Chapter 3 – Lighter Than Air

He drew oxygen into his lungs, not so much gasping for air as allowing it to flood him. He nearly fell over, his body limp and his legs crumbling even as they stood. He kept his footing only by the most primitive instinct to survive. He fell into the water again; he would die and the job would never be finished.

Booker DeWitt knew all of this before he could get a glimpse of his surroundings. Blinking the water out of his eyes, he saw that it was bright again, more so than when he first entered the clouds. It nearly knocked him over again from shock and exhaustion when someone grabbed him by the arm and held him steady.

"Whoa there," a crusty voice called, "careful, brother."

Shaking his head like a wet dog, Booker saw that the arm holding him was attached to another man in a robe, and pushed him off.

"Get away!"

Booker splashed around haphazardly, until the water was finally below his knees. With that, he collapsed onto the dry earth, his face in the grass.

"Just leave him be, son," a voice in the distance called. "Remember when you first entered Columbia? Our prophet fills our lungs with water so that we may better love the air."

His body wanted to shut down, but Booker stayed conscious by the fear of reliving the nightmare: going back to the room. I'll just catch my breath, he thought. For a moment, Booker heard Slate giving him an order. Are you a tin soldier, DeWitt? Don't fall asleep on these plains.

He lay there, stretching his fingers through the grass every so often to remind him that it was really there. There was a stinging in his right hand. At first he assumed it had to be from the struggle, but pulling it closer, his vision coming into focus, he saw the black lines. The back of his hand had been branded with a large, black tattoo – nothing elegant or intricate – two letters: A.D. They must have stuck it onto him while he was unconscious. But seeing it made him remember the pain of the needle tracing through his flesh, and it brought him to alertness.

Standing up and flushing the water from his nose, Booker detected the scent of flowers. He was standing in a garden, and a carefully tended one at that. The rose bushes were trimmed and only appeared at the backs of wooden benches and the bases of statues. Off in the distance, in the small pool from which he had emerged, were three people in robes, kneeling before a statue that looked like Benjamin Franklin in a toga. Booker moved across the grass and under a marble archway to find more worshippers sitting on a bench and holding hands as they prayed. There's got to be some regular folks in this place, he thought. Still, he scolded himself for underestimating them. That was twice now he allowed some innocuous item or person on this job to turn the tables on him. Just 'cause someone seems simple doesn't change the fact that they know the rules here. After getting shoved into a rocket capsule and nearly drowned, he started to realize that the one who knew too little was he himself.

Booker walked through the garden and past the fountains, coming to a wooden door carved up with holy-looking images. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that no one was following him, and shoved it open. An iron-smelling breeze hit him in the face. He swiped at the air around him, finding himself on a stone platform that sank through the air toward an open street. Before him was the city, clear as day. It stretched out like a canyon, floating buildings all around and in the distance, hazy enough to be mistaken for clouds. They were big, stone structures, with windows that made Booker think of Philadelphia, and roofs that reminded him of Louisiana. It was like a chain of islands, with whole neighborhoods flying together, linked to smaller buildings by drawbridges and metal rails. At least three small dirigibles were slowly weaving through the buildings. The breeze was eerily gentle and the air just slightly brisk, two oddities that Booker attributed to whatever miracle machinery was keeping the city afloat in the first place.

Booker's platform came to shore at the end of a promenade and he started moving down it. The promenade was flanked with benches and rosebushes, and – to Booker's relief – regular looking people, dressed in coats, smocks, and bowler hats. The promenade itself was made of paving stones instead of asphalt. Directly in front of him, floating high above on a distance platform, was a statue of the bearded fellow – the one they called Comstock – holding out a cutlass as his cloak erupted out from him like wings.

Booker raised an eyebrow. Give a man a little bit of power

As he walked down the promenade, Booker reminded himself that he wasn't here to inspect the city. He reached into his vest pocket and held out the pictures he had gotten from the cigar box. The photograph of Elizabeth wouldn't be much use; it didn't have a written date, but the paper was old and the color already fading. She must have been fourteen when it was taken. The odds of identifying her by the photo were slim. Booker didn't have an inkling of where the people who would even recognize her could be found.

