Audio Transcript – 'Answers'
[I'm a fool. I'm blind, and I'm a fool. It's just as the Luteces have always said, Booker, the answers are always dependent upon the angle of one's perspective. I just needed to look! Cohen's museum tickets... 'A little outing,' he said, but the museum at Point Prometheus has been turned into a proving ground for Dr. Alexander's Protectors, the same Protectors spliced from the inmates of the penal colony owned by Sinclair! And if Cohen's agents are the ones visiting the orphanages, then Fontaine's people have no reason to suspect the treachery. Cohen has an affiliation with Andrew Ryan, that's true, but he has no stake in the plasmid industry. It's a perfect deception: the only man able to steal the Little Sisters is the man who doesn't need them.]
Kyle Fitzpatrick shifted his weight from foot to foot impatiently. "Elizabeth, I don't think anyone is going to answer that phone."
Elizabeth sighed. She had forwarded a message to Frank Fontaine via the pnuemo line early that morning, outlining her conversation with Wildemar Noble and what little she knew of Cohen's child trafficking racket. She included a time she would be available for a telephone call. But not only had Fontaine failed to acknowledge the message, the operator had informed Elizabeth several times that the line to Fontaine's Department Store and to Fontaine Futuristics had been completely severed. For some inexplicable reason, Frank Fontaine was in a communications blackout.
"He'll pick up," she murmured, not quite believing it herself.
Fitzpatrick knitted his eyebrows. "I thought you said you were using my call card to phone your aunt?"
"She'll pick up."
"Elizabeth..."
The connection clicked, and the line went dead. Elizabeth slammed the phone on its cradle. The backstage attendants all jumped. Fitzpatrick took a wary step back.
Frank Fontaine had spies all over Rapture. In all likelihood, one of them had overheard her conversation with Mr. Noble at the Fighting McDonagh's the previous evening. If Elizabeth had uncovered anything connected to the missing Little Sisters, she anticipated Fontaine being the first to know about it. His silence was bewildering.
Every time Elizabeth thought she was one step ahead of the city and its intrigues, she stumbled. Even with the Doors, she felt blind, jumping from one disjointed fragment of the truth to the next. The light was fading, and the path was receding beneath the shadows. And this time, Elizabeth didn't believe the interference was her employer's doing. He was not a man easily silenced, and the prospect of dealing with someone formidable enough to muzzle Fontaine gave Elizabeth significant pause for thought.
"You have a performance in five minutes," Fitzpatrick reminded her. "You made last night's show by the skin of your teeth. Another close call like that and Sander will be displeased."
"Displeased might be too pretty a term."
"My point exactly. Curtain call in five."
Elizabeth brushed a few errant strands of lint from her crimson dress. When she looked at herself in the mirror, the bright-eyed girl from Monument Island wasn't the one looking back at her. There were new lines creasing the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes looked murky and tired. She felt thin, like a paper person creased and worn at the edges. Elizabeth wondered what Booker would think if he could see her now.
Elizabeth turned away from the mirror. Booker wouldn't think anything. Booker DeWitt was dead, and the dead forfeited their right to any opinion of the living.
"I'm ready," she intoned.
Kyle Fitzpatrick nodded.
The heavy velvet curtain ascended. The stage lights, high above her head in the rafters, illuminated a column of dust motes pirouetting in the air, glittering in tendrils of gold. Elizabeth looked out into the packed Fleet Hall. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she recognized a few faces, including the Luteces, sitting in the front row, watching her expectantly. They had come to every performance, like attentive parents. But as she searched the private theater boxes, she didn't see the clean-shaven man with the amber eyes. Perhaps it had been too much to hope for Frank Fontaine's appearance.
Sander Cohen was saying something to the audience, but Elizabeth wasn't listening. She watched his arms perambulate through the air, his gesticulations and grand theatrical gestures, and she thought he looked like a bird with his wings clipped, trying desperately to flap away.
After the raucous round of applause from the audience, Elizabeth stepped towards the microphone. The pit orchestra began to play...
