25. Beneath the Sea
When the brilliance faded Elizabeth was standing in silhouette before a panoramic window, a window that looked outward into dimly lit undersea depths. Beyond fronds of undulating seaweed and ascending streams of bubbles, a city glowed, an impossible city connected by the steel cylinders of framework tunnel. Between those ill-lit buildings, the wreckage of Engels sank...chunks and pieces alighting in the depths with billowing clouds of dirt, her once brave, garish tail collapsing on an undersea spire. In the distance I saw an arm of the Columbian angel come to rest. Slate and his men were nowhere to be found.
"Elizabeth..." I glanced about uneasily, hearing my voice dull against the inner solitude of the gallery. "What...is this place?" From the window she'd turned and begun to walk, boot soles rapping softly upon the dingy, water spotted tile. Columns and couches dotted the foyer's floor, while a grand staircase ran from both sides to a circular landing atop a sliding white doorway. Above glowing neon illuminated the words RAPTURE METRO. Posters hung upon its walls. Somewhere in the distance unfamiliar music played.
"It's a doorway...one of many." She said with uncertain voice, looking up and around.
"What do you mean 'it's a doorway?'" I asked as she continued to walk toward the doors. "Where are you going!?"
"Oh, come on..." She hastened her pace. "It's this way!" Distracted, the girl hadn't looked at me since our arrival.
"What Comstock said about your finger...why we look alike...is there an answer here?" I tried to get her to look at me, to no avail. The white door had a circle in it that spun at her approach. The door rose.
It opened to a burnt-out staircase; decorations fallen from the walls. "Down here!" She shouted from below, waving me after. I raced to catch up, grasping her by the arm, forcing her to look at me. Here and there skeletons and rotted corpses dotted the flanks of the passage, yet these horrors she seemed to pay no heed.
"Elizabeth, dammit! What the hell is going on! Where the hell are we!?"
She glanced to my eyes, but in hers I could see something not right…almost as if she were looking through me. "This used to be a city. Like…like Columbia." Her eyes closed, and about us I could hear the soft shrug of buildings swaying. "There are many like it."
"Just…stop." I looked around, not only hearing but feeling the creaking…the groaning of metal…as if the sea might breach and rush in at any moment. "Why are we here!?"
She opened her eyes and looked up to me…tugged my arm.
Backing into a fallen column, she slipped over it, possessed by whatever madness had overcome her. I crossed after her upon my posterior. She glanced to me again, nodded along the passage toward a red carpeted stair that let down.
I shook my head.
She smiled, bringing me to a landing above what seemed an undersea terminus. Upon the wall behind her on the upper level, a sign stated,
"ATTENTION!
All Bathysphere travel is now denied!
At its base the carpet veered across an atrium with glass windows open to the sea. Between each a thirty-foot gray statue rose, men with angelic wings rising above their heads. As I followed, she entered an oblate pod with benches on the sides. "Elizabeth, what is going on? What do you mean, this is a doorway?"
Finally, she'd stopped, looking into my eyes. "I can't explain…I have to show you." She turned toward a set of controls and a lever. I winced as the doors to the pod closed and the thing began to descend. After a turn, we headed outward through the odd hoops I'd seen outside. Around us the buildings rose, like New York but impossibly modern, impossibly bright. The fact that they were untold fathoms beneath the surface of the Atlantic was as illogical as Columbia. Gradually the city fell away.
We were ascending.
The sphere breeched to a calm ocean beneath a starry sky, barely a wave to be seen. Before us rose a high, gray lighthouse. "Look at that..." Elizabeth sighed. "Thousands of doors, opening all at once. My God, they're beautiful!"
I noticed the sphere moving toward the pillar of stone, sending ripples outward from the unearthly still waters. "What? The stars?" The capsule came to a halt and doors opened with a hiss, but now I realized something seemed off as her gaze...as real as this seemed...as real as everything had seemed...something wasn't right. I could feel it.
Elizabeth took my hand. "Come on….it's this way." She led me out upon the landing and it was cool, as cool as a North Atlantic night ought to be. I wished I had a coat, but despite her light accoutrement she seemed unfazed. That worried me.
The lighthouse was massive...at least two hundred feet high with a circumscription of gray stone that ascended in a shallow spiral. Atop the tower's height a brilliant white beacon glowed, the brightest against a starry night. Surmounting the shallow spiral of stairs, she led us to a pair of massive brass doors. Each was of the finest workmanship, each adorned by half of the image of a man caught in gold. Like the statues we'd seen below, his arms were upstretched as angelic wings. Tall gray stone columns rose to either side, supporting an overhanging triangular pediment. In my ears I now could hear a ringing. Not the sound of guns and explosions...more unearthly...like a choir of angels.
