for Fontaine. I should have known—the intelligent man work for men with more guns. Always the better policy. I will not make that mistake again. You have my loyalty, Mr. Ryan.”
“Do I? We’ll see. Well, you sent for me and I can see the problem for myself. No sea slugs, no ADAM. Any suggestions, Doctor? What are we to do for ADAM? We have all these lunatic ADAM addicts running about… a whole industry could collapse. I’ve taken over the plasmids business—built the Hall of the Future to extol them. But if we run out of them—it’s all for nothing.”
Tenenbaum looked up from the test tube. “There is a way, Mr. Ryan. Until we can learn to breed more slugs…”
“And that is?”
“Many men are dying and dead in Rapture. But before they die, there is a… how would you say it, a stage in their metabolism of plasmids… in which they create a refined ADAM inside them. It is deposited in the torso. And we believe…”
She looked at Suchong, who nodded at Ryan. “Yes. It can be harvested. From the dead.”
Karlosky grunted and shook his head. But said nothing. Ryan glanced at him. It was hard to startle Karlosky, but it seemed they’d done it.
Ryan looked back at the sea slug. “You can get ADAM from the dead?”
Suchong removed his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “Yes. But there is a certain way to do this—the ADAM must be sensed, and drawn up into the syringe properly—and correctly transported. Little Sisters are best suited for that process…”
Tenenbaum shook her head. “But the girls are already… damaged. If we sent them to do the harvesting—who will protect them? They are…” She glanced at Ryan, then quickly away. “They are worth a lot of money. They will not trust ordinary guards… and we cannot trust ordinary men with them.”
“So for that,” Suchong said, “we have developed hybrids, our cyborg sea workers. Gil Alexander has made great progress with the Alpha Series—Augustus Sinclair has, ah, leased out this Johnny Topside from Persephone. Subject Delta—he is bonded with the girl we took from the Lamb woman. Eleanor Lamb.”
“Bonded?” Ryan asked, not sure he liked the sound of it.
“The girls are to be bonded to the Alpha creatures. They are to be… surrogate fathers. Little ones call them big daddies. Most charming. The girls will be conditioned to work closely with them.”
Tenenbaum made a small sound of acknowledgment. “They do seem to need something, some symbol of adulthood they can feel comfortable with…”
The conversation was getting ever more peculiar. Ryan wasn’t sure he understood what they were planning.
But he knew a solution was needed. And he liked the neatness of harvesting ADAM from the dead. It closed the circle, somehow: an unexpected link in the Great Chain.
“What exactly will you need from me?” he asked, finally.
Near Fighting McDonagh’s Bar 1958
This won’t look too good, Sullivan thought. Me being in charge of law enforcement in Rapture—and being the drunkest son of a bitch in Rapture tonight…
He stood outside McDonagh’s tavern, swaying, wondering how late it was. Long after midnight—lights had already been turned down. Couldn’t even make out his watch.
How much money had he lost at the card table, in the back room? Four hundred Rapture dollars at least. Poker. His downfall. Shouldn’t have drunk so much. Might’ve folded some of those hands before they got expensive. Maybe Shouldn’t have gotten in the game…
But his old gambling bugaboo was back—and with a vengeance. Only way he could get his mind off the mess that Rapture was becoming—and his failure to keep the splicers at bay. He was sure Ryan was starting to look at him like he was a useless old drunk.
Maybe he needed to get married. Get married again, a nice warm wife to keep him in line.
He shuddered. A wife. How do guys like McDonagh do it?
He sighed and started off toward the stairs. He just had his hand on the metal door to the ramp when he heard a boom from behind it and a keen whistling sound.
Rogue splicers.
The corridor was twisting around from the booze and his mouth was paper dry. Too drunk to deal with this. “Gotta get backup…” He licked his lips and put his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket. But then again—he was top cop. Had to show it. “Fuck backup.”
He drew his gun, opened the door, took two steps through—and was slammed in the chest by the force of a Sonic Boom plasmid. The sonic shock wave made him stagger back painfully hard against the doorframe. A leering, goggle-eyed splicer in a ragged T-shirt was crouched behind a tumble of crates. “Gotcha big-badge! Or should I say big ass!” He pointed his hand to fire off another Sonic Boom, but Sullivan, sobering fast, slipped back through the door, taking cover to one side—and a cackling made him look up, through the doorway, to see a female splicer clinging flylike to the ceiling, wearing only yellowed underwear and a brassiere, her long dirty hair hanging down like Spanish moss. She was pointing one grimy hand down at the Sonic Boomer and twirling her finger—a whistling sound became a windy roaring and a small cyclone appeared, whirling bits of trash, picking up the empty crates to smash them against the metal walls. “Ha ha haaaa!” she cackled. “Care to go for a spin!”
The Sonic Boomer yelled and tried to scramble clear, but the expanding Cyclone Trap plasmid caught him, jerked him off his feet, spun him like a ragdoll in the air—and dropped him with a thump. He yelled in outrage as the spider splicer giggled.
Completely out of their gourds, Sullivan thought.
“Two plasmids from one lunatic,” Sullivan muttered, trying to get a bead on her in the dim corridor with his gun. She suddenly dropped down, landing catlike, and spun to face him. “Puppet cop, cop it, pup! That’s you!” She made a gesture, and suddenly a second splicer appeared, almost her twin, in front of her and to one side. Sullivan fired convulsively—and the bullet simply passed through the flickering image.
A third plasmid. “Target dummy.”
She cackled again—and then looked startled, her eyes widening. She looked down to see a curved fish-gutting knife blade protruding under her breastbone, spurting blood. She toppled forward, dying, and the Sonic Boomer who’d stabbed her from behind leered… and gestured—Wham—Sullivan was flung to skid down the ramp on his back…
Dazed, he lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, gasping for air—then he sat up… and looked through the open door, about four paces off at what he thought was the splicer, sneaking around in the shadows.
Sullivan got up, dusted himself off, put his gun in his pocket, and said, “Screw this.”
He turned and walked back to the bar.
Hall of the Future 1958
Diane McClintock was on one of her long, solitary walks through Rapture. She knew it was dangerous. She had a gun in her purse.
She had four cocktails in her, too, and she didn’t much care about the danger. She was heading somewhere, in a roundabout way. Pauper’s Drop. But she couldn’t bring herself to go there directly. She was afraid Andrew might be watching her, through the cameras; through his agents. She had to take the roundabout route so he’d never guess she was hoping to get a close look at the man they called Atlas…
She strolled through the museum, the new Hall of the Future, with its videotaped displays glorifying plasmids—all quite ironic, considering some of the horrors plasmids had brought.
She passed onward. Footsteps echoing, she wandered through the livid colored light of Rapture; she rambled past pistons pumping mysteriously in wall niches, past the steaming pool of the baths, under iridescent panes of crystal, through high-ceilinged atriums of brass and gold and chrome, vast chambers that seemed as grandiose as any palace ballroom. A palace, that’s what Rapture seemed to her, an ornate palace of Ryanium and glass, swallowed by the sea—which was ever so slowly digesting it.
And sometimes it seemed to Diane that everyone in Rapture had already died. That they were all ghosts—the ghosts of royalty and servants. She remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s sunken city. She’d read all of Poe in trying to educate herself to impress Andrew and the others. Again and again she’d returned to The City in the Sea. She remembered Poe’s lines—some seemed especially apt now…
Resignedly beneath the sky.
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
She sighed, and she walked onward, her head throbbing. Still half-drunk.
Acting as if she went toward Pauper’s Drop on a whim, she passed through the transparent corridor, and the metal door. Down a flight of steps…
Sullen-eyed tramps lolled against the walls of the buildings, under intricate scrawls of graffiti. They lay about smoking, drinking, talking—and looking at her with an unsettling interest.
Maybe it was time to take refuge in the Fishbowl Café. It looked civilized enough.
She hurried into the café, sat in a booth by the dusty window, and ordered coffee from the frowzy, gum-chewing waitress who already had the pot in her hand. “Sure, honey,” the waitress said, giving her brown curls a toss. “You want some pie? It’s seapalm pie, but they put a lotta sugar in it, not too bad…”
“No, thank you,” Diane murmured, wondering if she could ask this woman about Atlas…
The waitress bustled off to deal with a thuggish-looking man at the other end of the row of booths.
Diane McClintock sipped coffee, looking out the window, hoping the caffeine would stop the thudding in her head.
Risky being here. She could easily fall into the hands of rogue splicers. But her depression had been whispering to her lately, It might be better if they got you…
Still, Rapture was in a time of relative peace, with Fontaine dead. She hoped it would last.
Atlas was said to come to Pauper’s Drop pretty regularly. He moved about undercover—he was “wanted for questioning” by Sullivan’s bunch. He was on the track to end up in Persephone for sure.
Why am I here? she wondered. But she knew. She wanted to see this man for herself. Her encounter with Margie outside Sir Prize, the woman’s sincerity, had planted a seed.
Andrew would hate her for coming. But that was part of why she was here. Atlas was a man with something Andrew Ryan was missing—a real heart.
She was startled from her fumination by a commotion outside. Several men with shotguns were shouting at the crowd of unemployed. They seemed to be getting them organized into a line. To her surprise, the ragtag crowd passively lined up…
Then a man came striding onto the scene, followed by several others carrying large baskets. The man in the lead somehow drew all eyes to himself. He was a handsome figure of a man with a fine head of hair, a mustache, a cleft chin, and broad shoulders. He dressed like a workingman—with a white shirt, sleeves rolled up; suspenders; simple work trousers; boots. But he carried himself like a man in charge. Yet there was no harsh edge of authority about him. His expression was kindly, compassionate, as he took a basket from the man behind him, began quietly passing out things to the people in line. The first one, a woman with gray-streaked hair and a lined face, a tattered frock, took a package, and Diane could read the woman’s trembling lips: “Thank you. Oh thank you…”
He spoke briefly to her, patted her arm, and then passed on to the next in line, personally handing out a pair of shoes; a sack that seemed to brim with canned goods.
Could this really be Atlas?
The waitress came to Diane’s tables, asked in a bored voice, “You want some more of what passes fer coffee around here, honey, or what?”
“What I’d really like…” Diane took a ten-dollar bill—with Ryan’s picture on it—and tucked it into the woman’s apron pocket. “Is to know if that man out there is who I think it is…”
The waitress looked around nervously, looked into her apron pocket, then nodded. With a lowered voice she said, “Him… he calls himself Atlas. Only t’ing I know: the lady lives down the hall from me wouldn’t have nothing to eat, weren’t for him. He’s helping people, that one. Gives out free stuff every week. Talks about a new order.”
The waitress hurried off, and Diane turned to stare out the window at the man called Atlas. He was gentle but powerful— the kind of man she truly wanted to meet…
She hesitated. Did she dare go out and talk to Atlas? Suppose Andrew were having her watched?
It was too late. There was shouting, an alarm on the concourse outside the café—constables were coming. Atlas waved at his charges—and then hurried off around the corner. Her chance was gone.
But she made up her mind. One way or another, she would meet this man…
She would stand face-to-face with Atlas.
Fort Frolic Shooting Gallery 1958
They were alone in the long, narrow shooting gallery, firing at man-shaped targets. The air smelled of gunsmoke; brass littered the floor. Bill stood just behind his wife, looking over her shoulder. “That’s it, love—take aim and shoot ’im right between the eyes.”
Elaine winced and lowered the revolver. “Do you have to put it that way, Bill? Between the eyes? It’s just a paper target…”
Bill McDonagh grinned ruefully. “Sorry, darlin’, but—you said you wanted this for self-defense! And those rogue splicers don’t play around—” He put his hand on her shoulder and added more gently, “If you’re going to defend yourself against them, you’ve got to shoot to kill. I know it’s bloody awful. It’s been hard for me to shoot at these blokes too…”
Elaine took a deep breath, raised the gun at the end of her arm, clasped it with both hands, and aimed at the silhouette at the other end of the shooting gallery.
She grimaced and squeezed the trigger, blinking as the gun went crack.
Bill sighed. She missed the target completely. “Right. This time, let out a long breath before you fire, squeeze the trigger gently, like, and—”
“Oh Bill…” Elaine lowered the gun, her lips quivering, eyes welling with tears. “This is so horrible. Having to… Mr. Ryan never said it’d be like this…”
Bill glanced at the door to see if anyone was listening. They seemed to be alone. But you never knew for sure anymore…
“Bill… it’s just… I can’t raise Sophie here, in a place where I have to…”
He put his arm around her. “I know, love. I know.”
She put her face on his shoulder and wept. “I want to leave Rapture…” she whispered.
“Elaine… darlin’… got to be careful where you talk like that…” He licked his lips, thinking, Listen to me. Turning into a craven bastard. “One thing at a time, love. Thing is—Fontaine’s gone but… word is, Atlas is making some kind of deal with the rogue splicers. He’s got a lot of ADAM stored up, somewhere. Got ’em workin’ for him. And he’s going to make some kind of move—he’s not just handing out food and pamphlets, love. All of us on this side of the fence—we’re going to have to defend ourselves. It’s more dangerous out there than ever…”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with a kerchief she took from his coat pocket. She took a deep breath and then nodded. “Sure, okay, Bill. I just hope you’re right about who we’ve got to shoot at.” She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “Far as I can tell—they might come at us from either side of the fence.” She cocked the gun. “I guess I’d better… be ready for anything.”
Elaine raised the gun and took aim at the paper outline. She let out a long, slow breath, centered the gunsights on the target’s head, and squeezed the trigger.
Bill McDonagh’s Flat 1958
It was Christmas Eve. Bill, Karlosky, and Redgrave sat around a card table in Bill’s living room, playing poker in the light from the Christmas tree. Two bottles, one nearly empty, stood beside a plate littered with cookie crumbs. Bill was beginning to feel he’d drunk too much. Sometimes the cards in his hand seemed to recede into the distance, and the room swiveled in his peripheral vision.
“Wonder if this Atlas is going to be the problem Mr. Ryan thinks,” Redgrave said, frowning over his cards. “All we got is rumors. That he’s working with the splicers, givin’ ’em ADAM. Where’s he get all that ADAM?”
“A lot of Fontaine’s supply seems to’ve done a vanishing act,” Bill said, trying to see his own cards. Were those diamonds or hearts? “When they raided his place—most of the stuff was gone. Ryan’s had Suchong hard at it making new stuff. Sometimes I wish he’d just let ’em…” He didn’t finish saying he wished plasmids would run out completely. Karlosky might report that to Ryan. And Ryan was not in a mood to have his policies questioned.
Redgrave raised the pot, Bill folded, and Karlosky called. Redgrave showed three aces.
Karlosky scowled at Constable Redgrave and threw down his cards. “You black bastard; you cheat me again!”
The black cop chuckled and scooped up the poker chips. “I beat you, that’s what I do, I beat you like an old rug…”
“Bah! Black son of a bitch!”
Shuffling the cards, Bill looked at Redgrave to see how he took Karlosky’s invective.
To his relief, he saw Redgrave looking gleeful, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he stacked his new chips. “Not surprised an ignorant Cossack son of a bitch like you can’t play poker… But a Russian not being able to hold his drink? That’s sad, man!”
“What!” Karlosky pretended to tremble with rage. “Not hold drink!”
He grabbed the unlabeled bottle—he had made the vodka himself from potatoes raised in Rapture hydroponics—and poured the transparent fluid into their glasses, slopping almost as much on the table. “Now! We see who can drink! A black bastard or a real man! Bill—you drink too!”
“Nah, I’m not a real man; I’m a married man! My wife’ll kick me ass if I come to bed any more bladdered’n I am…” He’d had three shots of the crude vodka—more than enough.
“He’s right about that!” Elaine said, scowling theatrically from the doorway to the bedroom. “I’ll kick him right out of bed!” But she laughed.
Bill watched as Elaine went to adjust an ornament on the Christmas tree, yawning in her terrycloth robe. It was a curious thing how he could look at his wife with her hair rumpled, her face without makeup, her feet bare under a terrycloth robe that was far from enticing boudoir wear, and still feel a deep desire for her. It wasn’t the vodka—he often felt that way seeing her about the flat.
“Is nice Christmas tree!” Karlosky said, toasting her.
The small Christmas tree was made out of wire and green paper, with a few colored lights—they were the only Christmas decoration Ryan allowed. No stars, no angels, no wise men, no baby Jesus. “A secular Christmas is a merry Christmas!” went the poster, put up in Apollo Square right before the holiday. The poster showed a winking dad dropping a Bible into a trashcan with one hand while handing his little girl a teddy bear with the other.
“Don’t stay up too late with these drunken louts, Bill!” Elaine said, rubbing her eyes, putting on a frown again.
“Ha!” Karlosky said, punching Redgrave playfully in the shoulder. “His wife whips him like little boy, eh!”
Bill laughed, shaking his head. “Sorry, love. We’re about done playing cards.”
Her look of mock disapproval vanished and she winked. “No, you guys go on and play your cards! Have fun. I just came out to tell you not to be too loud so you don’t wake up Sophie.”
Redgrave turned her a bright smile. “Ma’am, thank you for havin’ me to Christmas Eve supper. Means a lot to me!” He raised his glass to her.
“Glad you could be here, Constable Redgrave. Goodnight.”
“Da!” Karlosky said. “Happy holiday, Mrs.!” He turned fiercely to Redgrave. “Now—drink up, you black bastard!”
Redgrave laughed, and they drank their vodka, clinking their glasses together when they were done.
“Okeydokey!” Karlosky said, lowering his voice as Elaine went to bed, “we will play more cards, you lose money to me—and we see if you really can drink… black bastard!”
“Cossack devil! Pour me another!”
Kashmir Restaurant 1958
On New Year’s Eve, Bill McDonagh sat with his wife at a corner table of the luxurious restaurant, near the wall-high window looking out into the churning depths of the sea. They had taken off their silvery party masks and set them on the table next to the champagne bottle.
He glanced out the window. The illuminated skyscraper-style buildings, seen through a hundred yards of rippling seawater, seemed to shimmy to the music: a Count Basie swing number.
Bill winked at Elaine, and she returned him a strained smile. She was pretty in her pearl-trimmed, low-cut white gown, but, despite all the care she’d taken, she still looked a bit haggard. Elaine didn’t sleep well anymore. None of them did. Lately, a bloke trying to sleep in Rapture was always unconsciously listening for an alarm to go off or the sounds of a security bot taking on a rogue splicer.
It was chilly near the window. The tuxedo wasn’t much protection against the cold. But he didn’t want to sit any closer to the entourage waiting for Ryan to show up: a group at several tables near the fountain. Sander Cohen was wearing a feathery mask and babbling madly away at a bored-looking Silas Cobb. Diane McClintock, wearing a gold party mask edged in diamonds, sat stiffly at a small table reserved for her and Ryan—she sat there alone, watching the door and muttering into her tape recorder. Ryan had gone on an errand to Hephaestus and was going to give some kind of New Year’s address over the radio.
“Well, love…” Bill said, toasting his wife with the champagne glass. Trying to pretend he was enjoying himself. “In just a few minutes it’ll be 1959…”
Elaine McDonagh nodded slowly and forced another weak smile. The fear flared in her eyes, then dutifully hid itself again. She gave him the brave look that always tore at his heart. “It is! It’s almost New Year’s, Bill…” She looked at the other tables, filled with revelers in jeweled masquerade costumes and masks. They were waving noisemakers, laughing, talking loudly over the music, doing their best to celebrate. Her gaze took in the bunting, the banners, the circular hot-pink neon sign, specially made up for the party: Happy New Year 1959. “It’s funny, Bill—all these years down here… Sophie growing up without seeing the sun… now the war… and it’s almost 1959… Time passes all funny in Rapture, doesn’t it? It’s slow and fast both…”
Bill nodded. Elaine was increasingly homesick, and scared. But he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man who had taken him out of the loo and made him a real engineer. Sure, Ryan was giving way to hypocrisy—but he was only human. And maybe it was true that Rapture had to go through this transition period before getting back on track. They just had to clear out the Atlas types, the worst of the splicers, and Lamb’s followers.
He noticed Elaine staring around at the armed men, the constables standing guard near the walls. The guards weren’t wearing masquerade masks. Scores of gunmen, there to protect this exclusive gathering from rogue splicers.
Constable was the one job you could stand a good chance of getting, if you were out of work in Rapture—because the mortality rate for constables was so high.
Bill was glad to see Brenda bringing each constable a flute of champagne on a tray to get ready for midnight. Made it seem more festive.
A gun in one hand, a champagne glass in the other, he thought ruefully. That’s Rapture.
He had a pistol under his coat; Elaine had one in her pearl-beaded white purse.
“Do you think Sophie’s all right?” Elaine asked, toying with her glass, looking anxiously at the clock.
“Sure, she’ll be fine.”
“Bill, I want to go home as soon as we get past New Year’s Eve. Like at twelve-oh-five, okay? I don’t like to leave Sophie with the sitter long in this place… I don’t know if Mariska can use a gun, really. I mean, I left her one, but…”
“Don’t worry; we’ll leave a few minutes after midnight, love.”
The Count Basie song finished, and Duke Ellington started. Wearing their gawdy party masks, a half dozen couples were dancing in a cleared space between the tables, forced smiles held stiffly on their faces.
Bill wondered what music the rest of the world was listening to. Music in Rapture had to be outdated. There were rumors about something called rock ’n’ roll.
Trying to change Elaine’s mood, he took her hand, pulled her to her feet, got her dancing to the Duke Ellington number. They used to love going dancing together in New York…
Then the song stopped, simply cut off in midtune, and the countdown started, led by a giddy Sander Cohen: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”
Bill pulled Elaine close for the midnight kiss…
That’s when the explosion came. The doors exploded inward, knocking three constables like rag dolls into the center of the room. Bill shoved their table over for partial cover, pushed Elaine to the ground behind the tabletop, and covered her with his body. Machine-gun rounds ricocheted from the bulletproof windows to slam through tuxedos, to wound squealing women in their glittering finery. Elaine was screaming something about Sophie. Another bomb flew into the room and detonated—body parts spun overhead, spraying blood. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing as machine-gun bullets raked the room—as if the gunfire were part of the New Year’s Eve revelry. Screams… More gunshots…
Faces that seemed frozen, mocking: the invading splicers were wearing masquerade-party masks—domino masks, feathered masks, golden masks…
Andrew Ryan’s voice came from the public address, at that moment, as he made his New Year’s speech…
“Good evening, my friends. I hope you are enjoying your New Year’s Eve celebration; it has been a year of trials for us all. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city…”
Bill peered around the edge of the table, saw a splicer in a black mask yelling, “Long live Atlas!”
Another, running through the cloud of smoke at the shattered doors, bellowed: “Death to Ryan!”
“…It was your strength of will that brought you here, and with that strength you shall rebuild. And so, Andrew Ryan offers you a toast. To Rapture, 1959. May it be our finest year.”
“Diane!” Elaine shouted.
Bill turned to see Diane McClintock crawling past on her hands and knees, dazed face bloodied, her green dress had become red-stained rags. “Diane—get down!” he called.
Beyond her, some of the constables were ducking behind the bar—and grinning. Bill realized that some of them had been in on this. A security bot went whistling by overhead, firing at a thuggish splicer cartwheeling into the room. A nitro splicer in a fur-fringed white mask was throwing another bomb, which blew up on a table under which three men in tuxes crouched—their tuxedos and their flesh mingled wetly in the blast.
Bill hoped to God the rogue splicers had the common sense not to throw too many bombs near the windows. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, but they could only take so much.
“Come on, Elaine, we’re off!” he said gruffly, trying to get some steel into her spine. “And bring your purse.”
He tugged out his pistol, the two of them scrambling like doughboys under barbed wire till they were under one of the few tables still standing. A bleeding thuggish splicer was crawling by like a hungry alligator, laughing insanely, his mask down around his neck. ADAM scars crisscrossed the man’s face in livid pink that somehow matched the neon pink of the Happy New Year 1959 sign. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole in the crawling splicer’s neck as he sang croakily, “I’m a little hair, pulled off a chin, about to go into a spin, down the drain drain drain—!” Then he noticed Bill and Elaine—and whipped a hooked blade at Bill’s face. Bill shot him in the forehead.
The blade clattered on the floor. Elaine groaned at the sight of the dead man. They crawled onward.
Bill risked a look over his shoulder and saw a group of loyal constables, including Redgrave and Karlosky, firing above an overturned table at spider splicers crawling across the ceiling near the blown-open doors. A red-masked nitro splicer made a bomb fly through the air with the power of his mind—it flew past the table, then doubled back. Karlosky and Redgrave dove to the side, and the bomb went off. Redgrave rolled, wounded. A shotgun blasted nearby—Rizzo firing over a table at the nitro splicer. The splicer’s face vanished in a welter of red, and a grenade blew up in his hands, his body flying apart like a New Year’s party favor.
Bill crawled onward, one arm over Elaine, who crept along beside him alternately sobbing and cursing. They’d reached the swinging doors into the back kitchen. “Okay, kid,” he whispered in her ear. “On three we jump up and run through them doors. Watch out for my pistol, love, I might have to fire it. One, two—three!”
They were up and rushing through, Bill shouldering the door aside—and firing at a spider splicer hanging upside down from the low ceiling. Wounded, the splicer fell off onto the stove, clattering into pots of boiling water and lit gas burners. Shrieking in pain, the splicer flailed and tumbled off the stove and onto the floor.
Bill and Elaine rushed past into the rear hall. Bill turned left; a gun banged just beside him. He turned to see Elaine pointing her own pistol, its muzzle smoking, her face contorted with anger as a nitro splicer fell back, his head shot open. A grenade fell from his hands and bounced to the floor—
“Down!” Bill yelled, and dragged her behind a steel kitchen cart, covering her with his body—and then the bomb went off. The cart caught the blast and slammed into them with the shockwave, the steel cart cracking painfully into Bill’s right arm. “Ow, buggerin’ hell that hurts!”
“Bill—are you all right?” Elaine asked, coughing as the smoke cleared.
“I’m okay, except me bloody ears are ringing like a mad monk’s church bell! Come on, we got to get up, love!”
They made their way dizzily down the smoky hallway, eyes stinging. Gunfire rattled behind them and explosions shook the floor. Other people were running from the kitchen. He looked back and saw Redgrave stumbling along, wounded in the leg but game enough—Karlosky behind him, urging the wounded Redgrave along.
Rizzo was turning to fire behind them through the door at splicers Bill couldn’t see. A swishing sound—and Rizzo shrieked, the scream becoming a gurgle as a curved blade buried itself in his throat. Rizzo fell back, blood gushing over his tuxedo…
Bill fired at the door—a masked splicer jerked back. Elaine kept tugging on his arm, shouting about Sophie. He let her urge him through the emergency exit to the stairs, and they saw a group of white-faced, scared-looking constables a flight below, yelling up at them: “This way! Down here!”
Hoping they weren’t heading into a trap, Bill and Elaine went with the constables.
A blur of corridors, passages, a checkpoint, another, waving ID cards, an atrium, an elevator…
Time did indeed seem all funny, weirdly collapsed, a telescope snapped shut…
And then they were in their own flat, panting, Bill locking the door. Elaine with her purse in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Hello!” called Mariska Lutz, their sitter, from the next room. “Back already? Have a good time?”
