Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Rudy shook his head. "I'm here a lot of hours. I just decided I might as well be comfortable."

  Matt said, "He's a workaholic."

  "And you're not?" Rudy grabbed an banana and started to peel it.

  Suddenly hungry, Abby took an orange. "You two are old friends?"

  "What is it now?" Matt said. "Fifteen years?"

  "Something like that." Rudy took a bite of his banana. "So, what were you doing when I came in?"

  Matt glanced at the screen. "We're making a shopping list. Most of it won't do much good until we get power. Oh, that reminds me. Can you put in a request with the mayor to give us a floor on one of the World Trade Center towers, near the top?"

  "A whole floor?"

  "As much as we can get of one, anyway. I'm sure a fair amount of the towers will be used for transient housing, but it's not like a whole lot of world trade is going to be happening, right?"

  "True. What for?"

  Matt pointed at the window and the domes beyond. "I'm feeling a little voyeuristic."

  #

  The walkie–talkie on Dorine Underwood's desk crackled and Barnaby Jolliet's voice came over the speaker virtually interference free, thanks to the inactivity of most local sources of electrical noise. "Mayor?"

  Dorine picked up her unit and pressed talk. "I'm here." She turned off the portable computer she was using to compile to–do lists and turned to face the window as she talked. The "sun" had traveled almost 360 degrees since it had come on twelve hours ago.

  "The megaphone team has reached the north end again, and they're ready for the next sweep. They were delayed by some more looting on 47th Street, but things seem under control for now. Any changed information you want to be in the new broadcast?"

  Dorine didn't need to look at her notes. "Yes. The water pressure in midtown, including Bellevue, is reported to be adequate for moderate use. Anyone concerned about dehydration can get help there, but tell them to stay where they are if they can. Water should be available almost everywhere by noon tomorrow.

  "Power will probably be restored to the Civic Center area and to midtown by sometime late tonight. Other areas will follow over a period of about two days. Anyone with industrial power experience who's willing to volunteer to be on a work crew so we can get more power up faster should meet at Times Square at midnight or six A.M. Nothing else right now."

  "Got it. Thanks."

  Without taking her eyes off the window, Dorine reached behind her and set the walkie–talkie back on her desk. By her watch the city had managed for about twelve hours and it was still intact. Of course, they really had no idea yet how many people might have been killed on the perimeter of the city, or had jumped from windows, or were now going quietly out of their minds.

  As she sat at her desk, exhausted, the "sun" went out.

  The first thing Dorine realized was that one of the two nearest emergency lights had gone dead after this long without a charge. The second thing was that the "sun" hadn't actually gone completely out. It was still where it had been, but now it was much dimmer. As her eyes adjusted, she realized the light's intensity now made it an artificial full moon.

  The "sun" had been too bright to look at, so the illusion was adequate as long as she didn't think about its circular path, but the "moon" was an outright fake. No craters, no dark seas, just a uniform dull silver like a distant porthole in a huge ship. Dorine felt her face grow warmer.

  Dorine got up and closed her office door and locked it. She went back to her desk, sat down, and put her head down on Rafael's picture. Only a minute later in the big and lonely dark room, beneath the light of a silvery moon, she cried.

  #

  Abby Tersa woke in darkness. For an instant, she didn't know where she was or what had wakened her. Then she recognized the dark outlines of a desk, a bookcase, and a couple of file cabinets. She was in an unused office down the hall from Rudy Sanchez, lying on an uncomfortable cot. Then the rest of it came back to her, and she suddenly felt lost, helpless.

  Immediately she forced away the feelings, swung her legs over the edge of the cot, and stood up. At the window was the same view of the darkened financial district, lit only by the glimmer of the huge lamp traveling around the city, still on the dim setting. Motion on the ground caught her eye.

  On Chambers Street a group of eight or ten people walked through the silent street. Puzzled, Abby watched as they approached one of the cars abandoned near the center of the street. The group surrounded the car, one at each corner, one at each side, and one in the middle of each bumper.

