by Larry Niven
Whyte was angry. In the booth he froze, with his brow furrowed and his forefinger extended. Trying to remember a number. Then he dialed in trembling haste.
He dialed two sequences. Jerryberry saw the interior of an airline terminal, then-dark.
"Oh, damn. I forgot it would be night here."
"Where are we?"
"Sahara Desert. Rudolph Hill Reclamation Project. No, don't go out there; there's nothing to see at night. Do you know anything about the project?"
"You're trying to grow a forest in the middle of the Sahara: trees, leaf-eating molds, animals, the whole ecology." Jerryberry tried to see out through the glass. Nothing. "How's it working?"
"Well enough. If we can keep it going another thirty years, this part of the Sahara should stay a forest. Do you think we're wiping out another ecology?"
"Well, it's probably worth it here."
"The Sahara used to be a lush, green land. It was men who turned it into a desert, over thousands of years, mainly through overgrazing. We're trying to put it back."
"Okay," said Jerryberry. He heard Whyte dialing. Through the glass he could now see stars and a horizon etched with treetop shadows.
He squinted against airport-terminal lights. He asked, "How did we get through customs?"
"Oh, the Hill project is officially United States territory." Whyte swung the local directory out from the wall and leafed through it before dialing a second time. "Some day you'll make any journey by dialing two numbers," he was saying. "Why should you have to dial your local airport first? Just dial a long-distance booth near your destination. Of course the change-over will cost us considerable. Here we are."
Bright sunlight, sandy beach, blue sea stretching to infinity. The booth was backed up against a seaside hotel. Jerryberry followed Whyte, whose careful, determined stride took him straight toward the water.
They stopped at the edge. Tiny waves brushed just to the tips of their shoes.
"Carpintena. They advertise this beach as the safest beach in the world. It's also the dullest, of course. No waves. Remember anything about Carpinteria, Barry?"
"I don't think so."
"Oil-slick disaster. A tanker broke up out there, opposite Santa Barbara, which is up the coast a little. All of these beaches were black with oil. I was one of the volunteers working here to save the birds, to get the oil off their feathers. They died anyway. Almost fifty years ago, Barry."
Part of a history lesson floated to the top of his mind. "I thought that happened in England."
"There were several oil-slick disasters. Almost I might say, there were many. These days we ship oil by displacement booths, and we don't use anything like as much oil."
"No cars."
"No oil wells, practically."
They shifted.
From an underwater dome they gazed out at an artificial reef made from old car bodies. The shapes seemed to blend, their outlines obscured by mud and time and swarming fish. Bent and twisted metal bodies had long since rusted away, but their outlines remained, held by shellfish living and dead. Ghosts of cars, the dashboards and upholstery showing through. An occasional fiber-glass wreck showed as if it had been placed yesterday.
The reef went on and on, disappearing into gray distance.
All those cars.
"People used to joke about the East River catching fire and burning to the ground. It was that dirty," said Whyte. "Now look at it."
Things floated by: wide patches of scum, with plastic and metal objects embedded in them. Jerryberry said, "It's pretty grubby."
"Maybe, but it's not an open sewer. Teleportation made it easier to get rid of garbage."
"I guess my trouble is I never saw anything as dirty as you claim it was. Oil slicks. Lake Michigan. The Mississippi." Maybe you're exaggerating. "Just what has teleportation done for garbage collection?"
"There are records. Pictures."
"But even with your wonderful bottomless garbage cans, it must be easier just to dump it in the river."
"Ahh, I guess so."
"And you still have to put the gupp somewhere after you collect it."
Whyte was looking at him oddly. "Very shrewd, Barry. Let me show you the next step."
* * *
Whyte kept his hand covered as he dialed. "Secret," he said. "JumpShift experimental laboratory. We don't need a lot of room, because experiments with teleportation aren't particularly dangerous…"
but there was room, lots of it. The building was a huge inflated Quonset hut. Through the transparent panels Jerryberry could see other buildings, set wide apart on bare dirt. The sun was 45 degrees up. If he had known which way was north, he could have guessed longitude and latitude.
