BioShock: Rapture Page 24

  Ryan missed the presence of the late Ruben Greavy. And he could have done without Anna Culpepper, who liked to put her oar in without having anything useful to say. He should never have allowed her on the council.

  Ryan toyed with an untasted cup of coffee, feeling his age. His role as Rapture’s guide and mentor was becoming a weight—he could almost feel it pinching his back, making his bones creak. And some on the council were making it worse, always prodding at him with their feeble little ideas. Meanwhile, Rapture’s problems had become Andrew Ryan’s: crime, subversives, foolish use of plasmids, constant maintenance problems … these required real vision to overcome. He was seeing that more and more clearly. A man needed a willingness to institute big solutions to big problems.

  “We’re so close to the surface here,” Anna said, sitting down with a cup of tea. “It makes me think it wouldn’t be so bad to have a few … excursions to the surface world … just close by, on a boat, I mean…” She looked up at the glass ceiling, just a yard or two under the surface of the ocean. Moonlight penetrated the waves, came glimmering down to color the room’s electric illumination with a blue-white paleness, making Anna, gazing upward, look as if she’d put on whiteface. That made Ryan think about Sander Cohen—he was glad Cohen hadn’t come. The performer was getting ever more socially peculiar. He’d sent a Jet Postal note, begging off with some enigmatic excuse about being “caught up in the hunt for art, which must be captivated, bound to the stage, in preparation for the titanomachy.”

  Titanomachy? Whatever was he talking about?

  Ryan glanced up as a shadow passed over them: the silhouette of a large, sleek shark swam overhead, circling the lighted room in curiosity.

  “In time,” Ryan said, “we may have an excursion, Anna. All in good time.”

  Anna sighed and gave him that pitying look he’d found so infuriating lately. “Dare I point out—it has been ten years since Hiroshima; there have been no further uses of atomic weapons. The war, it appears, is a ‘cold’ one. That’s what our radio tells us.”

  Rizzo sniffed disapprovingly at her skepticism. “Russkies have been stockpiling A-bombs just same as the US of A, Miss Culpepper. Why, it’s a tinderbox out there! The Commies are taking over China; the Soviets got their agents every goddamn place! Only a matter of time before the atomic war comes!”

  “Exactly,” Ryan said. Good old Rizzo, a sensible man. “And that aside—we have to remain as hidden away here as we can. We don’t want anybody taking notice of anything out here. The lighthouse is risky enough. If it weren’t for the air draw…” Ryan changed the subject. “Let’s get to it—we have to decide on a policy about all this violence…”

  “It’s simple, boss,” Sullivan said, leaning his elbows on the table, a pinched look on his face. “We got to ban plasmids. I know how you feel about banning products. But we got no choice! You’re talking about atomic power? I’m not sure these plasmids are any safer than that stuff…”

  Sullivan’s words were slurring ever so slightly. He’d been drinking before the meeting. Ryan reached for patience. “Chief—I know it was hard for you to lose Harker that way. But the market has a life of its own, and we can’t choke that life off with bans or even”—he had difficulty actually saying the word—“regulations. The solution is simple. Ryan Enterprises is now in the plasmid business. A better product will draw people in—and they’ll buy one that doesn’t affect their minds.” He glanced at Bill, thinking he looked weary and troubled. “What do you think, Bill?”

  “You’re seriously going into plasmids, guv?” Bill asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “It’ll take more time to develop a plasmid that doesn’t have side effects. Meanwhile…”

  “Bill, it’s either we go into them or ban them—and how well did Prohibition work?”

  “But—they’re addictive.”

  “So is alcohol!”

  Bill shook his head. “Look what happened to Mr. Greavy! If you’d seen it…”

  “Yes.” Ruben Greavy’s death was a painful subject for Ryan. “Yes, that was a great loss to me. He was an artist, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a true Renaissance man. A great loss. I feel responsible—I should have sent security along with him. But he would insist on going wherever he liked in Rapture…”

  “I was the one with him,” Bill said, looking very unhappy. “If anyone’s responsible…”

  “The only one responsible,” growled Sullivan, “is that telekinetic bitch that killed him. But Mr. Ryan—if you want to continue allowing plasmid sales and get Ryan Industries into it…” He shook his head, wincing at the thought. “Then it’s got to be regulated.”

