Fontaine—he said I had to give him a percentage. My ma always said so: I get stubborn—and I told him to go to hell on a sled. He tells that Reggie to knock me around.”
Sofia clucked her tongue sympathetically, and wrote, No recourse for those stricken by bad luck. No WPA here. Nothing to catch those who fall. Enormous potential for social ferment.
“You’re in my care now,” Sofia said soothingly. Her heart was wrenched at Margie’s story. “I can even offer you a job.”
“What kinda work?”
“Gardening, assisting. I intend to start a new program I’m calling Dionysus Park. Nothing you’ll have to be ashamed of. But I will need something from you. I need your trust. Your complete trust.”
Margie sniffled, and her eyes welled with tears. “Gee, if you’ll help me—gosh, you got it, Doc! I’ll trust you from here to the stars!”
“Good!” Sofia smiled.
If you could get people to trust you, really trust you—you would get their loyalty too.
And she would need loyalty, unthinking loyalty, for what she had in mind. A gradual revolution, first in mind and then in fact—transforming Rapture from within …
Between Neptune’s Bounty and Olympus Heights
1951
Frank Fontaine felt like a fat kid with the keys to a candy store.
Gliding through the sea in his private, radio-controlled bathysphere, from Neptune’s Bounty to the station for Olympus Heights and Mercury Suites—past neon signs for several shops, including one of his own—Fontaine reflected on what a feast Rapture was for a man like him. Ryan kept business regulations to the absolute minimum. If you had enough Rapture dollars to hire a space from Ryan Industries, you could open pretty much any business you wanted. Fontaine had even cultivated one of Ryan’s bookkeepers, Marjorie Dustin. As long as he diddled Marjorie every so often and kicked her some cash, she cheerfully added forty percent, on paper, to his fresh fish take—Ryan Industries was paying for forty percent more fish than they received.
He knew Ryan had men keeping an eye on him. That very morning Fontaine had spotted that Russian thug Karlosky following him through the Lower Concourse. Ryan was setting up security cameras around Rapture. Not a lot of them yet, but more were coming—and Ryan controlled them. Hard to keep a secret for long from those cameras.
Fontaine watched an enormous fish with a gigantic mouth swim past. He had no idea what kind it was—it swiveled an eye to look through his bathysphere port, seeming intrigued. Fontaine shook his head, amused at how much he’d grown accustomed to living in a giant aquarium. Maybe someday, when he’d gotten control of Rapture, he could use the undersea city as his base for forays onto dry land. He’d always have a place to escape to, where the cops would never find him …
Fontaine caught a glimpse of one of his own subs sliding by below, heading toward the underwater wharf entrance, dragging a net full of glistening silvery fish. Silver—like silver dollars. Cash just swam along in the sea, and all you had to do was find some sucker to scoop it up for you. Sometimes he thought he was the only guy in the world who wasn’t a sucker.
People in Rapture were getting sick of eating fish. Fontaine had started smuggling in beef, which was all but impossible to get in Rapture otherwise. Shortage was opportunity. A lot of these saps were even feeling short on religion, so Fontaine brought in Bibles. Which was sure to make Ryan angry. Ryan hated religion—whereas Fontaine simply laughed at it.
The bathysphere arrived at the station, locked into place, and Fontaine emerged. He hurried past a group of snazzy partiers heading through the Metro for one of the nightclubs. The overhead lights were dimming, as they were designed to do in the evening, to give people in Rapture a more normal sense of night and day.
Fontaine took a tram up to Olympus Heights, and then the elevator to his place in Mercury Suites. He arrived just in time to grab a quick bite before his meeting. He walked through the marble-lined rooms, past small bronze statues of dancing women and the comforting paintings of New York City scenes. He did miss New York.
He sat at a marble-topped, gold-legged table by the big window looking out on the blue, lamplit sea, where glowing purple jellyfish wafted by like skirts on invisible dancing girls.
His cook Antoine made him beef bourguignon with seaweed and a few lonely leafs of lettuce on the side. He drank a glass of a pretty dull Worley wine, and then the doorbell rang. Reggie let them in.
“Da boss’s in here,” Reggie said.
