John E. Stith - Manhattan Transfer

MANHATTAN TRANSFER by John E. Stith

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MANHATTAN TRANSFER

by John E. Stith

Chapter 1

Going Up

Manhattan never sleeps. It doesn't even blink. By three in

the morning, it was as close to lethargy as it ever gets, but

that was still busier than a nursery full of hyperactive kids

with megadoses of sugar and caffeine.

As something quite out of the ordinary began, Manhattan lay

awake in the dark.

#

Slightly past the orbit of Saturn, over forty degrees above

the plane of the ecliptic, ionized particles of the solar wind

encountered a disruption where none had existed before.

Space twisted. An artificial rotating singularity deformed

the fabric of space, bending it in on itself until a black hole

formed. Charged particles that would normally have sped directly

through the region, instead began to move in arcs, most of which

ended at the singularity. They accelerated as their paths curved

tighter toward the gravitational lens, speeding faster and faster

as they approached, and, during their final nanoseconds of

existence outside the event horizon, spewing X-rays like tiny

distress calls.

The event horizon bloomed to a diameter of several hundred

kilometers before it stabilized. While the solar wind funneled

into the region, an enormous black starship emerged from inside

the event horizon. The starship, almost as black as the region

of space it slid out of, absorbed radiation across the entire

spectrum as it spun sedately. As the nearby singularity was

switched off, the event horizon shrank until it vanished, and the

only obstruction to the solar wind was the ship itself.

The huge squat disk-shaped ship sported octagonal rather

than circular endplates. The disk was about ten kilometers tall,

as thick as a small moon, and the octagonal endplates spanned

over ten times that distance. The ship's spin slowed until it

hung motionless in the dim starlight. The ship then began to

pivot into the solar wind. The black ship kept adjusting its

orientation until one octagonal surface pointed generally at the

distant yellow G-type star. The precise alignment was at the

small blue planet, third from the sun. Moments later, the

enormous ship began to accelerate smoothly toward Earth.

#

The whup-whup-whup from the chopper's blades rose in pitch

and volume as the pilot pulled back on the collective, and the

chopper rose a meter off the concrete at the edge of Manhattan.

The six passengers were all secured, and the sounds in the

pilot's headphones were positive, reassuring. He let the craft

hover a moment on the ground-effect cushion as he readjusted his

shoulder strap. As soon as he felt in control, he let the

chopper continue its rise. Below him the circular markings of

Manhattan's East 60th Street heliport began to shrink. As he

rose, he let the chopper turn slowly, and he scanned the space

over nearby building tops. When the chopper faced the East River

and JFK International beyond, the pilot pushed on the cyclic

stick and tilted the chopper slightly forward, still rising as

the craft began to move toward the airport.

The pilot enjoyed the runs between Manhattan and JFK,

particularly at times like now--the morning rush hour. This was

one of the few jobs in flying where you could "drive" over the

roads below in Queens. He took a lot of pleasure in passing

slow-moving traffic on the Long Island Expressway, BQE, and Van

Wyck, cruising right over the stalls and backed up sections,

ignoring pileups and emergacharge trucks.

He reached cruising height just before the East River.

Below was the Queensboro Bridge, doing its best to jam more

people into Manhattan.

A sudden shadow was the first indication of trouble.

Reflexes took over and he lost a little altitude just in case.

If the passengers complained, he couldn't tell, because the

headphones and the rotor roar would block anything up to a

scream.

The helicopter pilot had just convinced himself there was no

problem when a faint pencil of red light cut the grimy sky

vertically in front of the windshell bubble. He jammed the stick

and tried to veer away, but he had no time. The whine of the

rotors suddenly changed pitch as the rotor blades hit the shaft

of laser light. The chopper became a machine gun, firing severed

pieces of rotor off to his left. In milliseconds, the slicing

light had whittled every rotor down to half its original length,

and then the chopper itself hit the beam. A band saw moving at

the speed of light, the laser sliced the chopper right down the

middle. The engine overhead exploded as the casing surrounding

the whirling components split into pieces.

