by Larry Niven
"How would you redesign the booths to make life easier for the police?"
But McCord wouldn't touch the subject. He didn't know anything about displacement-booth design.
Seven o'clock. The interview with Evans was at ten.
Jerryberry shifted back to the Cave. He was beginning to get nervous. The Cave, and a good dinner, should help ease his stage fright.
He turned down a couple of invitations to join small groups. With the interview hanging over his head, he'd be poor company. He sat alone and continued to jot during dinner.
Escape booths. Send anywhere, receive only from police and fire departments.
Police can shut down all booths in an area. Except escape booths?
No, that would let the looters escape, too. But there might be no way to stop that. At least it would get the innocent bystanders out of a riot area.
Hah! Escape booths send only to police station!!!
He crossed that out and wrote, All booths send only to police station!!! He crossed that out, too, to write an expanded version:
1. Riot signal from police station.
2. All booths in area stop receiving.
3. All booths in area send only to police station.
He went back to eating. Moments later he stopped with his fork half raised, put it down, and wrote:
4. A million rioters stomp police station to rubble, from inside.
And it had seemed like such a good idea.
* * *
He was dawdling over coffee when the rest of it dropped into place.
He went to a phone.
The secretary at Seven Sixes promised to have Dr. Whyte call as soon as he checked in. Jerryberry put a time-limit on it, which seemed to please her.
McCord wasn't home.
Jerryberry went back to his coffee. He was feeling twitchy now. He had to know if this was possible. Otherwise he would be talking through his hat-in front of a big audience.
Twenty minutes later, as he was about to get up and call again, the headwaiter came to tell him that Dr. Robin Whyte was on the phone.
"It's a design problem," said Jerryberry. "Let me tell you how I'd like it to work, and then you can tell me if it's possible, okay?"
"Go ahead."
"First step is the police get word of a flash crowd, a mall riot-type crowd. They throw emergency switches at headquarters. Each switch affects the displacement booths in a small area."
"That's the way it works now."
"Now those switches turn off the booths. I'd like them to do something more complex. Set them so they can only receive from police and fire departments and can only transmit to a police station."
"We can do that." Whyte half-closed his eyes to think. "Good. Then the police could release the innocent bystanders, send the injured to a hospital, hold the obvious looters, get everybody's names. . . right.
Brilliant. You'd put the receiver at the top of a greased slide and a big cell at the bottom."
"Maybe. At least the receiver would be behind bars."
"You could issue override cards to the police and other authorities to let them shift in through a blockade."
"Good."
Whyte stopped suddenly and frowned. "There's a hole in it. A really big crowd would either wreck the station or smother, depending on how strong the cell was. Did you think of that?"
"I'd like to use more than one police station."
"How many? There's a distance him Bany, what are you thinking?"
"As it stands now, a long-distance passenger has to dial three numbers to get anywhere. You said you could cut that to two. Can you cut it to one?"
"I don't know."
"It's poetic justice," said Jerryberry. "Our whole problem is that rioters can converge on one point from all over the United States. If we could use police stations all over the United States, we wouldn't have a problem. As soon as a cell was full here, we'd switch to police stations in San Diego or Oregon!"
Whyte was laughing. "If you could see your face! Barry, you're a dreamer."
"You can't do it."
"No, of course we can't do it. Wait a minute." Whyte pursed his lips.
"There's a way. We could do it if there was a long-distance receiver at the police station. Hook the network to a velocity damper! I told you, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to dial to a long-distance receiver from any booth."
"It would work, then!"
"You'd have to talk the public into paying for it. Design wouldn't be much of a problem.. We could cover the country with an emergency network in a couple of years."
"Can I quote you?"
"Of course. We sell displacement booths. That's our business."
- 10 -
Talk shows are one of the few remaining pure entertainment features on teevee. With cassettes the viewer buys a package; with a talk show he never knows just what he's getting. It is a different product. It is cheap to produce. It can compete.
The Tonight Show shows at 8:30 P.M., prime time.
Around nine they start flicking in, pouring out of the coin booths that line the street above the last row of houses. They mill about, searching out the narrow walks that lead down to the strand. They pour over the low stone wall that guards the sand from the houses. They pause, awed.
Breakers roll in from the black sea, flashing electric-blue.
Within minutes Hennosa Beach is aswarm with people: men, women, children, in couples and family groups. They hold hands and look out to sea. They stamp the packed wet sand, dancing like savages, and whoop with delight to see blue light flash beneath their feet. High up on the dry sand are piles of discarded clothing. Swimmers are thick in the water, splashing blue fire at each other.
Many were drunk or high on this or that when the Tonight Show led them here. Those who came were happy to start with. They came to do a happy thing. Some carry six-packs or pouches of pot.
The line of them stretches around the curve of the shore to the north, beyond Hermosa Pier to the south, bunching around the pier. More are shifting in all the time, trickling down to join the others.
Jerryberry Jansen flicked in almost an hour early for the interview.
The station was an ant's nest, a swarm of furious disorganization.
Jerryberry was looking for Wash Evans when Wash Evans came running past him from behind, glanced back, and came to a jarring halt.
