by John Shirley
Wallace led them to a large steel door, one of three placed symmetrically around the dome. He checked a couple of dials on a panel beside the door, nodded to himself, and spun the wheel. He grunted as it swung open into a tunnel made of some amalgam pocked by vents and ribbed in metal. “Now if you gentlemen will wait to the side here…”
They pressed against the wall to the right, Ryan with an expression of proprietary pride. After a minute, the battery-powered gripper drove slowly through the doorway, whirring to itself. Affixed to its rear was a small cockpit, where Wallace drove, the gripper’s jointed, black-metal arms retracted; behind him came a little radio-slaved tram, reminding Bill of a small funicular without the cable. It seemed to be driving itself—and it stopped in front of Ryan and Bill when the gripper stopped.
“Step in,” Ryan said, and they climbed into the leather-mesh seats of the shuttle, side by side. The gripper moved off, and the little shuttle followed.
They passed under the electric lights of the tunnel for what seemed a quarter mile when suddenly a killer whale flashed overhead, its toothy mouth agape. Bill recoiled. “Oi!”
Ryan laughed dryly. “Look closer!”
Bill leaned out of the tram and saw that the walls here were transparent—they were a heavy, polished glass of some kind banded with metal. Light shone upward from electric lamps on the seabed outside the transparent section. He could see the tunnel, mostly cement, occasionally glass, wending out across the seabed toward the framework of Rapture. The foundations of Rapture stood out in shades of dark green and indigo.
“It’s hard to reckon where the water stops and the glass starts—it’s like we’re in the water with ’em!” Bill muttered. A diffuse shimmer from the surface far above answered the glow from the seabed lamps. Schools of fish emerged from billowing forests of green kelp and purple sea fans: tuna, cod, and fish he couldn’t identify, gleaming with iridescence, threading in and out of light and shadow. A squid pulsed by and then another great black-and-white orca swept by. Bill was awestruck. “Look at that bloody thing! Fast as a swallow but big enough to swallow a man! It’s flyin’ right over us!”
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Ryan mused, gazing through the curving, transparent pane as they rolled along. “Fairly obvious, looking out at a glorious prospect like this one, why I’m calling the city Rapture! Of course, I’ve always had a fascination with the deep sea. It’s another world—a free world! For years I read of giant squid netted from the depths, the adventures of explorers in diving bells and bathyspheres, strange things sighted by submariners. The thrilling potential of it all! I detest the warmongering of the ‘Great Powers’—but world wars did generate workable submarines…”
“Nothing but glass, holding out all that water?” Bill marveled. “We’re down fair deep! All that bloody great pressure…!”
“I’m not ready to share all my secrets with you yet, Bill, but that is in fact a perfect merging of glass—and metal. Something new called submolecular bonding. Astonishingly pressure resistant. Expensive, but worth every cent.”
The two vehicles paused under the curving transparent pane of the tunnel, and Bill gazed into the shaded blue distances of the sea. He glimpsed great shadowy shapes swimming along out there, murk-veiled outlines not quite definable—appearing and vanishing. An object on the seabed about five hundred yards away gave off a faint red glow.
“What’s that—glowing, over there?”
“That’s our geothermal energy valve,” said Ryan. “We lost three men setting it up,” he added casually. “But now it seems quite secure…”
“Three men lost?” Bill looked at him, suddenly feeling what a deep, cold place this was. “How many have died working out here?”
“Oh, not so many. Why, when they built the Panama Canal, Bill—how many do you think died there?”
Bill thought back to his reading as he watched the silhouette of a bathysphere drifting by overhead. “If I recall, the French lost about fifteen thousand men. When the Americans finished the job, another five thousand died.”
Ryan nodded briskly. “Risk, Bill—nothing is built without risk. Build an ordinary house and lay the foundations a few inches wrong, the whole thing might collapse on you. Men died for the canal. Men died in the building of great bridges, died attempting to scale the highest mountains. Pioneers died crossing deserts. But we don’t take pointless risks. We are observing safety precautions—we don’t wish to lose skilled workers. Ah”—Ryan pointed— “look there.”