Shrapnel from the exploding engine perforated bodies of the

pilot and passengers as the two halves of the chopper began their

plunge to the East River. The pilot hadn't even had time to

utter the one word traditionally heard as black box recordings

terminate.

#

Matt Sheehan had heard little more than the roar of the

A-train subway since it sped away from the Jay Street station in

Brooklyn and lurched under the East River. He'd taken a small

detour through Brooklyn after landing at JFK and taking the

subway through Queens.

As he stared out the window into the dark, he saw nothing

except an occasional utility lamp as the car rocked on its rails.

He was aware of snippets of conversation, but paid no attention.

The morning rush hour crowd was so dense, Matt held his small

flight bag in the same hand that gripped the overhead strap. The

woman in front of him faced the door, pretending as he did that

it was comfortable to be as close as lovers. The mass of bodies

rocked with the motion of the car. Through the front of the car,

Matt could see the lead car making small zig-zag motions.

The woman suddenly turned and looked around angrily. She

scanned nearby faces, returning to Matt's. Her eyes were green.

Her skin looked tanned, but the smooth texture said her

complexion came from parents rather than the sun. She said, "I

really don't appreciate that." Matt got a glimpse of even white

teeth.

It took Matt a moment to realize someone in the crowd must

have pinched her or touched her in a way even more intimate than

the close contact necessitated. He almost said, "You sound like

my wife," but instead he hunched up one shoulder and extricated

his free arm from the mass of bodies. He held his hand palm out.

"I didn't touch you," he said calmly. "At least not anywhere

except here." His gaze flicked down to where her shoulder

touched his chest.

The woman, whose hair was shiny black, held his gaze a

moment before she said, "I'm sorry," and started scanning other

faces again.

Me, too, he thought as the subway continued to jostle the

riders, a giant hand rocking the crib too energetically. Matt

felt tired. He hadn't slept well on the flight from Mexico City

to JFK, and wished he had more energy for his detour through

Manhattan.

He let his eyelids droop closed, then popped them open a

second later, when the car lurched violently. The overhead light

went out. In the same instant, a shower of sparks splattered

from somewhere behind him, and the screaming and shouting

started.

A rumbling series of loud explosions sounded, so many of

them separated by so little time that the noise was more a

high-speed rat-a-tat-tat than distinct booms. Matt felt his body

pushed forward into the woman ahead of him as emergency brakes

decelerated the car, and he felt a sudden breeze behind him. The

floor of the car lurched again, and by the time the car jerked to

a stop, the floor seemed to tilt toward the rear.

As the screams and shouts finally gave way to angry and

panicked loud questions like, "What the hell's going on?"

directed to no one in particular, the car jerked several times

and came to a halt in blackness. A woman's voice split the dark,

yelling, "Get your Goddamn hand off me!"

The echoes from behind him had changed texture and

lengthened, as if they no longer came from an enclosed car.

People began spreading out, and suddenly a man cried, "Hey--" His

voice trailed off until an impact forced more air out of his

lungs. A few matches and cigarette lighters pierced the

darkness. At first all they revealed were the forward half of

the car and a confused throng of people. And Matt drew in a

breath as he realized what didn't show--the rear half of the car.

He pushed his way toward the back as more cries came from that

direction: "Oh, my God." "Harry, Harry! What happened?"

As he got closer, Matt realized that the back half of the

car was gone. He swallowed hard. People cowered at the sides of

the vehicle, hanging on tightly and looking into the blackness

behind the car. A man who apparently was the one who had just

fallen got to his feet on the floor of the tunnel and looked up

in surprise. Matt reached the severed edge of the car, and the

temperature from packed bodies dropped noticeably. He took a

deep breath and tried to control his fear.

