by John Shirley
“Children—all are lost creatures,” Brigid Tenenbaum said softly, her voice almost inaudible.
“You were pretty young when you started working as a scientist, Miss Tenenbaum,” Fontaine prompted. Understand what makes ’em tick, and you can wind up their clock. Set ’em for whatever time you want. “How’d that happen?”
She took a sip of wine, lit another cigarette, and seemed to gaze into another time. “I was at German prison camp, only sixteen years old. Important German doctor; he makes experiment. Sometime, he makes scientific error. I tell him of this error, and this makes him angry. But then he asks, ‘How can a child know such a thing?’ I tell him, ‘Sometimes, I just know.’ He screams at me, ‘Then why tell me?’” She smiled stiffly. “‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to do such things, at least you should do them properly!’” She took a drag on her cigarette and made a ghostly little smile—and a ghost of cigarette smoke rose from her parted lips as she let the smoke drift slowly out of her lungs.
Suchong rolled his eyes. “She tells that story many times.”
Fontaine cleared his throat. “I don’t know as I can get you the kind of experimental subjects you’re talking about right away, Doc,” Fontaine said. “Might draw too much attention. But what I can get you is some grown-up guys who’ve run afoul of the rules around here. Couple of guys disappear from Detention, who’s going to care? We’ll give out they escaped and got drowned trying to get out of the city.”
Suchong made a single brisk nod. “That can be useful.”
“So—supposing you could find a way to control genes,” Fontaine said, toying with his wineglass. “Is it true what I heard—that genes control how we age?”
Again Suchong said no and Tenenbaum said yes at the same moment.
Suchong grunted in irritation. “This is Tenenbaum theory. Genes only one factor!”
“Genes, they are almost everything,” Tenenbaum said, sniffing.
“But I mean—you could help a man stay young,” Fontaine persisted. “Maybe change his body in some way. Give him more hair, stronger arms, a longer … you know. If we could sell that … and give a guy, I don’t know, more talents … more … abilities.”
“Yes,” Tenenbaum said. “This is something my mentor talked about. To enhance a man’s powers—make him der Übermensch—the superman. A super man—or woman! Many risks in this. But yes. With time—and much experimentation.”
“When Suchong get money and experimental subjects, Mr. Fontaine?” Suchong asked.
Fontaine shrugged. “I’ll get you the first research payment tomorrow. We’ll work out a contract, just between us…”
Fontaine paused, reflecting that if he had to give them shares in the business, it might cost him a lot of money in the long run. But once he had the basic products started, the technology going, he could hire other researchers cheaper. And then he could get rid of Suchong and Tenenbaum. One way or another.
He smiled his best, most convincing, most openhearted smile at them. Never failed to lure the suckers in. “I’ll get you the contract and the money fast—but we’ve got to do it carefully. ‘Free’ enterprise or not—Ryan watches everything…”
9
Lower Wharf, Neptune’s Bounty
March 1953
Chief Sullivan didn’t like being out on the lower wharf when the lights had been dimmed this much. He could still see to get around, but the shadows around the pylons multiplied and seemed to squirm at the edge of his vision. This wasn’t a safe place even in broad “daylight.” A couple of guys had disappeared on this wharf over the past week. One of them had been found, or what was left of him, his body carved up pretty good. Seemed to Sullivan, when he’d examined the body, that those nice straight cuts had been made by scalpels …
Sullivan’s boots creaked on the planks as he walked to the end of the wharf. The cold came off the water. The smell of fish was strong—the reek of decay. Three wooden crates were lined up together on the wharf with a curious palm-print logo on them—but he figured breaking into them wasn’t likely to provide him proof of the contraband smuggling he knew was going on. They were marked “Rotten—for discard” and smelled like it. He figured Fontaine was too smart to have his contraband right here on the wharf.
The lower wharf resembled a wooden pier. It slanted down toward water released into the big chamber that enclosed part of the fisheries. The shallow water around the wooden projections was mostly just to give a feeling of a real wharf, to break up the claustrophobia—part of the psychology of Rapture design. A big electric sign, hanging from the ceiling, switched off, read FONTAINE’S FISHERIES. The walls here were mostly corrugated metal; above the lower wharf area was the upper wharf, with cafés and taverns like Fighting McDonagh’s—the tavern owned by Bill McDonagh, though he had little time to run it in person.
