Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Matt watched for a couple of minutes as Nadine started the back rub and threw in some flirting for good measure. As Matt watched, the pain inside his gut grew and grew, and somehow summoned up that old unrelated feeling from his childhood, the feeling that no matter what he did, it would never be enough to satisfy his parents. After a few minutes he couldn't stand it anymore. He had to get away.

  He backed away from the small group, turned, and strode toward the woods. As he did, he was aware that he held the slim hope that Nadine would see the hurt, and that she would follow him, that maybe they could talk and smooth things over. He made a point of not going much farther when he reached the edge of the trees.

  He walked maybe ten meters into the trees and came to a small clearing, barely hearing the cries of birds in the trees, amazed at how strong his reaction had been. He waited there twenty or thirty minutes, feeling that if Nadine cared anything at all about him that she would have been there by that time. Finally the feelings built to the point that he cried, and the feeling of loss of control just made him hurt that much more.

  When he finally recovered, he went back to the picnic area. The back rub was over, and Nadine was casually chatting with a couple of people from their unit.

  That night, sex was more fiery than it had been in several weeks. Matt had lain awake for a long time afterward, wondering if that had been Nadine's goal, and angry at himself that he was so easily manipulated.

  Matt took a deep breath, blinked away the recollection, and swung his feet over the edge of the cot. He stretched and walked to the window. The array of domed cities in the distance focused his attention on the present.

  Minutes later he was back in the operations room. Bobby Joe had beat him there again and was busily engaged at the control console.

  "Any word?" Matt asked.

  "None so far. I really think our transmission is getting out there, though."

  Matt sat down beside Bobby Joe. "We've been transmitting for—" he looked at his watch "—–coming up on forty–eight hours so far. You'd think that would be enough time for them to realize we're answering their signal. Why don't they transmit something else to tell us they understand?"

  "I wish I knew."

  "Any chance the atmosphere outside the dome absorbs more than we think it does? Maybe our signal is a lot weaker than theirs."

  "Don't think so. I can pinpoint the portion of our signal that's reflecting off that dome, and my computer and my gut say they should be getting just as strong a signal as we are."

  Matt leaned back and rubbed his forehead. He was still sitting there when Abby came in and sat down.

  "Good morning," she said.

  "Hi."

  "You look tired."

  "I shouldn't be," Matt said. "I got plenty of sleep. How are things with your message?"

  Abby shook her head. "Still no progress. We all feel quite inept."

  "No one said it would be easy. Whoever wrote that message isn't very much like us, I'd bet."

  "Still, there's got to be a way."

  #

  "You want to cut a hole through the dome?" Dorine Underwood said. "Isn't that a bit drastic?"

  The council meeting was slightly larger than normal, since Matt Sheehan had brought some of his team along.

  "I know it sounds that way, Ms. Mayor," Matt said. "But we've given it a lot of thought and it seems to make the most sense. Can I outline our reasoning?"

  Dorine hesitated. "All right. It can't hurt to hear it."

  "First of all, every indication we have says we're going to be here for a long time, if not forever, if we accept the status quo. We've heard nothing from our captors except the sign over our heads, and we've been beaming messages via radio frequencies and broad–spectrum light in every possible direction, and we still haven't heard a peep out of our captors. I understand that they might have trouble decoding what we're sending, and we'll probably have trouble with any message from them, but we've received nothing. Either they're unaware of our transmissions or they're ignoring us.

  "I believe that getting out of this enclosure is the only thing that might increase our chances of being taken home. If we're enough of a nuisance, maybe they won't want us."

  "Possibly. But they might just dump us in space."

  "That's a risk. I don't think it's very likely, but that's a risk."

  Dorine searched Matt's eyes. She was used to watching people's eyes. Who was it that said something about eyes being the window to the soul? He looked honest. He had readily admitted her fear had some justification, rather than just brushing aside the objection. "Go on, Colonel Sheehan."

  "Okay. First some background." Matt gestured at the bald man sitting next to him. "You may recognize Dr. Brewster from a Time article last year. Dr. Brewster, with a couple of associates from Columbia University, has made an extensive series of spectroscopic measurements, looking at the atmosphere out there, between the domes, and in addition they've been able to make measurements of the atmospheres inside most of the other domes. Their findings indicate the air outside between the domes is breathable, although at a lower pressure than in here. About eighty percent of the domes contain various mixtures of oxygen and nitrogen with minor amounts of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and trace gases that won't hurt us. There might be circumstances where we'd need oxygen masks, but in general, we'd be perfectly safe."

  Barnaby had grown increasingly agitated while Matt spoke. As soon as Matt paused for a breath, Barnaby said, "Sure, maybe we can breathe the air, but what about bugs? Who knows what kind of germs might get in here?"

  Matt nodded. "You're right that that's a factor in this decision. And it's not just the micro–organisms that could get in here; we could be letting our own germs loose on everyone else. Doctor?" He turned toward an older woman near him. "This is Dr. Rosenthal. She's a molecular biologist, also from Columbia."

