by John Shirley
“Oh, stop running your yapper…” Maybe he’d take his last hit of BruteMore—see how it did with the SportBoost real fresh in his system. He wondered if he could get Sally to take some BreastGro …
He got up, went to the icebox—he’d hidden the BruteMore behind an open, half-empty can of beans.
He injected it standing right there, with his back to Sally. A glowing red energy suffused him. He could feel it move through his body—it was like individual cells growing from inside.
Sally kept rattling on. “This area wasn’t supposed to be no permanent place to live! Supposed to be temporary housing for train maintenance! Not much better than one of those shacktowns we had in the Depression, when I was a kid, out in Chicago!
“You know what they’re starting to call this parta Rapture under the train station? Pauper’s Drop! Can you beat that? Pauper’s Drop, Rupert! That’s where you’ve taken me! I shoulda listened to my old man. He warned me about you. What’re you doing over there? Look at you! You look like you’re getting all swollen up … it ain’t natural!”
He spun to face her—and look at the expression on her face! Sally knew she should’ve kept her mouth shut. Her scrambling away like that—that was a clue. She was trying to get to the door.
“Should’ve kept your mouth shut, woman!” he roared. The metal walls seemed to vibrate with the sound. “Your old man warned you, did he? I’ll show you somethin’ that old fool never thought of!”
She was tugging at the door handle. Rupert Mudge turned, seized the icebox, lifted it up, spun around—and threw it at her.
Funny how light it seemed in his hands …
And funny too, how fragile she turned out to be. She had seemed like a real terror, sometimes. A little ball of fury. But now, just a big wet red splash all over the rusty metal door. And the wall. And the floor. And the ceiling. And a head all by itself, facing into the corner …
Uh-oh. Sally was paying the bills around here. And now she was dead.
He’d better get out of here. Get over to Fontaine.
Mudge stormed out the door, headed for the passage to the Metro. Yeah—Fontaine’s. Find work there. Any work at all. No matter what they asked him to do. Because he had needs. That’s what Sally hadn’t understood. He had powerful needs—and a need to be powerful.
Arcadia, Rapture
1955
“You know what’s missing, here?” Elaine said, looking around at the enclosed parkland. “The sounds of birds. There’re no birds in Rapture.” A soft, golden, artificial light suffused the air. Pushed by hidden fan blades Bill himself had installed, the breeze blew the perfume of daffodils and roses to them.
Bill and Elaine were sitting on a bench holding hands. They’d decided to spend most of his day off together. They’d had lunch and then gone for a long walk. It was getting near dinnertime, but it was a delight being in the park. Smelling flowers, looking at the greenery. Hearing a stream chuckling and murmuring. He found himself wishing they’d brought their little girl, Sophie.
Not quite four years old, Sophie liked to scamper to the miniature wooden bridge and toss blades of grass into the creek of filtered water, watch them float downstream to vanish into the walls. She would play happily among the ferns, the artfully random boulders, the small trees.
Still, he reckoned Sophie was having a good time back in the flat, playing that Sea Treasure board game with Mascha, the little daughter of Mariska Lutz. Mariska was an Eastern European woman Elaine had hired out of Artemis Suites as a part-time nanny. Funny to think Sophie and Mascha had never known a world beyond Rapture. Ryan suppressed most images of the surface world in Rapture’s classrooms. That troubled Bill as much as The Journey to the Surface. But there were things that troubled him more. Like Mr. Gravenstein putting a gun to his head in front of his ruined grocery store. The memory still haunted Bill.
“No birds here, love, that’s right enough,” Bill said at last. “But there are bees. From the Silverwing Apiary. There goes one of the little buggers now…”
They watched the bee zip by: pretty much the only wildlife inside Rapture, unless you counted certain people. The bees were necessary to pollinate the plants, and the plants created oxygen for Rapture.
“Ah, there’s your pal Julie,” Elaine said. Her lips compressed as she watched Julie Langford walk up.
Bill glanced at Elaine. Did she really think he had some kind of hanky-panky going on with Julie Langford?
The ecological scientist was a compact woman of about forty, her pragmatic haircut held by barrettes. She wore transparent-framed glasses and olive-colored coveralls for her work in the tree farm and the other green zones of Rapture. Bill liked talking to her—liked her quickness, her independent way of thinking.
