“Mr. Ryan’s been watching your operation out here. Seen you build it up, edge out the competition—make a success of it. And you’ve done a good job supplying us. But you’re nosy. You’ve been asking questions about what’s down below—” He hooked a thumb at the sea and grinned unpleasantly. “You even bribed some of our platform workers with booze…”
“I just want to be part of what you’re building down there. I sent several letters—”
“Sure, we got the letters. Mr. Ryan’s read ’em.” Sullivan looked the trawler over. “You got anything left to drink on this boat, besides water?”
Fontaine took out the flask, passed it over. “Help yourself…”
Sullivan opened the flask, drank deeply. He passed it back empty.
“Listen,” Fontaine said. “I’ll do what I have to—anything it takes to make my way … in Rapture.”
Sullivan pursed his lips. “You know—once you go where Mr. Ryan is, you ain’t coming back. You live there; you work there. Maybe you do real good there. But you don’t leave there. There ain’t a whole lot of rules. But that’s one of them. And that takes commitment, Fontaine. You ready for that?”
Fontaine looked out to sea, as if he were thinking, puzzling out some great truth. Then he nodded to himself. There’d been a kid at the orphanage—whenever the nuns asked him if he wanted to please God, the kid had looked at them, all mistylike. The kid had ended up a priest. Fontaine put that simple, misty-eyed belief on his own face. And he said, “All the way, Chief.”
Sullivan gave him a long, close look—and then grunted. “Well—Mr. Ryan liked your letters. And he’s inclined to offer you a place in Rapture. Says you’ve earned it, sticking at your vigil out here. I guess we’re taking a chance on you. Same offer goes for your men.”
“So—when do we go? Down to Rapture, I mean…”
Sullivan chuckled and turned to look at the sea, then nodded to himself. “Right now.”
And at exactly that moment, the crew of the trawler gasped and pointed—seeing a submarine suddenly rise to the surface in a roaring wash of froth just forty yards off the port bow.
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