Redgrave laughed, and they drank their vodka, clinking their glasses together when they were done.
“Okeydokey!” Karlosky said, lowering his voice as Elaine went to bed, “we will play more cards, you lose money to me—and we see if you really can drink… black bastard!”
“Cossack devil! Pour me another!”
On New Year’s Eve, Bill McDonagh sat with his wife at a corner table of the luxurious restaurant, near the wall-high window looking out into the churning depths of the sea. They had taken off their silvery party masks and set them on the table next to the champagne bottle.
He glanced out the window. The illuminated skyscraper-style buildings, seen through a hundred yards of rippling seawater, seemed to shimmy to the music: a Count Basie swing number.
Bill winked at Elaine, and she returned him a strained smile. She was pretty in her pearl-trimmed, low-cut white gown, but, despite all the care she’d taken, she still looked a bit haggard. Elaine didn’t sleep well anymore. None of them did. Lately, a bloke trying to sleep in Rapture was always unconsciously listening for an alarm to go off or the sounds of a security bot taking on a rogue splicer.
It was chilly near the window. The tuxedo wasn’t much protection against the cold. But he didn’t want to sit any closer to the entourage waiting for Ryan to show up: a group at several tables near the fountain. Sander Cohen was wearing a feathery mask and babbling madly away at a bored-looking Silas Cobb. Diane McClintock, wearing a gold party mask edged in diamonds, sat stiffly at a small table reserved for her and Ryan—she sat there alone, watching the door and muttering into her tape recorder. Ryan had gone on an errand to Hephaestus and was going to give some kind of New Year’s address over the radio.
“Well, love…” Bill said, toasting his wife with the champagne glass. Trying to pretend he was enjoying himself. “In just a few minutes it’ll be 1959…”
Elaine McDonagh nodded slowly and forced another weak smile. The fear flared in her eyes, then dutifully hid itself again. She gave him the brave look that always tore at his heart. “It is! It’s almost New Year’s, Bill…” She looked at the other tables, filled with revelers in jeweled masquerade costumes and masks. They were waving noisemakers, laughing, talking loudly over the music, doing their best to celebrate. Her gaze took in the bunting, the banners, the circular hot-pink neon sign, specially made up for the party:
Bill nodded. Elaine was increasingly homesick, and scared. But he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man who had taken him out of the loo and made him a real engineer. Sure, Ryan was giving way to hypocrisy—but he was only human. And maybe it was true that Rapture had to go through this transition period before getting back on track. They just had to clear out the Atlas types, the worst of the splicers, and Lamb’s followers.
He noticed Elaine staring around at the armed men, the constables standing guard near the walls. The guards weren’t wearing masquerade masks. Scores of gunmen, there to protect this exclusive gathering from rogue splicers.
Constable was the one job you could stand a good chance of getting, if you were out of work in Rapture— because the mortality rate for constables was so high.
Bill was glad to see Brenda bringing each constable a flute of champagne on a tray to get ready for midnight. Made it seem more festive.
He had a pistol under his coat; Elaine had one in her pearl-beaded white purse.
“Do you think Sophie’s all right?” Elaine asked, toying with her glass, looking anxiously at the clock.
“Sure, she’ll be fine.”
“Bill, I want to go home as soon as we get past New Year’s Eve. Like at twelve-oh-five, okay? I don’t like to leave Sophie with the sitter long in this place… I don’t know if Mariska can use a gun, really. I mean, I left her one, but…”
“Don’t worry; we’ll leave a few minutes after midnight, love.”
The Count Basie song finished, and Duke Ellington started. Wearing their gawdy party masks, a half dozen couples were dancing in a cleared space between the tables, forced smiles held stiffly on their faces.
Bill wondered what music the rest of the world was listening to. Music in Rapture had to be outdated. There were rumors about something called rock ’n’ roll.
Trying to change Elaine’s mood, he took her hand, pulled her to her feet, got her dancing to the Duke Ellington number. They used to love going dancing together in New York…
Then the song stopped, simply cut off in midtune, and the countdown started, led by a giddy Sander Cohen: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”
Bill pulled Elaine close for the midnight kiss…
That’s when the explosion came. The doors exploded inward, knocking three constables like rag dolls into the center of the room. Bill shoved their table over for partial cover, pushed Elaine to the ground behind the tabletop, and covered her with his body. Machine-gun rounds ricocheted from the bulletproof windows to slam through tuxedos, to wound squealing women in their glittering finery. Elaine was screaming something about Sophie. Another bomb flew into the room and detonated—body parts spun overhead, spraying blood. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing as machine-gun bullets raked the room—as if the gunfire were part of the New Year’s Eve revelry. Screams… More gunshots…
Faces that seemed frozen, mocking: the invading splicers were wearing masquerade-party masks— domino masks, feathered masks, golden masks…
Andrew Ryan’s voice came from the public address, at that moment, as he made his New Year’s speech…
Bill peered around the edge of the table, saw a splicer in a black mask yelling, “Long live Atlas!”
Another, running through the cloud of smoke at the shattered doors, bellowed: “Death to Ryan!”
“Diane!” Elaine shouted.
Bill turned to see Diane McClintock crawling past on her hands and knees, dazed face bloodied, her green dress had become red-stained rags. “Diane—get down!” he called.
Beyond her, some of the constables were ducking behind the bar—and grinning. Bill realized that some of them had been in on this. A security bot went whistling by overhead, firing at a thuggish splicer cartwheeling into the room. A nitro splicer in a fur-fringed white mask was throwing another bomb, which blew up on a table under which three men in tuxes crouched—their tuxedos and their flesh mingled wetly in the blast.
Bill hoped to God the rogue splicers had the common sense not to throw too many bombs near the windows. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, but they could only take so much.
“Come on, Elaine, we’re off!” he said gruffly, trying to get some steel into her spine. “And bring your purse.”
He tugged out his pistol, the two of them scrambling like doughboys under barbed wire till they were under one of the few tables still standing. A bleeding thuggish splicer was crawling by like a hungry alligator, laughing insanely, his mask down around his neck. ADAM scars crisscrossed the man’s face in livid pink that somehow matched the neon pink of the
