that fisheries sign that bothered him. Frank Fontaine had installed an office, a conveyor belt for fish, big freezers for long-term storage down below. Nothing unexpected.
But the feeling of vague dread returned every time Ryan looked at the neon sign—and it seemed to increase, becoming an inner shudder, as the neon sign was switched on. A nice-looking sign, really, with
“Seen enough of Neptune’s Bounty, boss?” Sullivan asked, glancing at his pocket watch. It was cold in here—they could see their breath—and they’d been inspecting new businesses for hours, trying to get a sense of what was taking root in Rapture.
Ryan heard a splash of water on the pylons nearby and glanced over to see a small tugboat-style vessel pulling up at the wharf, the smoke from its engine sucking into vents on the low ceiling. The lower wharf was an interior space designed to look exterior, with shallow water around the jutting wooden dock and the occasional boat from neighboring chambers where fish and other goods were off-loaded. Another peculiarity of Rapture—a boat that wasn’t a submarine, putting around deep under the surface of the sea.
“Mr. Ryan, how are you sir?”
Ryan turned back to Fontaine’s Fisheries to see Frank Fontaine standing at the open door, hands in pockets, dressed in a yellow overcoat and three-piece tailored suit, black shoes decked out in spats, bald head shining in the blue light from his sign—Fontaine’s own name glowing over his head. Stepping out beside him, smoking a cigarette and squinting past the smoke, was the thuggish bodyguard Fontaine had brought in recently —Reggie something. Reggie was looking at Sullivan with a kind of smirking contempt.
Ryan nodded politely. “Fontaine. You seem to be settling in, all right. I like the fisheries’ sign. Neon brightens Rapture up.”
Fontaine nodded, glancing up at the sign. “Sure. Just like the forty-deuce. I help you, Mr. Ryan? I was just about to check on my fishing sub…”
“Ah, yes. The fishing subs—I like to keep tabs on them myself.”
“That right? Got you worried?” Fontaine’s tone was cool, a little mockery behind the respect.
“Rapture leaks enough,” Ryan said, wryly. “We don’t want too much coming in—or too much slipping out. Nobody comes or goes without our authorization.”
“For a place that likes to keep the rules down, Rapture’s sure got a lot of ’em,” Reggie muttered.
“We’ve got only as many rules as we need,” Ryan said. “No robbery. And nobody leaves Rapture—or brings in stuff we don’t want here. No outside product or religion—no Bibles, ‘holy’ books of any kind. Luxury goods—we’re going to make our own, soon’s we can. No letters, no correspondence with the outside world. Secrecy is our protection.”
“I couldn’t miss the contraband rules.” Fontaine chuckled. “Being as you posted them in my office, in big black letters. Or your man there did.”
Sullivan grunted to himself.
“I think you understand me,” Ryan said, carefully keeping his tone civil. “The fisheries could be a weak link…” Ryan hesitated, choosing his words carefully. Fontaine was a forceful entrepreneur, and Ryan liked that. He’d even outbid Ryan Enterprises for some shop space. All in the spirit of Rapture. But Ryan needed to let Fontaine know where the boundaries were. “The only thing a fisherman should bring to Rapture is fish.”
Fontaine winked—flashing a smile. “We have no trouble identifying what’s fish and what isn’t, Mr. Ryan. There’s the smell. The scales.”
Reggie laughed softly.
Ryan cleared his throat. “We’re all individuals here, Fontaine. But we’re also part of the Great Chain of industry… The Great Chain unites us when we struggle in our own interest. If anyone breaks that chain by bringing in contraband, that’s a weak link. Even ideas can be contraband…”
Fontaine smiled. “The most dangerous kind, Mr. Ryan.”
“I do wish you luck, and a prosperous business,” Ryan said.
“Might feel more like I’m part of things if you invited me to join the Rapture Council,” Fontaine said mildly, lighting a cigar with a gold lighter. “Care for a smoke?”
“No. Thank you.” Ryan examined the cigar. “I presume that is a Rapture-made cigar?”
“Naturally.” Fontaine raised the cigar for Ryan to see.
Ryan smiled noncommittally. “You perhaps have the impression the council is some grand, powerful organization. It’s a very loose commission to oversee enterprise, keep a bit of an eye on things without interfering. Time consuming, to be honest.” Ryan wasn’t enthusiastic about bringing the glib, forceful Fontaine into the Rapture Council. He liked competition, but not breathing down his neck. “But ah—I’ll take your request under advisement.”
“Then we’re in good shape!” Fontaine said, blowing blue cigar smoke in the air.
The man seemed relaxed, certain of himself, unworried. And maybe there was something in his eyes that Ryan recognized. A hint, a flicker that suggested Fontaine’s willingness to do whatever he had to do… to get what he wanted.
“Mr. Ryan likes to talk about choices,” Elaine was saying. “And I keep wondering if we made the right one, coming to Rapture in the first place.”
“We did, love,” Bill said, glancing around the comfortable flat with some satisfaction. He patted her pregnant tummy absently with his left hand, his right around her shoulders. They sat gazing out at the sea from their viewing alcove.
Before opening day, Ryan had purchased a great many furnishings wholesale and warehoused them in the undersea city, selling them at a profit to Rapture entrepreneurs. He’d brought in raw materials too, and a modest manufacturing base had sprung up.
Elaine’s tastes didn’t run to the rococo excess found in so much of Rapture. She had chosen simple lines, craftsman-style furnishings: curving dark wood, polished redwood tables, silver-framed mirrors. A smiling portrait of Bill—his mustache curling up, his russet hair starting to recede—hung over their shark-leather living room sofa. Materials found in the undersea environs around Rapture were being increasingly used in furnishings—locally mined metals, many-hued corals for tabletops and counters, glass from deep-sea sands, even beams and brass from sunken ships.
The curving window of the viewing alcove, the glass arching over them sectioned by frames of Ryanium alloy, looked out on a deep channel between towering buildings. An uneven dull-blue light prevailed through the watery space; the new, glowing sign across the way, seeming to ripple in the funhouse lens of the water, read:
“I don’t mind the smell of Rapture,” Elaine said. “It’s kind of like the laundry room of the building I grew up in. Kind of homey. Some of it.”
“We’re working on that smell, love,” Bill put in. “The sulfur smell too.”
“And I don’t mind so much not seeing my family. But Bill—when I think of raising a child here…” She put her hand over his, on her swollen belly. “That’s when I worry. What will the schools be like? And living without churches, without God… And what will the child learn of the world up above? Just the hateful things Ryan says about it? And—will she… if it’s a she… will she really never get to see the sky?”
“Oh in time she will, love—in time. Someday, when Mr. Ryan thinks it’s safe, the city will be built higher up, above the waves. And we’ll come and go freely, Bob’s your uncle. But that’s a generation off, at least. It’s a dangerous world out there. Bloody atom bombs, innit?”
“I don’t know, Bill. When we went to dinner in Athena’s Glory, with him and his friends—Well, Mr. Ryan ranted a good deal, don’t you think? On and on about the world above and how we have to accept our choice and
