Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Lucky Stiles leaned back in a stuffed chair that almost swallowed him. "I don't know. You'd think the tunnel stuff was enough."

  Benny thought about Lucky's hesitation. "You know Stella, that little blonde who hangs out at Spacey's? She owes me a couple of big favors. I already talked to her about you, and she's waiting for you tonight." The currency of the day was favors, labor exchanges. This was the only thing he had to offer that he thought might be enough.

  "Stella? Yeah, I remember her."

  "Did I ever tell you Stella can tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue? She knows lots more exciting tricks."

  "And she's waiting for me?"

  "If you'll do this. It's what you want, too. You don't want Manhattan squashed because we're doing things we shouldn't be doing."

  Lucky said, "Well, I can probably convince the mayor of the error of her ways." He laughed, a smoker's laugh that turned to a cough.

  #

  Rudy raised the periscope near another dome, this one containing what looked like a large grassy hill rather than a fabricated city.

  The large hill reminded Matt of a wasp's nest, constructed by sticking on little sections one after another. Here and there on the hillside were cave openings. Near several of the caves, small creatures frolicked in the grass. They were mostly green, and apparently had hard shells, like armadillo hide, covering much of their torsos. Matt couldn't tell if they could retract the limbs or head. Matt found himself grinning as he watched the little creatures rough–house with one another, like cats at play.

  "Those little guys sure are cute," he said finally, relinquishing the view to Julie, who agreed with him.

  When it was Abby's turn, she watched for several minutes before she said, "Is it my imagination, or do those creatures stay in almost the same place all the time?"

  Matt took another look. After a couple of minutes he had to agree. "You're right. I wonder why that would be. Maybe they're extremely territorial?"

  Bobby Joe took another look, and then Julie took a second turn. She held her minivid optics up to the periscope. Shortly she said, "I see the reason. They're on leashes."

  When Matt got a chance to look through Julie's viewfinder, he could see clearly with the magnified view. Attached to the rear legs of the small creatures were clear straps, short enough that they couldn't get tangled up, and long enough that the creatures could get to each other.

  Bobby Joe said, "It's like letting your dog outside and making sure it doesn't go too far. Maybe they're pets, or maybe that's just they way they do playpens."

  Matt trained the lens on the cave opening nearest the frolicking group of creatures. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as the lens revealed glimpses of two or three huge creatures hiding inside the cave. About the only thing Matt could see clearly were wide rows of teeth. Something moved at the edge of his field of view. Two fast–moving yellow–green creatures were approaching the small, tethered creatures. The following seconds were full of activity.

  The yellow–green creatures moved so quickly Matt never did get a good picture of them, except to see large sharp talons as one of the creatures cut loose one of the tethered youngsters. At almost the same time, large versions of the youngsters erupted from the nearby cave. When the fight was over, one of the invaders had fled with his catch, and the other invader was dead.

  Matt sucked in his breath. "It looks to me, like those little guys out there are bait."

  Abby looked through the lens next, and Matt told her what he had seen and which cave to look at. Seconds later she said, "I bet you're right. But this isn't quite the normal version of using bait, not like, say, humans using worms to catch fish. I think those are adults using their own young for bait."

  Matt peered through the periscope after Julie finished making a short recording. The semi–dark tunnel felt even more uncomfortable as he looked through the dome at the glint of wide rows of teeth in the cave on the hill. "I wonder why our captors would have brought this hill. Everything else we've seen is fairly clearly a city of some kind."

  Abby spoke up. "Hard to say. One possibility is that our captors are more like these creatures than any other captives. Maybe their cities look like this from the air."

  Matt scratched his ear. "Oh, that gives me a chilling thought. I can imagine a city that's mostly underground, like an iceberg at sea. Depending on how deep these people cut when they extract a city, they could cut right through the center of a city, or not even take very much of it."