  As though on signal, their heads all dipped. An instant later the car moved sideways toward the curb. They were carrying the car. Automobile theft was suddenly much easier than it had been. But what could people do with the cars?

  When the car was fairly close to the cabs and trucks already at the side of the road, the group set the car down on the pavement and walked up the street toward the next one in the middle of the street.

  At the same instant that Abby understood the group wasn't stealing cars, but was in fact clearing the roads, a deep–throated rumbling noise sounded for a second and then stopped. The fluorescent lights overhead began to glow, but went off again before lighting fully. That was what had wakened her. Now that the air conditioning fans were off again, the building once more seemed artificially quiet.

  As she looked back out the window, the rumbling started again, and the overhead lights came on. Lights in City Hall came on, and lights along Chambers and Lafayette and Park Row came on, too. A whole little section of Manhattan had power.

  Across the island, the twin towers of the World Trade Center remained black.

  Abby checked her watch. Almost five A.M. She moved to the cot and slipped into her shoes, then opened the office door. She started toward Rudy's office, but stopped as she reached the open doorway to the office Matt occupied. From the doorway Abby could see Matt staring through the window into the darkness beyond, as though he were oblivious to the newly restored power.

  She wasn't sure if the attraction to him was sexual or maternal. He was an unusual mix of strength and vulnerability. He made decisions easily and quickly, but she knew something was bothering him a lot, something beyond the obvious predicament.

  Abby knocked lightly on the doorframe. Matt didn't respond. She knocked harder, and this time he turned around.

  "Oh, hi," he said.

  "Good morning."

  "Morning."

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Sure, fine. Just fine."

  Sometimes people can lie convincingly, but Matt didn't seem to have the energy to try. Abby didn't believe him.

  #

  "I think I see a tube that wasn't there yesterday," Rudy said. He squinted at the dome wall. He was almost positive that dark hose was new. "I need to go investigate. Can you guard the fort until I get back?" He moved quickly to grab his tool belt.

  Abby looked up from the small photo of the message on the dome roof. "Sure. If the phones start ringing or if any other linguists show up, we still need all the help we can get, right?"

  "Right. And Matt should be back in an hour or so I think."

  "No problem." Abby hesitated. "Is he all right?"

  "Matt? Sure, as much as any of us are. And he's been through some pretty tough stuff and come out fine. Why do you ask?" Rudy buckled the belt.

  "No reason." Abby wasn't sure why she lied.

  Rudy started for the door. As he was almost through it, Abby asked, "Does he have any family left behind?"

  "His wife," he called behind him, thinking more about the new hose than anything else.

  #

  The hose was new. It met the dome near the East River Park, just south of the severed end of the Williamsburg Bridge.

  Rudy drove onto the grass. As he got close enough to see that the hose was equipped with a bird–feeder tub, too, a cherry–picker drove up and Nicholas stepped down from the driver's seat. "You saw it, too, huh?" Nicholas said.<
br />
  "Yep."

  They stepped into the cage and Nicholas hit the controls. Rudy looked at Nicholas's bloodshot eyes and said, "Didn't you get any sleep last night?" Rudy had gotten the four hours that he'd recommended to everyone on the crews. The "sun" had come back on at the same time and position it had gone on the first time, so the pattern was obvious: one twelve–hour rotation on "sun" and one twelve–hour rotation on "moon."

  "I know what you said," Nicholas said, "but I just can't sleep at all as long as the problems we've got aren't solved. Haven't you ever been so upset you couldn't sleep?"

  "Yeah, but these problems are bound to last longer than I can go without sleep."

  The cage reached the brown bird–feeder and Nicholas slowed their approach. He stopped a foot from the edge. "Why do they put these things so high?"