The subway car had been sheared in half. The metal edges of

the floor, walls, and ceiling still glowed a dull red from the

heat of whatever had done this. Matt had once seen the edges of

a hole created by an armor-piercing missile smashing through a

tank wall. That hole reminded him of these edges, but here were

no curling can-opener edges, just the shaved nubs, looking like

plastic cut with a very hot knife, a hardware-store 3-D model of

how walls were made. On the floor of the car and on the clothing

of a couple of people apparently in shock, were splatters of what

could only be blood. In the air were musty smells of machine

oil, ozone--and fear.

In the tunnel behind the car, Matt could at first see only

faint reflections from the rails. He took a tiny penlight from

his bag. With help from the light, he jumped to the track bed,

careful to stay clear of the extra rail on the outside, even

though the power was almost certainly off. A couple of meters

from the severed edge of the car he found a man lying on the

tracks, moaning. Matt grabbed a hunk of fabric and pulled the

man's leg so it no longer touched the rail. His heart pounded in

his chest, but finally it began to slow as the initial adrenaline

rush faded.

The man's right hand was gone, cut cleanly at the wrist. He

heard gasps from behind him. The wound seemed to be partially

cauterized already, but blood oozed and pulsed into the cinders.

Matt took the man's belt, looped it a few times around the bare

wrist, and fastened it tightly enough to bar further blood loss.

Quietly, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, he said to the

injured man, who probably couldn't hear him anyway, "Okay,

fellow, I'm here. We're going to get medical help for you.

You'll be fine."

Matt played his penlight over the nearby ground, but he saw

no sign of the man's missing hand. Behind him a couple of people

jumped to the cinder track bed. He called toward them, "A man

here needs medical attention if there's a doctor around."

He moved farther down the tracks. The next couple of meters

could have been the aftermath of combat. There would be no

helping the people here. What was left of a man had been cleaved

vertically just to the right of his head. The rest could only be

described as large and mostly recognizable pieces of human

bodies.

Matt had seen casualties this horrible before, but he had

always known why. Here he was totally confused. Was this the

result of some terrible accident? Earthquake? The work of

terrorists? Nothing made any sense. Somewhere behind him a

nervous laugh got out of control and turned to a repetitive wail

before it ended with the sound of a slap.

He walked past the remains and stopped. Instead of the rear

half of the severed car, or even empty rails extending under the

river, here was nothing. The rails themselves were severed,

butting up flat against a dark wall that completely blocked the

tunnel mouth. As Matt came closer, he could feel the heat

radiating from the dull-black surface barring the way. Water

pooled on the tunnel floor. Where the hell was the rear half of

the train?

As he played his light on the mottled surface, voices behind

him said, "What the hell is that?" and "Mother of God."

Matt glanced behind him and saw an array of tiny flames

piercing the black. A man in a business suit stumbled forward.

"Agatha. Agatha! Can you hear me?"

Matt walked back to the man, passing a couple of onlookers

with lighter flames flickering. "I'm sorry, but unless Agatha is

in the car you just came from, she probably can't hear you. Come

on. We've got to get out of here fast. We're probably still

under the river, and something's cut the tunnel. We could be

flooded at any time."

The suited man shook, his gaze directed toward the blocked

end of the tunnel. The man who had lost his hand lay still on

the ground, surrounded by three people who looked at him with

horrified expressions, but weren't helping. Matt moved closer.

"Help me carry him out," he said to the onlookers. He

forced his voice to be calm despite his urge to run. "It's risky

to move him because he might have a concussion or broken bones

from the fall, but he's got to get medical attention, and it's

going to be a while before any help gets down here."

"What happened?" asked one of the three, a woman with dazed

eyes.

"I don't have any idea at all. Maybe a bridge above us

collapsed. I hope we'll find out when we get above ground." He

hoped the prospect of finding out more when they got moving would

appeal to them, but he didn't give the bridge theory any real

credence. This was something worse. How much worse, he had no

idea.

"Take off your coat so we can use it as a litter," Matt said

quickly to the taller man, who wore a raincoat.

The man didn't respond.

"Come on." Matt grabbed the man's arm.

The man took the coat off as though in a trance. Matt laid

out the coat next to the injured man.

