Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Once the truck was parked tightly against the wall, the driver got out of the cab and walked around to where a big electric winch was mounted on the side of the truck.

  Rudy lowered his voice slightly. "The winch will drive apart the two grippers, if we're lucky."

  Julie couldn't see much with the truck covering the working area, but she left her minivid on. The driver of the truck looked at a small display screen as he adjusted two wheel–handled controls. When he finished, he pushed a button next to the winch, and then quickly moved back from the truck.

  The winch made grinding noises for a few seconds before the noises dropped in pitch and the winch began to work harder. Several more seconds went by before there came a loud sproing as something in the mechanism gave way, and the winch began to race.

  "Didn't sound real good to me," Julie said.

  "Me, neither," Rudy said.

  A few minutes later, after the truck had been driven forward, two workers verified that part of the mechanism had broken and the wall was unaffected.

  "How many more ideas do you have?" Julie asked.

  "Not too many," Rudy admitted. "But it's always the last one that works."

  "Always?"

  "Usually. 'Cause the cliché is that when you get something that works, that's when you stop trying."

  #

  The last one worked.

  Rudy felt like he'd been working five days without sleep when he got word that the dipole oscillator was ready to try. He was having trouble working up enthusiasm, but he went for a look anyway.

  Julie Kravine was back down in the tunnel, obviously eager to find out the results. She wasn't much younger than Rudy, but he felt like an old man in the face of her obvious energy. "What's this one gonna' do, Rudy?"

  "Well, it's a little like a microwave oven, except that what we're cooking is outside the oven. A microwave oven heats things by creating an oscillating field that makes water molecules want to line up with it as it changes polarity over and over. Once the water molecules start twisting back and forth like that, the friction with other molecules makes heat. It's the modern equivalent of rubbing two sticks together.

  "This thing does it a little differently. It's set up to make magnetic domains twist back and forth, like an old bulk tape eraser, except much stronger and much more focused. The theory is that if we can generate enough internal heat and make enough molecules bounce around, then maybe we can weaken that stuff."

  Julie looked pleased with the description.

  Next to the black wall was a large machine with a cone–shaped extension pointed right at the wall, almost touching it. As Rudy and Julie watched, Dr. Brantower, a woman in her fifties, gave a go–ahead sign. A click sounded from somewhere, and an intense humming sound filled the tunnel. A spot on the black wall right in front of the cone began to glow brightly. It stayed bright for five seconds, at which time the same click sounded, the humming disappeared, and the spot on the wall faded back to black.

  Dr. Brantower and a man Rudy didn't know went over to examine the spot. After a minute or so, Dr. Brantower called out. "Hey, Rudy! The surface texture is changed!"

  Rudy felt a surge of energy, and suddenly felt younger than Julie. They went over to the wall, and Julie played her minivid over the surface while Rudy took a close look. Sure enough, instead of the black–ridged surface, a spot the size of a fingernail was slightly gray and the ridges had been smoothed over. As Rudy watched, Dr. Brantower took a nearby flat–blade screwdriver and prodded at the surface. Particles flaked off like dust, and Rudy's heartbeat quickened.

  "All right!" Rudy shouted. "You're a genius, Doctor."

  Dr. Brantower laughed with delight.

  Ten minutes later, Rudy and Julie and a crowd much larger than before watched from a distance as the cone slowly drew a plate–sized glowing circle on the black wall.

  While the circle was cooling, a quick lottery picked a lucky winner for the person who got to swing a sledgehammer at the center of the circle. Fortunately the winner was a muscular man. He swung the sledge hammer so hard Rudy worried about the head flying off, but the head hit squarely in the center of the circle. The circle of material stayed where it was but it clearly vibrated in the second or two after the blow.

  A cheer went up in the crowd.

