The Missing Man (v4.1) (5 page)

The platform was crowded with people, shivering
in a cold wind; apparently waiting their turn to enjoy a ride in the little
boats. George knew that they were outdoors because they could not stand being
indoors.

Ahmed tapped on his arm. He had the wrist-radio
earphones plugged into both ears, and his voice sounded odd and deaf
“Headquarters wants to know why, George. Can you give details?”

“Tell them they have five minutes, seven
minutes if they’re lucky. Get the patrol boats here to stop it and”-George
almost shouted into Ahmed’s wrist mike-“GET ME THAT HELICOPTER. Get it
over here fast! We need it as soon as we get through the air locks!”

The glass air-lock door opened and people
tumbled and shoved through. On the other side was another room surrounded by
glass. They lined up against the glass walls like moths against a lighted
windowpane, looking out.

“Why do we have to wait so long?” It
was a wail, a crying sound like an ambulance siren in the night. The group
muttered agreement and nodded at the woman who clutched her hands against the
glass as though trying to touch the scene outside.

“I’m not worried about the bends,”
said a portly older man. “They adjust the waiting time for people with bad
sinus and ear drum infections. Does anyone here have a sinus, or eardrum
infection?”

“We don’t need to wait, then,” said
the same man, louder when there was no reply. “Does anyone here know how
to make the door open? We can go out right now.”

“My son has a screwdriver,” suggested
a woman, pushing the teen-age young man toward the door. Ahmed moved to protest
and the woman glared at him and opened her mouth to argue.

An old woman was tugging at the door. It opened
suddenly and they forgot quarreling and went out through the door to the open
docks and the cold salt wind, and the sound of cold choppy waves splashing
against the cement pillars.

An air-beating heavy whirring sound hovered
above the docks. Ahmed looked up. A ladder fell down and dangled before them.
Ahmed grabbed the rope rungs and pulled. They sagged lower. He fitted his foot
into a rung and climbed.

George stood, breathing deeply of an air that
smelled sweet and right and tingled in his lungs like life and energy. The
clouds of panic and resignation faded from his mind and he heard the seagulls
screaming raucous delight, following the small boats and swooping at
sandwiches. The people clustered at the edge of the docks, beginning to talk in
normal tones.

The ladder dangled before him, bobbing up and
down. The rope rungs brushed against his head and he brushed them aside. What
had been happening? What was the doom he had just escaped from? He tried to
remember the trapped moments and tried to understand what they had been.

“Come on, George,” a voice called from
above.

He reached up, gripped and climbed, looking into
a sky of scudding gray and silver clouds. A white and blue police helicopter
bounced above him, its rotating blades shoving damp cool air against him in a
kind of pressure that he enjoyed fighting. At the top the ladder stiffened into
a metal stair with rails, and opened into the carpeted glass-walled platform of
a big observation helicopter.

Ahmed sat cross-legged on the floor, twitching
with hurry and impatience, holding his wrist radio to his lips. “Okay,
George, tune to it. What will blow the observation building? Who, what, where?
Coast Guard is waiting for information.”

Still with his memory gripped onto the strange
depression he had felt inside the observation building, in the air of Jersey
Dome, George looked down and tuned to it and knew how the people still inside
felt, and what they wanted.

In the four-step glittering observation
building, each glass room was full of people waiting at the doors. He saw the
central elevator arrive and open its door and let out another crowd of people
to wait and push and pull at the first door at the top. Desperation. A need to
get out.

With a feeling of great sorrow, George knew who
the saboteurs were. All the kids with screwdrivers, all the helpful people with
technical skill who speed elevators, all the helpful people without mechanical
understanding who would prop open dime-operated toilet doors for the stranger
in need. They were going to be helpful, they were going to go through the
air-lock doors and leave the doors jammed open behind them. No resistance
behind them to hold back sixty-five pounds per square inch air pressure forcing
up from below in the compressed city, pushing upward behind the rising
elevator.