The Brobdingnagian gates were locked.
"Are you gonna open it?" I asked, wondering how that was even a rational question. I looked upward, attempting in vain to find Columbia. It hadn't been nighttime when we'd fallen.
She fumbled with her hairpin...sighed in exasperation. "Oh, it's no good. I...I thought once we were here, I could fully control it. I thought..." In my mind I heard a ting such as the striking of a tuning fork, and abruptly Elizabeth stopped talking. She was looking to her hand.
"What is that?" I exclaimed, looking at the brass appeared in her hand.
"It's...it's a key." She said, looking at it spellbound. Her eyes slowly migrated to the horizon, looking almost through me.
"Where did it come from?" I asked, quite unable to believe my own.
"It's...it's always been there. I just couldn't see it."
Before I could question her enigmatic statement, she turned and unlocked the mechanism. About us the surreal ocean remained smooth as glass, that eerie hum pervading an endless horizon. Realizing she was waiting for me, I turned from the horizon to press the doors open. Instead of passing into a lighthouse, we passed beneath a gate.
I did a double take, unable to believe my eyes. yet inside seemed to be out...save for the fact that as far as the eye could see was the languid ocean adorned by hundreds more lighthouses. Each exactly the same as the one we were entering. On the horizon and above us were more stars than I could count, only now I realized they were not stars...they were beacons...beacons atop upon even more lighthouses.
"Not stars...doors." Elizabeth said hands wide, the hem of her dress flaring slightly as she turned about.
"Doors...to?" I whispered ominously.
"Doors to everywhere." She answered, turning again, eyes meeting the myriad of spires rising above us. Finally, the girl looked back to me. "All that's left is the choosing."
Elizabeth began to descend the steps. Over my shoulder I could see the entrance to the lighthouse we'd only just entered. The door behind us had closed.
"Elizabeth, what are all these lighthouses?" I asked, still unable to comprehend what I was seeing. "Why are we...who..."
"There are a million, million worlds. All different and...all similar." As she came upon the landing inches above the water, stone rushed up from beneath the depths to form a walkway, complete with stone railings and lanterns aglow on both sides. My eyes goggled. She seemed to take little notice of this, even as I fell behind her in shock. Something, I knew for certain now, was off here...what I was seeing was not the reality of things. What had happened to her? What had happened to us? "Constants and variables."
"What?" I asked, troubled by this funhouse mirror we found ourselves in.
"There's always a lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a city." She'd turned back to me with a sad expression.
"How...do you know this?" I exclaimed softly, uncertain that I wanted to know the answer.
"I can see them through the doors." She glanced about. "You...me...Columbia..." Her eyes again landed upon me. "But sometimes something is different..."
"Constants...and variables."
"Yes." She said, hands at her sides.
Though she looked the same as the woman I'd rescued from the Monument, there was preternatural calm in her demeanor. Whatever the Siphon had done to her, she could see all these possibilities. No ignorance would befall her...no happenstance could ever surprise her. I didn't like it.
Onward I followed, watching agape as a stones rushed from water, rose to form a bridge of stone before us, stones manifesting from…nothing, almost as if it had been, then collapsed only to reverse itself. As if nothing cosmic had occurred, she began to walk and I followed, realizing that we were heading for a lighthouse...not the nearest one, but one just beyond it. Nearing the mirror image of the steps we'd ascended moments before, Elizabeth was ready with her key. As she unlocked the new gates I approached, passing into what should have been a cold, stony interior. Instead, we emerged at dawn to a cloud swept horizon.
I found myself looking down a receding seashore, while above and behind a whitewashed tower rose, octagonal, with a glowing Russian church dome atop it. Its brilliance was such that it was unbearable to look at. Where had I seen this before?
"Look." Elizabeth said with a turn and raise of her hands.
In my awe I'd somehow not noticed, but the horizon was far from empty, much like the last sea we had entered from. Thousands of these lighthouses lit its reach, each atop a cliff, each rising impossibly above a sandy beach on a high outcrop of rock. Upon the landing of each I saw two figures...Elizabeth and myself.
"It's...us." I breathed, seeing my back from a distance. Elizabeth was with me, pointing...and him...and a hundred others. The ocean was flat, the coast endless…and filled with lighthouses. What I was seeing was not possible.