  "No idea. Unless they think we're much taller. Or they figure the height keeps the masses away so they don't cause any damage or get hurt while experts figure out how to hook up internal systems."

  "What internal systems do we have that interface to Rabbit Chow?"

  "That's sure what it looks like, isn't it?" The tub must have held a hundred liters of small green stubby cylinders smaller than pencil erasers. Rudy bent over for a closer look. The tiny cylinders had the mottled color of old green linoleum, with mirror–smooth curved sides and flat non–reflecting ends, as though the little pellets were extruded from tiny tubes in the larger hose, and sliced off every centimeter as the material came into the tub.

  With one hand, Rudy scooped air in the direction of his nose to try to sense the odor without getting an undiluted dose that could conceivably be dangerous. He smelled nothing.

  Rudy took a piece of paper from his pocket. With one end he scooped up five of the pellets. As they rested in the curve of the page, he carefully folded the paper several times.

  Nicholas said, "They've taken care of air and water. Don't you suppose this is intended to be food?"

  "Yep. But I'm not sticking that in my mouth until I'm sure it's safe."

  "But people are running out of food already. You want to wait until the lab checks it before setting up a way to handle distribution?"

  "No. I think you're right. I just want to play safe. There's nothing wrong with working both in parallel. But let me make a call and get a cop car to take this up to Bellevue so that's not the critical path."

  Nicholas nodded, and Rudy used his walkie–talkie to make the request.

  "So," Rudy said when he was finished. "What are the choices?"

  "Well, we can't pump this stuff like water. And depending on how concentrated it is, it may take a lot of work to shovel and deliver. We could maybe get some industrial vacuuming equipment and beef it up to get the stuff out of here. I'm not sure about transportation. Too bad there weren't a bunch of tanker trucks in the city."

  A police siren in the distance came closer and closer. Rudy gazed north for a moment and said, "You know, we do have a lot of cement mixers."

  #

  The ringing phone startled Julie Kravine.

  When power had been restored to the WNBC offices a few hours earlier, she had immediately tried the phones. Dead. Her next action was to start recharging her minivid batteries.

  The sound of the phone ringing in her own cubicle was reassuring, a touchstone that for an instant could let her block out the reality beyond the short, tan walls.

  "WNBC, Julie Kravine," she said into the mouthpiece.

  "Hi. This is Matt Sheehan. We met on the subway."

  "Hello. How are you doing?"

  "Fine. I'm assisting in the City Manager's office. I want to ask you for two favors. I probably should have talked to the station manager or something, but this seemed easier."

  "Shoot."

  "One, power's up everywhere but the Heights and Chelsea, and they think they'll get those problems solved in the next few hours. We'd like you to start broadcasting the message that at eight P.M. the mayor will address the city, and we'd like you to get a video link set up so she can talk from her office."

  "You got it. I'll need to do some coordinating, but we'll do it. What's your number?"

  Matt gave it to her.

  "Okay, what's the second thing?"

  "I need to borrow a bunch of video cameras with long lenses and a bunch of other video gear. A cop car with a truck can be there in an hour."

  "Gonna be doing some big–time home videos?"

  "In a sense."

  #

  Dorine Underwood sat at her desk at a few minutes before eight P.M. Behind her a sign listed the audio channels viewers could turn to for the five languages her speech would be translated into. The overhead office lights and the light spilling in from the hallway provided more comfort than she had realized they might, somehow being unmistakable signs that life went on. She hoped her presence on TV screens in the city would be a similar reassurance for the residents. That would be possible only if she was calm and matter–of–fact, so she took a couple of deep breaths and glanced at her notes again.

  "Madam Mayor, you're on in ten seconds," said one of the television crew. Six broadcasting organizations were represented tonight. The man counted down on his fingers…three, two, one. The red light came on.