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office 1959
“It makes me half-crazed to think of it,” Ryan said, voice trembling. He balled the report in his hands and threw it into a corner. “On New Year’s Eve! The cold-blooded treachery of it! They expected me to be there! It was an attack on me—but it was also an attack on the heart and soul of Rapture. Our most accomplished men and women were in that room, Bill, celebrating the new year. And at least six constables betrayed us! We’re lucky Pat Cavendish acted quickly—he shot most of the treasonous scum. But, by God, we must root out any other bad apples.”
He sounded bitter—but rational. Lately, Bill suspected that there was something twisted growing in Andrew Ryan…
Bill and Ryan sat alone in his office, Bill wishing someone were here to back him up. He had to say something Ryan wasn’t going to like.
Shifting in his chair, Bill rubbed his deeply bruised arm where the explosion had knocked the cart into him. His ears still rang a bit; Elaine was haunted by nightmares. “Mr. Ryan—this attack didn’t come out of the blue. It’s because you took out Fontaine. It’s a reaction to that, really. People are saying Rapture doesn’t mean what it used to—nationalizing a business… by force! It gave them the excuse to go a bit mad! That Atlas took the opportunity—lit the fuse of the whole bloody thing…”
Ryan snorted. “It’s not nationalization. I own most of Rapture anyway. I built it! I simply—acted for the best interests of the city! Atlas is just another babbling ‘Pravda,’ a tissue of lies he calls truth! If we let him take hold here, he’ll be another Stalin! The man wants to be dictator! If it’s war—why then so be it!”
“Mr. Ryan—I don’t think it’s a war we can win. It’s the math! Atlas just has too many of them rogue splicers. And too many rebels with him. We need to broker some kind of peace deal, guv—Rapture can’t take a revolution! This city is underwater, Mr. Ryan! It’s in the North Sea! It’s sitting on channels of hot lava! All of that is… oh, crikey, it’s volatile. We’re dying the death of a thousand cuts from leaks already—but one major leak in the wrong part of Hephaestus, and we could have a hell of an explosion. Suppose some of that icy water contacts the hot lava, in a pressurized area? The whole thing would go up! All this fighting risks exactly that kind of damage!”
Ryan looked at him, his gaze suddenly flat. His voice was flatter as he said, “And what do you suggest we offer them?” He closed his eyes and visibly shuddered. “Unions?”
“No, guv—a lot of these blokes worked for Fontaine. The others just want the ADAM. Crave it. Let’s hand over Fontaine Futuristics to Atlas’s lot. It’s not right to go against our principles—to nationalize, Mr. Ryan. We can take the high road, show ’em we stand for something! We can go back to the way we were and give up Fontaine Futuristics!”
“Give them…?” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “Bill—men died to take over the plasmids industry! They will not have died in vain.”
Bill didn’t believe for a moment that Ryan was concerned about who’d died in vain. That was just an excuse. Andrew Ryan wanted the plasmids industry. It was in his nature. He was a tycoon. And the plasmids industry was the biggest prize in this toy store.
“Ryan Industries owns Fontaine Futuristics now,” Ryan went on. “For the good of the city. In due time, I’ll break it up. But I’m not going to give it to that murdering parasite Atlas!”
“Mr. Ryan—we’ve got to stop this war. It’ll destroy us all… there’s no place to retreat to! If we won’t make peace with them—well, if that’s the case, I’ll have to submit my resignation from the council.”
Ryan looked at him sadly. “So you’re walking out on me too. The one man I trusted… betraying me!”
“I’ve got to show you how strongly I feel about this—we’ve got to make peace! It’s not just Atlas—suppose he makes a deal with Sofia Lamb? Her people are fanatics. Now she’s broken out, she’s twice as dangerous! Her mad little cult’ll have a go at us too! We have to stop this war, Mr. Ryan!”
Ryan slammed a fist onto the desk so hard the room echoed with it. “The war can be stopped by winning it! It can be won with superior might, Bill! We can do more and better splicing, use pheromones, keep control of our splicers… and have an unstoppable army of superhuman beings! We have the labs—oh yes, we’re short on ADAM now, it’s true.” He cracked his knuckles. “The Little Sisters we have left can’t produce enough ADAM. But there’s ADAM out there—in all those bodies. It lives on after the splicer dies! It can be harvested, Bill! And the Little Sisters are ideal for harvesting it. We can make this war work for us! War can be opportunity as well as catastrophe!”
Bill stared at him.
Ryan flapped his hand in dismissal. “It’s written on your face, Bill. You’ve left me. You’ve always been loyal. But I’m afraid you will be a disappointment—like so many others. So many who’ve turned their backs on the grand vision. So many who’ve betrayed Rapture. Who’ve soiled the glorious thing I’ve built with my two hands.” He shook his head. “The future of the world… betrayed!”
Bill knew he’d better turn this around, fast, if he hoped to ever see Elaine again. He could see that in Andrew Ryan’s eyes. Ryan had only to call Karlosky or one of his other men and give the order, and he’d be in a cell. They might have lost control of Persephone, but there was always a lockup to be found, or an air lock to be thrown out of.
He let out a long, slow breath—and then nodded. “You’re right, Mr. Ryan. I reckon I did lose faith. I’ll…” He licked his lips. Hoped he was playing this right. “I’ll give it a lot of thought. We’ll find a way.” He almost believed it himself.
Ryan leaned back in his chair and frowned, looking at him closely. But Bill could see Ryan wanted to believe him. He was a lonely man. He trusted few people.
“Very well, Bill. I need you. But you need to understand— we’re here now, in Rapture, and we’re committed. And we’re going to do this my way. I built Rapture. I’ll do whatever I have to—but I will not let the parasites tear down what I have built.”
Banker’s Row, near Apollo Square 1959
Oh bloody hell, thought Bill McDonagh, seeing Anna Culpepper standing near the largest of Rapture’s banks, up ahead. Bill was walking along beside Andrew Ryan that frightened morning—and he knew what Mr. Ryan would think when he heard her singing. He’d heard her, once, himself, warbling in her new role as protest songstress—amazed that she’d gone from taking part in the council to condemning Ryan Enterprises for the new economic depression gnawing at Rapture’s soul…
Anna was standing on the street corner, singing to the frantic crowd, acoustic guitar in her hands. The overhead lamp flashed a golden glint from her earrings and played across her curly black hair.
“While Rome burns, she fiddles,” Ryan growled, as Bill followed him down the passageway to within a few yards of the crowd surging around the First Bank of Rapture. Karlosky and two other bodyguards, big men in long coats, carrying Thompsons, were walking a couple of paces in front of Ryan. Two others followed. The memory of the New Year’s Eve attack was still fresh.
Each wall along the passageway had its line of muttering, scowling customers, most of them men in work clothes or rumpled suits, clutching paperwork and shifting from foot to foot as if they were in a long line for a urinal. A wispy-haired man in frayed seersucker was peering over the shoulders of the people in front of him, trying to see into the bank, shouting past a cupped hand through the open door. “Come on, come on, we want our money; stop stalling in there!”
There were murmurs when Ryan walked up. A few glared his way and elbowed one another, but no one wanted to be the first to confront him.
“You could shut the bank down, just temporary-like, Mr. Ryan,” Bill suggested in a whispered aside. “I mean—just for now, for a few days, till the hysteria’s over, and we can reassure people…”
“No,” Ryan said firmly as the bodyguards encircled him, facing outward, guns pointed at the ceiling—but ready to drop their gun muzzles on the crowd should it rush Andrew Ryan. “No, Bill—that would be interfering with the market. The fools have the right to withdraw their money.”
“But a run on banks, guv—could be disastrous…”
“It already is. And they’ll pay the price. The resulting market correction will send them scuttling for cover like rats from a hailstorm. I just wanted to know if it was true—see it with my own eyes. I can’t interfere.”
“We could try and talk to them right here…”
Ryan snorted. “Useless. I’ll address them on radio, try and talk sense. But there’s no use reasoning with a mob.”
Karlosky turned and spoke in low tones with Ryan, out the side of his mouth. “Let’s get you out of here, Mr. Ryan…”
“Yes, yes, we’ll go…” But Ryan lingered, staring at the gathering crowd, people stalking from the banks counting fistfuls of Rapture dollars as they went, more men rushing up the street, eager to withdraw their money. Word had gotten out that the war with Atlas and the splicers was going to destroy the banks, somehow—that they’d be targeted by the subversives. Bill wondered if Atlas himself had spread that rumor, deliberately sparking the run on the banks. A depression gave him a propaganda victory.
Ryan’s presence had quieted the crowd a little—the shouting and muttering had dropped to a droning murmur, and Bill could hear Anna Culpepper singing now. Something about Cohen—how “Ryan’s songbird” was really “Ryan’s stableboy.”
“I’ve heard about this Communist versifying,” Ryan said to Bill, with acid quietness, glowering at Culpepper. “Union songs, organizers singing ‘folk music’ about the workingman. As if a Red had even a passing acquaintance with working!”
Anna had spotted Ryan now—and Bill could see she was nervous. Her voice faltered as she looked at the armed bodyguards. But she licked her lips and resumed singing. Bill had to admire her courage.
“So Anna’s turned against me,” Ryan said. “I’d heard something of the sort. But to go this far… singing a musical score for a run on the banks! I suppose she thought she’d find sheep for Atlas’s flock here. Or perhaps she’s gone over to the other sheep—the Lamb cult…” He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here. I’ll see to it the little Red bird stops singing…”
Ryan Plasmids 1959
The little girl watched, big eyed, as the enormous metal man lumbered clankingly around the room, the sensors on its round metal head glowing. It was only a remote-controlled model, really—there was no man inside it. Brigid Tenenbaum puppeted the clanking caricature of a deep-sea diver around the room from a control panel overlooking the training area. She had to be careful not to misdirect the Big Daddy model—it could run over the little girl like a freight train.
Subject 13 was a small blond child in a pink pinafore, her large azure eyes fixed on the Big Daddy. It was all part of the conditioning process—the girl had been treated with a drug that made her more susceptible to bonding with the creature that would be her guardian in the dangerous urban wilderness Rapture had become.
“He’s big and strong,” the little girl chirped. “He’s funny too!”
“Yes,” Brigid said. “He is your big funny friend.”
“Can I play with him?” The child’s voice was a little fuzzy from the drug.
“Certainly…” Brigid made the Big Daddy model come to a sudden stop.
Then she moved a lever, causing its right arm to lift, its hand to outstretch—reaching out to the little girl.
There was something about the sight that stabbed Brigid Tenenbaum to the core…
18
Metro near Apollo Square
1959
Hurrying out of the passage from the Metro, Diane McClintock once more felt lost—though in fact she’d come here for a reason. She was here to find Atlas. Even so, she was overcome with a sensation of insubstantiality, of being a mere ghost wandering a palace.
And then, near the blockade at the entrance into Apollo Square, something caught her eye… a poster plastered to the metal wall.
It asked, Who is Atlas?
Just those three words, under a stylized, heroic image of a stoic, confident, clean-shaven man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders, fists on his hips, gazing with visionary intensity into the workingman’s future…
The one time she’d seen him, outside the café, he’d seemed like an ordinary man—good-looking, sturdy, but ordinary. And yet he was doing an extraordinary thing—risking Ryan’s constables by engaging in flagrant altruism.
At the very least, Atlas must be a charismatic man. Someone who could inspire her—end her feeling of aimlessness…
She turned to the bearded sentry cradling a shotgun at the blockade—a burly, unshaven man in a work shirt and oil-spotted blue jeans. “Listen—could you tell me… I saw him, once—in Pauper’s Drop. Atlas. He was passing out supplies. I’d… I’d like to talk to him. Maybe I could help. When I saw him in Pauper’s Drop, I just…” She shook her head. “I felt something.”
The sentry looked at her as if deciding whether or not she was sincere. Then he nodded. “I know what you mean. But I don’t know as I can trust you…”
Diane looked around to see if anyone was watching—then she took a wad of Rapture dollars out of her purse. “Please. This is all I could get hold of today. I’ll pay my way in. But I have to see him.”
He looked at the money, swallowed hard—then he reached out, grabbed it, and hid it in an inside coat pocket. “Hold up right here…”
The bearded sentry turned and called out to another, older sentry. They spoke in low tones; the bearded sentry turned and winked at her. The older guard hurried off. The sentry went back to his post, whistling to himself. With one hand he gestured to her: wait. Then he pretended not to see her.
Had she thrown away her bribe? Maybe she’d thrown away her life—spider splicers watched Apollo Square from high up on the walls. It was nippy, unevenly lit in Apollo Square tonight, and there were dead men rotting not so far away. The smell made her feel sick. She was still slightly drunk, the space around her whirling ever so slowly, and she thought she might throw up if she had to smell the dead bodies much longer.
But she wasn’t leaving. She was going to stick around till the splicers got her—or she got in to see Atlas.
If Ryan didn’t want her, she’d decided, maybe someone else would.
A woman hurried up to the barricade. “Atlas says okay, he’ll see you, McClintock,” said the woman. Diane tried not to stare at the woman’s scarred face—one of her eyesockets was covered over by scar tissue; her brown hair was matted. “Philo, you come on in with us.”
The shotgun-toting Philo nodded and gestured at Diane with the muzzle of the gun. “You go in ahead of me.”
Diane thought about backing out—but she stepped through the scrap-wood gate and followed them across Apollo Square to Artemis Suites. The one-eyed woman stepped over a low pile of trash in the doorway. Diane followed her into the reeking interior of the building.
Stomach lurching as she picked her way through moldy garbage, Diane entered a stairway that zigzagged up a graffiti-tagged concrete and steel shaft. They climbed four stories up, past drunks and groups of grubby children.
Her escorts took her through a doorway and down a carpeted, burn-scarred hall. The little bushy-haired woman never hesitated, and Philo clumped along behind Diane. The lights flickered again.
“Lights might go out,” Philo remarked, his voice a slow rumble. “Ryan’s turned the power off in the building. We got some jerry-rigged, but it ain’t reliable.”
“I got a flashlight,” the woman said. They came to another stairway, and, to Diane’s bafflement, this time they went down. This stairway was relatively clean, occupied only by the occasional bored sentry scratching himself and nodding as they passed.
Down and down they went, farther down than they’d gone up… down to a subbasement passageway.
Here, they passed under steam-shrouded pipes, their feet splashing through puddles, till they came to a small antechamber with a high, water-dripping ceiling. A Securis door was guarded by a grinning, shivering splicer in a ratty sweater and torn trousers, toes sticking out of his decaying shoes. He had the hard-core splicer’s red scrofula on his face, and he juggled three scythelike fish-gutting blades from hand to hand. The curved blades hissed close to the naked lightbulb on the ceiling, missing it by no more than a quarter inch. “Who’s the extra bitch, tittle-tattle tits?” the splicer asked in a scratchy voice, never pausing in juggling the blades.
“McClintock. Atlas says she can go in.”
“Says you, tittle-tattle tits—we’ll fry your bits if that ain’t it! Ha! Go ahead on in!”
The splicer stepped aside, still juggling, and “tittle-tattle tits” opened the Securis door for them. Diane hurried through, eager to get past the splicer.
They were in a lamplit utility area. Pipes and heating ducts came up through the floor near the walls. The room was warm and smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew and brine.
The cigarette was being smoked by a muscular man seated casually behind a battered gray-metal desk. On the desk was a tumbler and a gold cigarette box.
It was he. The man she’d seen outside the café. He wore white, rolled-up shirtsleeves, just like in the poster. A good face, she thought, that seemed to emanate trustworthiness.
Two shaggy bodyguards stood behind him, near a ganglion of valves. Both bodyguards wore coveralls and carried tommy guns. One of them had an unlit pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“I’d be Atlas,” said the man at the desk, with an Irish lilt, looking her over with an unsettling frankness. “And you’re one of Ryan’s birds?”
“I’m Diane McClintock. I work… I worked… for Mr. Ryan. I saw you helping people in Pauper’s Drop—and it touched me. I don’t feel good about the way things are going and… I just wanted to see if… to see if…” What was it she wanted, exactly?
He smiled impishly. “You don’t seem certain of what you’re wanting to see, Miss McClintock.”
She sighed and unconsciously brushed her hair into place with her hand. “I’m tired. Had a few drinks. But… I want to know more about you—I mean, you know, in a friendly way. I don’t work with the constables. I’ve seen things. Heard stories… I don’t know what to believe anymore… I just know—once I was passing by Apollo Square and I saw a woman come over the barricades and… one of the splicers working for Andrew…” She didn’t like to remember it. The woman hurrying along, full of life, one moment. The next, a splicer had sent a ball of fire into her—and she’d sizzled away into a blackened corpse, within steps of where Diane stood. “Well the splicer burned her. And the look on her face… like she was trying to tell me something. So tonight…” She sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just so tired right now…”
“Get the lady a chair, you great ejit,” Atlas growled at Philo.
Without a word, Philo brought a metal chair from a corner, and Diane sat down. Atlas pushed the gold box across the desk toward her.
“Cigarette?”
“I’d adore one.” She opened the box and took a cigarette, her hands trembling. Philo lit it for her, and she inhaled gratefully, then blew the silken smoke into the air. “This—this is a real cigarette! Virginia tobacco! And in a gold box! You do yourself well for a revolutionary…”
Atlas chuckled. “Oh, aye. But we took that from one of Ryan’s little storerooms under Rapture. Sure, he brought it in to sell in a little shop—a shop I used to sweep out, once upon a time. I was maintenance, a janitor in Rapture—come here when they sang me a pretty lie—a promise of working in me trade. Ended up a janitor. And later—couldn’t find work doing even that.”
“What was your trade, before?”
“Why, I was a metal worker.” He stubbed out his cigarette—his fingers looked pale and soft for a workingman. “As for what we took from that storeroom—we distributed most of it to the people. How do you think people eat round ’ere, with Ryan, the great son of Satan himself, cutting off supplies to Artemis, eh?”
She nodded. “He’s talked about an amnesty for people who give up the… what does he call it, the Bolshevik organizing.”
“Bolshevik organizing! So we’re Soviets now! Asking for a fair break is hardly that!”
She tapped the cigarette over an ashtray on the desk. “Any sort of ‘break’ is pinko stuff to Andrew.” She sniffed. “I’m fed up with him. But I’ve got no reason to love you people either. You can see what you did to me.” She touched the scars on her cheek.
He shook his head sadly. “You were hurt in the fight, were you? A bomb? You’re still a fine-looking woman, so you are. You were too strong to die there. Why, you’ve gotten character from it, that’s all that’s come about, Diane.”
He looked at her with that disarming frankness. And she wanted to believe in him.
“Why do you call yourself Atlas? It’s not your real name.”
“Figure that out on your own, did you?” He grinned. “Welllll… Atlas takes the world on his shoulders. He’s the broad back, ain’t he? And who’s the workingman? The workingman takes the world on his broad back too. Holds it up for the privileged—for the likes of you!”
He opened a drawer and, to her astonishment, took out a bottle of what looked like actual Irish whiskey. Jameson. “Care for hair of the dog, mebbe? Philo—find us some glasses…”
They drank and talked, of politics and fairness and organizing and reappropriation of goods for the working class. “And you think you’re the liberator of the working class, Atlas?”
“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. That’s the only thing Ryan was right about. These people will liberate themselves! But they do need someone to tell them that it can be done.” He toyed with his glass. Then he said, “You know about the Little Sisters, do you? What they do to them poor little orphan waifs?”
“I’ve heard… Yes, it bothers me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He poured her a third drink. “Sure, and it should bother you,” he said solemnly, lighting another cigarette. “It should cut you up inside! I’ve got a little girl meself, you know. The thought of them bastards mebbe getting hold of that child! Oh, the thought! But will it stop anyone from buying ADAM? No. Rapture can’t go on like this, Diane, me dear. This cannot go on…”
It didn’t take long for her to make up her mind. It wasn’t the whiskey, or the cigarettes, or that strong chin, or those frank brown eyes, or the pungent opinions. It was thinking about going back to her place alone—and waiting to hear from Andrew Ryan.
No. Never again.
“Atlas,” she said, “I’d like to help.”
“And why would I believe Ryan hasn’t sent you here, on the sly, like, will you tell me that now?”
“I’ll show you—I’m no spy. I’ll do things he would never approve of. And then… you’ll know you can trust me.”
Ryan Plasmids
1959
The odd little chamber, partly cold steel-walled lab and partly nursery, was chilly today. Drips of cold water slipped from a rusty bolt in the ceiling in a far corner. Brigid had told maintenance about the leak, but so far no one had come to fix it.
Subject 15 didn’t mind—the little girl played contentedly with the drip as Brigid watched, the girl seeming to delight in this tiny little invasion of the gigantic sea into her cell. Squatting in the corner, the child tried to catch each drop as it came down. She giggled when she caught one…
Brigid sighed. The experiments had been going well; the attachment conditioning was working. But she felt heavier every day—as if she were carrying some hidden burden. She was beginning to feel like a Big Daddy herself, as if she too were sheathed in metal. That thought reminded Brigid—it was time.
She went to the door, opened it, took the remote control from her lab-coat pocket, and pointed the device at the hulking gray-metal figure waiting, dormant, in the corridor. Somewhere inside that metal armor was what remained of a man, who was now in a sort of comatose state, waiting for the stimuli to awaken… but never completely awaken. He would always be little more than a machine.
She pressed the button on the remote, and the Big Daddy responded instantly, turning with a creak, coming with clanging steps into the conditioning lab.
“Ooh!” Subject 15 chirped, clasping her wet hands together with delight when she saw the Big Daddy. “Mr. Bubbles is here!”
Brigid Tenenbaum watched as Subject 15 walked—almost like a sleepwalker—to the Big Daddy. The little girl clasped its metal hand and gazed up at it, smiling uncertainly…
And suddenly, for the first time in many years, Brigid Tenenbaum remembered.
She’s a girl, once more, in Belorussia, watching the Nazis take her father away. It is before the war, but they are removing troublemakers. The Nazi officer in charge of the platoon turns his gray-eyed gaze on her. He is a big, craggy-faced man wearing a helmet, his hands in heavy gloves; he wears a glossy leather belt, a strap across his chest, and high, polished boots; he glints with shiny buttons and medals. He says, “Little one—you can be of use. First in the kitchens, working. In time, you go to the camps… Experimental subjects are needed…” He reaches out to her. She stares up at him, thinking he’s more like a machine than a man. Her father took her to a silent movie in which she saw a man of metal, stalking about. This officer is a man of metal in a uniform, metal clothed in flesh.
She knows she’ll never see her father again. She will be alone. And this man is reaching out to her. Something closes up in her heart. She thinks, I must make friends with the metal men…
She reaches out and clasps the gloved hand.
And now, in Rapture, Brigid Tenenbaum shuddered, remembering the little girl that she was… and the woman she became. Even before that day, she’d been distant from people; she’d always had a hard time connecting. But she’d kept a door in herself open a crack. It was at that moment, clasping that officer’s hand, that she closed the door that she’d always kept open for her family. She would simply survive…
Now, Brigid stood there, staring at Subject 15, and the model of the Big Daddy. Subject 15—another child conditioned to attach herself to a machine. Metal men, clothed in flesh—and in Rapture, metal men, enclosing flesh. Subject 15 was a child twisted, her childlike nature distorted, for Rapture’s purposes—a child so much like the little girl Brigid had been.
Brigid shuddered. “Not this one,” she whispered. “No more…”
She felt herself turned inside out, as she said it. Feelings geysered up in her, seething in her heart. She was once more a child—and she would become a mother. She would be a mother with many adopted children. She could no longer treat these children as experimental subjects.
She went to the child and embraced her. “I am sorry,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
Mercury Suites
1959
“What is the difference between a man and a parasite?” The words came over the public-address system, reverberating from the metal walls as Bill walked down the hall to Sullivan’s place. A camera swiveled to watch him as he came.
“A man builds,” came Andrew Ryan’s recorded voice. “A parasite asks, ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says, ‘Watch out or you might tread on the toes of God.’”
Bill was beginning to think the “parasite” might be right about that last one.
He knocked on the apartment door, and Sullivan himself opened it. The security chief glanced past him to make sure he was alone, then nodded. “Come on in.”
Bill could smell the booze on Sullivan’s breath, and the chief of security’s gait was unsteady as he walked away from the door. Bill followed him in and closed the door. Sullivan’s place was laid out pretty much like his own, but it was sparer—bachelor furnishings. And there was another feature, a good many “dead soldiers,” empty bottles on tables and desks, even the carpet.
Sullivan sat on the sofa, shoving an empty bottle out of the way to put a tape recorder down on the coffee table. Bill sat beside him. To their left was a big picture window into the undersea-scape. The building creaked in the current. A school of yellow-finned fish cruised by and suddenly changed direction, all of them at once darting away from the building’s lights with that mysterious unanimity they had.
“Drink?” Sullivan asked, his voice lifeless. His eyes were red-rimmed. It looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.
It was early for Bill, not yet five, but he didn’t want to seem like he was judging Sullivan. “Just a finger or two of whatever’s in that bottle there, mate.”
Sullivan poured it into a glass that hadn’t been clean in a long while, and Bill picked it up. “What’s all the rush and worry, Chief? Urgent notes from you popping out of the pneumo and all. I had to cut work early to get here on time.”
Sullivan turned to look at an unfinished red-and-black knitted blanket folded beside him on the sofa. He reached out with his free hand and caressed it, lips trembling. Then he tossed off his drink and put the glass down on the coffee table with a clack. “Ryan’s starting his little propaganda campaign, to make the Little Sisters thing seem all hunky-dory. Using kids to farm plasmids. That going to be hunky-dory with you, Bill?”
“Christ no. I don’t like plasmids—don’t like ’em double when they get ’em that way. Ryan says it’s only temporary, and what do you do with the orphans anyway, but…” He shook his head. “It can’t go on forever. Things are falling apart—the city and… the people. The whole place will come apart at the seams if we don’t…”
He broke off, wondering, suddenly, if he was being a fool, talking something close to sedition to Ryan’s chief of security. Was all this a setup? But Sullivan had been unhappy with his job for a long time, and he’d made Bill a kind of confidante. You had to trust someone sometime. And he knew Chief Sullivan, after all these years. Sullivan wasn’t much of an actor. Especially when he was drunk. This was for real.
“It’s already come apart at the seams, Bill,” Sullivan said slurringly. “I’ve got some recordings here—I’ve put them all on one tape. But they came from different times, different people…” He pressed the Play button on the tape recorder. “I want your opinion about this, Bill. You’re the only son of a bitch I trust in this waterlogged city…”
The tape recorder played a guitar strumming a mocking little tune, someone whistling along in the background. A gentle drumbeat led the way to singing that Bill recognized as Anna Culpepper’s voice.