Before looking for the girl, he needed to find an area to search in. Booker came to the end of the promenade and arrived at the feet of the giant statue of Comstock. Around him was a grassy circle where a family of three was having a picnic in the sunlight. Other streets branched out from around the statue: one back down the promenade, others into alleys packed with people sitting outdoors, waiting in line at vendors, or getting a shoeshine. A number of buildings surrounding them weren't floating on the same platform, so they bobbled up and down in the breeze, never tilting but drifting like ships on a bright, windy sea.

Over at the picnic blanket, the family was talking loudly.

"Perfect day for the celebration!"

"Father Comstock must have foreseen and planned it this way."

It struck Booker that the city – and whoever this Father Comstock was – had an old-time sensibility in spite of the miracle machines that must have kept it floating. Indeed, when Booker gathered up the nerve to gaze out at the bottom of the other floating platforms, he saw them covered in steel girders that emitted some kind of hazy glow from behind their slowly rotating propellers. That strange mixture – a zeal for science-fiction machines only matched by one for sentimental symbols – unnerved Booker. It made him think of the kind of person who believed intensely in the essence of one moment or another; so intensely that he would embrace whatever means to preserve it.

Beside him, a youngish blonde man in a boater hat was talking to a teenager. As he spoke, he casually twisted his hand around in a pontificating way. "Says he's for faith, family, and fatherland. Who could be against all that?"

"Excuse me," Booker said to the man, waving to get his attention. "I was wondering if you could give me some directions. I'm new here." Booker showed him the postcard he had gotten from the cigar box – the one with the golden cherub. "This wouldn't be a landmark now would it?"

The man took the postcard and his face lit up. "Absolutely," he said. "That's Monument Island!"

"Sounds important," said Booker.

"You bet," said the man, handing the postcard back. "You're definitely new here if you're trying to go there. I'm sorry to tell you that it's closed."

"It's alright. I wasn't planning on visiting yet. I just needed a landmark."

"Well, don't think too little of it, friend. It's one of the prides of Columbia. In fact…" Quickly enough he had started lecturing, as Booker assumed he would. Booker nodded his head frequently enough, waiting for this fellow to arrive at something he shouldn't be blabbering about. "Now the only people allowed in are the caretakers, but even they have to be trained to defend themselves from the Vox Populi."

The teenager, who had been standing there with his arms crossed, gave a little huff. "Is that all anyone talks about anymore? Vox Populi this and Vox Populi that! I've never even seen one and neither has anyone I know. What does Vox Populi even mean?"

"Well…" the blonde man started, but trailed off.

"It's Latin," Booker interjected. "It means 'Voice of the People."

The blonde man fidgeted at this and twiddled his thumbs, giving Booker a cross look. "Well…" he started. "The Vox Populi may be dangerous to you and I, but they have no interest in Monument Island aside from issuing the occasional vacant threat. Father Comstock knows – because he has foreseen it – there's only one beast that seeks to remove the lamb from the monument."

Booker felt a sting in his temple at this last remark. It was small enough that no one else noticed one side of his face tighten up, but it reminded him of the migraines he had had as a boy. Maybe it was something about the air at this height. Or maybe he had just been taken aback by something. That stinging from behind his eye was more of a spark working its way to an idea: if the lamb was in the monument and they had given him a picture of it, along with the picture of Elizabeth…

"Is this lamb a girl?" Booker asked.

The blonde man and the teenager looked at Booker in unison, wearing the same expression of befuddlement. He wondered if he had asked the wrong question.

"Well," said the blonde man. "I can't say we ever got a chance to learn. The child was born before I came to the city." He mumbled the last part. "Come along, Harry. Suddenly, I've a bad yearning for some chewing tobacco."

The blonde man grabbed Harry by his elbow and jerked him toward a general store across the grass.

"By the way, mister," Booker called after him. "You never told me where to go."

The blonde man turned around halfway without slowing his pace. "Just head down Main Street. Once you come to the archway of Father Franklin, you'll see it. Flying up there."

