John Shirley - BioShock - Rapture

“There’s no use trying to say you’ll only take the job if you stay on the ship—it’s what Greavy says that goes! If he says you go down, you go down!”

“Then you go down in my place—and you wrestle with the devil! It’s unholy, what he’s tryin’ to do down there!”

“If you leave here now, matey, you don’t get paid a penny more! Get aboard this instant—we sail in ten minutes—or you can say good-bye to your contract!”

“Two weeks salary for my life? Pah!”

“You won’t die down there. We had one run of bad luck is all—”

“I say it again: Pah! Good-bye to you, Mr. Forester!”

The deckhand stalked off—and Gorland realized the ship’s officer was glaring at him with unconcealed suspicion. “You—what are you doing hanging ’round here?”

Gorland flicked his cigarette butt into the sea. He grinned drunkenly. “Just having a smoke, matey.”

He set off to follow the deckhand, wondering what he’d stumbled onto. It was like a trail of coins gleaming on a moonlit path. If he kept following the shiny little clues he’d find the moneybag they were leaking from.

Gorland knew this trail could lead him to trouble, maybe jail. But he was a restless man, unhappy if he wasn’t out on an edge. He either stayed busy working the game or lost himself in a woman’s arms. Otherwise he started thinking too much. Like about his old man dumping him in that orphanage when he was a boy.

The deckhand turned the corner of one of the loading docks to go up the access road. It was a foggy night, and there was no one else on the short side road to the avenue. No one to see…

Frank Gorland had two approaches to getting what he wanted from life. Long-term planning—and creative improvisation. He saw a possibility—a foot-long piece of one-inch-diameter metal pipe, fallen off some truck. It was just lying in the gutter, calling to him. He scooped up the piece of pipe and hurried to catch up with the slouching shape of the deckhand.

He stepped up behind the man, grabbed his collar, jerked him slightly off balance without knocking him over.

“Hey!” the man yelped.

Gorland held the deckhand firmly in place and pressed the end of the cold metal pipe to the back of his neck. “Freeze!” Gorland growled, altering his voice. He put steel and officiousness into it. “You turn around, mister, you try to run, and I’ll pull the trigger and separate your backbones with a bullet!”

The man froze. “Don’t—don’t shoot! What do you want? I don’t have but a dollar on me!”

“You think I’m some crooked dock rat? I’m a federal agent! Now don’t even twitch!”

Gorland let go of the deckhand’s collar, reached into his own coat pocket, took out his wallet, flipped it open, flashed the worthless special-officer badge he used when he needed bogus authority. He flicked it in front of the guy’s face, not letting him have a real look at it.

“You see that?” Gorland demanded.

“Yes sir!”

He put the wallet away and went on, “Now hear this, sailor: you’re in deep shit, for working on that crooked project of Ryan’s!”

“They—they told me it was legal! All legal!”

“They told you it was a secret too, right? You think it’s legal to keep secrets from Uncle Sam?”

“No—I guess not. I mean—Well I don’t know nothing about it. Just that they’re building something out there. And it’s a dangerous job, down them tunnels under the sea.”

“Tunnels? Under the sea? For what?”

“For the construction. The foundations! I don’t know why he’s doing it. None of the men do—he tells ’em only what they need to know. Only, I heard Greavy talking to one of them scientist types! All I can tell you is what I heard…”

“And that was—?”

“That Ryan is building a city under the sea down there!”

“A what!”

“Like, a colony under the goddamn ocean! And they’re laying out all kindsa stuff down there! It don’t seem possible, but he’s doing it! I heard he’s spending hunnerds of millions, might be getting into billions ! He’s spending more money than any man ever spent buildin’ anything!”

Gorland’s mouth went dry as he contemplated it, and his heart thumped.

“Where is this thing?”

“Out in the North Atlantic—they keep us belowdecks when we go, so we don’t see where exactly. I ain’t even sure! Cold as death out there, it is! But he’s got the devil’s own heat coming up—steam comes up someways, and sulfur fumes, and the like! Some took sick from them fumes! Men have died down there, buildin’ that thing!”

“How do you know how much he’s spending?”

“I was carryin’ bags into Mr. Greavy’s office, on the platform ship, and I was curious, like. I hears ’em talkin’…”

“The what kind of ship?”

“That’s what they call it. Platform ship! A platform to launch their slinkers! The Olympian there, it supplies the platform ships!”

“Slinkers, that what you said?”

“Bathyspheres, they is!”

“Bathyspheres! If you’re lying to me…”

“No officer, I swear it!”

“Then get out of here! Run! And tell no one you spoke to me—or you go right to jail!”

The man went scurrying away, and Gorland was left in a state of mute amazement.

Ryan is building a city under the sea.

Ten A.M. and Bill McDonagh wanted a cigarette. He had a pack of smokes calling to him from his jacket pocket, but he held off. He was right bloody nervous about this meeting with Andrew Ryan. He was sitting literally on the edge of the padded velvet waiting-room chair outside the door of Ryan’s office trying to relax, his report on the tunnel in a big brown envelope on his lap.

Bill glanced at Elaine working diligently at her desk: a sturdy brunette in a gray-blue dress suit. She was about twenty-nine, a self-contained woman with snappy blue eyes—and that upturned nose that reminded him of his mum. But the jiggle when she shifted in her seat—that sure wasn’t like his bony old mum. He’d watched Elaine walking about the office whenever he could do it discreetly. She had slightly wide shoulders and hips, long legs. One of those leggy American women like Mary Louise, but smarter, judging from the brief contact he’d had with her. Bet she liked to dance. Maybe this time he’d get up his nerve and ask her…

Bill made himself sit back in the seat, suddenly feeling weary—he was still knackered from staying up past midnight supervising the night crew in the tunnel. But he was glad for the work—he was making far more money than he’d ever made before. He’d moved up to a nicer flat on the west side of Manhattan after his first month working for Ryan, and he was thinking of buying a car. The work was sometimes like plumbing writ large. But the gigantic pipes in the tunnel project weighed tons.

Maybe he should talk to Elaine. Ryan didn’t respect a man without enterprise. Didn’t matter what the enterprise was in.

Bill cleared his throat. “Slow day, innit, Elaine?”

“Hm?” She looked up as if surprised he was there. “Oh—yes, it has been a bit slow.” She looked at him, blushed again, bit her lip, and looked back at her paperwork.

He was encouraged. If a woman blushed looking at you that was a good sign. “Things are slow, got to make ’em brisker, I always say. And what’s brisker than the jitterbug?”

She looked at him innocently. “Jitterbug?”

“Yeah. Fancy a jitterbug sometime?”

“You mean—you’d like to go dancing…?” She glanced at the door to Ryan’s inner office, and lowered her voice. “Well, I might … I mean, if Mr. Ryan doesn’t… I’m not sure how he feels about employees who…”