Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  "They'd never figure that out without a lot of help. So you're saying we're going to have that tough a time, too?"

  "With some of the figures, maybe. Then again, we might get lucky and find the equivalent of a side view of a stairway used to show where the stairs are. Some pictographs should simply be a small picture of what they represent."

  "So we're back to making guesses as to what these things represent?"

  "Yes."

  Bobby Joe and Abby stared at the eight pictographs. Finally Bobby Joe said, "The one that looks like a 3–D octagon. Could that be the ship we're on?"

  "Could be," Abby said slowly. "But they use octagons so frequently it could be other things, too." She looked at the picture of the message on the dome ceiling. "The first symbol in the message is the same one."

  Bobby Joe looked back at the symbols on the screen. "That one on the right looks a lot like a dome."

  "Yeah, it does. How about if we try it?"

  Bobby Joe turned to Matt. "Any problem if we try out some of the console functions?"

  Matt shook his head. "Give it a shot."

  #

  Benny Kellermund and Lucky Stiles entered the Empire State Building from 34th Street. Benny felt instantly dwarfed in the two–story passage surrounding the banks of elevators. He also felt a sharp twinge of guilt. This grand old building was coming up on a hundred years old.

  The building was much quieter than he'd seen it in the past. Apparently the bulk of the normal visitors were from out of town. Now the supply of out–of–towners was pretty limited. A large sign said no admission fee was being charged and for people to use the elevators whenever they wanted.

  Benny walked with Lucky, trying to look casual. Both men wore maintenance clothes. Lucky had explained that would be their best camouflage, and Benny had seen the wisdom. They both also wore bulky backpacks. They had talked about suitcases and cardboard boxes and other options and finally settled on this plan.

  No one seemed to be paying them any attention as they passed elevators meant for people who worked in the bottom two–thirds of the building and reached the express elevators that would reach all the way to the eightieth floor. For the first time in Benny's memory, an elevator was waiting for them. They got in alone, and Lucky pressed the button for eighty.

  "Seems slow," Lucky said as they began to rise.

  "It's the low gravity," Benny said,

  "I knew that," Lucky said.

  Benny smiled, but he didn't say anything.

  "What?" Lucky asked.

  "Nothing. Nothing." Benny blanked his expression, but he still felt good about knowing things Lucky didn't. Lucky was good with explosives, but he wasn't smarter than Benny.

  Benny's ears popped only once on the way to the top. He was sure they had popped two or three times on the way up in the past. He was suddenly sure it was the result of the lighter gravity, but he wasn't exactly sure why.

  The doors opened on the eightieth floor. Benny and Lucky moved down the hall to the pair of elevators that would take them to the eighty–sixth floor. On previous trips on windy days, Benny had been able to feel the building shudder slightly with the gusts. Today the building hummed with air–conditioner noise and the vibrations of elevators and other machinery, but the floor felt rock solid under his feet.

  One of the elevators to the eighty–sixth floor was ready for them when they reached the door, and going these six floors seemed to take half the time it had taken them to rise the first eighty floors.

  On the eighty–sixth floor, Lucky was all for going directly to the elevator that led to the 102nd floor, but Benny convinced him they should go out on the observation deck first. "After all, it might be a long time before anyone's allowed up here again, if you know what I mean."

  They went out to the open–air observation deck, and the view took Benny's breath away for an instant. The air inside the dome was totally clear. Beyond the security barrier, the World Trade Center towers looked so close they could have been only twenty blocks away. Benny looked up at the remaining dozen or so floors rising from the center of the observation deck. The antenna tower on top of the domed building, just above the higher enclosed observation deck, rose even taller, so high that it seemed to almost touch the transparent dome overhead.

  Benny's surge of pride in Manhattan and the sense of familiarity generated by his previous trips to this point were displaced by an emotion he refused to identify as fear. Those domes outside. From here Benny had the best view he'd ever had of those outside domes, and he felt cold. Just past the tip of the Chrysler Building with its curves and points was an incredibly tall and thin dome that for no obvious reason reminded Benny of the ant farm his aunt Martha had given him when he was five or six. He had a sudden image of the way the ant farm had eventually looked in the trash, the glass cracked, the ants all dead.

  Benny got as close as he could to the edge and looked down on the closest buildings. "You remember those Letterman reruns where he dropped watermelons and stuff off a big building?"

  "We should go," said Lucky. "We got things to do."

  Benny followed him silently, more nervous than he wanted to admit about whether they should be doing this. He kept telling himself the explosives would never actually be used.

  They took stairs up a floor and got on the elevator that would go all the way to the top—the 102nd floor. Lucky pressed the button for the ninetieth floor. Benny was still amazed at not having to wait for elevators.

  At the ninetieth floor the men got out on a floor much smaller than the first eighty–six floors. Benny said, "Did you know they built this entire building in a year and a half?"

  "Get outta' here." Lucky clearly didn't believe him, but Benny was sure he remembered right.

  "That's true. I wouldn't make that up."

  "You couldn't build something like this in ten years. You know how long the Farber Building's been under construction? You can't even get a bridge fixed in a year and a half."