“Ryan drew us in, Ryan locked us in
And Sander Cohen kept us hypnotized—
Andrew kept us thin, all for a whim,
And Sander Cohen kept us mesmerized—
With silly songs and watered drinks
And dance-dance-dancing
With silly blonds and makeup winks
All flounce-flounce-flouncing…”
It went on in that vein, in Culpepper’s languid, teasing voice. When Sullivan hit Pause, Bill shrugged and said, “Well, what about it, Chief? I’ve heard this kind of daft thing before. She’s swanned out of Ryan Industries and been hanging around McDonagh’s, if truth be told, drinking and trying to be clever with her friends, sniping at Ryan. Songs like that are right popular with some about Rapture, but they don’t sing ’em too loud.”
Sullivan snorted. “You don’t think it deserves… punishment?”
“Why? Just a song, innit?”
“’Kay, how about this?” Sullivan started the tape again. This time it was Anna Culpepper just talking. “Cohen’s not a musician, he’s Ryan’s stable boy. Ryan’s corrupt policies crap all over the place, and Cohen flutters around, clearing it up. But instead of using a shovel, like you would with a proper mule, Cohen tidies with a catchy melody and a clever turn of phrase. But no matter how nicely it sounds, he can’t really do anything about the smell.”
He paused it again, poured himself another drink, and, voice slurring even more, asked, “Whuh yuh think about that one, eh?”
“Hmm, well… got to admit it’s pretty inflammatory, like, Chief. But them arty types will talk and talk—and talk. Don’t mean much.”
“You know what—listen to this… This is one of the guys we had to raid recently. He ducked us, and I’m glad of it, ’tween you and me, Bill… It’s from before Fontaine went down…” He hit Play, and Bill heard a voice he thought was Peach Wilkins.
“We all come down here, figured we’d be part of Ryan’s Great Chain. Turns out Ryan’s chain is made of gold, and ours are the sort with the big iron ball around your ankle. He’s up in Fort Frolic banging fashion models… we’re down in this dump yanking guts outta fish. Fontaine’s promising something better.”
“Sounds like that Atlas rabble-rouser,” Bill remarked. “Different voice, same ideas.”
“Now, listen to this, one, Bill,” Sullivan said. “This is the same guy, a bit later on.”
“Fontaine’s putting the screws on us and double. He’s squeezing us out of eighty points of our cut with the threat of turning us in to Ryan if we don’t play ball. Son of a bitch! Sammy G. comes and tells me he’s thinking of going to the constable, and the next day, Sammy G. was found in a sack in the salt pond. We got no choice here.”
He stopped the tape and poured himself another drink, swaying in his seat. “You see, Bill? Do you see?”
“Not exactly, Chief…”
“See, first they get pulled into Rapture. Like you did—like I did. Then they find out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be if you’re not one of the big shots. Then Fontaine drags them into his own little ‘chain.’ They want out when that turns bad too—and what happens? Some of ’em start turning up dead. So what can they do? They got stuck working for Fontaine! And what happens? Ryan sends us in to catch them. Hang them for smuggling! For something they were trapped into!”
“I don’t know if that was their only choice, Chief. But I see what you mean.”
“And then there’s that Persephone.”
Bill winced. “Hate the thought of that place. Been afraid I’d end up there myself.”
“Lamb’s taken over that whole part of Rapture—made Persephone her base. Who gave her that base? Ryan, is who. Torturing people to find Lamb’s followers… that just created more followers for Lamb.”
“Torture? I never knew about that…”
“He didn’t want you to know, Bill. To catch some of ’em—the Persephone Reds, the smugglers—Ryan not only used torture, he personally supervised at least one session I know of, with Pat Cavendish doing the dirty work.”
“Torture!” Bill’s stomach twisted at the thought. “You sure, Chief?”
“Oh yeah! I had to clean up the mesh… the mess. Well—maybe they had it comin’. Maybe. But this girl, this Culpepper, all she did was bitch ’n’ moan. Or sing if you wanta call it that. Sang another funny, stupid little tune about that loony tune, Sander Cohen. You wanta know how much a loony tune he is? Listena thish…” He started the recorder playing once more.
Sander Cohen’s distinctly demented voice minced through a recitation:
“Ahem. The Wild Bunny by Sander Cohen: I want to take the ears off, but I can’t. I hop, and when I hop, I never get off the ground. It’s my curse, my eternal curse! I want to take the ears off, but I can’t! It’s my curse, my fucking curse! I want to take the ears off! Please! Take them off! Please…!”
“Right,” Bill said, when it ended. “We already knew the bloke was eccentric, Chief…”
“Eccentric? He’s a murderer! Gone nuts on ADAM. Kills people for fun over there in the Fleet Hall. Pastes their bodies up with cement, makes them into statues for display, in his back room.”
Bill stared. “You’re pulling me leg.”
“No. No I’m not. Like to lock him up. But Ryan insists Cohen’s an ally…” He shook his head miserably.
“Ryan’s protecting him?”
“Cohen whined about Culpepper’s songs making fun of him. Said they were subjecting Ryan to ridicule too. Sent over tapes of it. Ryan went a bit mad himself…”
“Not taking ADAM, is he?”
“Ryan? No—he’s getting into the gin. Stays cool sometimes. Paranoid other times. Two days sober, one half-drunk. Not a good pattern. I know it too well.”
Bill licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. “No excuse for protecting Cohen if he’s really a murderer…” He took a long pull on the whiskey Sullivan had given him and scarcely tasted it.
“So me having to protect that little prick Cohen,” Sullivan growled, “that extends to Ryan giving me orders to…” His voice broke. He reached over and picked up the red-and-black knit blanket. Clutched it to his chest. “Pretty, isn’t it? When I was done with her, I left her as she was, in the bathroom, naked in the tub…”
Bill stared. “What you mean—when you were done with her?”
Sullivan closed his eyes, clutching the blanket to him, the sudden motion spilling his drink on his lap. “I seen she had a half-knitted blanket by her bed. It was nice. You know, black and red, real pretty. So I took it… Just didn’t seem right to leave it lying there, all by itself…”
Bill finished his drink. Thought maybe he should get out of here—while Sullivan let him. But at last he asked, “Chief—are you saying that Ryan sent you to kill Anna Culpepper?”
Sullivan looked at the blanket. After a long moment, he nodded. “In her bath. Pushed her under the water… Her eyes, Bill—her eyes staring at me through the water… as I held her under… when the bubbles come up, I was thinking: there goes her life! You know? Her life all bubblin’ up from her mouth! Just like the bubbles that come up outside that window… see ’em?”
“Oh Jay-sus, Chief, that’s…” Bill took a long, deep, ragged breath. Not sure what to say. He almost felt like he ought to comfort Sullivan. Sorry you went through that. But you couldn’t say that to a murderer. “Chief—I’ve got to get back to my wife. This is… it’s too late to do anything about it. We have to… to let it go. And I want you to know, it’s all safe with me, mate. What you said.”
“Oh—I can’t let it go,” Sullivan said, his eyes closed, voice barely audible. “I’m going to Neptune’s Bounty. Find a soft spot and…”
Bill got up, backed away from him—then hurried to the door. And left without another word.
Ryan Plasmids
1959
Fully dressed, Brigid Tenenbaum lay on her cot, staring at the steel wall. She knew she would not sleep that night. She kept seeing their faces… gazing up at the metal men, adoringly…
The Little Sisters. Their large, dark, trusting eyes… She could not bear it anymore. The way they would lovingly climb into her lap—the cruelty of their innocence.
She must act—she must find relief. She could run away, hide alone in some corner of Rapture. There was that old maintenance dorm she’d found. But hiding there, alone, wouldn’t work—their eyes, their faces would pursue her. There would be no hiding from them.
No. The only way was to set them free from this place. Then she would no longer feel their pain—their release would be hers…
Now was as good a time as any. The sentries had been gathering out front late at night, and it would be necessary to shut off the cameras and bots. But she knew just how to do that. She would find some way to get past the fourth man, later. Perhaps she might have to kill him.
Brigid reached under her bunk and found the bottle of vodka. She’d bought it from Karlosky, but it hadn’t really helped smother the cruel feelings of caring for the children that had arisen in her. She’d given up after half a bottle.
Which left half a bottle…
She opened the labelless bottle, took a mouthful, swished it around, then spat it out onto her lab coat. She got her keys from the hook on the wall and then went out into the hallway. A security camera swiveled toward her and sent a bot from its cabinet to look at her. It registered her DNA-detection flasher, circled her once, and then whirred back to its container. She kept on down the hallway, made a stop in lab 16, then came back out into the corridor—and stopped dead. Two sentries were scowling at her, blocking the way with shotguns in their hands.
The tall, sallow-faced guard in the overalls was Rolf. She didn’t know the squat one with the bad teeth. He had a constable badge pinned upside down on an old military coat.
“What you doing wandering ’round; this ain’t your work time, lady,” Rolf asked, squinting at her suspiciously.
Brigid blinked at them, swaying in what she hoped was a good simulation of drunkenness. “Could not sleep. Lonely. Thinking maybe I will make myself pretty to visit you. Maybe I will take a shower, yes? Maybe you join me in shower, eh?”
Rolf’s mouth dropped open—nothing had ever surprised him more. But she could see he wanted to believe it.
The short one scratched his matted hair. “Well now… you mean… just Rolf here?”
“Oh no, plenty room for everyone; we take turns, yes?” Pretending to swig the vodka, she turned to point at the showers, at the far end of the hall.
She turned back and grinned at them with bleary inebriation. “You take bottle and wait there, eh? I will make myself pretty…”
“Oh no, too many cameras…” Rolf began. “If someone checks…”
“I will turn them off!” Brigid insisted, waving the problem away. “It is nothing!”
“What’s a-going on down here?” called a redheaded man, with a tommy gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. He came stalking down the hall, lower lip thrust out disapprovingly. But his expression changed, became sheer lust, when he saw the bottle in her hand. Not lust for her…
“Is that… wine?”
Brigid shook her head at him. “No. Much stronger. You want?” She thrust the bottle into his grasp. “You take the vodka to shower; I will take care of cameras. You can share with these boys, yes? We have a small party.” She wagged a finger at them. “But you must not be naughty boys in shower!” She turned away, laughing, and staggered away in the direction of the autosecurity control panels…
She heard them walking off, muttering, toward the showers. Rolf saying, “I dunno… maybe just a drink or two, but there’s no way we…”
She used the combination lock, switched off the security cameras and bots, and then went to check the showers. It was already done. The overwhelming dose of sleeping powder she’d put in the vodka had done its work, and quickly. All three sentries were sprawled snoring on the floor. She unloaded two of the shotguns, taking the shells, and then carried the third shotgun away with her.
She got the leather tote bag she needed, with the equipment for removing the sea slugs and some canned food. She stuffed it all in the bag. The purging device would cause the sea slugs to disintegrate inside the children. They would vomit up the remains.
Brigid hurried down the dimly lit hall to the row of children’s cells. She leaned the shotgun against the wall before she let the girls out, not wanting to scare them. She put a finger to her lips, to signify quiet, as she let each one out, and winked.
“Now children,” she whispered, as they gathered around her, a diminutive crowd, “we will play a game of quiet—like hide-and-seek. We will get the other girls and then…”
“Someone’s coming,” said one of the moppets.
Brigid heard the heavy footsteps then. Probably the fourth sentry, who stood out in the hallway. “Hey, the system’s down!” he called, from around the corner of the corridor.
“Children, we will go back into this nursery, together, all of us, and we’ll wait till he goes by—we will trick him!”
The children giggled mischievously, and she hushed them, herding them into the nursery cell. One of them lay on the cot, pretending to be asleep; the others pressed into a corner near the door, squatting in excited silence with Brigid. A few moments more, and then they heard the guard striding by.
“Rolf!” the man called. “Where the hell you got to? The system’s down! Christ, if the splicers’ve got in…”
Brigid and the Little Sisters waited another long, slow minute. She guessed it’d be two or three minutes before the fourth sentry found the others sleeping in the showers. There was no time to get any more children out—they were far down the hallway. She’d lose the ones she had if she tried…
Heart pounding, Brigid stood up, and whispered, “We must go like ghosts! Quiet as ghosts!”
“The ghosts aren’t so quiet,” a black-haired Little Sister remarked, twirling the ends of her hair around a finger. “I hear them talking all the time!”
“Then be quieter than ghosts! Come on!”
Brigid opened the door and they tiptoed through. She herded them around the hallway corner, toward the front door of the facility. They were almost running when they reached the outer corridor—the cameras out there were still angling inertly down. But that wouldn’t last…
They got across the anteroom to the Metro just as the alarms went off behind them. But she managed to get all the Little Sisters with her into the bathysphere.
She knew an abandoned dorm that might do for a safehouse. It was a dusty place, almost forgotten now, in a basement corner of the city. There, she could clear the sea slugs from the children and give them a chance to be human beings. They would lose something, but they would gain much more.
And perhaps the cruelty of her maternal instinct would transmute—and pain would become joy.
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office
1959
Andrew Ryan hit the Record button on the Acu-Vox and cleared his throat: “I am told that Lamb has been seen in the streets… come out of her sanctum in Persephone. Rapture’s split up between our territories, the Atlas turf, and Lamb’s little group of psychos—my city is schismed.” He sighed. “One of the Alpha Series was killed in the incident, and his bonded Sister stolen. But the counsel has no time for a manhunt; Atlas swells the ranks of his marauders by the day. Regardless, Lamb’s name has already faded among the people. She is no more than a ghost who has forgotten to die…”
A chime came on the desk. He heard Karlosky’s voice over the intercom. “Boss? Doctor Suchong is here.”
Ryan switched off the tape recorder. “Very good. Send him in.”
He opened a desk drawer, drew out the folder containing Suchong’s proposal, and scanned it again as the doctor came padding in. Ryan was distantly aware of Suchong bowing. “Yes… sit down.” He heard the squeak of Suchong sitting in the chair and went on: “I’ve looked over this little plan of yours—frankly, Doctor Suchong—frankly, I’m shocked by your proposal.” Ryan glanced up from the folder, tented his fingers, closing his eyes as if considering the idea objectively, though in fact he’d already made up his mind. “If we were to modify the structure of our commercial plasmid line as you propose, to make the user vulnerable to mental suggestion—would we not be able to effectively control the actions of citizens of Rapture? Free will is the cornerstone of this city. The thought of sacrificing it is abhorrent.”
Suchong, sitting across from Ryan, nodded, somehow conveying apology, disappointing Ryan by acquiescing. He’d hoped Suchong would “talk him into it.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “However,… we are indeed in a time of war. If Atlas and his bandits have their way, will they not turn us into slaves? And what will become of free will then? Desperate times call for desperate measures. And, after all, if you say Fontaine knew of this sort of thing—then it could be working its way to Atlas. We can’t let them get the edge on us, Suchong.”
Suchong looked at him attentively. “Then—you approve Suchong’s plan? We can proceed with pheromone conditioning?”
“If you can guarantee the splicers respond to me. Not to anyone else.”
“Suchong works for Ryan! I will see to it…”
“And what does Tenenbaum think? Does she think there might be a means to block this… this hormonal control?”
Suchong shrugged. “Suchong… think not. But—not sure where she is. Cannot ask.”
“What? Why not?”
“You do not know? I assumed guards reported to you! She is… gone. Hiding somewhere in Rapture. Took Little Sisters with her.”
“No one told me this.” Ryan laughed softly and bitterly. “Who got to Tenenbaum? Was she paid to do this? By Atlas?”
“Something bother her for long time, Mr. Ryan.”
“Had an attack of conscience, has she?”
Suchong blinked, not knowing what was meant. The English word conscience was one he hadn’t bothered to learn. “She is… troubled female. She says we are harming children, even though we give them immortality! We give them power to always heal! This is harming? Suchong does not think so…”
“Ah.” Ryan picked up a pencil and flipped it from finger to finger. He was not convinced the Little Sisters were happy little elves working away for Rapture. But—he was convinced that ADAM was Rapture’s edge on the outside world. Suppose they were ever invaded. KGB, CIA, some other insidious “intelligence” lurkers would infiltrate. Perhaps this new pernicious influence, this Atlas, would bring them. Or some of Lamb’s treacherous bunch. She could have been a KGB agent all along. And if they were invaded by the Soviets or the Brits or the USA—then what? Only the extraordinary abilities provided by plasmids could protect Rapture from outsiders. So ADAM must go on. He needed the Little Sisters more than ever.
“If she took any Little Sisters with her, plasmid production will be drastically undercut.”
“Yes,” Suchong smoothed his greased-back hair thoughtfully. “We will need more… ‘Little Sisters.’”
“Well, there’s no time to wait for more people to…” Ryan cleared his throat. “I’ll tell Cavendish to see to it we have a few more until… something else is worked out.” Ryan tossed the pencil on the desk. “As for Brigid Tenenbaum, we shall find her. If you betray me, Doctor—I warn you, things will not go well.”
Suchong smiled sadly. “I would not respect you, if that were not the case, Mr. Ryan.” Suchong bowed. Then he hurried to the door, bent on his mission.
A whisking sound—and Ryan turned to see a small package arrive for him in the pneumatic tube. The handwriting told him it was from Sullivan. He removed it from the tube and opened it. It contained a reel of recording tape and a note in Sullivan’s hand:
Don’t think you’ll see me alive again, sir. I plan a quick get-together with a bullet. Can’t live with what I done. She had the cutest little red and black blanket. Here’s a tape, might clue you in on why Jasmine Jolene moved out. Why she’s been ducking you. Owe you that, I guess, Great Man. Now I owe myself something else. A little drinky, a little bye bye.
Bye bye, Great Man!
Ryan stared at the note—then looked at the tape. He was strangely reluctant to listen to it. At last he put it in the tape player, and pressed Play.
Metro near Apollo Square 1959
Hurrying out of the passage from the Metro, Diane McClintock once more felt lost—though in fact she’d come here for a reason. She was here to find Atlas. Even so, she was overcome with a sensation of insubstantiality, of being a mere ghost wandering a palace.
And then, near the blockade at the entrance into Apollo Square, something caught her eye… a poster plastered to the metal wall.
It asked, Who is Atlas?
Just those three words, under a stylized, heroic image of a stoic, confident, clean-shaven man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders, fists on his hips, gazing with visionary intensity into the workingman’s future…
The one time she’d seen him, outside the café, he’d seemed like an ordinary man—good-looking, sturdy, but ordinary. And yet he was doing an extraordinary thing—risking Ryan’s constables by engaging in flagrant altruism.
At the very least, Atlas must be a charismatic man. Someone who could inspire her—end her feeling of aimlessness…
She turned to the bearded sentry cradling a shotgun at the blockade—a burly, unshaven man in a work shirt and oil-spotted blue jeans. “Listen—could you tell me… I saw him, once—in Pauper’s Drop. Atlas. He was passing out supplies. I’d… I’d like to talk to him. Maybe I could help. When I saw him in Pauper’s Drop, I just…” She shook her head. “I felt something.”
The sentry looked at her as if deciding whether or not she was sincere. Then he nodded. “I know what you mean. But I don’t know as I can trust you…”
Diane looked around to see if anyone was watching—then she took a wad of Rapture dollars out of her purse. “Please. This is all I could get hold of today. I’ll pay my way in. But I have to see him.”
He looked at the money, swallowed hard—then he reached out, grabbed it, and hid it in an inside coat pocket. “Hold up right here…”
The bearded sentry turned and called out to another, older sentry. They spoke in low tones; the bearded sentry turned and winked at her. The older guard hurried off. The sentry went back to his post, whistling to himself. With one hand he gestured to her: wait. Then he pretended not to see her.
Had she thrown away her bribe? Maybe she’d thrown away her life—spider splicers watched Apollo Square from high up on the walls. It was nippy, unevenly lit in Apollo Square tonight, and there were dead men rotting not so far away. The smell made her feel sick. She was still slightly drunk, the space around her whirling ever so slowly, and she thought she might throw up if she had to smell the dead bodies much longer.
But she wasn’t leaving. She was going to stick around till the splicers got her—or she got in to see Atlas.
If Ryan didn’t want her, she’d decided, maybe someone else would.
A woman hurried up to the barricade. “Atlas says okay, he’ll see you, McClintock,” said the woman. Diane tried not to stare at the woman’s scarred face—one of her eyesockets was covered over by scar tissue; her brown hair was matted. “Philo, you come on in with us.”
The shotgun-toting Philo nodded and gestured at Diane with the muzzle of the gun. “You go in ahead of me.”
Diane thought about backing out—but she stepped through the scrap-wood gate and followed them across Apollo Square to Artemis Suites. The one-eyed woman stepped over a low pile of trash in the doorway. Diane followed her into the reeking interior of the building.
Stomach lurching as she picked her way through moldy garbage, Diane entered a stairway that zigzagged up a graffiti-tagged concrete and steel shaft. They climbed four stories up, past drunks and groups of grubby children.
Her escorts took her through a doorway and down a carpeted, burn-scarred hall. The little bushy-haired woman never hesitated, and Philo clumped along behind Diane. The lights flickered again.
“Lights might go out,” Philo remarked, his voice a slow rumble. “Ryan’s turned the power off in the building. We got some jerry-rigged, but it ain’t reliable.”
“I got a flashlight,” the woman said. They came to another stairway, and, to Diane’s bafflement, this time they went down. This stairway was relatively clean, occupied only by the occasional bored sentry scratching himself and nodding as they passed.
Down and down they went, farther down than they’d gone up… down to a subbasement passageway.
Here, they passed under steam-shrouded pipes, their feet splashing through puddles, till they came to a small antechamber with a high, water-dripping ceiling. A Securis door was guarded by a grinning, shivering splicer in a ratty sweater and torn trousers, toes sticking out of his decaying shoes. He had the hard-core splicer’s red scrofula on his face, and he juggled three scythelike fish-gutting blades from hand to hand. The curved blades hissed close to the naked lightbulb on the ceiling, missing it by no more than a quarter inch. “Who’s the extra bitch, tittle-tattle tits?” the splicer asked in a scratchy voice, never pausing in juggling the blades.
“McClintock. Atlas says she can go in.”
“Says you, tittle-tattle tits—we’ll fry your bits if that ain’t it! Ha! Go ahead on in!”
The splicer stepped aside, still juggling, and “tittle-tattle tits” opened the Securis door for them. Diane hurried through, eager to get past the splicer.
They were in a lamplit utility area. Pipes and heating ducts came up through the floor near the walls. The room was warm and smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew and brine.
The cigarette was being smoked by a muscular man seated casually behind a battered gray-metal desk. On the desk was a tumbler and a gold cigarette box.
It was he. The man she’d seen outside the café. He wore white, rolled-up shirtsleeves, just like in the poster. A good face, she thought, that seemed to emanate trustworthiness.
Two shaggy bodyguards stood behind him, near a ganglion of valves. Both bodyguards wore coveralls and carried tommy guns. One of them had an unlit pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“I’d be Atlas,” said the man at the desk, with an Irish lilt, looking her over with an unsettling frankness. “And you’re one of Ryan’s birds?”
“I’m Diane McClintock. I work… I worked… for Mr. Ryan. I saw you helping people in Pauper’s Drop—and it touched me. I don’t feel good about the way things are going and… I just wanted to see if… to see if…” What was it she wanted, exactly?
He smiled impishly. “You don’t seem certain of what you’re wanting to see, Miss McClintock.”
She sighed and unconsciously brushed her hair into place with her hand. “I’m tired. Had a few drinks. But… I want to know more about you—I mean, you know, in a friendly way. I don’t work with the constables. I’ve seen things. Heard stories… I don’t know what to believe anymore… I just know—once I was passing by Apollo Square and I saw a woman come over the barricades and… one of the splicers working for Andrew…” She didn’t like to remember it. The woman hurrying along, full of life, one moment. The next, a splicer had sent a ball of fire into her—and she’d sizzled away into a blackened corpse, within steps of where Diane stood. “Well the splicer burned her. And the look on her face… like she was trying to tell me something. So tonight…” She sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just so tired right now…”
“Get the lady a chair, you great ejit,” Atlas growled at Philo.
Without a word, Philo brought a metal chair from a corner, and Diane sat down. Atlas pushed the gold box across the desk toward her.
“Cigarette?”
“I’d adore one.” She opened the box and took a cigarette, her hands trembling. Philo lit it for her, and she inhaled gratefully, then blew the silken smoke into the air. “This—this is a real cigarette! Virginia tobacco! And in a gold box! You do yourself well for a revolutionary…”
Atlas chuckled. “Oh, aye. But we took that from one of Ryan’s little storerooms under Rapture. Sure, he brought it in to sell in a little shop—a shop I used to sweep out, once upon a time. I was maintenance, a janitor in Rapture—come here when they sang me a pretty lie—a promise of working in me trade. Ended up a janitor. And later—couldn’t find work doing even that.”
“What was your trade, before?”
“Why, I was a metal worker.” He stubbed out his cigarette—his fingers looked pale and soft for a workingman. “As for what we took from that storeroom—we distributed most of it to the people. How do you think people eat round ’ere, with Ryan, the great son of Satan himself, cutting off supplies to Artemis, eh?”
She nodded. “He’s talked about an amnesty for people who give up the… what does he call it, the Bolshevik organizing.”
“Bolshevik organizing! So we’re Soviets now! Asking for a fair break is hardly that!”
She tapped the cigarette over an ashtray on the desk. “Any sort of ‘break’ is pinko stuff to Andrew.” She sniffed. “I’m fed up with him. But I’ve got no reason to love you people either. You can see what you did to me.” She touched the scars on her cheek.
He shook his head sadly. “You were hurt in the fight, were you? A bomb? You’re still a fine-looking woman, so you are. You were too strong to die there. Why, you’ve gotten character from it, that’s all that’s come about, Diane.”
He looked at her with that disarming frankness. And she wanted to believe in him.
“Why do you call yourself Atlas? It’s not your real name.”
“Figure that out on your own, did you?” He grinned. “Welllll… Atlas takes the world on his shoulders. He’s the broad back, ain’t he? And who’s the workingman? The workingman takes the world on his broad back too. Holds it up for the privileged—for the likes of you!”
He opened a drawer and, to her astonishment, took out a bottle of what looked like actual Irish whiskey. Jameson. “Care for hair of the dog, mebbe? Philo—find us some glasses…”
They drank and talked, of politics and fairness and organizing and reappropriation of goods for the working class. “And you think you’re the liberator of the working class, Atlas?”
“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. That’s the only thing Ryan was right about. These people will liberate themselves! But they do need someone to tell them that it can be done.” He toyed with his glass. Then he said, “You know about the Little Sisters, do you? What they do to them poor little orphan waifs?”
“I’ve heard… Yes, it bothers me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He poured her a third drink. “Sure, and it should bother you,” he said solemnly, lighting another cigarette. “It should cut you up inside! I’ve got a little girl meself, you know. The thought of them bastards mebbe getting hold of that child! Oh, the thought! But will it stop anyone from buying ADAM? No. Rapture can’t go on like this, Diane, me dear. This cannot go on…”
It didn’t take long for her to make up her mind. It wasn’t the whiskey, or the cigarettes, or that strong chin, or those frank brown eyes, or the pungent opinions. It was thinking about going back to her place alone—and waiting to hear from Andrew Ryan.
No. Never again.
“Atlas,” she said, “I’d like to help.”
