Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  "What did you see back there?" asked Rudy softly.

  Matt kept his voice very low, too. "A sleeping Archie. These must be quarters."

  Abby said. "I think you're right. And I think we must have just turned on the no vacancy sign."

  Chapter 13

  Trapped Like Bugs

  "You want to blow up the Empire State Building?" repeated Lucky Stiles.

  Benny, Lucky, and the preacher were in the upstairs office at the warehouse. Benny was having as much trouble shifting gears as Lucky was.

  Stuart Lund had a glow to his eyes Benny hadn't seen before. This guy was excited.

  "No, no, no," said the preacher. "I don't really want to blow it up."

  "But you want I should put a bunch of explosives up there and rig them to go off?" asked Lucky.

  "Yes. But as a threat. Not that we'd actually do it."

  Benny sat silently, just observing Lucky and the preacher.

  "I don't understand," said Lucky. "I either do something or I don't do something. You're talking about not doing something, or you're talking about doing something?"

  "I'm talking about threatening to blow up the building if the mayor doesn't cancel the expedition."

  "Okay. So what if she doesn't?"

  "But she will. She won't want the Empire State Building blown up. She'll have to realize that if people feel so strongly about stopping the expedition, that it should be stopped. She'll call them back."

  "I mean," Lucky said, "what if she doesn't?"

  The preacher looked as if this was a brand new idea to him. "But I'm telling you, she will."

  "Let's say I'm not convinced. Actually, I kinda like the idea. But I don't understand. You say if she doesn't cancel, you'll do this. That means you gotta be ready to do it."

  "Right. Exactly. We'd be ready to do it. We just wouldn't need to actually pull the switch."

  "But if she says no, then I can pull the switch, right?"

  "Er—" The preacher was quiet.

  "I mean, if we're not prepared to follow through with the threat, there is no threat, am I right?"

  "I see what you're saying," the preacher said slowly. "It's just that we won't need to follow through because the mayor will give in."

  "Okay, okay," Benny said suddenly. "I think I can straighten this out. Lucky, you can pull the switch if the mayor says no. The preacher says she won't say no, so as long as the preacher is right, you don't pull the switch. If the preacher is wrong, which he says he isn't, then you can pull the switch. But the preacher says that won't happen."

  Lucky scratched his head. "Thanks, I think."

  The preacher sat there saying nothing, like some robot given unclear directions.

  "But there's still a problem," Lucky said.

  "And what's that?" asked the preacher.

  "There aren't enough explosives in the world—or at least here—to do the job."

  The preacher frowned. "I thought you did the job with the water in the Battery Tunnel with explosives."

  Lucky nodded. "Yeah, but this is different. We're talking about a huge building. I mean, in World War II, a bomber flew right into the side of the building. Somewhere near the top, too. The bomber isn't there anymore. The building is. What does that tell you?"

  "Gee," the preacher said. "I hadn't thought about it. But I do remember that story." He leaned back in his chair and looked depressed. "So this whole conversation's been for nothing?"

  "Depends. I can do a lot of damage. With some luck, I might even be able to blow off the top section, along with the antenna tower. If that thing came crashing down, it'd do a lot of damage. And that would get the mayor's attention. 'Course if I never pull the switch, none of this matters anyway."

  "Well, it does matter. If the mayor doesn't believe the threat is real, then she won't act."

  "Like I say, I can do a lot of damage. I could put stuff close enough to the observations towers that they'd be gone, or they be closed forever. And every time anyone looked at the skyline, they'd see what a dumb move the mayor made."

  The preacher brightened at that. "Maybe this will work. So you'd have to have some kind of remote control."

  "That's for sure. They haven't made a fuse long enough for me to get out of the building in time. Plus which, we don't want it going off automatically. I've got to be in control, so when the mayor says okay I don't push the button."

  "And you could rig it so that anyone tampering with the explosives would set them off?"

  "Piece of cake."