Reggie ushered Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum into the sitting room. “Keep an eye on the door, Reggie,” Fontaine said. “We don’t wanna be interrupted…”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Dr. Yi Suchong was still wearing a long white lab coat over a shabby suit peppered with rusty spots that looked like bloodstains. Brigid Tenenbaum wore a calf-length blue dress. She walked somewhat awkwardly in red pumps, clearly unused to them. She was a young woman—the wunderkind they’d called her. Her face, however, its angularity reflecting Belorussia, was marked by experience. There was a cold distance in it. Fontaine understood that distance. He didn’t let anyone close to him either. But there was something almost robotic in her movements. And she never met his eyes, though sometimes he felt her watching him.
She obviously dressed up for the meeting, with a touch of lipstick, awkwardly applied. She wasn’t so bad, despite her tobacco-stained teeth and chewed-down fingernails.
As they sat on ornate sofas across from each other, Fontaine ran a hand over his bald head, wondering if he should grow out his hair—but women seemed to like him bald. “May I smoke, please?” she asked.
“Sure you can. Have one of mine.” He passed her the ornate silver cigarette box he kept on the coral and glass coffee table.
She took a cigarette with trembling fingers, inserting it into an ivory holder she produced from a small pocket in her dress. Fontaine lit it with a silver lighter shaped cunningly like a seahorse. She glanced at him as she blew smoke toward the ceiling—then looked quickly away.
Both of the scientists, sitting widely apart, seemed quite stiff and formal. Seemed like they didn’t trust him. They’d get over it when he started shoveling mounds of money over them. Something nice and cozy about a blanket of cash.
Suchong was a lean Korean, wearing wire-rim glasses. He must’ve been twice Tenenbaum’s age. She didn’t at all seem in awe of him, though he had a string of degrees.
“How about some wine?” Fontaine asked.
She said yes and Suchong said no at precisely the same instant. Suchong laughed nervously. Tenenbaum just stared fixedly at the end of her cigarette.
Fontaine got wine for himself and her and said, “Dr. Suchong—I understand you’ve been working for Ryan Industries.”
Suchong sighed. “Suchong works for himself. There is the Suchong Institute and Laboratories. But—contracts with Ryan and Sinclair, yes…”
“And Miss Tenenbaum—you’re working … as a free agent?”
“Yes. This is a good description.” She looked past him, over his shoulder, as if she were trying to give the impression of looking at him without quite being able to.
“This is where I say, You’re all wondering why I called you here,” Fontaine said, putting down his wineglass. “I asked you two here because I’m thinking there’s bigger opportunities in this science stuff than I ever thought of. I’ve got people who work for Ryan giving me the inside skinny. What I hear, you two are feeling somewhat frustrated.”
Tenenbaum bobbed her head, her eyes flickering at everything but Fontaine. “This is true, what you say. Ryan says work on anything—but research costs money. Financial support is, what is the word—inconsistent.” She flicked her eyes at Suchong. “Dr. Suchong does not wish to make Mr. Ryan angry—but we both need … more!”
Suchong frowned. “Woman, do not speak for me.” But he didn’t deny it was true.
They were ripe and ready to pluck. “Well now,” Fontaine said, “given the right situation, the three of us could start our own little research team. Suchong, I understand you’re working on a new kind of tobacco?”
“Not precisely.” Suchong’s accent was heavy—it took Fontaine a moment to translate plee-cise-lee into precisely. “Suchong alters genetics of another plant to make nicotine. Make nicotine in sugarcane! We will extract and make ‘Nico-treats.’ Nicotine candy!”
“Clever!” Fontaine said, grinning. “Yeah, I’ve been reading up on this whole genetics business. You could make all kinds of things by switching genes around, seems to me. Maybe miniature cattle we could keep down here somewhere for fresh beef, yeah? And from what I hear, you could switch a person’s genes around. You could make changes in people, right?”
Her frown deepened into a scowl, which she directed at the floor. “What do you know of that?”
“Just rumors. That you’re paying for some kind of special sea slug. I hear you’ve bought ten of them…”
She nodded once, briskly. “I would buy more if I could. No ordinary sea slug. This species is a living miracle! I asked Ryan to help fund these experiments. He was not listening.” She sniffed, taking her cigarette butt from the holder and dropping it
vaguely toward the ashtray. It fell onto the table and smoldered there. She gnawed at a nail, her eyes unfocused, seeming halfway in another world, oblivious as Fontaine reflexively put the cigarette out in the ashtray.
Making a sudden awkward pushing gesture with her hand, she went on, “Ryan, he put me off! ‘Maybe later,’ all this sort of thing.”