He had been pretending to believe it was a mad
bomber. How could he tell the police and Coast Guard that it was just the
residents of the city, mindless with the need to gel out, destroying their own
air-lock system?

George held his head, the vision of death strong
and blinding. “They are jamming the air-lock system open in the
observation building, Ahmed. Tell someone to stop them. They can’t do that. It
will blow!” The panic need to escape blanked his mind again.

“Lift,” George said, making nervous
faces at the view below. “Lift this damned copter.”

“Is he all right?” the pilot asked
Ahmed.

Ahmed was talking intensely into the wrist
radio, repeating and relaying George’s message. He made a chopping gesture to
shut up.

The copter pilot gave them both a glance of
doubt for their sanity and set the copter to lift, very slowly.

Beating the air, the copter rose, tilting, and
lifted away from the dwindling platform of glinting glass in the middle of the
gray ocean.

George gripped the observation rail and watched,
ashamed that his hands were shaking.

He saw something indefinable and peculiar begin
to happen to the shape of the glass building. “There it goes,” he
muttered, and abruptly sat down on the floor and put his hands over his face.
“Hang on to the controls. Here we go. Ahmed, you look. Take pictures or
something.”

There was a crash, and a boom like a cannon.
Something that looked like a crushed elevator full of people shot upward at
them, passed them slowly, and then fell, tumbling over and over downward.

A roaring uprush of air grabbed the copter and
carried it into - the sky upside down, falling in a rain of small objects that
looked like briefcases and fishing rods and small broken pieces that could not
be recognized. George hung on to a railing. Suddenly the copter turned right
side up, beating its heavy spinning blades in a straining pull upward away from
the rising tornado.

With a tearing roar Jersey Dome spat its
contents upward through the air shaft, squeezing buildings and foam blocks and
people and furniture into the shaft and upward in a hose of air, upward to the
surface and higher in a fountain of debris, mangled by decompression.

For long moments the fountain of air was a
mushroom-shaped cloud, then it subsided, raining down bits. The copter circled,
its occupants deafened and awed.

With one arm and one leg still hooked around the
rail, Ahmed listened intently to his radio, hands cupped over his ears to make
the speaker plugs in his ears louder. He spoke.

“The city manager is alive down there and
broadcasting. He says the canopy of the done did not break, it just lowered.
The air shaft sucked in everything near it and is now plugged shut with foam
blocks from buildings but the blocks are slowly compressing into it, and they
can hear an air hiss. Survivors are putting on scuba air equipment and finding
places to survive another hurricane if the tube blows free again, but he’s
afraid of water leaks coming in and drowning them out from underneath because
the pressure is going down. He wants the air shaft plugged from the top.
Suggests bombing it at the top to prevent more air escaping.”

Ahmed listened, tilting his head to the sounds
in his ears.

“People in the water,” George said.
“Bombs make concussion.

Let’s get the people out.”

“Affirmative,” said the police pilot.
“Look for people.”

The helicopter swept low and cruised over the
water, and they looked down at the close passing waves for a human swimmer
needing help.

“There.” Ahmed pointed at a pink shiny
arm, a dark head. They circled back and hovered, let down the ladder, and the
two Rescue Squad men climbed down and maneuvered a web mesh sling around a limp
young unconscious naked woman. Her head bobbed under and came up as they slid
the sling under her. The waves washed up against their knees as they leaned out
from the rope ladder.

“NOW HEAR THIS, NOW HEAR THIS,”
proclaimed a giant amplified voice. “ALL BOATS IN THE AREA CIRCLE IN THE
DISASTER AREA AND TAKE IN SURVIVORS. IN FIVE MINUTES, AT THE NEXT SIGNAL, ALL
BOATS MUST WITHDRAW FROM THE AIR-SHAFT CENTER TO A DISTANCE OF FIVE HUNDRED
YARDS TO PERMIT BOMBING. AWAIT SIGNAL. REPEAT. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO SEARCH
FOR AND TAKE IN SURVIVORS.”

