Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  The Archie brought two things. The first was a transparent bowl of familiar food pellets, which it set on the floor as though a pet dog were nearby. In addition it carried a small box with eight switches on top of it. It set the box on the floor near the bowl. It moved toward the console, then stopped, apparently waiting for the humans to get out of the way.

  Abby and the others stepped back, and the Archie used one graceful limb to touch the console switch that let it back out of the information they had been exploring, and then it chose another area. Eight new icons came up on the screen. The Archie made a point of pressing one of the wedges slowly enough for the humans to see which one it had touched, and the screen changed again. One of the icons looked like the box on the floor.

  The Archie then backed up and left the room. Two at a time the armed Archies departed until the humans were alone again.

  "What was that all about?" asked Matt.

  "I don't know," Abby said.

  Rudy picked up the box and they examined it. Each of the eight switches was a rotary switch with eight positions.

  A brief chattering from the console turned their heads back to the screen. A picture of an Archie came up on the screen. At the same time a chattering sound like the previous one, but subtly different, came from a speaker on the console. The screen changed and showed a top view of an Archie with the two front limbs highlighted. Another sound came from the speaker.

  "It's language lesson time!" Abby said. "I need the computer. And can someone set up my minivid and just let it run?"

  As quickly as she could she readied the computer, and as the sequence of sounds and images continued, fell into a pattern. Each time the computer produced a snippet of the Archies' language and showed an image, she had the computer record the sound bite and immediately afterward spoke and recorded her best guess as to what was being described.

  After cataloging several snippets, Bobby Joe interrupted to show her what he'd deduced about how to slow down the flow, or speed it up, or reverse it. Touching the left and right side wedges on the keyboard put the sequence into forward or reverse, and the distance from the center determined the speed. Abby went back to the beginning and recorded the sound associated with the image of an Archie.

  She made no attempt at first to break the collection of words into categories or try to deduce anything about speech patterns, phonetics, morphology, semantics, or syntax. Almost every word she heard sounded like the previous three words. All she could hope to do for a start was build the collection of sounds linked to human best–guess expressions.

  The sequence of images continued, some of them looking like photographic images, others looking like artists' conceptions, still others just icons.

  If she had been studying the individual sounds, trying to replicate them or understand them, she'd still have been on the first two or three sounds. Instead, after a couple of hours, she reached the end of the sequence, and her computer said it had recorded 884 sets. She leaned back, feeling drained.

  Bobby Joe pushed another one of the keyboard wedges, and the console spoke for a couple of seconds, probably five or six words strung together.

  "Do that again in just a minute," Abby said, suddenly feeling more energetic. She told the computer to start listening for foreign words in its vocabulary and to play back the English version after each word it found.

  Seconds after that, Bobby Joe played back the sequence. From Abby's computer came her recorded voice speaking the sentence, "Ship Archies dome human city." Since the intonation on each word was similar, her voice sounded like a spelling checker.

  Bobby Joe looked at her and said, "Me smart now."

  From the corner of her eye, Abby saw Matt give Bobby Joe a come–here signal, and Abby was just able to make out his words as Matt said, "Abby is our best hope of communicating with these guys. Slow her down and you and I are going to have a little talk."

  Abby reached forward and triggered another phrase. This time her computer said, "Ship Archies two human."

  She shook her head and played more sentences, slowly realizing by analyzing sentence after sentence that earlier she had made a series of small errors, like saying "two" when the symbol probably had meant "with." Each time she was able to reach a conclusion about a specific word, she went back and changed her recording and rethought some of her assumptions, as though she were working a three–D crossword puzzle. She hit an easy stretch, a series of dots obviously meant to represent numbers—–first one dot, then two, then three and so on, and then the images went back to more difficult ones.

  A long time later, what seemed like days, she was aware of Matt standing nearby. She turned to him. "I think I'm getting pretty close to a basic working vocabulary. It's still bound to have errors, but it's starting to make sense."

  She played another Archie sentence, and her computer said, "Mouth Archies box two one three four five six seven eight." Abby looked at the box the Archie had left, and Matt retrieved it.

  "You think it's a combination?" Abby asked.

  "You're the expert."

  "I think it's a combination."

  "And if I set the combination on these switches?"

  "Then maybe that's a signal that we're ready to talk. Probably what I thought meant 'mouth' actually means 'talk' or 'speak.'"

  "Are we ready?" Matt asked.

  "We're as close as we're going to get for a while longer. I've been using Archie–to–human look–up, but I can also set it to human–to–Archie."

  The others came closer as Matt turned the switches on the box, lining the points on the knobs up with the right number of small dots drawn at each position. As he set them he said, "Two one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I don't know if they use left–to–right or right–to–left, but I guess we'll find out."

  A few minutes later the double doors opened again, and armed Archies moved cautiously back into the room. The Archie with yellow stripes in its clothing moved forward and stopped. Matt stepped forward and handed it the box, which it accepted. The Archie's hand was dark–skinned, like most of its body. The hand was smaller than a human's, with no sign of the equivalent of fingernails. The hand swiveled as the Archie placed the box into a small pouch on the belt on its rear segment. Abby glanced back and saw that Julie had her minivid recording again.

