by John Shirley
“So me having to protect that little prick Cohen,” Sullivan growled, “that extends to Ryan giving me orders to…” His voice broke. He reached over and picked up the red-and-black knit blanket. Clutched it to his chest. “Pretty, isn’t it? When I was done with her, I left her as she was, in the bathroom, naked in the tub…”
Bill stared. “What you mean—when you were done with her?”
Sullivan closed his eyes, clutching the blanket to him, the sudden motion spilling his drink on his lap. “I seen she had a half-knitted blanket by her bed. It was nice. You know, black and red, real pretty. So I took it … Just didn’t seem right to leave it lying there, all by itself…”
Bill finished his drink. Thought maybe he should get out of here—while Sullivan let him. But at last he asked, “Chief—are you saying that Ryan sent you to kill Anna Culpepper?”
Sullivan looked at the blanket. After a long moment, he nodded. “In her bath. Pushed her under the water … Her eyes, Bill—her eyes staring at me through the water … as I held her under … when the bubbles come up, I was thinking: there goes her life! You know? Her life all bubblin’ up from her mouth! Just like the bubbles that come up outside that window … see ’em?”
“Oh Jay-sus, Chief, that’s…” Bill took a long, deep, ragged breath. Not sure what to say. He almost felt like he ought to comfort Sullivan. Sorry you went through that. But you couldn’t say that to a murderer. “Chief—I’ve got to get back to my wife. This is … it’s too late to do anything about it. We have to … to let it go. And I want you to know, it’s all safe with me, mate. What you said.”
“Oh—I can’t let it go,” Sullivan said, his eyes closed, voice barely audible. “I’m going to Neptune’s Bounty. Find a soft spot and…”
Bill got up, backed away from him—then hurried to the door. And left without another word.
Ryan Plasmids
1959
Fully dressed, Brigid Tenenbaum lay on her cot, staring at the steel wall. She knew she would not sleep that night. She kept seeing their faces … gazing up at the metal men, adoringly …
The Little Sisters. Their large, dark, trusting eyes … She could not bear it anymore. The way they would lovingly climb into her lap—the cruelty of their innocence.
She must act—she must find relief. She could run away, hide alone in some corner of Rapture. There was that old maintenance dorm she’d found. But hiding there, alone, wouldn’t work—their eyes, their faces would pursue her. There would be no hiding from them.
No. The only way was to set them free from this place. Then she would no longer feel their pain—their release would be hers …
Now was as good a time as any. The sentries had been gathering out front late at night, and it would be necessary to shut off the cameras and bots. But she knew just how to do that. She would find some way to get past the fourth man, later. Perhaps she might have to kill him.
Brigid reached under her bunk and found the bottle of vodka. She’d bought it from Karlosky, but it hadn’t really helped smother the cruel feelings of caring for the children that had arisen in her. She’d given up after half a bottle.
Which left half a bottle …
She opened the labelless bottle, took a mouthful, swished it around, then spat it out onto her lab coat. She got her keys from the hook on the wall and then went out into the hallway. A security camera swiveled toward her and sent a bot from its cabinet to look at her. It registered her DNA-detection flasher, circled her once, and then whirred back to its container. She kept on down the hallway, made a stop in lab 16, then came back out into the corridor—and stopped dead. Two sentries were scowling at her, blocking the way with shotguns in their hands.
The tall, sallow-faced guard in the overalls was Rolf. She didn’t know the squat one with the bad teeth. He had a constable badge pinned upside down on an old military coat.
“What you doing wandering ’round; this ain’t your work time, lady,” Rolf asked, squinting at her suspiciously.
Brigid blinked at them, swaying in what she hoped was a good simulation of drunkenness. “Could not sleep. Lonely. Thinking maybe I will make myself pretty to visit you. Maybe I will take a shower, yes? Maybe you join me in shower, eh?”
Rolf’s mouth dropped open—nothing had ever surprised him more. But she could see he wanted to believe it.
The short one scratched his matted hair. “Well now … you mean … just Rolf here?”