  "Sounds terrible but possible," Abby said. "If they left behind half of the first city we saw, I suppose they could have even done the equivalent of swooping down on a body and removing only the heart."

  Bobby Joe stepped forward from the semi–dark in the tunnel. "But this all makes it sound as if they're dummies. Or maybe kids who've just got their first chance to play with their parents' starship."

  "It is puzzling," Matt said. "Maybe they're just in a terrible hurry for some reason."

  Bobby Joe said, "Maybe they have a quota. Or maybe they're on a huge scavenger hunt. Can you just imagine the list? 'One island city, one hill city, one enormous square building.'"

  Matt shook his head. "Implausibility aside, I don't know that that's consistent with destroying the rest of the planet after they've got a city."

  "Sure it is. That way the competition has to look even longer to get the one for their list. Can you imagine how long it might take them to get another smoggy island city with internal combustion engines still in use?"

  "This is nonsense," Julie finally said. "These guys aren't gonna go racing around the universe to play games."

  Abby said, "You're probably right. But an intelligent species that would go around destroying lives and worlds just so they can build a bizarre zoo with intelligent captives is hard to accept, too. We obviously need to stay open to the possibility that they don't think like us. For all we know, what they've done is perfectly reasonable and kind, from their point of view."

  Matt suddenly jerked away from the periscope. "Jeez!"

  "What?" Abby said.

  "Something just jumped at the periscope. I didn't even see it coming." Matt had his eye back on the periscope. "It looks moist and formless, and it's just oozing down the inside of the dome."

  The others took turns looking.

  "One more reason for not going in there," Abby said.

  Julie recorded a few seconds for posterity. "It looks like it's pulling itself back into shape."

  Matt took one last look. At first the gooey mess on the inside of the dome had made it seem that the creature had been moving so fast it had ruptured against the hard surface, but now the creature actually seemed to be recovering. Matt caught glimpses of tissue that alternately suggested squid suckers and fur, but he never got a look at the entire creature. His stomach felt queasy. If they had cut an opening in this dome…

  "Come on," Matt said. "Let's get the ventilator in place and catch up with Rudy and Richard."

  #

  In East Harlem, called Spanish Harlem by some and El Barrio by far more, Manny Garzon sat on the steps in front of his apartment building.

  Heavy booming from several car stereos and boom boxes almost made the morning seem normal, but Manny knew it wasn't a normal day.

  He wished his family had stayed in Puerto Rico. Then they'd be safe. His mom complained so much that only white people were Americans, Manny had been surprised to learn that Puerto Rico was part of America. He still didn't understand why then they'd had to move from one part of America to another just to live in a slightly nicer place.

  He looked up at the dome over the island and said to himself, "No doubt about it. We should'a stood at home."

  #

  By the time Abby and the others caught up with Rudy and Richard, the borer had almost reached the city that was transmitting the video they had all seen. Rudy curved the path the borer took so that it went past the dome very closely.

  "Are we going inside this one?" Abby asked M
att.

  "I want to if it looks safe, but it's also a function of how much time we have to spare." Matt raised his voice. "Let's have a short planning meeting, everyone. Rudy, let the borer just go on ahead for now."

  The six of them sat in a line on the tunnel floor, Matt and Rudy in the center, Abby and the others on the ends.

  "How long will it take the borer to reach the wall we're heading toward?" Matt asked.

  Rudy tapped a few buttons on his watch. "I think we've probably got another twelve to fifteen hours at the rate we're going. And there's no way to speed that up."

  "Okay. That gives us enough time to explore this dome and at least try to get a clue as to why no one's responding to our return signal. The more we can learn, the better, as long as it doesn't slow us down. Rudy, you and Richard stay with the borer, and trade off enough to get whatever sleep you can. Unless we see anything that changes my mind when we take a closer look at the dome, I'd like Abby and Bobby Joe with me. Julie, you've got your choice."

  "I'd like to get pictures of the city," she said.