  The preacher leaned forward in his chair and looked into space for a minute. "I think it will work. Will you do it?"

  Lucky hesitated. He looked at Benny. "What do you think?"

  "If that expedition keeps going, they're going to stir up a hornet's nest. We only have to push the button if the mayor doesn't listen to reason. The preacher says she will. And if she doesn't, it's her fault. We got nothing to lose."

  "I don't know. We're talking about a lot of trips to the top with backpacks. You willing to help?"

  "Sure. The preacher says the elevators are still going."

  Finally Lucky said, "What the hell. At least we don't have to worry about rats and alligators this time."

  #

  "Rise and shine, Bobby Joe."

  At first Bobby Joe's eyes felt as if they were glued shut. A hand jogged his shoulder, but it took him several seconds to get past squinting in the light. Matt Sheehan knelt next to where Bobby Joe had fallen asleep on the floor of the kiosk.

  "You've had your two hours. That's all we can afford."

  "Oh, God." Bobby Joe pulled himself upright and leaned back against the wall. If he had been trained in anatomy, he probably could have identified by name the one or two muscles that weren't sore and the one or two joints that weren't stiff. Matt helped him up.

  Richard, Julie, and Abby still slept on the floor. Rudy stood guard by the door. Light–headed from sleep deprivation and low gravity, Bobby Joe moved to the wall and ran his finger along the desktop that supported what had to be a computer and communications console, if the Archies worshipped the same technology god.

  Matt's voice came from over Bobby Joe's shoulder. "I think it's time you earned your keep. You think you can figure out how to use the system?"

  "Too early to tell. If our being here was one of the things they had in mind when they designed the system, I'd have better luck teaching Richard to be a public speaker. If their race is one hundred percent honest and respectful of property rights and 'need to know,' then I've got an outside chance." Bobby Joe's generation began manually programming VCRs for their parents, so he had more faith in his abilities than he let on.

  "I can't expect miracles. Just do your best. I suppose you and Abby will need to work together, so she can try to interpret while you do your computer stuff. Wake her up as soon as you think there's something for her to start on."

  Bobby Joe ran his fingers over his bald scalp. "Will do."

  The first puzzle was how to sit down. The Archies might just stand when they used the computer, but then again maybe they didn't. Bobby Joe knelt and looked closely at the wall below the console. If he were designing living quarters meant to be as space efficient as possible, he'd go for built–in furniture that folded out of the walls. Maybe the Archies did, too. They were a lot different from humans in appearance, and perhaps in thought, but both humans and Archies had to function with the same rules of space and time. If the Archies wanted to fit ten units of materials in a five–unit kiosk, they had to live with some of the same constraints humans would have.

  The two square meters of wall surface under the desk showed no obvious blemishes, deformations, or knobs. Bobby Joe pushed on a series of points anyway, just in case human color vision didn't pick up everything the Archies' eyes could see. No results.

  Bobby Joe stood up, wondering if perhaps some action at the console would activate a device that would move a chair into place. He didn't want to touch the console yet, though. When he foun
d out how to turn it on, for all he knew he might start transmitting video to a central location. That should get a reaction from the Archies.

  Besides that, a console switch would imply some powered, mechanized method of getting a chair in place. Again, if he were designing a setup like this, he wouldn't want to rely on motors and actuators when a simpler system would be cheaper and more reliable.

  Kneeling again, he inspected the two walls adjacent to the console. Nothing obvious there, either. Crap.

  Matt told Rudy it was time to trade places. Matt took over the guard position, and Rudy lay down on the floor to sleep. The place looked like Bobby Joe had imagined summer camp to be, only more octagonal. And some of the campers had new beards.

  Bobby Joe stood up again, puzzled. Maybe the Archies did just stand while they used the console. He ticked off possibilities on his fingers and stopped abruptly when he hit "ceiling."

