She tried to say something else, but it was cut off, squeezed off by the inexorable pressure of his fingers tightening on her throat. Tighter, squeezing ever tighter, until her pretty eyes fairly popped out of her head…
A security bot whirred by overhead, making that irritating whistling noise. Ryan and Bill, walking with their escort, glanced up at the bot as it whizzed by, Bill ducking.
He looked over at Elaine and Sophie, browsing together on the other side of the open-stall market. The pale, frightened little man standing behind the hydroponic vegetables rack gave them a hesitant smile. Bill glanced up at another sound—the big security camera above a fruit booth, whirring in its red pool of light to take him in. He wore his ID flasher, so it decided not to tell one of the turrets or bots to kill him.
This was no place to raise a child. Especially when they might come across a dead body at any moment. But Ryan insisted that life go on with as much normality as possible, and he’d pressured Bill to bring his family out on this walk today.
“Come along, Bill…” Ryan had said.
Bill had said, “Right, guv’nor, I’ll get the Mrs. and the squeaker…” But it had taken a lot of talking to get Elaine out of the house with Sophie.
They had Redgrave and Karlosky in front of them, Linosky and Cavendish, each one of them with a machine gun in his hands. Andrew Ryan was the only one without a gun. Ryan carried that fancy walking stick now, what with him getting a bit long in the tooth. He still looked natty and confident—a bit grim, but not too worried.
A lot of men had died in the past few days. Skirmishes were popping up all over Rapture. It was a guerilla war—but it was war.
Bill had nearly left Ryan Industries after the takeover of Fontaine Futuristics—it had been a blow, Ryan nationalizing an industry. A putrid hypocrisy. And before that—Persephone. Then Sullivan telling him what Ryan had been up to, behind the scenes. Torture—and having Anna Culpepper killed. But the final, camel-busting straw was the disappearance of Mascha. He’d asked Ryan about it, and Cavendish. Ryan had said he could not be bothered with every petty crime around Rapture—and Cavendish had said, “You deal with the plumbing; we’ll deal with security—now fuck off.” And that was it—he’d decided right then, walking away from Cavendish’s office, he was getting his family out of Rapture. It was just a question of choosing his moment.
He had a half-formed plan. Roland Wallace wanted out too. They’d talked it over: Wallace was authorized to pass through an external-access air lock. There was a minisub in bay 2. Wallace could pretend to be doing repairs on it, then slip out with it through the air lock to the open sea.
Wallace would get the little sub to one of the old sentry launches, still tied up behind the lighthouse, and bring the launch around to its entrance. Bill could get his family out through the lighthouse, which had a single cable for its cameras and turrets. He could unhook that cable. If the camera were out, the security bots wouldn’t be activated when he approached the lighthouse shaft. No one but Ryan was genetically authorized to be up there—the bots would attack anyone else.
The water was rough, over Rapture. They’d have to wait on the escape; wait for better weather, in late spring. Fewer ice floes. Then they’d escape, take the launch to the sea routes, ride the currents, and flag down a passing ship.
As if reading his thoughts, the PA system hissed with static, whined with feedback, and then a woman’s voice announced:
Another hiss of static became:
Bill pretended an interest in the grain-based “meat” at the farmer’s market “butcher’s stall.” But his mind was full of questions. Could he and his family really escape from Rapture? Was it possible while this war was going on? Probably too dangerous to try.
There was one other possibility. Having a couple too many glasses of Worley’s brandy, he’d even recorded that possibility on an audio diary:
He had to erase that tape immediately. He’d be a dead man if someone found it.
“Seen Diane lately?” Ryan asked, too casually, as he picked up a rather withered apple from a stand. He smelled it, made a face, and put it back.
“Diane McClintock? No, guv, not in person, like. Last I heard she was… ah, that Doctor Steinman did some work on ’er.”
“He was working on her in more ways than one, Bill. Your delicacy is appreciated. Yes, I was actually quite bored with her, and she became very narcissistically tiresome after the New Year’s Eve attack. Whining about her scars. Went gadding about with Steinman—but he’s thrown her over, I understand. Last I knew she was spending a lot of time gambling in Fort Frolic…”
The security bot flew past again—it was on watchful patrol status in order to protect Ryan—and Bill noticed little Sophie watching it with big eyes. Frightened of the thing that was supposed to be protecting her.
Sophie saw him looking at her and came running to him, throwing her little arms around his waist. Elaine followed, with a strained smile, nodding to Ryan.
Ryan looked down at Sophie and smiled, patting her on the head—she shrank away from him. Ryan looked startled at that.
Then came a sad, low-pitched groaning noise and an ominous vibration of heavy footsteps—and they turned to see the hulking, plodding, clanking form of a Big Daddy. There were at present two models of Big Daddy, the Rosies and the Bouncers. This one, a Bouncer, made a drawn-out moaning sound as it came, almost as if in mourning. They all did that, of course. They all smelled rancid. Like dead things.
The Bouncer was carrying an oversized drill built into its right arm; on its back was a heavy power pack. To Bill the Big Daddies almost looked like pictures of robots he’d seen on the covers of pulp science fiction magazines. But he knew there was most of a human being inside that Big Daddy suit—some poor blighter who’d been caught breaking a rule, sometimes a criminal, sometimes a Lamb follower, sometimes just a hungry man who’d stolen an apple. The constables tranquilized “candidates” for Big Daddies and took them to Prometheus Point, where their flesh was fused with metal, their brains altered and conditioned to focus on protecting the Little Sisters and on killing anything they perceived as a threat. When the Big Daddies were damaged, repair parts were scavenged, on the sly, from the Eternal Flame Crematorium. Who was going to miss a leg or an arm when the rest had been cremated?
All over the massive Big Daddy’s great round metal head were circular, glowing sensors; its huge metal- encased legs clunked along relentlessly—but careful never to injure the barefoot, grubby little tyke of a girl who scampered along beside it. Gatherers, some called the girls. This one was tiny and fragile compared with the Big Daddy, but she dominated it completely. The Little Sister wore a dirty pink smock; her face seemed faintly greenish, her eyes sunken. There was a distance in those eyes, like something Bill had seen in Brigid
