The lights were dimming for evening over the coliseum-sized space of Apollo Square. The enormous four- faced clock hanging from the center of the ceiling showed eight o’clock, as Andrew Ryan said, “This simply cannot continue.” His voice was low, and grating.
Bill nodded. “Right enough, guv,” he said softly. He was thinking of the hangings.
But Ryan probably meant the chaos that had been surging up lately, in Apollo Square and Pauper’s Drop. In other parts of Rapture.
Pistols holstered under their coats, Andrew Ryan, Bill McDonagh, Kinkaide, and Sullivan stood together just inside the opening of a passageway that led out into Apollo Square. Karlosky was behind them, down the corridor, watching the back way; Head Constable Cavendish and Constable Redgrave were standing a few paces to the right and left, both carrying tommy guns. Rising up the brass-trimmed art-deco ornamented walls to either side of the doorway were the sleek sculptures that had once reminded Bill of hood ornaments: elongated, silver figures of muscular men reaching for the sky with rocketlike verticality, and holding up the ceiling in the process. To the left yellow lettering on a scarlet banner read:
But it was the hanged men, across from them, that captivated their attention…
Ryan was making his monthly inspection of Rapture. “We’ve had repair crews in ’ere, working on leaks,” Bill said, “and the constables did a good job of protecting them. Nicking mad splicers, bunging ’em in the Dingley Dell. But it’s getting right crowded in there. And in the morgue. I mean, just take a butcher’s at that, hard to…” He chuckled to himself. He’d almost used the Cockney “rhyming slang,” “hard to Adam and Eve,” meaning “hard to believe,” but that would be a pretty confusing expression in Rapture. “Hard to believe it’s come to this.”
Standing in an open space, just inside the farther doors, was a crude wooden platform and on it a T- shaped gallows made of planks pulled up from around Rapture. Bill had seen the gaping holes where the planks had been the day before. From each arm of the T, a man’s body hung.
Apollo Square stank too. It stank of dead bodies. There were five of them Bill could see, four men and a woman, the corpses scattered widely about the big room, sprawled awkwardly in brown puddles of dried blood. And there were the two hanged men, slowly turning on the ropes at the far side of the big room.
The tram tracks were intact; there was no train at the moment. As far as Bill knew, the trains were still running. At Artemis Suites, faces peered out at them from the darkened recesses of the doorway. Trash lay about the square, some of it stirring in the ventilator breeze. Music played from somewhere, so distorted Bill couldn’t make out what it was at first—then he recognized Bessie Smith. She seemed to be asking to be sent to the electric chair.
Laughter cackled mockingly from the ceiling. Bill looked up to see a spider splicer creeping across, upside down beside the big windows.
“Maybe you can bring him down, Cavendish,” Sullivan said, glowering up at the splicer. “I don’t know how good that tommy gun is at this range, but…”
“No!” Ryan said suddenly. “It is not against the law to use ADAM. It is not against the Rapture law to walk on walls or ceilings so long as you don’t damage them. If he breaks a serious law—shoot him down. But we’re not going to shoot them like rabid dogs out of hand. Some of them are employable, eh Kinkaide?”
Kinkaide sighed and shook his head doubtfully. “Employable? Only sometimes, Mr. Ryan. Offer ’em ADAM, they can be persuaded to use the Telekinesis, move the bigger Metro parts about for us. But they get distracted and fight too much. Couple of them were supposed to be moving pipes into place, ended up throwing them at each other like spears. One of them impaled, right through. Took a long time to get the pipe clean afterward.”
Ryan shrugged. “ADAM will be controlled, in time.” He paused thoughtfully, then went on: “As for the rogue splicers, we will only kill those we
“How do we get rogue splicers under control, guv?” Bill asked.
He took a deep breath, his face hardening with determination: “For starts—we are going to enforce a curfew. We’ll require identification cards at checkpoints. We will increase the presence of security turrets and security bots at key points… Ah, speak of the mechanical devil…
Two security bots whirred around the edges of the voluminous room, flying side by side, miniature self- guiding helicopters, each about the size of a fire hydrant but blockier, with built-in guns. They made Bill nervous— he never trusted the bots not to shoot him, since they were mere machines, even though he and the others here wore identification “flashers” that told the bots they were friends.
He ducked as the robots flew by, always afraid their whirring copter blades would slice into him if they came too close. The choppering security bots continued on their way, circling the big room, watching for anyone who might threaten Ryan and his entourage.
Then the full import of Ryan’s words began to sink in. “’Ere, guv—did you say curfews? Checkpoints? You mean—all over Rapture?” Hadn’t Ryan always claimed that that was the kind of thing the Communist dictators pulled?
“Yes,” Ryan said, gazing balefully at the bodies twisting on the gallows. “Everyone will have an ID card. They must restrict themselves to authorized areas, and the ID cards will tell us where they’re supposed to be. There’ll be a curfew until further notice. We’ll have to institute the death penalty for more crimes. We can all see for ourselves how tough the situation is. And we’re losing population. We’ll have to recruit new people to catch up… meanwhile, we’ve got to get things stabilized. We’ll have to set up a serious large-scale raid to take Fontaine down. We’re going to destroy him this time. And take over his business—for the good of Rapture. Run it responsibly…”
Bill was stunned. “Take over Fontaine’s business? But—doesn’t that kind of run against the whole spirit of Rapture?”
Ryan frowned. “Sometimes we have to fight to protect that spirit, Bill! Look what happened—right here in Apollo Square. Three constables shot dead! We’re going to see to it that all enemies of Rapture are caught—and punished!”
Bill felt disoriented, almost dizzy. Ryan was sounding more like Mussolini than a man who advocated pushing out the limits of human freedom. “You plan to take over Fontaine’s plasmid business—by force? That’s not exactly the free market at its best, Mr. Ryan.”
“No. No it isn’t. But Fontaine’s threatening Rapture with destruction! The whole colony will fall apart if we don’t act, Bill. He
“I concur,” said Kinkaide, nodding. “We’ve had enough chaos. You have to draw into some prescribed limits sometimes. Time to get tough. To take the offensive.”
Bill found himself wondering if Ryan’s shift into the offensive might be exactly what Fontaine wanted. Were they playing into Frank Fontaine’s hands?
Fontaine struggled inwardly to banish the squirming discomfort, the trapped feeling that rose up in him when he walked up to a restricted area. No reason to feel trapped. He had two good bodyguards with him—you needed two, nowadays—there was Reggie, and there was Naz: the grinning, swarthy splicer looking like a mad
