Red Tide

by Larry Niven

  Whyte took a deep breath.

  “There’s a way,” Whyte said. “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?”

  “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 WERE ONE OF THE FEW remaining pure entertainment features on television. With DVDs the viewer bought a static package; with a talk show she never knew just what she would be getting. It was a different product. It was cheap to produce. It could compete with the reality TV junk.

  The Tonight Show aired at 8:30 P.M., prime time.

  ***

  Around nine they started flicking in, pouring out of the booths that lined the street above the last row of houses. They milled about, searching out the narrow walks that led down to the strand. They poured over the low stone wall that guarded the sand from the houses.

  They paused, awed.

  Breakers rolled in from the black sea, flashing electric-blue.

  Within minutes Hermosa Beach was swarming with people: men, women, children—in couples and family groups. They held hands and looked out to sea. They stamped the packed wet sand, dancing like savages, and whooped with delight to see blue light flash beneath their feet. High up on the dry sand were piles of discarded clothing. Swimmers were 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 there. Those who came were happy to start with. They came to do a happy thing. Some carried six-packs or pouches of marijuana.

  The line of them stretched around the curve of the shore to the north, beyond Hermosa Pier to the south, bunching around the pier. More were shifting in all the time, trickling down to join the others.

  ***

  Jerryberry 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 stopped to a jarring halt.

  “Hi,” 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 cursed. “I heard they’d cleared up the riot—”

  “More than that. They caught the lady shoplifter.”

  “Good,” Jerryberry said honestly.

  “If you say so. One out of a thousand people that recognized your pictures of her turned out to be right. Woman by the name of Irma 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?”

  Evans said, “Yah, there’s a new riot going on at Hermosa Beach.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Craziest damn thing. You know Gordon Lundt, the movie 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 fuckload 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?”

  “Sudden mobs have 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 interviews.” He produced the digital audio 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 screens.

  The gyroscopically mounted smooth-pan digital 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 a football stadium. Or bigger? 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.

  Jerryberry filed the idea for his discussion with Wash.

  Now, back to work.

  He stepped into a booth, dialed, and was gone.

  ***

  Wash hadn’t been kidding. Hermosa was a zoo.

  But not in the way the mall had been a zoo.

  People were, for the most part, friendly. Jammed shoulder to shoulder. But friendly. Little knots formed here and there as different visitors discovered fellow travelers from the same city, or the same town, or the same state. Like old home week. They meandered together slowly down to the sand, and experienced the magic of the red tide—glowing eerie blue in the night. Then they moved back up the beach and headed for home. Wherever home happened to be.

  This time, law enforcement was trying to get out ahead of potential problems. There were enough uniformed police sprinkled throughout the mass of people that anyone with funny ideas thought better of it.

  Jerryberry caught footage of the whole thing, adding his own commentary along the way. Occasionally someone recognized him—once they got up close enough to see who he was in the dim light—but now Jerryberry didn’t feel so sheepish. The heat seemed to be off. He wasn’t the goat anymore. The stain of infamy had been mostly removed.

  “Barry!” a woman’s voice said loudly over the din of the crowd.

  Jerryberry stopped recording, and waited while someone pushed her way through the people and reached him.

  Janice Wolfe was wearing a flattering one-piece swimsuit and flip-flop sandals that slapped her heels as she walked.

  “I can’t believe you saw me in all these faces—and in the dark, too!” Jerryberry practically yelled to her over the noise of the crowd.

  “When I saw the little LED lights from the camera weaving around in the throng, I was curious to find out if it was you. Come for the red tide, or for t
he people-watching?”

  “A little of both. C.B.A. still wants my interview, with additional coverage on what’s happening here. For contrast. Violent riots versus quiet riots, I guess?”

  “That’s good, right?” Janice said.

  “Yes,” Jerryberry said.

  “You look exhausted,” Janice said when she got up close to him, her body pressed against his side. A not unpleasant sensation, Jerryberry thought silently. The smash of people didn’t give either one of them a lot of room in which to maneuver.

  “Quite,” Jerryberry said. “But if I was feeling mildly apocalyptic this morning, things look a lot better now. Thanks again for being a sounding board when I needed it, Janice.”

  “What are friends for?” she said, smiling.

  “Well, I’m about done here,” Jerryberry said. “You going to go in and take a swim?”