A very tall, very black woman in a lab smock greeted Whyte with glad cries. Whyte introduced her as "Gemini Jones, Phd."
"Gem, where do you handle disposal of radioactive waste?"
"Building Four." The physicist's hair exploded around her head like a black dandelion, adding unnecessary inches to her height. She looked down at Jerryberry with genial curiosity. "Newstaper?"
"Don't ever try to fool anyone. The eyes give you away."
They took the booth to Building Four. Presently they were looking down through several densities of leaded glass into a cylindrical metal chamber.
"We get a package every twenty minutes or so," said Gem Jones. "There's a transmitter linked to this receiver in every major power plant in the United States. We keep the receiver on all the time. If a package gets reflected back, we have to find out what's wrong, and that can get hairy, because it's usually wrong at the drop-ship."
Jerryberry said, "Drop-ship?"
Gemini Jones showed surprise at his ignorance. Whyte said, "Backup a bit, Barry. What's the most dangerous garbage ever?"
"Give me a hint."
"Radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. Most dangerous per pound, anyway. They send those wastes here, and we send them to a drop-ship. You've got to know what a drop-ship is."
"Of course I-"
"A drop-ship is a moving teleport receiver with one end open. Generally it's attached to a space probe. The payload flicks in with a velocity different from that of the drop-ship. Of course it's supposed to come tearing out the open end, which means somebody has to keep it turned right. And of course the drop-ship only operates in vacuum."
"Package," Gem Jones said softly. Something had appeared in the metal chamber below. It was gone before Jerryberry could quite see what it was.
"Just where is your drop-ship?"
"Circling Venus," said Whyte. "Originally it was part of the second Venus expedition. You can send anything through a drop-ship: fuel, oxygen, food, water, even small vehicles. There are drop-ships circling every planet in the solar system, except Neptune.
"When the Venus expedition came home, they left the drop-ship in orbit. We thought at first that we might send another expedition through it, but-face it, Venus just isn't worth it. We're using the planet as a garbage dump, which is about all it's good for.
"Now, there's no theoretical reason we can't send unlimited garbage through the Venus drop-ship, as long as we keep the drop-ship oriented right. Many transmitters, one receiver. The payload doesn't stay in the receiver more than a fraction of a second. If it did get overloaded, why, some of the garbage would be reflected back to the transmitter, and we'd send it again. No problem."
"What about cost?"
"Stupendous. Horrible. Too high for any kind of garbage less dangerous than this radioactive stuff. But maybe we can bring it down someday." Whyte stopped; he looked puzzled. "Mind if I sit down?"
There were fold-up chairs around a card table with empty pop bulbs on it. Whyte sat down rather disturbingly hard, even with Gem Jones trying to support his weight. She asked, "Can I get Doctor Janesko?"
"No, Gem, just tired. Is there a pop machine?"
Jerryberry found the pop machine. He paid a chocolate dollar for a clear plastic bulb of cola. He turned and almost bumped into G
emini Jones.
She spoke low, but there was harsh intensity in her voice. "You're running him ragged. Will you lay off of him?"
"He's been running me!" Jerryberry whispered.
"I believe it. Well, don't let him run you so fast. Remember, he's an old man."
Whyte pulled the cola bulb open and drank. "Better." He sighed. . and was back in high gear. "Now, you see? We're cleaning up the world. We aren't polluters."
"Right."
"Thank you."
"I never should have raised the subject. What have you got for the mall riot?"
Whyte looked confused.
"The mall riot is still going on, and they're still blaming me."
"And you still blame JumpShift."
"It's a matter of access," Jerryberry said patiently. "Even if only ten men in a million, say, would loot a store, given the opportunity, that's still about four thousand people in the United States. And all four thousand can get to the Santa Monica Mall in the time it takes to dial twenty-one digits."