  The kiosk roofs were peaked, reaching a point about a meter above the seam where the roof met the wall. But the ceiling was flat. A close examination of the ceiling showed a set of eight small squares forming a ring about a meter wide. Bobby Joe reached for the square set in the pie slice above the console. He couldn't reach it.

  Bobby Joe jumped and pushed the square. It clicked. Slowly in the light gravity, the ceiling pie slice began to pivot, the point in the center swinging down into the room, bending at a hinge along the edge where the ceiling met the wall.

  As the ceiling segment swung down, a segmented sheet above it unfolded like Japanese origami or whatever they called that stuff when you fold a piece of paper into some 3–D shape. Finally eight segments touched the floor. Bobby Joe felt an inordinate amount of pride in the accomplishment, despite the fact that the chair didn't look like it would be very comfortable for a human. The "chair" was more like a short ladder with only two wide steps. Apparently an Archie would rest on it with the rear body segment supported by the lower step, the higher step supporting the forward segment closer to the console.

  Bobby Joe put some weight on the bottom step. The structure stretched a bit, but held. Bobby Joe wondered how heavy humans were compared to the Archies. Finally he sat on the rear shelf and leaned forward on the upper shelf. His posture was a little like that of someone sitting backward on a chair and leaning forward to rest on the chair back. The position was slightly more comfortable than standing.

  He glanced back at Matt, who gave him a thumbs–up. Bobby Joe felt a small surge of pride in pleasing him. As he averted his gaze, he noticed another faint square set into the floor.

  Bobby Joe knelt beside the chair and fingered the square on the floor. Finally he pressed his thumb against the square and it sank into the surface. As it did, a larger octagonal outline appeared next to the square hole. Gingerly, he pushed the octagon sideways and revealed a similarly shaped dark opening. He looked up at Matt and said, "Maybe this is how they get rid of trash."

  Matt nodded and looked impressed. Bobby Joe slid the cover back into place and stood up. Now for the hard part—figuring out the console.

  On the surface of a trapezoidal shelf about a half–meter deep was an octagon split into eight pie wedges. In front of it was a much smaller octagon, about the size of a dollar.

  On the wall above the shelf was a much larger octagon. To the left and to the right of the octagon were much smaller octagons, about the size of a thumbnail. The one on the right had a glassy sheen to it, and the one on the left was perforated with a few hundred tiny holes. Bobby Joe felt good to have a starting point. The odds suggested that the two small octagons were a camera lens and a microphone.

  Bobby Joe dug through his backpack and found some tape. He tore off two short sections and applied the pieces to the two small octagons. If he accidentally turned on console communications, he didn't want a bunch of Archies showing up to find out why one of their kiosks was infested with apes.

  Nothing on the desktop looked like an on–off switch. Bobby Joe touched the small octagon at the front of the desktop. Instantly the large octagon on the wall lit, displaying eight pie wedges, each with an image.

  Bobby Joe stared at the eight images. They could have been icons, or they could have been actual text in the Archies' language. Bobby Joe looked at Matt and said, "I think it's time I woke Abby."

  "Okay."

  A couple of minutes later, Abby and Bobby Joe stood on opposite sides of the chair and looked at the screen. Abby's minivid optics module sat on the chair, angled so it could record whatever images they summoned on the console.

  The images themselves surprised Bobby Joe by being of lower quality than he'd guessed was likely. They were granular, the individual pixels easily discernible. In addition, they flickered, like TV screens shown on old films, and the flickering was even worse when he looked at the screen from the corner of his eye instead of straight at it.

  Abby rubbed her eyes and said, "This may tell us something about their eyes. They may not see as well as we do, and their persistence of vision may be longer than ours."

  "So this might look just fine to them?"

  "It's possible. This ship wouldn't have been cheap to build. I'd bet they could have higher resolution if they wanted it. And it could be they don't see in stereo since the display is flat. Having only the one eye–stalk suggests that they have either no stereoscopic vision, or stereoscopic with fairly limited depth perception since the separate views would have to be pretty close together."