  As soon as they verified that the latest gas reading around the hole was safe, Rudy and several others went for a closer look. Around the entire perimeter, the black material had crumbled away. What showed in the gap looked like a sheet of dirty wires running up and down. As Rudy watched, one of the men pried loose a single fiber that had more give than piano wire. Someone else inserted a crowbar and tried to break the fiber. It stretched without breaking.

  "Get a jack," Rudy said.

  In minutes, a jack was in place, and one of the workers slowly notched it up one click at a time, pulling one end of the crowbar. When the strand had stretched about a foot, the man pushing on the jack began to strain harder, and just as it seemed the strand would prevent him from clicking the jack one more notch, the strand snapped and the crowbar clattered to the ground.

  "That's it!" Rudy shouted. "That's it! This may take a while, but now it's just a matter of brute force and turning the crank." He took a deep breath and glanced at Julie, who looked as happy as he felt.

  Just a few minutes later, though, as Rudy watched the crew start to cut a large door–shaped hole in the black wall, he realized that he was also a little scared.

  He hoped they were really doing the right thing.

  Chapter 5

  Gray Goo

  Lifeless automobiles lined both sides of the street as though some nearby rich collector had long ago run out of space to house them.

  Matt Sheehan's car dipped its nose as he drove south, moving into the left lane of the northbound half of the Battery Tunnel. The Manhattan digital audio station had been out of commission since they had been brought here, and the lone FM station currently on the air faded into static as he moved deeper. That was just as well; the song reminded him of a long hike he and Nadine had made outside of Rio. As he reached the column of cars and trucks parked in the right lane, a cop flagged him down, looked at his face, and told him about a parking space just ahead of a truck parked about thirty meters ahead.

  On foot Matt passed through the decontamination station where his skin and clothes were misted by a noxious combination of ingredients recommended by members of the Board of Public Health, none of whom, as far as Matt could tell, had ever come through in person. He almost wished he was back in the WTC with Abby and the other linguists, but his help didn't seem needed there, and he was curious about the black barrier.

  Beyond the decon station were a few more trucks parked on the right. Near the black barrier clustered a small crowd.

  Matt came up behind Rudy and Julie, who sat together on a large box. He tapped Rudy's shoulder and exchanged hellos with the two of them, who both seemed in good spirits. Julie's minivid was inactive for the moment.

  "Shouldn't be long now," Rudy said. He pointed at the large square outline in the black barrier. "They've weakened the base material all around that doorway, and they're cutting the individual strands holding the top in place."

  "I'm glad I got down here before they finished."

  "Any change in the transmission?"

  "Nope. Bobby Joe doesn't know what to make of it. I don't understand, either. If they want to talk, what we're sending back should be a pretty clear hello." Matt rubbed the muscles at the back of his neck. "Bobby Joe's a strange bird, though."

  "What now?"

  "If he had his way, instead of transmitting the capture pictures, I think we'd be sending them Silly Sheila cartoons. 'Can't you just see the expressions on their faces when they decode this?' he says."

  Julie smiled, and said, "But he's a smart guy."

  "No doubt about it. He's invaluable. He's just one of those guys who takes a little more supervision than average. I bet if he was married and had kids, he'd
have them totally confused. But, boy would they have interesting expressions." Matt looked back at the crowd near the black barrier.

  Rudy hesitated. "You look tired."

  Matt took his gaze off the clump of workers and looked at Rudy. "A little. I guess we all are."

  About the same time, someone in the crowd near the barrier called out, "We got it!"

  Rudy and Julie got up, and the three of them moved forward. Julie turned on her minivid. Workers pried at the top of the square outline and slowly a very thin section of black material, still attached at the bottom, tilted out from the rest of the barrier like a drawbridge pivoting outward from a castle wall. Revealed behind the section was the same gray material they had seen covering the plain.

  The black square tilted all the way down until what had been the top edge rested against the stained pavement. Along the hinged junction were exposed hundreds of tiny fibers. The sheet of black material looked paper thin, but it hardly flexed when a massive construction worker put his full weight in the center of it and bounced on his steel–toed work boots a couple of times. "Mighty strong stuff," the guy said.