  “We’ll consider restricting some plasmids,” Ryan said, though he had no intention of really restricting any plasmids. “This is a rough transitional period. To be expected. Part of the tumult of the market…”

  “Do we even know for sure which plasmids are out there?” Kinkaide asked.

  Sullivan shrugged. “Not for sure. I’ve got a partial list.” He searched his pockets, looking for it. “Got it here somewhere … Some are kinda black market; some Fontaine sells in shops. He’s selling EVE right next to it. Damned floors are littered with syringes … here it is…” He unfolded a wrinkled piece of paper.

  Sullivan cleared his throat, squinted at the paper, and read out, “Electro Bolt—fires bolts of electricity. Can stun a man or kill him. Incinerate!—started with a plasmid you could use for cooking but now it’s sorta like a flamethrower that comes outta your hand. I have seen Teleport—not sure how we can control that one. It’s a big worry. I mean, Christ, how do you jail someone who can teleport? Telekinesis—that’s what killed Mr. Greavy. You’ve all seen that. There’s Winter Blast—sends out a current of supercold air. Freezes your enemy solid. And there’s that Spider thing they go up the walls with. Lots of those creeps around.”

  “Ha, creeps,” Anna said, absently glancing at the transparent ceiling. “They do creep, don’t they? Good one, Chief.”

  He looked at her in puzzlement. He hadn’t been joking.

  “What about this Teleport?” Bill asked. “What do we do about the bloody Houdini Splicers? It can’t be legal.”

  Ryan nodded. He didn’t trust it either. It weakened security—it might enable people to leave Rapture. He had security cameras and turrets set up at the only egresses to Rapture, to stop anyone unauthorized from leaving; he was in the process of installing more security bots. Some plasmids could make a joke of all those wonderfully engineered devices. “We’ll see what we can do to suppress that one.”

  Kinkaide tried to straighten his tie and only made it more crooked. “I don’t understand the physics of these plasmids. Where are these new ADAM cells drawing all the energy from? If the splicer shoots out flame, does it come from his intestinal methane? Where does he get the raw materials? Does he lose a pound afterward?”

  Bill looked at him. “You’re the boffin—no theories, then?”

  Kinkaide shrugged. “I can only speculate that all this extra energy is being drawn from the splicer’s environment in some way. The air around us is charged, after all. That could account for the Electro Bolt. The mutagenic cells, once redesigned by ADAM, have a sort of secondary mitochondria that might provide specialized energy emissions. We don’t know what most of our genes do—some might be designed for these powers. Which might even account for tales of supernatural beings, genies and magicians and the like—but those mutations didn’t work out, you see. Perhaps because they tended to be burdened by negative side effects—like psychosis, facial excrescences, and so on…”

  “Bit of a dodgy omen, that, innit, Kinkaide?” Bill pointed out. “I mean—if these mutations existed in the past, and they didn’t make it. Didn’t work out then, might not work out for Rapture, then.”

  “Something in that,” Kinkaide allowed, nodding slightly. “But Mr. Ryan is right—if it’s possible to create plasmids, then it should be possible to perfect them. We can work out the bad parts. Just imagine having rati
onal control of telekinesis or the ability to climb walls like a fly, to hurl electricity. To become … superhuman. It’s wonderful, in its way.”

  “Maybe people could just learn to use ADAM without overindulging,” Anna suggested. “An education program.”

  Finally, Ryan thought, Anna had said something useful. “Not a bad idea. We’ll look into that.”

  “The side effects of plasmids,” Sullivan pointed out, “are the only thing keeping more people from buying ADAM. We fix the side effects, we’ll have superpowered people everywhere. We’ll all have to do it just to keep some kinda balance of power. I don’t want to cough fire every time I belch.”

  Bill nodded eagerly. “Chief Sullivan’s in the right of it—side effects or not, plasmids are just too dangerous. Rapture is made mostly of metal—but it’s complex, and that makes it vulnerable, fragile in some places. Daft bastards running around shooting fire, blasting lightning about—they could bring down the whole bloody house of cards!”

  Ryan made a dismissive gesture.