“And why would I believe Ryan hasn’t sent you here, on the sly, like, will you tell me that now?”
“I’ll show you—I’m no spy. I’ll do things he would never approve of. And then… you’ll know you can trust me.”
Ryan Plasmids 1959
The odd little chamber, partly cold steel-walled lab and partly nursery, was chilly today. Drips of cold water slipped from a rusty bolt in the ceiling in a far corner. Brigid had told maintenance about the leak, but so far no one had come to fix it.
Subject 15 didn’t mind—the little girl played contentedly with the drip as Brigid watched, the girl seeming to delight in this tiny little invasion of the gigantic sea into her cell. Squatting in the corner, the child tried to catch each drop as it came down. She giggled when she caught one…
Brigid sighed. The experiments had been going well; the attachment conditioning was working. But she felt heavier every day—as if she were carrying some hidden burden. She was beginning to feel like a Big Daddy herself, as if she too were sheathed in metal. That thought reminded Brigid—it was time.
She went to the door, opened it, took the remote control from her lab-coat pocket, and pointed the device at the hulking gray-metal figure waiting, dormant, in the corridor. Somewhere inside that metal armor was what remained of a man, who was now in a sort of comatose state, waiting for the stimuli to awaken… but never completely awaken. He would always be little more than a machine.
She pressed the button on the remote, and the Big Daddy responded instantly, turning with a creak, coming with clanging steps into the conditioning lab.
“Ooh!” Subject 15 chirped, clasping her wet hands together with delight when she saw the Big Daddy. “Mr. Bubbles is here!”
Brigid Tenenbaum watched as Subject 15 walked—almost like a sleepwalker—to the Big Daddy. The little girl clasped its metal hand and gazed up at it, smiling uncertainly…
And suddenly, for the first time in many years, Brigid Tenenbaum remembered.
She’s a girl, once more, in Belorussia, watching the Nazis take her father away. It is before the war, but they are removing troublemakers. The Nazi officer in charge of the platoon turns his gray-eyed gaze on her. He is a big, craggy-faced man wearing a helmet, his hands in heavy gloves; he wears a glossy leather belt, a strap across his chest, and high, polished boots; he glints with shiny buttons and medals. He says, “Little one—you can be of use. First in the kitchens, working. In time, you go to the camps… Experimental subjects are needed…” He reaches out to her. She stares up at him, thinking he’s more like a machine than a man. Her father took her to a silent movie in which she saw a man of metal, stalking about. This officer is a man of metal in a uniform, metal clothed in flesh.
She knows she’ll never see her father again. She will be alone. And this man is reaching out to her. Something closes up in her heart. She thinks, I must make friends with the metal men…
She reaches out and clasps the gloved hand.
And now, in Rapture, Brigid Tenenbaum shuddered, remembering the little girl that she was… and the woman she became. Even before that day, she’d been distant from people; she’d always had a hard time connecting. But she’d kept a door in herself open a crack. It was at that moment, clasping that officer’s hand, that she closed the door that she’d always kept open for her family. She would simply survive…
Now, Brigid stood there, staring at Subject 15, and the model of the Big Daddy. Subject 15—another child conditioned to attach herself to a machine. Metal men, clothed in flesh—and in Rapture, metal men, enclosing flesh. Subject 15 was a child twisted, her childlike nature distorted, for Rapture’s purposes—a child so much like the little girl Brigid had been.
Brigid shuddered. “Not this one,” she whispered. “No more…”
She felt herself turned inside out, as she said it. Feelings geysered up in her, seething in her heart. She was once more a child—and she would become a mother. She would be a mother with many adopted children. She could no longer treat these children as experimental subjects.
She went to the child and embraced her. “I am sorry,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
Mercury Suites 1959
“What is the difference between a man and a parasite?” The words came over the public-address system, reverberating from the metal walls as Bill walked down the hall to Sullivan’s place. A camera swiveled to watch him as he came.
“A man builds,” came Andrew Ryan’s recorded voice. “A parasite asks, ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says, ‘Watch out or you might tread on the toes of God.’”
Bill was beginning to think the “parasite” might be right about that last one.
He knocked on the apartment door, and Sullivan himself opened it. The security chief glanced past him to make sure he was alone, then nodded. “Come on in.”
Bill could smell the booze on Sullivan’s breath, and the chief of security’s gait was unsteady as he walked away from the door. Bill followed him in and closed the door. Sullivan’s place was laid out pretty much like his own, but it was sparer—bachelor furnishings. And there was another feature, a good many “dead soldiers,” empty bottles on tables and desks, even the carpet.
Sullivan sat on the sofa, shoving an empty bottle out of the way to put a tape recorder down on the coffee table. Bill sat beside him. To their left was a big picture window into the undersea-scape. The building creaked in the current. A school of yellow-finned fish cruised by and suddenly changed direction, all of them at once darting away from the building’s lights with that mysterious unanimity they had.
“Drink?” Sullivan asked, his voice lifeless. His eyes were red-rimmed. It looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.
It was early for Bill, not yet five, but he didn’t want to seem like he was judging Sullivan. “Just a finger or two of whatever’s in that bottle there, mate.”
Sullivan poured it into a glass that hadn’t been clean in a long while, and Bill picked it up. “What’s all the rush and worry, Chief? Urgent notes from you popping out of the pneumo and all. I had to cut work early to get here on time.”
Sullivan turned to look at an unfinished red-and-black knitted blanket folded beside him on the sofa. He reached out with his free hand and caressed it, lips trembling. Then he tossed off his drink and put the glass down on the coffee table with a clack. “Ryan’s starting his little propaganda campaign, to make the Little Sisters thing seem all hunky-dory. Using kids to farm plasmids. That going to be hunky-dory with you, Bill?”
“Christ no. I don’t like plasmids—don’t like ’em double when they get ’em that way. Ryan says it’s only temporary, and what do you do with the orphans anyway, but…” He shook his head. “It can’t go on forever. Things are falling apart—the city and… the people. The whole place will come apart at the seams if we don’t…”
He broke off, wondering, suddenly, if he was being a fool, talking something close to sedition to Ryan’s chief of security. Was all this a setup? But Sullivan had been unhappy with his job for a long time, and he’d made Bill a kind of confidante. You had to trust someone sometime. And he knew Chief Sullivan, after all these years. Sullivan wasn’t much of an actor. Especially when he was drunk. This was for real.
“It’s already come apart at the seams, Bill,” Sullivan said slurringly. “I’ve got some recordings here—I’ve put them all on one tape. But they came from different times, different people…” He pressed the Play button on the tape recorder. “I want your opinion about this, Bill. You’re the only son of a bitch I trust in this waterlogged city…”
The tape recorder played a guitar strumming a mocking little tune, someone whistling along in the background. A gentle drumbeat led the way to singing that Bill recognized as Anna Culpepper’s voice.
“Ryan drew us in, Ryan locked us in
And Sander Cohen kept us hypnotized—
Andrew kept us thin, all for a whim,
And Sander Cohen kept us mesmerized—
With silly songs and watered drinks
And dance-dance-dancing
With silly blonds and makeup winks
All flounce-flounce-flouncing…”
It went on in that vein, in Culpepper’s languid, teasing voice. When Sullivan hit Pause, Bill shrugged and said, “Well, what about it, Chief? I’ve heard this kind of daft thing before. She’s swanned out of Ryan Industries and been hanging around McDonagh’s, if truth be told, drinking and trying to be clever with her friends, sniping at Ryan. Songs like that are right popular with some about Rapture, but they don’t sing ’em too loud.”
Sullivan snorted. “You don’t think it deserves… punishment?”
“Why? Just a song, innit?”
“’Kay, how about this?” Sullivan started the tape again. This time it was Anna Culpepper just talking. “Cohen’s not a musician, he’s Ryan’s stable boy. Ryan’s corrupt policies crap all over the place, and Cohen flutters around, clearing it up. But instead of using a shovel, like you would with a proper mule, Cohen tidies with a catchy melody and a clever turn of phrase. But no matter how nicely it sounds, he can’t really do anything about the smell.”
He paused it again, poured himself another drink, and, voice slurring even more, asked, “Whuh yuh think about that one, eh?”
“Hmm, well… got to admit it’s pretty inflammatory, like, Chief. But them arty types will talk and talk—and talk. Don’t mean much.”
“You know what—listen to this… This is one of the guys we had to raid recently. He ducked us, and I’m glad of it, ’tween you and me, Bill… It’s from before Fontaine went down…” He hit Play, and Bill heard a voice he thought was Peach Wilkins.
“We all come down here, figured we’d be part of Ryan’s Great Chain. Turns out Ryan’s chain is made of gold, and ours are the sort with the big iron ball around your ankle. He’s up in Fort Frolic banging fashion models… we’re down in this dump yanking guts outta fish. Fontaine’s promising something better.”
“Sounds like that Atlas rabble-rouser,” Bill remarked. “Different voice, same ideas.”
“Now, listen to this, one, Bill,” Sullivan said. “This is the same guy, a bit later on.”
“Fontaine’s putting the screws on us and double. He’s squeezing us out of eighty points of our cut with the threat of turning us in to Ryan if we don’t play ball. Son of a bitch! Sammy G. comes and tells me he’s thinking of going to the constable, and the next day, Sammy G. was found in a sack in the salt pond. We got no choice here.”
He stopped the tape and poured himself another drink, swaying in his seat. “You see, Bill? Do you see?”
“Not exactly, Chief…”
“See, first they get pulled into Rapture. Like you did—like I did. Then they find out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be if you’re not one of the big shots. Then Fontaine drags them into his own little ‘chain.’ They want out when that turns bad too—and what happens? Some of ’em start turning up dead. So what can they do? They got stuck working for Fontaine! And what happens? Ryan sends us in to catch them. Hang them for smuggling! For something they were trapped into!”
“I don’t know if that was their only choice, Chief. But I see what you mean.”
“And then there’s that Persephone.”
Bill winced. “Hate the thought of that place. Been afraid I’d end up there myself.”
“Lamb’s taken over that whole part of Rapture—made Persephone her base. Who gave her that base? Ryan, is who. Torturing people to find Lamb’s followers… that just created more followers for Lamb.”
“Torture? I never knew about that…”
“He didn’t want you to know, Bill. To catch some of ’em—the Persephone Reds, the smugglers—Ryan not only used torture, he personally supervised at least one session I know of, with Pat Cavendish doing the dirty work.”
“Torture!” Bill’s stomach twisted at the thought. “You sure, Chief?”
“Oh yeah! I had to clean up the mesh… the mess. Well—maybe they had it comin’. Maybe. But this girl, this Culpepper, all she did was bitch ’n’ moan. Or sing if you wanta call it that. Sang another funny, stupid little tune about that loony tune, Sander Cohen. You wanta know how much a loony tune he is? Listena thish…” He started the recorder playing once more.
Sander Cohen’s distinctly demented voice minced through a recitation:
“Ahem. The Wild Bunny by Sander Cohen: I want to take the ears off, but I can’t. I hop, and when I hop, I never get off the ground. It’s my curse, my eternal curse! I want to take the ears off, but I can’t! It’s my curse, my fucking curse! I want to take the ears off! Please! Take them off! Please…!”
“Right,” Bill said, when it ended. “We already knew the bloke was eccentric, Chief…”
“Eccentric? He’s a murderer! Gone nuts on ADAM. Kills people for fun over there in the Fleet Hall. Pastes their bodies up with cement, makes them into statues for display, in his back room.”
Bill stared. “You’re pulling me leg.”
“No. No I’m not. Like to lock him up. But Ryan insists Cohen’s an ally…” He shook his head miserably.
“Ryan’s protecting him?”
“Cohen whined about Culpepper’s songs making fun of him. Said they were subjecting Ryan to ridicule too. Sent over tapes of it. Ryan went a bit mad himself…”
“Not taking ADAM, is he?”
“Ryan? No—he’s getting into the gin. Stays cool sometimes. Paranoid other times. Two days sober, one half-drunk. Not a good pattern. I know it too well.”
Bill licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. “No excuse for protecting Cohen if he’s really a murderer…” He took a long pull on the whiskey Sullivan had given him and scarcely tasted it.
“So me having to protect that little prick Cohen,” Sullivan growled, “that extends to Ryan giving me orders to…” His voice broke. He reached over and picked up the red-and-black knit blanket. Clutched it to his chest. “Pretty, isn’t it? When I was done with her, I left her as she was, in the bathroom, naked in the tub…”
Bill stared. “What you mean—when you were done with her?”
Sullivan closed his eyes, clutching the blanket to him, the sudden motion spilling his drink on his lap. “I seen she had a half-knitted blanket by her bed. It was nice. You know, black and red, real pretty. So I took it… Just didn’t seem right to leave it lying there, all by itself…”
Bill finished his drink. Thought maybe he should get out of here—while Sullivan let him. But at last he asked, “Chief—are you saying that Ryan sent you to kill Anna Culpepper?”
Sullivan looked at the blanket. After a long moment, he nodded. “In her bath. Pushed her under the water… Her eyes, Bill—her eyes staring at me through the water… as I held her under… when the bubbles come up, I was thinking: there goes her life! You know? Her life all bubblin’ up from her mouth! Just like the bubbles that come up outside that window… see ’em?”
“Oh Jay-sus, Chief, that’s…” Bill took a long, deep, ragged breath. Not sure what to say. He almost felt like he ought to comfort Sullivan. Sorry you went through that. But you couldn’t say that to a murderer. “Chief—I’ve got to get back to my wife. This is… it’s too late to do anything about it. We have to… to let it go. And I want you to know, it’s all safe with me, mate. What you said.”
“Oh—I can’t let it go,” Sullivan said, his eyes closed, voice barely audible. “I’m going to Neptune’s Bounty. Find a soft spot and…”
Bill got up, backed away from him—then hurried to the door. And left without another word.
Ryan Plasmids 1959
Fully dressed, Brigid Tenenbaum lay on her cot, staring at the steel wall. She knew she would not sleep that night. She kept seeing their faces… gazing up at the metal men, adoringly…
The Little Sisters. Their large, dark, trusting eyes… She could not bear it anymore. The way they would lovingly climb into her lap—the cruelty of their innocence.
She must act—she must find relief. She could run away, hide alone in some corner of Rapture. There was that old maintenance dorm she’d found. But hiding there, alone, wouldn’t work—their eyes, their faces would pursue her. There would be no hiding from them.
No. The only way was to set them free from this place. Then she would no longer feel their pain—their release would be hers…
Now was as good a time as any. The sentries had been gathering out front late at night, and it would be necessary to shut off the cameras and bots. But she knew just how to do that. She would find some way to get past the fourth man, later. Perhaps she might have to kill him.
Brigid reached under her bunk and found the bottle of vodka. She’d bought it from Karlosky, but it hadn’t really helped smother the cruel feelings of caring for the children that had arisen in her. She’d given up after half a bottle.
Which left half a bottle…
She opened the labelless bottle, took a mouthful, swished it around, then spat it out onto her lab coat. She got her keys from the hook on the wall and then went out into the hallway. A security camera swiveled toward her and sent a bot from its cabinet to look at her. It registered her DNA-detection flasher, circled her once, and then whirred back to its container. She kept on down the hallway, made a stop in lab 16, then came back out into the corridor—and stopped dead. Two sentries were scowling at her, blocking the way with shotguns in their hands.
The tall, sallow-faced guard in the overalls was Rolf. She didn’t know the squat one with the bad teeth. He had a constable badge pinned upside down on an old military coat.
“What you doing wandering ’round; this ain’t your work time, lady,” Rolf asked, squinting at her suspiciously.
Brigid blinked at them, swaying in what she hoped was a good simulation of drunkenness. “Could not sleep. Lonely. Thinking maybe I will make myself pretty to visit you. Maybe I will take a shower, yes? Maybe you join me in shower, eh?”
Rolf’s mouth dropped open—nothing had ever surprised him more. But she could see he wanted to believe it.
The short one scratched his matted hair. “Well now… you mean… just Rolf here?”
“Oh no, plenty room for everyone; we take turns, yes?” Pretending to swig the vodka, she turned to point at the showers, at the far end of the hall.
She turned back and grinned at them with bleary inebriation. “You take bottle and wait there, eh? I will make myself pretty…”
“Oh no, too many cameras…” Rolf began. “If someone checks…”
“I will turn them off!” Brigid insisted, waving the problem away. “It is nothing!”
“What’s a-going on down here?” called a redheaded man, with a tommy gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. He came stalking down the hall, lower lip thrust out disapprovingly. But his expression changed, became sheer lust, when he saw the bottle in her hand. Not lust for her…
“Is that… wine?”
Brigid shook her head at him. “No. Much stronger. You want?” She thrust the bottle into his grasp. “You take the vodka to shower; I will take care of cameras. You can share with these boys, yes? We have a small party.” She wagged a finger at them. “But you must not be naughty boys in shower!” She turned away, laughing, and staggered away in the direction of the autosecurity control panels…
She heard them walking off, muttering, toward the showers. Rolf saying, “I dunno… maybe just a drink or two, but there’s no way we…”
She used the combination lock, switched off the security cameras and bots, and then went to check the showers. It was already done. The overwhelming dose of sleeping powder she’d put in the vodka had done its work, and quickly. All three sentries were sprawled snoring on the floor. She unloaded two of the shotguns, taking the shells, and then carried the third shotgun away with her.
She got the leather tote bag she needed, with the equipment for removing the sea slugs and some canned food. She stuffed it all in the bag. The purging device would cause the sea slugs to disintegrate inside the children. They would vomit up the remains.
Brigid hurried down the dimly lit hall to the row of children’s cells. She leaned the shotgun against the wall before she let the girls out, not wanting to scare them. She put a finger to her lips, to signify quiet, as she let each one out, and winked.
“Now children,” she whispered, as they gathered around her, a diminutive crowd, “we will play a game of quiet—like hide-and-seek. We will get the other girls and then…”
“Someone’s coming,” said one of the moppets.
Brigid heard the heavy footsteps then. Probably the fourth sentry, who stood out in the hallway. “Hey, the system’s down!” he called, from around the corner of the corridor.
“Children, we will go back into this nursery, together, all of us, and we’ll wait till he goes by—we will trick him!”
The children giggled mischievously, and she hushed them, herding them into the nursery cell. One of them lay on the cot, pretending to be asleep; the others pressed into a corner near the door, squatting in excited silence with Brigid. A few moments more, and then they heard the guard striding by.
“Rolf!” the man called. “Where the hell you got to? The system’s down! Christ, if the splicers’ve got in…”
Brigid and the Little Sisters waited another long, slow minute. She guessed it’d be two or three minutes before the fourth sentry found the others sleeping in the showers. There was no time to get any more children out—they were far down the hallway. She’d lose the ones she had if she tried…
Heart pounding, Brigid stood up, and whispered, “We must go like ghosts! Quiet as ghosts!”
“The ghosts aren’t so quiet,” a black-haired Little Sister remarked, twirling the ends of her hair around a finger. “I hear them talking all the time!”
“Then be quieter than ghosts! Come on!”
Brigid opened the door and they tiptoed through. She herded them around the hallway corner, toward the front door of the facility. They were almost running when they reached the outer corridor—the cameras out there were still angling inertly down. But that wouldn’t last…
They got across the anteroom to the Metro just as the alarms went off behind them. But she managed to get all the Little Sisters with her into the bathysphere.
She knew an abandoned dorm that might do for a safehouse. It was a dusty place, almost forgotten now, in a basement corner of the city. There, she could clear the sea slugs from the children and give them a chance to be human beings. They would lose something, but they would gain much more.
And perhaps the cruelty of her maternal instinct would transmute—and pain would become joy.
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office 1959
Andrew Ryan hit the Record button on the Acu-Vox and cleared his throat: “I am told that Lamb has been seen in the streets… come out of her sanctum in Persephone. Rapture’s split up between our territories, the Atlas turf, and Lamb’s little group of psychos—my city is schismed.” He sighed. “One of the Alpha Series was killed in the incident, and his bonded Sister stolen. But the counsel has no time for a manhunt; Atlas swells the ranks of his marauders by the day. Regardless, Lamb’s name has already faded among the people. She is no more than a ghost who has forgotten to die…”
A chime came on the desk. He heard Karlosky’s voice over the intercom. “Boss? Doctor Suchong is here.”
Ryan switched off the tape recorder. “Very good. Send him in.”
He opened a desk drawer, drew out the folder containing Suchong’s proposal, and scanned it again as the doctor came padding in. Ryan was distantly aware of Suchong bowing. “Yes… sit down.” He heard the squeak of Suchong sitting in the chair and went on: “I’ve looked over this little plan of yours—frankly, Doctor Suchong—frankly, I’m shocked by your proposal.” Ryan glanced up from the folder, tented his fingers, closing his eyes as if considering the idea objectively, though in fact he’d already made up his mind. “If we were to modify the structure of our commercial plasmid line as you propose, to make the user vulnerable to mental suggestion—would we not be able to effectively control the actions of citizens of Rapture? Free will is the cornerstone of this city. The thought of sacrificing it is abhorrent.”
Suchong, sitting across from Ryan, nodded, somehow conveying apology, disappointing Ryan by acquiescing. He’d hoped Suchong would “talk him into it.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “However,… we are indeed in a time of war. If Atlas and his bandits have their way, will they not turn us into slaves? And what will become of free will then? Desperate times call for desperate measures. And, after all, if you say Fontaine knew of this sort of thing—then it could be working its way to Atlas. We can’t let them get the edge on us, Suchong.”
Suchong looked at him attentively. “Then—you approve Suchong’s plan? We can proceed with pheromone conditioning?”
“If you can guarantee the splicers respond to me. Not to anyone else.”
“Suchong works for Ryan! I will see to it…”
“And what does Tenenbaum think? Does she think there might be a means to block this… this hormonal control?”
Suchong shrugged. “Suchong… think not. But—not sure where she is. Cannot ask.”
“What? Why not?”
“You do not know? I assumed guards reported to you! She is… gone. Hiding somewhere in Rapture. Took Little Sisters with her.”
“No one told me this.” Ryan laughed softly and bitterly. “Who got to Tenenbaum? Was she paid to do this? By Atlas?”
“Something bother her for long time, Mr. Ryan.”
“Had an attack of conscience, has she?”
Suchong blinked, not knowing what was meant. The English word conscience was one he hadn’t bothered to learn. “She is… troubled female. She says we are harming children, even though we give them immortality! We give them power to always heal! This is harming? Suchong does not think so…”
“Ah.” Ryan picked up a pencil and flipped it from finger to finger. He was not convinced the Little Sisters were happy little elves working away for Rapture. But—he was convinced that ADAM was Rapture’s edge on the outside world. Suppose they were ever invaded. KGB, CIA, some other insidious “intelligence” lurkers would infiltrate. Perhaps this new pernicious influence, this Atlas, would bring them. Or some of Lamb’s treacherous bunch. She could have been a KGB agent all along. And if they were invaded by the Soviets or the Brits or the USA—then what? Only the extraordinary abilities provided by plasmids could protect Rapture from outsiders. So ADAM must go on. He needed the Little Sisters more than ever.
“If she took any Little Sisters with her, plasmid production will be drastically undercut.”
“Yes,” Suchong smoothed his greased-back hair thoughtfully. “We will need more… ‘Little Sisters.’”
“Well, there’s no time to wait for more people to…” Ryan cleared his throat. “I’ll tell Cavendish to see to it we have a few more until… something else is worked out.” Ryan tossed the pencil on the desk. “As for Brigid Tenenbaum, we shall find her. If you betray me, Doctor—I warn you, things will not go well.”
Suchong smiled sadly. “I would not respect you, if that were not the case, Mr. Ryan.” Suchong bowed. Then he hurried to the door, bent on his mission.
A whisking sound—and Ryan turned to see a small package arrive for him in the pneumatic tube. The handwriting told him it was from Sullivan. He removed it from the tube and opened it. It contained a reel of recording tape and a note in Sullivan’s hand:
Don’t think you’ll see me alive again, sir. I plan a quick get-together with a bullet. Can’t live with what I done. She had the cutest little red and black blanket. Here’s a tape, might clue you in on why Jasmine Jolene moved out. Why she’s been ducking you. Owe you that, I guess, Great Man. Now I owe myself something else. A little drinky, a little bye bye.
Bye bye, Great Man!
Ryan stared at the note—then looked at the tape. He was strangely reluctant to listen to it. At last he put it in the tape player, and pressed Play.
19
Arcadia, Rapture
1959
“I just don’t feel comfortable in this park anymore, Bill,” Elaine said. “Bodyguards or not.”
She and Bill stood on the little bridge, watching the reflected light play in the stream. The cryptic pagan graffiti of the Saturnine cult marked the wood of the little footbridge. They’d seen bullets lying about in the grass—and ADAM syringes.
Bill nodded. “Does seem daft, coming ’ere. Suppose she steps on one of those syringes? What’ll that do to her?”
Elaine put her hand to her mouth. “Oh—I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But—she and Mascha were all atwitter about coming here, love.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “A few minutes more, and we’ll go home, eh?”
He glanced over his shoulder, saw Constable Redgrave and Karlosky, talking a few strides away, each with a shotgun and a pistol. The little girls were playing with the little wooden dolls Sam Lutz had made them over by a boulder, close to the sliding Japanese-style doors, about fifty feet away.
A drumming of propellers caught his attention, and he looked up to see a security bot fly overhead. It whined past, watching for splicers. Arcadia had been cleared of splicers and rebels—at least for the time being. Bill had requested a day with his family in the park, and Ryan had seen to it.
“I just have the worst feeling, Bill,” Elaine whispered…
Bill sighed, wanting a cigarette. Real tobacco was in short supply. “I know. You’re right. I’m going to get us out of here.”
“Bill!” Redgrave called, worry in his voice.
Karlosky was already hurrying toward the boulder where the girls had been. They were gone…
“Sophie!” Bill shouted. He found himself running after Karlosky. “Redgrave—keep Elaine here!”
“That door—” Karlosky puffed.
Bill saw it then—the sliding door was open. And the girls were nowhere to be seen. His daughter was gone.
Then—there she was. Sophie, stepping through it, alone, tears in her eyes. “Daddy?”
Karlosky ran through the door, calling, “Mascha! Hey kid! Where you go!”
Bill ran to Sophie, swept her up in his arms. “Crikey, I was so worried, love, don’t run off like that. Where’s Mascha?”
“We heard someone call us—from the tea room! We went through the door, but it was someone I don’t know… a big man… He said she had to go with him—for Rapture!”
“What!” Still holding her, Bill stepped through the door—and saw no one except Karlosky coming back, frowning.
Karlosky shook his head at him. “They’re gone.”
But there was Mascha’s doll, lying on the floor. Its head was snapped off. Bill put Sophie down, placed his hands on her shoulders, and looked tenderly into her eyes. “Did he hurt you, love?” Bill asked, heart sinking as he thought about poor Mascha…
Her lips quivered. “I pulled at his arm, and he pushed me down! And I ran away!” And then she burst into tears.
Elaine rushed up, then, crushing Sophie to her, tears of mother and daughter running together.