The wharf area felt, to Sullivan, like a kind of man-made cavern. Wood and sand and a pool of water below, the looming walls, the ceiling overhead—it was like an undersea cave. Only the walls and ceiling were metal.
The actual docking area for the fishing submarines, complete with cold storage vaults, was hidden down in the back, in a fish-reeking labyrinth of passages, conveyor belts for seafood processing, and offices—like the wharf master’s office. The wharf master was Peach Wilkins—Fontaine’s man. So far, Wilkins had stonewalled Sullivan when it came to the smugglers.
Reaching into the pocket of his trench coat to feel the reassuring grip of his revolver, Sullivan descended the switchback ramp to get closer to the water. The briny water lay quiet as a sheet of glass. But something splashed off in the shadows close to the wall.
He drew the pistol but kept it low, thumb ready to cock the hammer back. He bent down, glanced under the pier, thinking he saw a dark shape moving back there in the dimness.
Sullivan squatted a little more, trying to peer into the darkness under the pier, but saw nothing but the glimmer of water. Nothing moved. Whatever he thought he’d seen was gone. But then he saw it, bobbing back there, close to the corrugated metal walls. Someone had been pushing a floating crate along. He wished he had a flashlight.
A distinct splashing sound came from back near the crate. He raised the revolver and shouted, “Come out of there, you!”
He was distantly aware of a creaking noise on the ramp behind him. But his attention was fixed on the darkness under the pier, where that splashing had come from …
“You in there! I’m going to start opening fire if you don’t—”
He broke off, hearing the creaking more distinctly behind him, and turned—in time to see the silhouette of a man against the dim light of the ceiling, leaping down at him from the higher wharf ramp—a monkey wrench in the stranger’s hand poised to bash Sullivan’s skull.
Sullivan just had time to twist himself to the right so that the monkey wrench came whistling down past his left ear, thumping painfully into his shoulder—then the man tackled him.
Sullivan was slammed backward, hand convulsively firing the pistol. He heard the man grunt as they both splashed into the shallow seawater. Sullivan twisted as he fell, coming down on his left side. Salty water roared in his ears and choked him, big rough hands closed around his throat, a great weight bore him downward. He struck out with the gun butt, felt it connect with the back of the man’s head. The two of them thrashed; then Sullivan got his feet under him and managed to stand, thigh deep, water streaming off him. The other man was getting up, staggering, blood dripping from a head wound. A big square-jawed, ham-fisted man in a pea jacket glared at him with one little brown eye through black hair pasted down by water. He’d lost the monkey wrench in the water.
The man swung a bunched fist hard at Sullivan—Sullivan jerked back so that the blow missed, but he was sent off-balance. He tried to fire the gun, but water had gotten in, and it misfired. Sullivan was staggering back to try to stay upright. The man grinned, showing crooked teeth, and sloshed toward him, big hands outstretched.
A flash from up on the
wharf—a gunshot—and Sullivan’s brawny assailant grunted, gritted his teeth, took one more step, then fell on his face in the water. He thrashed for a couple of moments—then went limp, floating facedown.
Sullivan steadied himself and looked up to see Karlosky smiling coldly down at him from the wharf ramp, pocketing a smoking pistol. The air smelled of gunsmoke.
“Nice shot,” Sullivan said as blood welled from the hole in the left side of the stranger’s head. “Assuming, that is, you weren’t aiming for me!”
“If I shoot at you,” Karlosky said in his Russian accent, “you already die.”
Sullivan pocketed his own pistol, grabbed the dead man by the collar, and dragged him to the lower ramp, laboring in his water-heavy clothing. Pulling the thug onto the ramp, he bent over—aware of the pain from a deep bruise in his left shoulder—and turned the corpse over. There was just enough light to make out the face. He still didn’t recognize him. Or did he? He reached out and wiped wet hair away from the dead man’s face. He’d seen that face in a photo, in the Rapture admissions records. A maintenance worker. “The guy tried to brain me with a wrench,” he said as Ivan Karlosky joined him.
