Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Matt cursed himself. He should have figured that part of the population would be the kind to take advantage of a situation like this rather than going home and waiting for word about what was going on. With four of them, he needed a smaller playing field. He turned, took a couple of steps, and leapt high, hoping his instincts would be good enough. His body arced into the air, carrying him an easy couple of meters higher than the top of the stalled bus he had aimed for. He tilted forward, windmilling wildly to keep from going over face forward, and just in time his feet landed on the roof of the bus. He bounced and skidded and came to a stop centimeters from the edge of the slick roof.

  The thugs weren't very smart; the first one came alone. The guy in the dirty brown sweatshirt jumped up as awkwardly as Matt had. Matt feinted and punched the guy in the nose, and the guy started a slow–motion spin back to the ground. Matt tipped backward for a couple of seconds before he regained his balance.

  Two of the thugs, one with a knife, jumped up simultaneously. They started to approach warily, and behind him Matt heard another pair of feet dimple the bus roof as they landed.

  Chapter 3

  Signals and Noise

  The roof of the bus had about the same area as a boxing ring, but here the edges of combat territory bordered on a steep drop to hard pavement.

  At the sound of the feet behind him on the bus roof, Matt turned, wanting to deal first with the single attacker. But the person behind him wasn't the other thug; it was Abby Tersa. She held her collapsed umbrella ready to use as a weapon. Her blonde hair slowly settled beside her face in the light gravity, and anger had reached those cool gray eyes.

  Matt turned back to the two approaching men. Both of them looked as if they had last shaved four days ago without help from a mirror. One of them held a knife. Another good sign that Matt was dealing with amateurs—–the knife was on the inside. The man wouldn't be able to take a wide swing without damaging his partner beside him. That handicap would be wasted if Matt took his partner out first, so Matt concentrated on the knife.

  The man with the knife moved ahead of his companion, possibly figuring that he'd use his weapon to soften up Matt first so his buddy didn't have to work up much of a sweat. He moved toward Matt, but his companion moved to catch up, holding almost even with him.

  Matt moved suddenly and directly for the knife–wielder. Surprise flashed across the man's dark eyes, and he made a feint with the knife. Matt took a calculated risk, and the second time the man lunged, Matt crouched sideways and kicked one foot hard toward the man's kneecap.

  The kick connected. In the low gravity, Matt's recoil tipped him over, but the man he'd kicked was no immediate threat. Matt had heard no grinding crunch when his kick connected, so the man probably wasn't going to suffer any permanent damage, but he was off–balance and definitely in pain. He lurched in a small circle, like a bear with one foot in a trap, until he fell off the bus, his knife flying away in a graceful arc. Matt got back to his feet while the remaining man was still watching his partner's slow–motion spill.

  The man's unarmed companion looked so shocked, Matt decided the time was right for some psychology. Simultaneously Matt grinned with the intensity of someone absolutely certain of a favorable outcome, moved toward the man confidently, and slowly reached inside his jacket. That was enough for the remaining man. He turned and took a running leap from the roof of the bus to the roof of a stopped car and kept going.

  Matt turned toward Abby, relieved that they were unhurt. As she took as step toward him, the fourth thug sprang into view. He had also jumped too high, and his arc carried him and his knife in a trajectory toward Abby. The man was tilting forward a little, obviously no more experienced in low–gravity jumping than they were.

  Matt started to move closer to where the man was going to land, but Abby beat him to it. Just as the man approached the edge of the bus roof, Abby sent a strong high kick directly into the man's stomach. The air whooshed from his lungs, and the knife went flying harmlessly away.

  The man hit the corner of the bus roof. If he'd been able to draw a breath already, the impact would have left him breathless all over again. He grimaced in pain as he slid off the roof.

  When Abby had kicked, she lost her balance. She hopped on one leg, tilting into a backward series of hops that merely postponed her eventual fall. "Oh, no!" she cried.

  Matt caught her just before she hopped backward off the roof of the bus. Abby wrapped her arms around him tightly and shuddered.