"See the pyramids beyond the Nile... watch the sunrise, from a tropic isle... just remember, darling, all the while... you belong to me..."
Elizabeth felt her mouth forming the words, heard herself singing, as if from a great distance. She continued to search the audience, jumping between the same patient eyes and the same polite expressions, frozen like porcelain under the light. Mannequins strapped to their seats, held captive by Cohen's art. But then Elizabeth saw someone standing in the back of the theater, near the exit. She struggled to distinguish his features, silhouetted against the open doorway, but she could tell it wasn't Frank Fontaine: too much hair. It was a young man, tall and dark. He rested against the doorframe, the burning nub of a cigarette flashing briefly in the darkness. Her gaze lingered, and the man watched her.
"And I'll be so alone without you... Maybe you'll be lonesome, too..."
Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch, and then the Doors began to open. The rear of the auditorium telescoped closer, pushing across the thresholds of all realities, and the silhouetted man was suddenly enormous, the largest shadow in the universe. He eclipsed the audience and the Fleet Hall, and through him, Elizabeth saw Rapture. She stood at a window, in a room no one would ever find, unless they already knew where to look. And the city burned around her. Currents of boiling water surged against the glass. In one of the buildings, an explosion shattered the outer hull. Fire and water billowed into helixes of bubbles. The lights flickered, and then the world went dark. There was silence. And standing next to Elizabeth was the man, the shadow. He watched Andrew Ryan's city smolder, and he took a drag of his cigarette, and he was happy.
... he aims to destroy me, I GOT A NEW GODDAMN FACE and to destroy my city RAPTURE, PARADISE OF THE CONFIDENCE MAN to question is to surrender... I will not question...
"Fly the ocean in a silver plane, see the jungle when it's wet with rain... just remember till you're home again... you belong to me..."
She took a deep breath, and allowed the audience's applause to shutter the Doors. Elizabeth bowed. When she looked up again, the man in the back of the theater was gone.
Elizabeth stepped back as the curtain fell. The pit band began the intermission, and the audience stirred in their seats. Fitzpatrick rushed over to her.
"Kyle," she asked breathlessly, "shouldn't you be on piano for the intermission?"
The young man's face was slick with sweat. He looked alarmingly pale. "Elizabeth... there's a man in the hall who wants to see you."
Elizabeth swallowed. Perhaps the bald crook had shone his face after all. "Who?"
"Some big old Russian spook. I've seen friendlier-looking types. Sander is with him."
Or perhaps not. "I see."
"And they said... well, they emphasized haste. Before the next act."
"Then you had better get outside, Kyle. I'll handle this."
He looked happy to leave her to it. Before he disappeared behind the curtain, he turned to her. "Elizabeth?"
"Yes?"
"Be careful. Please."
Elizabeth nodded. She stepped through the backstage entrance into the service corridor. Standing next to Sander Cohen was a huge man who looked about ready to burst out of his dinner jacket. He had a brutal, scarred face and belligerent eyes. He reminded Elizabeth of Comstock's metal patriots.
"Elizabeth dear," Cohen purred, "this is Mr. Karlosky. His esteemed employer wishes to have a quiet word. In private."
Elizabeth pointedly ignored Cohen. "May I ask who your employer is, Mr. Karlosky?"
"You'll know him," Karlosky said gruffly, but not unkindly. "You ain't in trouble or nothing; boss just wants to meet you. He's waiting for you upstairs."
Elizabeth's instincts told her that she wouldn't have much say in the matter, so she didn't push the issue. But as she started to follow Karlosky to the theater boxes, Cohen grabbed her arm. His grip was unnaturally strong, and when he pulled her close, Elizabeth could see a band of yellow in his hazel eyes. SportsBoost plasmid. Cohen had been splicing.
His powdered face cracked into a dangerous sneer. Beneath the makeup, his skin had already begun to break out in shingled hives.
"If you fuck this up, you recalcitrant little bitch," he snarled, "I'll tear your face off with my teeth!"