  “We’ll get the splicers under control. Meanwhile,” he added musingly, “this is all part of our evolution. Just growing pains.” He considered explaining fully. But they wouldn’t understand if he told them what he really thought. Greavy had understood, though. He’d understood the winnowing. The subtraction of weak links from the Great Chain; what they were going through in Rapture now was the heat of a welding torch, both destructive and constructive.

  “It isn’t just the superpowered sons of bitches,” Sullivan growled, crumpling the list of plasmids in his shaky hands. “It’s the leadheads rampaging around the city, shooting guns at random. Faster reflexes from all that ADAM. We’ve had to kill four in the last two days. Sad thing is, they all had kids. Transferred to that new orphanage of Fontaine’s…”

  “Fontaine,” Bill said, looking at Ryan significantly. “Got a finger in every bloody thing. Every kind of smuggling. He’s not just bringing in cheap hooch and Bibles anymore, guv’nor.”

  Ryan grunted. “How’s the evidence looking on Fontaine’s smugglers?”

  Sullivan sat up straighter, suddenly energized. “I’ve got enough to raid him, Mr. Ryan—then we’ll have the proof! I’ve got a witness to the smuggling ring, up in detention, under protection.”

  “Then put it together,” Ryan said. “We’ll raid his operation and see what we get.”

  Kinkaide shook his head. “All that charity stuff he’s behind. You’ve got to wonder what he’s up to.”

  “He’s up to undermining me!” Ryan said bitterly. “Charity is a form of socialism! It’s too much like that Lamb woman. If they’re not working together—then they will be in time. Like Lenin recruiting Stalin. Stopping Fontaine stops this propaganda tool he calls charity…”

  “What about this plasmids business?” Rizzo asked. “We don’t want to ban them or regulate them … so how do we control them?”

  “Now that’s a good question, mate,” Bill said.

  “I am about to announce a new Ryan Enterprises product line,” Ryan said, smiling in a way he hoped was reassuring. “A new line of weapons! Chemical throwers, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, better machine guns—we can use weapons innovation to counterbalance the splicers until we get ADAM perfected.”

  Bill shook his head skeptically but said nothing.

  “There’s something else,” Sullivan said, frowning. “I’ve got a source in Fontaine Futuristics—tells me about some kind of what they call fairy-moan experimentation, something like that, that can be used to get a handle on those splicers—”

  “He means pheromone, I suspect,” Kinkaide said, smirking.

  “Maybe that was it,” Sullivan said, unruffled. “Something about Suchong using phero … those things … to control the splicers, without the splicers even knowing it. Maybe spraying a chemical that makes them all show up in one place, so they cause problems for … well, anybody you wanted to cause problems for. I guess.”

  Ryan scowled. “Control the splicers … with pheromones…” He was intrigued. But it was troubling too. Because Suchong worked for Fontaine.

  Meaning that Fontaine in turn would eventually control at least some of the splicers. And it was becoming clearer: Fontaine was a predator. If you allowed him to grab that kind of power, he would use it to take Rapture over. Probably he’d do it behind a smokescreen. As Bill had warned, Fontaine could even partner up with Lamb’s followers, now that they were at loose ends.

  It could mean the destruction of Rapture.

  Fort Frolic, Fleet Hall, Backstage

  1956

  “Can anyone ever make you feel like Sander Cohen can? Rapture’s most beloved musical artist returns with ‘Why Even Ask?,’ his greatest album yet. Songs of love. Songs of joy. Songs of passion. Buy ‘Why Even Ask?’ and invite Sander Cohen into your home today.” Hurrying along through the empty backstage area, Martin Finnegan chuckled to himself hearing the public-service announcement playing from Cohen’s dressing room. Cohen was listening to the PA announcement over and over again. “Can anyone ever make you feel like Sander Cohen can? Rapture’s most beloved musical artist returns…”

