“Did you hear anything up there in the lighthouse?” she asked. “I mean—maybe ships passing or gulls or…”
“You know what I heard up there? Icebergs! We heard one of them banging on the lighthouse—boom! Big ol’ clangin’, echoing sound! What a noise!”
“I’d like to go up and look sometime,” she said wistfully. “If they allowed it…”
“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry I brought you down here. They made it sound so good…”
She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips seemed deliciously soft to him, after dealing with cold, hard metal all day.
“Me too, kid!” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. She was a small woman, nestling easily against him.
Around the crowded bunk room, people muttered and argued and bitched in three, maybe four different languages: the singsong of Chinese, the bubbling flow of Spanish, and especially the sarcastic brassiness of Brooklyn English.
“Whadya doin’ with ya boots under my bunk over heah? I look like I got room for your shit under my bunk fa cryin’ out loud?”
“Someone fucking stole the last of my scented fucking soap! You know how hard it is to get that shit? It’s probably you, Morry…”
“The fuck it was!”
“Somebody got into my lockbox! I had my last EVE hypo in there and it’s gone!”
“Whatya talkin’ about, you’re the one stole my plasmids! I had a New Skills I was gonna inject for the job tomorrow!”
Frightened by the shouting, Mascha came to sit with her back against her dad’s legs. She made the little dolls clack together, singing loudly to drown out the sound of all those heated voices. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!”
Someone in the far corner shouted, but Sam couldn’t make out what they said. He caught a flash, heard a crackle, smelled ozone—a shout of pain and a flare of blue light.
A ball of fire sizzled across the room, between the bunks, and charred the wall on the left.
“Mama! Daddy!” Mascha whimpered, climbing up on the bed behind them to peek over her mother’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“Someone’s messing with those plasmids!” Mariska whispered, her voice choked with fear. “They’re way over there, little one, on the other side of the room—we’ll be safe here.”
“Stay at the bunk,” Sam told her firmly. Mariska tried to hold him back, but he pulled away. He had to know what was going on. If they were throwing fireballs, the whole place could catch—plenty of flammables in Artemis. They were a ways from the doors to the suite and could surely burn alive before they got out. A mighty peculiar way to die considering they were deep underwater. But he’d heard of men burning alive in submarines in the war.
He moved carefully to steal a look around the corner of the Ming family’s double bunk and saw the two men quarrelling in the far corner of the room near the row of circular blue-lit ports looking out into the sea.
“Just get outta my face or the next one’ll toast you, Griggs!” Babcock shouted, jabbing an angry finger at the smaller man. Babcock was a tall man with fat cheeks and patchy hair, greasy coveralls. He had one of the odd skin reactions people got from plasmid use, this one on his scalp, making an ugly mesh of red welts. Part of his hair had fallen out around it.
Toby Griggs was squared off with him—a puny, fox-faced fellow, hair slicked back; he had a tart way of talking and a lively sense of humor. Sam had always kind of liked Toby for his spunk. Toby worked as a salesman in one of the shops off Fort Frolic and still had his wrinkly green-and-black-checked suit on.
“Back off or I’ll electrocute you, Babcock!” Toby crowed as energy crackled between the fingers of his raised right hand. “I’ll strap you in the electric chair standin’ up!”
Sam wasn’t surprised that Toby had spent his paycheck on a plasmid from Fontaine Futuristics—Toby had been talking about how a good plasmid could be an equalizer. He was a little guy and didn’t like to be bullied.
But Babcock had always seemed levelheaded—and he had two small girls to think of—plump little twins. Yet there was Babcock, using
Toby Griggs had a look in his eyes that made Sam think of a rooster back home on the ranch about to jab a rival with its beak—that mean glitter in its little eyeballs. As for Babcock, it looked to Sam like the mesh of red welts on his head was pulsing in rhythm with his angry panting. A wavery column of hot air rose from the fire flickering over Babcock’s hands. Strange that the flames emanating from his fingers didn’t burn them—but plasmids were like that. It seemed to Sam that heavy plasmid use made people into something like rattlesnakes, not hurt by their own venom.
Toby and Babcock danced around each other, teeth bared, wild-eyed, drool running from the corners of their mouths, energies simmering in their raised hands. To Sam their threats sounded like babbling; like they were barely aware of what they were saying.
“Threatening me, Babcock?” Toby howled. “Is that right?
“Die?
“No one’s threatening your family! You’ve been getting nutty from the moment you got that plasmid!” Toby snarled. “You can’t handle it! Maybe you took too much EVE and not enough ADAM—ya don’t know what you’re doing! You’re nuts, Babcock! Batty, crackers, crazy! Back off or I’ll put a charge in you that’ll turn your head into a thousand-watt lightbulb!”
“How are you gonna do that when you’re a burned-up cinder, Griggs, huh? Answer me that!”
Fire whirled restlessly, roaring in Babcock’s hands, as if it were eager to destroy.
Toby Griggs growled to himself and took the offensive. He twisted his shoulders about, grimacing with insane concentration. Electricity writhed from his fingers, crackling through the air at Babcock, just as Babcock’s wife—a pudgy, mousy-haired woman in slippers and a loose blue frock—came rushing up to him on her short legs, throwing her stubby arms around him. “
Then she let out a pealing shriek as the Electro Bolt struck her and Babcock at once… an extra-big bolt of blue-white lightning—everything Toby Griggs could summon up.
Onlookers screamed as Babcock and his wife went rigid. The two of them were doing an absurd little dance together, locked in a fatal embrace as the current raged through them, sparking blue from their bared teeth. Mrs. Babcock’s hair stood on end; her dress caught fire…
Their eyes smoked and then boiled out of their heads. Their faces contorted.
The charge burst and sparks flew into the walls and floor as Mr. and Mrs. Babcock, flesh fused in a grotesque mock of marriage, fell in a limp, smoldering heap.
“Oh my God,” Sam muttered, staring at them. “They’re dead! Toby Griggs, what have you done!”
“You—you all saw it!” Toby said shrilly, backing away from the gathering crowd between the bunks. “He threw a fireball at my head! He was raving, completely out of his gourd! He was on a plasmid high! He can’t handle his plasmids, and he just… he tried to… tried to kill me! He…”
Then Toby bolted, dodging past grasping hands, out the front door of the suites.
Two little girls, the five-year-old Babcock twins, came tiptoeing up together, clutching each other in life as their parents clutched each other in death.
“Mommy?” quavered one little girl.
“Daddy?” quavered the other.
Two little girls. All alone now. Orphans. Two little sisters…
