Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  They maneuvered past the walkway beside the severed car and past the lead car. Matt made sure no one was left aboard as they passed. Flickering light illuminated a scattering of possessions left behind. A headphone lay near a dark spill of blood on a bench. Someone must be in one shoe, because a lone sneaker with its laces still tied rested in a corner. An expensive video player had been left behind, along with a few coin–sized disks that by now would have footprints on them. A half–eaten sandwich wrapped in a deli bag lay flattened on the dirty floor. As they passed the lead car, Matt understood why the motorman had been no help. He was dead, smashed against the glass by the sudden stop.

  Matt and the others were able to walk without jarring the injured man too badly, and they began to head up the moderate slope as quickly as they could without risking further injury to the victim. Steam rose slowly from a grate somewhere ahead. A couple of other people stayed close to them, holding cigarette lighters and matches in turns so the group could see a little of their surroundings. The woman carrying one corner of the raincoat got a couple of offers to have someone else take her place, but she turned them down. Ahead of them, the other passengers seemed to be taking it all in stride. Matt supposed living in New York required people to be adaptable.

  Matt kept walking, trying to jostle his passenger as little as possible, as he wondered what they would find when they got out of the tunnel.

  #

  Rudy Sanchez got a second cup of coffee from the machine in the hall and took it back to his office. The hall was dark. No one else was in yet, and Rudy liked to savor the feeling of being in before the rest of the offices began to fill. He got twice as much done when the building was calm and quiet as he did when office hours began. Beating the morning rush enhanced the feeling.

  He glanced out the window at the stream of cars coming across the Brooklyn Bridge and sat down, ready to get back to planning the replacement for the old generator on the upper east side. He'd been thinking about how to start the next phase when he realized something about the sound of the city had changed. He went back to the window.

  At first everything seemed normal. Traffic was a little slow, but that was hardly surprising. As Rudy watched, his eyes widened as a black shape of some kind came out from behind the Chase Manhattan Bank Tower. What the hell? It seemed to be some kind of craft, paralleling the coastline, and as it moved, it directed a dim red pencil of light through the dirty air, toward the ground. Where the pencil touched land or water, destruction followed.

  In awe Rudy put down his coffee cup and stared. What the hell was going on? He put his face nearer the glass and looked to both sides. Another identical black ship was moving along the coast farther to the north.

  Both black, windowless craft flew an even course as they slanted what had to be high–power lasers toward the Manhattan shoreline. Rudy looked at the nearer craft. From just aft of the laser's origin, a gun muzzle threw a stream of pellets so fast and so frequently, there seemed to be a brown shaft of light right behind the laser.

  A deep rumbling sound reached Rudy, quaking the floor under his feet and vibrating the windows. He had the impression of thousands of small explosions occurring in the slit opened up by the lasers.

  As Rudy moved to turn on the radio on his desk, the lights went out.

  #

  Abby Tersa had left Grand Central Terminal and was on her way to the United Nations General Assembly Building when the traffic lights went off. Normally she enjoyed the six–block walk, but today she stood on the sidewalk in front of the Chrysler Building and backed against the wall as the crowd roared and the car honking intensified, as if to fill the gap caused by the sudden absence of subway sounds and the hubbub from freight elevators and exhaust fans.

  Abby had never seen a power failure since she'd moved to the Bronx three years earlier. It made her nervous.

  She edged along the base of the building, feeling the urge to get to work quickly, but knowing that without power for microphones, amplifiers, recorders, and lights, she wouldn't be needed for much translating. She was wondering if the power would return anytime soon when she saw the black craft move from behind the tall slab of the U.N. Secretariat Building. The craft aimed its laser down toward where the East River met the Manhattan shore.

  Fighting down the panic, Abby began sprinting toward the U.N. Fifteen years ago she had been in training for the Olympics. In a timed run during physical education in junior high, she'd been surprised to learn that she was the fastest runner in her class. Encouraged by her parents, who saw running as a good thing to balance out all the hours that she spent in her room studying, she went out for the track team. At first she had rationalized the activity partly because it was one more way she could exercise her foreign language skills, but she grew to enjoy the running itself, finding that when she hit her stride she could block all her worries. This time she found herself unable to block the image of that strange ship.

  #

  Arsenio Hecher pulled into the right lane fast, finding a spot that wasn't directly behind a delivery truck. His fare, a white couple with a kid, didn't complain. Out–of–towners were quieter than the natives.

  Arsenio kept watch in the cab's rear–view mirror as the vehicle moved onto the Brooklyn Bridge, heading northwest into lower Manhattan. The traffic moved fast for rush hour, but it was never fast enough. Sometimes Arsenio thought about finding someplace less congested so he could really move, but when it came right down to it, he liked the way New York itself moved. Anyplace else would seem like a sleepy country afternoon, and he could never go back to that.

  Faint sunlight hit gray waves cresting in the East River. Arsenio honked a reply to a fellow yellow as the other cab edged past him. Why was the other lane always faster?

  The cab had just emerged from the shade of the large bridge support near the Manhattan shore when a moving shadow flashed over the roofs of cars and trucks ahead. Someone must have been on a hell of a low path to La Guardia. Arsenio craned his neck to see what kind of plane it was.

