planted that charming little confetti bomb, with its warnings? Oh, I found out, Bill.” He slapped the top of his desk. “It was done by an agent of Sofia Lamb! Stanley Poole’s infiltrated her little circle. He’s heard that it was one of our own people who planted the thing… quite likely, Simon Wales!”
“Wales!”
“Oh yes! At Lamb’s behest.”
“Well—why not prosecute her for that? A bomb’s a bomb. It was vandalism at least! But this just
“Her public prosecution would become a cause celebre! Anyway, we haven’t got solid proof. Just hearsay. But think about it—how like a psychiatrist to create a bomb that blows nothing up… except our sense of security! Not long after she got here, she started her little game, pulling the pins out from under us one by one. Do you know what she did with the bonus money I paid her? She took that—and a great many ‘donations’ from her followers—and built that smarmy Dionysus Park. Named in some bizarre effort at mockery…”
“Dionysus Park?” Bill scratched his head. He’d only been there once, to check the drainage. “Thought it was some kind of ‘retreat.’ Therapeutic art, something like that.”
“Oh yes.” Ryan’s voice dripped with cynicism as he went on. “A retreat—her sheeplike followers closeted with Sofia Lamb in her precious garden and her own cinema. Just the setting for Marxist propaganda disguised as therapy and art! Rapture is a powder keg, Bill—I knew that when Ruben Greavy died. Plasmids made Rapture unstable. We can’t remove plasmids, not now—but we can remove some of the instability. Lamb, people like her —they have to be stopped.”
Bill wondered exactly what happened to the “incarcerated” in Persephone. Wasn’t Persephone a name from a myth—about hell?
Ryan went on, gesturing at the Acu-Vox, “I recorded a note to you about all this—but I may as well talk it straight out with you instead. You remember when you spoke of a ‘marketplace of ideas’? That was you. I liked the phrase. So—I let Lamb enter the marketplace, tried to defang her in debates. But she is too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely… You know the place they’re calling Pauper’s Drop—you’ve been to the Limbo Room?”
“Not me. Too much a ’ole in the wall.”
“Good. Because Grace Holloway was singing protest songs there—perfectly harmless colored lady was Grace, till Lamb got hold of her! And between their protest screeches, these… these Oblomovs hand out Lamb’s manifesto! Lamb adorns every wall there! Saint Lamb! You made her, McDonagh—”
“Me!”
“You with your marketplace-of-ideas talk! You persuaded me to allow her sort! Now—I want you to talk to the council about this. They must accept that people like this are to be silenced…”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Ryan, it’s not my place…”
“I need to know how you really feel, Bill. That’ll show me where you stand.”
“But—incarceration? This place Persephone… What exactly is it?”
Ryan sighed. “I should have let you in on it. Quite a while back I did a deal with Augustus Sinclair to build it—it’s out on the edge of Rapture. Right over that… big crevice—just in case. It’s… a facility for isolation and interrogation. Something between a mental hospital and a penal institution. For political enemies of Rapture.” He was busying himself with the tapes—seeming embarrassed. “Some of this woman’s followers are free—and some aren’t. We’ll find them, in time, and they’ll have their own little cells. There are various shades of malcontents in Persephone…” He seemed to realize he was fussing mindlessly with the tapes and put the box aside. “As for water-pressure issues—I’ll have Sinclair speak to you, give you reports on all that. He has a maintenance crew to deal with any… internal problems of that kind.”
Something else occurred to Bill, then. There was a chance, after all, he
Bill let out a long, slow breath to calm himself. When things cooled down, maybe he could persuade Ryan to close Persephone.
“Okay, Mr. Ryan,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “I reckon you know best.”
Simon Wales felt a powerful mingling of superstitious awe and pride as the guard let him into Sofia Lamb’s cell.
She was waiting for him on her neatly made bunk, sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, her blond hair back in a bun. She looked thin, hollow-eyed. But the transcendent spark was there.
“So you did come,” she said softly. “How’d you arrange it?”
Wales had to take a breath to calm himself before he replied. He viewed this woman as a sending from the Locus of Universal Love. It was like being with the radiant Joan of Arc as she waited for the stake. “I… I have some terms of friendship with Sinclair, since Daniel and I were the chief architects of Rapture. I convinced him to let me inspect the structure here, to see if it was putting strain on the rest of Rapture—all a blind, of course. He allowed it—and then it was simply a matter of bribing the guards…”
“Good. You must see to it that the guards will let you in whenever you come—pay them whatever you must. They fear Sullivan and Ryan—they cannot be induced to simply let me go. But they can be persuaded to let me talk freely with the other inmates.” She frowned. He could see emotional pain flicker across her face, quickly suppressed. “What about… Eleanor? Any word?”
“
She grimaced. “Well. They will think she is one thing… but I have buried her true mission deeply inside her. Eleanor will survive! And she will surprise them. She will surprise everyone here. I have faith in that.” She glanced at the door. “I’m developing a therapeutic relationship with Nigel Weir…”
Wales looked at her in surprise. “Weir? The warden of Persephone? He let you…”
She smiled. “He’s a sad, disturbed little man. Under pretense of interrogating me—he asked me about himself. Indirectly, you see. I turned the interrogation back on him—we even looked at his files together. I think I’ve persuaded him to let me do some experimenting—and therapy on the prisoners in Persephone. He’ll convince Sinclair it’s all for the benefit of Ryan’s little fiefdom. But in time, I plan to organize a rebellion here. One which they will never expect. They’re foolish, putting so many political prisoners in one facility—it plays into our hands…”
Gazing at her, Wales felt dizzy. He suddenly—uncontrollably—went to his knees. “Ma’am… oh, Sofia! How is it that I was ever loyal to Andrew Ryan? That I let him blind me?”
She smiled. “It’s all right, Simon. The ego is powerful. The will to love is weak, at first. It must be strengthened with sacrifice to the collective. It takes time! But you were one of the first to see the light. You are beloved to me, Simon Wales… And in good time, Ryan will fall. And I… we… will be waiting to take his place. Rapture will be ours. Tell them—tell everyone—I will be watching! I will know who is a slave to ego—and who ascends to the body with the blessed…”
“Yes, Sofia! I’ll see that your flock knows!”
Sofia Lamb put a hand on his head, in benediction. Wales felt an orgasmic shudder go through him at her touch, and he lowered his head and wept with joy…
13
