BioShock by John Shirley

Author:John Shirley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

12

Artemis Suites

1955

“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.

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