“Crikey,” Bill muttered. The Ryan robot gave him the willies.
Then the car moved on to the mechanical tableau that warned about taxation on the surface world. Up on his left was a farmhouse, where a farmer tilled his field and his happy wife and child stood behind him… but then a giant hand—truly gigantic—moved clutchingly into the tableau, reaching down from above. It had suit sleeves on it—like the suit worn by a bureaucrat. It grabbed the roof of the house and tore it off… The tax man taking away all that the man had worked for… The animatronic farmer slumped in despair…
“Oh lord,” Bill said, staring at the hand. It was terrifying, that giant hand… And the hand—as if from some cruel bureaucratic jehovah—came inexorably down in other tableaus as the ride trundled slowly onward. An animatronic scientist made a glorious discovery in his laboratory, rose up on a pedestal in triumph—and then was crushed back down by that giant hand from above.
That one ought to make Suchong and his like happy, Bill supposed.
The next tableau showed an artist painting away in rapturous inspiration—before a giant hand came down and suppressed his freedom again…
The final tableau was the most frightening of all. A child was happily watching TV with his family. Then Ryan’s God-like voice warned,
And the giant hand came down, pushed through the wall—and dragged the child away—into the darkness… into death.
Bill shook his head. This was all about scaring children it seemed to him. He’d heard that Sofia Lamb, when she’d first come, had given Ryan the idea—an “amusement ride” that was a kind of aversion therapy, a way of imprinting children with a revulsion for the surface world—and a consequent commitment to the only alternative: Rapture…
Between the big tableaus, animatronic Ryans appeared, lecturing, hectoring—warning the child about the horrors of the surface world.
As the ride ended he heard Cohen’s song, “Rise, Rapture, Rise,” playing…
Bill sighed. He was going to do whatever he could to keep Elaine away from here. She wouldn’t understand. She already had her doubts about Rapture, and this would only deepen them. Whatever happened, they were committed to Rapture and Andrew Ryan. Weren’t they?
“How can a house divided stand, Simon?” Sofia Lamb asked gently as they sat in the sculpture garden of Dionysus Park. Simon Wales sat beside her on the carved coral bench, smoking a pipe, seeming troubled; Margie and several of Sofia’s other followers were scattering fish-gut fertilizer around the plants at the other end of the park’s gallery of sculptures. Across from them was an example of “unconscious art,” a sculpture by one of her followers showing a squirming octopus—but the creature had a human face that was oddly like Andrew Ryan’s. “Rapture is designed for conflict, for competition—but can this marvel of a community survive that division, bottled up down here? We need unity to make Rapture thrive! And that means a
Simon glanced around nervously. “Really, you shouldn’t use those kinds of… well, Ryan would regard that as red propaganda… Could be dangerous. They’re building a new detention center, and I have a feeling Ryan might want it for, ah, people who talk about undermining his master vision…”
Sofia shrugged. “If I must go to prison—so be it. The people need me! More are coming every day, Simon! The vision of wholeness is taking hold! Rapture must be a single society—not some schizophrenic social organism forever wrestling with itself. Look at what’s been happening—people forced into prostitution, living on top of one another. How is that better than the surface world?”
“If he suspects what you’re up to…”
She chuckled. “He’s convinced I’m on his team. I advised him on how to set up that little child-training amusement park… it’s absurd, really; I doubt if it does anything but frighten children, but he believes it’ll train them to accept Rapture. I gave him an edited report on all my…” She glanced at him. “I
He looked at her with a stunned expression and swallowed hard. “But—of
“Mommy, look!” Eleanor said pipingly. Sofia glanced over to see her small daughter, just three years old, in her pink pinafore, dragging one of the audiodiaries behind her. “I’m going to play with the Mr. Diary you gave me!”
Sofia nodded. “Wonderful, my love!”
His voice lowered, Simon asked, “Don’t you think it’s time she had some contact with other children, Doctor?”
“Hm? No. No, they’re under the influence of the poisonous paradigm of Andrew Ryan. I will keep her right here, train her in safe isolation—make her a paragon of the society to come…”
“And—” He cleared his throat. “What happened to her father?”
“Ah, as to that—it’s a private matter.”
Eleanor was sitting in the grass, talking to the tape recorder as if it were a friend; she clutched a small screwdriver in her hand. “Hello, Mr. Diary. Want to play?” She mimicked its voice: “‘Actually, I’m quite busy right now, Miss Eleanor. Maybe later.’ Well, all right! But do you mind if I take you apart while I wait? I promise I’ll put