  "That's fine, but especially when we're outside this tunnel, we have to act like a military unit. Abby and Bobby Joe can probably fill you in if the lecture last night wasn't enough."

  Abby smiled ruefully and nodded.

  "Can we ever," said Bobby Joe.

  #

  Matt, Abby, Bobby Joe, and Julie moved as quickly as they could into the alien city. In the sky on the far side of the city, a dim reddish "sun" sent out weak light. The air smelled of burnt leaves.

  The silhouette of the city was an erratic graph, peaks and valleys formed by a collection of cone–shaped buildings of varying sizes and distances from Matt. One of the taller and closer cones was topped by a light that varied irregularly in color and intensity; Rudy had deposited them close to the building that was still transmitting a signal to the world outside the city's bubble—a signal that had been answered with no apparent effect.

  They passed by a couple of cones that were approaching Matt's height.

  As they reached a few cones that were about five times Matt's height, the tall tip of a cone near the center of the city began to pierce the "sun." Moments later they entered shade.

  One of the nearest cones reached what had to be 100 meters into the air and had an exterior spiral staircases. Matt could still see the cone with the beacon, slightly deeper into the city, but minutes later they walked through what felt a little like a mountain valley, with sharply pointed hilltops all around.

  "I still don't see anything that looks like a door," Abby said. "Do you think we have to go up those staircases to get inside these cones?"

  "I was hoping you'd tell us," Matt said.

  The group made another turn, and Matt saw their destination cone. They reached the bottom of the spiral stairs and started up. The spiral was a gentle rise, looping around the cone six times as it rose. Soon they got an aerial view of the surrounding city and could see domed cities in the direction of Manhattan. In the opposite direction was visible the nearest wall of the chamber enclosing the collection of cities. Almost directly opposite Manhattan, a faint vertical line showed at the junction of two flat surfaces, and Matt remembered a graphic image Bobby Joe had generated, one showing that from above, the chamber outline was a huge octagon.

  Two–thirds of the way to the top, Matt suggested a rest stop. He looked back toward the hill–city and Manhattan, imagining he could see the route the tunnel had cut.

  "You and Rudy were in the army together, weren't you?" Julie said unexpectedly.

  Matt took his gaze away from the route they had traveled and looked at her. "Yes. Mostly in Brazil and Argentina."

  "What's he like?"

  "Like he is now. He's one of those few people I'd want to have on my side if I were starting a small company. Whatever he's paid, he's worth more."

  "Why'd he get out of the army?"

  Matt hesitated. "He got into a situation where he either had to blow the whistle on a respected colonel who had some unsavory habits involving young boys, or have to live with his conscience and let it go on."

  "So he got out?"

  "He blew the whistle and then got out. Rudy was born in East L.A. and a lot of his friends were Hispanic, so maybe he took the colonel's transgressions a little more personally than some other outsider might have." Matt looked at the horizon. "South America is a mess right now. The internal politics are a cesspool, and the career potential for whistle blowers isn't very good. One of them ran into a bad accident in the jungle."

  "But you stayed in."

  "Yup. I was angry, too, but sometimes you can do more from within the system. A couple of months later, after the charges had been dismissed for lack of evidence, the colonel got himself accidentally photographed by surveillance cameras that had been undergoing testing before being sent out to remote airstrips suspected of servicing drug runners. And copies of the film were accidentally duplicated and sent to several organizations along with routine test photographs."

  "You're saying you're responsible for those accidents?"

  "Oh, no. Rudy did most of the work. I just signed a few requisition forms, stuff like that. Rudy told me later that he and the colonel came back on the same flight. Rudy was amazed at how many martinis a person could consume between Rio and New York." Matt looked at the view for a moment. "I told you all of this in your role of being a friend of Rudy's, not as a reporter. I assume you understand that."

  "I do. That's why I was curious."

  "He's a good guy. He's a little possessive, in the good sense. New York is his city now. This team is partly his responsibility. He works hard to make sure that no one hurts anything that's partly his."