Redgrave was close behind her—he’d been watching her back. “Bill—where’s the other one?” Redgrave asked, looking around.
“Some bastard took her…”
He stepped up to Karlosky, drew him aside. “You see anything?”
“Nyet—but I think I heard Cavendish back there.”
“Cavendish? I’ve got to get my wife and girl back to our place. You and Redgrave see if you can find Mascha, will you?”
“We try. But…” Karlosky shook his head. “Not much hope.”
It seemed to Bill that those three words summed it all up.
Fort Frolic, Rapture
1959
“My daddy’s smarter than Einstein, stronger than Hercules, and lights a fire with a snap of his finger! Are you as good as my daddy, Mister? Not if you don’t visit the Gatherer’s Garden, you aren’t! Smart daddies get spliced at the garden!”
The automated voice at the Gatherer’s Garden machine, near the entrance to the strip joint where Jasmine worked, seemed to be speaking directly to Andrew Ryan, as if teasing him, mocking him. He ignored it, as well as the startled man taking tickets at the door. He rushed into the strip club, disregarding the swaying woman on the stage.
He beelined right to that backstage door he’d been so familiar with before he’d gotten Jasmine into her luxury apartment…
He should have taken her in hand, forced it out of her—not gotten so caught up in other things.
But too late. He kept hearing the tape over and over in his head. “That creepy Tenenbaum promised me it wasn’t gonna be a real pregnancy; they’d just take the egg out once Mr. Ryan and I had… I needed the money so bad. But I know Mr. Ryan’s gonna suss it out… gonna know I wasn’t being careful… gonna know I sold the…”
Sold his child!
He slammed into the back hallway, down the hall, into the bedroom where strippers did their “extra” shows for special customers, and there she was, barely dressed, yawning on the wrinkled bedclothes. Jasmine Jolene, looking sleepy. Pretending all was right with them when she saw him come in. Pretending that she was glad to see him.
“I… I thought you’d forgotten about me…” she squeaked. Forgetting her elocution lessons in her fear. “But I’m so glad you didn’t.”
“You sold my child! To Tenenbaum! To Fontaine!”
She scrambled away from him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know. I didn’t know Fontaine had something to do with it! I…”
He couldn’t bear to hear the lies coming out of that pretty mouth. He lunged at her, closed his hands over her soft neck.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. “No, no don’t! Please! I loved you—don’t, please, don’t! No, no!”
She tried to say something else, but it was cut off, squeezed off by the inexorable pressure of his fingers tightening on her throat. Tighter, squeezing ever tighter, until her pretty eyes fairly popped out of her head…
Farmer’s Market
1959
A security bot whirred by overhead, making that irritating whistling noise. Ryan and Bill, walking with their escort, glanced up at the bot as it whizzed by, Bill ducking.
He looked over at Elaine and Sophie, browsing together on the other side of the open-stall market. The pale, frightened little man standing behind the hydroponic vegetables rack gave them a hesitant smile. Bill glanced up at another sound—the big security camera above a fruit booth, whirring in its red pool of light to take him in. He wore his ID flasher, so it decided not to tell one of the turrets or bots to kill him.
This was no place to raise a child. Especially when they might come across a dead body at any moment. But Ryan insisted that life go on with as much normality as possible, and he’d pressured Bill to bring his family out on this walk today.
“Come along, Bill…” Ryan had said.
Bill had said, “Right, guv’nor, I’ll get the Mrs. and the squeaker…” But it had taken a lot of talking to get Elaine out of the house with Sophie.
They had Redgrave and Karlosky in front of them, Linosky and Cavendish, each one of them with a machine gun in his hands. Andrew Ryan was the only one without a gun. Ryan carried that fancy walking stick now, what with him getting a bit long in the tooth. He still looked natty and confident—a bit grim, but not too worried.
A lot of men had died in the past few days. Skirmishes were popping up all over Rapture. It was a guerilla war—but it was war.
Bill had nearly left Ryan Industries after the takeover of Fontaine Futuristics—it had been a blow, Ryan nationalizing an industry. A putrid hypocrisy. And before that—Persephone. Then Sullivan telling him what Ryan had been up to, behind the scenes. Torture—and having Anna Culpepper killed. But the final, camel-busting straw was the disappearance of Mascha. He’d asked Ryan about it, and Cavendish. Ryan had said he could not be bothered with every petty crime around Rapture—and Cavendish had said, “You deal with the plumbing; we’ll deal with security—now fuck off.” And that was it—he’d decided right then, walking away from Cavendish’s office, he was getting his family out of Rapture. It was just a question of choosing his moment.
He had a half-formed plan. Roland Wallace wanted out too. They’d talked it over: Wallace was authorized to pass through an external-access air lock. There was a minisub in bay 2. Wallace could pretend to be doing repairs on it, then slip out with it through the air lock to the open sea.
Wallace would get the little sub to one of the old sentry launches, still tied up behind the lighthouse, and bring the launch around to its entrance. Bill could get his family out through the lighthouse, which had a single cable for its cameras and turrets. He could unhook that cable. If the camera were out, the security bots wouldn’t be activated when he approached the lighthouse shaft. No one but Ryan was genetically authorized to be up there—the bots would attack anyone else.
The water was rough, over Rapture. They’d have to wait on the escape; wait for better weather, in late spring. Fewer ice floes. Then they’d escape, take the launch to the sea routes, ride the currents, and flag down a passing ship.
If they could get through to the lighthouse at all—not only was Ryan’s security in the way, there were rebels and rogue splicers. Atlas now controlled about forty percent of Rapture, including Apollo Square, Artemis Suites, and Neptune’s Bounty, his strongholds. Lamb was mostly tied up around Persephone and Dionysus Park. They’d all have to be skirted. Bill thought about trying to make some kind of deal, on the sly, with Atlas, but he knew he couldn’t be trusted…
As if reading his thoughts, the PA system hissed with static, whined with feedback, and then a woman’s voice announced: “Atlas is a friend of the parasite! Don’t be a friend of Atlas! Ignore the lies of Atlas and his parasites! Rapture is on the rise!”
Another hiss of static became: “We all have bills to pay, and the temptation to break curfew to make a little extra ADAM is forgivable. Breaking the curfew is not! Stay on the level, and stay out of trouble!” A whine of feedback, and then: “Wanting an item from the surface is forgivable! Buying or smuggling one into Rapture is not! Attention: a new curfew will be enacted on Thursday! Citizens found in violation will be relocated! The parasite has his eye on Rapture—keep your eye on the parasite!”
Bill pretended an interest in the grain-based “meat” at the farmer’s market “butcher’s stall.” But his mind was full of questions. Could he and his family really escape from Rapture? Was it possible while this war was going on? Probably too dangerous to try.
There was one other possibility. Having a couple too many glasses of Worley’s brandy, he’d even recorded that possibility on an audio diary: “I don’t know if killing Mr. Ryan will stop the war, but I know it won’t stop while that man breathes. I love Mr. Ryan—but I love Rapture. If I have to kill one to save the other, so be it.”
He had to erase that tape immediately. He’d be a dead man if someone found it.
“Seen Diane lately?” Ryan asked, too casually, as he picked up a rather withered apple from a stand. He smelled it, made a face, and put it back.
“Diane McClintock? No, guv, not in person, like. Last I heard she was… ah, that Doctor Steinman did some work on ’er.”
“He was working on her in more ways than one, Bill. Your delicacy is appreciated. Yes, I was actually quite bored with her, and she became very narcissistically tiresome after the New Year’s Eve attack. Whining about her scars. Went gadding about with Steinman—but he’s thrown her over, I understand. Last I knew she was spending a lot of time gambling in Fort Frolic…”
The security bot flew past again—it was on watchful patrol status in order to protect Ryan—and Bill noticed little Sophie watching it with big eyes. Frightened of the thing that was supposed to be protecting her.
Sophie saw him looking at her and came running to him, throwing her little arms around his waist. Elaine followed, with a strained smile, nodding to Ryan.
Ryan looked down at Sophie and smiled, patting her on the head—she shrank away from him. Ryan looked startled at that.
Then came a sad, low-pitched groaning noise and an ominous vibration of heavy footsteps—and they turned to see the hulking, plodding, clanking form of a Big Daddy. There were at present two models of Big Daddy, the Rosies and the Bouncers. This one, a Bouncer, made a drawn-out moaning sound as it came, almost as if in mourning. They all did that, of course. They all smelled rancid. Like dead things.
The Bouncer was carrying an oversized drill built into its right arm; on its back was a heavy power pack. To Bill the Big Daddies almost looked like pictures of robots he’d seen on the covers of pulp science fiction magazines. But he knew there was most of a human being inside that Big Daddy suit—some poor blighter who’d been caught breaking a rule, sometimes a criminal, sometimes a Lamb follower, sometimes just a hungry man who’d stolen an apple. The constables tranquilized “candidates” for Big Daddies and took them to Prometheus Point, where their flesh was fused with metal, their brains altered and conditioned to focus on protecting the Little Sisters and on killing anything they perceived as a threat. When the Big Daddies were damaged, repair parts were scavenged, on the sly, from the Eternal Flame Crematorium. Who was going to miss a leg or an arm when the rest had been cremated?
All over the massive Big Daddy’s great round metal head were circular, glowing sensors; its huge metal-encased legs clunked along relentlessly—but careful never to injure the barefoot, grubby little tyke of a girl who scampered along beside it. Gatherers, some called the girls. This one was tiny and fragile compared with the Big Daddy, but she dominated it completely. The Little Sister wore a dirty pink smock; her face seemed faintly greenish, her eyes sunken. There was a distance in those eyes, like something Bill had seen in Brigid Tenenbaum’s—as if her peculiar aloofness had been installed in her creation.
“Come on, Mr. Bubbles!” the Little Sister fluted, calling to the Big Daddy. “Come on, or we’ll miss the angels!” The towering mock of a deep-sea diver lumbered after her, moaning…
“Oh Christ,” Bill muttered.
A dark-haired Little Sister skipped past them.
“Mascha!” Sophie called out.
The Gatherer stopped, blinking, mouth open in an O, to look at Sophie for a long, puzzled moment. Then she said, “What is that one? That’s not a Gatherer; and she’s not an angel yet! We can’t play with her until she’s an angel!”
Then the little girl danced away. The Big Daddy gave out its long, mournful groan and clumped after her. The floor shook with the creature’s going.
“Oh God, Bill,” Elaine said, hugging Sophie to her. “Was that—?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m sure it wasn’t her.” He doubted she believed the lie.
Bill was just grateful that Sophie hadn’t seen what was left of her friend Mascha sticking a syringe in a dead body, drawing out the pulsing red effluvium of living ADAM. A sickening sight. It seemed to belong to Rapture the way giant pink elephants belonged to hallucinating drunks.
The public address chose that moment to inform them, “The Little Sisters Orphanage: in troubled times, give your little girl the life she deserves! Boarding and education free of charge! After all, children are the future of Rapture!”
And Bill noticed that Ryan was staring down at Sophie…
Olympus Heights
1959
Feeling weary, deeply weary, yet restless too, Andrew Ryan poured himself a martini from the silver shaker and settled back in his easy chair at the picture window, gazing out over the shimmering skyline of the submerged city.
I’m getting old, he thought. The city should still be young. Yet it seems to be aging right along with me.
A couple of squid rippled by, outlined against the glow—and then were gone. The neon signs for Rapture businesses were flickering, threatening to go out. Some of the lights supposed to shine up from the bases of the buildings were dark. But most of the lights still worked. The city of Rapture continued to glow.
The city itself was showing signs of new life. There were the new Circus of Values machines, expected to raise a great deal of revenue. There were the Gatherer’s Gardens too. Scientists were working on machines that could raise man from the dead, if he hadn’t been dead long, and restore him to life. Sure, the population of Rapture was depleted, but when he completed his control of ADAM and the splicers, and rid the city of the rebels, he could build Rapture up anew.
He sipped the martini, put it on the end table beside the tape recorder, and then pressed Record for his audio diary. History must have its due.
“On my walk today I had an encounter with a pair of them… he, a lumbering palooka in a foul-smelling diving suit, and she, an unwashed moppet in a filthy pink smock. Her pallor was off, green and morbid, and there was a rather unpleasant aspect to her demeanor, as if she were in an altogether different place than the rest of us. I understand the need for such creatures; I just wish I could make them more presentable.” He chuckled to himself at that, took a sip of his martini, and made another diary entry: “Could I have made mistakes? One does not build cities if one is guided by doubt. But can one govern in absolute certainty? I know that my beliefs have elevated me, just as I know that the things I have rejected would have destroyed me.” On one of the buildings outside, a light flickered and went out. He sighed. “But the city… it is collapsing before my…” He hesitated. Not able to finish the thought. It was unbearable. “Have I become so convinced by my own beliefs that I have stopped seeing the truth? But Atlas is out there, and he aims to destroy me—to question is to surrender. I will not surrender.”
A letter arrived in the pneumatic tube: Ryan heard the distinctive swish of its arrival. He got wearily up, fetched the message back to his easy chair.
Grunting as he sat, he fumbled it open. He was losing some dexterity in his fingers.
He unfolded the letter—and recognized Diane McClintock’s handwriting:
Dear Andrei:
Andrei Rianofski, Andrew Ryan, Mr. Ryan; the lover, the Tycoon, the Tyrant: just three of the many sides of you. I saw only the cold side recently—first you didn’t show up for New Year’s Eve, and I had to face rogue splicers without you. Then you didn’t show up when I was recovering from the surgery. You stood me up again in Fort Frolic. You had “a meeting”! So I decided to go home. Tried to go the short route. Apollo Square was blocked off, taken over by the rebels. But I was a bit drunk, and angry, and I wanted to confront them for the damage they’d done me. Maybe I wanted them to kill me and just get it over with. A woman tried to escape—to get past Ryan’s guards keeping the rebels in Apollo Square, and one of your pet splicers pointed his finger at her and she burst into flames! I had heard about Atlas. But it occurred to me I only had your side of it. So I thought they were either going to kill me—or explain themselves to me. And I bribed a guard at the gate into letting me through.
Conditions are terrible in Apollo Square, and Artemis. The crowding, the squalor. They say it was almost as bad before the revolution. They say it was your doing—your neglect! Graffiti is painted on the walls: “Atlas Lives!” What do I really know about Atlas? And at last someone took me to meet him. They know I’m your mistress, or was, but they have learned to trust me. Atlas was surprisingly humble. I asked him if he would lead the people in some kind of uprising against you. He said, “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. These people will liberate themselves.” Isn’t that strange—it’s almost like something you would say! But when he said it—I understood. It meant something. It went right to the heart of me, Andrei! I thought you were a great man. I was wrong. Atlas is a great man. And I will serve him; I will struggle beside him, fighting all you represent! I’m going on a raid tomorrow to get weapons and food. I will learn to fight, Andrei. You abandoned me—now I have left you. I have left you for Atlas—and the revolution!
Ryan folded the paper up and tore it into small bits. He let the shreds of paper flutter to the floor, picked up his martini—and suddenly lost control of himself, throwing the glass so that it smashed on the big picture window, fragments of wet, broken glass sliding down over the glowing spires of the city…
Arcadia, Rapture 1959
“I just don’t feel comfortable in this park anymore, Bill,” Elaine said. “Bodyguards or not.”
She and Bill stood on the little bridge, watching the reflected light play in the stream. The cryptic pagan graffiti of the Saturnine cult marked the wood of the little footbridge. They’d seen bullets lying about in the grass—and ADAM syringes.
Bill nodded. “Does seem daft, coming ’ere. Suppose she steps on one of those syringes? What’ll that do to her?”
Elaine put her hand to her mouth. “Oh—I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But—she and Mascha were all atwitter about coming here, love.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “A few minutes more, and we’ll go home, eh?”
He glanced over his shoulder, saw Constable Redgrave and Karlosky, talking a few strides away, each with a shotgun and a pistol. The little girls were playing with the little wooden dolls Sam Lutz had made them over by a boulder, close to the sliding Japanese-style doors, about fifty feet away.
A drumming of propellers caught his attention, and he looked up to see a security bot fly overhead. It whined past, watching for splicers. Arcadia had been cleared of splicers and rebels—at least for the time being. Bill had requested a day with his family in the park, and Ryan had seen to it.
“I just have the worst feeling, Bill,” Elaine whispered…
Bill sighed, wanting a cigarette. Real tobacco was in short supply. “I know. You’re right. I’m going to get us out of here.”
“Bill!” Redgrave called, worry in his voice.
Karlosky was already hurrying toward the boulder where the girls had been. They were gone…
“Sophie!” Bill shouted. He found himself running after Karlosky. “Redgrave—keep Elaine here!”
“That door—” Karlosky puffed.
Bill saw it then—the sliding door was open. And the girls were nowhere to be seen. His daughter was gone.
Then—there she was. Sophie, stepping through it, alone, tears in her eyes. “Daddy?”
Karlosky ran through the door, calling, “Mascha! Hey kid! Where you go!”
Bill ran to Sophie, swept her up in his arms. “Crikey, I was so worried, love, don’t run off like that. Where’s Mascha?”
“We heard someone call us—from the tea room! We went through the door, but it was someone I don’t know… a big man… He said she had to go with him—for Rapture!”
“What!” Still holding her, Bill stepped through the door—and saw no one except Karlosky coming back, frowning.
Karlosky shook his head at him. “They’re gone.”
But there was Mascha’s doll, lying on the floor. Its head was snapped off. Bill put Sophie down, placed his hands on her shoulders, and looked tenderly into her eyes. “Did he hurt you, love?” Bill asked, heart sinking as he thought about poor Mascha…
Her lips quivered. “I pulled at his arm, and he pushed me down! And I ran away!” And then she burst into tears.
Elaine rushed up, then, crushing Sophie to her, tears of mother and daughter running together.
Redgrave was close behind her—he’d been watching her back. “Bill—where’s the other one?” Redgrave asked, looking around.
“Some bastard took her…”
He stepped up to Karlosky, drew him aside. “You see anything?”
“Nyet—but I think I heard Cavendish back there.”
“Cavendish? I’ve got to get my wife and girl back to our place. You and Redgrave see if you can find Mascha, will you?”
“We try. But…” Karlosky shook his head. “Not much hope.”
It seemed to Bill that those three words summed it all up.
Fort Frolic, Rapture 1959
“My daddy’s smarter than Einstein, stronger than Hercules, and lights a fire with a snap of his finger! Are you as good as my daddy, Mister? Not if you don’t visit the Gatherer’s Garden, you aren’t! Smart daddies get spliced at the garden!”
The automated voice at the Gatherer’s Garden machine, near the entrance to the strip joint where Jasmine worked, seemed to be speaking directly to Andrew Ryan, as if teasing him, mocking him. He ignored it, as well as the startled man taking tickets at the door. He rushed into the strip club, disregarding the swaying woman on the stage.
He beelined right to that backstage door he’d been so familiar with before he’d gotten Jasmine into her luxury apartment…
He should have taken her in hand, forced it out of her—not gotten so caught up in other things.
But too late. He kept hearing the tape over and over in his head. “That creepy Tenenbaum promised me it wasn’t gonna be a real pregnancy; they’d just take the egg out once Mr. Ryan and I had… I needed the money so bad. But I know Mr. Ryan’s gonna suss it out… gonna know I wasn’t being careful… gonna know I sold the…”
Sold his child!
He slammed into the back hallway, down the hall, into the bedroom where strippers did their “extra” shows for special customers, and there she was, barely dressed, yawning on the wrinkled bedclothes. Jasmine Jolene, looking sleepy. Pretending all was right with them when she saw him come in. Pretending that she was glad to see him.
“I… I thought you’d forgotten about me…” she squeaked. Forgetting her elocution lessons in her fear. “But I’m so glad you didn’t.”
“You sold my child! To Tenenbaum! To Fontaine!”
She scrambled away from him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know. I didn’t know Fontaine had something to do with it! I…”
He couldn’t bear to hear the lies coming out of that pretty mouth. He lunged at her, closed his hands over her soft neck.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. “No, no don’t! Please! I loved you—don’t, please, don’t! No, no!”
She tried to say something else, but it was cut off, squeezed off by the inexorable pressure of his fingers tightening on her throat. Tighter, squeezing ever tighter, until her pretty eyes fairly popped out of her head…
Farmer’s Market 1959
A security bot whirred by overhead, making that irritating whistling noise. Ryan and Bill, walking with their escort, glanced up at the bot as it whizzed by, Bill ducking.
He looked over at Elaine and Sophie, browsing together on the other side of the open-stall market. The pale, frightened little man standing behind the hydroponic vegetables rack gave them a hesitant smile. Bill glanced up at another sound—the big security camera above a fruit booth, whirring in its red pool of light to take him in. He wore his ID flasher, so it decided not to tell one of the turrets or bots to kill him.
This was no place to raise a child. Especially when they might come across a dead body at any moment. But Ryan insisted that life go on with as much normality as possible, and he’d pressured Bill to bring his family out on this walk today.
“Come along, Bill…” Ryan had said.
Bill had said, “Right, guv’nor, I’ll get the Mrs. and the squeaker…” But it had taken a lot of talking to get Elaine out of the house with Sophie.
They had Redgrave and Karlosky in front of them, Linosky and Cavendish, each one of them with a machine gun in his hands. Andrew Ryan was the only one without a gun. Ryan carried that fancy walking stick now, what with him getting a bit long in the tooth. He still looked natty and confident—a bit grim, but not too worried.
A lot of men had died in the past few days. Skirmishes were popping up all over Rapture. It was a guerilla war—but it was war.
Bill had nearly left Ryan Industries after the takeover of Fontaine Futuristics—it had been a blow, Ryan nationalizing an industry. A putrid hypocrisy. And before that—Persephone. Then Sullivan telling him what Ryan had been up to, behind the scenes. Torture—and having Anna Culpepper killed. But the final, camel-busting straw was the disappearance of Mascha. He’d asked Ryan about it, and Cavendish. Ryan had said he could not be bothered with every petty crime around Rapture—and Cavendish had said, “You deal with the plumbing; we’ll deal with security—now fuck off.” And that was it—he’d decided right then, walking away from Cavendish’s office, he was getting his family out of Rapture. It was just a question of choosing his moment.
He had a half-formed plan. Roland Wallace wanted out too. They’d talked it over: Wallace was authorized to pass through an external-access air lock. There was a minisub in bay 2. Wallace could pretend to be doing repairs on it, then slip out with it through the air lock to the open sea.
Wallace would get the little sub to one of the old sentry launches, still tied up behind the lighthouse, and bring the launch around to its entrance. Bill could get his family out through the lighthouse, which had a single cable for its cameras and turrets. He could unhook that cable. If the camera were out, the security bots wouldn’t be activated when he approached the lighthouse shaft. No one but Ryan was genetically authorized to be up there—the bots would attack anyone else.
The water was rough, over Rapture. They’d have to wait on the escape; wait for better weather, in late spring. Fewer ice floes. Then they’d escape, take the launch to the sea routes, ride the currents, and flag down a passing ship.
If they could get through to the lighthouse at all—not only was Ryan’s security in the way, there were rebels and rogue splicers. Atlas now controlled about forty percent of Rapture, including Apollo Square, Artemis Suites, and Neptune’s Bounty, his strongholds. Lamb was mostly tied up around Persephone and Dionysus Park. They’d all have to be skirted. Bill thought about trying to make some kind of deal, on the sly, with Atlas, but he knew he couldn’t be trusted…
As if reading his thoughts, the PA system hissed with static, whined with feedback, and then a woman’s voice announced: “Atlas is a friend of the parasite! Don’t be a friend of Atlas! Ignore the lies of Atlas and his parasites! Rapture is on the rise!”
Another hiss of static became: “We all have bills to pay, and the temptation to break curfew to make a little extra ADAM is forgivable. Breaking the curfew is not! Stay on the level, and stay out of trouble!” A whine of feedback, and then: “Wanting an item from the surface is forgivable! Buying or smuggling one into Rapture is not! Attention: a new curfew will be enacted on Thursday! Citizens found in violation will be relocated! The parasite has his eye on Rapture—keep your eye on the parasite!”
Bill pretended an interest in the grain-based “meat” at the farmer’s market “butcher’s stall.” But his mind was full of questions. Could he and his family really escape from Rapture? Was it possible while this war was going on? Probably too dangerous to try.
There was one other possibility. Having a couple too many glasses of Worley’s brandy, he’d even recorded that possibility on an audio diary: “I don’t know if killing Mr. Ryan will stop the war, but I know it won’t stop while that man breathes. I love Mr. Ryan—but I love Rapture. If I have to kill one to save the other, so be it.”
He had to erase that tape immediately. He’d be a dead man if someone found it.
“Seen Diane lately?” Ryan asked, too casually, as he picked up a rather withered apple from a stand. He smelled it, made a face, and put it back.
“Diane McClintock? No, guv, not in person, like. Last I heard she was… ah, that Doctor Steinman did some work on ’er.”
“He was working on her in more ways than one, Bill. Your delicacy is appreciated. Yes, I was actually quite bored with her, and she became very narcissistically tiresome after the New Year’s Eve attack. Whining about her scars. Went gadding about with Steinman—but he’s thrown her over, I understand. Last I knew she was spending a lot of time gambling in Fort Frolic…”
The security bot flew past again—it was on watchful patrol status in order to protect Ryan—and Bill noticed little Sophie watching it with big eyes. Frightened of the thing that was supposed to be protecting her.
Sophie saw him looking at her and came running to him, throwing her little arms around his waist. Elaine followed, with a strained smile, nodding to Ryan.
Ryan looked down at Sophie and smiled, patting her on the head—she shrank away from him. Ryan looked startled at that.
Then came a sad, low-pitched groaning noise and an ominous vibration of heavy footsteps—and they turned to see the hulking, plodding, clanking form of a Big Daddy. There were at present two models of Big Daddy, the Rosies and the Bouncers. This one, a Bouncer, made a drawn-out moaning sound as it came, almost as if in mourning. They all did that, of course. They all smelled rancid. Like dead things.
The Bouncer was carrying an oversized drill built into its right arm; on its back was a heavy power pack. To Bill the Big Daddies almost looked like pictures of robots he’d seen on the covers of pulp science fiction magazines. But he knew there was most of a human being inside that Big Daddy suit—some poor blighter who’d been caught breaking a rule, sometimes a criminal, sometimes a Lamb follower, sometimes just a hungry man who’d stolen an apple. The constables tranquilized “candidates” for Big Daddies and took them to Prometheus Point, where their flesh was fused with metal, their brains altered and conditioned to focus on protecting the Little Sisters and on killing anything they perceived as a threat. When the Big Daddies were damaged, repair parts were scavenged, on the sly, from the Eternal Flame Crematorium. Who was going to miss a leg or an arm when the rest had been cremated?
All over the massive Big Daddy’s great round metal head were circular, glowing sensors; its huge metal-encased legs clunked along relentlessly—but careful never to injure the barefoot, grubby little tyke of a girl who scampered along beside it. Gatherers, some called the girls. This one was tiny and fragile compared with the Big Daddy, but she dominated it completely. The Little Sister wore a dirty pink smock; her face seemed faintly greenish, her eyes sunken. There was a distance in those eyes, like something Bill had seen in Brigid Tenenbaum’s—as if her peculiar aloofness had been installed in her creation.