Bill saw something like a giant lobster flying over, fifty feet long. Then it passed from a patch of dimness into the glow around the edges of Rapture, and he saw it was one of the smaller, specialized submarines he’d glimpsed earlier. Beams of light projected from headlights like shining eyes; its jointed, pincered mechanical arms were extended to grasp a big ornate segment of metal wall lowering on a cable.
Bill watched a gripper move up opposite it, mechanical arms poised to help ease the big metal section into place on a wall. The wall sections appeared to be sculpted, prefabricated metal pieces. Bill thought of the way the Statue of Liberty had been constructed, with the separate pieces made in Europe, then shipped to America and fitted precisely together to form the gargantuan figure.
He noticed there was no one in the small cockpit at the rear of the gripper—he could just make out the connective control cable trailing behind it.
“How does anyone see enough to control it?” he asked. “The controller watches through a window?”
Ryan smiled. “He’s watching on a screen. We use a television camera on that one.”
“Television! Me second cousin in the Bronx had one. Got a headache, me, when I tried to watch one of those boxes, not a week ago. Fellas caperin’ about in dresses, dancing packs of cigarettes…”
“The technology can be used for more than entertainment,” Ryan said. He pointed across the site. “One of our supply submarines…”
Bill saw it gliding along on the far side of Rapture’s foundations: a larger submarine, without mechanical arms, that could almost have belonged to the British Navy—except that it was pulling a massive oblong shape behind it on a doubled chain. “It’s towing freight in some kind of container,” he remarked.
“There is a little air in the cargo bag, for buoyancy,” Wallace said. “Mostly it contains some dry goods and medical supplies. All netted together.”
“Costly process,” Ryan said. “Off we go, Wallace…”
Wallace returned to the gripper, and they drove on, through tunnel after tunnel, passing through domes crowded with tool racks, machinery, tables. Here and there a lighted window looked out into the deep. Just outside a dome window a crowd of translucent pink jellyfish billowed, trailing long, delicate-looking stingers. A strong smell of sweat and old laundry was a physical presence in the domes; some were partly screened off, and Bill glimpsed men sleeping in cots back there.
“The construction goes on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” Ryan said. “The men work in shifts, ten hours on, fourteen off. We have a recreation dome where beer is sold, music is played, movies are shown. They showed the latest Cagney film there last week…”
“Fan of ’opalong Cassidy meself,” Bill murmured, as they passed into another covered tunnel. A transparent panel gave a glimpse of workers in deep-sea diving suits wrestling a culvert-sized copper pipe into place.
“We’ll be sure to get you some Hopalong Cassidy films to watch when you’re down here,” Ryan said.
“Will I be working down here a great deal, then?”
“You’ll be with me in New York much of the time. And in Reykjavík. I need the perspective of someone I can trust. But we’ll be down here too—I intend to supervise the next stage closely. Rapture will be my legacy. I fully expect to spend the rest of my life down here, once the city is built.”
Bill tried to conceal his shock. “The rest of your life, guv’nor? All of it? Down here?”
“Oh yes. The ant society up above is not for us. And radiat
ion from the atomic wars, when they come, will last for many years above the surface of the sea. We’ll be safe down here.”
That’s when Bill noticed the hissing sound of wheels through water—he looked over the lower window frame of the little transport and saw two inches of water accumulated on the floor of the tunnel.
“What’s that! Wallace—pull us over! Look at the floor!” The two vehicles jarred to a stop and Bill climbed out. He knew that Ryan wasn’t pleased to have him suddenly giving orders, but he also instinctively knew this could be a matter of life and death. “Look there!” Bill pointed to the thin coating of water over the amalgam floor.
Wallace was getting out, flashing an electric hand torch. “What the devil! We haven’t had any leaks in this section!” His eyes had grown big; his hands trembled, making the light jiggle on the wet floor.
“Didn’t you say the water pressure wasn’t a problem…?” Bill asked, examining the curved walls of the tunnel more closely.
“Well, these tunnels aren’t entirely made of the new alloy—it’s tremendously expensive to make. We keep most of that back for Rapture itself. Only the support ribs … But they should be enough, when you consider the steel mesh in the concrete, the doubling of—”
“What’s this about?” Ryan asked nervously. “Wallace—is there something I should know?”
