Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  #

  Julie kept her minivid active and tried as hard as she could to focus her thoughts on the mechanics of her job. Thank God the recorder still had a moderate charge. The minivid optics were attached to her headband, feeding what they saw into her glasses and to the recorder that hung lightly at her waist.

  She had made several deliberate pans of the dome overhead and recorded the stalled traffic with drivers milling about on Fulton and Broadway before the artificial sun came on and the dome cleared. Now she used her telephoto on the cities inside the domes out there on the plain. In one of the nearest bubbles, which contained maybe a hundred very large pyramid–shaped blue buildings with irregular windows, she could make out the motion of what looked to be people.

  Light glinted from the dome over the blue city, and in the short time she recorded the scene, the brightest reflection moved just a hair to the right. The "sky" was brighter over that side of the dome, as though it had its own "sun" pointed at it but was shielded from view in this direction. She waited a few moments and the reflection was again slightly to the right of where it had been before. In her telephoto image, she could see a couple of distant domes that looked dark. Some domes were simple portions of spheres; others were distorted to accommodate tall structures, the way the tent–shaped dome over Manhattan was.

  Julie looked back up at the dome above Manhattan. The bubble came close to touching the tip of the southernmost of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. She moved past a small crowd of people on the sidewalk and took some more shots. The honking seemed to have died down a little since she and the others had gotten up to the street, but people clogged the road, walking between stopped trucks and buses, or standing rigid and looking up. A couple of people near the intersection were shouting unintelligibly.

  Julie noticed more eye contact than normal among people in the crowd, as though many of them were silently asking, "Do you see this, too?" In the street she recognized another journalist but couldn't tell if he was wearing a minivid.

  "Are you going to be all right?" asked a voice behind her shoulder.

  She turned and found Matt Sheehan standing there, his small flight bag held in one hand. "It's a little too early to tell right now, don't you think?"

  "I meant as far as getting around the city."

  "Sure. I'll be fine. Do you realize that there seem to be people living under those other domes?"

  "No, but I'm glad to hear it. That probably means they intend to keep alive."

  Motion in the direction of what was left of the Brooklyn Bridge made them turn in unison. What seemed to be an enormous transparent hose was extending down from somewhere above, the top end invisible. Julie turned and saw another hose to the "south." She turned full circle and could see four different hoses dropping around the island. Presumably more hoses were dropping near the north end of the dome, near Harlem and Washington Heights.

  The end of the nearby hose almost reached the flat plain outside the dome. Julie started her minivid again and watched through the telephoto viewfinder. "That hose, or whatever it is, is starting to curve," she said for Matt's benefit.

  The hose continued to curve until it completed a ninety–degree turn, facing the dome. "It's coming closer to the dome," Julie said.

  As the large transparent tube came closer, the end grew in diameter. Finally it stuck itself against the side of the dome, maybe fifty meters in the air, about as high as the Brooklyn Bridge support.

  "So are the rest of the tubes," Matt said as he turned back to face the closest one.

  Where the lip of the hose touched the dome, a bright ring formed. The dome material in the circle and just outside the circle shimmered, and then the clear dome material within the circle melted away from the center until it looked as if some huge glass blower had just perfectly formed the spout on a glass teapot.

  Julie was aware of several distant sirens as she stood watching the dome material near the hose lose its shimmer. Within seconds the dome and hose were back to their normal transparency, as though they had been connected forever.

  "What do you suppose those things are for?" she asked.

  Matt glanced at the ring of tubes. "If they want to keep us alive, we're going to need air pretty soon. I'd vote for ventilation."

  Another set of hoses began to drop from the sky. As Julie and Matt watched, she realized she could feel a breeze when before there hadn't been one.

  "You must be right about the air," she said, then looked around. "Tell me something. Does it look to you like the light has moved since it came on?"

  Matt glanced toward the "sun." "Maybe a little. To the right?"

  "That was my guess, too."

  "I always wondered what it would be like to live in an ant farm."

  "You're kiddin' me."

  Matt looked at her. "Yeah, I'm kidding."

  One of the second set of hoses had melted through the dome. This hose was smaller and lower to the ground, and whatever was happening to the dome itself was different. Instead of a simple hole in the dome, part of the dome, or part of the hose, was extruding a shape into the interior of the dome. They watched in awe for several seconds before Matt suddenly laughed.

  "What?" Julie asked.

  "It's a bird–feeder. That cup is going to fill with water, I bet you—" he hesitated. "I don't know that betting you money makes any sense anymore."

  Julie looked back at the junction and the interior shape as it stopped mutating. He was right. A bird–feeder was just what it looked like. "I've seen a lot of things, but I'm having a tough time believing this is all real."

  "Me, too."

  Julie heard cries from somewhere in the crowd behind her. She turned and saw several people looking and pointing upward. She looked to where they pointed, and she saw shapes appearing on the top of the tent–shaped bubble.

  She and Matt watched in silence as what looked to be lettering of some kind formed on the dome. Through her telephoto, the large black shapes split into a few smaller shapes, as though the aliens' paragraphs themselves formed two–dimensional shapes. The characters were completely foreign to her. Most of the marks had such ill–defined shapes, they looked more like a child's doodling than actual writing, possibly alien pictographs rather than characters.