“Come on, Mr. Bubbles!” the Little Sister fluted, calling to the Big Daddy. “Come on, or we’ll miss the angels!” The towering mock of a deep-sea diver lumbered after her, moaning…
“Oh Christ,” Bill muttered.
A dark-haired Little Sister skipped past them.
“Mascha!” Sophie called out.
The Gatherer stopped, blinking, mouth open in an O, to look at Sophie for a long, puzzled moment. Then she said, “What is that one? That’s not a Gatherer; and she’s not an angel yet! We can’t play with her until she’s an angel!”
Then the little girl danced away. The Big Daddy gave out its long, mournful groan and clumped after her. The floor shook with the creature’s going.
“Oh God, Bill,” Elaine said, hugging Sophie to her. “Was that—?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m sure it wasn’t her.” He doubted she believed the lie.
Bill was just grateful that Sophie hadn’t seen what was left of her friend Mascha sticking a syringe in a dead body, drawing out the pulsing red effluvium of living ADAM. A sickening sight. It seemed to belong to Rapture the way giant pink elephants belonged to hallucinating drunks.
The public address chose that moment to inform them, “The Little Sisters Orphanage: in troubled times, give your little girl the life she deserves! Boarding and education free of charge! After all, children are the future of Rapture!”
And Bill noticed that Ryan was staring down at Sophie…
Olympus Heights 1959
Feeling weary, deeply weary, yet restless too, Andrew Ryan poured himself a martini from the silver shaker and settled back in his easy chair at the picture window, gazing out over the shimmering skyline of the submerged city.
I’m getting old, he thought. The city should still be young. Yet it seems to be aging right along with me.
A couple of squid rippled by, outlined against the glow—and then were gone. The neon signs for Rapture businesses were flickering, threatening to go out. Some of the lights supposed to shine up from the bases of the buildings were dark. But most of the lights still worked. The city of Rapture continued to glow.
The city itself was showing signs of new life. There were the new Circus of Values machines, expected to raise a great deal of revenue. There were the Gatherer’s Gardens too. Scientists were working on machines that could raise man from the dead, if he hadn’t been dead long, and restore him to life. Sure, the population of Rapture was depleted, but when he completed his control of ADAM and the splicers, and rid the city of the rebels, he could build Rapture up anew.
He sipped the martini, put it on the end table beside the tape recorder, and then pressed Record for his audio diary. History must have its due.
“On my walk today I had an encounter with a pair of them… he, a lumbering palooka in a foul-smelling diving suit, and she, an unwashed moppet in a filthy pink smock. Her pallor was off, green and morbid, and there was a rather unpleasant aspect to her demeanor, as if she were in an altogether different place than the rest of us. I understand the need for such creatures; I just wish I could make them more presentable.” He chuckled to himself at that, took a sip of his martini, and made another diary entry: “Could I have made mistakes? One does not build cities if one is guided by doubt. But can one govern in absolute certainty? I know that my beliefs have elevated me, just as I know that the things I have rejected would have destroyed me.” On one of the buildings outside, a light flickered and went out. He sighed. “But the city… it is collapsing before my…” He hesitated. Not able to finish the thought. It was unbearable. “Have I become so convinced by my own beliefs that I have stopped seeing the truth? But Atlas is out there, and he aims to destroy me—to question is to surrender. I will not surrender.”
A letter arrived in the pneumatic tube: Ryan heard the distinctive swish of its arrival. He got wearily up, fetched the message back to his easy chair.
Grunting as he sat, he fumbled it open. He was losing some dexterity in his fingers.
He unfolded the letter—and recognized Diane McClintock’s handwriting:
Dear Andrei:
Andrei Rianofski, Andrew Ryan, Mr. Ryan; the lover, the Tycoon, the Tyrant: just three of the many sides of you. I saw only the cold side recently—first you didn’t show up for New Year’s Eve, and I had to face rogue splicers without you. Then you didn’t show up when I was recovering from the surgery. You stood me up again in Fort Frolic. You had “a meeting”! So I decided to go home. Tried to go the short route. Apollo Square was blocked off, taken over by the rebels. But I was a bit drunk, and angry, and I wanted to confront them for the damage they’d done me. Maybe I wanted them to kill me and just get it over with. A woman tried to escape—to get past Ryan’s guards keeping the rebels in Apollo Square, and one of your pet splicers pointed his finger at her and she burst into flames! I had heard about Atlas. But it occurred to me I only had your side of it. So I thought they were either going to kill me—or explain themselves to me. And I bribed a guard at the gate into letting me through.
Conditions are terrible in Apollo Square, and Artemis. The crowding, the squalor. They say it was almost as bad before the revolution. They say it was your doing—your neglect! Graffiti is painted on the walls: “Atlas Lives!” What do I really know about Atlas? And at last someone took me to meet him. They know I’m your mistress, or was, but they have learned to trust me. Atlas was surprisingly humble. I asked him if he would lead the people in some kind of uprising against you. He said, “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. These people will liberate themselves.” Isn’t that strange—it’s almost like something you would say! But when he said it—I understood. It meant something. It went right to the heart of me, Andrei! I thought you were a great man. I was wrong. Atlas is a great man. And I will serve him; I will struggle beside him, fighting all you represent! I’m going on a raid tomorrow to get weapons and food. I will learn to fight, Andrei. You abandoned me—now I have left you. I have left you for Atlas—and the revolution!
Ryan folded the paper up and tore it into small bits. He let the shreds of paper flutter to the floor, picked up his martini—and suddenly lost control of himself, throwing the glass so that it smashed on the big picture window, fragments of wet, broken glass sliding down over the glowing spires of the city…
20
Drafting Room, Atlantic Express Depot
1959
“There was meant to be a maintenance team here instead of me,” Bill groused as he bent to examine the cracks in the curved metal wall of the maintenance runoff tunnel. “They had some git of a splicer, was going to creep up the walls and fix the leaks they couldn’t reach. Don’t know what became of the buggers…”
Karlosky grunted. “I think I see your maintenance team.”
Bill stood up, walked over to Karlofsky—together they looked through a window into the mailroom of Jet Postal. The shadowy, indirectly lit room was scattered with undelivered mail. And with bodies—several bodies, men in maintenance coveralls lying about on the floor, motionless, pasted to the deck with their own blood. They seemed to have been hacked up by some sharp blade.
Bill sighed, stomach contracting at the sight. “Yeah. I don’t see that splicer. Maybe…”
Karlosky nodded, musingly patting the breach of his tommy gun. “Not good workers, those splicers,” he said dryly. “They go crazy; they kill. A man does not get job done when busy being crazy and killing.” After a moment, he shrugged and added, “Unless killing is the job.”
“Well, I’m going to make a list of cracks and leaks and get a team in here with a constable escort,” Bill said. “We can’t risk…” He broke off, staring at a small figure in a pinafore, a child, moving through the shadows of the Jet Postal sorting room. Steel boots clanked; a great metal shape loomed up behind her.
A Big Daddy and a Little Sister. She skipped along, a large syringe in one hand, singing a song they couldn’t clearly hear. Something about “Mr. Bubbles” and “the angels.” Her enormous chaperone stumped along close behind her.
Bill and Karlosky watched with an uneasy mix of fascination and revulsion as the little girl squatted by a man’s awkwardly sprawling, facedown corpse and jammed the syringe into the back of his neck. She did something with the syringe, chirruping happily to herself, and it began to glow with extracted ADAM.
Bill stepped closer to the window and bent over to peer at the Little Sister. “Karlosky—is that Mascha?”
Karlosky groaned to himself. “Yes, maybe—maybe not. All Little Sisters look much alike to me.”
“If it’s her—I owe it to her folks to get her back.”
“We tried, Bill! You spoke to many people—no one would help.”
“That’s why I’ve got to do this myself, right now…”
“Please, don’t argue with Big Daddy, Bill—oh—there is splicer!”
A spider splicer was creeping upside down on the ceiling over the Little Sister. He had a hooked blade in one hand. He was chattering to himself—the intervening pane of glass muted the sound.
The Little Sister stood up, turned toward the Big Daddy—and then a blade spun past her, whipping through the air like a boomerang. The blade narrowly missed her head—so close it cut a bit of her hair, which drifted prettily away. The weapon circled the room and returned to the splicer, who caught the blade handle neatly, cackling as he did it.
The Little Sister’s guardian reacted instantly. The Big Daddy stepped into a pool of light, raised a rivet gun to aim at the ceiling, and fired a long strafe of rivets at the spider splicer. The gun nailed its target at such close range it cut the splicer in half. The spider splicer’s lower half and its upper half clung to the ceiling… separately, by feet and hands, the two halves gushing blood. Then they let go, and the halves of the splicer dropped heavily to the floor.
The little girl chirruped happily.
“You see?” Karlosky whispered. “If you interfere with her—you end up like him!”
“I’ve got to try,” Bill said. “Maybe if you distract him, I can grab her…”
“Oh shit, Bill, you son of bitch bastard!” Karlosky said, and muttered another imprecation in Russian. “You get me killed!”
“I’ve got faith in your gift for self-preservation, mate. Come on.” Bill led the way to the door of the Jet Postal sorting room. He hesitated, wondering what Elaine would want him to do. She would want Mascha rescued—if this Little Sister was in fact Mascha—but Elaine wouldn’t want him to risk himself this way. Still—there probably wouldn’t be another chance.
He opened the door, then stepped back, crouching down to one side, signaling to Karlosky. “Do it. Then run…”
Karlosky swore in Russian once more, but he raised his tommy gun and fired a short burst toward the Big Daddy—a burst from a tommy gun wasn’t going to kill it, and Karlosky wouldn’t risk the wrath of his employers by destroying the valuable cyborg, but it got the Big Daddy’s attention. The lumbering metal golem turned and rushed like an accelerating freight train at the source of the assault. Karlosky was already running, cursing Bill as he went. The Big Daddy clanged past Bill, not seeing him crouching by the door.
Bill slipped behind the metal guardian and through the door, seeing the little girl standing up from another extraction, blood-dripping syringe in her hand. She looked at him with big eyes, mouth opened in a round O.
Was this Mascha? He wasn’t sure.
“Mr. Buuuuuuubbles!” she called. “There is a bad man here waiting to be turned into an aaaaaaangel!”
“Mascha,” Bill said. “Is that you?” He took a step toward her. “Listen… I’m going to pick you up, but I won’t hurt you—”
Then a metallic clumping close behind Bill turned his blood cold. He spun about just in time to be struck across the chest—the Big Daddy, returned to protect its charge, swinging the weapon in its hand like a club. Bill was knocked backward, off his feet, the air smacked from his lungs, the room whirling.
Gasping, he lost consciousness for a few moments. When the spinning specks formed shapes and the room coalesced, he looked dizzily around—saw that he was sitting up on the floor, back against a bulkhead. The Big Daddy and his little charge were nowhere to be seen.
Bill got up, moaning to himself with the pain of his bruised chest, and staggered to the door. He was met by Karlosky. “You okay, Bill?”
“Yeah—good to see you alive. I thought I’d got you killed…”
“No, I outsmart that steel bastard. Look…!”
He pointed across the open space of the depot—on the far wall, the little girl was climbing into one of the key-shaped art-deco apertures that the Little Sisters used to enter hidden passageways. They scuttled through the passageways to take their scavenged ADAM back to Ryan’s laboratories.
Mascha or not Mascha? He would never know. She simply vanished into the wall.
The Big Daddy waited quietly by the big art deco keyhole for his Little Sister to return.
Bill shook his head and turned away, grimacing with pain—and wanting only to get back to Elaine.
Once more, his determination to escape Rapture was underscored. He had to get his family back to the surface. Back to blue sky and sunlight and freedom…
Medical Pavilion, Aesthetic Ideals Surgery
1959
“Ryan and ADAM, ADAM and Ryan… all those years of study, and was I ever truly a surgeon before I met them? How we plinked away with our scalpels and toy morality! Yes, we could lop a boil here and shave down a beak there—but could we really change anything? No! But ADAM gives us the means to do it, and Ryan frees us from the phony ethics that held us back. Change your look, change your sex, change your race. It’s yours to change, nobody else’s!”
Wearing a blood-soaked surgical gown and white surgeon’s cap, his hands in rubber gloves, Doctor J. S. Steinman hit Pause on the little tape recorder that he’d wedged between the blond patient’s ample breasts; then he pushed the gurney, its wheels susurrating through the shallow water that had leaked across the floor of the surgery. He hummed to himself, singing an Inkspots song, “If I Didn’t Care,” over the muffled moaning of the patient he’d strapped to the little wheeled bed. “Would I be sure that this is love beyond compare? Would all this be true—if I didn’t care… for… you!”
He pushed the woman into place under the glaring surgical light and reached into his coat pocket for his favorite scalpel. Tiresome to do without a nurse, but he’d had to kill Nurse Chavez when she’d started whining about his efforts to please Aphrodite, threatening to turn him into the constables. Of course, he hadn’t killed her till he’d done some fine experimentation on her doll-like visage. He still had Chavez’s face in a refrigerator, somewhere, along with some others he’d peeled off and saved in preservative jars, faces from patients who’d given their lives for his perfect fusion of art and science. He really must try to organize his preserved faces with a filing system.
Steinman paused to admire this latest woman writhing in her restraints on the gurney. She’d used some low-grade plasmid to help her hack a gambling machine in Fort Frolic, and his fellow artist, Sander Cohen, who owned the casino, had caught her. It was getting hard to find voluntary patients. He did think he might get Diane McClintock to come in again. He longed to alter her in another manner entirely, according to his artistic whim—to give her a truly transcendent face. He might get hold of a telekinesis plasmid and use it to form her face from within, shape it telekinetically, into something lovely.
They were all so ugly, honestly, so plain. They didn’t try hard enough to make themselves fitting vessels for Aphrodite. “But they’re filthy, filthy at the core,” he muttered. No knife was sharp enough to cut that filth out. He tried and tried and tried, but they were always so fat or short or… plain. Steinman made a tsk sound as the blond woman shrieked unintelligibly at him through the gag. Some insult, perhaps. “My dear, I’d love to give you some anesthetic to grace your experience, I really would, but I have quite run out of it, and anyway, there is something less aesthetically pleasing about sculpting an unconscious patient. If they are unconscious, the blood hardly spurts at all, their eyes don’t have that look of possession by the god of terror, and how satisfying could that be, now I ask you? I may have to stop and have some more ADAM and a touch of EVE myself… Oh do try to accept this, my dear, appreciate it as a sacrificial aesthetic experience. A sacrifice to Aphrodite! Sander Cohen and I have talked about doing a performance onstage with one of my little surgeries. Can you imagine? A face sculpting set to original music? The trouble is, of course—” He bent near his wild-eyed patient to whisper confidentially. “The trouble is, my dear, Sander Cohen is quite insane. Mad. Out of his mind! Ha ha-aa! I shouldn’t socialize with Cohen, that loony tune, I have my reputation to think of.”
He hit Record again on the tape recorder and cleared his throat to set down another immortal memo. “With genetic modifications, beauty is no longer a goal, or even a virtue. It is a moral obligation. Still, ADAM presents new problems for the professional,” he said, for the audio diary. “As your tools improve, so do your standards. There was a time I was happy enough to take off a wart or two, or turn a real circus freak into something you can show in the daylight…” So saying, he started carving deeply into the face of the woman on the gurney, glad he’d taken the trouble to brace her head in place because she was shaking so much with agony as he sliced away her cheeks.
He went on, “…But that was then, when we took what we got—but with ADAM, the flesh becomes clay. What excuse do we have not to sculpt and sculpt and sculpt until the job is done?” He hit Pause on the tape recorder, its buttons becoming slippery with the blood on his hands, and considered his work. It was hard to tell through all the blood and torn tissue. “My dear, I believe I’m going to give you some ADAM that will regrow your face into another shape entirely. Then I’ll carve the new tissue some more. Then I’ll regrow some more face on you with ADAM. Then I’ll carve that some more. Then—”
Another muffled shriek from the woman. He sighed, shaking his head. They just would not understand. He hit Record again and accompanied his next wet, spurting spate of carving with a kind of artistic manifesto: “When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I’ve spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?”
Steinman hit pause again, used his left hand to wipe some blood from the recorder buttons. He returned to his patient only to find she’d died on him. “Oh dammit, not another one…”
Blood loss and shock, he supposed, as usual. It was really quite unfair.
They always left him too soon. It made him angry to think of their selfishness.
He slashed at her in his fury, knocking the tape recorder on the floor, cutting her throat into ribbons, long pretty ribbons… which he then tied into bows.
When he calmed down enough to be precise, he exposed her breasts and cut them into shapes like the sea anemones that waved in the gentle currents so restfully, so gracefully, outside the window of his office…
Ah, he thought: The Rapture of the Deep…
Fighting McDonagh’s Bar
1959
When? It had to be soon. He was going to have to escape from Rapture, with Elaine and their daughter, and if that meant killing—
“Bill?”
Bill McDonagh nearly leapt from his barstool when Redgrave spoke at his elbow.
“Blimey, don’t sneak up on a man like that!”
Redgrave smiled sadly. “Sorry. Something you ought to know, though. Your woman who cleans the rooms—she found something.”
Bill sighed. He tossed down his brandy, nodded to his bartender. “Just close down when you feel like it, mate.” He got off the barstool. “All right, let’s have it, Redgrave…”
“You’ve been letting out some of your rooms, ain’t you? Number seven—that was the Lutzes’?”
“Sure. I don’t charge them for it. Christ, their little girl went missing on my watch.” He couldn’t resist a cold look at Redgrave. “On your watch too.”
Redgrave grimaced. “We only looked away a couple of seconds. We were watching for splicers—”
“I know—forget it. What about Sam Lutz?”
“Come on.”
Feeling leaden, Bill went with Redgrave to the tavern’s back rooms. Number 7’s combination door was open. He stepped in and immediately saw the two of them stretched out on the mattress, on their backs, side by side: two corpses holding hands, barely recognizable as Mariska and Samuel Lutz. There were a couple of empty pill bottles lying on the floor nearby.
The sunken eyes of the cadavers were closed, eyelids like wrinkled parchment, their faces yellow and emaciated. The shriveling of death had given their lips the same pinched expression of disapproval, as if they were silently judging all the living. They wore their best clothes, he noticed.
“Suicide. And there’s this…” He pointed—beside the bodies was one of the ubiquitous tape recorders.
Bill pressed Play on the tape recorder. Mariska Lutz’s voice came distant and tinny from the little recorder, as if speaking across the gulf of death: “We saw our Mascha today. We barely recognized her. ‘That’s her,’ Sam said.” Mariska gave out a strange little sobbing laugh. “‘You’re crazy,’ I told him. ‘That thing—that is our Mascha?’ But he was right. She was drawing blood out of a corpse… and when she was done, she walked off hand in hand with one of those awful golems! Our Mascha!”
Bill stopped the recording.
Redgrave cleared his throat. “Well. I expect… they knew they couldn’t get her back. She was already… gone. You know, changed so much. So they…”
He gestured limply at the pill bottles.
Bill nodded. “Yeah. Just… just leave ’em here. I’ll seal it up. This’ll be their crypt, for now.”
Redgrave stared at him as if he might object—then he shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He looked back at the bodies. “We only looked away for a moment or two.”
He shook his head and walked out, leaving Bill alone with the dead.
Atlas HQ, Hestia
1959
Walking up to Atlas’s office, Diane was still sweaty, shaky from the raid.
She’d had some training from Atlas’s guerillas, and she was almost used to slipping through the wire, waiting as the other team created the decoy, dashing past Ryan’s men. More than once she’d followed the other guerillas up a side passage, up the stairs, through some old maintenance passage—all of them carrying GI backpacks, to fill with supplies stolen from one of the constabulary armories.
But this time, when the guards broke in on them, just as they finished their “harvest” of the ammo—and just as Sorenson got control of the Big Daddy—the chaos had been exhilarating and nightmarish at once. Firing her own pistols, one in each hand, her heart slamming with each shot, she’d watched a constable go down, shrieking, dying. I’ve killed a man…
She’d cringed from blazing return fire, seen three of her comrades falling…
She decided, now, to record some of her impressions on her audio diary—she had decided she was going to be the historian of the revolution. She switched the recorder on with trembling hands, as she walked along. “We went on a raid outside the wire today. We snagged thirty-one rounds of buckshot, four frag grenades, a shotgun, and thirty-four ADAM. We lost McGee, Epstein, and Vallette.” She swallowed hard at that. She’d particularly liked Vallette. Too easy to reel off a list of the dead: the butcher’s bill, the guerillas called it. She went on, “We got one of those goddamn Big Daddies in the bargain, though. It was something awful what they had to do to that little girl to get the ADAM, but we didn’t start this thing. Ryan did. I can’t wait to tell Atlas. He’ll be so pleased…”
Diane stepped into Atlas’s office to let him know they’d gotten a Big Daddy—and stared in surprise at the stranger sitting at Atlas’s desk. He seemed to be recording an audio diary of his own. After a breathless moment, he was no longer a stranger. She hadn’t recognized him at first.
Something… the cold, cynical expression on his face and that sneering voice talking of long cons… made it seem impossible he could be anyone but Frank Fontaine.
He turned a look of angry shock at her—then put on Atlas’s expression. His voice became Atlas’s. “Miss McClintock… what are you doing here? Let me just…” He dropped the Atlas pretense, shaking his head—seeing in her face that she knew. Finishing in Frank Fontaine’s voice, “… turn this off…”
He switched off the tape recorder. It occurred to her that she should run. She’d found out something he would kill to keep secret.
But her feet seemed frozen to the floor; she was barely able to speak. “They trusted you! How could you let them die… for a lie?”
Fontaine stalked toward her, drawing a buck knife, opening it with a practiced motion, the blade making a snick sound as it flicked into readiness. “It don’t matter, kid,” he said. “Because it’s all lies. Everything is. Except for…” Then she felt the cold blade slash upward, into her belly, just under her ribcage, “…this.”
Rapture Central Control
1959
Bill McDonagh paced up and down in the passageway outside Central Control. The constables at the entrance to the hall had been friendly, glad to see him. Not knowing his mission.
He had to make his move, and soon. Then signal Wallace to take the minisub up to the boat. Conditions were as good as they were ever going to be for escape. The city’s turbulence indicators showed the sea was fairly calm right now. Ryan’s men were dealing with a new disruption, concentrated in sealing off Apollo Square—there weren’t many of Ryan’s bunch between here and the lighthouse.
Roland Wallace wouldn’t take the minisub unless Bill gave him the signal. But there was something he’d have to do then. About Ryan. And Rapture. He had made up his mind that if he succeeded today, in Ryan’s office, he would send his family to safety but stay in Rapture, at least for a time, and try to create a new leadership, make a peace deal with Atlas. He had helped build this place—he felt an obligation to the survivors. Eventually he could rejoin Elaine and Sophie…
The survivors. Quite a surprising number of people had died here or been executed. Ryan was starting to put the corpses up on stakes at the entryway to Central Control. Rapture had become a police state—it had turned into its own opposite.
Bill let out a long, slow breath, reached into his pocket for the pistol. Checked the load for the fourth time. Put it back in his blazer. Could he do this? Then he remembered Sam and Mariska Lutz.
“Got to face it, old man,” he told himself. “Got to be done.” He put the pistol back, took out the little radio. He clicked it and murmured into it. “Wallace?”
A crackle. Then, “Yes, Bill.”
“It’s time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. Going to take care of my business and then bring the family for the… picnic.”
“Okay. I’m ready. Meet you there.”
He put the radio away. Heart pounding, he straightened his tie and opened the door. A security camera swiveled to take him in as he stepped through. He had his ID flasher on, and it let him pass without releasing the security bots. Ryan still trusted him.
He strode past the crucified corpses, smelling them but steadfastly not looking at them, and went to the door of Ryan’s office. He was scanned by a turret—and it let him pass. He reached for the door just as Karlosky came out. Bill almost jumped out of his shoes.
Karlosky looked at him curiously. “Something making you nervous, Bill?”
“Me, no, it’s just them bodies out there—give me the willies.”
Karlosky nodded sympathetically. “Don’t like that decoration either. Sometimes necessary. I’m going to get sandwich for me and Mr. Ryan. You want something?”
“Me? No, I…” Christ, how could he eat sandwiches with these bodies stuck up out here? However… “Well, yes, Ivan. Whatever… whatever you’re having.” The longer Karlosky stayed away, the better.
Karlosky nodded and strolled out. Bill went into Ryan’s office.
Andrew Ryan was standing by the window, gazing out at the sea, leaning on his walking stick. He wore his tailored three-piece gray silk suit, and, in that moment, Bill felt his heart go out to him. Ryan had built this brave new world to match his dream. And it had become a nightmare.
But Bill reminded himself of those men and women crucified in the outer room. And he took a deep breath and pulled the pistol.
Ryan didn’t turn around. He seemed to know. “Go on, do it, Bill. If you’re man enough.”
Bill raised the gun—and it trembled in his hand.
Ryan smiled sadly. “What was it you said, Bill? You’d stay with me, ‘from A to Zed.’ Well, we’re not quite at Zed yet. But it seems you’re taking your leave.”
“No,” Bill said, his voice breaking. “I’m staying… for a while. Can’t desert all these people. I helped bring ’em here.”
Ryan turned toward him, hefting the gold-topped walking stick. “Bill, you’re a weak link on the Great Chain—and I cannot leave that weak link in place…”
Bill aimed the gun as Ryan stalked toward him.
Bill’s mouth was dry, his pulse thudding.
Ryan was almost in reach. “A man chooses, Bill—a slave obeys. Choose. Kill me or obey your cowardice and run away!”
Andrew Ryan, the man who’d plucked him from obscurity—who’d elevated Bill McDonagh in this great city—raised the walking stick to strike him down. It was in Ryan’s hardened eyes, his twisted mouth: the aging tycoon had every intention of using that gold-headed cane to crush Bill’s skull.
Shoot him!
But Bill couldn’t do it. This man had reached down from Olympus and raised him up to Olympus Heights. Andrew Ryan had trusted him. He couldn’t.
The walking stick came whistling down—and Bill caught it, wincing at the impact as he grabbed it with his left hand. They struggled a moment, Ryan panting, his teeth bared—and then Bill acted instinctively. He struck down with the butt of the pistol like a club, cracking Andrew Ryan on the forehead.
Ryan grunted and fell backward. He lay gasping on the floor, eyes half-closed. Bill found that he had the walking stick in his own hand. He dropped it beside Ryan, then knelt and took Ryan’s pulse. Ryan was stunned, unconscious, but his pulse was strong. Bill knew, somehow, that Ryan would survive intact.
Bill squeezed Ryan’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t kill you. Best of luck, guv…”
He stood, pistol in hand, and started for the door, walking mechanically, feeling all lumbering and heavy like a Big Daddy. He stuck the pistol in his pocket and found his way out past the double line of dead men on stakes, out past the swiveling camera.
