“We have too few sea slugs,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, squinting into a microscope at a dead gastropod, as Frank Fontaine entered lab 23. These new research digs were bigger, roomier, with ports and windows, levels, and a balcony-walk looking down on the central concourse of Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum turned, frowning thoughtfully to Fontaine. “Only special gastropod works for ADAM mutagen and base for EVE… and these, all gone.”
“We’ll have to cut back plasmid production,” Fontaine said gloomily, looking at the remaining sea slugs squirming in the aquarium.
“Perhaps in time. But very slow process, much experimentation, maybe years. Better is to increase individual sea-slug production of mutagen—of ADAM. This can be done more quickly—if we use host.”
“A
“We try adults already. Two subjects. They sickened and died. Screaming—very noisy. Irritating. One of them reached to me…” She looked in wonder at her hand. “Tried to hold on to my hand. Begging, take it out, take it out of me… But children! Ah—it likes to be in children. The sea slug is happy there.”
“It’s happy… in children? Well—how’s it work exactly?”
“We implant sea slug in lining of child’s stomach. The sea slug bonds with cells, becomes symbiotic with human host. After host feeds, we induce regurgitation, and then we have twenty, thirty times more yield of usable ADAM.”
“And how do you know it works so good on kids?”
Dr. Suchong answered him as he pushed a gurney into the room. “Suchong and Tenenbaum experiment on this child!” Stretched out on the gurney was what appeared to be a sleeping child, a rather ordinary little white girl in a dressing gown, strapped to the wheeled hospital bed. She was perhaps six years old. Her eyes opened— she looked up at him sleepily, gave him a distant, fuzzy smile. Drugged.
“Where in hell you get that kid?”
“Child was sick,” Tenenbaum said. “Brain tumor. We tell parents maybe we heal. We implant sea slug in her abdomen, inside. It cures her tumor! We keep her tranquilized—she talks in her mind to sea slug…”
As if in response, the little girl lifted a hand—and touched her own belly caressingly.
Tenenbaum gave a little satisfied grunt. “Yes. She will be productive.”
“You intend to use this child to create a new plasmid base…” Fontaine shook his head. “One child? Will it be enough? The market for it is exploding! People are going wild for the stuff! I was going to start major marketing, stores, maybe even vending machines…”
“This is tester child,” Suchong said. “We need more, many more. Implant, feed, induce regurgitation— much mutagen produced, much ADAM. Better if not tranquilized. We must prepare hosts for this. Condition them!”
“How come it… it likes children?” Fontaine asked. He could almost feel a sea slug squirming in his own belly. Sheer imagination, but the thought nauseated him.
Tenenbaum shrugged. “Child stem cells are more malleable. More… responsive. They bond with the sea slug. We need children, Frank—many children!”
Fontaine snorted. “And where are we supposed to get those? From a mail-order catalogue?”
Dr. Suchong frowned and shook his head. “Suchong has not seen such catalogue. Not needed. Two children available already. Orphan girls. Babcock twins. They stay with people in Artemis Suites—their parents dead. Both parents killed by plasmid attack. And they are girls, the right age—perfect! We pay to bring them here.”
“Okay; they’ve got to be kids—but why girls?” Fontaine asked. “People are even more protective about little girls.”
Tenenbaum winced and turned back to the microscope, muttering, “For some reason girls take sea-slug implant better than boys.”
Fontaine wondered what little boy they’d experimented on to determine that and what had become of him. But he didn’t really care. He
And in fact—there was one place that could supply children for all sorts of things. “So—just girls, eh? That’s okay; that’ll just be fewer bunks in the orphanage.”
“Orphanage?” Tenenbaum blinked in puzzlement. “There is an orphanage in Rapture?”
Fontaine grinned. “No, but there will be. You just gave me the idea, with this thing about the Babcock orphans. I’ll donate the money for the orphanage! Yeah! ‘The Little Sisters Orphanage.’ We’ll get our adorable little plasmid farms… and we’ll train ’em up right. We got to do this soon! I’ve got more orders for plasmids than I can fill in a year!” Something about the idea energized him. He felt a kind of shudder, almost a release go through him as he thought about it.
He heard the door open and turned to see his bodyguard come in, grimacing. He’d left Reggie standing at the door outside Fontaine Futuristics—now his hand was clasping his right biceps, blood streaming from his fingers. “Say, anybody got any bandages here?”
“Reggie!” Fontaine stepped to the door, looked down the concourse. Saw no one. “What happened? You hurt bad?”
Suchong was already methodically sponging off the wound on Reggie’s arm.
“Ouch! Oh, I’m not hurt bad. But I’ll tell you what—somebody shot at me. Kind of at random, seemed like. The prick. I shot back, but I think I missed him. He took off.”
“Shot at you… you mean a constable?” Fontaine asked.
“Don’t think so. I wasn’t doing anything to make a constable shoot at me. And he didn’t have a badge. Loopy-looking plasmid-head with a pistol. Spots all over his face. It’s been like this lately—random shooting. Ryan’s started putting in those security turrets, to keep these guys in check. You’ll want to get one of those babies for this place. Camera with a machine gun that picks out targets. I dunno how it… ouch, Doc, shit!”
“Suchong is so sorry,” Dr. Suchong said, not sounding sorry as he wound a bandage tightly around the wound.
“Like I was saying, I dunno how the turret thing keeps from killing the wrong people. All I know is—on and off all day there’s been gunfire. Plasmids… that’s the reason I don’t use that stuff. I don’t like firing my gun without a goddamn reason.” He winced again. “Waste of good bullets.”
Andrew Ryan was standing at the window, looking broodingly out at the lights of Rapture shimmering through the sea, thinking:
“You wanted to see Poole?” Sullivan asked, coming in with the ratlike little reporter.
Ryan nodded and sat at his desk. Stanley Poole and Sullivan sat across from him. “Well, Poole? What’s your report about this Topside character? People are talking about him as if he’s a hero—but he’s an outsider, as I understand it…”
Sullivan frowned. “I could’ve got you the dirt on him, Mr. Ryan.”
“I know, Chief. But your men are sometimes too… obvious. Poole here has a strange gift for being ignored. Well, Poole?”
Stanley Poole licked his lips nervously. “Yes sir, well, near as I can find out, this guy they’re calling Johnny Topside—he’s a deep-sea diver. There was some snoopers out here, you remember; our subs made sure they stopped snooping. When they went missing, why, he came out to see what was going on. Went down at the main lighthouse and found a way in. One of the air locks, I guess. People are pretty impressed with him, making his way here. Acts like he’s on his own, just wants to help. He’s asking about missing girls, seems like…”
