by John Shirley
Bill and Elaine reached Fleet Hall, pausing to admire the grand blue-and-white sign. The archway was tricked out with radiant lines of white neon. A buzz of mingled conversations came from inside. Bill pressed Elaine’s arm to him and bent and kissed her cheek, and they went in.
The big, ornate concert hall was thronged, and they had seats in the orchestra section. The lights went down, the band struck up, and the musical Patrick and Moira commenced. It was a Sander Cohen production, thankfully without Cohen in it, and Elaine was enthralled. Bill found it all rather sentimental and a tad morbid—the play was about a ghostly couple who found each other in the afterlife—but he was happy to be there with Elaine, pleased she was having a good time. She seemed lost here on occasion. Now—he felt like they’d really found their place in the world … deep under the sea.
Heat Loss Monitoring, Hephaestus
1950
Bill almost had the heat monitor adjusted. Temperature control was just one of Rapture’s numerous points of vulnerability, one of many maintenance linchpins that had to be constantly adjusted to keep the city from breaking down. The city under the sea had been settled for just two years—a little less—but there was a great deal of repair to be done already.
Caught between fire and ice, me, Bill thought.
A certain amount of the cold water outside Rapture was drawn in through sea vents to modify the heat from the volcanic gases used to drive the turbines—water in one was cold enough to kill a man from hypothermia in under a minute; the water in the other hot enough to boil him. Bill had witnessed both tragedies.
Bill turned wheels to balance the mix of frigid coolant and volcanically heated water. He glanced out the window into the sea, where a complex of transparent pipes glowed dull red, conveying mineral-rich heated water from geothermal sources. Bill could faintly smell sulfur, though they tried hard to filter it all out. Still and all, the air in Rapture was usually cleaner than it was in New York City. Clean air was provided by gardens like Arcadia and the intake vents in the lighthouse structures.
The heat meters were bobbing just right now. He had the balance. Pablo Navarro was working at the other end of the apparatus-crowded room with Roland Wallace and Stanley Kyburz.
“That Navarro is always looking for a leg up,” Wallace grumbled, coming over. “Wants to be head engineer of the section, don’t you know.”
“That’s Greavy’s call, mate. But I don’t know as Pablo keeps at the job hard enough to deserve that title. How’s Kyburz working out?”
“Getting his work done. Good technical know-how. But those Aussies—they’re odd. And he’s the sullen sort, don’t you know.”
“Every Australian I ever knew was a sullen ol’ sod,” Bill said absently, eyeing the meters. “Holding steady so far.”
“Anyhow, there was an intercom buzz for you. Mr. Ryan wants you in Central Control.”
“Should’ve told me before! Right, I’m off.”
Bill checked the meters once more and then hurried out, hoping Elaine would be working in Ryan’s office.
He found Ryan pacing in front of his desk. No sign of Elaine. “Ah, Bill. I sent Elaine home early.”
Bill felt a sudden inner coldness. “Is she all right?”
“Yes, yes,” Ryan said distractedly. “Seemed fine. Wanted to look in on the nanny. Perhaps she came back to work too soon after the baby was born. How is the child?”
“The little one’s right as rain. Smiling and waving ’er arms about like she’s conducting a band…”
“Splendid, splendid…”
Bill hoped Elaine was all right. But she had insisted on getting a sitter and going back to work. She seemed to get cabin fever in the flat. Not easy to take the baby in a stroller through the park in Rapture—a bit of a journey to the small park areas.
“Bill, would you come with me? I have to have a chat with Julie Langford. I’d like your opinion on the new tea garden in Arcadia. And some other things. Plenty to talk about along the way…”
They traversed several passages and then entered a transparent corridor between buildings, sauntering untouched through the sea itself—heat vectored through the floor, protecting them from the North Atlantic’s frigidity. “I’m hearing rumblings in Rapture I don’t like, Bill,” Ryan muttered, pausing to watch a school of bright fish swim frantically by, pursued by an orca. “Out there, it’s all as it should be. The big fish eats the smaller fish. Some fish elude predators and thrive. But here … there are those who disturb the balance.”
