'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:
rows and rows of trees.
'We can grow damn near anything out here. We started with date palms, went to orange and grapefuit trees, pineapples, a lot of rice paddies, mangoes-anything that grows in tropic climates will grow here, as long as you give it enough water.'
Jerryberry had already noticed the water tower. It looked just like the transmitter. He said, 'And the right soil.'
'Well, yes. Soil isn't that good in Death Valley. We have to haul in too much fertilizer.' Rivulets of perspiration ran down Whyte's cheeks. His soft face looked almost stern. 'But the principle holds. With teleportation, men can live practically anywhere. We gave people room. A man can work in Manhattan or Central Los Angeles or Central Anywhere and live in- in-'
'Nevada.'
'Or Hawaii! Or the Grand Canyon! Crowding caused riots. We've eliminated crowding-for a while, anyway. At the rate we're going we'll still wind up shoulder to shoulder, but not until you and I are both dead.'
Jerryberry considered keeping his mouth shut but decided he didn't have the willpower. 'What about pollution?'
'What?'
'Death Valley used to have an ecology as unique as its climate. What's your unlimited water doing to that?'
'Ruining it, I guess.'
'Hawaii, you said. Grand Canyon. There are laws against putting up apartment buildings in national monuments, thank God. Hawaii probably has the population density of New York by now. Your displacement booths can put men anywhere, right? Even places they don't belong.'
'Well, maybe they can,' Whyte said slowly. 'Pollution. Hmm. What do you know about Death Valley?'.
'It's hot.' Jerryberry was wet through.
'Death Valley used to be an inland sea. A salt sea. Then the climate changed, and all the water went away. What did that do to the ecology?'
Jerryberry scratched his head. 'A sea?'
'Yes, a sea! And drying it up ruined one ecology and started another, just like we're doing. But never mind that. I want to show you some things. Pollution, huh?' Whyte's grip on Jerryberry's arm was stronger than it had any right to be.
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.'