"Not exactly." She said, turning to watch ourselves walking the stone of the landing, the path from one lighthouse to the next seemingly assembling itself from nothing. I realized this must be my mind trying to make sense of the inexplicable...at least in our reality. "We swim in different oceans, but land on the same shore. It always starts with a lighthouse."
I shook my head, my mind threatening to revolt. "I...I don't understand."
"We don't need to." She said, leaning inward toward me. "It'll happen all the same."
"Why?"
"Because it does. Because it has. Because it will." She turned to look upward with hands upon hips.
"Choices." I whispered, looking at the infinitude of domed towers. "There's so many choices."
"They all lead us to the same place." Elizabeth answered. "Where it started."
I'd had about enough madness. "No one tells me where to go." I grumbled.
"Booker..." She said, resignation upon her face. "You've already been."
She turned and began to walk. Unable to ignore the dozens, hundreds of us walking along the cliff side overlooks beneath the glowing towers, I followed. Eventually we came to the dreaded doors once more, and, waiting for my approach, she opened them. Instead of an ocean they opened to a flowing steam, split in twain about an islet. About the pool several men and women were assembled in the water up to their knees, while steep banks led up to grassy, tree-lined hillocks.
"Wait a minute...I know this place." I heard myself saying. "It's in Kansas, near Fort Riley. I was here, Elizabeth. Twenty years ago, right after Wounded Knee. I was looking for..."
She'd stepped aside, and though we were both in the steam she didn't seem bothered. "Why were you here?"
"Are you ready to have your past erased?" The preacher said. "Are you ready to have your sins cleansed?" I recognized him now...Comstock's preacher...Witting. "Are you ready to be born again?"
Though this was a memory of mine I found myself trudging through the water as the parishioners whispered silent prayers and praises to the Lord. "Take my hand." Witting said, offering his outstretched own.
"No, I don't want to." I said, fear rising in my words. This was more than a memory.
"But you already did, didn't you?" Elizabeth asked from my side.
"Are you ready to be born again!?" Witting extoled as he clasped my fingers. "Do you hate your sins?!"
"I do." I heard myself whisper.
"Do you hate your wickedness?!"
"YES!" I proclaimed. I felt pain now…remembered again the dead squaws on that cold December morning...remembered how my hands felt filleting their scalps...seeing my hideous work upon their faces.
"Do you want to clean the slate, leave behind all that you were before and be born again in the blood of the Lamb?"
"YES!" I shouted anew.
Witting was staring into my eyes now...raised his hands to my face. "Jesus! Wash this man clean. "Father, make him born aga..."
Suddenly a terror came upon me and I found myself pushing him away...both to his surprise and mine. Those around me too were dismayed, but I wrestled my way out of their circle and out into the open cool water. "Stop it!" I railed. About me well dressed men tried to calm my fit. I broke free and ran, splashing through the water toward the banks until they were gone. Only me, Elizabeth and the water remained.
"You didn't go through with it." Elizabeth said, standing near me.
"You think a dunk in the river is gonna change the things I've done?!" I exclaimed, holding back tears, unable to get the memory of the women out of my mind. I felt their bloody scalps in my hand...saw the grisly impression I'd made on my 'mates'. "Let's get out of here. These...these doors of yours...they're all tears, right?" Well, open one up...open one up to Paris. I want to be shed of all this!"
She was looking at me, absorbing my tirade. "Not until we find Comstock."
"Comstock is dead!" I shouted. "Or don't you remember?"
"No!" She said, turning back to me with anger in her eyes. "He was here." She let out her arm toward a path up a low hill...a whitewashed chapel sat atop it, a rickety plank door at its front. It seemed hardly more than a shed. "This way."
It wasn't a lighthouse, but it opened the same. A gate.
Beyond the door stood a man silhouetted against a window. The room I recognized as my apartment in the Bowery. "And what of my debts?" I heard myself ask.
He smiled contritely. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." By his voice I recognized him...orange haired, dressed in a suit. Laslowe.
Elizabeth was standing next to a nearby door. Not the door to the apartment, but the one adjoining my bedroom. Hesitantly I reached its knob, remembering how drunk I'd been that night...how mind-bendingly blasted. It was all I could do to keep my balance. I turned the brass knob...swung the door open to reveal a nursery that smelled like Annabelle. Inside I heard cooing and the chimes of a music box.
"Wait..." I mumbled, approaching the crib. A brown-haired infant with blue eyes looked back at me, suddenly reaching, excited for my presence. "No, this is wrong...what is this!? There was no...no baby! I remember...there was no baby and if there was, I sure as hell wouldn't give it over to this guy!"