  “I thought about it,” Janice said, wrinkling her nose. “But with all those people in the water, it’s bound to be a soup by now.”

  “Janice, it started that way. Red plankton soup. You’d need a shower.”

  “Yeah? I’ll pass.”

  “You going to watch my live interview with Wash? I’m going to be making a rather out-of-the-box proposal to the people of the United States.”

  “Do tell? Yes, I’ll watch. About Evans, do you think he’ll play the part of friend, or foe?”

  “With Wash, it’ll be a little bit of both. But I’m ready for him this time. You won’t believe who I’ve been talking to today. Together we figured out how to beat riots. Forever.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Maybe I’ll give you the full story when the Evans interview is over. Up for a late-night snack when I get home?”

  “Absolutely,” Janice said, and leaned in to give Jerryberry a peck on the cheek.

  Then she was gone, moving back into the crowd from whence she had come.

  Jerryberry stood there dumbly, his hand absently rubbing the place on his face where her warm lips had touched his skin.

  Then he smiled, wrapped up his equipment, and pushed determinedly for the nearest booth.

  BOOK TWO: DIAL AT RANDOM

  LARRY NIVEN

  DIAL AT RANDOM

  ROBIN WHYTE WAS APPROACHING a booth when a naked man and woman flicked in front of him. They were wrapped around each other, but grinning out of the booth at any passersby. Robin froze for a second. Then his sense of humor kicked in, and he opened the door, interrupting their progress.

  The booth was narrow, but they were both small and lean. They were standing on their luggage, one bag each. They barely fit. Robin remembered, from years ago, a misty gray view of the interiors of a pair of lean Dutch scientists having sex in an MRI machine.

  The man shouted. “Close the door!”

  She talked over him, smiling brilliantly. “Hi! We just got married.”

  He said, “Come on, close the door. We’re flicking down Ventura Boulevard—”

  Robin Whyte asked, “Trying to set a record for streaking?”

  “Yeah, and you’re interfering! Close the door!”

  Robin looked around. Murphy’s Law held: there was a cop approaching on a Segway. Ventura Boulevard was clogged with pedestrians going to work this early morning, but those nearby had stopped to look. The cop was weaving among them, coming fast.

  There should still be time. Robin Whyte pulled out a calling card, flipped it inside and closed the door. The pair flicked out. Robin opened the booth, stepped in and inserted his jump card into the Pay slot. He tapped at the destination keyboard: Home 4 Go, three symbols that flicked him out.

  He was grinning. The couple should be easy to track. They’d been in Meander mode, taking three seconds each to flick from booth to booth, giving them a changing panoramic view. They must have acquired something like a Press jump card. Transit mode was faster, but not too fast: you still had to absorb kinetic or potential energy differences. Long Range was still experimental, but that was what Robin was using.

  And Robin had already arrived outside Home 4, the JumpShift factory in the Mojave Desert. It was nearly nine in the morning.

  ***

  Home 4 was Lightspeed Labs, which made and tested experimental teleportation gear.

  One of the first lessons they’d learned at JumpShift Inc. was: don’t put the booth inside your home. You make it too easy for burglars. Robin had to go through Security just like everyone else. A generic-looking white man in his forties, he was dressed to face the public: grey suit, pink turtleneck, clean-shaven, a sheer white smile. He asked the guard, “How’s it going?”

  “Lots of people coming in, ever since six. You’re one of the latest, Mr. Whyte.”

  The weather was fine. Not too much wind. Not that that mattered here; Hosni would be making his own wind. Robin went on in.

  The factory floor was big. Thirty people didn’t crowd it. Most were JumpShift employees. Eight or ten were labeled PRESS; they were manipulating video cameras, or trying to talk to Hosni, or videotaping a quite ordinary JumpShift booth and the big circuit board beside it, which weren’t doing anything. Action centered around a weirdly garbed Hosni Lasalle. Hosni was thoroughly padded, wearing a hardshelled pressure suit and a parachute. The aeroshell stood nearby, open, but looking like a heavily streamlined man.

  The helmet was tipped back from Hosni’s head. He spotted Robin and raised a thumb (all’s okay) while continuing to talk to a pretty woman in her thirties. Robin didn’t interrupt.

  ***

  It was early days for JumpShift Inc. Robin Whyte was in the business of selling teleportation. It would be a lot easier if you could teleport anywhere with the flick of a credit card, and JumpShift’s publicity was likely to leave that impression. And you could do that. It was just that, flicking around on the surface of a spinning ball, you had to face certain laws of physics.