Julie Langford had worked for the Allies devising a defoliant in the Pacific, he knew, exposing Japanese jungle bases. He’d also heard that when Andrew Ryan talked her into coming to Rapture, the U.S. government had gotten peeved after she’d abandoned her federal job. She’d vanished, in fact, from North America. They’d been combing the world looking for her ever since.
“Hello, Bill, Elaine,” Julie said distractedly, glancing around at the plants. “Still not quite enough natural light getting through down here. Need to add more sunlight mirrors in the lighthouses. Those junipers are going brown around the edges.” She put her hands on her hips and turned politely to Elaine. “How’s your darling little girl?”
Elaine smiled distantly. “Oh Sophie’s good, she’s just learning to—”
“Good, good.” Julie turned impatiently back to Bill. “Bill, I’m glad I ran into you. I need to talk to you about the boss—just for a minute. Alone, if you don’t mind.”
Bill turned to his wife, wondering how she’d feel about it. “You mind, Elaine?”
“Go on, I’m fine. Do as you like.”
“Back in a mo’, love.” Clearly she wasn’t fine with him strolling off with Julie, but Elaine was a cheerful girl most of the time. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel a little jealousy now and then, keep her from taking him for granted. He kissed Elaine on the cheek and walked off toward the little bridge with Julie, hands in his pockets, trying to look as unromantic as possible.
“Don’t mean to drag you away from the little lady,” Julie said in a way Bill thought was a bit condescending toward Elaine. “But I need an ally, and I know you love this park.”
“Right. What’s afoot, Julie?”
“I tell you, Bill—here I am, a batty plant woman working for years to expose the Japs in the jungle, melting away plant life, and now I’m down here trying to do the complete opposite. ‘We’ll create a second Eden down there,’ Ryan says. All that, and now he wants to turn this place into a paying tourist attraction—for residents of Rapture, I mean.”
“What? But I thought this was a public park.”
“So it was to be. But he doesn’t really believe in public ownership of anything. And he’s trying to keep up with Fontaine. So he’s raising capital. Which means charging for everything you can imagine. Hires me to build a forest at the bottom of the ocean—then turns a walk in the woods into a luxury. Something you have to pay for! You know how he is. ‘Should a farmer not be able to sell his food? Is a potter not entitled to a profit from his pots?’ But what am I going to do? He’s my boss, but he listens to you, Bill. Maybe you can talk him out of this. We need some kind of free public space in Rapture. A commons. People just need it—they need the breathing room.”
Bill nodded, glancing at his wife, pleased to see Anya Anyersdotter had stopped to talk to her. Elaine was smiling. She liked Anya, a smartly dressed little woman in a pageboy haircut, prone to freethinking. Anya designed shoes and clothes and had her own boutique—one of Rapture’s success stories.
Bill turned back to Julie. “But here, what am I to do, Julie? You know about his own private forest fire?”
“What? No!”
“Oh yeah. Tells me: ‘I once bought a forest. Then they,’ says he, ‘claimed
the land belonged to God—demanded I establish a public park there. A public park, where the rabble can stand about gawping, pretending they’ve earned that natural beauty! Land that I owned! Congress under that bastard FDR tried to nationalize my forest—so I burnt it to the ground.’”
“Not truly…”
“Oh yes. Truly. You think he could be talked into making anything into public property?”
She made a soft little grunting sound and shook her head. “Maybe not.” She gestured at the gemlike parkland around them. “Once he told me, ‘God did not plant the seeds in Arcadia. I did.’ But I designed all this—with a little help from Daniel Wales…”
“I think we ought to trust Mr. Ryan. He’s known what he’s been about so far…”
“Yeah well—it doesn’t end there. He’s even talking about a surcharge for oxygen! He says the air in Rapture is only there to breathe because Ryan Industries provided it!”