He stepped into the hallway, trying not to look like he was in a hurry. He and Elaine and Sophie would have to take a circuitous route. It was a long trek yet to get where they were going. He didn’t have much time. Karlosky would find Ryan, and there would be an alert… security bots, Ryan’s thugs…
He had to hurry or lose everything. They were waiting for him in the cemetery, a separate little park off Arcadia…
Cemetery near Arcadia
1959
Burials at sea were cheap. But some preferred Rapture’s charming little cemetery.
Bill had liked visiting the place, and it was usually deserted, so he’d arranged to meet Elaine and Sophie here. Old-fashioned, rustic in style, the cemetery near Arcadia reminded him of the churchyard where his grandfather was buried.
But when he stepped through the archway, he found it had lost its charm.
Five paces away, a naked man, painted blue, was hunched threateningly over Elaine and Sophie, who were cowered in front of a tombstone. The man was a Saturnine, one of the “pagan” cults who’d sprung up in the vacuum of religion in Rapture, sneaking about starkers to paint their cryptic graffiti, getting high on ADAM and coloring themselves blue. “Harness the flame, harness the mist!” the man chanted in a grating voice. The blue-painted savage gripped a large kitchen knife in his right hand. Its blade was brown with dried blood.
The man’s bare foot was pressing Elaine’s purse to the ground, as if crushing a small animal.
“I will give you to the flame,” the Saturnine muttered. “I offer you to the mist!”
The Saturnine raised his knife high, to slash down at Elaine—
“Here’s some flame, you bastard; harness this!” Bill shouted, to make him turn his way.
The Saturnine whirled to confront Bill, his face a caricature of ADAM-warped savagery, teeth bared, red foam coming from his nostrils. He threw the knife as Bill dodged to the left—the knife slashed at his right shoulder, just a razor-thin cut, and Bill shot the pagan point-blank in the chest.
The Saturnine swayed, went to his knees, and flopped facedown.
Sophie was sobbing, her hands covering her eyes. Elaine jerked her purse from under the dead man’s foot, pulled out the pistol, slung the purse over her shoulder, and, with a look of steely determination in her eyes that Bill admired, pulled Sophie to her feet. “Come on, baby,” Elaine told her. “We’re getting the hell out of this place.”
“I’m scared, Mama,” Sophie said.
“I know the feeling, love,” Bill said, giving the child a quick hug. “But you’ll like the surface world. Don’t believe what you’ve heard about it. Come on!”
* * *
They were surprisingly close. Bill, Elaine, and Sophie were hurrying up to the open bathysphere that would take them up the shaft of the lighthouse, to where Wallace should be waiting.
A rogue splicer slid down the cable, jumping off the bathysphere’s top and tumbling through the air like an acrobat. He landed on his feet in front of Bill. The splicer wore a small harlequin-style New Year’s Eve mask, splashed with the blood of the body he’d taken it from; he had long, dirty brown hair, a streaked red-brown beard, and glittering blue eyes. His yellow teeth were bared in a rictuslike grin. “Hee, that’s me, and ooh, that’s you!” he cackled. Leaping from right to left, back again, blur-fast, an elusive target. “Look at the little girly-girl! I can sell her to Ryan or keep her for play and maybe a quick bite!” He had a razor-sharp curved fish-gutting blade in each hand…
Sophie whimpered in fear and ducked behind her mother—Elaine and Bill fired their pistols at the splicer almost simultaneously… and they both missed. He’d leapt in the air, flipping over them and coming down behind: SportBoost, and lots of it.
The rogue splicer was spinning to slash at them—but Bill was turning at the same time, firing. The bullet cracked into one of the curved blades, knocking it away. The splicer slashed out with the other blade, which cut the air an inch from Sophie’s nose.
Enraged, Bill forgot his gun and rushed at the splicer, shouting, “Bastard!” He just managed to duck under the swishing blade, to tackle the splicer around the middle, knocking him onto his back. It was like tackling a live wire—there was not a gram of fat on the splicer; he was all muscle and bone and tension—and Bill felt himself overbalanced and quickly flung off.
The splicer leapt up, stood grinning down at Bill—throwing the hooked blade before Bill could fire his pistol. Bill twisted aside, felt the curved knife shear a piece of skin from his ribs—and then there were three quick gunshots, each one making the splicer take a jerking step back. The third one went through the splicer’s right eye, and the splicer went limp, falling on his back, feet twitching.
Bill turned, panting, to see his wife with the gun in her hand, a wild look in her eyes. Sophie was clinging to her mother’s leg, face buried in her hip.
“You’re a bloody fine shot, love,” he told Elaine, “and thank God for that.”
“I had a good teacher,” she said numbly, staring at the splicer’s body.
“Come on—into the lift…” Elaine nodded and took Sophie into the bathysphere. Bill climbed in after them, found the release hidden under the control panel, and activated it.
They took the bathyspheric lift up the shaft, out of the undersea—the three of them riding up into the lighthouse. Bill had cut power on the security bots and turrets guarding the way out through the lighthouse this morning, but he was afraid they’d be back on, somehow, to greet his family with a spray of bullets as soon as they stepped out of the bathysphere.
But only quiet greeted them, at first, when they stepped out. And the echo of their footsteps in the dome…
Sophie looked around in awe, stunned by the naked daylight coming through the entrance to the lighthouse, the unfamiliar sound of breakers outside—then, eyes wide in fear, she stared up at the enormous electroplated bust of Andrew Ryan, glaring back down at them. Ryan seemed to be holding up a banner, yellow lettering on a red field, reading:
NO GODS OR KINGS.
ONLY MAN.
“It’s Mr. Ryan!” Sophie gulped, stepping back. “He’s watching us!”
“It’s just a statue,” Elaine said.
“Oh, but she’s right,” said Head Constable Cavendish, coming around from the other side of the bathysphere. Bill spun, raising his gun, but then he saw that Karlosky was there too, and Redgrave; they all had tommy guns at the ready in their hands. Redgrave was pushing a despondent Roland Wallace, who had his hands bound behind him. If Bill fired, the constables would return fire, and Elaine would likely be hit. And Sophie. He couldn’t get them all.
Bill lowered his pistol—and then let it slip from limp fingers to the floor.
“Drop it, lady,” said Cavendish, pointing the tommy gun at her.
With a sob, she dropped her gun, and clutched Sophie to her. “Oh God, Bill, we were so close…”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, love. I should have found a better way…”
Karlosky looked grim; Cavendish was grinning wolfishly—but Redgrave looked stricken, uncertain. Deeply sad.
“I tried, Bill,” Wallace said. “I got the boat here. I climbed out to look for you, and there they were. Coming up in boats.”
“You don’t reckon Ryan has cameras none of you know about?” Cavendish sneered. “’Specially outside this place. You think you’re the only ones who tried to leave? Others tried—they’re Big Daddies now. The external camera caught ol’ Wallace here slippin’ out…”
“Ryan—is he dead?” Elaine asked. Her eyes showed hope; her voice was defiant.
“Nyet,” Karlosky said. “A headache. But he is strong man. Not so easy to kill. Your man—he did not have nerve to finish job.”
“Couldn’t do it,” Bill admitted miserably. “He was my friend. There was a time he was like another father to me.”
Redgrave nodded. His voice was husky as he said, “I hear that, Mr. McDonagh. I sure do. It’s the same with me. I’m sorry—I’d like to help you. You were always good to me. But…”
“I know,” Bill said. “But let me ask you one thing. Did he send you to bring my wife and child in? Or just me and Wallace?”
“I…” Redgrave glanced at Cavendish. “I heard him say: ‘Stop Bill McDonagh. And that traitor Wallace.’ That’s all he said.”
“He does not want anyone leaving,” Karlosky said. “Now—all three of you, turn around. We tie your hands; you go with us. We all go back down…”
Bill looked at Karlosky. “I’ll take what’s coming to me. You can tell him anything you want about my girls. Tell Ryan that the splicers got ’em.”
Cavendish snorted. “Karlosky’s not doing any goddamn thing of the sort.”
Bill went on, looking steadily at Karlosky. “We got drunk together, you and me, Karlosky, more than once. Christmas Eves. Holidays. Long nights with vodka. We fought side by side in battle…”
Karlosky licked his lips. Comradeship mattered to Karlosky.
“What’s this horseshit?” Cavendish growled, seeing Karlosky hesitate. “You three turn around, like he said.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Elaine, Sophie—turn around. Just do it.”
Their eyes welling with tears, his wife and child turned, and Bill locked eyes with Karlosky. “What do you say, mate. One favor. I know you can’t let me go… But you can let them go. With Wallace.”
Redgrave looked back and forth between them, looking like he was trying to make up his own mind…
Cavendish frowned. “What’s all this horsepucky? Come on, let’s move, stop wasting time, Karlosky, you damned Russian drunk!”
Karlosky raised his eyebrows at that, looked thoughtful. But at last he shook his head. “No, Bill—sorry. Too risky.”
Redgrave sighed and pointed his gun at Karlosky. “Ivan—this man here, he and his wife had me over for dinner, more than once. Only white people in this place that done that. I can’t let Bill leave Rapture. But we didn’t get no orders about his family.”
Cavendish snarled, twitched his gun toward Redgrave. “You black-assed son of a—”
But that’s when Karlosky turned and shot Cavendish in the side of the head. Two shots. Blood and brains splashed as Cavendish jerked sideways, took a shaky step—and fell.
“Bastard,” Karlosky said, spitting on the body.
Elaine and Sophie screamed, clutching at each other.
Wallace stared in dull amazement. “Christ, Karlosky!”
Elaine looked around to see what had happened—but she kept Sophie turned away.
Karlosky glared at Redgrave—then looked down at Cavendish. “I don’t like to be pushed around, Redgrave,” Karlosky said. “But Cavendish—he was asshole. Wanted to kill him many times! And anyway—if anyone is going to insult you… will be me!”
Elaine turned slowly to them, clutching Sophie to her. She winced at the sight of Cavendish’s shattered head and said, “Mr. Redgrave—can’t you let Bill go with us?” Elaine asked. “Please!”
Redgrave shook his head apologetically, swinging the gun toward Bill. “I’m sorry. Bill and Wallace got to come with me.”
“I understand,” Bill said, meeting Redgrave’s eyes. “Ryan’s the one who gave you a chance. It was the same with me.”
“The launch’s idling out there, Mrs. McDonagh,” Wallace said in a dead voice. “Bottom of the stairs. All you got to do is cast off, press the drive lever, head straight on the way it’s pointing right now—that’ll take you to the sea lanes. Someone’ll see you. There’s a flare gun in the launch…”
Elaine was turning to Bill, looking stunned. “No, Bill…!”
Bill took her hand and kissed it. “Elaine… You know what you have to do now. For Sophie.”
Elaine shook her head.
Bill stepped closer, kissed her tear-stained lips. Then he pushed Sophie into her arms. “For Sophie…”
Her mouth buckled. But she nodded, just once. Face white, lips trembling, Elaine took Sophie by the hand and walked away from him. They walked past the bathysphere, toward the little corridor leading to the stairs…
“What about Daddy?” Sophie asked, as they went, her voice quavering.
“We’ll talk about it later, hon,” Elaine said. “Daddy has some business right now…”
Bill’s daughter looked back over her shoulder at him. Bill tried to fill his mind with the last sight he would have of her. “Good-bye, love!” he called, waving once. “Your old dad loves you!” Then Elaine pulled Sophie along with her, through a doorway, and out of his sight…
Karlosky looked at Bill, then nodded toward a nearby window. Bill walked to the window; through it could see sun sparkling on sea. Blue sky, white clouds sailing by.
He waited. Men with guns behind him. Watching him.
After a few minutes he saw the small vessel, moving on the surface of the sea, away to the northeast, to the sea lanes.
Bill felt a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said, turning away from the window.
The four of them got into the bathysphere. Karlosky and Redgrave, keeping their weapons on Bill, and Roland Wallace.
“I’m sorry, Roland,” Bill said. “This is my fault, mate.”
Roland shook his head. “I was going to try it anyway. Not your fault. Proud to know you.”
When they got to the bottom, there were three more constables waiting. “Take this one to Suchong,” Karlosky said, shoving Wallace toward them.
Wallace went meekly with them.
“What they going to do with Roland?” Bill asked softly.
“Who knows?” Redgrave said sadly.
Bill tried to think about escape. But all the fight seemed to have drained out of him. He knew he wouldn’t see his baby girl or his wife again. And Karlosky was good at what he did. He’d never let Bill get by him again.
Bill walked ahead of Karlosky and Redgrave to the Metro. The journey to Central Control was like a journey back in his mind, more than ten years in Rapture. New York City. London. The war…
That boy being sucked out the shattered fuselage of the plane… He’d always felt bad, surviving when that kid had died—that young man, and other men. Friends who’d gone down in burning bombers. Well, now he had a chance to be with them…
They reached Central Control, and he found himself in the shadow of the dead. He looked up to see the decayed corpse of Frank Fontaine, stuck on a stake, like a Jesus who missed the resurrection boat. Ryan had the body crudely sewn up, brought here, and posted. A message to his enemies. Which is what Bill was about to be. Karlosky handed Redgrave his machine gun, then drew a pistol from under his coat, and stepped behind Bill.
Bill heard the sound of Karlosky cocking the gun. “Supposed to crucify you, before killing,” Karlosky remarked. “But—I always liked you. So. Quick death.”
“I guess I should’ve killed Ryan,” Bill said. His voice sounded thick and unnatural in his own ears. “He must be gloating…”
“Nyet—he understands better than you think,” Karlosky said. “A lot of these others out here, he watched them die. But… he can’t be here for this. He told me. He couldn’t stand to watch you die, Bill. Not good friend like you…”
Bill smiled. He never heard the gunshot that killed him.
Park Avenue, New York City
1959
A warm day in July…
“I’m too scared to go out there, Mama,” Sophie said, for the tenth time in ten minutes.
Elaine sighed. “I know. But you have to.”
“You have something we call agoraphobia, Sophie,” the doctor said gently. He was an expensive Park Avenue psychiatrist. A kindly middle-aged man in a sweater and bowtie. He had a trim beard, a large nose, a sad smile, inquisitive eyes. But it happened he wasn’t charging Elaine much. He seemed interested in Sophie’s case. Perhaps even interested in Elaine herself, in another way.
“You have to do this, sweetheart,” Elaine said.
“Well, no,” said the doctor. “She doesn’t have to. But—she wants to, really. She just has mixed feelings about it.”
“The sky scares me,” Sophie insisted.
“I know it does.” The doctor smiled.
“In Rapture we don’t have sky,” she said. Then she told him some more about Rapture.
He listened patiently, then sent her out to wait with his receptionist, so he could talk to Elaine privately. “She has a remarkable imagination,” he said, chuckling. “‘Rapture’!”
Elaine didn’t try to explain. She couldn’t tell people about Rapture; they would never believe her. And if they did—it could lead to Ryan finding her.
So she just nodded. “Yes, Doctor…”
“She’s been through something traumatic—perhaps in war?” he said. “Somewhere overseas?”
Elaine nodded. “Yes. In war.” That was true, anyhow.
“I thought so. Well, she will heal. But we must start by dealing with her fears. I think, despite appearances, she will go outside today, for a walk in the park…”
To her surprise, the doctor offered to go with them. After a while, Sophie reluctantly agreed to try the park. They went down the elevator and walked slowly across the marble-floored lobby. Sophie became more frightened as they got closer to the street. Ever since they’d left the fishing boat that had picked them up off Iceland, she’d darted under cover as quickly as she could, hiding her eyes from the sky.
Then the doctor turned to Sophie and said, in a kindly voice, “May I carry you?”
Sophie looked up at him gravely. “Yes.”
He nodded, equally grave, and knelt by her. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up, carried her piggyback out the door, Elaine walking at his side. Elaine couldn’t help making a grotesque comparison to the way Big Daddies sometimes carried Little Sisters. But she thrust it out of her mind.
“Oh!” Sophie said as they stepped out into the hot sun. But she only clung harder.
They walked over to Central Park. Sophie cried on the way, but didn’t ask to hide from the sky.
They got to the park and found an open green field, with butter-colored flowers. On the edge of the field birds sang in the trees. The doctor let Sophie down, and she walked slowly out into the sunlight.
“Mama,” she said, shading her eyes to look up at the blue sky. “It’s nice out here. It just goes on and on. You know what?”
“What?”
“I think Daddy would have liked seeing this.”
“Yes, Sophie,” Elaine said, just managing not to cry. “Yes, love. Yes, he would have.”
Drafting Room, Atlantic Express Depot 1959
“There was meant to be a maintenance team here instead of me,” Bill groused as he bent to examine the cracks in the curved metal wall of the maintenance runoff tunnel. “They had some git of a splicer, was going to creep up the walls and fix the leaks they couldn’t reach. Don’t know what became of the buggers…”
Karlosky grunted. “I think I see your maintenance team.”
Bill stood up, walked over to Karlofsky—together they looked through a window into the mailroom of Jet Postal. The shadowy, indirectly lit room was scattered with undelivered mail. And with bodies—several bodies, men in maintenance coveralls lying about on the floor, motionless, pasted to the deck with their own blood. They seemed to have been hacked up by some sharp blade.
Bill sighed, stomach contracting at the sight. “Yeah. I don’t see that splicer. Maybe…”
Karlosky nodded, musingly patting the breach of his tommy gun. “Not good workers, those splicers,” he said dryly. “They go crazy; they kill. A man does not get job done when busy being crazy and killing.” After a moment, he shrugged and added, “Unless killing is the job.”
“Well, I’m going to make a list of cracks and leaks and get a team in here with a constable escort,” Bill said. “We can’t risk…” He broke off, staring at a small figure in a pinafore, a child, moving through the shadows of the Jet Postal sorting room. Steel boots clanked; a great metal shape loomed up behind her.
A Big Daddy and a Little Sister. She skipped along, a large syringe in one hand, singing a song they couldn’t clearly hear. Something about “Mr. Bubbles” and “the angels.” Her enormous chaperone stumped along close behind her.
Bill and Karlosky watched with an uneasy mix of fascination and revulsion as the little girl squatted by a man’s awkwardly sprawling, facedown corpse and jammed the syringe into the back of his neck. She did something with the syringe, chirruping happily to herself, and it began to glow with extracted ADAM.
Bill stepped closer to the window and bent over to peer at the Little Sister. “Karlosky—is that Mascha?”
Karlosky groaned to himself. “Yes, maybe—maybe not. All Little Sisters look much alike to me.”
“If it’s her—I owe it to her folks to get her back.”
“We tried, Bill! You spoke to many people—no one would help.”
“That’s why I’ve got to do this myself, right now…”
“Please, don’t argue with Big Daddy, Bill—oh—there is splicer!”
A spider splicer was creeping upside down on the ceiling over the Little Sister. He had a hooked blade in one hand. He was chattering to himself—the intervening pane of glass muted the sound.
The Little Sister stood up, turned toward the Big Daddy—and then a blade spun past her, whipping through the air like a boomerang. The blade narrowly missed her head—so close it cut a bit of her hair, which drifted prettily away. The weapon circled the room and returned to the splicer, who caught the blade handle neatly, cackling as he did it.
The Little Sister’s guardian reacted instantly. The Big Daddy stepped into a pool of light, raised a rivet gun to aim at the ceiling, and fired a long strafe of rivets at the spider splicer. The gun nailed its target at such close range it cut the splicer in half. The spider splicer’s lower half and its upper half clung to the ceiling… separately, by feet and hands, the two halves gushing blood. Then they let go, and the halves of the splicer dropped heavily to the floor.
The little girl chirruped happily.
“You see?” Karlosky whispered. “If you interfere with her—you end up like him!”
“I’ve got to try,” Bill said. “Maybe if you distract him, I can grab her…”
“Oh shit, Bill, you son of bitch bastard!” Karlosky said, and muttered another imprecation in Russian. “You get me killed!”
“I’ve got faith in your gift for self-preservation, mate. Come on.” Bill led the way to the door of the Jet Postal sorting room. He hesitated, wondering what Elaine would want him to do. She would want Mascha rescued—if this Little Sister was in fact Mascha—but Elaine wouldn’t want him to risk himself this way. Still—there probably wouldn’t be another chance.
He opened the door, then stepped back, crouching down to one side, signaling to Karlosky. “Do it. Then run…”
Karlosky swore in Russian once more, but he raised his tommy gun and fired a short burst toward the Big Daddy—a burst from a tommy gun wasn’t going to kill it, and Karlosky wouldn’t risk the wrath of his employers by destroying the valuable cyborg, but it got the Big Daddy’s attention. The lumbering metal golem turned and rushed like an accelerating freight train at the source of the assault. Karlosky was already running, cursing Bill as he went. The Big Daddy clanged past Bill, not seeing him crouching by the door.
Bill slipped behind the metal guardian and through the door, seeing the little girl standing up from another extraction, blood-dripping syringe in her hand. She looked at him with big eyes, mouth opened in a round O.
Was this Mascha? He wasn’t sure.
“Mr. Buuuuuuubbles!” she called. “There is a bad man here waiting to be turned into an aaaaaaangel!”
“Mascha,” Bill said. “Is that you?” He took a step toward her. “Listen… I’m going to pick you up, but I won’t hurt you—”
Then a metallic clumping close behind Bill turned his blood cold. He spun about just in time to be struck across the chest—the Big Daddy, returned to protect its charge, swinging the weapon in its hand like a club. Bill was knocked backward, off his feet, the air smacked from his lungs, the room whirling.
Gasping, he lost consciousness for a few moments. When the spinning specks formed shapes and the room coalesced, he looked dizzily around—saw that he was sitting up on the floor, back against a bulkhead. The Big Daddy and his little charge were nowhere to be seen.
Bill got up, moaning to himself with the pain of his bruised chest, and staggered to the door. He was met by Karlosky. “You okay, Bill?”
“Yeah—good to see you alive. I thought I’d got you killed…”
“No, I outsmart that steel bastard. Look…!”
He pointed across the open space of the depot—on the far wall, the little girl was climbing into one of the key-shaped art-deco apertures that the Little Sisters used to enter hidden passageways. They scuttled through the passageways to take their scavenged ADAM back to Ryan’s laboratories.
Mascha or not Mascha? He would never know. She simply vanished into the wall.
The Big Daddy waited quietly by the big art deco keyhole for his Little Sister to return.
Bill shook his head and turned away, grimacing with pain—and wanting only to get back to Elaine.
Once more, his determination to escape Rapture was underscored. He had to get his family back to the surface. Back to blue sky and sunlight and freedom…
Medical Pavilion, Aesthetic Ideals Surgery 1959
“Ryan and ADAM, ADAM and Ryan… all those years of study, and was I ever truly a surgeon before I met them? How we plinked away with our scalpels and toy morality! Yes, we could lop a boil here and shave down a beak there—but could we really change anything? No! But ADAM gives us the means to do it, and Ryan frees us from the phony ethics that held us back. Change your look, change your sex, change your race. It’s yours to change, nobody else’s!”
Wearing a blood-soaked surgical gown and white surgeon’s cap, his hands in rubber gloves, Doctor J. S. Steinman hit Pause on the little tape recorder that he’d wedged between the blond patient’s ample breasts; then he pushed the gurney, its wheels susurrating through the shallow water that had leaked across the floor of the surgery. He hummed to himself, singing an Inkspots song, “If I Didn’t Care,” over the muffled moaning of the patient he’d strapped to the little wheeled bed. “Would I be sure that this is love beyond compare? Would all this be true—if I didn’t care… for… you!”
He pushed the woman into place under the glaring surgical light and reached into his coat pocket for his favorite scalpel. Tiresome to do without a nurse, but he’d had to kill Nurse Chavez when she’d started whining about his efforts to please Aphrodite, threatening to turn him into the constables. Of course, he hadn’t killed her till he’d done some fine experimentation on her doll-like visage. He still had Chavez’s face in a refrigerator, somewhere, along with some others he’d peeled off and saved in preservative jars, faces from patients who’d given their lives for his perfect fusion of art and science. He really must try to organize his preserved faces with a filing system.
Steinman paused to admire this latest woman writhing in her restraints on the gurney. She’d used some low-grade plasmid to help her hack a gambling machine in Fort Frolic, and his fellow artist, Sander Cohen, who owned the casino, had caught her. It was getting hard to find voluntary patients. He did think he might get Diane McClintock to come in again. He longed to alter her in another manner entirely, according to his artistic whim—to give her a truly transcendent face. He might get hold of a telekinesis plasmid and use it to form her face from within, shape it telekinetically, into something lovely.
They were all so ugly, honestly, so plain. They didn’t try hard enough to make themselves fitting vessels for Aphrodite. “But they’re filthy, filthy at the core,” he muttered. No knife was sharp enough to cut that filth out. He tried and tried and tried, but they were always so fat or short or… plain. Steinman made a tsk sound as the blond woman shrieked unintelligibly at him through the gag. Some insult, perhaps. “My dear, I’d love to give you some anesthetic to grace your experience, I really would, but I have quite run out of it, and anyway, there is something less aesthetically pleasing about sculpting an unconscious patient. If they are unconscious, the blood hardly spurts at all, their eyes don’t have that look of possession by the god of terror, and how satisfying could that be, now I ask you? I may have to stop and have some more ADAM and a touch of EVE myself… Oh do try to accept this, my dear, appreciate it as a sacrificial aesthetic experience. A sacrifice to Aphrodite! Sander Cohen and I have talked about doing a performance onstage with one of my little surgeries. Can you imagine? A face sculpting set to original music? The trouble is, of course—” He bent near his wild-eyed patient to whisper confidentially. “The trouble is, my dear, Sander Cohen is quite insane. Mad. Out of his mind! Ha ha-aa! I shouldn’t socialize with Cohen, that loony tune, I have my reputation to think of.”
He hit Record again on the tape recorder and cleared his throat to set down another immortal memo. “With genetic modifications, beauty is no longer a goal, or even a virtue. It is a moral obligation. Still, ADAM presents new problems for the professional,” he said, for the audio diary. “As your tools improve, so do your standards. There was a time I was happy enough to take off a wart or two, or turn a real circus freak into something you can show in the daylight…” So saying, he started carving deeply into the face of the woman on the gurney, glad he’d taken the trouble to brace her head in place because she was shaking so much with agony as he sliced away her cheeks.
He went on, “…But that was then, when we took what we got—but with ADAM, the flesh becomes clay. What excuse do we have not to sculpt and sculpt and sculpt until the job is done?” He hit Pause on the tape recorder, its buttons becoming slippery with the blood on his hands, and considered his work. It was hard to tell through all the blood and torn tissue. “My dear, I believe I’m going to give you some ADAM that will regrow your face into another shape entirely. Then I’ll carve the new tissue some more. Then I’ll regrow some more face on you with ADAM. Then I’ll carve that some more. Then—”
Another muffled shriek from the woman. He sighed, shaking his head. They just would not understand. He hit Record again and accompanied his next wet, spurting spate of carving with a kind of artistic manifesto: “When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I’ve spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?”
Steinman hit pause again, used his left hand to wipe some blood from the recorder buttons. He returned to his patient only to find she’d died on him. “Oh dammit, not another one…”
Blood loss and shock, he supposed, as usual. It was really quite unfair.