  "Any guesses as to what that says?" she asked.

  Matt took a long look. "I suppose it must be a message to us rather than some label for themselves, but if it were for their own use, I'd be afraid it said something like, 'Manhattan Zoo,' or worse."

  "Worse?"

  "Yeah, it could say, 'Laboratory Animals.'"

  #

  Minutes after the artificial night began, Dorine Underwood saw the "sunrise" from her office, and it gave her new hope. If their captors were providing light, they wouldn't be preparing to kill everyone right away. She hoped.

  Given that the city was still alive, she had an organization to run. Her thoughts still flicked from topic to topic in her typical stress reaction, and she willed herself to calm down. She must be calm. Dorine took a couple of deep breaths and forced herself to look for something good in the situation. It took her several minutes. Finally she decided that the only slightly good news was that she wouldn't have her day constantly interrupted by out–of–towners.

  She paused for a few seconds and picked up a picture of Rafael. He was off designing a new theater in Cleveland, however far away that was now. She gripped the picture tightly enough that the glass popped as it pressed more tightly against the photo of her husband. "Dear God," she said softly. "Give me strength to do what must be done. And give Rafael the strength to handle—–whatever it is that's happened."

  She dabbed at her eyes briefly, then strode into the hall. No one was going to say Sherilyn Underwood's little girl wasn't up to anything the Lord threw her way. And she'd be damned if anyone got an opportunity to say a white mayor would be handling things better. She didn't get to be mayor of New York City by caving in whenever the unexpected happened.

 
She found Freddy the night guard still near his post. He stared out the hallway window completely entranced.

  "Freddy," she said softly, and touched his arm.

  Freddy jumped. "God damn. Don't do—" Freddy regained control. "Oh, it's you, Ms. Mayor. I'm sorry. You just scared the—"

  "It's all right. I understand completely. Something very strange has happened out there."

  "You're damn—er, you ain't wrong there, ma'am."

  "Look, I've got a job for you. Are you ready?" Seeing the man's hesitation, she added, "We've got a city to run. Something bad has happened out there, and the people of Manhattan need us more than ever."

  "Yes, ma'am. You're right. I'm ready."

  "That's good. What I want you to do is walk over to Barnaby Jolliet's office. Tell him I said for him to use his best judgment about getting the police out there to reassure people. And ask him for three of his walkie–talkies so we can talk until the phones are on again. You got that?"

  "I got it, ma'am. And bring you all three walkie–talkies?"

  "Right. Unless you see Ken Randall. Give him one. And when you get back, tell everyone you can find in the building there'll be a meeting in the planning room in twenty minutes—at nine–thirty. Tell that to Mr. Jolliet, too, and Ms. Phillipe in the Municipal Building."

  "You got it, Ms. Mayor." Freddy seemed visibly relieved to see that someone was reacting as though this were something that could be handled. Dorine hoped the rest of Manhattan would react the same way.

  Dorine went back to her office and looked out the window. On the street, a pair of men jumped straight into the air. Their heads must have cleared the second floor before they fell gently back to the ground.

  She looked over the skyline. One more good thing about this. The air looked cleaner than it had in decades.

  #

  Julie turned off her minivid after training the lens on the message on the dome. "I hope you're wrong about what it says," she said. "I hope it says, 'We'll have you back in twenty–four hours.'"

  Matt looked at one of the domes outside their own. "Doesn't seem too likely, though, does it?"

  "No," Julie said. "Damn, I hate to admit this, but I'm scared."

  "Me, too," said Matt. "Me, too."

  Some of the buses and cars in the street were abandoned. By now, many drivers had just parked as far from the center of the road as they could, and left their vehicles there.

  Matt hesitated. "I was on my way to visit a friend who works in the Municipal Building. You're not going to have any trouble getting home or wherever you need to go?"

  "I'll be fine. Who's your friend if I need to get hold of you?"

  "Rudy Sanchez."

  Julie reached into a pocket. "Here's my card in case you need to reach me."

  "Thanks. You take care of yourself."

  "You, too." Julie turned, and within seconds she was lost in the crowd.

  #

  Matt walked over to Park Row, past City Hall Park, which was packed with onlookers staring up at the reflections from the interior of the dome. People on the street were slipping and sliding with the lower friction and the unfamiliarity with low gravity. A few people adapting more quickly ran with long, high bounding steps or jumped straight up as far as they could. A cab surged through a gap in traffic and tried to make a hard turn, but wound up sliding sideways until it mashed the fender on a stalled truck. A couple of street people slumping on the sidewalk next to the building pulled their coats more tightly around themselves.

  Matt found the Municipal Building straddling Chambers Street. No one questioned him as he checked an office directory that said Rudy's office was on the nineteenth floor, then started up the stairs.

  The nineteenth floor was a long dim corridor lit only by a few emergency lamps and light filtering through office windows. Matt reached the southern end of the hallway and found the nametag he'd been looking for. As he hesitated in the hall, a man he didn't recognize hurried out of the office.

