by Larry Niven
Three people wanted to murder him. On two of them the teevee was blanked. The third was a graying dowdy woman, all fat and hate and disappointed hopes, who showed him a kitchen knife and started to tell him what she wanted to do with it. Jerryberry cut her off, shuddering. He wondered if any of them could possibly get hold of his displacement-booth number.
There was a check in the mail. Severance pay and bonuses from C .B
.A. So that was that.
He was setting the dishes in the dishwasher when the phone rang. He hesitated, then decided to answer.
It was Janice Wolfe-a pretty oval face, brown eyes, a crown of long, wavy, soft brown hair-and not an anonymous killer. She lost her smile as she saw him. "You look grim. Could you use some cheering up?"
"Yes!" Jerryberry said fervently. "Come on over. Apartment six, booth number-"
"I live here, remember?"
He laughed. He'd forgotten. You got used to people living anywhere and everywhere. George Bailey lived in Nevada; he commuted to work every morning in three flicks, using the long-distance displacement booths at Las Vegas and Los Angeles International Airports.
Those long-distance booths had saved the airlines-after his father had dribbled away most of his stocks to feed his family. They had been operating only two years. And come to think of it- Doorbell.
Over coffee he told Janice about the riot. She listened sympathetically, asking occasional questions to draw him out. At first Jerryberry tried to talk entertainingly, until he realized, first, that she wasn't indulging in a spectator sport, and second, that she knew all about the riot already.
She knew he'd been fired, too. "That's why I called. They put it on the morning news," she told him.
"It figures."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Get drunk. Alone if! have to. Would you like to spend a lost weekend with me?"
She hesitated. "You'll be bitter."
"Yah, I probably will. Not fit to live with. .. . Hey, Janice. Do you know anything about how the long-distance displacement booths work?"
"No. Should I?"
"The mall riot couldn't have happened without the long-distance booths. That damn Wash Evans might at least have mentioned the fact. . .
except that I only just thought of it myself. Funny. There hasn't ever been a riot that happened that quick."
"I'll come with you," Janice decided.
"What? Good."
"You don't start drinking this early in the morning, do you?"
"I guess not. Are you free today?"
"Every day, during summer. I teach school."
"Oh. So what'll we do? San Diego Zoo?" he suggested at random.
"Sounds like fun."
They made no move to get up. It felt peaceful in Jerryberry's tiny kitchen nook. There was still coffee.
"You could get a bad opinion of me this way. I feel like tearing things up."
"Go ahead."
"mean it?"
"Me, too," she said serenely. "You need to tear things up. Fine, go ahead. After that you can try to put your life back together."
"Just what kind of school do you teach?"
Janice laughed. "Fifth grade."
There was quiet.
"You know what the punch line is? Wash Evans wants to interview me!
After that speech he made!"
"That sounds like a good idea," she said surprisingly. "Gives you a chance to give your side of the story. You didn't really cause the mall riot, did you?"
"No!. . . No. Janice, he's just too damn good. He'd make mincemeat of me. By the time he got through I'd be The Man Who Caused the Mall Riot in every English-speaking country in the world, and some others, too, because he gets translations-"
"He's just a commentator."
Jerryberry started to laugh.
"He makes it look so easy," he said. "A hundred million eyes out there, watching him, and he knows it. Have you ever seen him self-conscious? Have you ever heard him at a loss for words? My dad used to say it about writing, but it's true for Wash Evans. The hardest trick in the world is to make it look easy, so easy that any clod thinks he can do it just as well.
"Hell, I know what caused the mall riot. The news program, yes.
He's right, there. But the long-distance displacement booth did it, too.
Control those, and we could stop that kind of riot from ever happening again.
But what could I tell Wash Evans about it? What do I know about displacement booths?"
"Well, what do you know?"
Jerryberry Jansen looked into his coffee cup for a long time.
Presently he said, "I know how to find out things. I know how to find out who knows most about what and then go ask. Legwork. They hammered at it in the journalism classes. I know legwork."
He looked up and met her eyes. Then he lunged across the table to reach the phone.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Jansen. Changed your mind?"
"Yes, but-"
"Good, good! I'll put you through to-"
"Yes, but!"
"Oh. Okay, go ahead."
"I want some time to do some research."
"Now, damn it, Jensen, you know that time is just what we don't have! Old news is no news. What kind of research?"
"Displacement booths."
"Why that? Never mind; it's your business. How much time?"
"How much can you afford?"
"Damn little."
"Bailey, C.B.A. upped my price to four thousand this morning. How come?"
"You didn't see it? It's on every screen in the country. The rioters broke through the police line. They've got a good section of Venice now, and there are about twice as many of them, because the police didn't shut down the displacement booths in the area until about twenty minutes too late. Twenty minutes!" Bailey seemed actually to be grinding his teeth. "We held off reporting the breakthrough until they could do it. We did. A.B . S. reported it live on all stations. That's where all the new rioters came from."
"Then. . . it looks like the mall riot is going to last a little longer."
"That it does. And you want more time. Things are working out, aren't they?" Then, "Sorry. Those A.B.S. bastards. How much time do you want?"
