“I was working in the lighthouse today,” Sam said glumly. Sam Lutz was tired. His back ached as he sat beside his wife and watched their daughter play beside the family bunk beds.
Sam and Mariska Lutz were sitting on their bottom bunk in the crowded number 6 of Artemis Suites—a “suite” intended for a few people, but which the Lutzes shared with nine other families. They ignored the argument and bustle and jostling from the rest of the apartment and watched Mascha playing on the floor by the bunk with two stiff little dolls Sam had made for her from scrap wood. One of the dolls was a boy, one a girl, and little Mascha—a pale black-haired child, with flashing black eyes like her mother—was making them dance together. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!” she sang, her reedy voice providing the music for the dance. Some song she’d heard piped over the public address in one of the atriums.
“It was good you could get the work, Sam,” Mariska said as she watched Mascha. Her diction was good—she’d taught English in Prague—but her accent was thick. They’d met when Sam was stationed in Eastern Europe after World War Two. Circumstances had made it almost impossible for her to marry him and go back to the States—but in ’48 they were approached by a recruiter from Rapture looking for Atlantic Express laborers. It was a way out of the wreckage that was left after the war. A way out of the U.S. Army.
Only Rapture wasn’t an out. He felt trapped here. The work had finished up, and Sam got laid off. And he’d been summarily informed he wasn’t allowed to leave the underwater colony. There was beauty in Rapture, sure—but people like Sam didn’t have much chance to appreciate it. It was like Sofia Lamb said: most people here were like the backstairs servants in a palace.
“Yeah, I needed the work, sure,” Sam admitted. “But it was just two days’ worth. Not enough to get us out of here. Need enough to get our own place in Sinclair Deluxe, at least.”
“There are some rooms they don’t use behind Fighting McDonagh’s—Elaine told me about them. Maybe they would let us have them cheap! The McDonaghs are nice.”
He grunted. “Maybe, but … not sure I’d want the girl there. McDonagh’s night manager hires out those rooms to women from Pauper’s Drop … desperate women, if you know what I mean…”
“And is it so much better here?”
“No.” Then realizing that gloom could be catching, he smiled and patted her hand, leaning close to whisper, “Some day I’ll take you home to Colorado. You’d like Colorado…”
“Maybe someday.” She twined her fingers with his, looking nervously around. “Best not to speak of such, here. We have food and shelter now…”
Sam snorted. He looked at the other people shuffling back and forth in the close, malodorous suite. And all the other rooms and suites in the Artemis building were just as crowded, just as prone to tension.
Little Toby Griggs appeared to be arguing with big, chunky Babcock again. Something odd about those two. It was as if in a moment they’d transform into two cats arching their backs and hissing. Then Babcock turned and walked away between the bunk beds. Griggs followed …
There were two rows of bunk beds in what should have been the living room. Seven more against the two long walls in the bedroom. Junk piled in the corner. Not enough storage. He hoped the toilet wasn’t plugged up again. Smelled like it might be.
And someone had been putting graffiti on the walls. Ryan doesn’t own us! it said. Become the body of the Lamb! That would have to come down before the constables saw it.
“Oh, if you were up in the lighthouse,” Mariska said suddenly, “you saw the sky! That must have been nice!” Her eyes were wide at the thought of seeing the sky again.
“Yes. I only had a few seconds to look at it. They had us busy fixing the entry bathysphere. We had to bowse up three hundred yards of steel spool and set it in place. Not easy with just three of us and only a hand-cranked winch. And it was cold up in that lighthouse shaft. It’s winter on the surface. I remember crossing this ocean in a troopship this time of year—cold as hell and the waves higher than the ship, all of us seasick.” He made a mental effort to force memories of the war out of his mind. It was helped by Toby Griggs and Babcock arguing loudly on the other side of the bunks. He tried to ignore them—you had to screen most people out, in these conditions, if you wanted to stay sane.