They always left him too soon. It made him angry to think of their selfishness.
He slashed at her in his fury, knocking the tape recorder on the floor, cutting her throat into ribbons, long pretty ribbons… which he then tied into bows.
When he calmed down enough to be precise, he exposed her breasts and cut them into shapes like the sea anemones that waved in the gentle currents so restfully, so gracefully, outside the window of his office…
Ah, he thought: The Rapture of the Deep…
Fighting McDonagh’s Bar 1959
When? It had to be soon. He was going to have to escape from Rapture, with Elaine and their daughter, and if that meant killing—
“Bill?”
Bill McDonagh nearly leapt from his barstool when Redgrave spoke at his elbow.
“Blimey, don’t sneak up on a man like that!”
Redgrave smiled sadly. “Sorry. Something you ought to know, though. Your woman who cleans the rooms—she found something.”
Bill sighed. He tossed down his brandy, nodded to his bartender. “Just close down when you feel like it, mate.” He got off the barstool. “All right, let’s have it, Redgrave…”
“You’ve been letting out some of your rooms, ain’t you? Number seven—that was the Lutzes’?”
“Sure. I don’t charge them for it. Christ, their little girl went missing on my watch.” He couldn’t resist a cold look at Redgrave. “On your watch too.”
Redgrave grimaced. “We only looked away a couple of seconds. We were watching for splicers—”
“I know—forget it. What about Sam Lutz?”
“Come on.”
Feeling leaden, Bill went with Redgrave to the tavern’s back rooms. Number 7’s combination door was open. He stepped in and immediately saw the two of them stretched out on the mattress, on their backs, side by side: two corpses holding hands, barely recognizable as Mariska and Samuel Lutz. There were a couple of empty pill bottles lying on the floor nearby.
The sunken eyes of the cadavers were closed, eyelids like wrinkled parchment, their faces yellow and emaciated. The shriveling of death had given their lips the same pinched expression of disapproval, as if they were silently judging all the living. They wore their best clothes, he noticed.
“Suicide. And there’s this…” He pointed—beside the bodies was one of the ubiquitous tape recorders.
Bill pressed Play on the tape recorder. Mariska Lutz’s voice came distant and tinny from the little recorder, as if speaking across the gulf of death: “We saw our Mascha today. We barely recognized her. ‘That’s her,’ Sam said.” Mariska gave out a strange little sobbing laugh. “‘You’re crazy,’ I told him. ‘That thing—that is our Mascha?’ But he was right. She was drawing blood out of a corpse… and when she was done, she walked off hand in hand with one of those awful golems! Our Mascha!”
Bill stopped the recording.
Redgrave cleared his throat. “Well. I expect… they knew they couldn’t get her back. She was already… gone. You know, changed so much. So they…”
He gestured limply at the pill bottles.
Bill nodded. “Yeah. Just… just leave ’em here. I’ll seal it up. This’ll be their crypt, for now.”
Redgrave stared at him as if he might object—then he shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He looked back at the bodies. “We only looked away for a moment or two.”
He shook his head and walked out, leaving Bill alone with the dead.
Atlas HQ, Hestia 1959
Walking up to Atlas’s office, Diane was still sweaty, shaky from the raid.
She’d had some training from Atlas’s guerillas, and she was almost used to slipping through the wire, waiting as the other team created the decoy, dashing past Ryan’s men. More than once she’d followed the other guerillas up a side passage, up the stairs, through some old maintenance passage—all of them carrying GI backpacks, to fill with supplies stolen from one of the constabulary armories.
But this time, when the guards broke in on them, just as they finished their “harvest” of the ammo—and just as Sorenson got control of the Big Daddy—the chaos had been exhilarating and nightmarish at once. Firing her own pistols, one in each hand, her heart slamming with each shot, she’d watched a constable go down, shrieking, dying. I’ve killed a man…
She’d cringed from blazing return fire, seen three of her comrades falling…
She decided, now, to record some of her impressions on her audio diary—she had decided she was going to be the historian of the revolution. She switched the recorder on with trembling hands, as she walked along. “We went on a raid outside the wire today. We snagged thirty-one rounds of buckshot, four frag grenades, a shotgun, and thirty-four ADAM. We lost McGee, Epstein, and Vallette.” She swallowed hard at that. She’d particularly liked Vallette. Too easy to reel off a list of the dead: the butcher’s bill, the guerillas called it. She went on, “We got one of those goddamn Big Daddies in the bargain, though. It was something awful what they had to do to that little girl to get the ADAM, but we didn’t start this thing. Ryan did. I can’t wait to tell Atlas. He’ll be so pleased…”
Diane stepped into Atlas’s office to let him know they’d gotten a Big Daddy—and stared in surprise at the stranger sitting at Atlas’s desk. He seemed to be recording an audio diary of his own. After a breathless moment, he was no longer a stranger. She hadn’t recognized him at first.
Something… the cold, cynical expression on his face and that sneering voice talking of long cons… made it seem impossible he could be anyone but Frank Fontaine.
He turned a look of angry shock at her—then put on Atlas’s expression. His voice became Atlas’s. “Miss McClintock… what are you doing here? Let me just…” He dropped the Atlas pretense, shaking his head—seeing in her face that she knew. Finishing in Frank Fontaine’s voice, “… turn this off…”
He switched off the tape recorder. It occurred to her that she should run. She’d found out something he would kill to keep secret.
But her feet seemed frozen to the floor; she was barely able to speak. “They trusted you! How could you let them die… for a lie?”
Fontaine stalked toward her, drawing a buck knife, opening it with a practiced motion, the blade making a snick sound as it flicked into readiness. “It don’t matter, kid,” he said. “Because it’s all lies. Everything is. Except for…” Then she felt the cold blade slash upward, into her belly, just under her ribcage, “…this.”
Rapture Central Control 1959
Bill McDonagh paced up and down in the passageway outside Central Control. The constables at the entrance to the hall had been friendly, glad to see him. Not knowing his mission.
He had to make his move, and soon. Then signal Wallace to take the minisub up to the boat. Conditions were as good as they were ever going to be for escape. The city’s turbulence indicators showed the sea was fairly calm right now. Ryan’s men were dealing with a new disruption, concentrated in sealing off Apollo Square—there weren’t many of Ryan’s bunch between here and the lighthouse.
Roland Wallace wouldn’t take the minisub unless Bill gave him the signal. But there was something he’d have to do then. About Ryan. And Rapture. He had made up his mind that if he succeeded today, in Ryan’s office, he would send his family to safety but stay in Rapture, at least for a time, and try to create a new leadership, make a peace deal with Atlas. He had helped build this place—he felt an obligation to the survivors. Eventually he could rejoin Elaine and Sophie…
The survivors. Quite a surprising number of people had died here or been executed. Ryan was starting to put the corpses up on stakes at the entryway to Central Control. Rapture had become a police state—it had turned into its own opposite.
Bill let out a long, slow breath, reached into his pocket for the pistol. Checked the load for the fourth time. Put it back in his blazer. Could he do this? Then he remembered Sam and Mariska Lutz.
“Got to face it, old man,” he told himself. “Got to be done.” He put the pistol back, took out the little radio. He clicked it and murmured into it. “Wallace?”
A crackle. Then, “Yes, Bill.”
“It’s time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. Going to take care of my business and then bring the family for the… picnic.”
“Okay. I’m ready. Meet you there.”
He put the radio away. Heart pounding, he straightened his tie and opened the door. A security camera swiveled to take him in as he stepped through. He had his ID flasher on, and it let him pass without releasing the security bots. Ryan still trusted him.
He strode past the crucified corpses, smelling them but steadfastly not looking at them, and went to the door of Ryan’s office. He was scanned by a turret—and it let him pass. He reached for the door just as Karlosky came out. Bill almost jumped out of his shoes.
Karlosky looked at him curiously. “Something making you nervous, Bill?”
“Me, no, it’s just them bodies out there—give me the willies.”
Karlosky nodded sympathetically. “Don’t like that decoration either. Sometimes necessary. I’m going to get sandwich for me and Mr. Ryan. You want something?”
“Me? No, I…” Christ, how could he eat sandwiches with these bodies stuck up out here? However… “Well, yes, Ivan. Whatever… whatever you’re having.” The longer Karlosky stayed away, the better.
Karlosky nodded and strolled out. Bill went into Ryan’s office.
Andrew Ryan was standing by the window, gazing out at the sea, leaning on his walking stick. He wore his tailored three-piece gray silk suit, and, in that moment, Bill felt his heart go out to him. Ryan had built this brave new world to match his dream. And it had become a nightmare.
But Bill reminded himself of those men and women crucified in the outer room. And he took a deep breath and pulled the pistol.
Ryan didn’t turn around. He seemed to know. “Go on, do it, Bill. If you’re man enough.”
Bill raised the gun—and it trembled in his hand.
Ryan smiled sadly. “What was it you said, Bill? You’d stay with me, ‘from A to Zed.’ Well, we’re not quite at Zed yet. But it seems you’re taking your leave.”
“No,” Bill said, his voice breaking. “I’m staying… for a while. Can’t desert all these people. I helped bring ’em here.”
Ryan turned toward him, hefting the gold-topped walking stick. “Bill, you’re a weak link on the Great Chain—and I cannot leave that weak link in place…”
Bill aimed the gun as Ryan stalked toward him.
Bill’s mouth was dry, his pulse thudding.
Ryan was almost in reach. “A man chooses, Bill—a slave obeys. Choose. Kill me or obey your cowardice and run away!”
Andrew Ryan, the man who’d plucked him from obscurity—who’d elevated Bill McDonagh in this great city—raised the walking stick to strike him down. It was in Ryan’s hardened eyes, his twisted mouth: the aging tycoon had every intention of using that gold-headed cane to crush Bill’s skull.
Shoot him!
But Bill couldn’t do it. This man had reached down from Olympus and raised him up to Olympus Heights. Andrew Ryan had trusted him. He couldn’t.
The walking stick came whistling down—and Bill caught it, wincing at the impact as he grabbed it with his left hand. They struggled a moment, Ryan panting, his teeth bared—and then Bill acted instinctively. He struck down with the butt of the pistol like a club, cracking Andrew Ryan on the forehead.
Ryan grunted and fell backward. He lay gasping on the floor, eyes half-closed. Bill found that he had the walking stick in his own hand. He dropped it beside Ryan, then knelt and took Ryan’s pulse. Ryan was stunned, unconscious, but his pulse was strong. Bill knew, somehow, that Ryan would survive intact.
Bill squeezed Ryan’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t kill you. Best of luck, guv…”
He stood, pistol in hand, and started for the door, walking mechanically, feeling all lumbering and heavy like a Big Daddy. He stuck the pistol in his pocket and found his way out past the double line of dead men on stakes, out past the swiveling camera.
He stepped into the hallway, trying not to look like he was in a hurry. He and Elaine and Sophie would have to take a circuitous route. It was a long trek yet to get where they were going. He didn’t have much time. Karlosky would find Ryan, and there would be an alert… security bots, Ryan’s thugs…
He had to hurry or lose everything. They were waiting for him in the cemetery, a separate little park off Arcadia…
Cemetery near Arcadia 1959
Burials at sea were cheap. But some preferred Rapture’s charming little cemetery.
Bill had liked visiting the place, and it was usually deserted, so he’d arranged to meet Elaine and Sophie here. Old-fashioned, rustic in style, the cemetery near Arcadia reminded him of the churchyard where his grandfather was buried.
But when he stepped through the archway, he found it had lost its charm.
Five paces away, a naked man, painted blue, was hunched threateningly over Elaine and Sophie, who were cowered in front of a tombstone. The man was a Saturnine, one of the “pagan” cults who’d sprung up in the vacuum of religion in Rapture, sneaking about starkers to paint their cryptic graffiti, getting high on ADAM and coloring themselves blue. “Harness the flame, harness the mist!” the man chanted in a grating voice. The blue-painted savage gripped a large kitchen knife in his right hand. Its blade was brown with dried blood.
The man’s bare foot was pressing Elaine’s purse to the ground, as if crushing a small animal.
“I will give you to the flame,” the Saturnine muttered. “I offer you to the mist!”
The Saturnine raised his knife high, to slash down at Elaine—
“Here’s some flame, you bastard; harness this!” Bill shouted, to make him turn his way.
The Saturnine whirled to confront Bill, his face a caricature of ADAM-warped savagery, teeth bared, red foam coming from his nostrils. He threw the knife as Bill dodged to the left—the knife slashed at his right shoulder, just a razor-thin cut, and Bill shot the pagan point-blank in the chest.
The Saturnine swayed, went to his knees, and flopped facedown.
Sophie was sobbing, her hands covering her eyes. Elaine jerked her purse from under the dead man’s foot, pulled out the pistol, slung the purse over her shoulder, and, with a look of steely determination in her eyes that Bill admired, pulled Sophie to her feet. “Come on, baby,” Elaine told her. “We’re getting the hell out of this place.”
“I’m scared, Mama,” Sophie said.
“I know the feeling, love,” Bill said, giving the child a quick hug. “But you’ll like the surface world. Don’t believe what you’ve heard about it. Come on!”
They were surprisingly close. Bill, Elaine, and Sophie were hurrying up to the open bathysphere that would take them up the shaft of the lighthouse, to where Wallace should be waiting.
A rogue splicer slid down the cable, jumping off the bathysphere’s top and tumbling through the air like an acrobat. He landed on his feet in front of Bill. The splicer wore a small harlequin-style New Year’s Eve mask, splashed with the blood of the body he’d taken it from; he had long, dirty brown hair, a streaked red-brown beard, and glittering blue eyes. His yellow teeth were bared in a rictuslike grin. “Hee, that’s me, and ooh, that’s you!” he cackled. Leaping from right to left, back again, blur-fast, an elusive target. “Look at the little girly-girl! I can sell her to Ryan or keep her for play and maybe a quick bite!” He had a razor-sharp curved fish-gutting blade in each hand…
Sophie whimpered in fear and ducked behind her mother—Elaine and Bill fired their pistols at the splicer almost simultaneously… and they both missed. He’d leapt in the air, flipping over them and coming down behind: SportBoost, and lots of it.
The rogue splicer was spinning to slash at them—but Bill was turning at the same time, firing. The bullet cracked into one of the curved blades, knocking it away. The splicer slashed out with the other blade, which cut the air an inch from Sophie’s nose.
Enraged, Bill forgot his gun and rushed at the splicer, shouting, “Bastard!” He just managed to duck under the swishing blade, to tackle the splicer around the middle, knocking him onto his back. It was like tackling a live wire—there was not a gram of fat on the splicer; he was all muscle and bone and tension—and Bill felt himself overbalanced and quickly flung off.
The splicer leapt up, stood grinning down at Bill—throwing the hooked blade before Bill could fire his pistol. Bill twisted aside, felt the curved knife shear a piece of skin from his ribs—and then there were three quick gunshots, each one making the splicer take a jerking step back. The third one went through the splicer’s right eye, and the splicer went limp, falling on his back, feet twitching.
Bill turned, panting, to see his wife with the gun in her hand, a wild look in her eyes. Sophie was clinging to her mother’s leg, face buried in her hip.
“You’re a bloody fine shot, love,” he told Elaine, “and thank God for that.”
“I had a good teacher,” she said numbly, staring at the splicer’s body.
“Come on—into the lift…” Elaine nodded and took Sophie into the bathysphere. Bill climbed in after them, found the release hidden under the control panel, and activated it.
They took the bathyspheric lift up the shaft, out of the undersea—the three of them riding up into the lighthouse. Bill had cut power on the security bots and turrets guarding the way out through the lighthouse this morning, but he was afraid they’d be back on, somehow, to greet his family with a spray of bullets as soon as they stepped out of the bathysphere.
But only quiet greeted them, at first, when they stepped out. And the echo of their footsteps in the dome…
Sophie looked around in awe, stunned by the naked daylight coming through the entrance to the lighthouse, the unfamiliar sound of breakers outside—then, eyes wide in fear, she stared up at the enormous electroplated bust of Andrew Ryan, glaring back down at them. Ryan seemed to be holding up a banner, yellow lettering on a red field, reading:
“It’s Mr. Ryan!” Sophie gulped, stepping back. “He’s watching us!”
“It’s just a statue,” Elaine said.
“Oh, but she’s right,” said Head Constable Cavendish, coming around from the other side of the bathysphere. Bill spun, raising his gun, but then he saw that Karlosky was there too, and Redgrave; they all had tommy guns at the ready in their hands. Redgrave was pushing a despondent Roland Wallace, who had his hands bound behind him. If Bill fired, the constables would return fire, and Elaine would likely be hit. And Sophie. He couldn’t get them all.
Bill lowered his pistol—and then let it slip from limp fingers to the floor.
“Drop it, lady,” said Cavendish, pointing the tommy gun at her.
With a sob, she dropped her gun, and clutched Sophie to her. “Oh God, Bill, we were so close…”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, love. I should have found a better way…”
Karlosky looked grim; Cavendish was grinning wolfishly—but Redgrave looked stricken, uncertain. Deeply sad.
“I tried, Bill,” Wallace said. “I got the boat here. I climbed out to look for you, and there they were. Coming up in boats.”
“You don’t reckon Ryan has cameras none of you know about?” Cavendish sneered. “’Specially outside this place. You think you’re the only ones who tried to leave? Others tried—they’re Big Daddies now. The external camera caught ol’ Wallace here slippin’ out…”
“Ryan—is he dead?” Elaine asked. Her eyes showed hope; her voice was defiant.
“Nyet,” Karlosky said. “A headache. But he is strong man. Not so easy to kill. Your man—he did not have nerve to finish job.”
“Couldn’t do it,” Bill admitted miserably. “He was my friend. There was a time he was like another father to me.”
Redgrave nodded. His voice was husky as he said, “I hear that, Mr. McDonagh. I sure do. It’s the same with me. I’m sorry—I’d like to help you. You were always good to me. But…”
“I know,” Bill said. “But let me ask you one thing. Did he send you to bring my wife and child in? Or just me and Wallace?”
“I…” Redgrave glanced at Cavendish. “I heard him say: ‘Stop Bill McDonagh. And that traitor Wallace.’ That’s all he said.”
“He does not want anyone leaving,” Karlosky said. “Now—all three of you, turn around. We tie your hands; you go with us. We all go back down…”
Bill looked at Karlosky. “I’ll take what’s coming to me. You can tell him anything you want about my girls. Tell Ryan that the splicers got ’em.”
Cavendish snorted. “Karlosky’s not doing any goddamn thing of the sort.”
Bill went on, looking steadily at Karlosky. “We got drunk together, you and me, Karlosky, more than once. Christmas Eves. Holidays. Long nights with vodka. We fought side by side in battle…”
Karlosky licked his lips. Comradeship mattered to Karlosky.
“What’s this horseshit?” Cavendish growled, seeing Karlosky hesitate. “You three turn around, like he said.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Elaine, Sophie—turn around. Just do it.”
Their eyes welling with tears, his wife and child turned, and Bill locked eyes with Karlosky. “What do you say, mate. One favor. I know you can’t let me go… But you can let them go. With Wallace.”
Redgrave looked back and forth between them, looking like he was trying to make up his own mind…
Cavendish frowned. “What’s all this horsepucky? Come on, let’s move, stop wasting time, Karlosky, you damned Russian drunk!”
Karlosky raised his eyebrows at that, looked thoughtful. But at last he shook his head. “No, Bill—sorry. Too risky.”
Redgrave sighed and pointed his gun at Karlosky. “Ivan—this man here, he and his wife had me over for dinner, more than once. Only white people in this place that done that. I can’t let Bill leave Rapture. But we didn’t get no orders about his family.”
Cavendish snarled, twitched his gun toward Redgrave. “You black-assed son of a—”
But that’s when Karlosky turned and shot Cavendish in the side of the head. Two shots. Blood and brains splashed as Cavendish jerked sideways, took a shaky step—and fell.
“Bastard,” Karlosky said, spitting on the body.
Elaine and Sophie screamed, clutching at each other.
Wallace stared in dull amazement. “Christ, Karlosky!”
Elaine looked around to see what had happened—but she kept Sophie turned away.
Karlosky glared at Redgrave—then looked down at Cavendish. “I don’t like to be pushed around, Redgrave,” Karlosky said. “But Cavendish—he was asshole. Wanted to kill him many times! And anyway—if anyone is going to insult you… will be me!”
Elaine turned slowly to them, clutching Sophie to her. She winced at the sight of Cavendish’s shattered head and said, “Mr. Redgrave—can’t you let Bill go with us?” Elaine asked. “Please!”
Redgrave shook his head apologetically, swinging the gun toward Bill. “I’m sorry. Bill and Wallace got to come with me.”
“I understand,” Bill said, meeting Redgrave’s eyes. “Ryan’s the one who gave you a chance. It was the same with me.”
“The launch’s idling out there, Mrs. McDonagh,” Wallace said in a dead voice. “Bottom of the stairs. All you got to do is cast off, press the drive lever, head straight on the way it’s pointing right now—that’ll take you to the sea lanes. Someone’ll see you. There’s a flare gun in the launch…”
Elaine was turning to Bill, looking stunned. “No, Bill…!”
Bill took her hand and kissed it. “Elaine… You know what you have to do now. For Sophie.”
Elaine shook her head.
Bill stepped closer, kissed her tear-stained lips. Then he pushed Sophie into her arms. “For Sophie…”
Her mouth buckled. But she nodded, just once. Face white, lips trembling, Elaine took Sophie by the hand and walked away from him. They walked past the bathysphere, toward the little corridor leading to the stairs…
“What about Daddy?” Sophie asked, as they went, her voice quavering.
“We’ll talk about it later, hon,” Elaine said. “Daddy has some business right now…”
Bill’s daughter looked back over her shoulder at him. Bill tried to fill his mind with the last sight he would have of her. “Good-bye, love!” he called, waving once. “Your old dad loves you!” Then Elaine pulled Sophie along with her, through a doorway, and out of his sight…
Karlosky looked at Bill, then nodded toward a nearby window. Bill walked to the window; through it could see sun sparkling on sea. Blue sky, white clouds sailing by.
He waited. Men with guns behind him. Watching him.
After a few minutes he saw the small vessel, moving on the surface of the sea, away to the northeast, to the sea lanes.
Bill felt a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said, turning away from the window.
The four of them got into the bathysphere. Karlosky and Redgrave, keeping their weapons on Bill, and Roland Wallace.
“I’m sorry, Roland,” Bill said. “This is my fault, mate.”
Roland shook his head. “I was going to try it anyway. Not your fault. Proud to know you.”
When they got to the bottom, there were three more constables waiting. “Take this one to Suchong,” Karlosky said, shoving Wallace toward them.
Wallace went meekly with them.
“What they going to do with Roland?” Bill asked softly.
“Who knows?” Redgrave said sadly.
Bill tried to think about escape. But all the fight seemed to have drained out of him. He knew he wouldn’t see his baby girl or his wife again. And Karlosky was good at what he did. He’d never let Bill get by him again.
Bill walked ahead of Karlosky and Redgrave to the Metro. The journey to Central Control was like a journey back in his mind, more than ten years in Rapture. New York City. London. The war…
That boy being sucked out the shattered fuselage of the plane… He’d always felt bad, surviving when that kid had died—that young man, and other men. Friends who’d gone down in burning bombers. Well, now he had a chance to be with them…
They reached Central Control, and he found himself in the shadow of the dead. He looked up to see the decayed corpse of Frank Fontaine, stuck on a stake, like a Jesus who missed the resurrection boat. Ryan had the body crudely sewn up, brought here, and posted. A message to his enemies. Which is what Bill was about to be. Karlosky handed Redgrave his machine gun, then drew a pistol from under his coat, and stepped behind Bill.
Bill heard the sound of Karlosky cocking the gun. “Supposed to crucify you, before killing,” Karlosky remarked. “But—I always liked you. So. Quick death.”
“I guess I should’ve killed Ryan,” Bill said. His voice sounded thick and unnatural in his own ears. “He must be gloating…”
“Nyet—he understands better than you think,” Karlosky said. “A lot of these others out here, he watched them die. But… he can’t be here for this. He told me. He couldn’t stand to watch you die, Bill. Not good friend like you…”
Bill smiled. He never heard the gunshot that killed him.
Park Avenue, New York City 1959
A warm day in July…
“I’m too scared to go out there, Mama,” Sophie said, for the tenth time in ten minutes.
Elaine sighed. “I know. But you have to.”
“You have something we call agoraphobia, Sophie,” the doctor said gently. He was an expensive Park Avenue psychiatrist. A kindly middle-aged man in a sweater and bowtie. He had a trim beard, a large nose, a sad smile, inquisitive eyes. But it happened he wasn’t charging Elaine much. He seemed interested in Sophie’s case. Perhaps even interested in Elaine herself, in another way.
“You have to do this, sweetheart,” Elaine said.
“Well, no,” said the doctor. “She doesn’t have to. But—she wants to, really. She just has mixed feelings about it.”
“The sky scares me,” Sophie insisted.
“I know it does.” The doctor smiled.
“In Rapture we don’t have sky,” she said. Then she told him some more about Rapture.
He listened patiently, then sent her out to wait with his receptionist, so he could talk to Elaine privately. “She has a remarkable imagination,” he said, chuckling. “‘Rapture’!”
Elaine didn’t try to explain. She couldn’t tell people about Rapture; they would never believe her. And if they did—it could lead to Ryan finding her.
So she just nodded. “Yes, Doctor…”
“She’s been through something traumatic—perhaps in war?” he said. “Somewhere overseas?”
Elaine nodded. “Yes. In war.” That was true, anyhow.
“I thought so. Well, she will heal. But we must start by dealing with her fears. I think, despite appearances, she will go outside today, for a walk in the park…”
To her surprise, the doctor offered to go with them. After a while, Sophie reluctantly agreed to try the park. They went down the elevator and walked slowly across the marble-floored lobby. Sophie became more frightened as they got closer to the street. Ever since they’d left the fishing boat that had picked them up off Iceland, she’d darted under cover as quickly as she could, hiding her eyes from the sky.
Then the doctor turned to Sophie and said, in a kindly voice, “May I carry you?”
Sophie looked up at him gravely. “Yes.”
He nodded, equally grave, and knelt by her. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up, carried her piggyback out the door, Elaine walking at his side. Elaine couldn’t help making a grotesque comparison to the way Big Daddies sometimes carried Little Sisters. But she thrust it out of her mind.
“Oh!” Sophie said as they stepped out into the hot sun. But she only clung harder.
They walked over to Central Park. Sophie cried on the way, but didn’t ask to hide from the sky.
They got to the park and found an open green field, with butter-colored flowers. On the edge of the field birds sang in the trees. The doctor let Sophie down, and she walked slowly out into the sunlight.
“Mama,” she said, shading her eyes to look up at the blue sky. “It’s nice out here. It just goes on and on. You know what?”
“What?”
“I think Daddy would have liked seeing this.”
“Yes, Sophie,” Elaine said, just managing not to cry. “Yes, love. Yes, he would have.”
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