"Come on," he said as he knelt beside the man. "Help me

move him."

Like obedient automatons the three each gripped a shoulder

or a leg and helped shift the injured man onto the coat. Matt

took the edge of the coat next to the man's damaged arm so he

could make sure nothing bumped against it. Together the four of

them lifted the man to waist height and started up the tunnel.

"If anyone gets tired, say so before you lose your grip. We're

taking a big enough risk already."

As they reached the severed car, Matt stopped to retrieve

his bag, and he found some passengers were still inside the car.

"Something is blocking the tunnel back there. Everyone who can

walk had better get started. No help is going to be here anytime

soon from the way things look. Walk forward to the next stop.

Anyone who's in good enough shape to run should do it and call

nine-one-one. And stay away from the extra rail. Move fast, but

stay calm."

Someone in the dark said, "My buddy says you can call for

help from phones on the tunnel walls."

"If you see one, try it. Otherwise just keep going. But

help anyone who needs it. Who can pass the word to the people in

the lead car?" As soon as he heard a voice say, "I can," he and

the others moved forward with the victim. Seconds later Matt

realized that a blinking minivid "active" light was tracking them

as they walked. Whoever it was even had a pinhead lamp shedding

dim light on the tunnel walls. Irritated that someone was

photographing them, he said, "Take your home movies somewhere

else, why don't you? We need to get out of here."

A feminine voice sounded from behind the light. "This is

for WNBC. What's your name, please?"

The voice seemed familiar. As a man with a lighter moved

closer to the person with the minivid, Matt saw that it was the

black-haired woman whose shoulder had bumped against his chest

since the last stop. Matt made no reply.

They maneuvered past the walkway beside the severed car and

past the lead car. Matt made sure no one was left aboard as they

passed. Flickering light illuminated a scattering of possessions

left behind. A headphone lay near a dark spill of blood on a

bench. Someone must be in one shoe, because a lone sneaker with

its laces still tied rested in a corner. An expensive video

player had been left behind, along with a few coin-sized disks

that by now would have footprints on them. A half-eaten sandwich

wrapped in a deli bag lay flattened on the dirty floor. As they

passed the lead car, Matt understood why the motorman had been no

help. He was dead, smashed against the glass by the sudden stop.

Matt and the others were able to walk without jarring the

injured man too badly, and they began to head up the moderate

slope as quickly as they could without risking further injury to

the victim. Steam rose slowly from a grate somewhere ahead. A

couple of other people stayed close to them, holding cigarette

lighters and matches in turns so the group could see a little of

their surroundings. The woman carrying one corner of the

raincoat got a couple of offers to have someone else take her

place, but she turned them down. Ahead of them, the other

passengers seemed to be taking it all in stride. Matt supposed

living in New York required people to be adaptable.

Matt kept walking, trying to jostle his passenger as little

as possible, as he wondered what they would find when they got

out of the tunnel.

#

Rudy Sanchez got a second cup of coffee from the machine in

the hall and took it back to his office. The hall was dark. No

one else was in yet, and Rudy liked to savor the feeling of being

in before the rest of the offices began to fill. He got twice as

much done when the building was calm and quiet as he did when

office hours began. Beating the morning rush enhanced the

feeling.

He glanced out the window at the stream of cars coming

across the Brooklyn Bridge and sat down, ready to get back to

planning the replacement for the old generator on the upper east

side. He'd been thinking about how to start the next phase when

he realized something about the sound of the city had changed.

He went back to the window.

At first everything seemed normal. Traffic was a little

slow, but that was hardly surprising. As Rudy watched, his eyes

widened as a black shape of some kind came out from behind the

Chase Manhattan Bank Tower. What the hell? It seemed to be some

kind of craft, paralleling the coastline, and as it moved, it

directed a dim red pencil of light through the dirty air, toward

the ground. Where the pencil touched land or water, destruction

followed.

In awe Rudy put down his coffee cup and stared. What the

hell was going on? He put his face nearer the glass and looked

to both sides. Another identical black ship was moving along the

coast farther to the north.