“Oh Jay-sus.” Bill lowered his voice. “Here comes that bloody prat Sander Cohen…”
Sander Cohen approached over the little bridge, arm in arm with two bored-looking young men wearing hunting outfits, though they carried nothing to hunt with. Cohen wore Tyrolean lederhosen, suspenders, and a mountain climber’s hat with a purple feather. The leather shorts exposed his knobby knees. He looked peculiarly pale—but that was largely because Cohen had whiteface makeup on, almost like a mime, though he was a long ways from a stage. His wiry, up-curling mustache seemed to quiver at the ends when he saw Bill. “Ah! Monsieur William McDonagh! Madame Langford!” Pronouncing the names, for no apparent reason, as if they were French.
“Cohen,” Langford said, with a curt nod.
“Sander,” Bill said. “You gents out for a stroll, yeah?”
“We are, in fact!” Cohen said. “These young rogues drank a bit too much. Taken a little too much SportBoost too! Talked me into a walk in the park. Though the Muse knows, I don’t like parks, you know. Revile them, actually. Reminds me of animals.” He squeezed the arm of the man on his left. “Not this sort of animal. This very sophisticated animal is Silas Cobb, Bill. You must have been to his darling little shop, Rapture Records! I suppose you might say it’s mine too—I’m an investor.”
Cobb was a skinny fellow with a shock of brown hair and a dreamy expression. He snorted and said, “Yeah. He pays the rent for my ‘darling little shop.’ Which just happens to have everything Mr. Cohen here ever recorded.” He brightened as he added, “And some other people too—Sinatra, Billie Holiday.” Cobb was still drunk, swaying in place.
“And this great megalith of a man,” said Cohen, tilting his head rakishly at the big guy on his right, “is Mister Martin Finnegan.” Finnegan was a mustached, surly-looking man, his height accentuated by the hair piled on top of his head. He seemed both grimly masculine and vaguely effeminate at once. “Martin worked backstage at the theater on Broadway where I performed my Young Dandies … if you needed a stout heart to pull a curtain rope, he was your man. Has quite a grip. But he’s an actor himself. The next Errol Flynn, eh Martin?”
“And why the hell not?” Finnegan growled. “I can act as well as that bastard from … Where the hell is Flynn from—he’s no Irishman, is he?”
Cohen waved dismissively. “Errol’s from Australia or Tasmania, some such place. Oh, few successful actors can act. They’re simply lit well and have nice muscle tone. A lovely profile. Oh! What was that!” Cohen ducked his head as a bee flew by. “Was that an insect? An insect here in Rapture! I thought I was free of insects here!”
“Just a harmless little bee,” Julie said. “Need ’em for the flowers.”
“Shuddersome things. Vile. Might walk on me. Might sting me. I detest nature. It won’t obey! It cannot be … organized. Can one stage nature? No! Nature should be conquered, forced to submit! How ruggedly handsome you look today, Bill. Won’t you come to the Kashmir with us, split a few bottles of wine, eh?”
“Bill! Bill!”
Bill turned to see Roland Wallace trotting up, face red, all out of breath.
“What’s afoot, Roland? Twice today I had a chance to say that. Love to say it.”
Wallace came to a stop, bent over, hands on his knees, puffing. “Bill—emergency! In Hephaestus—flooding! Looks like it might’ve been sabotage. Someone did this on purpose, Bill. Someone’s trying to kill us all…”
Kashmir Restaurant, Rapture
1955
Ryan held court over the dinner table. Joining him this evening were Diane McClintock; the engineer Anton Kinkaide; Anna Culpepper, thinking herself arty in a blue beret; Garris Fisher—a top executive working for Fontaine Futuristics—and Sullivan. Karlosky was about thirty paces away, keeping security watch in the restaurant’s anteroom. Karlosky was fed, as part of the job—but no vodka, not here. The Russian could sometimes be trigger happy, especially after a vodka or three. Once in New York, Karlosky had shot a cab driver who’d had the temerity to scrape the limousine’s shiny fender. Ryan had to pay a pretty bribe to keep Karlosky out of jail.