  Martin went down the wood-walled corridor, found Sander Cohen seated pensively in front of his gold-framed oval dressing-room mirror, putting on another layer of makeup with one hand. With the other he was shaping the needlelike points of his hooked mustache. Cohen wore a purple and blue silk smoking jacket, silk slippers, and purple silk pajamas. He looked at Martin in the mirror. “I’m running short of makeup, you know,” Cohen said. He picked up the stub of an eyebrow pencil and began to darken his eyebrows. “I’ve asked Andrew for more, but he talks tiresomely of import priorities, the importance of creating our own goods. Does he really expect me to make my own eyebrow pencil? My, you look virile today, Martin…”—all said while outlining his eyebrow, looking at Martin in the mirror. That face became ever more lurid each time Martin saw it, ever more like a mad, mustachioed mime. “… And invite Sander Cohen into your home today…” The recording ended, and Cohen restarted it. “Can anyone ever make you feel…”

  “What do you think of that announcement?” Cohen asked, starting on the other eyebrow, watching him closely in the mirror. “It’s going out tonight on the public address. Trying to push my new record. It seems a bit bland to me. Lacking in verve. Doesn’t have that libidinous fevre that I so delight in…”

  Martin sat in a wooden chair behind Cohen, wishing he’d stop playing the announcement. “I think it’s good for regular folks to hear,” Martin said. “Kind of family friendly, like. That’s good, you need that.”

  “Oh God, I hope it doesn’t mean they’ll bring their children to my shows. I can’t imagine how I was able to bear being one. Fortunately it didn’t last long.”

  Martin shifted in the uncomfortable chair, making it squeak. “Speaking of how Sander Cohen can make me feel … The note you sent me mentioned trying something new…”

  Cohen tittered, hand fluttering over his mouth. “Well…” He winked, and opened a dressing-table drawer and drew out two bottles, setting them down on the dressing table, one after the other. They were squat bottles filled with red fluid. Martin knew full well what they were. Cohen opened the lower drawer, took out a flat black box, and opened it. In velvet-lined compartments were two syringes filled with glowing fluid. EVE. For activating the plasmids. Staring at the bottles, Martin’s mouth was dry. He and Cohen had taken cocaine together before, cut with a lot of booze. But this … He had seen splicers. Some of them seemed fairly together. Others, though, were like nitroglycerine, always ready to explode. And then there was the disfigurement. Those who used a great deal of ADAM ended up looking like they had a skin disease. The loony expressions glued on their faces made it all worse. On the other hand—look at that blue glow in the bottles! The implied power in it.

  “Well? Shall we indulge?” Cohen asked, his mouth screwed to a cone and twisted comically to one side. “Hmm?”

  “What the hell,” Mar
tin heard himself say. He knew he’d try it sooner or later. He tried everything sooner or later. As Cohen prepared the syringes, Martin found he regretted that his first experience with ADAM was going to be with Sander Cohen. The Artiste always took everything to crazy extremes. After that last little drunken trip into Arcadia, dancing naked with the Saturnines, forcing a teenage boy to have sex with an octopus, they were all lucky not to be in the Rapture detention cells. They’d gotten out one step ahead of the constables.

  But Martin did want to be a stage performer. So far, the only performance he’d done in Rapture had been at Cohen’s “tableaus,” where Martin and Hector Rodriguez and Silas Cobb and a couple others dressed in scanty costumes and posed heroically under the Artiste’s direction, for a very small audience. Many in the audience had been touching themselves obscenely. What was it Hector had said later that night? “It could well be that all art is just grift, after all.”

  “Now, let us partake,” said Cohen. “This bottle contains SportBoost and Winter Blast. A splicer cocktail. That’s yours. Mine is something very, very hard to get—Teleport! Next I want to try those Spider Splicings … Well? What are you waiting for? Bottoms up! So to speak…”

  Martin took a deep drink from the plasmids bottle. The thick fluid was surprisingly bland, though there was a chemical aftertaste, a bit of saltiness. Perhaps a suggestion of the taste of blood. And then—

  A terrifying rigidity struck him. It was as if someone was running an electric current through his muscles, a charge generated from within his brain, crackling out through his nervous system—and it was making him go rigid. His arching back was threatening to snap his spine.

  And then he fell to the floor, shaking with spasms, fighting for breath. Waves of dark, hissing energy unfolded in him. He felt high, but he was also terrified. He was distantly aware that Cohen was dragging down his pants—“Presto plunge-oh!” Cohen whooped—and then came the piercing pain of the needle jabbing into Martin’s gluteus maximus.