  The Archie's head was so big Abby found herself comparing it not to insect heads, but to animal heads. It was a little like a sightless buffalo with a large dark nose and gray teeth. The eye–stalk protruding from the forehead seemed terribly vulnerable to Abby, but perhaps it was much stronger than it seemed, or perhaps the Archies' regenerative mechanism was more thorough than humans'. Suddenly she had to suppress a grin as she realized what the large worm–like eye–stalk vaguely resembled.

  The Archie chattered briefly, and Abby's voice came from the computer, saying "Archie." Abby touched a switch on the computer and said, "Human." The computer chattered, and suddenly the Archie sat down in the middle of the floor, its center four limbs folded underneath it, the back two and front two extended. Its eye–stalk pointed toward Abby. The armed Archies didn't change position. Matt and the others sat behind Abby in a semicircle. Abby was again aware of a scent like laundry detergent.

  The Archie pulled a small egg–shaped device from its forward belt. It spoke and again the computer translated. "Archie ship explosion one." As it spoke, it manipulated the egg, and a couple of meters away the console screen changed. The new screen showed damage to the huge red cylinder. Then the Archie spoke again. "Archie ship explosion two." The console screen changed and showed a top view of the ship.

  Abby turned to Matt. "I think it's asking if we planted more explosives, and if so, where."

  "I want some information from them before we answer that. Ask them why they took Manhattan."

  Abby turned to the Archie and tried to figure out how to phrase that, given her limited vocabulary with almost no verbs. Finally she decided on trying to use a sequence as the Archie had and said, "
Planet city two. Dome city ship three. One," and the computer chattered.

  The Archie was silent for almost a minute, then said, "One planet city fall. Two dome city not fall."

  Abby said to Matt, "I think I got a couple of words wrong. I think it's saying the city is safe now. That now it's protected."

  "What about the Earth? Is it all right?"

  Abby turned and thought. She'd correct "fall" to safe" later. She gave the Archie a choice. "Human planet fall. Human planet not fall."

  "Human planet not fall."

  "Thank God." She hesitated. "Human planet not fall. Archie human planet fall."

  "Human planet not fall. Archie human planet not fall."

  "I think it's saying the Archies are not going to hurt Earth."

  "Why should we believe them?" Matt asked. "We know they destroyed the world the tree people lived on. And we've got evidence that at least one other planet was destroyed."

  "Tree people planet not fall. Archies tree people planet fall."

  "Tree people planet not fall. Archies Tree people city dome not fall. Tree people planet fall."

  Abby tried several times to phrase the question another way and got several variations on the answer. Finally she turned to Matt and said, "I think its saying that the Archies didn't destroy the tree people's planet. Someone else did."

  "Someone else? So they—they're just rescuing cities before someone else comes along and wipes out the planet?"

  "I think so. If I'm interpreting all this correctly, the Archies are trying to preserve a little bit of each civilization before someone else destroys it all."

  "Can you find out how much time there is before whoever is destroying planets destroys the Earth?"

  Abby turned back and thought. Finally she phrased her question. She thought she knew what the answer meant, but she tried to ask it another way.

  "I've asked it twice, in different ways. I got what I think is the same answer both times."

  "So when is it? When do they say the Earth will be destroyed?"

  "I'm still unsure of time units, but I think it could be any time now."

  #

  Dorine Underwood was finally talked into taking the call. "This is the mayor," she said.

  "It's about time," said a male voice that made Dorine think of a large rodent.

  "You want to speak to me or not?"

  Hesitation. "Yes," the voice said suddenly. "Cancel the expedition. You're going to get us all killed."

  "I can't do that. The expedition is our only hope of survival. Look, it's been nice talking to you, but—"

  "Wait! A lot of people are going to be killed if you don't stop. The Empire State Building is wired to explode."

  "Look, I'm really very busy."

  "I'm not joking. There are 200 kilos of plastic explosive, all ready to blow if anyone touches them, or if I send the signal."

  "Has anybody ever told you you're a son of a bitch?"

  "I don't think you're taking me seriously. And I don't like that. I'm the one who climbed through the sewers and did the Battery Tunnel job, and you took that seriously. Do you only get excited when it's too late?"

  Dorine had received crank calls a number of times in the past, but somehow this one didn't seem to fit the pattern. The man might be telling the truth. "What are your terms?"

  "That's better. Have the expedition called off by midnight. Or else the—"

  Suddenly the phone on the other end clattered.

  "Hello?" said Dorine. "Hello?"

  Several seconds passed before a voice came on the line, a different voice this time. "Hello. Mayor?"

  "Yes."

  "Sergeant Wilkins here. He was calling from a public booth on Broadway. We're searching the area now, and we'll keep you posted."

  "Okay. Thanks."

  Dorine immediately called the chief of police. "Barney, I just got a call saying there are 200 kilos of plastic explosive in the Empire State Building. I want the building evacuated, and I want an estimate of how bad the damage could be, assuming it's been placed in the most effective spot. Then see if you can find qualified bomb squad volunteers. Use your own judgment on how much else needs to be evacuated. I think the guy's for real, but I don't know for sure."