  Abby's hair smelled fresh. Matt pushed a loose strand back into place. A long moment later, Abby let go. "Ah, sorry," she said.

  "My pleasure." Matt smiled. "You do that sort of thing a lot?"

  Abby shook her head, and her blonde hair swirled slowly.

  Together they moved to the edge of the roof where the man had fallen. He lay on the ground, groaning loudly. From his position, it was obvious that his fall had been interrupted by a fire hydrant. In normal gravity, he might well have suffered a broken back. Probably now he just felt as though he had one.

  A small crowd gathered on the sidewalk as Matt used his walkie–talkie to tell the police they were needed. When he finished, Matt glanced at Abby and said, "Going down?"

  Abby nodded and together they leaped. As they floated back to the ground, Matt recalled a slow–motion jumping image from the remake of The Six Million Dollar Man.

  #

  Stuart Lund awoke in a hospital bed and realized almost instantly that his right hand was gone. Severed at about a thirty–degree angle at the wrist, the stump was covered with something that looked like a thin layer of gauze. He stared at the stump for a long moment, then out of curiosity imagined the hand was still there and tried to make a fist. The action sent pain into his wrist. He felt a muscle tighten in his forearm and then relax.

  With his arm still in the air, he looked around. The long room was filled with the constant commotion of a too–busy staff trying to deal with all the problems of patients occupying two long rows of beds, but Stuart paid almost no attention to his present surroundings.

  A series of images raced unbidden through his brain. On the subway, he had been taking advantage of the crush of people to rest his right hand against the derriere of an attractive woman farther back in the car. He could still feel the pain where the hand had been cleaved from his wrist.

  He had regained consciousness while resting on the subway platform and the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the "Repent!" sign in the row of advertisements.

  Stuart had never been a strongly religious man. In fact, he hated the times when his aunt used to force him to attend services at the Church of Modern Christian Discipline.

  The sign right next to the "Repent" sign had been a ballet advertisement proclaiming, "Dance All You Can Be," but Stuart felt certain God hadn't been trying to tell him to become a dancer.

  But there was no denying what had happened to him. God had intervened in an unmistakable way. God had cut off his hand to say, "Sin no more," but God had left Stuart alive and had shown him the "Repent!" sign for some reason. Stuart didn't feel he knew a lot about God, but he did know from Albert Einstein that God didn't play dice. God must have a definite purpose for Stuart.

  But what was it?

  #

  Rudy Sanchez looked over the Pier 17 pumping installation with satisfaction. A hose ran from the bird–feeder into a generator–driven pump, which sent a steady flow into a nearby fire hydrant. The hose vibrated with the rush of liquid. The "sun" had traveled about 180 degrees around the city since it had come on, and about six hours had passed. Unlike the real sun, this one provided no radiant warmth. Moving from shade to "sunlight" made no change in the temperature, which was a steady twenty–five degrees C everywhere air moved freely.

  "That's good," Rudy said to Victor Krunkale, a water works supervisor, a big man with hands so large that Rudy imagined he had a hard time buttoning his shirt. "Can you get your team to install at least another ten setups like thi
s? Then we'll make some measurements and see if we've got enough capacity."

  "It might take me three shifts," Victor said. "We had lots of no–shows today."

  "Whatever it takes. Maybe the fire threat will be lower since no one's using natural gas, but if we get a bad fire, people are going to need water even more than they already do." Rudy turned to Nicholas Dunte, who had been waiting for the last few minutes. "Okay, let's go see this thing you're talking about."

  Nicholas gestured toward the cherry–picker. They got in and the driver took them southwest past a few severed piers. Before they reached the place Nicholas had told him about, Rudy suddenly asked the driver to stop. He got out and approached a discolored spot at the base of the bubble. "Just a sec."

  Rudy knelt in front of the patch that had caught his eye. For a moment he just looked through the clear bubble at the flat plain beyond. From here he used to be able to see Squibb Park in Brooklyn. Outside the enclosed city, the featureless gray surface was unbroken except by other domes. Rudy couldn't see signs of motion in the nearest dome, one with scores of multicolored spires. The plain itself had the texture of matte–finish paint. It showed no reflections, just a uniform gray surface that could have been diamond hard or bubble–gum soft. The surface of the plain was roughly even with ground level, so the subterranean portion of Manhattan had to be embedded in the gray stuff.