Both black, windowless craft flew an even course as they

slanted what had to be high-power lasers toward the Manhattan

shoreline. Rudy looked at the nearer craft. From just aft of

the laser's origin, a gun muzzle threw a stream of pellets so

fast and so frequently, there seemed to be a brown shaft of light

right behind the laser.

A deep rumbling sound reached Rudy, quaking the floor under

his feet and vibrating the windows. He had the impression of

thousands of small explosions occurring in the slit opened up by

the lasers.

As Rudy moved to turn on the radio on his desk, the lights

went out.

#

Abby Tersa had left Grand Central Terminal and was on her

way to the United Nations General Assembly Building when the

traffic lights went off. Normally she enjoyed the six-block

walk, but today she stood on the sidewalk in front of the

Chrysler Building and backed against the wall as the crowd roared

and the car honking intensified, as if to fill the gap caused by

the sudden absence of subway sounds and the hubbub from freight

elevators and exhaust fans.

Abby had never seen a power failure since she'd moved to the

Bronx three years earlier. It made her nervous.

She edged along the base of the building, feeling the urge

to get to work quickly, but knowing that without power for

microphones, amplifiers, recorders, and lights, she wouldn't be

needed for much translating. She was wondering if the power

would return anytime soon when she saw the black craft move from

behind the tall slab of the U.N. Secretariat Building. The

craft aimed its laser down toward where the East River met the

Manhattan shore.

Fighting down the panic, Abby began sprinting toward the

U.N. Fifteen years ago she had been in training for the

Olympics. In a timed run during physical education in junior

high, she'd been surprised to learn that she was the fastest

runner in her class. Encouraged by her parents, who saw running

as a good thing to balance out all the hours that she spent in

her room studying, she went out for the track team. At first she

had rationalized the activity partly because it was one more way

she could exercise her foreign language skills, but she grew to

enjoy the running itself, finding that when she hit her stride

she could block all her worries. This time she found herself

unable to block the image of that strange ship.

#

Arsenio Hecher pulled into the right lane fast, finding a

spot that wasn't directly behind a delivery truck. His fare, a

white couple with a kid, didn't complain. Out-of-towners were

quieter than the natives.

Arsenio kept watch in the cab's rear-view mirror as the

vehicle moved onto the Brooklyn Bridge, heading northwest into

lower Manhattan. The traffic moved fast for rush hour, but it

was never fast enough. Sometimes Arsenio thought about finding

someplace less congested so he could really move, but when it

came right down to it, he liked the way New York itself moved.

Anyplace else would seem like a sleepy country afternoon, and he

could never go back to that.

Faint sunlight hit gray waves cresting in the East River.

Arsenio honked a reply to a fellow yellow as the other cab edged

past him. Why was the other lane always faster?

The cab had just emerged from the shade of the large bridge

support near the Manhattan shore when a moving shadow flashed

over the roofs of cars and trucks ahead. Someone must have been

on a hell of a low path to La Guardia. Arsenio craned his neck

to see what kind of plane it was.

The woman in the back seat asked, "Does this sort of thing

happen a lot here?"

He didn't know what she was talking about until he looked

forward again, A field of red tail lights glared at him and horns

began to honk even faster. As he watched, a sparkling red light

flashed across a truck ahead of the car in front of him.

Arsenio slammed on the brakes as the truck exploded. The

car behind him smashed into his rear bumper, and the man in the

back seat yelled, "What the hell!" as in the rear-view mirror

Arsenio saw a truck plow into the guy behind him. The kid began

to cry.

From the corner of his eye, Arsenio saw steam explode from

the water at the edge of the river, as though a long thin heater

lay just below the surface. As the cab finally showed signs of

stopping successfully, the road surface began to tilt forward.

The bridge was coming apart! "Crap!"

The Goddamn bridge was turning into a drawbridge, but

backwards. The section Arsenio's cab was on tilted down. As his

panic rose, and he jammed his foot on the brakes hard enough to

force the antilock on, he could see cars on the other side of the

break burning rubber as they tried to gun it up the slope.