Bill stepped up beside Ryan, the two of them gazing through the glass like two people chatting at an aquarium. “Rumblings, guv’nor? Which sort? The pipe sort or the people sort?”
“It’s the people—if you want to call them that.” Ryan shook his head and added, “Parasites!,” his mouth twisting sharply with the word. “I thought we could weed them all out. But people are tainted, Bill—there are rumors of union organizers here in Rapture! Unions! In my city! Someone is encouraging them. I’d like to know who … and why.”
“Haven’t heard anything quite like that myself,” Bill remarked.
“Stanley Poole caught some union talk in the tavern. There’s a pamphlet being passed around complaining about ‘unfairness to the workingman of Rapture’…”
“People being tense—they naturally need to blow off steam, guv. Toss around their ideas, freelike. Even some ideas you … we … don’t like, Mr. Ryan. Unions and whatnot. Now, I won’t defend ’em—” he added hastily, “—but there’s a kind of marketplace of ideas too, yeah? People need to be able to trade in ideas…”
“Hm. Marketplace of ideas. Maybe. I try to be tolerant. But unions—we saw where that leads…”
Bill decided not to argue that one. They both silently watched a blue whale swim majestically overhead. Bubbles streamed up from the seabed; lights blinked on in the buildings of Rapture, rising spectrally through the blue-green water. The Wales brothers’ designs mixed sweeping lines with a certain artful intricacy. The architecture seemed calculated to project boldness, even bravado.
A neon sign across the watery way, running vertically down a building that could almost have been from mid Manhattan, read FLEET HALL. Another neon sign glowed in grape-purple to advertise WORLEY’S WINERY, the letters rippling with intervening sea currents. Most of the apartment buildings had square windows, not portholes—for the most part they looked like apartment buildings on dry land. The effect, at times, was more like a sunken Atlantis than a metropolis deliberately built beneath the sea—as if the polar ice caps had melted, flooding Manhattan, its steel and stone canyons immersed in a deep, mysterious watery world without a clear horizon.
“It could be,” Ryan went on at last, “that we were too hasty in some of our recruiting for Rapture. I may have picked some people who were not as likeminded as I’d hoped.”
“Most of our people believe in the Rapture way, Mr. Ryan—there’s plenty of free enterprise in Rapture.” Bill smiled as a stream of bubbles rose a few inches beyond the glass. “It’s bubblin’ with it!”
“You hearten me, Bill. I hope everyone stays busy—competing, carving out their place in our new world. Everyone should branch out, create new businesses! Do you still plan to open a tavern?”
“Right enough I do. Fighting McDonagh’s it’ll be called. After me old man; he was a boxer in his youth.”
“We’ll have a grand-opening party for you!” Ryan looked up, toward the heights of the towers mounting through the sea—hard to see the tops of many of them from here. He took a deep breath, looking pleased, seeming to buoy into a better mood. “Look at it, rising like an orchestral climax! Rapture is a miracle, Bill—the only kind of miracle that matters! The kind a real man creates with his own two hands. And it should be celebrated every day.”
“Miracles need a lot of maintenance, Mr. Ryan! Thing is, we’re short on people to deal with the sewage, the cleaning, and the landscaping in Arcadia. We got posh types who never suffered worse than a paper cut—but
precious few who can dig a ditch or plumb a pipe.”
“Ah. We’ll have to lure men who have the skills we need, then. Find ways to house them. We’ll bring them in, don’t you worry about it. The light attracts the enlightened, Bill!”
Bill wondered how that would work out—bringing ever more blue-collar workers, men who might not take to a place where the guv’nor despised unions. Could be trouble down the road.
“Ah,” Ryan said, with satisfaction. “A supplies sub is coming in…”
They watched the submarine ghost by overhead, its lights glowing against the indigo depths. From here, its lines muted by the depths, the sub looked like a giant creature of the sea itself, another kind of whale. It would be heading to Neptune’s Bounty. Bill watched the sub angle downward for the hangar-sized intake airlock that led up to the wharf and Fontaine’s Fisheries.