Before Elizabeth could bury a knee in Cohen's groin, he shoved her away. She could feel her arm bruising. In the dim hallway, Cohen's eyes glowed yellow, and red light snapped between his fingertips.
Elizabeth hurried after Karlosky. As she climbed the stairs, she felt Cohen's gaze burning into the back of her skull. She heard him, screaming in her ears:
... it's my curse! It's my fucking curse! I want to take the ears off! Please! Take them off! Please...
Elizabeth shivered.
"Hey, miss? Over here."
Karlosky stood outside the executive suite. Two more armed guards were posted on either side of the door, tommy guns held across their chests. They seemed on edge. As the other patrons meandered back to their boxes, the guards peered at them suspiciously. Karlosky pushed past his colleagues and hammered on the door. "She's here, sir."
Elizabeth heard an indistinct reply from inside. Then Karlosky pushed the door open, and gestured for Elizabeth to enter.
The two seats nearest the banister were occupied. In one sat a blond woman with a pinched, myopic face. She fingered her pearl necklace as she stole glances between Elizabeth and her companion, the dark-haired man in the adjacent chair.
Elizabeth stood there awkwardly for a few moments while the man took a measured sip of his martini.
"Diane, my dear," he finally spoke; Elizabeth immediately recognized the voice, "could you spare us a moment?"
"Andrei––"
"Please, do it for me. We shan't be a moment."
A blond woman mumbled something to the affirmative and left her seat. She didn't look at Elizabeth as she passed, continuing to fiddle with her expensive necklace. When the woman was gone, the man in the chair spoke again:
"Sander Cohen's work... doesn't always resound with the general populace, I'm afraid, but his new songbird has been the talk of Rapture. I had to see her for myself." Although Elizabeth couldn't see his face, she could hear his smirk. "I told Sander that if your singing was half as beautiful as you are, than we were in for a treat. "
Elizabeth caught herself rubbing her thimble for the first time in many days. "I'm pleased you enjoyed the performance, Mr. Ryan."
Andrew Ryan looked over his shoulder. Rapture's founder and the chief executive officer of Ryan Industries was a tall, dark man, impeccably groomed and well dressed. He had high cheekbones and a small, neat mustache under an aquiline nose. His eyes were palatine blue, like the ocean. There was something immutable and timeless about him, as though he had stepped from the pages of Shelley's Ozymandias. Elizabeth thought Ryan would approve of the comparison. There was little difference, she decided, between the statues and effigies dotting Rapture, and the man sitting two feet in front of her.
"Enjoyed it?" Ryan had a slight Russian accent, well suppressed. When the theater lights reflected off his martini glass, his eyes glinted. "My dear, your talent reminds me of the reason I built Rapture in the first place, so that men and women of your ability could pursue their passions unimpeded by the censor. You embody the most fundamental ideals of this city. Hearing you sing tonight was... an affirmation, as well as a privilege."
"Thank you, Mr. Ryan."
"Please, my dear, have a seat, and call me Andrew."
Elizabeth had absolutely no intention of calling him Andrew, but for the sake of politeness, she sat down in Diane McClintock's empty chair. Below them, Fitzpatrick serenaded the intermission with Cohen's Scherzo No. 7. Elizabeth watched his fingers dance across the keyboard.
"You have a lovely view from up here," she noted.
"Sander charges triple for box seats, as he ought to, but I believe the expense is cost effective."
Elizabeth merely nodded. Andrew Ryan procured a cigarette tin and a lighter from his jacket pocket, held them out to her. Elizabeth inclined her head in thanks. Ryan lit her cigarette, and Elizabeth took a long, grateful drag.
Ryan broke the silence after a few moments. "I had another reason for coming to call this evening, my dear, beyond the pleasure of your company."
"To take full advantage of your box seat view for which Cohen charges triple?"
Ryan chuckled. "Touché." Then his smile evaporated. "But... I'm afraid I come bearing bad news, which I thought was best to share with you in person.
