by John Shirley
“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 s
orry,” 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.