  The woman in the back seat asked, "Does this sort of thing happen a lot here?"

  He didn't know what she was talking about until he looked forward again, A field of red tail lights glared at him and horns began to honk even faster. As he watched, a sparkling red light flashed across a truck ahead of the car in front of him.

  Arsenio slammed on the brakes as the truck exploded. The car behind him smashed into his rear bumper, and the man in the back seat yelled, "What the hell!" as in the rear–view mirror Arsenio saw a truck plow into the guy behind him. The kid began to cry.

  From the corner of his eye, Arsenio saw steam explode from the water at the edge of the river, as though a long thin heater lay just below the surface. As the cab finally showed signs of stopping successfully, the road surface began to tilt forward. The bridge was coming apart! "Crap!"

  The Goddamn bridge was turning into a drawbridge, but backwards. The section Arsenio's cab was on tilted down. As his panic rose, and he jammed his foot on the brakes hard enough to force the antilock on, he could see cars on the other side of the break burning rubber as they tried to gun it up the slope. Electric motors whined, climbing to the top end of the scale as the wheels spun, and cars slid backward, smoke rising from their tires. His heart raced even faster than the time he'd been mugged.

  For just an instant, Arsenio thought the cab was stopped precariously on the slope, but the bridge lurched again, and the car behind him hit his bumper one last time.

  The cab slid off the end of the broken bridge. The screams from the back seat blended into one loud roar.

  Arsenio cursed uncontrollably, his hands locked on the steering wheel and his foot still pistoned into the brake pedal for the entire time it took before the cab smashed into the water.

  #

  From his darkened office, Rudy Sanchez looked out at the destruction along the Manhattan shore. The Brooklyn Bridge had been severed, two trucks sliced in the process, and cars had spilled like toys int
o the river. Boats docked along the piers had been cut in two as steam roiled into the morning air. Rudy stood in shock, the dead telephone still gripped in one hand.

  He had been tempted to run to help someone, anyone, but now he just stood, temporarily locked by indecision and fear. It seemed to him that anything he did now would be bailing a tidal wave with a teaspoon. A couple of fires had started where natural gas lines ran under the East River to Brooklyn, but cutoff mechanisms that didn't depend on power would limit the amount of gas available to burn.

  The black craft closest to him switched off the red light, undoubtedly some unbelievably high–power laser. The craft rose swiftly with no vapor trail until Rudy lost sight of it.

  The city sounded sick. The occasional rumble of a passing subway hadn't been audible for several minutes. The increased frantic honking from cabs and trucks grid–locked without working traffic lights more than made up for the lack in volume, but provided no comfort.

  A flicker of black caught Rudy's eye. The craft were returning. He leaned forward and could see two more of them flying in formation but spreading the pattern as they fell. And what they were doing was even stranger than before. There seemed to be some filmy transparent material stretched between the craft. They looked as if they held some enormous soap bubble. What in God's name was happening?

  The nearest black craft settled slowly toward the shoreline, stretching its corner of the bubble as it fell. Moments later the craft hovered over a severed dock. The corner of the soap bubble widened, and the edge of the bubble began to pull itself down toward the shoreline, apparently sealing itself to the ground or to some material the ship had deposited in the groove it had cut earlier. Within minutes, the filmy bubble had settled into a smooth seal for as far as Rudy could see. It seemed big enough to be covering the entire island of Manhattan.

  The black craft rose, moving away from Manhattan as it did. Another one entered Rudy's field of view. Seconds later they both stopped, and stayed where they were, hovering.

  Rudy had no warning. In one moment the ships just hovered. In the next moment a giant flashbulb went off. Rudy could see nothing but sparkles surrounding a large red spot for the next minute, but slowly his vision returned. When it did, he could see the bubble was still in place, but now it seemed more tangible. It was still transparent, but the reflections seemed brighter and they no longer wavered.

  The hovering craft were gone. As Rudy tried to see where they might be, an enormous shadow crept over lower Manhattan.

  #

  Julie Kravine took a last few shots with her minivid, then shut off the sand–grain light. The image of the stalled subway cars faded from her retinae, and she turned to follow the stragglers up the tunnel.

  Ahead of her were the four people carrying the man who had lost his hand. Julie cringed, just thinking about it again. And she remembered the severed bodies they were leaving behind. She had taken shots of them, too, more so that people would believe her report rather than because they'd be used on the news. She hadn't felt this ambivalent since she left Tom.

  Julie felt uneasy. The ground rumbled with some unidentifiable tremble, and things just felt wrong. If the tunnel collapse was some localized catastrophe, she'd be hearing the rumble from other subways as they traveled nearby. Instead, the only vibration was that constant faraway tremor.

  The rumble stopped. Suddenly the underground felt completely quiet, unnatural. Something was definitely very wrong. Julie hurried ahead, following the flickering lights. She stumbled, then got back to her feet and started picking cinders out of her palms. The tunnel smelled oily.