When Whyte spoke again, he sounded bitter. "What are we supposed to do, stop inventing things?"
"No, of course not." Jerryberry pulled open another bulb of cola.
"What, then?"
"I don't know. Just. . keep working things out." He drank. "There's always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean you should stop solving problems?"
"Well, let's solve this one."
They sat sipping cola. It was good to sit down. The old man's running me ragged, thought Jerryberry.
"Crowds," he said.
"Right."
"You can make one receiver for many transmitters. In fact. . every booth in a city receives from any other booth. Can you make a booth that transmits only?"
Whyte looked up. "Sure. Give it an unlisted number. Potentially it would still be a receiver, of course."
"Because you have to flick the air back to the transmitter."
"How's this sound? You can put an E on the booth number. The only dials with E's in them are at police stations and fire stations. E for Emergency."
"All right. Now, you put a lot of these escape booths wherever a crowd might gather-"
"That could be anywhere. You said so yourself."
'Yali.
"We'd have to double the number of booths in the country.. or cut the number of incoming booths in half. You'd have to walk twice as far to get where you're going from any given booth. Would it be worth it?"
"I don't think this is the last riot," said Jerryberry. "It's growing. Like tourism. Your short-hop booths cut tourism way dQwn. The long-distance booths are bringing it back, but slowly. Would you believe a permanent floating riot? A mob that travels from crowd to crowd, carrying coin purses, looting where they can."
"I hate that idea."
Jerryberry put his hand on the old man's shoulder. "Don't wony about it. You're a hero. You made a miracle. What people do with it isn't your fault. Maybe you even saved the world. The pollution was getting very rough before JumpShift came along."
"By God, it was."
"I've got to be going. There are things I want to see before I run out of time."
8
Tahiti. Jerusalem. Mecca. Easter Island. Stonehenge. The famous places of the world. Places a man might dial almost on impulse. Names that came unbidden to the mind.
Mecca. Vast numbers of Muslims (a number he could look up later) bowed toward Mecca five times a day. The Koran called for every Muslim to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. The city's only industry was the making of religious articles. And you could get there just by dialing….
Jerusalem. Sacred to three major religions. Jews still toasted each other at Passover: "Next year in Jerusalem." Still a forming ground of history after thousands of years. And you could get there just by dialing….
Stonehenge. An ancient mystery. What race erected those stones, and when and why? These would never be known with certainty. From the avenue at the northeast entrance a path forked and ran up a hill between burial mounds. . and there was a long-distance displacement booth on the hill.
It would be eleven at night in Stonehenge. One in the morning in Mecca and Jerusalem. No action there. Jerryberry crossed them out.
Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Vatican. . dammit, the most memorable places on Earth were all in the same general area. What could he see at midnight?
Well- Tahiti. Say "tropical paradise," and every stranger in earshot will murmur, "Tahiti." Once Hawaii had had the same reputation, but Hawaii was too close to civilization. Hawaii had been civilized. Tahiti, isolated in the southern hemisphere, might have escaped that fate.
Everything lurched as he finished dialing. Jerryberry stumbled against the booth wall. Briefly he was terrified. But he'd be dead if the velocity transfer had failed. It must be a little out of synch.
He knew too much, that was all.
There were six booths of different makes this side of customs. The single official had a hopeless look. He waved through a constant stream of passengers without seeming to see them.
Jerryberry moved with the stream.
They were mostly men. Many had cameras; few had luggage. English, American, French, German, some Spanish and U.S.S.R. Most were dressed lightly-and poorly, in cheap clothes ready to come apart. They swarmed toward the outgoing booths, the rectangular Common Market booths with one glass side. Jerryberry saw unease and dismay on many faces. Perhaps it was the new, clean, modem building that bothered them. This was an island paradise? Air conditioning. Fluorescent lighting.