"'Lo," said Jerryberry. "Is there anything we need to go over before we go on?"
Evans seemed at a loss. "Yah," he said, and caught his breath a little. "You're not news anymore, Jansen. We may not even be doing the interview."
Jerryberry said a dirty word. "I heard they'd cleared up the riot-"
"More than that. They caught the lady shoplifter."
"Good!"
"If you say so. One out of a thousand people that recognized your pictures of her turned out to be right. Woman name of Inna Hennessey, lives in Jersey City but commutes all over the country. She says she's never hit the same store twice. She's a kick, Jansen. A newstaper's dream. No offense intended, but I wish they'd let her out of jail tonight. I'd interview her."
"So I didn't cause the mall riot anymore, now you've got Irma Hennessey. Well, good. I didn't like being a celebrity. Anything else?"
He was thinking, All that jumping around, all the things I learned today, all wasted. Unless I can get a tapezine lecture out of it.
Evans said, "Yah, there's a new mall riot going on at Hermosa Beach."
"What the hell?"
"Craziest damn thing." Wash Evans lit a cigarette and talked around it. "You know Gordon Lundt, the 'zine star? He was on the Tonight Show, and he happened to mention the red tide down at Hermosa Beach. He said it was pretty. The next thing anyone knows, every man, woman, and child in the country has decided he wants to see the red tide at Hermosa Beach."
"How bad is it?"
"Well, nobody's been hurt, last I heard. And they aren't breaking things. It's not that kind of crowd, and there's nothing to
steal but sand, anyway. It's a happy riot, Jansen. There's just a bitch of a lot of people."
"Another flash crowd. It figures," said Jerryberry. "You can get a flash crowd anywhere there are displacement booths."
"Can you?"
"They've been around a long time. It's just that they happen faster with the long-distance booths. Some places are permanent floating flash crowds. Like Tahiti... . what's wrong?"
Wash Evans had a funny look. "It just hit me that we don't really have anything to replace you with. You've been doing your homework, have you?"
"All day." Jerryberry dug out the Minox. "I've been everywhere I could think of. Some of this goes with taped interviews." He produced the tape recorder. "Of course there isn't much time to sort it out-"
"No. Gimme." Evans took the camera and the recorder. "We can follow up on these later. Maybe they'll make a special. Right now the news is at Hermosa Beach. And you sound like you know how it happened and what to do about it. Do you still want to do that interview?"
"I-sure."
"Go get a C.B.A. camera from George Bailey. Let's see, it's-nine fifteen, dammit. Spend half an hour, see as much as you can, then get back
here. Find out what you can about the-flash crowd at Hermosa Beach.
That's what we'll be talking about."
George Bailey looked up as Jerryberry arrived. He pointed emphatically at the single camera remaining on the table, finger-combed the hair back out of his eyes, and went back to monitoring half a dozen teevee screens.
The camera came satisfyingly to life in Jerryberry's hands. He picked up a list of Hermosa Beach numbers and turned to the displacement booths. Too much coffee sloshed in his belly. He stopped suddenly, thinking:
One big riot-control center would do it. You wouldn't need a police network.-just one long-distance receiver to serve the whole country, and a building the size of Yankee Stadium, big enough to handle any riot. A federal police force on permanent guard. Rioting was an interstate crime now anyway. You could build such a center faster and cheaper than any network.
Not now. Back to work. He stepped into a booth, dialed, and was gone.
What Good Is a Glass Dagger?
I
Twelve thousand years before the birth of Christ, in an age when miracles were somewhat more common, a warlock used an ancient secret to save his life.
In later years he regretted that. He had kept the secret of the Warlock's Wheel for several normal lifetimes. The demon-sword Glirendree and its stupid barbarian captive would have killed him, no question of that But no mere demon could have been as dangerous as that secret.
Now it was out, spreading like ripples on a pond. The battle between Glirendree and the Warlock was too good a tale not to tell. Soon no man would call himself a magician who did not know that magic could be used up. So simple, so dangerous a secret. The wonder was that nobody had noticed it before.
A year after the battle with Glirendree, near the end of a summer day, Aran the Peacemonger came to Shayl Village to steal the Warlock's Wheel.
Aran was a skinny eighteen-year-old, lightly built His face was lean and long, with a pointed chin. His dark eyes peered out from under a prominent shelf of bone. His short, straight dark- hair dropped almost to his brows in a pronounced widow's peak. What he was was no secret; and anyone who touched hands with him would have known at once, for there was short fine hair on his palms. But had anyone known his mission, he would have been thought mad.
For the Warlock was a leader in the Sorcerer's Guild. It was known that he had a name; but no human throat could pronounce it. The shadow demon who had been his name-father had later been imprisoned in tattooed runes on the Warlock's own back: an uncommonly dangerous bodyguard.
Yet Aran came well protected. The leather wallet that hung from his shoulder was old and scarred, and the seams were loose. By its look it held nuts and hard cheese and bread and almost no money. What it actually held was charms. Magic would serve him better than nuts and cheese, and Aran could feed himself as he traveled, at night.