  The woman cleared her throat. "As Mr. Sheehan says, this question involves several calculated risks. In our own experience, many micro–organisms work on fairly specific targets. Many diseases that attack humans, for instance, don't have the slightest effect on most other mammals, let alone reptiles, amphibians, or birds, or creatures even more different from us. The odds suggest that micro–organisms from alien worlds are unlikely to be dangerous to us, and vice versa. Mr. Sheehan's plan does involve taking precautions, in case we're wrong, but in any event my feeling is that the risk is smaller than what we have to gain."

  "Thank you, Doctor," Matt said. "Again, one of the key aspects of this decision is the basic question: are we willing to live in prison for the rest of our lives?"

  Dorine said, "There might well be a significant number of people here who do want to live as long as they naturally can."

  "I understand that, Ms. Mayor. Again, our plan would strive to isolate the people going outside from the people staying here, so that even if there is a health problem, it will affect only the volunteers on the team."

  "All right. Go on." Dorine was glad she hadn't had to run against this man in the last election. He was ready for every question, and had convincing arguments for all his statements. Her most recent opponent had been a wealthy man who had gotten his way so often that his debating skills had atrophied.

  "I guess the final reason for wanting to go outside is that we hope to learn more from the residents in other domes, but we're having difficulties trying to talk to them from a distance. The linguists feel, and it makes sense to me, that direct two–way contact has the best chances of speedy communication. If I'm in the room with you, and I point at a chair and say 'chair,' and you tell your computer to record what I said and what object I pointed to, then we can swap roles and both sides can begin to build up a vocabulary. Of course, I could have meant 'sit down' or 'wood' or 'cushion,' but with a face–to–face opportunity, we can assemble enough data to start finding out what's really being said. Right now, with only one–way communication established, we're having a tough time doing anything more than verifying that one
of the other domes experienced something like what we did. Also, it could turn out that some of the races that we'd find it easiest to talk to might be races with no electronics communications equipment. A team would continue trying to establish radio or light–beam communications, so we wouldn't be abandoning that process."

  "You present a compelling argument. But what if we're unable to cut through the dome?"

  "Then we haven't lost anything, have we?"

  #

  "You don't really expect to cut through it with that, do you?" Matt asked Rudy Sanchez. The two men stood on the grass in Battery Park, looking at a small plastic bubble sealed to the inside of the dome. Inside the sealed volume was a city worker with an oxyacetylene torch ready to go.

  "Not really, but we have to try it, right?"

  Matt nodded. The first test they'd conducted was to see if they could scratch the surface with an industrial diamond. They hadn't been able to mar the surface. A sledge hammer driven against a tungsten carbide bit didn't do anything except make a lot of noise. A variety of strong acids and bases had done nothing more than make a mess. The only result from an attempt with a strong laser was a discolored spot on the surface of the gray plain outside the dome; the laser light went through the dome material without causing any measurable change.

  Rudy responded to a gesture from the city worker, and he raised his thumb.

  Matt heard the whoosh of the twin gas jet lighting, and bright white light danced on nearby reflecting surfaces. After about five minutes the light died, the gas jet popped as it shut off, and the man inside the bubble lifted his helmet and shook his head at Rudy.

  "Damn," Rudy said.

  Matt sat in silence with him for a couple of minutes, as they waited for Bobby Joe. Bobby Joe was shaking his head as he approached.

  "No good," Bobby Joe said. "I've got temperature readings from about a meter from the flame, ten meters away, and a hundred meters away."

  "And they all read the same, right?" Rudy said.

  "You got it. They all rose a few hundredths of a degree. Whatever that stuff is, it's one superfine heat conductor. We can't get any one spot hot enough to do any damage because the heat spreads through it so fast."

  Rudy raised an eyebrow in Matt's direction. "I don't think we've got anything that'll do the trick."

  Matt sighed. "I believe you. I guess it's time we went for a drive."

  #

  The caravan of city trucks traveled south in the northbound tube of the Battery Tunnel, moving deeper as they approached the blocked end. The two lanes in the southbound tube bound for Brooklyn still had too many abandoned vehicles clogging them. Two large trucks trailing the procession stopped before the others did. Teams from each truck got out and prepared to build decontamination barriers across the width of the tunnel.

  Power was on here, too, although there hadn't been much need for it recently. The existing Battery Tunnel lights reduced the need to bring in additional artificial lighting, and the fans would help to keep the air breathable, at least until, and if, the crew was near to breaching the barrier to the outside. Matt listened to the metallic whine of tires as the noise bounced back from the tunnel walls.

  The lead truck pulled to a halt in the right lane, fifty feet from the black seal at the end of the tunnel. Paramedic teams had removed the victims left behind when the tunnel was severed, but the last twenty or thirty feet of roadbed still bore the dark stains of blood and oil.

  To Matt the black material blocking the tunnel looked just like the stuff at the end of the subway tunnel. He walked the final meters to the wall and put his fingers against it. It had the feel of wrought iron. The surface tilted away from him, so it was maybe forty–five degrees from vertical. He pulled a fingernail down the surface, and felt the roughness. When he scratched sideways, he could feel a series of tiny ridges.

  "Can I borrow a hammer?" he asked Rudy.

  Rudy set a small toolbox on the stained concrete and withdrew a ball–peen hammer.

  Matt swung the hammer against the black surface. Wrought iron would have absorbed more of the energy. Against this surface, the hammer snapped back as though Matt had hit a cubic meter of stainless steel. "Doesn't sound encouraging, does it?"

  "Not really," Rudy said. Six more people from Rudy's organization approached the wall and started their own investigations.

  "How did this layer get here?" Matt asked as even more people formed several smaller groups to attack the surface with a variety of techniques.

  Rudy shrugged. "We don't know really. No one reported seeing any material brought down, and I'm sure it isn't a simple layer of melted rock. Quite a few people reported hearing a series of explosions like you heard. One possibility proposed by metallurgists is that the aliens shot a huge number of explosive pellets into the cut formed by the lasers. If the pellets contained material that sprang into its original shape and fused together, what we could have is a huge cone underneath the city."

  "Sounds a little strange to me," Matt said.

  "This whole business is a little strange. One of the things the metallurgical folks found is that the material is magnetized, and that the direction corresponds to the direction the magnetic flux would have been oriented on Earth. That's one reason they think that for at least a short time, a lot of the barrier material was fluid, so the magnetic dipoles could move freely and align themselves with the strongest magnetic field present."

  "So, if that theory's true, even if we can't get through this section, there's a possibility of a gap at the very bottom of the cone. All we'd need to do is tunnel down who knows how far through solid granite."

  "Simple, eh?" Rudy grinned. "And we should be able to figure out how deep we'd have to go. We can measure this angle—" he pointed to the black barrier "—and we can measure the angles in other locations. My guess is the hole they cut is at least a kilometer deep in the center."

  #

  Julie Kravine put her ID back in her pocket and walked deeper into the tunnel. Ahead were flashing yellow lights of city maintenance vehicles parked in the right lane of the tunnel. She turned on her minivid and started recording as a matter of habit.

  A pinpoint of brilliant light turned on in the distance ahead, and a shower of sparks flew to one side. The sparks fell to the ground so slowly, the display seemed more like faraway fireworks.

  Rudy Sanchez sat on the back bumper of a city electrical truck. He looked tired. Julie got within a couple of yards of him before he looked up and smiled as though he were glad to see her. Too many people looked away when reporters arrived.

  "Hi," he said.

  "Hi, yourself. How's it going?"

  "Slow. Very very slow. Or not at all, depending on your point of view."

  The sparks were still flying in the air near the barrier ahead. "Don't you think you're gonna' be able to cut through it?"

  "I just don't know. Isn't that the kind of answer reporters hate?"

  "Not when it's honest."

  "It's honest. We've tried acid, diamond–tipped blades, torches—" he jerked his thumb toward the sparks "—welding equipment. Nothing."

  "Why keep trying if you're sure it's impossible?"

  "'Cause I'm not sure. Different materials have different weaknesses. Maybe we'll find a weak link."

  "Sounds like wishful thinking to me."

  Rudy was silent for a moment. "Maybe so. But you remember paper newspapers from when you were a kid?"

  "Sure."

  "You ever try to tear out an article on part of a page? If you did, you probably noticed that tearing the page vertically was easy. But tearing across the page was damn near impossible to do, at least in a straight line."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "So the paper was stronger in one direction than the other, because of the way the fibers lined up. Other materials are like that, too. Some of them you can pull on the ends really hard and they can support thousands of pounds of tension, but bend them in two and they snap just like a little piece of wood. We need to fig
ure out how to snap this stuff."

  "You know you did that very well?" Julie said. Rudy looked puzzled, so she went on. "When I talk to technical people, most of them either don't try to explain very well because they want to feel superior, or they really do try to explain, but they sound like they're reciting their doctoral thesis—they don't know how to explain things to people who don't talk their jargon."

  "Well, thanks. You do your job well, too. I've seen reporters who ask all the questions and just absorb the answers like some mechanical person. Or they ask questions to impress the audience. You seem to care about what you're hearing. And you think about what you hear. You've asked some pretty interesting questions in the last few days—questions that should be occurring to the people you're asking, but you beat them to it."

  The light sparking against the barrier went off. Julie felt uncomfortable with the compliment, and said, "Yeah, well, thanks."

  A guy Julie hadn't seen before approached and said to Rudy, "No luck. That was six cycles of hot and cold, and it still looks exactly the same."

  "Ok, thanks" Rudy said. He made a mark on his clipboard. "Can you tell Verhogan it's his turn?"

  "Sure thing." The man went back toward the barrier.

  "What's next?" Julie asked.

  "The surface seems to be made up of a huge number of filaments, all running from the surface down to wherever they all meet, all fused together; we can feel the ridges, like a beaded curtain dipped in glue, only a lot smaller. Verhogan's built a very strong spreader. It's got tiny grippers meant to catch on those little ridges, so maybe we can pry a gap between filaments."

  "You gonna' go watch?"

  "Yeah. This one I was a little more curious about."

  As Julie walked with Rudy toward the black wall, a truck backed up against the surface. On the rear of the truck was a device with wide jaws made from shiny metal. Julie aimed her minivid at the contraption, watching light glint from the fine rows of teeth.