  Matt rapped on the doorframe. "Hello. Anybody home?"

  From behind a tall file cabinet, Rudy Sanchez appeared. Rudy had grown up in East L.A., then gotten his degree in mechanical engineering before entering the military, where Matt had met him. He'd shaved his moustache since Matt had seen him last, and added maybe ten pounds, but in the light from the window, he looked fit. "Matt? You're a day early. God, it's good to see you."

  "Same here." Matt shook hands, and he smiled despite the tension. Rudy's grip had lost none of its strength. It felt good to see a familiar face in the middle of all this.

  Rudy sighed. "If you had just been a day late, you might have been spared all this."

  "Well, I am here." Matt moved to the window, and Rudy joined him. From this height, he could see a few more domes that, from ground level, had been hidden behind the closest domes.

  Matt said, "God damn. I still can't believe this is really happening." His face felt hot.

  "I know what you mean. I feel like I'm dreaming." Rudy hesitated. "I don't mind telling you this whole business scares me."

  Matt stared at one of the distant domes. "Me, too. A person would be pretty damn stupid not to be scared right now."

  "What the hell do you figure's happening?"

  "You mean other than the fact that we've been captured by some pretty advanced aliens?" Matt said with a forced chuckle.

  "Yeah, other than that little detail." Rudy's face showed the tension running through his body.

  "You got me. That they want us alive. Those big hoses out there seem to be supplying air at a comfortable temperature. Those slightly smaller hoses seem to be bird–feeder water supplies."

  "Makes sense to me, too, but for God's sake why?" Rudy asked.

  "I've got no better idea than you do."

  Rudy shook his head. "I've got to go to an emergency planning meeting in five minutes. Your skills could come in mighty handy right now. Want to come along?"

  "Fine by me. I'd like to do be doing something. I feel terminally edgy."

  Rudy turned his head. "Is Nadine all right? I thought you said she'd be meeting you here."

  Matt stared out the window. For a brief moment, he was looking out the window of a chalet in the Swiss Alps, and Nadine was beside him. "Nadine had a change of plans. She's still in Cairo. I talked to her a couple of nights ago. She wants a divorce."

  For a moment Rudy stared out the window toward the domes in silence. "Well, I guess you could say she got it, huh?"

  In spite of himself, Matt laughed.

  #

  Dorine cut short the pre–meeting nervous conversation and convened the emergency session promptly on time. Fortunately the room had a large window so they didn't need artificial lighting. The group was smaller than she had expected. No doubt that meant some people were walking to work from stalled subways, or had gone home to deal with emergencies there, or had been outside the borough when it was pulled loose. Perhaps a fair number of people simply couldn't cope with the strange circumstances.

  She scanned faces in the group. Good. The police commissioner, Barnaby Jolliet, was here. She saw people from the city council and the Office of Emergency Management. "Where's Michelle Phillipe?" she asked. "Anybody know?"

  "No one has seen her this morning," said a man in his late thirties or early forties. "I don't think anyone senior to me in the City Manager's office is in right now. I'm Rudy Sanchez."

  "All right. Let's start with quick department summaries and then go to planning. I suppose we all know equally little about what's really happening, so all we can do is get this borough functioning as best we can. There may be a couple of million people in Manhattan right now, and they're going to need protection, food, water, electricity, waste disposal, medical help." Dorine scanned faces.

  "Barnaby, how do things stand with the police?"

  Barnaby Jolliet, a man with a ruddy complexion, shifted in his chair. Despite his slightly blustering manner, and an occasional unwillingness to admit he didn't know an answer, Barnab
y was competent and hard–working. "We've made a good start. All the precincts except for the sixteenth and the thirty–fourth are in communication with walkie–talkie relays. We've got officers with bullhorns going up all the avenues, restoring order and telling people we're getting things under control. We've stopped looting in several spots, but so far most people don't seem to be trying to take advantage of the situation. It's more like people are still in shock."

  Barnaby held up his walkie–talkie. "For those of you with walkie–talkies, stay off channels A through G; those are for police use. Channels H and I are emergency channels. Channel K is the city government party line." He put the walkie–talkie on the table and looked at Dorine. "We need to keep people in check, and we can do that. The tough part is when, not if, we have a big fire. Without water, we're going to be flat out of luck."

  "I know. Good summary. What about water?"

  "Why are we bothering with this?" suddenly asked an older man who Dorine recognized as a long–time city employment worker. "You're treating this like just another emergency, but it's not. It's crazy out there!"

  "We have to do what we can," Dorine said forcefully. "Without us the chaos will be damn sight worse. There are some areas, like yours, and like the tourist bureau, that won't be as busy as normal, but other groups will be a lot busier. Anyone without something to do should volunteer in another area. Back to my question about water."

  Michelle's stand–in, Rudy, spoke up. "It looks like the aliens are making water available to us. One of my people is getting a battery–operated computer ready so we can find what we need in inventory. With some luck, can run hoses from the alien supply into the water mains. With pumps we can get it up to near the same pressure we had before. I've sent a team of people out to shut off pipes to sections that were severed.