Ahmed and George shouted up to the pilot,
“Ready.” And the hoist drew the mesh sling with the young woman in it
upward and into the copter through a cargo door in the bottom. The door hatch
closed. They climbed back inside, dripping, and spread the unconscious and
pretty body out on the floor for artificial respiration. She was cold,
pulseless and bleeding from ears, nose and closed eyes. There were no bruises
or breaks visible on the smooth skin. George tried gentle hand pressure on the
rib cage to start her breathing again, and some blood came from her mouth with
a sigh. He pushed again. Blood came from her eyes like tears.

Ahmed said wearily, “Give it up, George,
she’s dead.”

George stood up and retreated from the body,
backing away. “What do we do, throw her back?”

“No, we have to take bodies to the
hospital. Regulations,” muttered the pilot.

They circled the copter around over the choppy
gray seas, wipers going on the windshield. The body lay on the floor between
them, touching their feet.

They saw an arm bobbing on the waves.

“Should we haul it in?” George asked.

“No, we don’t have to take pieces,”
said the pilot, tone level.

They circled on, passing the little electric
boats of the people `who had been fishing when the dome blew. The faces were
pale as they looked up at the passing helicopter.

The corpse lay on the floor between them, the
body smooth and perfect. The plane tilted and the body rolled. The arms and
legs moved.

Ahmed seated himself in the copilot’s seat,
fastened the safety harness and leaned forward with his head in his hands, not
looking at the corpse. George looked out the windshields at the bobbing debris
of furniture and unidentifiable bits, and watched Coast Guard boats approaching
and searching the water.

The copter radio beeped urgently. The pilot
switched it on. “Coast Guard command to Police Helicopter PB 1005768.
Thank you for your assistance. We now have enough Coast Guard ships and planes
in the search pattern; please withdraw from the disaster area. Please withdraw
from the disaster area.”

“Order acknowledged. Withdrawing,” the
pilot said, and switched the radio off. He changed the radio setting and spoke
briefly to Rescue Squad headquarters, and turned the plane away from the area
of destruction and toward the distant shore.

“What’s your job in police?” he asked
over his shoulder.

George did not answer.

“Rescue, Detection and Prevention,”
Ahmed answered for him “We were in Jersey Dome ten minutes ago.”
Behind them the bombs boomed, breaking and closing the air shaft.

“You sure didn’t prevent this one,”
said the copter pilot.

Ahmed did not answer.

This is a blackmail tape. One copy of this tape
has been mailed to each of the major communes and subcities in the New York
City district.

We are responsible for the destruction of
Brooklyn Dome. It was a warning, and demonstrated our ability to destroy. We
have in our possession a futures expert whose specialty was locating and predicting
accidental dangers to the city complex caused by possible simple mechanical and
human failures. He is drugged and cooperative. We asked him how Brooklyn Dome
could self-destruct from a simple mechanical failure, and he explained how. We
are now prepared to offer his services for sale. Our fee will be fifteen
thousand dollars a question. If you are afraid that your commune has enemies,
your logical question would be: What and who can destroy my commune, and how
can I prevent this attack? We will provide the answer service to your enemies,
if they pay. They might be asking how to destroy your commune as you listen to
this tape. Remember Brooklyn Dome. The name and address enclosed is your
personal contact with us. No one else has this name. Keep it secret from the
police, and use it when you decide to pay. If you give your contact up to the
police, you will cut yourself off from our advice, your enemies will contact us
through other names and buy methods to destroy you. Remember Brooklyn Dome. Act
soon. Our fee is fifteen thousand dollars a question. The price of survival is
cheap.

“Every police department has a copy. Want
me to play it again?” Judd Oslow asked. He sat cross-legged on top of his
desk like a large fat Buddha and sipped coffee.