  "Well, it may be okay for them, but I bet it'll give me a headache in an hour."

  "Mmm," Abby said.

  "Any ideas so far?"

  Abby pointed to the pie wedge on the left. "That image there reminds me of a side–view silhouette of their mouths. It looks a little like a spider's mouth, but with no mandibles."

  "Yeah, it does. So maybe that indicates communication, speech?"

  "Could be."

  "If that's true, we don't want to activate that function."

  "How would we if we wanted to?" asked Abby. "Touch the corresponding wedge on this control panel?"

  "That's my first guess, but I didn't want to try anything like that without a clue as to what it might be turning on. Showing a mouth might not mean speech or communication, and I didn't want to be ordering a pizza."

  "Don't talk about real food, all right? I'm getting so very tired of green pellets."

  "Sorry about that." Bobby Joe hesitated. "Do spiders have good vision?"

  "I don't know, but that's probably just as well. If we think of the Archies as just big spiders, I think we're bound to make mistakes. As much as possible, we should focus on what we can learn about the Archies and extrapolate from there. For instance, we shouldn't expect they lay eggs unless we get some direct evidence for that assumption."

  "Okay. So what next?"

  "I've got several video images stored. Language or symbols from things like the elevator door and several machines. I need to create a small catalog of them. I want to use more space than a computer screen." Abby looked at Matt. "Any problem with writing on the wall? It'll make it tougher to cover our tracks."

  "Go ahead. It won't be long before that's less important."

  Abby and Bobby Joe went to work, with Abby locating images and Bobby Joe transcribing them on the wall, along with a brief note about where they came from. When they finished, a dozen images decorated the wall next to the console.

  To Bobby Joe several of the images looked more like Rorschach ink blots than characters. Abby's image collection included the sign on the dome over Manhattan, and images from the emergency exit door, the elevator, the monorail car, the location Richard had planted explosives, and several other unidentified equipment cabinets. Now that they were all together on the wall, Bobby Joe could see a similarity in most of the images except for the sign on the dome. On the right–hand side of all the other images was a distorted octagon and a square with a vertical line at its center.

  Abby must have been looking at the same thing, but she was ahead of Bobby Joe. Sh
e pointed to the octagon and square from the message on the emergency door. "You know what? I'm beginning to think these symbols on the end are location references. This octagon is almost whole. But look at the ones from places farther inside. They're smooshed in."

  "That's a technical term, right?"

  "Right. The one from near the observation port is smooshed in maybe ten percent. The one from what you guys guessed was part of the propulsion system is smooshed farther in, and the actual location is physically closer to the center of the ship. The octagon we found on the elevator is almost whole. I think the smooshing says where you are, what direction from the center of the ship, and how far out from the center. And the thin line in these squares shows elevation in the ship. Everything on this level looks the same, but the one from the emergency door says we were closer to the middle of the ship."

  Bobby Joe scanned the images, looking for any inconsistency that could disprove the hypothesis. He didn't find one. "So are you saying the Archies have a pictographic language?"

  "I'm betting they don't. If their history is something like ours, separate groups developed their own languages, and pictographs are an easy solution that allows a group of people who don't all use the same language to quickly understand the message. Even if they do all use the same language now, pictographs are still convenient shorthand."

  "So all we need to do is figure out what these other seven pictures mean? How do we do that?"

  "That's the first step. And all I can say for now is keep your mind as open as you can, and be prepared for the possibility that we just won't be able to decipher everything. Think about the ‘I Love New York’ bumper sticker with the heart symbol for the word 'love' and what the Archies would need to know to understand it. The heart is an internal organ, so they're not going to know what it looks like without a dissection or a scan. Then they would need to know that our stylized shape correlates to the heart, and they'd need to know the historical basis for believing the heart is the source of emotion. Plus they'd need to know that in that context, red is good. The symbol is actually an ideogram, not a pictograph."