  Now that they had breached the barrier, Matt was more interested in the gray material. If it had anything like the strength of the black sheet, they still had a long job in front of them.

  A worker wearing gloves swung a hammer lightly at the gray wall, then looked carefully at where the hammer had silently hit. He swung again, harder, and Matt heard a soft dull thud. When the hammer came back, Matt could see a shadowed indentation on the gray wall, and he felt relief, convinced the gray stuff was going to be easier to deal with.

  Rudy stepped onto the black sheet. He pulled out a pocketknife and put on a pair of gloves. The knife blade seemed to cut into the gray surface fairly easily. Seconds later, Rudy shook a small wedge of the gray stuff off his knife and into a beaker held by a woman in a long white lab coat. Rudy glanced at the faces of the work crew. "Good work. The chemists will tell us pretty soon how safe this stuff is, but so far it looks like it's going to be easy going from here on out. Take a break if you want."

  Most of the group drifted away, but one man offered Rudy a very long screwdriver and said, "Want to see how deep you can go?"

  Rudy took the screwdriver, put the point against the face of the gray substance, and leaned into it. The screwdriver buried itself to the handle. When he pulled it back out, the blade was clean. He looked toward Matt and said, "This stuff seems to have the consistency of modeling clay."

  Matt took a closer look. An hour later, he was still standing near the exposed gray material, talking with Rudy and Julie, when the woman in the white lab coat came back and told Rudy that the stuff was safe unless anyone tried to eat it. The pH was neutral, it wasn't flammable or explosive, it didn't generate dangerous particulates like asbestos did, and it didn't give off any dangerous gases. Her summary was that it was as safe as modeling clay. She took some more of the gray stuff back to the lab with her, to do more extensive testing.

  Rudy called the crew back to work and passed on the summary. He used his knife again and, as though the occasion was a bizarre wine and cheese party, cut small wedges for everyone to examine. "If we're going to tunnel very far, we've got to cut through quite a few meters of this," he said. "I'd appreciate your thoughts on the best ways to do it."

  Matt held a sample of the gray substance in his hand. It didn't feel sticky. He squeezed it, and it flattened just like soft clay. He stretched it, and it thinned to the diameter of a pencil before it broke. The two halves mixed together easily, leaving no sign that they had been separated. He sniffed the material and detected no odor.

  Other people nearby subjected the material to some improvised tests, like putting a glob on the floor and hammering it, and lighting a match under a piece. The hammered piece looked like flattened modeling clay, and the heated piece turned darker until it looked like discolored clay that was stiffer than normal.

  Finally a man with a shovel stepped forward. He put the edge of the shovel against the wall and planted his heel firmly against the back end. Without too much trouble he removed a shovelful of the gray stuff and plopped it onto the pavement. "Maybe we just dig," the man said.

  #

  Abby came up behind Matt as he stared out the window of the World Trade Center command post and said, "How about dinner tonight?"

  He turned and smiled. "You haven't found any hoard of real food have you?"

  Abby wasn't sure what there was about his smile, but it always made her want to smile back. "I'm afraid not. But we could picnic on the roof. That would be a change."

  "Sure. Why not?"

  They still had an hour of "daylight" left when they reached the observation deck. Matt carried a plastic liter jug of water, and Abby carried a jar of food pellets and a couple of paper cups. They walked up to the highest level of the deck.

  "Would this table suit you, monsieur?" She gestured toward the nearby open space.

  Matt looked around the empty observation deck and at the domes beyond. For just a second, his eyes took on that faraway look that she hated to see. "You sure you don't have anything with a view of the Hudson?"

  "Don't I wish."

  They sat. Abby looked at Matt, and thought more seriously about the question. "You think it's really possible that we may see the Hudson again?"

  "I wish I knew. I'm not sure I can handle a steady diet of this stuff for the rest of my life." Matt gestured at the jar of food pellets.

