“Why, I was a metal worker.” He stubbed out his cigarette—his fingers looked pale and soft for a workingman. “As for what we took from that storeroom—we distributed most of it to the people. How do you think people eat round ’ere, with Ryan, the great son of Satan himself, cutting off supplies to Artemis, eh?”
She nodded. “He’s talked about an amnesty for people who give up the… what does he call it, the Bolshevik organizing.”
“Bolshevik organizing! So we’re Soviets now! Asking for a fair break is hardly that!”
She tapped the cigarette over an ashtray on the desk. “Any sort of ‘break’ is pinko stuff to Andrew.” She sniffed. “I’m fed up with him. But I’ve got no reason to love you people either. You can see what you did to me.” She touched the scars on her cheek.
He shook his head sadly. “You were hurt in the fight, were you? A bomb? You’re still a fine-looking woman, so you are. You were too strong to die there. Why, you’ve gotten
He looked at her with that disarming frankness. And she wanted to believe in him.
“Why do you call yourself Atlas? It’s not your real name.”
“Figure that out on your own, did you?” He grinned. “Welllll… Atlas takes the world on his shoulders. He’s the broad back, ain’t he? And who’s the workingman? The workingman takes the world on his broad back too. Holds it up for the privileged—for the likes of you!”
He opened a drawer and, to her astonishment, took out a bottle of what looked like actual Irish whiskey. Jameson. “Care for hair of the dog, mebbe? Philo—find us some glasses…”
They drank and talked, of politics and fairness and organizing and reappropriation of goods for the working class. “And you think you’re the liberator of the working class, Atlas?”
“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. That’s the only thing Ryan was right about. These people will liberate themselves! But they do need someone to tell them that it can be done.” He toyed with his glass. Then he said, “You know about the Little Sisters, do you? What they do to them poor little orphan waifs?”
“I’ve heard… Yes, it bothers me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He poured her a third drink. “Sure, and it should bother you,” he said solemnly, lighting another cigarette. “It should cut you up inside! I’ve got a little girl meself, you know. The thought of them bastards mebbe getting hold of that child! Oh, the thought! But will it stop anyone from buying ADAM? No. Rapture can’t go on like this, Diane, me dear. This cannot go on…”
It didn’t take long for her to make up her mind. It wasn’t the whiskey, or the cigarettes, or that strong chin, or those frank brown eyes, or the pungent opinions. It was thinking about going back to her place alone—and waiting to hear from Andrew Ryan.
No. Never again.
“Atlas,” she said, “I’d like to help.”
“And why would I believe Ryan hasn’t sent you here, on the sly, like, will you tell me that now?”
“I’ll show you—I’m no spy. I’ll do things he would never approve of. And then… you’ll know you can trust me.”
The odd little chamber, partly cold steel-walled lab and partly nursery, was chilly today. Drips of cold water slipped from a rusty bolt in the ceiling in a far corner. Brigid had told maintenance about the leak, but so far no one had come to fix it.
Subject 15 didn’t mind—the little girl played contentedly with the drip as Brigid watched, the girl seeming to delight in this tiny little invasion of the gigantic sea into her cell. Squatting in the corner, the child tried to catch each drop as it came down. She giggled when she caught one…
Brigid sighed. The experiments had been going well; the attachment conditioning was working. But she felt heavier every day—as if she were carrying some hidden burden. She was beginning to feel like a Big Daddy herself, as if she too were sheathed in metal. That thought reminded Brigid—it was time.
She went to the door, opened it, took the remote control from her lab-coat pocket, and pointed the device at the hulking gray-metal figure waiting, dormant, in the corridor. Somewhere inside that metal armor was what remained of a man, who was now in a sort of comatose state, waiting for the stimuli to awaken… but never completely awaken. He would always be little more than a machine.
She pressed the button on the remote, and the Big Daddy responded instantly, turning with a creak, coming with clanging steps into the conditioning lab.
“Ooh!” Subject 15 chirped, clasping her wet hands together with delight when she saw the Big Daddy. “Mr. Bubbles is here!”
Brigid Tenenbaum watched as Subject 15 walked—almost like a sleepwalker—to the Big Daddy. The little girl clasped its metal hand and gazed up at it, smiling uncertainly…
She’s a girl, once more, in Belorussia, watching the Nazis take her father away. It is before the war, but they are removing troublemakers. The Nazi officer in charge of the platoon turns his gray-eyed gaze on her. He is a big, craggy-faced man wearing a helmet, his hands in heavy gloves; he wears a glossy leather belt, a strap across his chest, and high, polished boots; he glints with shiny buttons and medals. He says, “Little one—you can be of use. First in the kitchens, working. In time, you go to the camps… Experimental subjects are needed…” He reaches out to her. She stares up at him, thinking he’s more like a machine than a man. Her father took her to a silent movie in which she saw a man of metal, stalking about. This officer is a man of metal in a uniform, metal clothed in flesh.
She knows she’ll never see her father again. She will be alone. And this man is reaching out to her. Something closes up in her heart. She thinks,
She reaches out and clasps the gloved hand.
And now, in Rapture, Brigid Tenenbaum shuddered, remembering the little girl that she was… and the woman she became. Even before that day, she’d been distant from people; she’d always had a hard time connecting. But she’d kept a door in herself open a crack. It was at that moment, clasping that officer’s hand, that she closed the door that she’d always kept open for her family. She would simply survive…
Now, Brigid stood there, staring at Subject 15, and the model of the Big Daddy. Subject 15—another child conditioned to attach herself to a machine. Metal men, clothed in flesh—and in Rapture, metal men, enclosing flesh. Subject 15 was a child twisted, her childlike nature distorted, for Rapture’s purposes—a child so much like the little girl Brigid had been.
Brigid shuddered. “Not this one,” she whispered. “No more…”
She felt herself turned inside out, as she said it. Feelings geysered up in her, seething in her heart. She was once more a child—and she would become a mother. She would be a mother with many adopted children. She could no longer treat these children as experimental subjects.
She went to the child and embraced her. “I am sorry,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