Booker felt Comstock's stone face above him, glaring out at the sky from underneath his wispy, carved eyebrows. Across the way, Comstock's likeness was painted on a building, the words "OUR PROPHET" emblazoned in capital letters like the kind written on a dollar. If Booker's hunch was correct, then this wasn't about finding some girl who ran away to an inaccessible city. He was sent here to bring back someone whom Comstock – and his people – was going to make sure would never leave.

Main Street was like any other, albeit brighter than most. The buildings were now close enough together that when Booker did see the blue sky, it seemed like it's old, distant self, miles away, instead of literally just around the corner. Most of the stores were closed and gated, with a few others wearing "Back in one hour" signs. One even had its doors open and a large sign reading, "OFF-DUTY. NO STEALING. YOU'RE ON THE HONOR SYSTEM" and Booker gave a half-confused chuckle. The street wasn't barren though. Children were playing at an open fire hydrant and one restaurant was open with people sitting outside. One man told the waiter to hurry up because they wanted to get to the raffle, and Booker figured that must be the reason every other place was closed. Columbia reminded him of New Orleans quite a bit, in large part because its open-air atmosphere, the way that people and children hovered around the streets without seeming as though they had anywhere they needed to be. As Booker walked, he racked his brain to remember the detective tricks he had gathered when he was in the Pinkertons.

The Pinkertons had used Booker as muscle most of the time. Most of his prior detective work came down to finding the right man and sending him a message with a club or the handle of a pistol. While the other agents would talk about unearthing the corruption of some political boss (these guys were always hired by a rival, crooked political boss), Booker was sneaking in and out of union meetings, following a man until after dark, and leaving him as roughed up as he could so that he kept breathing. It was starting to dawn on Booker that however fierce he was, his style as a detective was about knowing how to beat information out of people. He had never gone up against a system.

He had only been in a situation like this once before, back in 1892, around the time most of the men were being sent off to Homestead. He and three other men were gathered together with what sounded like a simple job. There had been an accident a factory in the Bronx. Six Lithuanians had been injured, two of whom were crippled in both legs. Now someone had come to the agency – a "friend" of the factory owner – looking to make sure the D.A.'s investigation came up with nothing. Normally all Booker had to do was head out with goon squad to the agitator's place and make sure a message got sent. Couldn't do something like that to a D.A., no matter how much they hated him in Albany. They got the job done and Booker never completely understood what had happened – big case, complex stuff, and he wasn't being paid to understand it. All Booker gleaned from that was how big things were and it was easier to keep them rolling than trying to fish something out.

Now, he found himself on the receiving end – a man who needed to find his way around the system. It was time for him to figure out how Columbian security worked so that he could bypass it. Thinking back to the Bronx job, he thought about reverse engineering a couple of the tricks he picked up. They had to destroy evidence, so he had to remember how they recognized it in the first place. They had to stop the flow of information between certain parties, so he needed to remember how to get these people talking. They had to recognize the holes the D.A. could use to bring down the client and plug them up; and he thought about how a network of agents – the same kind he used to depend on – could be divided and exploited.

Toward the end of Main Street, Booker noticed another illustrated poster on the wall, about twice his own height. There were plenty of these around the place, most of which Booker had ignored. But this one caught his eye: it had a painting of a white lamb. The lamb was feeding at the hand of a figure dressed all in black, with a hood obscuring its face. The symbolism was obvious, he thought, but took notice of the writing above the image: "The False Shepherd seeks only to lead the lamb astray."

Booker came to the marble archway and turned the corner. Sure enough, there was Monument Island, floating amongst the clouds with other parts of the city. The statue of the cherub was at least three times taller than any building Booker had seen so far, as though Comstock had commissioned his own, Vatican-style Lady Liberty. It wasn't exactly golden – more of a bronze structure by the look of it. Its arms were gently held out to its sides, like it was showing it had nothing to hide. Of course, it did – it hid precisely what Booker had come to retrieve.