  "How's it going down below?" Abby asked as she took the cups and poured water for them both.

  "By the time I left, they had dug a tunnel about two meters deep into that putty–like gray stuff outside. If everything goes well, I expect they'll reach the surface tomorrow."

  Abby popped a foot pellet in her mouth. It was as tasty as a pencil eraser, as brittle as a calcium pill. "And then what? Whoever steps outside gets picked up and put back in the cage? Or gets sizzled by enormous huge insect zapper?"

  Matt took a couple of the food pellets. "I guess that's possible. We don't really know how closely they're watching what's going on. Rudy suggested spreading a tarp over a jeep, and painting it the same shade of gray as the plain. I'm not convinced yet, and in any event we've got to get to the surface first."

  "I want to go, you know." Abby looked at him over her cup of water. She felt surprisingly relaxed, enjoying the opportunity to be alone with Matt.

  "On the trip to the other dome?"

  "Of course."

  "Could be dangerous." His gaze made her want to be in danger with Matt rather than perfectly safe without him.

  "That's very true. That's why I thought you'd be especially eager to hear about volunteers."

  Matt grinned.

  Abby knew right then he'd been teasing her and that the answer was yes. She could read that message far easier than written words. God, why had she never met anyone like this before? "Well?"

  "Well. Well, we have to have a linguist."

  Abby felt a brief tremor pass through her body, but wasn't entirely sure whether it was the result of knowing she could go, or knowing she could go with Matt. She covered her reaction by taking another drink of water.

  "Thanks for not teasing me too long."

  "Tease you? God forbid. You're teasing me."

  "Would you like that?" Without even realizing what she was doing, Abby moved closer to him.

  Matt's expression was cheerful as she looked into his eyes from a closer vantage point. His expression slowly became more serious, as Abby said nothing, and she felt sure she could see the longing in his eyes. What she couldn't tell was whether Abby was at the front of his brain, or if his wife took that position. She found it more difficult to breathe.

  Finally Matt said, "If circumstances were a little different, I'd like that a lot."

  Abby's courage suddenly faltered, and she didn't feel up to asking him which circumstances he was referring to. She could easily imagine how bad she'd feel if Matt went on to remind her
that he was married.

  #

  Manhattan is home to over 100 nationalities, most of which seem homogeneous only to the outsiders. One such diverse group is the Native Americans. Many of them rallied at the American Indian Community Home Gallery on Broadway north of SoHo.

  From Arapaho to Iroquois to Sioux to Zuni, they gathered at their island within an island for mutual support and to compare theories. At any time of day, there would always be at least a few groups of people talking, singing soft chants, or simply sitting near each other. More than a few of them made jokes about how first the white man stole Manhattan from the Indians and now someone else seemed to have stolen it again.

  #

  A cop let Rudy pass. Sometimes when Rudy walked from one place to another, he could let his thoughts drift, and for a brief time he could imagine everything was the way it used to be. He had worked hard to escape that tiny two–bedroom house in East L.A., and few things here reminded him of the small homes in the barrio. He'd told Matt and Abby his store of food in his office was because he spent so much time there, and that was partly true, but the main reason was one he seldom admitted to himself. After a childhood of competing with too many people for too little food, he had wanted never again to feel hunger for very long. The irony of now having to subsist on the alien food pellets was not lost on him.

  Although he enjoyed its cosmopolitan life a lot, Rudy had never expected to wind up in New York. In fact, he had heard so much about it that he had once told Matt he'd never consider living in New York unless he had so much money he could afford his own zip code.

  As soon as he stepped past the decontamination barrier the thoughts dissipated. He looked ahead, and he knew something was wrong.

  He was early, as was his habit. None of the tunnel–digging crew had arrived yet. He reached the guard who'd been on duty and found the man asleep. Rudy walked closer to where pole–mounted trouble lights glared harshly near the tunnel mouth.