Picking at the remains of his sea bass with the elegant sterling fork, Andrew Ryan reminded himself to keep smiling. He didn’t much feel like it, but he was hosting this meal at the Kashmir and felt an obligation to keep up appearances. He sat quietly with his talkative guests, Anna rambling about a new song she’d written; Diane about a painting she was engaged in, having just recently gotten the notion she might be an artist. Kinkaide was making feeble efforts at witticisms. All quite tedious to Ryan. He sensed that everyone was trying to think of some way to talk about anything but their feelings about Rapture. Which made him wonder what people said about life here behind his back. Of course the grumbling was becoming louder. The treacherous Sofia Lamb was stoking that smoldering fire …
He watched his guests put on their little acts, striving to seem cheerfully amused, happily involved in Rapture, but starting to fray around the edges in the confinement—like so many of the weaklings he’d allowed into the city. They had every manner of comfort: even now they sat in the most luxurious corner booth of the restaurant, by the tiered, gurgling marble fountain, under a big window that looked out on an undersea garden where purple and red flabelliform plants waved in shafts of blue light. Chopin played softly from hidden speakers. Life here for the moneyed should be enchanting. But it never seemed to be enough.
Ryan noticed Anton Kinkaide staring goofily at Diane. Kinkaide was a man with little social sophistication but a brilliant engineering mind. His ratty sweater, crooked bowtie, and nervous nursing from a beer glass contrasted with Fisher’s easy champagne sophistication. Ryan wondered if Diane would like Anton Kinkaide. The engineer could be impressive—he had designed the Rapture Metro—and he was a man who loved ideas. Diane pretended to be an intellectual at times, though really she was quite a naïf.
The only other diners in the restaurant, at a table across the big room, were the smirking Pierre Gobbi and Marianne Dellahunt. The young Frenchman, a winemaker, was visibly bored as he listened to the superficial Marianne, whose taut features seemed empty of character and age. She’d made one too many visits to Dr. Steinman.
Ryan wished Bill and Elaine had come to dinner. Bill McDonagh was damn good company. Levelheaded too.
Sullivan was finishing a third glass of Worley’s best wine. Sullivan was a bit of a stiff at any gathering; he was either stone-faced or got drunk and started leering at the women. After the leering phase he’d slip into the inevitable drinker’s glumness, glowering at the windows as if angry with the endless blue depths. Ryan could almost read his mind: Taking this nutty job and moving down here, I musta been crazy.
But sober, Sullivan did what needed to be done. Ryan knew he could trust his security chief. That was worth putting up with a great deal.
He wasn’t sure he trusted Garris Fisher as much. The urbane middle-aged Fisher, both a biochemist and an entrepreneur, had helped promote Fontaine’s plasmids.
“Any interesting new developments at Fontaine Futuristics, Garris?
” Ryan asked carelessly.
Fisher smiled mysteriously, as Ryan had known he would. “Oh—” He tapped the champagne flute with his fingernail to make it ring. “Naturally. But nothing you need worry about, Andrew…”
“Your BruteMore is selling rather well, I understand. Others aren’t quite … panning out.”
Fisher shrugged. “These little potholes crop up in the road of commerce, do they not? We bump right through them, change the tires, and move on. Our SkinGlow is popular with the ladies … And Fontaine’s new one, Incinerate—quite flashy.”
“Ah, yes.” Ryan chuckled. “I watched the cook in the kitchen start the gas fire with it. Pointed his finger and whoof! A bit startling at first.”
“Startling is itself an advertisement, you know. Grabs attention.”
Ryan nodded. There was something to that—he’d been impressed, seeing the man shooting fire from his hand. A true sign of Rapture science at work. And according to Sullivan, Fontaine was raking in huge profits—overtaking Ryan’s own. Ryan Industries truly needed to find a way into plasmids …
Kinkaide was gawping at Diane again. Ryan found himself wondering if he could indeed fob Diane off on Anton. Of course, he could always simply tell her to go away. But somehow she’d wormed her way into his emotional life so that he knew just dismissing her would be painful, which was partly why he wanted to get rid of her. He didn’t want the distraction of a serious relationship. She’d been hinting of marriage lately. Detestable thought. Never again. But he would prefer Diane left him on her own, without having to be … propelled.
He felt her touch his arm, turned to see her smiling back at him with just a mild reproach. “Darling, my glass has been empty for ever so long.”
Ryan sighed inwardly. The former cigarette girl, at least publicly, was always putting on that stilted chic diction she’d picked up from the movies. Thought she was Myrna Loy.
“Yes, my dear, we do need another bottle of champagne.” He didn’t want to suggest any more wine for Sullivan. “Brenda!”