  "You got it."

  Dorine hung up the phone and wondered what to do. There was no question about halting the expedition, but the idea of someone destroying the Empire State Building made her sick.

  Chapter 15

  Damage Report

  Matt rubbed his forehead and looked at the Archie who sat just a meter in front of Abby. Its brown head looked hard, like chitin on a magnified ant's head. The Archie's eye–stalk swung toward Matt, looking far too much like a penis with an eye on the tip. The eye didn't look like a human eye; it was faceted, like a fly's eye.

  "I'm still having a little trouble shifting gears," Matt said. "What this Archie is saying, essentially, is that we're an endangered species, and that they grabbed Manhattan so they could preserve what little they could?"

  "That's the way I see it," Abby said.

  The Archie spoke again, and Abby's computer said, "Human Archie ship. Human human city."

  Matt raised his eyebrows, and Abby said, "I think it's saying it wants us back in Manhattan."

  "No." Matt thought for a moment. "Tell them we cannot sit by and do nothing about the Earth. Tell them we've got an explosive a thousand times larger than the one that went off already, and that it's hidden on the ship. It will explode unless we command it not to. As long as they cooperate fully and answer all our questions, we will not damage the ship. But if they do not cooperate, we will have to assume they are lying to us, and we'll let the explosion destroy the ship. We insist on staying here and finding out what's going on."

  Abby looked at Matt without expression for a second. "I'll give it a try." She and the Archie talked via the computer for several minutes, as the Archie got more and more animated, its eye–stalk twitching, and its body quivering. Finally Abby turned to Matt and said, "The Archie obviously is unhappy with that—angry, indignant, insulted, I don't really know how to characterize the feeling, and I don't know if it really has a human counterpart, but the Archie has agreed to let us stay here and learn more."

  "Good. Ask them who's destroying all these planets and why."

  Moments later Abby sighed and said, "This isn't working. I need to know more about their language."

  "Okay, can you tell them that and tell them we don't want to be captives here. We want free run of the ship, and we promise not to do more damage if they're telling the truth."

  "Truth is going to be a tough idea to get across right now."

  "Then just say we won't damage the ship."

  Abby spoke and her computer translated. She and the Archie went back and forth, the Archie growing more agitated at first, and then finally relaxing a little. The Archie's eye–stalk pointed first at Matt, then Abby. The Archie's oblong mouth was ringed with what looked like tiny hairs.

  This time the Archie apparently had to consult with its peers. It rose smoothly on its center four legs and left the room.

  Abby said, "This is really hard to calibrate, but I'm getting the feeling these Archies are acting less like what I'd imagine a starship crew to be like, and more like I'd expect a group of civil servants or bureaucrats to act. If I'm reading this right, the objections were more along the lines of this being against the rules, rather than objections that our having more explosives here might damage the ship or injure people."

  Rudy shook his head. "These creatures are acting more like labor unions than a starship crew."

  Julie nodded, then asked, "If they want proof of this explosive we claim to have, what then?"

  Matt said, "I don't know. Maybe we can show them file recordings of nuclear testing."

  "Yeah," said Bobby Joe. "And if they're willing to trust images, we could show them the death–star being blown up."

  "I hadn't thought about how easy it is to fake images. I guess we ju
st have to act tough and cross our fingers. Certainly the fact that we got here and set off one explosion must have helped convince them we can be real trouble if we don't get our way."

  As they waited, Rudy asked, "Do these Archies have names?"

  Four Archies remained standing against the wall next to the door, their weapons still trained on the humans, their eye–stalks still directed at the humans.

  Abby shook her head. "I don't know."

  Bobby Joe looked around. "You could try 'dickhead.'"

  Abby turned away and Matt couldn't see her expression, but her shoulders shook slightly, and he got the feeling she was trying to hide the urge to laugh.

  Minutes later the Archie returned. It spoke to the four others, who all lowered their weapons and left the room. It chattered briefly, and Abby turned to Matt and said, "If I'm understanding correctly, we can go where we want as long as an Archie is nearby. I think you're right; having detonated the explosion has made them take us more seriously. And Rudy's right, too. I'm getting the feeling the Archies are having trouble adapting to this new situation. They seem to be trained to do their normal jobs, but they have trouble dealing with change. As long as we tell them clearly what we want, and refuse to negotiate, my guess is that we can do quite a lot."

  "Interesting. Tell them we want to be on the bridge and for you to be able to continue your language lessons. I assume by now doing that in person would be quicker than at a console."

  "That's true."

  "All right. Tell them that, and tell them we won't damage the ship any more as long as they do what we ask."

  Abby spoke again, and the computer chattered.

  The Archie responded, clenching and unclenching its front two hands as it spoke, and Abby said, "I think it's still pretty unhappy about all this, but it seems willing."

  The Archie rose and this time the humans all rose with it. "Rudy, help me grab the stuff we've got left," Matt said.