“I heard you shoot,” Karlosky said. “But you miss.”
“Didn’t have time to aim. You see anybody else on the other side of the wharf?”
“Da! Running away! Could not see who!”
“I’ve seen this one’s file. Don’t remember his name.”
“Mickael Lasko. Ukrainian! All sons of bitches, Ukrainians! Lasko, he work maintenance, then do something for Peach Wilkins. I heard in a bar, maybe he knows about smuggling—so I follow him this morning. The bastard lose me down in the docking maze. Some hidden passages down there…”
“Seemed like this particular Ukrainian son of a bitch wanting to do me in…” Shivering with the chill from the water soaking his clothing, Sullivan went through the dead man’s coat pockets—and came up with an envelope full of Rapture dollars and, in another pocket, a small notebook. He opened the notebook. It contained a list, blurred from the water. He read it aloud:
“Bibles—7 sold
Cocaine 2 g sold
Liquor 6 fifths
Letters out, 3 at 70 RD each.”
“Looks like he’s smuggling,” Karlosky said.
Sullivan shook his head. “Looks like Fontaine or Wilkins don’t have much respect for me. Like I’m supposed to believe this guy is behind it all. He’s not going to keep a notebook listing cocaine and Bibles. I doubt he knew how to spell ’em. The envelope with the cash in it was payment to this knucklehead to try to take me down. They were okay with it if he got killed. Make it look like the smuggler was all done for, take the heat off them…”
He tossed Karlosky the envelope. “You can have that—for saving my life. Come on, I’ll send someone down to pick up this patsy.” They started back up the ramp, hurrying into better lighting. “Shit, I hate walking with salt water in my pants. It’s rasping my ball sack, goddammit … let’s get a drink. I’ll buy you a vodka.”
“Vodka is good to get smell of rotting fish out! And smell of dead Ukrainian—even worse!”
A Locked Laboratory, Rapture
1953
“Absurd, Tenenbaum!” Dr. Suchong jeered as he walked ahead of Frank Fontaine and Brigid Tenenbaum.
“This discovery is very great,” Tenenbaum retorted confidently. She seemed to simmer with subdued excitement. “Mr. Fontaine, you will see!”
Frank Fontaine’s deal with Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum hadn’t quite paid off yet. Maybe, he figured, as he followed her and Suchong into the laboratory, today was the day that particular roll of the dice was going to come up lucky sevens. Tenenbaum’s excitement—which she almost never showed—seemed to hint she’d stumbled across something explosive.
Tenenbaum led the way to a sedated man in a hospital gown lying on a padded gurney in the most secretive inner chamber of the laboratory complex. She looked the unconscious man over with analytical coolness as she spoke. “Germans, all they can talk about is blue eyes and shape of forehead. All I care about is why is this one born strong, and that one weak—this one smart, that one stupid? All the killing, you think the Germans could have been interested in something useful? Today—I think we have found something very much useful…”
The sleeping man on the gurney was bound to it with leather restraints. He was quite an ordinary-looking man of medium height, brown hair, blotchy skin. Fontaine had seen him playing poker in Fighting McDonagh’s—Willy Brougham. On the white metal table beside Brougham was an enormous syringe with a thick red liquid in it. Occupying most of a shelf beyond the table was a five-gallon aquarium tank bubbling with seawater. Immersed in the tank, pulsing repugnantly on a bed of sand, was one of Tenenbaum’s sluglike wonders. It was about eight inches long, with a primitive armor fringing its edges. It had striated, grainy skin; faintly incandescent blue panels on its humped back. Teeth gnashed at one end on its elongated body; a small tapered tail twitched at the other.
“This Tenenbaum, she believes genes answer to everything. Suchong think genes important—but the control of subject’s mind, conditioning of synapses, these things are more important! Who controls such, controls all!”