"Your employer, Frank Fontaine, is dead. He was shot in Port Neptune early this afternoon."
Elizabeth felt something acrid slither into her lungs, and she wasn't entirely sure it was the cigarette smoke. Her knuckles whitened around the arms of the chair.
"There was a shootout at the Fisheries between my men and several dozen splicers under Fontaine's control. Fontaine himself went out guns blazing, McDonagh assures me." Ryan sipped his martini. "His assets have been confiscated, Fontaine Futuristics condemned, his accounts annulled. Fontaine was the one roach I couldn't seem to exterminate, but all I needed, it seems, was ample time to find the proper poison. So ends all parasites... regardless of their financial affluence."
"How long have you known about me?" murmured Elizabeth.
"Since Morris Lauderman told Yi Suchong about a woman appearing out of thin air in the middle of his restaurant. And as you well know, Dr. Suchong suffers from a distinct lack of discretion. It wasn't difficult for my men to keep tabs on your activities. The employees of Ryan Industries are exceedingly thorough."
"Employees." Elizabeth glowered. "You mean Sinclair."
"You're intuitive. Yes, Augustus Sinclair is what happens when spineless moral relativism is spun into a business ethic. The man has his dirty fingers in each and every pie. But I will admit, his little firm has its uses, tracking you being the least of them."
"Then why not stop me?"
"Because I chose not to. In this city, that is usually enough."
Elizabeth gave a curt laugh. "Your word is law. How positively autocratic."
"You presume to superimpose a conceit of tyranny where none exists. I allowed you to flutter through Rapture because I recognized that spying for Fontaine was not your primary intent. And to be perfectly candid," Ryan put his martini down and turned to face her, making eye contact for the first time, "you intrigue me, Elizabeth. I think you are, perhaps, the most exceptional person in my city this evening. You outfoxed Fontaine, which, frankly, does not happen. You showed no interest in his politics or his money. The logical conclusion of course is that you are pursuing your own objective in Rapture, one that supersedes Fontaine's interests as well as a concern for your own welfare. And I doubt that objective is your estimable singing career."
"Do you expect me to tell you why I'm really here, in Rapture?"
"I have spared you Fontaine's fate at the hands of Ryan Security."
"Altruism, Mr. Ryan?"
"Don't insult me. Rapture is founded upon the principles of free enterprise, free trade. I merely expect a fair exchange for services rendered. I have allowed you your liberty, and in turn, I expect you to tell me what I want to know. After all," Ryan allowed himself a thin smile, "it's not as though you have a great many alternatives."
Elizabeth tapped ash from the tip of her cigarette. "What do you want to know?"
"You were tasked with locating Fontaine's missing moppets. Going by the audio diary transcription Sinclair intercepted on the pneumo line, I take it you have succeeded?"
"You ought to know. It was Sinclair and Cohen, abducting the children to provide test subjects for Gilbert Alexander's Protector program. On your dime, I might add."
"Business, my dear, and an out-of-pocket expense I was willing to pay in order to close the books on Fontaine's little empire. And with that arrogant rascal counting the maggots, you ought to be left with a vacuum of purpose... and yet you are not. You have an agenda of your own. Why are you really here?"
Elizabeth smiled enigmatically. "I deal in debt settlement. As you said, Mr. Ryan, there ought to be an exchange for services rendered. I'm just here to collect."
"From whom?"
"The man's name is Zachary Comstock."
"And what is he to you? More than a client, I suspect, if Sinclair's reports are to be believed, which they invariably are."
Elizabeth looked away from Ryan. She could still feel him staring at her; for some reason, she was willing to be forthright with him. There was something about his demeanor that brooked no pretense. Elizabeth had no doubt that Andrew Ryan could recognize a deception as easily as Frank Fontaine could craft one.
"Comstock is my father," she said softly.
Ryan nodded. "Well, Miss Comstock, that puts you in a rather difficult position."
"Enlighten me."