Electric motors whined, climbing to the top end of the scale as

the wheels spun, and cars slid backward, smoke rising from their

tires. His heart raced even faster than the time he'd been

mugged.

For just an instant, Arsenio thought the cab was stopped

precariously on the slope, but the bridge lurched again, and the

car behind him hit his bumper one last time.

The cab slid off the end of the broken bridge. The screams

from the back seat blended into one loud roar.

Arsenio cursed uncontrollably, his hands locked on the

steering wheel and his foot still pistoned into the brake pedal

for the entire time it took before the cab smashed into the

water.

#

From his darkened office, Rudy Sanchez looked out at the

destruction along the Manhattan shore. The Brooklyn Bridge had

been severed, two trucks sliced in the process, and cars had

spilled like toys into the river. Boats docked along the piers

had been cut in two as steam roiled into the morning air. Rudy

stood in shock, the dead telephone still gripped in one hand.

He had been tempted to run to help someone, anyone, but now

he just stood, temporarily locked by indecision and fear. It

seemed to him that anything he did now would be bailing a tidal

wave with a teaspoon. A couple of fires had started where

natural gas lines ran under the East River to Brooklyn, but

cutoff mechanisms that didn't depend on power would limit the

amount of gas available to burn.

The black craft closest to him switched off the red light,

undoubtedly some unbelievably high-power laser. The craft rose

swiftly with no vapor trail until Rudy lost sight of it.

The city sounded sick. The occasional rumble of a passing

subway hadn't been audible for several minutes. The increased

frantic honking from cabs and trucks grid-locked without working

traffic lights more than made up for the lack in volume, but

provided no comfort.

A flicker of black caught Rudy's eye. The craft were

returning. He leaned forward and could see two more of them

flying in formation but spreading the pattern as they fell. And

what they were doing was even stranger than before. There seemed

to be some filmy transparent material stretched between the

craft. They looked as if they held some enormous soap bubble.

What in God's name was happening?

The nearest black craft settled slowly toward the shoreline,

stretching its corner of the bubble as it fell. Moments later

the craft hovered over a severed dock. The corner of the soap

bubble widened, and the edge of the bubble began to pull itself

down toward the shoreline, apparently sealing itself to the

ground or to some material the ship had deposited in the groove

it had cut earlier. Within minutes, the filmy bubble had settled

into a smooth seal for as far as Rudy could see. It seemed big

enough to be covering the entire island of Manhattan.

The black craft rose, moving away from Manhattan as it did.

Another one entered Rudy's field of view. Seconds later they

both stopped, and stayed where they were, hovering.

Rudy had no warning. In one moment the ships just hovered.

In the next moment a giant flashbulb went off. Rudy could see

nothing but sparkles surrounding a large red spot for the next

minute, but slowly his vision returned. When it did, he could

see the bubble was still in place, but now it seemed more

tangible. It was still transparent, but the reflections seemed

brighter and they no longer wavered.

The hovering craft were gone. As Rudy tried to see where

they might be, an enormous shadow crept over lower Manhattan.

#

Julie Kravine took a last few shots with her minivid, then

shut off the sand-grain light. The image of the stalled subway

cars faded from her retinae, and she turned to follow the

stragglers up the tunnel.

Ahead of her were the four people carrying the man who had

lost his hand. Julie cringed, just thinking about it again. And

she remembered the severed bodies they were leaving behind. She

had taken shots of them, too, more so that people would believe

her report rather than because they'd be used on the news. She

hadn't felt this ambivalent since she left Tom.

Julie felt uneasy. The ground rumbled with some

unidentifiable tremble, and things just felt wrong. If the

tunnel collapse was some localized catastrophe, she'd be hearing

the rumble from other subways as they traveled nearby. Instead,

the only vibration was that constant faraway tremor.