“Dunno,” Bill said, “who might be encouraging unions—but I can tell you one person I don’t much trust is that Frank Fontaine.”
Ryan shrugged. “He’s quite the productive one. He’s got a lot of enterprise rolling. He keeps me thinking; I like the competition…,” adding, as if thinking aloud, “within reason.”
Fontaine had worked with Peach Wilkins to develop a way to do Rapture’s fishing more discreetly—underwater. A few simple adaptations to the smaller subs, refitting them to drag nets, and they had purely subaquatic fishing.
But the fishery gave Fontaine a potential access to something that Bill knew made Ryan nervous—the outside world. His subs left Rapture on business of their own—and they might be contacting anyone out there. Every year Ryan cut more ties with the surface world, liquidating his properties, selling factories and railroads.
“You think maybe Fontaine’s using the subs to bring in contraband, guv?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m monitoring that possibility. I warned him—and it seemed to me he took the warning seriously.”
“Some smuggling’s going on, Mr. Ryan,” Bill pointed out. “A Bible turned up in the workers’ quarters.”
“Bibles…” Ryan said the word with loathing. “Yes—Sullivan told me. The man says he bought it from ‘a fellow I didn’t know over to Apollo Square.’”
Bill had no love for religion himself. But privately he thought some people probably needed it as a safety valve. “All I can tell you, Mr. Ryan, is that I’ve never trusted that bugger Fontaine. He talks all silky, like—but none of it feels like real silk.”
“We can’t assume anything, you know. Come along…”
Bill sighed. Sometimes he got tired of being ‘Come Along Bill.’
An electric eye triggered the semicircular Securis door to slide open. They strode along corridors decorated with posters extolling the glories of Rapture’s commerce, down a curving stairway, to a bathysphere station where a banner declared COMMERCE, INDEPENDENCE, CREATIVITY. Ryan remained silent, brooding as they went.
Bill expected to take the Atlantic Express, but Ryan ignored the train station and continued to the Rapture Metro. They passed a party of maintenance workers who tipped their hats at Ryan. He paused and shook hands all around. “How’s it going, boys? Patching up the ceiling? Good, good … don’t forget to invest some part of your paychecks in one of Rapture’s new businesses! Keep it growing, fellas! You working for Bill here? If he isn’t treating you right—don’t tell me about it!” They laughed all around at that. “Start a competing plumbing business, give ol’ Bill here a run for his money, eh! How do you like that new park of ours, by the way. Seen it yet? Fine place to take the ladies…”
When he was in the mood, Ryan could be quite convivial, even chummy, with the workingman. He seemed almost to be performing for Bill today.
Ryan put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels as he reflected, “When I was a young boy, my father took me to a park in … well, it was in a foreign capital … the czar was still alive then, but my father’s business was faltering, and that park lifted his spirits! ‘This is where I met your mother!’ he said. So boys—if you want to meet the right young miss, we’ve got just the place! Plenty of privacy for sparking the ladies, eh?”
The workmen laughed; he clapped two of them on the shoulders, wished them a profitable day’s work, and sent them on their way. The men went away beaming—they’d be able to boast of chatting with the great Andrew Ryan.
Ryan led Bill into the waiting bathysphere. When its hatch lowered into place, Ryan tapped the selector for their destination and hit the GO lever. The bathysphere dropped neatly into its passageway and then set out horizontally with a bubbling whoosh.
The two men sat back, riding in companionable quiet till they were halfway to the nearest air lock for Arcadia, when Ryan said, “Bill—have you heard residents whining about not being permitted to leave Rapture?”
“Here and there,” Bill admitted reluctantly. He didn’t want to snitch on anyone.
“You know we cannot trust anyone outside Rapture, Bill. We’d have American intelligence agents down here, or the jackals from the KGB, fast as…” He snapped his fingers.
“It can be hard for some down here, sir. There’s some as wonder if they made the right choice immigrating to Rapture…”
“I have no respect for quitters! You don’t visit Rapture—it’s a way of life!” He shook his head bitterly. “They are spineless! They were told, before they came, that there were certain inviolable rules. No one leaves! There is no place for men like us on the surface.”