  Rudy looked more closely at the base of the bubble itself. In most places the clear surface extended straight into the slit between the city and the flat gray plain. Here, however, the bubble gradually blackened as it approached the ground. Level with the concrete Rudy knelt on, the bubble was black. Between there and the clear section seemed to be a boundary layer, where what looked to be two kinds of materials flowed together, establishing a strong bond.

  The seam reminded Rudy of tinted sunglasses, the kind that were clear at the bottom and dark at the top, but when he ran his fingers over the surface he could tell the texture change was more significant than mere tinting. Above the boundary layer, the dome felt perfectly smooth and slick, like clean glass. Just above ground level, the black surface was slightly rough, and it felt like wrought iron.

  Next to him, Rudy saw that Nicholas had found a loose piece of packing material to kneel on. Nicholas was one of the most capable city workers under Rudy, and he was also probably the most fastidious.

  Rudy got his knife from his pocket and applied the blade to the black surface. He pushed hard on the knife and drew the blade along the surface. When he looked closely, he could see no sign that the blade had made any impression.

  "Got any theories?" Rudy asked.

  Nicholas ran his fingers over the clear part and then over the black section. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and cleaned off his fingers as he thought. Finally he said, "Two possibilities occur to me. One, this section of the bubble has been damaged somehow. Two, the bubble doesn't go all the way down to bedrock. They must have supported the section of earth they excavated to ensure the island wouldn't fall apart when they lifted us. Perhaps the black material is what was used below ground, and what we see here is the region where it was fused into the bubble material."

  Rudy stood up and realized they had attracted a small crowd of curious onlookers. "Okay," he said to Nicholas. "How much farther is this other tube?"

  Nicholas got back up and looked southwest. "Not far. We're halfway there already."

  They traveled a minute or two in the cherry–picker, then the driver stopped, and they got out. Nicholas pointed up at a large silvery circle where a smaller opaque hose met the side of the dome.

  Rudy and Nicholas rode the cherry–picker cage upward to the spot. The cage hung in the air, vibrating slightly as Rudy took a closer look. Inside the large silvery circle were four more circles, two medium ones side–by–side on top, each with a small circle directly below it. The large circles were a somewhat darker shade of silver.

  The two smaller circles seemed to be controls. Around the perimeter of each of the smaller circles was a series of dots, a little like minute marks on an analog watch. In the "clock" on the right, the dot at two o'clock glowed. In the "clock" on the left, a dot near three o'clock blinked on and off.

  After examining the array of circles, Rudy finally said to Nicholas, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "Probably. If you're thinking about electricity."

  As Rudy nodded, Nicholas took a multimeter from a pocket in his overalls. He wiped some lint off the display face and handed it to Rudy. "You want to do the honors?"

  "How about if we each take one lead?"

  Nicholas took the red lead and Rudy took the black. Rudy set the multimeter to "volts" and they each extended their probes to the large circles above the "clocks."

  "You feel that?" Rudy asked. He pulled the probe away from the silver circle and let it snap back again.

  "Yeah, it feels like a magnet. But I really don't believe these probes are ferromagnetic."

  Both men let their probes just hang from the silver circles.

  "Forty–two volts at eleven Hertz," Rudy said a moment later even though Nicholas could easily read the display. A small green light on the multimeter stayed on steadily, indicating a clean sine wave. "You want to try the adjustment on your side? Here, this pen is pretty well insulated."

  "Thanks anyway." Nicholas took a long plastic adjusting tool from his pocket. Carefully he reached forward and pressed the plastic tip against the dot next to the one that glowed. The glowing dot went out, and the one Nicholas touched came on, glowing slightly brighter.

  The display said a little over fifty volts. "All right!" Rudy said. "Do it again."