The problem was getting into the place. Even if it weren't closed, he could only speculate as to what kind of security the girl was under. And since it was closed, there probably wouldn't be any rocket to lift him from here to there. Booker paced a bit and leaned against a wall in the shade. This job is gonna take longer than I thought. A dirigible drifted off the street. It moved more like a boat than a plane. This close, he could see the people inside, sitting in rows like in a railcar. For a moment, he thought of commandeering one of these blimps, but then realized it would be too conspicuous. The police would be keeping eyes on all of them. Again, he thought back to how the Pinkertons had worked around the system from the top down. Before he quit – after Homestead – an older agent had told him that the trickiest targets were the ones who used the tools nobody noticed. Or at least, the ones they took for granted.

Booker stepped out into the sun, realizing he was starting to shiver. But then the shadows came over him again, clipping back and forth between light and shadow. Above him was a long metal pipe. He had noticed a few of them when he first arrived in the city, but he assumed they were part of the plumbing. But they weren't pipes after all – they were rails. The shadows cast on him were crates, each about the size of a trolley, and they were sliding along the rails with barely a sound besides the rushing of air. Each crate was branded with a big, flashy logo that rushed by too fast for him to read. But he could see how the rails ran through the city like vines, around the buildings and between the islands. Looking out around Monument Island and its surrounding neighborhoods, Booker saw more rails and crates moving along them like railcars through the air. They ran up and downward. They weren't everywhere, but they were common enough to be commonplace. It dawned on Booker DeWitt that whatever cargo was in the crates were the essentials to how the city functioned: food, steel, spare parts, and anything that Comstock's people needed quickly and on demand. And some of those things needed to go to Monument Island. Booker rarely smiled, but he almost gave a little smirk, less pleased with himself than he was with this prophet's blind spot. There was a way to get around this city undetected, and with that a way to bypass this system.

He walked off to find a stockyard for the crates, the place where he could learn where they went and how he could sneak onto one of them unnoticed. Main Street had given way to a wide field of grassy parks and carnival booths, like someone had dropped a county fair into a metropolis. A long rail wound its way through the towers that surrounded the field, carrying more cargo and making hardly a sound. As Booker followed the path of the rails, he kept off the grass and closer to the arches bridged the field to the alleys. Each archway was adorned with posters and prints, most with images of Comstock and Monument Island, always illustrated with heavenly glows and beams of yellow light. Each poster grew more banal as Booker tried to ignore them – writing proclaiming Comstock's gift of foresight, the new Eden in the clouds, the lamb growing into the future of the city. The railway started an incline and curved its path deeper into the city. Booker started to follow, but paused when something caught his eye. He was in an archway with another poster, different from the others. This one was painted in black and red, rendering a silhouette of a crooked, long-fingered hand, like the kind Booker imagined witches and goblins had when he was a child. But what caused him to stop was what was written on the demonic hand, glowing in yellow: A.D. Over the image, the poster read: "You will recognize the False Shepherd by his mark."

Instinctively, Booker shoved both his hands into pockets. This is a set-up, he thought. They tried drowning me and when that didn't work they branded me for a hunt. Unless… no. Were they expecting me? His hands still in pockets, Booker backed away from the poster and nearly tripped as the street gave way to the grass. He wanted to wipe his forehead, which was sweating all of a sudden, but for a moment couldn't remember which hand bore the mark.

"Telegram for you, Mr. DeWitt!"

Booker was caught off guard by the boy and nearly jumped, but held his breath and kept his hands in his pocket. A boy had appeared at his side, holding out a card.

"Um… here's your telegram, Mr. DeWitt."

Booker stood there, not flinching. The boy looked confused as well. He probably figured if he stuck to the script, he didn't need to worry.

"How is it for me?" Booker asked. "I just got here."

"That's the funny thing, sir. My boss told me this was scheduled to be delivered to this spot at this exact time." The boy took out a pocket watch, flipped it open, and nodded, looking a little please with himself.

Booker leaned in closer to the boy. "Is this a joke?"

The boy just smiled, still a little befuddled. "Afraid not, Mr. DeWitt. I mean, there's only one man who can see the future. Maybe he's shared his gift."

Booker took his left hand from his pocket and snatched the telegram away. The boy remained. "Scram kid. I don't have any money for a tip."

The boy wiped the smile from his face and trotted off. Booker held the telegram before him.

DeWitt STOP Do not alert Comstock to your presence STOP Whatever you do, do not pick #77 STOP

Lutece