Flash crowd

"Hard to say. Three, for general use. Maybe a dozen more for the space industry. Those are still experimental. We lose money on the space industry. We'd make it back if we could start producing drop-ships in quantity. We've got a ship on the drawing boards that would transmit itself to any drop-ship receiver."

Jerryberry prompted him. "And three for general use, you said."

"Yes. We've made over three hundred million passenger booths in the past twenty years. Then there's a general-use cargo booth. The third model is a tremendous portable booth for shipping really big, fragile cargoes. Like a prefab house or a rocket booster or a live sperm whale. You can set the thing in place almost anywhere, using three strap-on helicopter setups. I didn't believe it when I saw it." Whyte sipped at his milk. "You've got to remember that I'm not in the business anymore. I'm still chairman of the board, but a bunch of younger people give most of the orders, and I hardly ever get into the factories."

"Does JumpShift have a monopoly on displacement booths?"

He saw the Newstaper! reaction, a tightening at Whyte's eyes and lips. "Wrong word," Jerryberry said quickly. "Sony. What I meant was, who makes displacement booths? I'm sure you make most of the passenger booths in the United States."

"All of them. It's not a question of monopoly. Anyone could make his own booths. Any community could. But it would be hideously expensive. The cost doesn't drop until you're making millions of them. So suppose. . Chile, for instance. Chile has less than a million passenger booths, all JumpShift model. Suppose they had gone ahead and made their own. They'd have only their own network, unless they built a direct copy of some other model. All the booths in a network have to have the same volume."

"Naturally."

"In practice there are about ten networks worldwide. The U.S.S.R. network is the biggest by far. I think the smallest is Brazil-"

"What happens to the air in a receiver?"

Whyte burst out laughing. "I knew that was coming! It never fails." He sobered. "We tried a lot of things. It turns out the only practical solution is to send the air in the receiver back to the transmitter, which means that every transmitter has to be a receiver, too."

"Then you could get a free ride if you knew who was about to flick in from where, when."

"Of course you could, but would you want to bet on it?"

"I might, if I had something to smuggle past customs."

"How do you mean?"

"I'm just playing with ideas. The incoming booths at customs are incoming because there's no way to dial out-"

"I remember. Type I's with the dials removed."

"Okay. Say you wanted to smuggle something into the country. You flick to customs in Argentina. Then a friend flicks from California to Argentina, into your booth. You wind up in his booth, in California, and not behind the customs barrier."

"Brilliant," said Whyte. "Unfortunately there's a fail-safe to stop anyone from flicking into an occupied booth."

"Sorry," Whyte said, gri

"I wondered if you could do something with dials to stop another mall riot."

Whyte thought about it. "Not by taking the dials off. If you wanted to stop a riot, you'd have to stop people from coming in. Counters on the booths, maybe."

"What was it like, Barry?"

"Crowded. Like a dam broke. The law did shut the booths down from outside, but not fast enough. Maybe that's the answer. Cut out the booths at the first sign of trouble."

"We'd get a lot of people mad at us."

"You would, wouldn't you?"

"Like the power brownouts in the seventies and eighties. Or like obscene telephone calls. You couldn't do anything about them, except get more and more uptight. . readier to smash things. . That's why riots happen, Barry. People who are a little bit angry all the time."

"Oh?"

"All the riots I remember." Whyte smiled. "There haven't been any for a long time. Give JumpShift some credit for that. We stopped some of the things that kept everyone a little bit angry all the time. Smog. Traffic jams. Slow mail. Slum landlords; you don't have to live near your job or your welfare office or whatever. Job hunting. Crowding. Have you ever been in a traffic jam?"

"Maybe when! was a little boy."

"Friend of mine was a college professor for a while. His problem was he lived in the wrong place. Five days a week he would spend an hour driving to work-you don't believe me? — and an hour and a quarter driving home, because traffic was heavier then. Eventually he gave it up to be a writer."

"Gawd, I should hope so!"

"It wasn't even that rare," Whyte said seriously. "It was rough if you owned a car, and rougher if you didn't. JumpShift didn't cause riots; we cured them."

And he seemed to wait for Jerryberry' s agreement.

Silence stretched long enough to become embarrassing.. yet the only thing Jerryberry might have said to break it was "But what about the mall riot?" He held his peace.

"Drain that thing," Whyte said abruptly. "I'll show you."

"Show me?"

"Finish that drink. We're going places." Whyte drank half a glass of milk in three gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing. He lowered the glass. "Well?"

"Ready."

On Madison Avenue the sunset shadows ran almost horizontally along the glass faces of buildings. Robin Whyte stepped out of L'Orangerie and turned right. Four feet away, a displacement booth.

In the booth he blocked the hand Jerryberry would have used to insert his C.B.A. card. "My treat. This was my idea. . Anyway, some of these numbers are secret." He inserted his own card and dialed three numbers.

Twice they saw rows of long-distance booths. Then it was bright sunlight and sea breeze. Far out beyond a sandy beach and white waves, a great cylinder with a rounded top rose high out of the water. Orange letters on the curved metal flank read: "JUMPSHIP FRESHWATER TRANSPORT."

"I could take you out in a boat," said Whyte. "But it would be a waste of time. You wouldn't see much. Nothing but vacuum inside. You know how it works?"

"Sure."

"Teleportation was like laser technology. One big breakthrough and then a thousand ways to follow up on it. We spent twelve solid years building continuous teleport pumps for various municipalities to ship fresh water in various directions. When all the time the real problem was getting the fresh water, not moving it.

"Do you know how we developed this gimmick? My secretary dreamed it up one night at an office party. She was about half smashed, but she wrote it down, and the next morning we all took turns trying to read her handwriting. . Well, never mind. It's a simple idea. You build a tank more put the teleport pump in the top. You teleport the air out. When the air goes, the seawater boils. From then on you're teleporting cold water-vapor. It condenses wherever you ship it, and you get fresh water. Want to take pictures?"

"I do."

"Then let's look at the results," Whyte said, and dialed.

Now it was even brighter. The booth was backed up against a long wooden building. Far away was a white glare of salt flats, backed by blue ghosts of mountains. Jerryberry blinked and squinted. Whyte opened the door.

Jerryberry said, "Whoooff!"

"Death Valley. Hot, isn't it?"

"Words fail me at a time like this, but I suggest you look up the dictionary definition of blast furnace." Jerryberry felt perspiration start as a rippling itch all over him. "I'm going to pretend I'm in a sauna. Why doesn't anyone ever put displacement booths inside?"

"They did for a while. There were too many burglaries. Let's go around back."

They walked around the dry wooden building… and into an oasis. Jerryberry was jarred. On one side of the building, the austere beauty of a barren desert. On the other was a manicured forest: