'I'd like to use more than one police station.'
'How many? There's a distance him Bany, what are you thinking?'
'As it stands now, a long-distance passenger has to dial three numbers to get anywhere. You said you could cut that to two. Can you cut it to one?'
'I don't know.'
'It's poetic justice,' said Jerryberry. 'Our whole problem is that rioters can converge on one point from all over the United States. If we could use police stations all over the United States, we wouldn't have a problem. As soon as a cell was full here, we'd switch to police stations in San Diego or Oregon!'
Whyte was laughing. 'If you could see your face! Barry, you're a dreamer.'
'You can't do it.'
'No, of course we can't do it. Wait a minute.' Whyte pursed his lips.
'There's a way. We could do it if there was a long-distance receiver at the police station. Hook the network to a velocity damper! I told you, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to dial to a long-distance receiver from any booth.'
'It would work, then!'
'You'd have to talk the public into paying for it. Design wouldn't be much of a problem.. We could cover the country with an emergency network in a couple of years.'
'Can I quote you?'
'Of course. We sell displacement booths. That's our business.'
10
Talk shows are one of the few remaining pure entertainment features on teevee. With cassettes the viewer buys a package; with a talk show he never knows just what he's getting. It is a different product. It is cheap to produce. It can compete.
The Tonight Show shows at 8:30 P.M., prime time.
Around nine they start flicking in, pouring out of the coin booths that line the street above the last row of houses. They mill about, searching out the narrow walks that lead down to the strand. They pour over the low stone wall that guards the sand from the houses. They pause, awed.
Breakers roll in from the black sea, flashing electric-blue.
Within minutes Hennosa Beach is aswarm with people: men, women, children, in couples and family groups. They hold hands and look out to sea. They stamp the packed wet sand, dancing like savages, and whoop with delight to see blue light flash beneath their feet. High up on the dry sand are piles of discarded clothing. Swimmers are thick in the water, splashing blue fire at each other.
Many were drunk or high on this or that when the Tonight Show led them here. Those who came were happy to start with. They came to do a happy thing. Some carry six-packs or pouches of pot.
The line of them stretches around the curve of the shore to the north, beyond Hermosa Pier to the south, bunching around the pier. More are shifting in all the time, trickling down to join the others.
Jerryberry Jansen flicked in almost an hour early for the interview.
The station was an ant's nest, a swarm of furious disorganization. Jerryberry was looking for Wash Evans when Wash Evans came running past him from behind, glanced back, and came to a jarring halt.
''Lo,' said Jerryberry. 'Is there anything we need to go over before we go on?'
Evans seemed at a loss. 'Yah,' he said, and caught his breath a little. 'You're not news anymore, Jansen. We may not even be doing the interview.'
Jerryberry said a dirty word. 'I heard they'd cleared up the riot-'
'More than that. They caught the lady shoplifter.'
'Good!'
'If you say so. One out of a thousand people that recognized your pictures of her turned out to be right. Woman name of Inna Hennessey, lives in Jersey City but commutes all over the country. She says she's never hit the same store twice. She's a kick, Jansen. A newstaper's dream. No offense intended, but I wish they'd let her out of jail tonight. I'd interview her.'
'So I didn't cause the mall riot anymore, now you've got Irma Hennessey. Well, good. I didn't like being a celebrity. Anything else?'
He was thinking, All that jumping around, all the things I learned today, all wasted. Unless I can get a tapezine lecture out of it.
Evans said, 'Yah, there's a new mall riot going on at Hermosa Beach.'
'What the hell?'
'Craziest damn thing.' Wash Evans lit a cigarette and talked around it. 'You know Gordon Lundt, the 'zine star? He was on the Tonight Show, and he happened to mention the red tide down at Hermosa Beach. He said it was pretty. The next thing anyone knows, every man, woman, and child in the country has decided he wants to see the red tide at Hermosa Beach.'
'How bad is it?'
'Well, nobody's been hurt, last I heard. And they aren't breaking things. It's not that kind of crowd, and there's nothing to steal but sand, anyway. It's a happy riot, Jansen. There's just a bitch of a lot of people.'
'Another flash crowd. It figures,' said Jerryberry. 'You can get a flash crowd anywhere there are displacement booths.'
'Can you?'
'They've been around a long time. It's just that they happen faster with the long-distance booths. Some places are permanent floating flash crowds. Like Tahiti… what's wrong?'
Wash Evans had a funny look. 'It just hit me that we don't really have anything to replace you with. You've been doing your homework, have you?'
'All day.' Jerryberry dug out the Minox. 'I've been everywhere I could think of. Some of this goes with taped interviews.' He produced the tape recorder. 'Of course there isn't much time to sort it out-'
'No. Gimme.' Evans took the camera and the recorder. 'We can follow up on these later. Maybe they'll make a special. Right now the news is at Hermosa Beach. And you sound like you know how it happened and what to do about it. Do you still want to do that interview?'
'I-sure.'
'Go get a C.B.A. camera from George Bailey. Let's see, it's-nine fifteen, dammit. Spend half an hour, see as much as you can, then get back here. Find out what you can about the-flash crowd at Hermosa Beach. That's what we'll be talking about.'
George Bailey looked up as Jerryberry arrived. He pointed emphatically at the single camera remaining on the table, finger-combed the hair back out of his eyes, and went back to monitoring half a dozen teevee screens.
The camera came satisfyingly to life in Jerryberry's hands. He picked up a list of Hermosa Beach numbers and turned to the displacement booths. Too much coffee sloshed in his belly. He stopped suddenly, thinking:
One big riot-control center would do it. You wouldn't need a police network.-just one long-distance receiver to serve the whole country, and a building the size of Yankee Stadium, big enough to handle any riot. A federal police force on permanent guard. Rioting was an interstate crime now anyway. You could build such a center faster and cheaper than any network.
Not now. Back to work. He stepped into a booth, dialed, and was gone.