"As much as I can get. A week."
"You've got to be kidding. You maybe can get twenty-four hours, only I can't make the decision. Why don't you talk to Evans himself?"
"Fine. Put him on."
The teevee went on hold. Pale-blue flow patterns floated upward in what had become a twenty-inch Kaleidoscope. Waiting, Jerryberry said, "If this riot gets any bigger, I could be more famous than Hitler."
Janice set his coffee beside him. She said, "Or Mrs. O'Leary's cow."
The screen came on. "Jansen, can you get over here right now? Wash Evans wants to talk to you in person."
"Okay." Jerryberry clicked off. He felt a thrumming inside him. . .
as if he felt the motion of the world, and the world were spinning faster and faster. Surely things were happening fast....
Janice said, "No lost weekend."
"Not yet, love. Have you any idea what you've let me in for? I may not sleep for days. I'll have to find out what teleportation is, what it does.
where do I start?"
"Wash Evans. You'd better get moving."
"Right." He bolted his coffee in three swift gulps. "Thanks. Thanks for coming over, thanks for jarring me off the dime. We'll see how it works out." He went, pulling on a coat.
Wash Evans was five feet four inches tall. People sometimes forgot that size was invisible in a teevee close-up. In the middle of a televised interview, when the camera was flashing back and forth between two angry faces, then the deep, sure voice and the dark, mobile, expressive face of Wash Evans could be devastatingly convincing.
Wash Evans looked up at Jerryberry Jansen and said, "I've been wondering if I owe you an apology."
"Take your time," said Jerryberry. He finished buttoning his coat.
"I don't. Fa
ct is, I psyched out the mall riot as best I knew how, and I think I did it right. I didn't tell the great unwashed public you caused it all. I just told it like it happened."
"You left some things out."
"All right, now we've got something to talk about. Sit down." They sat. Their faces were level~ now. Jerryberry said, "This present conversation is not for publication and is not to be considered an interview. I have an interview to sell. I don't want to undercut myself."
"I accept your terms on behalf of the network. We'll give you a tape of this conversation."
"I'm making my own." Jerryberry tapped his inside pocket, which clicked.
Wash Evans grinned. "Of course you are, my child. Now, what did I miss?"
"Displacement booths."
"Well, sure. If the booths had been cut off earlier-"
"If the booths didn't exist."
"You're kidding. No, you're not. Jansen, that's a wishing horse.
Displacement booths are here to stay."
"I know. But think about this. Newstapers have been around longer than displacement booths. Roving newstapers, like me-we've been using the booths since they were invented."
"So?"
"Why didn't the mall riot happen earlier?"
"I see what you mean. Hmm. The airport booths?"
"Jansen, are you actually going to face the great unwashed teevee public and tell them to give up long-distance displacement booths?"
"No. I.. . don't know just what I have in mind. That's why I want some time. I want to know more."
"Uh-huh," said Evans, and waited.
Jerryberry said, "Turn it around. Are you going to try to talk the public into giving up news programs?"
"No. Maybe to put some restrictions on newstaping practices. We're too fast these days. A machine won't work without friction. Neither does a civilization. . . . But we'd ruin the networks, wouldn't we?"
"You'd cut your own throat."
"Oh, I'd be out." Evans mashed out a cigarette. "Take away the news broadcasts, and they wouldn't have anything left to sell but educational teevee. Nothing to sell but toys and breakfast cereal. Jansen, I don't know."
"Good," said Jerryberry.
"You question my dispassionate judgment?" Evans chuckled in his throat. "I'm on both sides. Suppose we do an interview live, at ten tonight. That'll give you twelve hours-"
"Twelve hours!"
"That's enough, isn't it? You want to research teleportation. I want to get this in while people are still interested in the riot. Not just for the ratings ,but because we both have something to say."
Jerryberry tried to interrupt, but Evans overrode him. "We'll advance you a thousand, and three more if we do the interview. Nothing if we don't.
That'll get you back on time."
Jerryberry accepted it. "One thing. Can you make Bailey forget to cancel my C.B.A. card for a while? I may have to do a lot of traveling."
"I'll tell him. I don't know if he'll do it."
- 5 -
He flicked in at Los Angeles International, off-center in a long curved row of displacement booths: upright glass cylinders with rounded tops, no different from the booths on any street corner. On the opposite wall, a good distance away, large red letters said "TWA." He stood a moment, thinking. Then he dialed again.
He was home, at the Shady Rest. He dialed again.
He was near the end of the row-a different row, with no curve to it. And the opposite wall bore the emblem of United.
The terminal was empty except for one man in a blue uniform who was waxing the floor.
Jerryberry stepped out. For upwards of a minute he watched the line of booths. People flicked in at random. Generally they did not even look up. They would dial a long string of digits-sometimes making a mistake, snarling something, and starting over-and be gone. There were so many that the booths themselves seemed to be flickering.
He took several seconds of it on the Minox.
Beneath the United emblem was along, long row of empty counters with scales between them, for luggage. The terminal was spotless-and empty, unused. Haunted by a constant flow of ghosts.
A voice behind him said, "You want something?"
"Is there a manager's office?"