“Oh no, plenty room for everyone; we take turns, yes?” Pretending to swig the vodka, she turned to point at the showers, at the far end of the hall.
She turned back and grinned at them with bleary inebriation. “You take bottle and wait there, eh? I will make myself pretty…”
“Oh no, too many cameras…” Rolf began. “If someone checks…”
“I will turn them off!” Brigid insisted, waving the problem away. “It is nothing!”
“What’s a-going on down here?” called a redheaded man, with a tommy gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. He came stalking down the hall, lower lip thrust out disapprovingly. But his expression changed, became sheer lust, when he saw the bottle in her hand. Not lust for her …
“Is that … wine?”
Brigid shook her head at him. “No. Much stronger. You want?” She thrust the bottle into his grasp. “You take the vodka to shower; I will take care of cameras. You can share with these boys, yes? We have a small party.” She wagged a finger at them. “But you must not be naughty boys in shower!” She turned away, laughing, and staggered away in the direction of the autosecurity control panels …
She heard them walking off, muttering, toward the showers. Rolf saying, “I dunno … maybe just a drink or two, but there’s no way we…”
She used the combination lock, switched off the security cameras and bots, and then went to check the showers. It was already done. The overwhelming dose of sleeping powder she’d put in the vodka had done its work, and quickly. All three sentries were sprawled snoring on the floor. She unloaded two of the shotguns, taking the shells, and then carried the third shotgun away with her.
She got the leather tote bag she needed, with the equipment for removing the sea slugs and some canned food. She stuffed it all in the bag. The purging device would cause the sea slugs to disintegrate inside the children. They would vomit up the remains.
Brigid hurried down the dimly lit hall to the row of children’s cells. She leaned the shotgun against the wall before she let the girls out, not wanting to scare them. She put a finger to her lips, to signify quiet, as she let each one out, and winked.
“Now children,” she whispered, as they gathered around her, a diminutive crowd, “we will play a game of quiet—like hide-and-seek. We will get the other girls and then…”
“Someone’s coming,” said one of the moppets.
Brigid heard the heavy footsteps then. Probably the fourth sentry, who stood out in the hallway. “Hey, the system’s down!” he called, from around the corner of the corridor.
“Children, we will go back into this nursery, together, all of us, and we’ll wait till he goes by—we will trick him!”
The children giggled mischievously, and she hushed them, herding them into the nursery cell. One of them lay on the cot, pretending to be asleep; the others pressed into a corner near the door, squatting in excited silence with Brigid. A few moments more, and then they heard the guard striding by.
“Rolf!” the man called. “Where the hell you got to? The system’s down! Christ, if the splicers’ve got in…”
Brigid and the Little Sisters waited another long, slow minute. She guessed it’d be two or three minutes before the fourth sentry found the others sleeping in the showers. There was no time to get any more children out—they were far down the hallway. She’d lose the ones she had if she tried …
Heart pounding, Brigid stood up, and whispered, “We must go like ghosts! Quiet as ghosts!”
“The ghosts aren’t so quiet,” a black-haired Little Sist
er remarked, twirling the ends of her hair around a finger. “I hear them talking all the time!”
“Then be quieter than ghosts! Come on!”
Brigid opened the door and they tiptoed through. She herded them around the hallway corner, toward the front door of the facility. They were almost running when they reached the outer corridor—the cameras out there were still angling inertly down. But that wouldn’t last …
They got across the anteroom to the Metro just as the alarms went off behind them. But she managed to get all the Little Sisters with her into the bathysphere.
She knew an abandoned dorm that might do for a safehouse. It was a dusty place, almost forgotten now, in a basement corner of the city. There, she could clear the sea slugs from the children and give them a chance to be human beings. They would lose something, but they would gain much more.
And perhaps the cruelty of her maternal instinct would transmute—and pain would become joy.