“I like that,” Fontaine said. “Conditioning is something real interesting to me. Read about it in some magazine. The Nazis were experimenting with it…”
Tenenbaum cleared her throat and said, “Now this man, Brougham, he is wounded—I will show you injury…” She lifted up the gown of the man on the gurney, and Fontaine winced to see a nasty, puckered, ragged tear in the man’s flesh, about seven inches long, haphazardly taped shut just above the groin. “He tries to use fishing hook to steal fish from fishery tanks! Ryan’s men catch him, slice him with his own hook. Now—we have extracted special material from slugs. Purified it. This material is made of special stem cells. Unstable. Highly adaptable. Please observe.”
She picked up the syringe and jammed it in the flesh just above the man’s groin. Brougham’s back arched, his body reacting—but he didn’t wake. Fontaine winced at the sight of the three-inch needle piercing deeply into the man’s gut.
“Now,” she said, “observe the wound.”
Fontaine did. And nothing happened.
“Ha!” Dr. Suchong said. “Maybe it not work this time. And your great theory—poof, Tenenbaum!”
Then the skin around the wound twitched, reddened, and the serrated flesh inside the wound seemed to writhe about … and seal shut. In a minute, only a faint scar remained of the ragged gash. It had healed before their eyes.
“I’ll be damned!” Fontaine said.
“I call it ADAM,” said Brigid Tenenbaum. “Because from Adam in the myth came life for mankind. This too brings life—it destroys damaged cells, replaces them with new ones—transferred by plasmids, unstable genetic material. Now, stem cells can be manipulated—their genes changed! We can make them this, make them that. If it can do this, heal instantly—what else can it do? Transform a man, a woman? Into what? Many things! Endless possibility!”
Suchong chewed at a thumbnail, staring at the experimental subject. Then he pointed. “You see there? On his head—some lesions!”
She shrugged. “Hardly visible. A few minor side effects…”
“Some may have much more! Your man with the miracle hands—that one behaves a little strangely now. And there are some curious marks on his arms. Like cancer! Uncontrolled cell growth!”
“So that’s the key,” Fontaine mused. “These stem-cell things and this … this ADAM? You can use it to change things up in a man—give him special abilities, like we discussed?”
“Precisely!” she said proudly.
Fontaine could tell she was speaking to him, though she never looked at him. She would turn her head his way, but her eyes were always fixed on some point over his left shoulder, as if she were talking to an invisible person behind him. “Growing hair, growing a bigger pecker, bigger muscles, bigger breasts for th
e ladies, bigger brains for the highbrows…”
“It is all possible with ADAM!”
“Hmf,” Suchong said. “You do not tell him how ADAM must be constantly re-energized!”
“Not a concern, Dr. Suchong!” Tenenbaum said, listening to Brougham’s heart with a stethoscope. “I have design for energizer—we will call it EVE!” She frowned. “But—the sea slug can only make so much ADAM and EVE. These sea slugs—we believe they are also parasites. We find on sharks, other creatures. Maybe they can be attached to human beings. A person could become a … a factory for ADAM. Then we have more ADAM for experiments.” She scratched thoughtfully in her unwashed hair. “Working with my mentor, all he thought of was how to find greater power in men! To breed them, to change them! Working at his side, I was thinking of another researcher. A greater one! Ha, ha!”
That was the first time Fontaine had ever heard her laugh—a brittle, almost inhuman sound.
“So this ADAM thing,” Fontaine went on, looking at the healed skin on the sedated man. “If you could get enough sea slugs, maybe some people to work with as … what would you call them, hosts … you could mass-produce this stuff?”
She nodded to the imaginary person behind Fontaine. “In time—yes.”
“But…” Dr. Suchong shook his head. “Suchong believe—ADAM could be addictive! My study of human beings shows me anything that make easy change in people, the people quickly become addicted! A man feels bad, takes drink of alcohol, very quick feels a little better—he becomes addicted to alcohol! Same with opium! Maybe same with ADAM—quick fix in man: addictive! Organism develops need for it. Suchong observe agitation in this man Tenenbaum found on dock. Sometimes he is … what is it you people say? He is ‘high’!”
Addictive? Even better. Fontaine thought of the time, risk, and expense of bringing in poppy from Kandahar.