“You on the point of a breakthrough?”
“Perhaps.” She glanced at Suchong. He shrugged.
Fontaine smiled. “Then it’s something I want to invest in. I’ll pay well for a stake—and Ryan doesn’t have to know about it. When you’re ready, you can come and work for me completely. Both of you! I figure this genetics dodge could be the wave of the future—and I’ve got a few things in mind. The two of you could work on it—Suchong could bring you into his lab, and I could pay your salary, for now … Maybe get this guy Alexander involved. Only I don’t want Ryan to know about any of this. I want it on the QT, see. He’ll move in and take anything we come up with otherwise—and he’ll find some excuse to keep all the rights to himself.”
Tenenbaum smiled crookedly. “Meanwhile, Ryan pays for Suchong’s expensive lab, yes?”
“Why not let him pay for the big stuff?” Fontaine said, toying with his wineglass. “I’m doing good here—but Ryan controls more resources in Rapture. He’s got deeper pockets. For now.”
“Suchong needs more research money, yes!” said the Korean abruptly. “But also need something else.” He put his hands on his knees, leaned stiffly forward, his eyes washing out behind his glasses as they caught the sea lights from the window. “Yes. We both think of altering human genes. Difficult to do without humans! What Suchong really needs is—young humans! Their cells have very much more possibility. But—everyone crazy about children! Overprotect them!” He made a face. “Vile creatures, children—”
“Don’t much like kids, eh?”
“Suchong grow up in a household where my father is very poor servant, only children there the brats of rich man. They treat me like dog! Children are cruel. Must be trained like animals!”
“Children—all are lost creatures,” Brigid Tenenbaum said softly, her voice almost inaudible.
“You were pretty young when you started working as a scientist, Miss Tenenbaum,” Fontaine prompted. Understand what makes ’em tick, and you can wind up their clock. Set ’em for whatever time you want. “How’d that happen?”
She took a sip of wine, lit another cigarette, and seemed to gaze into another time. “I was at German prison camp, only sixteen years old. Important German doctor; he makes experiment. Sometime, he makes scientific error. I tell him of this error, and this makes him angry. But then he asks, ‘How can a child know such a thing?’ I tell him, ‘Sometimes, I just know.’ He screams at me, ‘Then why tell me?’” She smiled stiffly. “‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to do such things, at least you should do them properly!’” She took a drag on her cigarette and made a ghostly little smile—and a ghost of cigarette smoke rose from her parted lips as she let the smoke drift slowly out of her lungs.
Suchong rolled his eyes. “She tells that story many times.”
Fontaine cleared his throat. “I don’t know as I can get you the kind of experimental subjects you’re talking about right away, Doc,” Fontaine said. “Might draw too much attention. But what I can get you is some grown-up guys who’ve run afoul of the rules around here. Couple of guys disappear from Detention, who’s going to care? We’ll give out they escaped and got drowned trying to get out of the city.”
Suchong made a single brisk nod. “That can be useful.”
“So—supposing you could find a way to control genes,” Fontaine said, toying with his wineglass. “Is it true what I heard—that genes control how we age?”
Again Suchong said no and Tenenbaum said yes at the same moment.
Suchong grunted in irritation. “This is Tenenbaum theory. Genes only one factor!”
“Genes, they are almost everything,” Tenenbaum said, sniffing.
“But I mean—you could help a man stay young,” Fontaine persisted. “Maybe change his body in some way. Give him more hair, stronger arms, a longer … you know. If we could sell that … and give a guy, I don’t know, more talents … more … abilities.”
“Yes,” Tenenbaum said. “This is something my mentor talked about. To enhance a man’s powers—make him der Übermensch—the superman. A super man—or woman! Many risks in this. But yes. With time—and much experimentation.”
When Suchong get money and experimental subjects, Mr. Fontaine?” Suchong asked.
Fontaine shrugged. “I’ll get you the first research payment tomorrow. We’ll work out a contract, just between us…”
Fontaine paused, reflecting that if he had to give them shares in the business, it might cost him a lot of money in the long run. But once he had the basic products started, the technology going, he could hire other researchers cheaper. And then he could get rid of Suchong and Tenenbaum. One way or another.
He smiled his best, most convincing, most openhearted smile at them. Never failed to lure the suckers in. “I’ll get you the contract and the money fast—but we’ve got to do it carefully. ‘Free’ enterprise or not—Ryan watches everything…
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