Red Tide

by Larry Niven

  Her parents had expected her to do this shopping yesterday evening. They were planning to come home tonight, but you couldn’t count on that, given JumpShift technology. Forget something? Pills, reading glasses, need a bathroom? Just flick home for a minute. And where’s Hilary?

  Breakfast finished, Hilary began her run. What did she need? Double-roasted peanuts. Pecan pralines. Groceries: a cut-up chicken, asparagus, some eggs and a container of egg yolks: maybe Mom would make hollandaise. Buy a couple of eccentrically shaped candles, they might make good gifts. Skim through that bookstore. The key here was to get home before her parents did, with enough of what she’d come for to show some serious shopping. It didn’t much matter what she bought. Just enough to cover for last night’s party.

  With her arms full of bags she stepped into 3rd Street and fumbled out her jump card.

  It looked like a credit card: rectangular, with a magnetic strip. During Hilary’s year as a freshman at the Cate boarding school, that card had lived in the Headmaster’s safe. Her parents did not fully trust their only daughter. Maybe these restrictions were the reason some friends called her “Hilarity”: she was sullen too often; she never got to do anything. There were approved addresses on the card. Emergency stuff: police, fire, hospital, the family lawyer. Cate School. Family and family friends. Addresses were added when Dad approved: a coffee shop, girl friends, yoga class, the Farmer’s Market. From anywhere not on the card, the card would take her straight home.

  The booth looked like one end of a test tube: round and made of hardened glass, with a rounded top. It was big enough for two, or for one and some luggage. Hilary stepped toward the booth, fumbled a paper bag, regained her balance and dropped the card. She stooped to reach for it without setting anything down.

  A tall boy on inline skates came out from behind a candy stand. Two more behind him. She glimpsed him coming, shied back and fell on her butt, spilling groceries but ducking a collision. The kid ran over her jump card, leaning way out to touch her hair as he passed. They all kept going, laughing like maniacs.

  Breathing hard, Hilary picked up the card. It was bent.

  Even as she wailed in fury, she thought: maybe, maybe there was a nugget of good news in this disaster.

  Darrell Tooney had already fiddled with her card. He’d added his own address, the locus of last night’s party in Malibu. If the card was ruined, Dad would never find the added locus … the address of a boy Dad didn’t know. On the other hand, how was she going to get home? Well, maybe she’d ask a shopkeeper for help.

  But first: bend the card back into shape. There, that didn’t look bad. Now try the card.

  Hilary picked up her bags and retrieved spilled groceries. She stepped into the booth, closed the door, inserted the card below the keypad. The system swallowed it. She was about to type in HOME when the booth triggered and flicked her away.

  ***

  She was expecting a series of jumps. The way it usually went, each booth sent you to the next within reach in the direction you wanted to go. You’d get flick flick flick, bump bump bump as you absorbed the kinetic energy. If the jump was too far, the card popped out and left you—wherever.

  But she’d flicked only once. Hilary knew that home wasn’t that close.

  The light had changed: the sun had dropped. As she stepped out she smelled ocean. Where was she?

  Not in Brentwood, that was sure. She was looking down toward scores of people, all lined up along a shoreline, every one of them facing away from her, shifting as they stared at … what?

  Of course she could step back into the booth. But there was something wrong with her jump card. No telling where it would take her. But what were they looking at?

  She set the groceries down outside the booth. Forcing her way through that crowd … might have been possible, but she saw something better. She saw a tree.

  Hilary was good at climbing trees. Big branches were low to the ground. In moments she was above the crowd, looking through branches, above the tops of their heads, at blue horizon and below that … ohmyGod. Whales!

  Had to be whales. Too big to be seals. She was seeing mostly curls of white water, but black shapes surfacing within, and wow. She’d heard tales of whales from a cousin who’d been in the San Juan Islands, a thousand miles north of Brentwood.

  The whales were tracking to the right … had to be north if that was the Pacific. Hilary watched while most of an hour passed. Presently she climbed down, thinking hard.