"There is no one in Rapture named Zachary Comstock. I should know; I issue the housing contracts. Either you are lying to me, which I find unlikely, or you have been misled, and I am far too well acquainted with the vicissitudes of genius to believe you would allow yourself to be conned. You are looking for a man who does not exist."
"But Cohen said––"
"Sander Cohen said what you wanted to hear. Much as you said what Frank Fontaine wanted to hear, as I understand it." Ryan swirled a toothpick around the rim of his glass. "Recurrence, eh? Circles. Those who do not learn their lessons from history are doomed to repeat it."
"Spirals."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Spirals," snapped Elizabeth. "Not circles. Comstock is here. I understand that you and the truth aren't always on speaking terms, Mr. Ryan, but I have it on extremely good authority that my father is in this city. I am going to find him, even if I have to tear your precious Rapture apart. And in the meantime, let's see if I can't rattle this Great Chain of yours, unsettle Cohen's child trafficking scheme."
Ryan frowned. Exceptional or not, she tried his patience. Perhaps it wasn't strictly in line with his philosophy to shoot the girl, but it would save him quite a bit of trouble if she decided to interfere.
"I could stop you, my dear."
... a few stretched necks are a small price to pay for our ideals...
"As you so delight in reminding people, you don't have the authority. No gods or kings, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth said derisively, "only man."
"Although the Great Chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide, we have ordinances in place for dealing with quislings, and I will not permit your interfering with Sander Cohen's business interests."
"He's selling children!"
"Orphans. Waywards. Creatures who would otherwise offer no meaningful contribution to society. I will admit that Frank Fontaine showed some foresight when he built up his plasmid business, but the man never truly understood marketing. He hid the girls in his orphanages and stuck the ADAM in filthy needles. Dispensation is tantamount to administrating narcotics. I have discussed some preliminary designs for plasmid machines with Yi Suchong, and they're exactly what Rapture needs. Presented properly, those Little Sisters are marketing gold."
"If you're intending to affect a change in plasmid distribution, then that means..." Realization hit Elizabeth like a kick in the teeth; she remembered Cohen's audio diary from the previous evening, "you're planning to requisition the plasmid market. You are going to nationalize Fontaine Futuristics."
Andrew Ryan's expression was inscrutable. "It is unfortunate that such measures had to be taken... unfortunate, but necessary. Fontaine's enterprises were endangering the city. His plasmids are on the market now. I cannot pull the Great Chain from its appointed course. But I can bring it under the purview of the city, for the good of Rapture." Ryan took a deep breath. "Lamb is gone... and now Fontaine. I am finally alone."
The cigarette was beginning to make Elizabeth feel thin and cold. She felt the smoke slithering down her throat, gray and glutinous. She struggled to steady her shaking hands.
"I once knew a girl," Elizabeth said quietly, "who was taken from her rightful family, literally torn from them. Ripped apart. She was locked away in an unfamiliar place, away from all the light and life of the outside world, and in her prison, she was completely alone. Like yourself, Mr. Ryan, the girl's captors recognized her value: she was an investment for which they had paid a very high price. So they conducted experiments on her. They chained her. They changed her. And they pulled her in so many different directions that they tore a hole inside her, a singularity that went deeper than one single stratum of time and space. They created something they didn't fully understand."
Ryan looked almost charmed. "Is this your attempt at upbraiding me, Miss Comstock? With Tenenbaum and Suchong now under contract with Ryan Industries, I shan't think the Little Sisters will pose much of an intellectual mare's nest for us."
"The girl's captors thought they were creating a weapon, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth crushed her cigarette in the ashtray, watched the cinders burn, "instead, they created God."
"I believe in no tribal fetishes, no invisible man in the sky. There is no God in Rapture."
"There is, Mr. Ryan. He wears a nice suit and frequents Eve's Garden when His secretary doesn't quite turn the trick."
Ryan bristled. Elizabeth had struck a nerve.