The uniformed man pointed down an enormous length of corridor. "The maintenance section's down that way, where the boarding area used to be.
I'll call ahead, let them know you're coming."
The corridor was long, unnecessarily long, and it echoed. The walk was eating up valuable time. . . and then an open cart came from the other end and silently pulled up alongside him. A straight-backed old man in a one-button business lounger said, "Hello. Want a ride?"
"Thanks." Jerryberry climbed aboard. He handed over his C.B.A.
credit card. "I'm doing some research for a-a documentary of sorts. What can you tell me about the long-distance booths?"
"Anything you like. I'm Nils Kjerulf. I helped install these booths, and I've been working on them ever since."
"How do they work?"
"Where do I start? Do you know how a normal booth works?"
"Sure. The load isn't supposed to exist at all between the two endpoints. Like the electron in a tunnel diode." An answer right out of the science section of any tapezine. Beyond that he could fake it.
This Nils Kjerulf was lean and ancient, with deep smile wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. His hair was thick and white. He said, "They had to give up that theory. When you're sending a load to Mars, say, you have to assume that something exists in the ten minutes or so it takes the load to make the trip. Conservation of energy."
"All right. What is it?"
"For ten minutes it's a kind of superneutrino. That's what they tell me. I'm not a physicist. I was in business administration in college. A few years ago they gave me a year of retraining so I could handle long-distance displacement machinery. If you're really interested in theory, you ought to ask someone at Cape Canaveral. Here we are."
Two escalators, one going up, one motionless. They rode up.
Jerryberry asked, "Why didn't they build closer? Think of all the walking we'd save."
"You never heard a 707 taking off?"
"Sound is only part of it. If a plane ever crashed here, nobody would want it hitting all the main buildings at once."
The escalator led to two semicircular chambers. One was empty but for a maze of chairs and couches and low partitions, all done in old chrome and fading orange. In the other the couches had been ripped out and replaced with instrument consoles. Jerryberry counted half a dozen men supervising the displays.
A dim snoring sound began somewhere, like an electric razor going in the next-door apartment. Jerryberry turned his head, seeking. It was outside. Outside, behind a wall of windows, a tiny single-engine plane taxied down a runway.
"Yes, we still function as an airport," said Nils Kjerulf.
"Skydiving, sport flying, gliding. I fly some myself. The jumbo-jet pilots used to hate us; we use up just as much landing time as a 747. Now we've got the runways to ourselves."
"I gather you were a manager somewhere."
"Right here. Iran this terminal before anyone had heard of teleportation. I watched it ruin us. Thirty years, Mr. Jansen."
"With no offense intended whatever, why did they train a professional administrator in quantum displacement physics? Why not the other way around?"
"There weren't any experts where the long-distance booths were concerned, Mr. Jansen. They're new."
"What have you learned in two years? Do you still get many breakdowns?"
"We still do. Every two weeks or so, something goes out of synch.
Then we go out of service for however long it takes to find it and fix it-usually about an hour."
"And what happens to the passenger?"
Kjerulf looked surprised. "Nothing. He stays where he started-or rather, that giant neutrino we were talking about is reflected back to the transmitter if the receiver can't pick it up. The w
orst thing that can happen is that the link to the velocity damper could be lost, in which case-but we've developed safeguards against that.
"No, the passengers just stop coming in, and we go out of service, and the other companies take the overflow. There isn't any real competition between the companies anymore. What's the point? T.W.A. and United and Eastern and the rest used to advertise that they had better meals in flight, more comfortable seats, prettier hostesses.. . like that. How long do you spend in a displacement booth? So when we converted over, we set the dialing system up so you just dial Los Angeles International or whatever, and the companies get customers at random.
Everyone saves a fortune in advertising."
"An antitrust suit-"
"Would have us dead to rights. Nobody's done it, because there's no point. It works, the way we run it. Each company has its own velocity shift damper. We couldn't all get knocked out at once. In an emergency I think any of the companies could handle all of the long-distance traffic."
"Mr. Kjerulf, what is a velocity shift damper?"
Kjerulf looked startled. Jerryberry said, "I took journalism."
"Ah."
"It's not just curiosity. My dad lost a fortune on airline stock-"
"So did I," said Kjerulf, half-smiling with old pain.
"Oh?"
"Sometimes I feel I've sold out. The booths couldn't possibly compete with the airlines, could they? They wouldn't send far enough. Yet they ruined us."
"My dad figured the same way."
"And now the booths do send that far, and I'm working for them, or they're working for me. There wasn't all that much reason to build the long-distance systems at airports. Lots of room here, of course, and an organization already set up. . . but they really did it to save the airline companies."
"A little late."
"Perhaps. Some day they'll turn us into a public utility." Kjerulf looked about the room, then called to a man seated near the flat wall of the semicircle. "Dan!"
"Yo!" the man boomed without looking up.
"Can you spare me twenty minutes for a public-relations job?"
The man stood up, then climbed up on his chair. He looked slowly about the room. Jerryberry guessed that he could see every instrument board from where he was standing. He called, "Sure. No sweat."
They took the cart back to the terminal. They entered a booth.