  The next step up was about sixty volts. Nicholas poked one dot after another until they got 104 volts, then 125 and 150. Rudy set the meter on the lip of the cherry–picker cage, and Nicholas kept going as each successive light got brighter and brighter until the voltage rose to the point where the two men didn't trust the meter leads to insulate safely, so Nicholas set the voltage back to 125.

  "Can I use that?" Rudy asked.

  Nicholas handed him the insulated tool, and Rudy pushed the dot next to the blinking dot. The blinking one went out, and the one Rudy pushed started blinking faster than the previous one. The meter said the new frequency was 13.2 Hertz. In a series of steps, Rudy took the frequency up to about fifty–seven Hertz and then a little over sixty–eight Hertz as the lights flashed faster. As a final test, he made sure he could get up to 440 Hertz.

  "I think we're in business," Rudy said. "We should be able do anything from wall–socket to substation. We'll probably have a little extra work dealing with two–phase instead of three, but I think we can get from here to there." He reached to pull the meter leads loose, but they stayed where they were. "I'll be damned," he said, and looked closer. The leads seemed to have been pushed into the surface of the silvery circle. By pulling with steady pressure for several seconds, he was able to get the leads back out. The silvery surface looked totally smooth and unblemished.

  Nicholas looked closely, too, then raised his eyebrows.

  Rudy pushed the controls to lower the cage to the ground, not far from still more onlookers. When the cage reached the pavement, Nicholas let Rudy swing the gate open, no doubt to keep his hands from getting dirty.

  #

  Abby Tersa was looking out the window of Rudy's office when he returned. Matt was sitting at Rudy's desk with the Manhattan yellow directory on the portable computer's screen.

  "Hello," Abby said.

  Rudy unsnapped an equipment belt and set it on the corner of the desk. "Hi." He wiped sweat from his forehead. "Those stairs are murder. Thank God the gravity is low." He came closer to Abby. "And you are?"

  "Abby Tersa." She shook Rudy's hand as Rudy gave her his name.

  "Abby's our first translator—er, make that linguist," Matt said. "How's it going so far for you?"

  "So far, so good. I've got several teams working on water and power. We may have water t
o midtown in six or eight hours, and water in most areas in a day. I just pulled back the team working on the ConEd generator up north, because we're being provided electricity, too. My guess is, we'll be ready to turn on switches during the next day or two. The biggest problem is recycling high–voltage cable—taking sections from where they're no longer needed to where we need them."

  Matt said, "There are some other problems. You know of any way to make food from nothing but water and electricity? Every place I saw selling food had a line long enough to buy them out. And I suppose stuff in freezers is spoiling all over the city."

  Abby spoke up. "What are people using for money?"

  Matt shook his head. "I think it's a variety of things. Drugs, cigarettes, sex. Some people are apparently using actual money. I guess I'm not as optimistic as they are that we'll get back to a place where money will be any good, but who knows?"

  Abby said, "If they're supplying water and electricity, don't you think they'll supply everything?"

  Matt and Rudy looked at each other as though deciding who got to answer. Matt said, "My guess is you're right. I just hate not knowing. And if people get too hungry, there's going to be even worse panic."

  Rudy said, "I agree. And I'm hungry, too."

  Matt looked at his watch. "Okay, so what do you say to The Restaurant in Windows of the World? With a hundred stories to climb, we shouldn't have much competition."

  Rudy nodded. "Sounds good to me. What about you, Abby? Hungry?"

  Abby scrutinized the two men. Both looked quite serious. "No, why don't you go without me?"

  Matt said, "We can't have that. How about if we eat in, instead?"

  "Well, all right," Rudy said, as though he were making a huge sacrifice. He walked to a vertical two–door cabinet and flung the doors open. "So, what's your pleasure? Breakfast cereal, pop–morsels, cookies, a banana or an orange?"

  Abby approached the cabinet with amazement. Every shelf was fully loaded with food, including several choices of tea, crackers, Tangy–Treats, and a huge supply of microwaveable EverLast snacks. "Did you get some warning that this was going to happen?"