  Broken card. Could take her anywhere. Why wasn’t she feeling the bumps? Or she could stroll on down to the shore and ask for help. Some stranger would escort her home. No danger, not with so many witnesses. Or she could phone her parents.

  Could take her anywhere. She’d never have a chance like this again.

  ***

  The scene jumped, and suddenly Hilary was surrounded by videocameras and people all watching her through the booth wall.

  Four men were carrying a man in a transparent shell. They stopped moving when they saw her; the man in the shell yelped and tried to tell her something. An older man jerked like a marionette, then lunged for a big control board.

  For an instant Hilary was tempted to do something weird. Flash them, maybe. But she could already be in trouble. Her ruined jump card might serve as an excuse for anything … maybe.

  Maybe not. Better get out. Hilary inserted her card into the PAY slot and was gone.

  ***

  The others were still reacting. Robin Whyte was watching the screens. Moby Dick’s deck was clear around the spit cage.

  Spit cages were still somewhat experimental. If this worked … despite its makeshift look, it was a JumpShift booth open at one end. Velocities wouldn’t matter if you aimed it right. If a cargo came through from the Mojave, it would flash straight up through the throat of the spit cage and into the sky at twice sonic speed. And if that cargo was a teenage girl protected by nothing more than an active-view T shirt, Robin would see a fireball. She’d be torn to bits and burnt to ash.

  But nothing was going through. He’d turned the link off in time.

  The girl was certainly gone. She might have been no more than a hallucination.

  Robin flicked the switch that would restore power to Moby Dick. Power flow … dials … spit cage status … all looked good. Robin picked a technician whose name he knew and tapped his shoulder. “Check me out, Wade,” he said. “Is this nominal?”

  Wade Hench stared. “You’re sending him through?”

  “I don’t see a problem.”

  “The girl?”

  “We’ll have to deal with that.” Robin stepped to a microphone. “Break for fifteen minutes,” he said. He motioned to the four men holding Hosni in his glass shell. “Hosni? Fifteen minutes, then go.”

  Cameras had caught the girl. Readings had caught her arrival, and another signature: a wave of energy to a mass in Lake Mead. The link that could make JumpShift a long distance proposition was working, and some unnamed girl was using it.

  Fifteen minutes later they rolled Hosni into the booth. Robin himself flicked the switch that flicked him out.

  ***

  Hilary stepped out onto a lawn, and stepped around a stone marker. The sun was high, noonish. Rows and rows of stone markers, and a densely packed crowd being well dressed and very politely quiet, just a few people whispering. An oddly dressed man at the front was speaking of … well, of a very accomplished woman who must be dead, because this was a cemetery. Cameras were panning over the crowd. She heard a name, “Miranda Troost,” and recognized it from school: the Secretary of State, dead of a stroke.

  How in Hell could she have reached Washington, DC?

  Hilary looked straight into a camera, then decided this wasn’t the fun she had anticipated. For an instant she considered: she could wait around and ask for help from a gravedigger. Instead, she returned to the booth and her bags and flicked out.

  ***

  It was cold. She was in cramped rectangular space, under
dim lights. The booth was pushed into one end of a corridor.

  That alone was strange. A booth in your living space was an invitation to home invasion. People didn’t usually install JumpShift booths inside. Hilary stepped out to see more. She called, “Hello?”

  The air was musty. The corridor was padded with something like cork, perhaps for soundproofing. It led to a solid-looking door, also padded. She opened it and found another door. It was colder yet, and this looked like an airlock. She couldn’t imagine that she was on the Moon—JumpShift booths wouldn’t do that—but where was she?

  Nobody had answered her hail.

  She closed the first door, the inner door. Half-expecting vacuum, half-compelled by curiosity, Hilary wrestled the outer door open. A terrible freezing wind fought her, and then she was out.