"Booker..." I heard her say, though I could not now see her. "You don't leave this room until you do."
"Wait..."
Laslowe had arrived at the door now, standing hands behind his back. "DeWitt...time is running short. Bring us the girl...and wipe away the debt."
Coming back from McSorely's, I'd remembered his words but hadn't thought he'd show. Annabelle was gone seven months now, and I'd managed to rack up debts I could never repay. I'd spent the evening drinking instead of taking care of our child. She could have died. Though it pained me, I knew that whomever this man served, his master could offer my girl a better life.
A life rid of me.
Reluctantly I reached into the crib and slipped my fingers about her tiny form...felt her fingers embrace mine. Saw those blue eyes.
"Go ahead." Elizabeth said, now standing in the corner beyond the cradle.
"No." I muttered, shaking my head.
"You can wait as long as you want." She said, crossing her arms before her. "Eventually you'll give him what he wants."
"How do you know all this!?" I exclaimed in exasperation. I felt the child touch me.
"I can see all the doors..." She said with a flash of her hands. "And what's behind all the doors. And behind one of them, I see him."
The realization dawned upon me like ice water in the face. "Comstock..." As if I was acting out a play, I turned...handed the baby to the waiting man. Her eyes were still upon mine and she reached out, not wanting to let go. It tore my heart to do what I knew I must. To do otherwise would condemn her to the hell I lived in. "What choice do I have?"
The gentleman took her in hand, bowed slightly with a flourish of his hand. "The debt's paid." Upward he tipped his head and turned. "Mr. Comstock washes you of all of your sins."
Crossing the creaking floorboards of my dilapidated apartment, he opened the door and exited. Still dangerously inebriated, I stumbled to the lone table and chair and sat heavily within. Before me a bottle beckoned, perhaps an eighth full of whiskey. How could I have not remembered this?
"What are we doing here?" I growled, swigging the burning caramel. "Comstock's...dead. We can just go on with our lives. You don't need..."
"Dead?" Elizabeth shouted, coming about the table until she was in my blurred sight. NO! He is ALIVE in a million, MILLION worlds! It's not over because the Prophet is dead. It will only be over when he never even lived in the first place!" I sat in the room drinking slowly, looking at the bottle...destroying the memories forever. It was nighttime outside and I could hear the automobiles and horse drawn wagons carrying through the streets below. Somewhere out my window a sigh flashed. The sound of the apartment was otherwise silent.
Eventually I rose...a difficult feat considering my state, wondering if I'd remember anything at all in the morning. Beneath my worthless Seventh Cavalry frame and memorabilia I opened Annabelle's jewelry box...knowing it would be empty. Yet her smell was somehow still there. Closing my eyes, I remembered Kansas...I remembered her. She smelled like Anna.
My eyes shot open.
Racing down the stairs, I burst onto Bowery and fell knees first upon my face. Rising from the brick of the sidewalk, I looked up to find Mrs. Neary glaring down upon me. "Moira..." I slurred, achieving my skinned hands and knees. "A man...a man just left my apartment. He had a baby girl in his arms."
"Anna? I thought I saw one. But why's he a havin' her this late at night, Mr. DeWitt?"
I staggered to my feet. "You saw him?!" I cried, looking down the night dark streets. "Which...which way did he go!" She pointed northward, and with wild eyes I was off, dashing, stumbling, tripping over myself. So drunk I was that I've no idea how far I ran, but I knew one thing...no matter what, I could not lose this last bit of Annabelle. Anna was ours...and I'd die to keep her.
Ahead several passersby had gathered at the entry way to an alley, an alley which popped and sparkled with the flash of electricity. Pushing them aside, I looked down its length to see two men...one of them Laslowe.
"The deal is off, you hear me!?" I shouted. It had begun to rain, and a cold, damp sheen covered my face.
Ahead the other man, darkly bearded, clad in a suit and heavily shouldered coat, was yelling into the wall at what I first supposed to be a door or another alley. When I stumbled to a halt to my shock, I found it was neither. Instead, it was a glowing portal, a ring of blinding fire cut straight through the brick itself. Inside I saw a woman, orange haired, arguing from behind that wall with Laslowe. They could have been twins. "Are you mad!?" Laslowe exclaimed, yet he was not holding my girl. Instead, this other man was. He turned to glance at my commotion down the side street, and despite the beard I recognized him instantly. At my sight he seemed to blanche, looking alternately at me and the thin air at my side.
"It's ready!" I heard the woman shout. "Go!"