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office
1959
Andrew Ryan hit the Record button on the Acu-Vox and cleared his throat: “I am told that Lamb has been seen in the streets … come out of her sanctum in Persephone. Rapture’s split up between our territories, the Atlas turf, and Lamb’s little group of psychos—my city is schismed.” He sighed. “One of the Alpha Series was killed in the incident, and his bonded Sister stolen. But the counsel has no time for a manhunt; Atlas swells the ranks of his marauders by the day. Regardless, Lamb’s name has already faded among the people. She is no more than a ghost who has forgotten to die…”
A chime came on the desk. He heard Karlosky’s voice over the intercom. “Boss? Doctor Suchong is here.”
Ryan switched off the tape recorder. “Very good. Send him in.”
He opened a desk drawer, drew out the folder containing Suchong’s proposal, and scanned it again as the doctor came padding in. Ryan was distantly aware of Suchong bowing. “Yes … sit down.” He heard the squeak of Suchong sitting in the chair and went on: “I’ve looked over this little plan of yours—frankly, Doctor Suchong—frankly, I’m shocked by your proposal.” Ryan glanced up from the folder, tented his fingers, closing his eyes as if considering the idea objectively, though in fact he’d already made up his mind. “If we were to modify the structure of our commercial plasmid line as you propose, to make the user vulnerable to mental suggestion—would we not be able to effectively control the actions of citizens of Rapture? Free will is the cornerstone of this city. The thought of sacrificing it is abhorrent.”
Suchong, sitting across from Ryan, nodded, somehow conveying apology, disappointing Ryan by acquiescing. He’d hoped Suchong would “talk him into it.”
Ryan cleared his throat. “However,… we are indeed in a time of war. If Atlas and his bandits have their way, will they not turn us into slaves? And what will become of free will then? Desperate times call for desperate measures. And, after all, if you say Fontaine knew of this sort of thing—then it could be working its way to Atlas. We can’t let them get the edge on us, Suchong.”
Suchong looked at him attentively. “Then—you approve Suchong’s plan? We can proceed with pheromone conditioning?”
“If you can guarantee the splicers respond to me. Not to anyone else.”
“Suchong works for Ryan! I will see to it…”
“And what does Tenenbaum think? Does she think there might be a means to block this … this hormonal control?”
Suchong shrugged. “Suchong … think not. But—not sure where she is. Cannot ask.”
“What? Why not?”
“You do not know? I assumed guards reported to you! She is … gone. Hiding somewhere in Rapture. Took Little Sisters with her.”
“No one told me this.” Ryan laughed softly and bitterly. “Who got to Tenenbaum? Was she paid to do this? By Atlas?”
“Something bother her for long time, Mr. Ryan.”
“Had an attack of conscience, has she?”
Suchong blinked, not knowing what was meant. The English word conscience was one he hadn’t bothered to learn. “She is … troubled female. She says we are harming children, even though we give them immortality! We give them power to always heal! This is harming? Suchong does not think so…”
“Ah.” Ryan picked up a pencil and flipped it from finger to finger. He was not convinced the Little Sisters were happy little elves working away for Rapture. But—he was convinced that ADAM was Rapture’s edge on the outside world. Suppose they were ever invaded. KGB, CIA, some other insidious “intelligence” lurkers would infiltrate. Perhaps this new pernicious influence, this Atlas, would bring them. Or some of Lamb’s treacherous bunch. She could have been a KGB agent all along. And if they were invaded by the Soviets or the Brits or the USA—then what? Only the extraordinary abilities provided by plasmids could protect Rapture from outsiders. So ADAM must go on. He needed the Little Sisters more than ever.
“If she took any Little Sisters with her, plasmid production will be drastically undercut.”
“Yes,” Suchong smoothed his greased-back hair thoughtfully. “We will need more … ‘Little Sisters.’”
“Well, there’s no time to wait for more people to…” Ryan cleared his throat. “I’ll tell Cavendish to see to it we have a few more until … something else is worked out.” Ryan tossed the pencil on the desk. “As for Brigid Tenenbaum, we shall find her. If you betray me, Doctor—I warn you, things will not go well.”