“Need to get you back to Dome One, sir!” But Wallace, eyes flicking about, looked more scared for himself than for Ryan.
“Let’s identify the problem first!” Ryan snapped.
“There!” Bill said, pointing. “You see—the support ribs, they’re about a foot and a half farther apart in that spot—someone’s been sloppy! The weakened support’s yielding to pressure, stressing the concrete. You see? It’s trickling through at the bottom…”
“I swear to you this flooding wasn’t here two hours ago!” Wallace said, looking around desperately. “I … I passed through this very section! There was no leak!”
“That’s bad,” Bill said. “Means it’s happening fast! And it’s going to accelerate! We’ve got to get Mr. Ryan back right bloody now before it—”
A resounding, high-pitched crick!—and water began to sheet powerfully down from the edge of a metal rib supporting the tunnel, about forty feet down. A crack spread visibly through the ceiling, like a slithering, living thing; there was a squeal, an extended creaking sound of metal buckling.
A sizzling sound, then, followed by sparks spitting down—and several of the lights went out near the spraying, hissing leak.
Wallace backed away from it—bumping into the little funicular where Ryan was staring down the tunnel.
Bill grabbed Wallace’s arm, squeezed it hard to snap him out of his panic. “Wallace, listen—this thing I came here in, can it go back without the gripper?”
“Yes, yes, there’s a switch, I can reverse it—but there’s not room for three men, and I doubt it could carry so much weight, it’s not meant for—”
“Quiet and listen! Get in it, take Mr. Ryan back to the next dome! Soon as you get there, communicate with the other domes—there must be some kind of public address system—”
“Yes, yes—there is—” Wallace was staring aghast at the sheets of water shooshing down, spraying hard on the tunnel floor, driving water to surge against their ankles.
“Tell them to seal off the domes connected to this tunnel!”
“What about you?” Ryan asked.
“Someone can watch for me—and if there’s time they can let me through! I’m going to work up a temporary support to slow this down! Go!”
“Right! Right, I…” Wallace jumped into the little transport beside Ryan and flicked a switch.
Bill just had a glimpse of Ryan’s appalled face looking back at him as the transport lurched off down the tunnel the way they’d come.
He turned and ran splashing through deepening water, up to his shins now, to the idling gripper. He climbed into the cockpit, aware of the strengthening smell of brine and a kind of fog thickening in the tunnel. Mist rose from the swirling, swishing flood. In the wan light of the gripper cockpit he found a series of switches, levers, a small steering wheel, a gearshift, an accelerator pedal …
Bill flicked the toggle on a switch labeled Grip, and the mechanical arms extended and opened their pincers in front of him, like a lobster warning off a rival. Two levers jutting beside the steering wheel seemed to control the arms …
The rising water was already seeping into the cockpit when he worked out how to manipulate the mechanical arms. Bill leaned out of the cockpit, peering upward in the muted light, and made out the spot he was looking for before another two overhead lights sparked, sizzled, and went out. He shifted gears and drove the gripper forward a few yards, leaving a wake in the water behind him as cold brine gathered around his ankles.
God send the gripper mechanism didn’t short-circuit before he could do the job.
The sounds of metal creaking were becoming ominously loud …
Bill took a deep breath and then manipulated the arms so that they bent at the nearest joints, angling sharply upward. He forced them hard against the ceiling, just where the water was spraying through. And the leak slackened. It was still coming, but not so fast.
He noted a switch marked Hold and flicked it. The gripper’s arms went rigid, holding in place, but already he could see the mechanical arms shivering, starting to buckle …
Heart thudding, he clambered quickly out, knocking his head against the metal cockpit in his hurry. “Bloody buggerin’ fuck!” Bill grabbed a spanner from a toolbox at the back of the gripper and hurried down the tunnel, splashing through shadow toward the lights, the saltwater above his knees now.
Another squealing sound from behind … the sea was going to crash through and flood the tunnel—damn quick too. But he might have the leak slowed down just enough to see to it Mr. Ryan got to safety. He wasn’t optimistic about his own chances.