  The conservation laws held. Flick a mile uphill and you gained potential energy and dropped some real energy: a temperature drop of seven degrees Fahrenheit if you were made of, say, water. Teleport west and you’d be driven into the ground: bend your knees as if you were using a parachute. East, you’d be lifted off your feet. South or north, you’d be shoved sideways. A little of that was no worse than driving a car over speed bumps, or around a turn, if you weren’t flicking very far. Or you could take several jumps in a row: Transit mode.

  The trick, for JumpShift, was to sell as many booths as possible while looking for a way to compensate for the conservation laws. If you didn’t sell enough booths … it would be like the electric cars of Robin’s childhood. If you didn’t have plugs in enough gas stations, you’d be stranded over and over. Why not buy a gas guzzler instead?

  There were people who really ought to have instant transportation. Robin had booths in the Kremlin, the White House, a score of seats of government, a few embassies. Altogether he’d sold about sixty thousand booths. Not bad. And if the new system worked, JumpShift would be more popular than ever.

  Robin maintained his business smile while he talked to various employees. This publicity stunt could make the difference between success and bankruptcy. Because, yes, you could flick a quarter of the way around a spinning globe, if that was what you wanted. You just had to be ready for the consequences.

  If he’d done this closer to the Equator—but Hosni was taking enough risk. Robin looked at screens set around the cafeteria. There were cameras all over Moby Dick, the yacht (leased) floating ninety miles offshore from Spain. Hosni’s lateral velocity at the Mojave Desert end would become vertical, straight up from the ocean surface, as he left the spit cage aboard Moby Dick. The aeroshell was there because he’d be going supersonic.

  Twenty years ago, a man in a pressure suit had stepped out of a balloon floating at stratospheric heights. He’d cracked supersonic speed on the way down, and become famous forever. Hosni would be falling supersonic in both directions.

  And it was time. Robin stepped forward to shake hands with the test pilot and wish him luck, a vi
deotape moment. With a couple of assistants Hosni sealed himself into the aeroshell. Cameras everywhere: good. Robin could picture fools claiming that the shell was empty when it left Moby Dick. Now Hosni was carried toward a booth just like sixty thousand others scattered around the world, except for the bank of controls next to it.

  And now there was a girl in the booth. The men carrying Hosni froze.

  Mid-teens, white, pretty, dressed for a party, looking around her like most travelers just flicking into a booth. She was holding a jump card.

  Robin Whyte could not remember moving faster. The instrument wall was four steps away. Robin lunged past a staring assistant and flicked the power off aboard Moby Dick’s spit cage. The signal would take four one-hundredths of a second to reach the ship.

  The girl looked around her, puzzled, then annoyed. She slid the jump card into its slot, which somebody should damned well have disabled, and was gone without typing a destination.

  ***

  The Farmer’s Market had spilled outward into 3rd Street and Fairfax. Shops formed barriers that forced what remained of traffic into curved paths and obstacle courses. The bicyclists and rollerboarders seemed to like it that way. There was just space for trams and carts to deliver goods from the JumpShift booths.

  Hilary Firestone flicked into a booth set in the newer section. She stepped out onto concrete and fading white and yellow lines. It was just past seven in the morning, and the summer sun was halfway up the sky.

  The Farmer’s Market was ninety years old, though most of the shops were not. These shops spread across the hot pavement did not have a makeshift look; they had been there for years. One sold scores of varieties of candles. One sold tobacco, pot, bongs and pipes. Several sold fruits and vegetables. One sold chickens and eggs, and another was a butcher shop—but those were above the curb, in the older section, where cars had parked before the coming of the JumpShift booths.

  Hilary was fourteen years old, tall, with straight black hair and skin too white to take a suntan. She was dressed for last night’s party, in white jeans and a scarlet blouse with a cartoon video playing across it, Coyote in hot pursuit of Roadrunner, around and around. A small leather purse hung on a strap over her shoulder. A minute ago she’d been in the mountains above Malibu. She looked around, a girl in a hurry—but breakfast was looking at her, a fruit stand that displayed orange juice squeezed before your eyes. She bought a large cup and gulped it as she walked. Here was coffee, here were breads, here were tables not yet occupied. Anything she wanted.