Suchong smiled sadly. “I would not respect you, if that were not the case, Mr. Ryan.” Suchong bowed. Then he hurried to the door, bent on his mission.
A whisking sound—and Ryan turned to see a small package arrive for him in the pneumatic tube. The handwriting told him it was from Sullivan. He removed it from the tube and opened it. It contained a reel of recording tape and a note in Sullivan’s hand:
Don’t think you’ll see me alive again, sir. I plan a quick get-together with a bullet. Can’t live with what I done. She had the cutest little red and black blanket. Here’s a tape, might clue you in on why Jasmine Jolene moved out. Why she’s been ducking you. Owe you that, I guess, Great Man. Now I owe myself something else. A little drinky, a little bye bye.
Bye bye, Great Man!
Ryan stared at the note—then looked at the tape. He was strangely reluctant to listen to it. At last he put it in the tape player, and pressed Play.
19
Arcadia, Rapture
1959
“I just don’t feel comfortable in this park anymore, Bill,” Elaine said. “Bodyguards or not.”
She and Bill stood on the little bridge, watching the reflected light play in the stream. The cryptic pagan graffiti of the Saturnine cult marked the wood of the little footbridge. They’d seen bullets lying about in the grass—and ADAM syringes.
Bill nodded. “Does seem daft, coming ’ere. Suppose she steps on one of those syringes? What’ll that do to her?”
Elaine put her hand to her mouth. “Oh—I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But—she and Mascha were all atwitter about coming here, love.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “A few minutes more, and we’ll go home, eh?”
He glanced over his shoulder, saw Constable Redgrave and Karlosky, talking a few strides away, each with a shotgun and a pistol. The little girls were playing with the little wooden dolls Sam Lutz had made them over by a boulder, close to the sliding Japanese-style doors, about fifty feet away.
A drumming of propellers caught his attention, and he looked up to see a security bot fly overhead. It whined past, watching for splicers. Arcadia had been cleared of splicers and rebels—at least for the time being. Bill had requested a day with his family in the park, and Ryan had seen to it.
“I just have the worst feeling, Bill,” Elaine whispered …
Bill sighed, wanting a cigarette. Real tobacco was in short supply. “I know. You’re right. I’m going to get us out of here.”
“Bill!” Redgrave called, worry in his voice.
“Sophie!” Bill shouted. He found himself running after Karlosky. “Redgrave—keep Elaine here!”
“That door—” Karlosky puffed.
Bill saw it then—the sliding door was open. And the girls were nowhere to be seen. His daughter was gone.
Then—there she was. Sophie, stepping through it, alone, tears in her eyes. “Daddy?”
Karlosky ran through the door, calling, “Mascha! Hey kid! Where you go!”
Bill ran to Sophie, swept her up in his arms. “Crikey, I was so worried, love, don’t run off like that. Where’s Mascha?”
“We heard someone call us—from the tea room! We went through the door, but it was someone I don’t know … a big man … He said she had to go with him—for Rapture!”
“What!” Still holding her, Bill stepped through the door—and saw no one except Karlosky coming back, frowning.
Karlosky shook his head at him. “They’re gone.”
But there was Mascha’s doll, lying on the floor. Its head was snapped off. Bill put Sophie down, placed his hands on her shoulders, and looked tenderly into her eyes. “Did he hurt you, love?” Bill asked, heart sinking as he thought about poor Mascha …
Her lips quivered. “I pulled at his arm, and he pushed me down! And I ran away!” And then she burst into tears.
Elaine rushed up, then, crushing Sophie to her, tears of mother and daughter running together.
Redgrave was close behind her—he’d been watching her back. “Bill—where’s the other one?” Redgrave asked, looking around.
“Some bastard took her…”
He stepped up to Karlosky, drew him aside. “You see anything?”
“Nyet—but I think I heard Cavendish back there.”
“Cavendish? I’ve got to get my wife and girl back to our place. You and Redgrave see if you can find Mascha, will you?”
“We try. But…” Karlosky shook his head. “Not much hope.”