He reached the Warlock's cave shortly after sunset. He had been told how to use his magic to circumvent the Warlock's safeguards. His need for magic implied a need for voice and hands, so that Aran was forced to keep the human shape; and this made him doubly nervous. At moonrise he chanted the words he had been taught, and drew a live bat from his pouch and tossed it gently through the barred entrance to the cave.
The bat exploded into a mist of blood that drifted slant-wise across the stone floor. Aran's stomach lurched. He almost ran then; but he quelled his fear and followed it in, squeezing between the bars.
Those who had sent him had repeatedly diagrammed the cave for him. He could have robbed it blindfolded. He would have preferred darkness to the flickering blue light from what seemed to be a captured lightning bolt tethered in the middle of the cavern. He moved quickly, scrupulously tracing what he had been told was a path of safety.
Though Aran had seen sorcerous tools in the training laboratory in the School for Mercantile Grammaree in Atlantis, most of the Warlock's tools were unfamiliar. It was not an age of mass production. He paused by a workbench, wondering. Why would the Warlock be grinding a glass dagger?
But Aran found a tarnish-blackened metal disc hanging above the workbench, and the runes inscribed around its rim convinced him that it was what he had come for. He took it down and quickly strapped it against his thigh, leaving his hands free to fight if need be. He was turning to go, when a laughing voice spoke out of the air.
"Put that down, you mangy son of a bitch-"
Aran converted to wolf.
Agony seared his thigh!
In human form Aran was a lightly built boy. As a wolf he was formidably large and dangerous. It did him little good this time. The pain was blinding, stupefying. Aran the wolf screamed and tried to run from the pain.
He woke gradually, with an ache in his head and a greater agony in his thigh and a tightness at his wrists and ankles. It came to him that he must have knocked himself out against a wall.
He lay on his side with his eyes closed, giving no sign that he was awake. Gently he tried to pull his hands apart. He was bound, wrists and ankles. Well, he had been taught a word for unbinding ropes.
Best not to use it until he knew more.
He opened his eyes a slit.
The Warlock was beside him, seated in lotus position, studying Aran'with a slight smile. In one hand he held a slender willow rod.
The Warlock was a tall man in robust good health. He was deeply tanned. Legend said that the Warlock never wore anything above the waist. The years seemed to blur on him; he might have been twenty or fifty. In fact he was one hundred and ninety years old, and bragged of it. His condition indicated the power of his magic.
Behind him, Aran saw that the Warlock's Wheel had been returned to its place on the wall.
Waiting for its next victim? The real Warlock's Wheel was of copper; those who had sent Aran had known that much. But this decoy must be tarnished silver, to have seared him so.
The Warlock wore a dreamy, absent look. There might still be a chance, if he could be taken by surprise. Man said, "Kpllr-"
The Warlock lashed him across the throat.
The willow wand had plenty of spring in it. Aran choked and gagged; he tossed his head, fighting for air.
"That word has four syllables," the Warlock informed him in a voice he recognized. "You'll never get it out."
"Gluck," said Aran.
"I want to know who sent you."
Man did not answer, though he had his wind back.
"You're no ordinary thief. But you're no magician either," the Warlock said almost musingly. "I heard you. You were chanting by rote. You used basic spells, spells that are easy to get right, but they were the right spells each time.
"Somebody's been using prescience and farsight to spy on me. Someone knows too many of my defenses," the ancient magician said gently. "I don't like that. I want to know who, and wh
y."
When Aran did not reply, the Warlock said, "He had all the knowledge, and he knew what he was after, but he had better sense than to come himself. He sent a fool." The Warlock was watching Aran's eyes. "Or perhaps he thought a werewolf would have a better chance at me. By the way, there's silver braid in those cords, so you'd best stay human for the nonce."
"You knew I was coming."
"Oh, I had ample warning. Didn't it occur to you that I've got prescience and farsight too? It occurred to your master," said the Warlock. "He set up protections around you, a moving region where prescience doesn't work."
"Then what went wrong?"
"I foresaw the dead region, you ninny. I couldn't get a glimpse of what was stealing into my cave. But I could look around it. I could follow its path through the cavern. That path was most direct. I knew what you were after.
"Then, there were bare footprints left behind. I could study them before they were made. You waited for moonrise instead of trying to get in after dusk. On a night of the full moon, too.
"Other than that, it wasn't a bad try. Sending a werewolf was bright. It would take a kid your size to squeeze between the bars, and then a kid your size couldn't win a fight if something went wrong. A wolf your size could."
"A lot of good it did me."
"What I want to know is, how did they talk an Atlantean Into this? They must have known what they were after. Didn't they tell you what the Wheel does?"
"Sucks up magic," said Aran. He was chagrined, but not surprised, that the Warlock had placed his accent.
"Sucks up mana," the Warlock corrected him. "Do you know what mana is?"
"The power behind magic."
"So they taught you that much. Did they also tell you that when the mana is gone from a region, it doesn't come back? Ever?"
Aran rolled on his side. Being convinced that he was about to die, he felt he had nothing to lose by speaking boldly. "I don't understand why you'd want to keep it a secret. A thing like the Warlock's Wheel, it could make war obsolete! It's the greatest purely defensive weapon ever invented!"