Flash crowd

3

For Eric Jansen and his family, displacement booths came as a disaster.

At first he didn't see it that way. He was twenty-eight (and Barry Jerome Jansen was three) when JumpShift, Inc., demonstrated the augmented tu

Eric Jansen had never worked for a salary. He wrote. Poetry and articles and a few short stories, highly polished, admired by a small circle of readers, sold at infrequent intervals to low-paying markets that he regarded as prestigious. His money came from inherited stocks. If he had invested in JumpShift then-but millions could tell that sad story. It was too risky then.

He was thirty-one when commercial displacement booths began to be sold for cargo transport. He was not caught napping. Many did not believe that the magic could work until suddenly the phenomenon was changing their world. But Eric Jansen looked into the phenomenon very carefully.

He found that there was an inherent limitation on the augmented tu

Cargo and passenger displacement booths were springing up in every city in America, but Eric Jansen knew that they would always be restricted to short distances. Even a ten-mile jump would be bumpy. A passenger flicking halfway around the equator would have to land ru

JumpShift stock was sky-high. Eric Jansen decided it must be overpriced.

He considered carefully, then made his move.

He sold all of his General Telephone stock. If anyone wanted to talk to someone, he would just go, wouldn't he? A displacement booth took no longer than a phone call.

He tried to sell his General Motors, wisely, but everyone else wisely made the same decision, and the price fell like a dead bird. At least he got something back on the stock he owned in motorcycle and motorscooter companies. Later he regretted that. It developed that people rode motorcycles and scooters for fun. Now, with the streets virtually empty, they were buying more than ever.

Still, he had fluid cash-and the opportunity to make a killing.

Airline stock had dropped with other forms of transportation. Before the general public could realize its mistake, Eric Jansen invested every dime in airlines and aircraft companies. The first displacement booths in any city were links to the airport. That lousy half-hour drive from the center of town, the heavy taxi fare in, were gone forever. And the booths couldn't compete with the airlines themselves!

Of course you still had to check in early-and the planes took off only at specified times.

What it amounted to was that plane travel was made easier, but shortdistance travel via displacement booth was infinitely easier (infinitely-try dividing any ten-minute drive by zero). And planes still crashed. Cassettes had copped the entertainment market, so that television was mostly news these days; you didn't have to go anywhere to find out what was happening. Just turn on the TV.

A plane flight wasn't worth the hassle.

As for the telephone stock, people still made long-distance calls. They tended to phone first before they went visiting. They would give out a phone-booth number, whereas they would not give out a displacement booth number.

The airlines survived, somehow, but they paid rock-bottom dividends. Barry Jerome Jansen grew up poor in the midst of a boom period. His father hated the displacement booths but used them, because there was nothing else.

Jerryberry accepted that irrational hatred as part of his father's personality. He did not share it. He hardly noticed the displacement booths. They were part of the background. The displacement booths were the most important part of a newstaper's life, and still he hardly noticed their existence.

Until the day they turned on him.

4

In the morning there were messages stored in his phone. He heard them out over breakfast.

Half a dozen news services and tapezines wanted exclusives on the riot. One call was from Bailey at C.B.A. The price had gone up to four thousand. The others did not mention price, but one was from Playboy.

That gave him furiously to think. Playboy paid high, and they liked unpopular causes.

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. Fu

"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?"