by John Shirley
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 ident
ical 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 carr
ying 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…”