Then he was in a lighted area of the tunnel, sloshing as fast as he could around a curve—and seeing a steel doorway up ahead in the recessed arch of a dome entrance. He splashed up to it, almost falling again. No window in this door, no intercom grid. The door was equipped with a wheel that could be used to open it—but he didn’t dare unless they judged it safe. They’d have water-pressure gauges. They’d know better than he would. He couldn’t risk all those lives for his own. He’d brought the spanner to let them know he was here—and used it to bang hard on the door. He heard faint voices on the other side, but couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. It sounded like an argument.
He looked over his shoulder and saw a wave rushing toward him along the tunnel. That was it, then. He was done for. He’d be toes-up in no time.
But then the door grated within itself and swung open. Water rushed past his knees into the dome. “No!” he shouted. “Close it! No time! Don’t let the water in!”
But strong arms were circling him, Ryan dragging him into the bright lights and human smells of the dome. Bill turned and, with Ryan and Wallace, took hold of the handle on the door, and pulled. The water flow was with them, helping them slam the big metal door shut. They got it closed only a moment before the big wave rushing down the tunnel struck it with a dull booming …
“Good lord but that was close,” Wallace said, panting, as the water receded about their ankles. “Thank God you’re safe, Mr. Ryan!”
Ryan turned to Bill—and then they spontaneously shook hands, grinning at each other. “Don’t thank God, Wallace,” Ryan said. “Thank a man. Thank Bill McDonagh.”
The Lighthouse, Rapture
1947
It was a chilly, breezy early evening as Andrew Ryan stepped off the launch. Ryan gestured for his bodyguards and coxswain to wait in the boat, then turned and climbed the steps of the great lighthouse structure. It was modeled on ancient descriptions of the lighthouse of Alexandria, and it radiated that classical majesty. He paused partway up to take it all in, entranced by the tower, the surf
ace entrance to Rapture.
He had ordained this … This was the manifestation of his will …
WELCOME TO RAPTURE, read the metal letters over the great, round copper-plated Securis door. To either side of the art deco entrance rose streamlined chromium figures of men, statues built into the walls, looking as if they were supporting the building, their elongated, upraised arms straining for the heights.
The door opened as he approached, and Chief Sullivan, smiling, emerged to shake his hand; along with a beaming Greavy; a wryly glum, bearded Simon Wales—and Bill McDonagh, looking a bit stunned. Ryan was glad Bill was here to see this. He had sensed doubts in Bill sometimes—now Bill would see, they’d all see, that the “impossible” was possible.
Wales nodded to Ryan, barely managing a smile. “I think you’ll be pleased, Andrew.” He had a mild Dublin accent. “Sure, we’re nearly there…” The architect wore a pea jacket, a black turtleneck sweater, and black trousers, his round, balding head shiny with perspiration, his bruised-looking eyes gleaming.
They entered the high-ceilinged, hexagonal chamber, like the interior of a particularly grand observatory, their footsteps echoing on the marble floors. Intricately trimmed, picked out in precious metals, the entryway to Rapture had the spacious marble-and-gold gravitas of a capitol building’s rotunda—exactly as planned. Ryan felt a certain awe, gazing up at himself—at the giant gold bust of Andrew Ryan looking gravely down at whoever entered this place. The expression was stern but not angry. It expressed authority but also objectivity. It gave notice: Rapture would tolerate only the worthy.
The statue seemed oddly mute, however. He would add a banner to let people entering here know that they were on the brink of a new society where men were not cramped by superstition or big government:
NO GODS OR KINGS. ONLY MAN.
He made a mental note of it. He would not forget. And why not have welcoming music playing for those entering the lighthouse? Perhaps an instrumental of “La Mer,” a whimsically pertinent song.
Wales was talking about veneers and trim—“certain endemic leakage issues that have Daniel quite concerned”—but Ryan scarcely heard him. Wales was caught up in a designer’s fixation on details, superficialities. It was the big picture that was thrilling, and, gazing about himself now, Ryan was almost speechless with its power.