MANHATTAN TRANSFER by John E. Stith Copyright 1993 CEC NOTICE: This work is being distributed according to the policy established by Coalition for Ethical Copying (CEC). Please do your part to keep your favorite writers writing, and preserve this notice and the contact information at the end of this file. **************************************************************** MANHATTAN TRANSFER (Copyright 1993) 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 s...
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