“Gardening, assisting. I intend to start a new program I’m calling Dionysus Park. Nothing you’ll have to be ashamed of. But I will need something from you. I need your
Margie sniffled, and her eyes welled with tears. “Gee, if you’ll help me—gosh, you got it, Doc! I’ll trust you from here to the stars!”
“Good!” Sofia smiled.
If you could get people to trust you, really trust you—you would get their loyalty too.
And she would need loyalty, unthinking loyalty, for what she had in mind. A gradual revolution, first in mind and then in fact—transforming Rapture from within…
Frank Fontaine felt like a fat kid with the keys to a candy store.
Gliding through the sea in his private, radio-controlled bathysphere, from Neptune’s Bounty to the station for Olympus Heights and Mercury Suites—past neon signs for several shops, including one of his own—Fontaine reflected on what a feast Rapture was for a man like him. Ryan kept business regulations to the absolute minimum. If you had enough Rapture dollars to hire a space from Ryan Industries, you could open pretty much any business you wanted. Fontaine had even cultivated one of Ryan’s bookkeepers, Marjorie Dustin. As long as he diddled Marjorie every so often and kicked her some cash, she cheerfully added forty percent, on paper, to his fresh fish take—Ryan Industries was paying for forty percent more fish than they received.
He knew Ryan had men keeping an eye on him. That very morning Fontaine had spotted that Russian thug Karlosky following him through the Lower Concourse. Ryan was setting up security cameras around Rapture. Not a lot of them yet, but more were coming—and Ryan controlled them. Hard to keep a secret for long from those cameras.
Fontaine watched an enormous fish with a gigantic mouth swim past. He had no idea what kind it was—it swiveled an eye to look through his bathysphere port, seeming intrigued. Fontaine shook his head, amused at how much he’d grown accustomed to living in a giant aquarium. Maybe someday, when he’d gotten control of Rapture, he could use the undersea city as his base for forays onto dry land. He’d always have a place to escape to, where the cops would never find him…
Fontaine caught a glimpse of one of his own subs sliding by below, heading toward the underwater wharf entrance, dragging a net full of glistening silvery fish. Silver—like silver dollars. Cash just swam along in the sea, and all you had to do was find some sucker to scoop it up for you. Sometimes he thought he was the only guy in the world who wasn’t a sucker.
People in Rapture were getting sick of eating fish. Fontaine had started smuggling in beef, which was all but impossible to get in Rapture otherwise. Shortage was opportunity. A lot of these saps were even feeling short on religion, so Fontaine brought in Bibles. Which was sure to make Ryan angry. Ryan hated religion—whereas Fontaine simply laughed at it.
The bathysphere arrived at the station, locked into place, and Fontaine emerged. He hurried past a group of snazzy partiers heading through the Metro for one of the nightclubs. The overhead lights were dimming, as they were designed to do in the evening, to give people in Rapture a more normal sense of night and day.
Fontaine took a tram up to Olympus Heights, and then the elevator to his place in Mercury Suites. He arrived just in time to grab a quick bite before his meeting. He walked through the marble-lined rooms, past small bronze statues of dancing women and the comforting paintings of New York City scenes. He did miss New York.
He sat at a marble-topped, gold-legged table by the big window looking out on the blue, lamplit sea, where glowing purple jellyfish wafted by like skirts on invisible dancing girls.
His cook Antoine made him beef bourguignon with seaweed and a few lonely leafs of lettuce on the side. He drank a glass of a pretty dull Worley wine, and then the doorbell rang. Reggie let them in.
“Da boss’s in here,” Reggie said.
Reggie ushered Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum into the sitting room. “Keep an eye on the door, Reggie,” Fontaine said. “We don’t wanna be interrupted…”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Dr. Yi Suchong was still wearing a long white lab coat over a shabby suit peppered with rusty spots that looked like bloodstains. Brigid Tenenbaum wore a calf-length blue dress. She walked somewhat awkwardly in red pumps, clearly unused to them. She was a young woman—the wunderkind they’d called her. Her face, however, its angularity reflecting Belorussia, was marked by experience. There was a cold distance in it. Fontaine understood that distance. He didn’t let anyone close to him either. But there was something almost robotic in her movements. And she never met his eyes, though sometimes he felt her watching him.
She obviously dressed up for the meeting, with a touch of lipstick, awkwardly applied. She wasn’t so bad, despite her tobacco-stained teeth and chewed-down fingernails.
As they sat on ornate sofas across from each other, Fontaine ran a hand over his bald head, wondering if he should grow out his hair—but women seemed to like him bald. “May I smoke, please?” she asked.
“Sure you can. Have one of mine.” He passed her the ornate silver cigarette box he kept on the coral and glass coffee table.
She took a cigarette with trembling fingers, inserting it into an ivory holder she produced from a small pocket in her dress. Fontaine lit it with a silver lighter shaped cunningly like a seahorse. She glanced at him as she blew smoke toward the ceiling—then looked quickly away.
Both of the scientists, sitting widely apart, seemed quite stiff and formal. Seemed like they didn’t trust him. They’d get over it when he started shoveling mounds of money over them. Something nice and cozy about a blanket of cash.
Suchong was a lean Korean, wearing wire-rim glasses. He must’ve been twice Tenenbaum’s age. She didn’t at all seem in awe of him, though he had a string of degrees.
“How about some wine?” Fontaine asked.
She said yes and Suchong said no at precisely the same instant. Suchong laughed nervously. Tenenbaum just stared fixedly at the end of her cigarette.
Fontaine got wine for himself and her and said, “Dr. Suchong—I understand you’ve been working for Ryan Industries.”
Suchong sighed. “Suchong works for himself. There is the Suchong Institute and Laboratories. But— contracts with Ryan and Sinclair, yes…”
“And Miss Tenenbaum—you’re working… as a free agent?”
“Yes. This is a good description.” She looked past him, over his shoulder, as if she were trying to give the impression of looking at him without quite being able to.
“This is where I say, You’re all wondering why I called you here,” Fontaine said, putting down his wineglass. “I asked you two here because I’m thinking there’s bigger opportunities in this science stuff than I ever thought of. I’ve got people who work for Ryan giving me the inside skinny. What I hear, you two are feeling somewhat frustrated.”
Tenenbaum bobbed her head, her eyes flickering at everything but Fontaine. “This is true, what you say. Ryan says work on anything—but research costs money. Financial support is, what is the word—inconsistent.” She flicked her eyes at Suchong. “Dr. Suchong does not wish to make Mr. Ryan angry—but we both need… more!”
Suchong frowned. “Woman, do not speak for me.” But he didn’t deny it was true.
They were ripe and ready to pluck. “Well now,” Fontaine said, “given the right situation, the three of us could start our own little research team. Suchong, I understand you’re working on a new kind of tobacco?”
“Not precisely.” Suchong’s accent was heavy—it took Fontaine a moment to translate