  She was in a glare of horizontal sunlight. Pinpoints of dry snow stung her skin. Everywhere about her was ice. Dirty ice formed paths. Paths circled a tall pole sticking out of the ice. One path led from the pole to here. A wide loop around the pole led to a little hut that looked like wood … Lord, that was a sauna, she thought. Hilary recognized this place from pictures and an article in National Geographic.

  But how could she be here? Teleport booths wouldn’t send this far, not without killing you.

  Shapes burst from the hut: naked men moving at a run, a file of six. Their arms half-hid their eyes, protecting. They ran straight at the pole. There was a big box on top of the pole, and it was moving to follow the men. A videotape camera.

  She’d been right: this was the three hundred degree run. From two hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the sauna, into minus one hundred as you ran naked to circle the North Pole.

  Did they have a setup like this at the South Pole too? But this had to be the North Pole because the sun was up, because it was northern hemisphere summer. The first man slapped the pole, took the turn and saw Hilary. He kept running. It was the fourth man who stopped, staring, letting the others pass him.

  Hilary stood gaping. The man stared back … then ran for the sauna.

  Hilary crouched, wrapped arms around her head, and wobbled backward into the airlock. No wonder they didn’t lock it. Lock a person out and she’d be frozen dead.

  She stared at the jump card before she used it again. Conservation of energy had consequences. Flick north or south, velocity change from the Earth’s spin would kick you sideways; flick east or west, you’d be lifted or slammed down. Flick a mile uphill, you’d lose heat energy. Downhill, you could faint from heat exhaustion.

  Her card certainly hadn’t been tagged to send her to the North Pole, before that idiot bent it. The card was jumping her at random.

  She didn’t really have a problem, she decided. As soon as she flicked into a residential zone, she’d ask for help. Anyway, what choice did she have? Face down half a dozen naked men? Dad would freak. She stepped into the booth and inserted the damaged card.

  ***

  It was night. Burning torches didn’t give much more light than the full moon.

  The houses were made of cloth: elaborate tents in various muted shades, brown and gray. She couldn’t guess where she was. She was surrounded by black-skinned children and adults, none of them moving very much. Lots of children. They looked at her through the glass. Lean arms and legs: they looked more than half starved.

  Hilary opened the jump booth. She pushed one of her grocery bags outside. She closed the door and flicked out.

  ***

  The sun was in the right place. Maybe she’d gotten lucky. But the floor wobbled and she knew she was on a boat. A twenty-foot motorboat, looked like, with a booth and pile of batteries in the middle.

  Other boats seemed to be arrayed around her. One was an ambulance ship with a red cross on it. One, a Coast Guard cruiser. The horizon was water in all directions, and a brilliant sun right at the edge. She’d gone back to dawn.

  Hilary stayed in the booth until she saw, in the sky above the ocean, something she recognized. One of the Goodyear blimps. Spanish words scrolled across its flank in brilliant electric light. Then English: JUMPSHIFT INTRODUCES HOSNI LASALLE IN DEATH DEFYING SK—It turned away.

  Hilary stepped out, leaving her groceries in the booth. This booth was a temp, portable, one in a skewed line of four hooked with cables to stacks of batteries. Now she could see a sizeable yacht with piles of equipment on deck, surrounding a tube that resembled a cannon pointed straight up.

  A woman in a business suit and flat shoes looked her over (seeing a child in party clothes) and said, “Hello, Dear. Who’re you with? Let’s see your invitation.”

  Hilary opened her purse and offered the card her parents insisted she carry, with her name, photo and home address. It wasn’t what the official was expecting. “My jump card doesn’t work right,” she said.

  The woman opened her mouth—and the crowd roared behind her. The cannon fired straight up. Something big disappeared from sight in a second or two, lost in a glare of clouds.

  The woman—the greeter?—turned back. “A broken jump card? You came to the right place. Let’s see that.”

  Hilary offered the bent jump card. “What’s going on?”

  “Publicity stunt,” the woman said dismissively. “We sent Hosni LaSalle, the stunt man, through a spit cage. And I’m Willie Day, how do you do?”