"Perhaps Fontaine was a worm looking into the face of God. Perhaps you are right. After all, you've seen them, Miss Comstock, in the ports, in the stinking mire..." Ryan sneered, "That scoundrel's hanger-ons are a regular convention of worms! They all have mothers, fathers, people who love them. They get married, fuck their wives. What makes you think you are any different? You know nothing of this city, its people!"
"I know enough!" snapped Elizabeth. "You destroy those who oppose you and you change nothing, because they are not the problem. Perhaps Fontaine wasn't some brilliant businessman or fifth columnist, inciting the people against you... perhaps the people just didn't like Andrew Ryan very much. This Eden has a snake, Great Man, and every time you cut off one of its heads, another will grow in its place."
"Unless I were to burn the nubbin, cut out the lesion and bury it where no one would ever find it. Bury it, and salt the earth."
Elizabeth felt a sudden surge of anger. "Just like you did to that girl in Eve's Garden?"
She saw the blood rising in his face. "I loaned you the right to draw breath in my city... and I can revoke it with a word."
"By all means, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth smiled dangerously, "lock me in Persephone. Hang me from the scaffold in Apollo Square. Prove me right."
For a moment, she thought Ryan was going to crush his martini glass in his fist... or dash it across her face. But Elizabeth was not afraid. She had been afraid of Frank Fontaine, of Sander Cohen, of the shadow at the back of the Fleet Hall; she would waste no more fear on the men of Rapture, least of all a vindictive hypocrite who silenced what he could not control, who valued a leaking city above the people living in it.
Abruptly, the pressure diffused, and Andrew Ryan seemed to relax. He hid his simmering anger behind an easy smile. "You're not one of Fontaine's parasites," he said softly. "You're not one of Lamb's collectivists. You're just astoundingly naive. Has it ever occurred to you, my dear, that I am not the one standing apart from his fellow man? You apportion your own isolation to the shoulders of men like me in an attempt to ease your burden. For all your intelligence, all your spirit, you are completely alone. I have my city, Miss Comstock. What do you have?"
Elizabeth didn't answer him right away. Instead, she stared at the adjacent chair, and as the light rippled across the palls of dust, a Door cracked open, and Elizabeth peeked behind it. Where Andrew Ryan was sitting, she saw a weatherbeaten man with brown, unruly hair and blue eyes the color of a cloudless sky. His face was coarse and unshaven, his clothes rumpled, his shirt untucked. He sat above the Fleet Hall and strummed his guitar, hummed a song Elizabeth recognized for a fleeting moment, and then forgot just as quickly. He didn't say anything, but he looked at her and smiled a small, sad smile that nearly broke her heart.
"A promise, Mr. Ryan. I have my promise."
Andrew Ryan nodded. Her answer seemed to satisfy him; promises and contracts were things Ryan weighed heavily. His temper in check, he was back to his polite, genial self.
Elizabeth sighed. "So, what happens now?"
"That, my dear, is entirely your decision." He knitted his hands together; his expression turned meditative. "But if I may offer a suggestion?"
"You may."
"Stay here. Forget this futile vendetta against Cohen. Don't waste your time searching for a man who does not exist. Sing. Read your books. Pursue the knowledge I know you hunger for. Rapture could be your city... and if you so desired it," he looked at her again, and his gaze lingered, "I could be your patron." Faced with Elizabeth's silence, he continued, "We could inaugurate an era of discovery, of intellectualism, that would last forever... unwithering, undying, unhindered by law and God. A tribute to this new world we will have created together."
"Forever..." Elizabeth almost laughed. "Do you know the measure of eternity, Mr. Ryan? I do. Time isn't linear. Time is fractal, and I can see iterations of infinity where you do not exist, where Rapture naught but ash and dust, and even those left to remember your great city are long gone. You have already failed."
Elizabeth rose from her seat. Andrew Ryan rose with her.
"Thank you for the cigarette, Mr. Ryan. I hope the worms don't stain your boots."
She turned to go. Karloskyopened the door for her. In the Fleet Hall, Kyle Fitzpatrick finished hisserenade, and Andrew Ryan finished his martini.