Bill was in awe of Ryan; he knew it, and Ryan knew it. But maybe it was time to give Ryan some guff about this lockdown. Because he was afraid that if Ryan stuck to this policy, it could be explosive. “It’s human nature, guv’nor, to want freedom to come and go. People get stir-crazy, like, when you pen them up. You believe a man should make a choice—but how can the poor sod choose to stay in Rapture? We took that choice away!”
“A man has thousands of choices in Rapture. But that one he gave up when he came to this world—a world that I created. I built it with money and resources earned with my sweat! It’s all a lot of absurd whining! In time we will expand Rapture across the seabed and there will be far more room to move about.” He flicked his hand in a gesture of contemptuous impatience. “They entered into a contract coming here! In the end, our choices make us what we are. A man chooses, Bill! They chose—and they must accept the responsibility.”
Bill cleared his throat. “Natural enough for some blokes to want to change their minds…”
The bathysphere reached its destination, clunking into place, and the hatch creaked open—but Ryan made no move to get out. He remained in his seat, looking at Bill with a new solemnity. “Have you changed your mind, Bill?”
Bill was taken by surprise. “No! This is my home, Mr. Ryan. I built this place with my bare hands.” He shrugged. “You asked what I’ve heard…”
Ryan looked at him for a long moment, as if peering into Bill’s soul. Finally, he nodded. “Very well, Bill. But I’ll tell you something. The residents of Rapture will be purged of the habits of ant society! They must learn to stand up beside us, like men—and build! I plan to start a new program of civic education. Banners, a great many more of them—educational announcements on televisions and public address, and billboards! I’m bringing in someone to help us train them to see that the world outside Rapture is the real prison … and Rapture is the real freedom.” Ryan climbed out of the bathysphere. “Come along, Bill. Come along…”
8
Andrew Ryan’s Office
1950
“Miss Lamb,” Diane announced. “Dr. Sofia Lamb…” There was a certain coolness in her voice as she said it, Andrew Ryan noted. Had she already taken a dislike to the woman? Dr. Lamb had been a kind of missionary, both physician and psychiatrist, working in Hiroshima before and after the bomb—maybe Diane was intimidated. Diane was sensitive about her working-class background.
“Escort her in. Have the guards wait outside.”
Diane sniffed but went back in
to the outer room and held the door for Sofia Lamb.
“He’ll see you now, Dr. Lamb,” Diane said, as if wondering why he was seeing her.
“Splendid. It’s been a long journey … I’m curious to find the final chamber of this great nautilus shell of a city…”
Ryan stood politely as she strode in. Dr. Lamb carried herself like the educated, well-heeled elite professional she was. He knew protocol would matter with her.
She was tall, almost cruelly slim, her blond hair coifed into large curls atop her head. She had a long neck, a narrow face with stark bone structure, icy blue eyes behind stylish horn-rimmed glasses, lips darkly rouged. She wore a navy-blue dress suit with sharp white collars and dark blue pumps.
“Welcome to Rapture, Miss Lamb. Won’t you have a seat? I hope your journey wasn’t too exhausting. It’s a pleasure to have you join us in our brave new world.”
She sat in the chair across from him, crossing her long pale legs. “Brave new world—a reader of Shakespeare! The Tempest, was it not?” Her long slender fingers expertly extracted a platinum cigarette case from her small handbag as she went on, looking blandly at him, “O brave new world that has such creatures in it…”
“Are you surprised, Miss Lamb, that I’m familiar with Shakespeare?” Ryan asked, coming around the desk to light her cigarette with a gold lighter.
She blew smoke at the ceiling and shrugged. “No. You’re—a wealthy man. You can afford to educate yourself.”
It was not an obvious criticism—yet somehow, it was condescending. But she smiled—and he saw a glint of charisma. “I must say,” she went on, glancing around, “this place is remarkable. Quite astonishing. And yet no one seems to know about it.”
“As few as we can manage. We work hard at keeping it secret. And we shall require you to keep it secret too, Miss Lamb. Or should I call you Doctor Lamb…?”