Jerryberry stood in line for the phone. Then he found that it wouldn't take his coin or his credit card. On his way to the change counter he thought to examine the displacement booths. They took only French money. He bought a heavy double handful of coins, then got back in line for the phone.
They have to get used to traveling again. Right on.
The computerized directory spoke English. He used it to get a string of booth numbers in downtown Papeete.
* * *
He was a roving newstaper again. Dial, watch the scene flick over, look around while inserting a coin and dialing. The coin slot was in the wrong place, and the coins felt wrong-too big, too thin-and the dial was a disk with holes in it. A little practice had him in the routine.
There was beach front lined with partly built hotels in crazily original shapes. Of all the crowds he saw in Papeete, the thickest were on the beaches and in the water. Later he could not remember the color of the sand; he hadn't seen enough of it.
Downtown he found huge blocks of buildings faced in glass, some completed, some half built. He found old slums and old mansions. But wherever the streets ran, past mansions or slums or new skyscrapers, he found tents and leantos and board shacks hastily nailed together. They filled the streets, leaving small clear areas around displacement booths and public rest rooms and far more basic portable toilets. An open-air market ran for several blocks and was closed at both ends by crowds of tents. The only way in or out was by booth.
They're ahead of us, thought Jerryberry. When you've got booths, who needs streets? He was not amused. He was appalled.
There were beggars. At first he was moving too fast; he didn't realize what they were doing. But wherever he flicked in, one or two habitants immediately came toward his booth. He stopped under a vertical glass cliff of a building, where the tents of the squatters ran just to the bouommost of a flight of stone steps, and waited.
Beggars. Some were natives, men and women and children, uniform in their dark-bronze color and in their dress and their speech and the way they moved. They were a thin minority. Most were men and white and foreign. They came with their hands out, mournful or smiling; they spoke rapidly in what they guessed to be his language, and were right about half the time.
He tried several other numbers. They were everywhere.
Tahiti was a white man's daydream.
Suddenly he'd had enough. On his list of jotte
d numbers was one that would take him out of the city. Jerryberry dialed it.
Air puffed out of the booth when he opened the door. Jerryberry opened his jaws wide to pop his ears.
The view! He was near the peak of a granite mountain. Other mountains marched away before him, and the valleys between were green and lush. Greens and yellows and white clouds, the blue-gray of distant peaks, and beyond everything else, the sea.
It was a bus terminal. An ancient Greyhound was just pulling out. The driver stopped alongside him and shouted something amiable in French. Jerryberry smiled and shook his head violently. The driver shrugged and pulled away.
This could not have been the original terminal. Before displacement booths it could have been reached only after hours of driving. In moving the terminal up here, the touring company had saved the best for first and last.
The bus had looked full. Business was good.
Jerryberry stood for a long time, drinking in the view. This was the beauty that had made Tahiti famous. It was good to know that Tahiti's population explosion had left something intact.
In good time he remembered that he was running on a time limit. He walked around to the ticket window.
The young man in the booth laid a paperback book face down. He smiled agreeably. "Yes?"
"Do you speak English?"
"Certainly." He wore a kind of uniform, but his features and color were those of a Tahitian. His English was good, the accent not quite French. "Would you like to buy a tour ticket?"
"No, thanks. I'd like to talk, if you have a minute."
"What would you like to talk about?"
"Tahiti. I'm a newstaper."
The man's smile drooped a bit. "And you wish to give us free publicity."
"Something like that."
The smile was gone. "You may return to your country and tell them that Tahiti is full."
"I noticed that. I have just come from Papeete."
"I have the honor to own a house in Papeete, a good property. We, my family and myself, we have been forced to move out! There was no-no paysage-" he was too angry to talk as fast as he wanted-"no passage from the house to anyplace. We were surrounded by the tents of the-" He used a word Jerryberry did not recognize. "We could not buy an instant motion booth for the house. I had not the money. We could not have moved the booth to the house because the-"that word again-"blocked the streets. The police can do nothing. Nothing."