  She caught up with the foursome. A couple of men walked with them, holding cigarette lighters, obviously ready to take over for anyone who got tired. She turned on her tiny light and minivid, capturing ten seconds before turning them off. She felt a pride in how well New Yorkers were responding to the trouble. Her sister in Columbus complained about the crime rate and the apparent unfriendliness, but when things got tough, New Yorkers found ways to cope.

  Julie moved to catch up again. She was tired from covering a late–night hostage crisis in south Brooklyn The good part was that it had left her with all her recording gear and a moderate battery charge at just the right time.

  She caught up with the others and turned on her minivid, set to voice–only to save the charge. The tall man who had been next to her in the subway when it all started gripped one corner of the raincoat holding the injured man. He was the same one who had calmed the crowd with sensible directions and a take–charge attitude that didn't smack of dictatorship. And he was the same one who had declined comment earlier. Was he a cop?

  The man was going to be the focus of this piece, whether he liked it or not, Julie decided. She moved deliberately to one of the other three people carrying the injured man.

  "I'm Julie Kravine with WNBC," she said to the woman who carried one corner of the raincoat. "What's your name?"

  "Bette Waylon." The woman wore a dark jacket with the bracelet cuffs made popular in Way Down and Way Over.

  "Can you tell me what you thought when the lights went out?"

  "Nothin' I guess. That I'd be late for business."

  "Any ideas about what might have caused this?"

  "Naw. But we can find out on TV when we get back up."

  "Anyone else here with a theory?" Julie watched the tall man. He opened his mouth but he didn't say anything.

  Julie moved around until she was next to the tall man. He glanced at her, then looked ahead.

  "And your name is, sir?"

  The man replied without looking at her. "Matt Sheehan."

  As she formulated her next question, Matt added, "And I apologize for being rude back there. I thought you were just another idiot with a camera. I guess I was a little edgy."

  "I think we're all a little edgy," Julie said, thinking that he seemed the least edgy of anyone down here. "You a cop?"

  "A cop? No."

  "You seemed to adapt pretty quickly to the situation. What's your background?

  "I've spent some time in the service."

  "Ah. So, do you have any theories about what happened back there?"

  The man was silent for a moment and several pairs of feet crunched gravel on the dark tunnel floor. "Not really."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "No. Just that I'm betting the problem isn't just down here."

  "Why makes you say that?"

  "Just because this section of tunnel goes under the river. It's got to be going through bedrock. Anything generating enough force to do damage like what's back there isn't going to be confined to one tunnel."

  Julie had been so intent on getting pictures and reactions that she hadn't thought much about anything else, but a sudden lurch in her stomach told her the man was probably right. An instant later she wasn't so sure the reaction had been nerves.

  The ground shook. People carrying the injured man stumbled as they passed through a plume of rising steam.

  Julie crouched in the dark tunnel, feeling the same sensation she felt in an elevator as it accelerated upward.

  #

  In the Columbia University Computer Science Department Building, Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster awoke with a start.

  For an instant, he felt he was at sea. The desk his head rested on didn't seem solid, and neither did the chair he sat in. He jerked his head upright.

  "Piss!" Bobby Joe looked at the dark computer screen in front of him. The atmospheric simulation run had been almost complete when he must have finally fallen asleep. And now he'd have to start over. The power had gone off, and it had stayed off long enough for his uninterruptible power supply to use up its charge.

  The floor lurched and a stylus on Bobby Joe's desk rolled a few centimeters and stopped. "What—"

  Either some of the students in his computer modeling class were playing one hell of a trick on him, or something was really screwy. He rose and moved to the window.

  Yup, something was really screwy, Bobby
Joe decided.

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and took another look over nearby building tops and watched New Jersey sink.

  "All right, you guys," he said loudly. "It's a convincing display."

  He listened for laughter or some other response. Nothing. He looked out the window again, first as far to the left as he could see, and then as far to the right. He'd spent enough time in VirtReal simulations to know what was real and what wasn't. This was real. But it was unreal.

  Traffic had come to a complete standstill on every road he could see. In the distance a huge mall vaguely resembled an aircraft carrier from this high up. Boats left their trails in scummy water. Slowly moving out into the Hudson was a line of turbulence.

  He looked up as best he could with his cheek flattened against the glass. Overhead was a solid black cloud. Or was it? The edge looked awfully straight.

  Bobby Joe looked back at New Jersey. He could see roads he'd never seen before, and the shoreline was beginning to disappear from view as it fell below nearby rooftops.

  Fear forced him into nervous humor. This was not going to be a good day.

  #

  Annie Muntz was eating breakfast and watching the morning news in Queens when the lights flickered and the TV picture froze on the last frame. Motion out the window caught her eye.

  On the table next to the couch was a thick tumbler with an inch of Scotch in it. She rose and moved closer to the window for a better look, taking her drink with her.

  At first, Annie thought somehow her apartment building was sinking into the ground, because the Manhattan skyline was slowly but undeniably rising into the air. And the skyline was under a huge transparent arc, as if all the buildings had been put under a giant cake cover.

  As she watched, her knees felt weak. The entire bubble–covered island of Manhattan was slowly rising into the air. As it continued to rise, she saw what was underneath the island. Below street level was a huge cone that extended even deeper than the Empire State Building was tall.