  Benny let the subject drop. "Why here?" he asked as he followed Lucky. "Why the ninetieth?"

  "Compromise. Much lower, and we wouldn't have a hope of doing any real damage. Much higher and all we'd do is take down the antenna. This should be just about right."

  They made a complete circuit of the floor without seeing another person. Finally Lucky tried the knob on a door near the elevator. The door was locked. Lucky set his pack on the floor and knelt next to the door. From his jacket pocket he took a small tool and started playing with the lock.

  "What's in there?" Benny asked.

  "Shhh."

  A half–minute later Lucky had the door open. He found a light switch inside, and the lamp revealed a janitor's closet. He motioned Benny inside, then shut the door. "This is close to the elevator, so it's one good location to blast. Later on we can put stuff near the outside wall, 'cause there'll be support beams running up through the walls."

  "You really think you can cut the whole thing off here?"

  "I don't know. But they're gonna know they were hit."

  Benny nodded. For the next twenty minutes he did what Lucky told him. When they finished, a beige box occupied a corner between the ceiling and two walls. On the box was a large official–looking sign saying, "Air Quality Monitoring. Do Not Touch."

  Behind that sign, which would come off without much effort, was another sign saying, "High Explosive. Tamper Alarm Active. Don't even think about touching this."

  #

  Bobby Joe turned back to the console and pressed the octagon wedge corresponding to the dome. The eight images on the screen vanished, replaced by eight more.

  "Well, this is easier," Abby said.

  Bobby Joe agreed. The eight new pictographs were body types. One showed silhouette of a humanoid, another something like a badger. Others showed a body shape suited for swimming, a generic–looking eight–legged creature, and a many–legged creature.

  Abby pressed the wedge associated with the humanoid creature. This time only six
of the wedges were occupied, all with variations on the humanoid form, one with a huge head, another that looked very much human. Abby pressed the one that looked human.

  The screen changed from its normal eight–wedge octagon. A circular image formed in the center, surrounded by smaller icons on eight trapezoids that showed around the perimeter of the image. The image itself was an overhead shot of Manhattan.

  The icons were less meaningful now. Bobby Joe pressed one at random and the view changed to a false–color image. "That could be infrared," Bobby Joe said. The icon corresponding to what he had pressed was now inverted. He pressed the same wedge again, and the icon returned to normal at the same time the central image returned to normal.

  Abby pressed an icon that looked like a megaphone, and the central view grew in magnification as long as she leapt her hand on the surface.

  Bobby Joe tried an icon consisting of four double–headed arrows that formed a snowflake octagon. The image in the center began to move to the side. He moved his finger on the wedge and the direction of motion changed. He moved the image until it was centered on midtown, then pressed the magnification image Abby had used.

  The image grew until they could see that Fifth Avenue was crowded with people. What seemed most unusual was the complete absence of steam rising from any below–pavement leaks in the normal heating–steam supply lines. Bobby Joe moved the image until it was centered on Fifth Avenue and kept magnifying it. The image grew until they could see individual people holding signs saying, "Stop the expedition," and "God will protect us." They could see only the signs held by people getting a little tired and letting the poles rest on their shoulders. The vertical signs were nothing but narrow slits.

  Bobby Joe increased the magnification until he could see a small portion of the pavement when it wasn't obscured by the heads of protesters. A Baby Ruth wrapper grew until it filled the screen. Seconds later the image was large enough that he could read the ingredients, and then someone's blond head filled the screen, dark roots showing along the part.

  "How do we back out of this and get to some other information?" Abby asked.

  "I'd guess this small octagon." Bobby Joe touched the symbol at the front of the desktop. The image of the blond head vanished and the screen returned to the one showing the several forms of humanoids. Bobby Joe pressed it again until they were back at the original eight icons. "I wonder if escape keys are universal."

  "Let's try this one." Bobby Joe touched an icon that looked like an octagon connected by a curved line to an eight–pointed star. The next display showed icons in only two wedges. He picked the one that looked like a dot next to a circle. The next eight symbols were all nearly identical, and he picked the one at the bottom. For another minute or two he kept pressing switches as a series of images flashed on the screen. Abby thought he repeated his course a time or two, but he was hard to keep up with. She had a sudden image of Bobby Joe as a computer vandal, impatiently and furtively breaking into some bank computer system. Finally he slowed down and gave her a summary of what he had learned. "I'm impressed," she said softly, and Bobby Joe beamed.

  The center of the screen suddenly filled with a slowly moving video image of a forest, seen from airliner altitude. Abby backed up and picked another image, this one showing an ocean coast dotted with small villages. The next image was one Bobby Joe recognized. Portions of England and France divided by the English Channel moved slowly south.

  Abby pushed a wedge and the image began to magnify smoothly. She let it continue until they could see ships bobbing in the English Channel, and traffic on both sides of the chunnel. "Thank God," Abby said softly. "They haven't started the destruction yet."

  "If these are live."

  "Right. If they are live, then maybe the Archies are making a complete record of Earth before they destroy it?"

  "Could be. But why? So they can show before and after shots to their buddies?"

  "Or for posterity."

  Matt said from behind them, "Or to show to potential adversaries, to demonstrate their power."

