Some fish elude predators and thrive. But here… there are those who disturb the balance.”
Bill stepped up beside Ryan, the two of them gazing through the glass like two people chatting at an aquarium. “Rumblings, guv’nor? Which sort? The pipe sort or the people sort?”
“It’s the people—if you want to call them that.” Ryan shook his head and added, “Parasites!,” his mouth twisting sharply with the word. “I thought we could weed them all out. But people are
“Haven’t heard anything quite like that myself,” Bill remarked.
“Stanley Poole caught some union talk in the tavern. There’s a pamphlet being passed around complaining about ‘unfairness to the workingman of Rapture’…”
“People being tense—they naturally need to blow off steam, guv. Toss around their ideas, freelike. Even some ideas you… we… don’t like, Mr. Ryan. Unions and whatnot. Now, I won’t defend ’em—” he added hastily, “—but there’s a kind of marketplace of ideas too, yeah? People need to be able to trade in ideas…”
“Hm. Marketplace of ideas. Maybe. I
Bill decided not to argue that one. They both silently watched a blue whale swim majestically overhead. Bubbles streamed up from the seabed; lights blinked on in the buildings of Rapture, rising spectrally through the blue-green water. The Wales brothers’ designs mixed sweeping lines with a certain artful intricacy. The architecture seemed calculated to project boldness, even bravado.
A neon sign across the watery way, running vertically down a building that could almost have been from mid Manhattan, read FLEET HALL. Another neon sign glowed in grape-purple to advertise WORLEY’S WINERY, the letters rippling with intervening sea currents. Most of the apartment buildings had square windows, not portholes—for the most part they looked like apartment buildings on dry land. The effect, at times, was more like a sunken Atlantis than a metropolis deliberately built beneath the sea—as if the polar ice caps had melted, flooding Manhattan, its steel and stone canyons immersed in a deep, mysterious watery world without a clear horizon.
“It could be,” Ryan went on at last, “that we were too hasty in some of our recruiting for Rapture. I may have picked some people who were not as likeminded as I’d hoped.”
“Most of our people believe in the Rapture way, Mr. Ryan—there’s plenty of free enterprise in Rapture.” Bill smiled as a stream of bubbles rose a few inches beyond the glass. “It’s bubblin’ with it!”
“You hearten me, Bill. I hope everyone stays busy—competing, carving out their place in our new world. Everyone should branch out, create new businesses! Do you still plan to open a tavern?”
“Right enough I do. Fighting McDonagh’s it’ll be called. After me old man; he was a boxer in his youth.”
“We’ll have a grand-opening party for you!” Ryan looked up, toward the heights of the towers mounting through the sea—hard to see the tops of many of them from here. He took a deep breath, looking pleased, seeming to buoy into a better mood. “Look at it, rising like an orchestral climax! Rapture is a miracle, Bill—the only kind of miracle that matters! The kind a real man creates with his own two hands. And it should be celebrated every day.”
“Miracles need a lot of maintenance, Mr. Ryan! Thing is, we’re short on people to deal with the sewage, the cleaning, and the landscaping in Arcadia. We got posh types who never suffered worse than a paper cut—but precious few who can dig a ditch or plumb a pipe.”
“Ah. We’ll have to lure men who have the skills we need, then. Find ways to house them. We’ll bring them in, don’t you worry about it. The light attracts the enlightened, Bill!”
Bill wondered how that would work out—bringing ever more blue-collar workers, men who might not take to a place where the guv’nor despised unions. Could be trouble down the road.
“Ah,” Ryan said, with satisfaction. “A supplies sub is coming in…”
They watched the submarine ghost by overhead, its lights glowing against the indigo depths. From here, its lines muted by the depths, the sub looked like a giant creature of the sea itself, another kind of whale. It would be heading to Neptune’s Bounty. Bill watched the sub angle downward for the hangar-sized intake airlock that led up to the wharf and Fontaine’s Fisheries.
“Dunno,” Bill said, “who might be encouraging unions—but I can tell you one person I don’t much trust is that Frank Fontaine.”
Ryan shrugged. “He’s quite the productive one. He’s got a lot of enterprise rolling. He keeps me thinking; I like the competition…,” adding, as if thinking aloud, “within reason.”
Fontaine had worked with Peach Wilkins to develop a way to do Rapture’s fishing more discreetly— underwater. A few simple adaptations to the smaller subs, refitting them to drag nets, and they had purely subaquatic fishing.
But the fishery gave Fontaine a potential access to something that Bill knew made Ryan nervous—the outside world. His subs left Rapture on business of their own—and they might be contacting anyone out there. Every year Ryan cut more ties with the surface world, liquidating his properties, selling factories and railroads.
“You think maybe Fontaine’s using the subs to bring in contraband, guv?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m monitoring that possibility. I warned him—and it seemed to me he took the warning seriously.”
“Some smuggling’s going on, Mr. Ryan,” Bill pointed out. “A Bible turned up in the workers’ quarters.”
“Bibles…” Ryan said the word with loathing. “Yes—Sullivan told me. The man says he bought it from ‘a fellow I didn’t know over to Apollo Square.’”
Bill had no love for religion himself. But privately he thought some people probably needed it as a safety valve. “All I can tell you, Mr. Ryan, is that I’ve never trusted that bugger Fontaine. He talks all silky, like—but none of it feels like real silk.”
“We can’t
Bill sighed. Sometimes he got tired of being ‘Come Along Bill.’
An electric eye triggered the semicircular Securis door to slide open. They strode along corridors decorated with posters extolling the glories of Rapture’s commerce, down a curving stairway, to a bathysphere station where a banner declared COMMERCE, INDEPENDENCE, CREATIVITY. Ryan remained silent, brooding as they went.
Bill expected to take the Atlantic Express, but Ryan ignored the train station and continued to the Rapture Metro. They passed a party of maintenance workers who tipped their hats at Ryan. He paused and shook hands all around. “How’s it going, boys? Patching up the ceiling? Good, good… don’t forget to invest some part of your paychecks in one of Rapture’s new businesses! Keep it growing, fellas! You working for Bill here? If he isn’t treating you right—don’t tell me about it!” They laughed all around at that. “Start a competing plumbing business, give ol’ Bill here a run for his money, eh! How do you like that new park of ours, by the way. Seen it yet? Fine place to take the ladies…”
When he was in the mood, Ryan could be quite convivial, even chummy, with the workingman. He seemed almost to be performing for Bill today.
Ryan put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels as he reflected, “When I was a young boy, my father took me to a park in… well, it was in a foreign capital… the czar was still alive then, but my father’s business was faltering, and that park lifted his spirits! ‘This is where I met your mother!’ he said. So boys—if you want to meet the right young miss, we’ve got just the place! Plenty of privacy for sparking the ladies, eh?”
The workmen laughed; he clapped two of them on the shoulders, wished them a profitable day’s work, and sent them on their way. The men went away beaming—they’d be able to boast of chatting with the great Andrew Ryan.
Ryan led Bill into the waiting bathysphere. When its hatch lowered into place, Ryan tapped the selector for their destination and hit the
The two men sat back, riding in companionable quiet till they were halfway to the nearest air lock for Arcadia, when Ryan said, “Bill—have you heard residents whining about not being permitted to leave Rapture?”
“Here and there,” Bill admitted reluctantly. He didn’t want to snitch on anyone.