  "Good evening, my fellow New Yorkers." Dorine looked into the lens and spoke coolly. "I don't have to tell you how strange the situation in which we find ourselves is. In fact we still don't know the true extent of what's happening to us. I'll tell you the official view, just so you don't worry too much about whether you're personally going crazy, as I know I felt for a little while. At 7:10 A.M. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, March twentieth, 2012, Manhattan was somehow cut loose from its surroundings and taken, presumably by some very advanced race of aliens, into a huge ship. Whether we're here as part of a zoo exhibit, or these aliens thought they were doing the equivalent of removing a tumor, we don't have the faintest idea. I'm sure we'll find out.

  "What I'm here to tell you tonight is that we are coping. As you hear these words, every district in Manhattan now has electricity and water. Natural gas is apparently going to be unavailable for the duration, as is steam. Crews have been out around the clock, rewiring substations, adjusting valves to equalize water pressure, putting out fires, and shutting gas valves to prevent any more accidents with the gas still in the pipes. We have no way of obtaining further supplies of gasoline, so its use is restricted to authorized emergency and police vehicles and occasional official business uses such as transporting equipment needed for utility operations. Anyone using such vehicles is urged to use them only if equivalent electric vehicles are truly unavailable.

  "Food is probably of primary importance to everyone, and I want to tell you there is food available, and there's enough for everyone. No one will go hungry. What we will be is bored.

  "I'm sure you realize we don't have the facilities or the raw material to manufacture enough food for everyone in Manhattan. The supply we do have is being furnished by our captors, as is the electricity and water we are using. We have no alternative. The food the aliens are providing has been run through exhaustive testing by doctors at Bellevue. It contains more calcium than most of us will need, but not so much that it's unsafe.

  "Twenty minutes after I stop talking, and that won't be too long now, city cement trucks are going to start an around–the–clock sweep through the city, stopping at every intersection. They're carrying loads of small nutrient pills." Dorine much preferred that designation to "Rabbit Chow."

  "The Bellevue doctors have determined that an average adult can subsist on about a half–liter per day. Anyone can take up to a liter every time a truck comes around, and we believe the supply to be unlimited. We'll be working on better delivery methods, but for now, at least we can all eat. I'm sure that you're going to find this whole process irritating, from the food itself to the delivery method. But we have to have food, and it has to be distributed quickly. This is our only choice.

  "I do have some requests
. I know that natural food already in the city is going to be more appetizing than what we're being provided, and I fully expect it will be eaten. What I ask is that you donate any unopened soft food you have to any area hospital so it can be available for the very young and for the sick and injured. In addition, we need to consolidate all extra supplies of medication, to make sure medicine is available for emergencies and so that until it's needed it's carefully stored for longevity."

  Dorine put aside a page of paper and looked at the next sheet. "Other needs exist; I know that and you know that. One of those needs is housing for people who don't live in Manhattan. At the end of this broadcast will be a series of phone numbers for people to call. City employees will be standing by, ready to coordinate referrals to area hotels and businesses. If you have space for a visitor in your home or apartment, please let us know.

  "Another need is information. I know you want to know what's going on, as do I. I'll have a status update at this same time and channel every night. I'll tell you the key things we've learned. Probably highest on that list is whether we are contacted by our captors, or if we can translate the message on the dome above us. Also following this broadcast will be a series of telephone numbers where you can ask questions you'd like to see me answer. The most–asked questions that we find answers to will be handled every night.

  "City employees have been working around the clock to make essential services available to you. I think they've done a tremendous job. And now I need to ask for your help. We need special skills in a variety of areas, and again there will be numbers to call after this telecast. First of all we need to decipher the message from our captors. Any expert linguists or cultural anthropologists, or people with experience in cryptography or mathematics, are desperately needed. In addition, we can use any experts in communications systems, video image analysis, and physics, as we try to learn as much as we can about our new environment. If you've got those skills, please call and give us a summary of your abilities. And tell us how to reach you so we can do that when the need arises. We also need more volunteers to help with city utility support, and we need volunteer fire fighters.