  "What would Rudy say about you?" This question came from Abby.

  "About me? I don't know. That I'm a bad gambler because I don't know when to give up, cut my losses. That I repeat my mistakes. That I have a tendency to stop along the way and look at the view. That I've been doing it too long now." Matt smiled.

  The time it took to walk around the cone grew significantly shorter as they moved farther up the side.

  Bobby Joe said, "Do you realize how slow the sun is moving?"

  Matt looked down to where the tip of the shadow of the cone they were climbing hit the ground, and he realized Bobby Joe was right. It had hardly moved in the whole time they'd been climbing. "These folks must be used to very long days, huh?"

  "Good guess."

  A final quick revolution brought them to the top of the cone. Inside a low wall was a meter–wide path that formed a nearly complete circle, and inside the path was a short cone, only three meters tall, flattened on top. Sitting on the flat top was the transmitter, which here was too bright to look at directly as it flashed purple then green then crimson.

  Matt made a quick communications check with his new light–spectrum walkie–talkie, and Manhattan base responded.

  Bobby Joe spotted a cable going from the bottom of the broadcasting light, down the surface of the cone for several centimeters, and then vanishing. By pushing on the right spot, a section of the cone moved as a doorway formed in its place.

  #

  Dorine Underwood found a near riot when she reached the conference room five minutes before the morning status meeting. She hadn't heard the crowd so agitated since the abduction of the city.

  Her throat was dry, not because of anxiety, but, she suddenly realized, because she had kept taking her allergy medication after arriving here. Now that the air contained far less dust and pollen, she could probably stop.

  She stepped into the meeting room. The conversation level dipped for an instant, then rose even higher than before. She could guess what the concern was already: second thoughts.

  Several times during the night, Dorine had found herself awake and worrying about the same thing. For the past several days, Manhattan had been functioning smoothly enough that she had started going back to her home at Gracie Mansion on the Upper East side at night. She felt mo
re relaxed in her own bedroom than she had been sleeping on a cot in City Hall, but back at Gracie Mansion were more reminders of Rafael. She said another quick prayer that he was still alive, because despite her fear that the team outside could cause the destruction of Manhattan, she was convinced the evidence was right. Something terrible was going to happen to Earth, or it had already happened.

  Dorine took her seat and called the meeting to order. The room quieted. She made no attempt to sidestep the issue. It wouldn't go away on its own, and she knew no other issue would get much real attention until this one had been dealt with. "All right. Who wants to start?"

  First up was Tony Robinson, the council president, a short man whose eyelashes were so long Dorine sometimes wondered if they were real. "Ms. Mayor, you've got to stop Sheehan and his team. All they're going to do is get us all killed."

  "I understand that we are all at risk, but are you telling me you're prepared to let the whole Earth die to save yourself?"

  Tony snorted. "That's not the issue. The video from the aliens in those huge cones showed their planet being destroyed right after their city was taken. The Earth is probably already dead."

  A flurry of murmurs took several seconds to die down.

  "That's only one data point," Dorine said. "The other one we have from the tree city says the people on their planet survived for between three and four weeks. If Earth is on the same schedule, we still have somewhere between a few days and more than a week to make a difference."

  "But there's no way to know the Earth is still alive right now. We could be taking this risk for nothing."

  "You'll get no argument from me on that. But there's also no way we can tell the Earth isn't alive and healthy. For the time being."

  "But. Ms. Mayor, you've got to—"

  "Just a minute, Mr. Robinson." Dorine scanned faces in the room. "I want to get a sense of the attitude here, by having a show of hands. I'm not saying I'm going to reverse my position, but I do want to see how people's feelings run. Everyone who thinks we should continue our efforts to prevent this ship from harming Earth, please raise your hands." Several hands rose, and Dorine counted them. "All right, everyone who thinks we should stop and play safe, raise your hands." She counted fewer hands. "Undecided?"