  Abby backed out of that section of information, shutting off the image of Earth. "I can't watch this right now." She selected the 3–D octagon and another set of icons appeared.

  "Hey," Bobby Joe said, "if they can't see in stereo, why would they have a 3–D icon?"

  "Take a look at a ball with one eye closed. You can still see that it doesn't look like a two–dimensional circle."

  "Gee, if they only have one ear, they could have saved a mint on hi–fi equipment."

  Abby picked another icon, and the center of the screen filled with what looked to be plans for the ship. She skipped around and found a top view of the octagonal floor on which Manhattan lay.

  Bobby Joe knew roughly how large the ship was, but seeing the tiny noodle–shaped image in the octagon that formed the sides of the ship still took his breath away.

  Abby picked a side view of the ship. According to a blinking dot, they were on the uppermost floor. The ship was divided into the two back–to–back levels containing cities. On each end the view showed a thin floor. The floor they were on looked more cluttered than the floor on the opposite side of the ship. Further in toward the center of this floor were two more concentric octagons.

  Another view showed the eight huge cylinders highlighted. A different view of them from the side showed dotted lines extending to a point in space as though the cylinders formed a giant lens.

  "It still looks to me like the cylinders are associated with propulsion," Bobby Joe said.

  "Good," said Matt. "The timer should go off in about an hour. Try to find another target we can reach quickly. Armed with the views of the ship, if we can keep them off guard long enough, we might be able to find the bridge and plant some explosives."

  "Blow up the bridge?"

  "No. That would probably guarantee we'd all die. But the threat might give us leverage."

  "Maybe you should call for the second team to bring out more explosives and weapons?"

  "I've thought about that a lot, but I don't think it's worth the risk right now. If we can thoroughly understand the situation, and know for sure what to damage, what not to damage, maybe it will make more sense. But right now, not knowing any more than we do about how well the ship is monitored, having more people moving around just increases the odds that they'll capture us." Matt hesitated. "As soon as you can find out from that console where the bridge is, we'll head for it."

  Bobby Joe nodded and turned to Abby. "Can I take over the search for now?"

  "Sure. Having this access has helped a lot. I think I'm closer to decoding the message on the dome ceiling. So far, I'm pretty sure that two of the pictographs mean 'ship' and 'city.'"

  Bobby Joe went back to the data on the ship itself. An icon resembling a tic–tac–toe grid led him into a set of overlaid displays where each segment showed interconnections of one type or another, but with no clues he could easily recognize as indicating whether the currently highlighted web represented communication lines, power lines, pneumatic tubes, water or air supplies, waste disposal, or lines that had no counterpart on Earth.

  It didn't take him long, though, before he was able to start making some assumptions that seemed reasonable to him. A web that all funneled into a central area of the ship was more likely to be communication lines than waste disposal. A couple of networks that focused on an enormous circular structure well away from the populated area of the ship were more likely to be air, water, or waste. Abby helped him discover that the Archies' directional indicators were half–octagons pointed opposite to the direction Bobby Joe's intuition said they should be, and that helped eliminate possibilities. Waste disposal, for instance, presumably wouldn't be sending material all over the ship, unless the Archies were really pretty disgusting creatures.

  "I think I've got it," Bobby Joe said a few minutes later.

  Matt woke Richard and asked him to stand guard, and then he was looking over Bobby Joe's shoulder.

&nbs
p; "All right," said Bobby Joe. "The lines highlighted right now are what I suspect are communication lines for two–way traffic and monitoring. I suspect that where they converge is the bridge." The display looked a little like a street map of D.C., showing a mass of lines radiating out from one point, a point inside the innermost octagon. "And this overlay is what I think is power lines." The power lines radiated from a different point, a large cylinder about halfway between the center of the ship and the edge, in the wedge adjacent to the one they had moved through.

  Bobby Joe pointed. "I think that must be the power plant. You can see the pattern of large supply lines spreading into smaller lines as the grid stretches out to the smallest systems. There's extra shielding here and here. This thing shows four lines, so you wouldn't need that if this was the water supply. And you can see that the bridge is supplied by some large lines. We could try to cut the power to the bridge."

  "Or we could threaten the power plant itself. It doesn't look as hard to get to as the bridge."

  Matt's alarm beeped, and he looked at his watch. "It's time Richard's explosives were set to go."

  "Will we be able to feel anything here?"

  "Count on it," said Richard.

  Bobby Joe, Abby, Matt, and Richard waited in silence. Rudy's snore was audible.

  Two minutes came and went. And a third.

  Suddenly the floor began to vibrate. In a couple of seconds the vibration stopped, and a second later it started again, even more intense, and lasted almost half a minute. In about the middle of the period, an alarm started, at least that was what Bobby Joe figured. It sounded more like a musical doorbell than an alarm. A sequence of eight to ten notes repeated every second.

  "Sounds awfully complex just to say "trouble," Matt said.

  Abby said, "I agree. That might be enough to say not only what kind of trouble, but where it is."

  Matt turned to Richard. "Good job." To everyone he said, "They're probably going to be stirred up for a while. I suggest we wait here for a couple of hours, and then make a break for the power plant."