I threw myself upon him and yanked him about by the arm, forcing him to look into my eyes. My eyes met my own, and in that moment both of us reeled. Obviously more prepared for our encounter than I, he took the opportunity to kick me in the gut, slamming me backward into the brick work. From the rooftops above downwash sluicing over my shoulders.
"Give her back you son of a bitch!" I yelled, grappling his lapel. Yet the rain had made his coat slick and being drunk my hands struggled for purchase. With Anna in his arms, he slipped my grasp and stumbled backward through the glowing hole in the bearing wall. "No!" I shouted, catching him again. We wrestled, as about us the glowing hole began to collapse. "No, no, NO!"
"Shut down the machine!" He cried, my own voice speaking his words. "Shut down the machine NOW! Do IT!"
"Give me back my daughter!" I shouted. In fury I lunged and snagged his arm, but it was too late. For a moment I had him...then I didn't. At my slip he fell backward through the portal. Already crying, Anna's blue eyes grew wide, and as he drew her away her tiny hand reached out to mine.
"NOOOOOOOO!" I bellowed. The burning circle closed with a flash. Before me the tip of her pinkie flew, tumbling slowly through the air, spinning a trail of blood. Falling after it I struck the wet brick of the wall headfirst. "Anna...Anna!" I cried. Spots flew in my eyes and I felt dizzy. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The rain began to come down in earnest now as I lay there, falling into a stupor.
Elizabeth was there, whispering to me as she looked out the window of my apartment. "She's gone, Booker. Anna's gone. You...shared this room with your regret for almost twenty years." Holding my hand outward, I saw the initials upon its back...the brand I'd placed there. A.D.
Anna DeWitt.
"Until one day, a man came to you and offered you a chance at redemption...a chance for us to be together."
"So...I sold you." I did not feel drunk now, though I wished I did. How could I have not remembered that? My head seemed to ache where I'd struck it, painfully so. We were standing below the strange lighthouse now, its Russian dome all aglow above. "This is all Comstock's fault. What if I went back...killed him before he did any of this!?"
Elizabeth stared at me as we came to the landing. "Things get set in motion, Booker. How could you even know how far back to go?"
I felt furious. "That's the only way to do it...go back to when he was born, and I'll smother the son of a bitch in his crib!"
As I went to open the door, I felt her place her hand upon mine, face forlorn. "Booker...are you sure this is what you want?"
"I have to." I whispered. Gently I removed her hand from mine, the bandage loosed now atop her knife split initials. "It's the only way I can undo what I've done to you." I looked at the thimble. For a moment she didn't let me go. Pushing her aside, I opened the door anyway.
Witting was standing there in the water, but there were no parishioners now...just him and me. It was where we had left off...before I'd broken and run.
"Booker DeWitt...are you ready to be born again!?" He exclaimed.
Ignoring him, I turned back to the portal only to find Elizabeth. There was no portal. She had a dire look upon her face. Anxiously my eyes cast about, glancing the hill tops and railings of roads just out of sight. "Why...why are we back here?" .
"This isn't the same place, Booker."
"Of course, it is, I remember...wait..." Studying her now, I saw that upon her neck she bore a golden cage upon the black pendant. Behind me Witting was pontificating, asking if I was ready to leave behind all that had gone before. "You're not...you're not...who are you?" Now another Elizabeth appeared, wearing her blue skirt and neckerchief. Beside her I saw another, her hair cut, clad in Montgomery's blue dress and corset. Beside her soon came another, then another. All different...all the same. On their pendants none bore the bird.
"You chose to walk away..." The one in her skirt said. "But in other oceans, you didn't..." Another said. "You took the baptism..."
"And were born again."
"As a different man."
"Comstock..." I gasped.
"It all has to end." One of them said.
"To have never started." Said another.
"Not just in this world."
"But in all of ours..."
"Smother him in the crib." I uttered, realizing where this was going.
"Smother...smother...smother..." They said, repeating one by one what I'd said. "Before the choice is made."
"Before you are reborn..." Said the first.
"And what name do you take, my son? Witting said from behind me.
One of the Elizabeths approached, innocent in her white dress, taking my forearm into her hands. "He's Zachary Comstock."
Now another approached, white blouse and blue skirt. She took my other. "He's Booker DeWitt."
"No..." I said, realizing the truth. "I'm both."
In unison they plunged me backward. My head hit the water with a splash. They held me with force, and though my body struggled for air I realized this was how it had be. I had to pay for my sins. I waited until the inevitable, and as their condemning eyes looked down upon me, finally I breathed water.