The rumble stopped. Suddenly the underground felt

completely quiet, unnatural. Something was definitely very

wrong. Julie hurried ahead, following the flickering lights.

She stumbled, then got back to her feet and started picking

cinders out of her palms. The tunnel smelled oily.

She caught up with the foursome. A couple of men walked

with them, holding cigarette lighters, obviously ready to take

over for anyone who got tired. She turned on her tiny light and

minivid, capturing ten seconds before turning them off. She felt

a pride in how well New Yorkers were responding to the trouble.

Her sister in Columbus complained about the crime rate and the

apparent unfriendliness, but when things got tough, New Yorkers

found ways to cope.

Julie moved to catch up again. She was tired from covering

a late-night hostage crisis in south Brooklyn The good part was

that it had left her with all her recording gear and a moderate

battery charge at just the right time.

She caught up with the others and turned on her minivid, set

to voice-only to save the charge. The tall man who had been next

to her in the subway when it all started gripped one corner of

the raincoat holding the injured man. He was the same one who

had calmed the crowd with sensible directions and a take-charge

attitude that didn't smack of dictatorship. And he was the same

one who had declined comment earlier. Was he a cop?

The man was going to be the focus of this piece, whether he

liked it or not, Julie decided. She moved deliberately to one of

the other three people carrying the injured man.

"I'm Julie Kravine with WNBC," she said to the woman who

carried one corner of the raincoat. "What's your name?"

"Bette Waylon." The woman wore a dark jacket with the

bracelet cuffs made popular in Way Down and Way Over.

"Can you tell me what you thought when the lights went out?"

"Nothin' I guess. That I'd be late for business."

"Any ideas about what might have caused this?"

"Naw. But we can find out on TV when we get back up."

"Anyone else here with a theory?" Julie watched the tall

man. He opened his mouth but he didn't say anything.

Julie moved around until she was next to the tall man. He

glanced at her, then looked ahead.

"And your name is, sir?"

The man replied without looking at her. "Matt Sheehan."

As she formulated her next question, Matt added, "And I

apologize for being rude back there. I thought you were just

another idiot with a camera. I guess I was a little edgy."

"I think we're all a little edgy," Julie said, thinking that

he seemed the least edgy of anyone down here. "You a cop?"

"A cop? No."

"You seemed to adapt pretty quickly to the situation.

What's your background?

"I've spent some time in the service."

"Ah. So, do you have any theories about what happened back

there?"

The man was silent for a moment and several pairs of feet

crunched gravel on the dark tunnel floor. "Not really."

"Nothing at all?"

"No. Just that I'm betting the problem isn't just down

here."

"Why makes you say that?"

"Just because this section of tunnel goes under the river.

It's got to be going through bedrock. Anything generating enough

force to do damage like what's back there isn't going to be

confined to one tunnel."

Julie had been so intent on getting pictures and reactions

that she hadn't thought much about anything else, but a sudden

lurch in her stomach told her the man was probably right. An

instant later she wasn't so sure the reaction had been nerves.

The ground shook. People carrying the injured man stumbled

as they passed through a plume of rising steam.

Julie crouched in the dark tunnel, feeling the same

sensation she felt in an elevator as it accelerated upward.

#

In the Columbia University Computer Science Department

Building, Dr. Bobby Joe Brewster awoke with a start.

For an instant, he felt he was at sea. The desk his head

rested on didn't seem solid, and neither did the chair he sat in.

He jerked his head upright.

"Piss!" Bobby Joe looked at the dark computer screen in

front of him. The atmospheric simulation run had been almost

complete when he must have finally fallen asleep. And now he'd

have to start over. The power had gone off, and it had stayed

off long enough for his uninterruptible power supply to use up

its charge.

The floor lurched and a stylus on Bobby Joe's desk rolled a

few centimeters and stopped. "What--"

Either some of the students in his computer modeling class

were playing one hell of a trick on him, or something was really

screwy. He rose and moved to the window.

Yup, something was really screwy, Bobby Joe decided.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and took another look

John E. Stith - Manhattan Transfer

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