  “Hilary Firestone.”

  She was still holding both the calling card and the jump card. “Hilary, what did you do to this card?”

  “A skateboard ran over it. Not my fault. Now—I thought it must be taking me to Points of Interest, you know, like with a Global Positioning System? There’re cameras pointed at me wherever I go.”

  “There’s a setting that does that. It’s for newstapers,” Willie said. “You’re not supposed to have it. Hmm. You can’t keep it. Maybe Mr. Whyte will be interested. We’ll wait here until he’s got a moment.”

  Hilary didn’t quite like that, but—“Okay. I’ll phone my parents.” She fished her phone out of her belt pouch.

  Willie Day took it before Hilary could react. “No, you certainly won’t do that. This isn’t a matter for the public.”

  Several options flicked through Hilary’s mind. She could snatch the phone back. She could scream for help, with video cameras all around her. She could kick the woman in the kneecaps. She settled for snatching both cards out of her other hand, turning to enter the booth, and flicking out.

  ***

  Hosni was still rising, rising … the cameras on his aeroshell were working fine. Clouds came at him and were torn apart. The sea dwindled below, the boat flotilla already lost. Voice was a little garbled. “If I had thought it through,” Hosni said, “I would have gone through feet first. The thrust of the wind was all at my head end. I should have gone in upside down, with the fins at my ears.”

  Robin asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Aye-firmative. So far so good. I think I’m in free fall now. Sky darkening, but you can see that yourself. How’s the other thing going, Robin?”

  Robin was facing several cameras; he made the most of it. “The D. D. Harriman is ready to launch. The spit cage in the tank is feeding hydrogen fuel. If this works out, we’ll circle the Moon in a one-stage spacecraft. I know you’d have loved to be the pilot—”

  “Oh, this is exciting enough, Boss. Time to drop the shell—”

  “Hosni, I’ll get back to you.” Because Segundo Gomes of Security was listening hard to a cellphone, then barking into it. Robin punched out and went over. He asked, “Segundo? What?”

  “Willie Day reports a young girl with a broken jump card. Coyote and—”

  Robin took the phone. “Willie?”

  “I take it you’re looking for her. Coyote and Roadrunner T-shirt, active. She was on one of the observer boats, the Hobbit. Your engineering team might tell you how she got here. I took her phone, but she snatched the card back and flicked out.”

  “Did you damage her in any way?”

  “No, Boss, I never touched
her.”

  “And you have her phone. Good. Anything else?”

  “Name’s Hilary. And she said she’s finding cameras everywhere she goes. I wondered—“

  “Yeah. She’s linked into a news feed, I bet. She goes wherever it’s interesting. And she’s got a link to … Willie, you’ll know about this pretty quick, but it’s secret. I’ve got an experimental setup going, called Long Jump mode, and her card seems to be using it.”

  ***

  Not long after dawn … or near sunset; how could you tell without directions?

  Residential … but the signs were funny. Arabic? That nearest building was a church or synagogue or something religious and foreign. Hilary opened the booth door anyway, because that was a uniform, and the foreign-looking woman wasn’t yet raising the gun in her right hand. Hilary called, “English?”

  “Yes, of course,” the woman said. “Please don’t move. I want to see your hands.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Jerusalem. Put the bag down with care.”

  Hilary knelt and began to set the bag down. Men were approaching, and they were all uniformed. “What’s going on?”

  “We have cleared these streets and closed reception on these booths. It should not have worked. How did you get past?”

  “My card’s damaged.” She was surrounded now. “What’s it all about?”

  “The Gaza Seven Accords are to be signed. Peace in our time,” the uniformed woman said with perhaps a touch of irony. “A fine opportunity for a homicide bomber.”

  Hilary suddenly saw herself as this officer must: an unexplained stranger with packages that could be bombs. She pulled the door shut and used the card. The Israeli was just a bit slow.