“Did you hear anything up there in the lighthouse?” she asked. “I mean—maybe ships passing or gulls or…”
“You know what I heard up there? Icebergs! We heard one of them banging on the lighthouse—boom! Big ol’ clangin’, echoing sound! What a noise!”
“I’d like to go up and look sometime,” she said wistfully. “If they allowed it…”
“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry I brought you down here. They made it sound so good…”
She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips seemed deliciously soft to him, after dealing with cold, hard metal all day. “Miluji tě!” she whispered. Czech for “I love you.”
“Me too, kid!” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. She was a small woman, nestling easily against him.
Around the crowded bunk room, people muttered and argued and bitched in three, maybe four different languages: the singsong of Chinese, the bubbling flow of Spanish, and especially the sarcastic brassiness of Brooklyn English.
“Whadya doin’ with ya boots under my bunk over heah? I look like I got room for your shit under my bunk fa cryin’ out loud?”
“Someone fucking stole the last of my scented fucking soap! You know how hard it is to get that shit? It’s probably you, Morry…”
“The fuck it was!”
“Somebody got into my lockbox! I had my last EVE hypo in there and it’s gone!”
“Whatya talkin’ about, you’re the one stole my plasmids! I had a New Skills I was gonna inject for the job tomorrow!”
Frightened by the shouting, Mascha came to sit with her back against her dad’s legs. She made the little dolls clack together, singing loudly to drown out the sound of all those heated voices. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!”
Someone in the far corner shouted, but Sam couldn’t make out what they said. He caught a flash, heard a crackle, smelled ozone—a shout of pain and a flare of blue light.
A ball of fire sizzled across the room, between the bunks, and charred the wall on the left.
“Mama! Daddy!” Mascha whimpered, climbing up on the bed behind them to peek over her mother’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“Someone’s messing with those plasmids!” Mariska whispered, her voice choked with fear. “They’re way over there, little one, on the other side of the room—we’ll be safe here.”
“Stay at the bunk,” Sam told her firmly. Mariska tried to hold him back, but he pulled away. He had to know what was going on. If they were throwing fireballs, the whole place could catch—plenty of flammables in Artemis. They were a ways from the doors to the suite and could surely burn alive before they got out. A mighty peculiar way to die considering they were deep underwater. But he’d heard of men burning alive in submarines in the war.
He moved carefully to steal a look around the corner of the Ming family’s double bunk and saw the two men quarrelling in the far corner of the room near the row of circular blue-lit ports looking out into the sea.
“Just get outta my face or the next one’ll toast you, Griggs!” Babcock shouted, jabbing an angry finger at the smaller man. Babcock was a tall man with fat cheeks and patchy hair, greasy coveralls. He had one of the odd skin reactions people got from plasmid use, this one on his scalp, making an ugly mesh of red welts. Part of his hair had fallen out around it.
Toby Griggs was squared off with him—a puny, fox-faced fellow, hair slicked back; he had a tart way of talking and a lively sense of humor. Sam had always kind of liked Toby for his spunk. Toby worked as a salesman in one of the shops off Fort Frolic and still had his wrinkly green-and-black-checked suit on.
“Back off or I’ll electrocute you, Babcock!” Toby crowed as energy crackled between the fingers of his raised right hand. “I’ll strap you in the electric chair standin’ up!”
Sam wasn’t surprised that Toby had spent his paycheck on a plasmid from Fontaine Futuristics—Toby had been talking about how a good plasmid could be an equalizer. He was a little guy and didn’t like to be bullied.
But Babcock had always seemed levelheaded—and he had two small girls to think of—plump little twins. Yet there was Babcock, using Incinerate!, making a ball of fire appear in his hands.
Toby Griggs had a look in his eyes that made Sam think of a rooster back home on the ranch about to jab a rival with its beak—that mean glitter in its little eyeballs. As for Babcock, it looked to Sam like the mesh of red welts on his head was
pulsing in rhythm with his angry panting. A wavery column of hot air rose from the fire flickering over Babcock’s hands. Strange that the flames emanating from his fingers didn’t burn them—but plasmids were like that. It seemed to Sam that heavy plasmid use made people into something like rattlesnakes, not hurt by their own venom.
Toby and Babcock danced around each other, teeth bared, wild-eyed, drool running from the corners of their mouths, energies simmering in their raised hands. To Sam their threats sounded like babbling; like they were barely aware of what they were saying.
“Threatening me, Babcock?” Toby howled. “Is that right? Is it? I’m tired of you big slobs pushing me around! Why do you think I paid good money for this plasmid? I may not eat for a week, but I have power to keep plug uglies like you from throwing your weight around! I’m a new man! I can feel it! I’m no one to screw with now, Babcock! Back off or die!”
“Die? Me? I can burn you to a cinder! I swore I’d defend my family against anyone who threatened them, and I’ll do it!”
“No one’s threatening your family! You’ve been getting nutty from the moment you got that plasmid!” Toby snarled. “You can’t handle it! Maybe you took too much EVE and not enough ADAM—ya don’t know what you’re doing! You’re nuts, Babcock! Batty, crackers, crazy! Back off or I’ll put a charge in you that’ll turn your head into a thousand-watt lightbulb!”
“How are you gonna do that when you’re a burned-up cinder, Griggs, huh? Answer me that!”
Fire whirled restlessly, roaring in Babcock’s hands, as if it were eager to destroy.
Toby Griggs growled to himself and took the offensive. He twisted his shoulders about, grimacing with insane concentration. Electricity writhed from his fingers, crackling through the air at Babcock, just as Babcock’s wife—a pudgy, mousy-haired woman in slippers and a loose blue frock—came rushing up to him on her short legs, throwing her stubby arms around him. “Noooo, Harold!” she yelled. “Don’t do that! You’ll get us killed!”
Then she let out a pealing shriek as the Electro Bolt struck her and Babcock at once … an extra-big bolt of blue-white lightning—everything Toby Griggs could summon up.
Onlookers screamed as Babcock and his wife went rigid. The two of them were doing an absurd little dance together, locked in a fatal embrace as the current raged through them, sparking blue from their bared teeth. Mrs. Babcock’s hair stood on end; her dress caught fire …
Their eyes smoked and then boiled out of their heads. Their faces contorted.
The charge burst and sparks flew into the walls and floor as Mr. and Mrs. Babcock, flesh fused in a grotesque mock of marriage, fell in a limp, smoldering heap.
“Oh my God,” Sam muttered, staring at them. “They’re dead! Toby Griggs, what have you done!”
“You—you all saw it!” Toby said shrilly, backing away from the gathering crowd between the bunks. “He threw a fireball at my head! He was raving, completely out of his gourd! He was on a plasmid high! He can’t handle his plasmids, and he just … he tried to … tried to kill me! He…”
Then Toby bolted, dodging past grasping hands, out the front door of the suites.
Two little girls, the five-year-old Babcock twins, came tiptoeing up together, clutching each other in life as their parents clutched each other in death.
“Mommy?” quavered one little girl.
“Daddy?” quavered the other.
Two little girls. All alone now. Orphans. Two little sisters …
Fontaine Futuristics, Rapture
1955
“We have too few sea slugs,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, squinting into a microscope at a dead gastropod, as Frank Fontaine entered lab 23. These new research digs were bigger, roomier, with ports and windows, levels, and a balcony-walk looking down on the central concourse of Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum turned, frowning thoughtfully to Fontaine. “Only special gastropod works for ADAM mutagen and base for EVE … and these, all gone.”
“We’ll have to cut back plasmid production,” Fontaine said gloomily, looking at the remaining sea slugs squirming in the aquarium. Ugly little fuckers. “Couldn’t we breed the little bastards? Create more sea slugs with, what do you call it, animal husbandry?”
“Perhaps in time. But very slow process, much experimentation, maybe years. Better is to increase individual sea-slug production of mutagen—of ADAM. This can be done more quickly—if we use host.”
“A host? Oh … Maybe we can hijack a ship, send you down the sailors.”
