The Last Days of the Permanent - Larry Niven, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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Larry Niven - The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot ClubIn its heyday the Club had numbered around ninety, and it was the most exclusive club in the world. Now a third of its members had quit, and a third were in prison or awaiting trial, and the remaining thirty-odd active members had lost a crucial something: confidence, enthusiasm, esprit de corps, call it what you will."We always knew it was coming," said Benny Sherman. He was a thick-set man, short and broad, made mostly of black hair and muscle. He waved a big, stubby-fingered hand at the south wall of the main room, where a commentator was spreading news of the outside world across a wall-sized screen. "It was all over that screen, for years. Central Riot Control in Nebraska. Pictures of the building going up. They told us just how it was gonna work. They gave us a completion date. Twenty of us quit that same day."Nobody said anything. The voice of the commentator came through at low volume, speaking of the rumor that the Soviets had developed a self-teleporting spy cloak. The teevee screen was never off in the Permanent Floating Riot Club."That spy cloak," James Get-It-All (Goethals) said wistfully. "That'd be nice to have when a flash crowd goes sour. I wonder what are the chances of stealing one.""Sure," said Willie Lordon. He was a featherweight, pinchfaced man, all birdlike bones and acid sarcasm. "Cops coming at you from all directions: What do you do? You roll yourself up in your spy cloak, and as soon as it forms a closed surface it's a displacement booth. Where are you now?" He paused for effect. "In a top secret headquarters in the Kremlin! You idiot.""Better that than Central Riot Control."Willie snorted."I've been there," said Benny Sherman. "Inside it's like a Rose Bowl without seats. Receiver booths, all around ,the lip of the bowl. You try to flick out of a place where the riot control is on, and you wind up dropping out the bottom of the booth. You slide all the way down to the bottom of the bowl, and you wait there with everyone else till the cops get around to you. I got out by the skin of my teeth.""By throwing away your take," said Willie Lordon. Clearly the idea disgusted him."It hurt, too. I had a diamond the size of an almond, if it was real, and a half dozen good watches...and there wasn't any way to tell we'd gone on riot control. I just had to guess the flash crowd had gone on long enough.""You're a genius," said Willie."I'm losing my nerve," Benny said mournfully. "Six times this past year we've flicked into flash crowds, and three times I threw away everything I had because it looked like the cops had time to put us under riot control. Once I was right. Twice I was wrong. That's just not good enough." He braced himself, "I think I'll quit." There, he'd said it."Shh," said Lou Garcia, waving them to silence. He turned the volume control louder. The teevee newscaster was saying, "... flash crowd in downtown Topeka seems to have developed due to a heavily advertised sale at Bloomingdale's...""Shh, Hell. I quit!" Benny bellowed over the racket. "We made a lot of money the last ten years. I want to stay outside to enjoy it!"Most of the members were on their feet, eyes on the screen. A flash crowd meant business. James Get-It-All was at the computer terminal getting the numbers of displacement booths in the affected area. An endless strip of paper ran from the slot: thirty-odd copies of the list.Lou Garcia favored Benny with a sardonic look. "You're giving up your share of the treasury?"That was a low blow. Benny stood a moment, considering.Then, "You can have it," he said, and walked out.He turned for one last look at the Club before going on. It seemed likely that he would never see it again.The Club was a three story brick building of prestressed concrete made to look like old brick. The brick/concrete was chipped in spots and dark with age: one among several blocks of older buildings. The luxuries were inside: luxuries bought with Club dues.Now other members were filing out the entrance and dividing there, heading for street-corner displacement booths half a block away in each direction. Willie Lordon was flexing his fingers as he walked. He carried a small electric knife that would slice out the bottom of a citizen's lock pocket, without alerting him if there was sufficient noise and jostling to distract him. James Get-It-All jogged along with the tense, serious look of a player who knows that his team depends on him. Lou Garcia stood at the entrance, grinning broadly as he watched them go.They filed into glass cylinders with rounded tops, dialed and disappeared, one by one.Benny watched them wistfully. He had helped to found the Club, and they didn't even know he was gone.He remembered a September night ten years ago, the night Orrie Black had proposed the idea. He and Orrie and Lou Garcia and some others who had gotten their start when the booths were new. In those days you could get the booth number of a house and just flick into the living room or entrance hall. You could make a strike just by dialing at random until you hit. But the citizens had wised up and started putting their booths outside, and now half a dozen ex-burglars had gathered at a topless beer and pool place."Think it out," Orrie Black had said. "Any time something interesting happens, anywhere in the country, some newstaper is going to report it. If it's interesting enough, people are going to flick in to see it, from all over the country. Now just think about that. With these long distance booths you can get. from anywhere to anywhere else just by dialing three numbers."If the crowd gets big enough a lot more people flick in just to see a flash crowd, plus more newstapers, plus any kind of agitator looking to shove his sign in front of a camera, plus looters and pickpockets and cops. Before anyone knows it you've got a riot going, with everypne breaking windows and grabbing what's in them. So why shouldn't we be the ones breaking windows?'"The key, the crucial thing, is for there to be enough of us to help each other out. We should all be flicking in at once . . ." And they'd tried it out in the Third Watts Riot, which had lasted a full day and a half.These days you were lucky if a flash crowd lasted two hours. And Orrie Black was in prison, and the others had gone their ways-all but Benny and Lou Garcia.The Club dues. Not everyone had liked that idea, Benny included. Half your take! But it had paid off, and not just for the Clubhouse. The treasury had paid defense lawyers and hospital fees. Flicking into a riot was dangerous, even for a pro.There must be a lot of it left in Lou Garcia's care. Quitting had cost Benny his share of that.Still-he shuddered, remembering the last one. Despite previous experience, he hadn't expected it to grow so big so fast. Something trivial had started it, as usual. A line of peoplewaiting for tickets to a top game show had gotten out of hand. Too many people, not enough seats, somebody getting pushy, and Wham! A pocket riot, until it hit the news, and then a few hundred more flicked in to see the damn fools fighting.Benny had flicked into the middle of it, already looking around for the stores-and the cops. The cops had learned something in past years. It wasn't that there were so many of them: it was their deployment. They tended to guard the most valuable store windows. Benny had spotted a furrier's, a small jewelry display, a home appliance store-all guarded by cops. He had seen clerks moving within the furrier's window, trying to get the goods out of harm's way.He had pushed his way out into the swarm: newstapers with gyrostabilized cameras, a scattering of hand-lettered signs held high, and a hell of a lot of people caught up in it somehow, unable to flick out because the displacement booths filled with incoming passengers before anyone could get in. A lot of incoming passengers had been Club members. A normal enough crowd, but so thick!The crowd had surged suddenly, downing the cops in front of Van Cleef and Arpel's. Benny had seen the small, wiry man who smashed the window, and scooped, and began pushing his way frantically toward the nearest booth. Toward Benny. And he was not a Club member.As he passed Benny, Benny had hit him in the stomach and rifled the man's pockets while he was still doubled over. He'd had to fight to keep his feet, but the crowding was such that nobody had noticed what he was doing.The crowd had surrounded the booth before he turned around. Benny had glimpsed a pair of cops holding back the crowd, letting them into the booth one at a time.The next nearest booth was a block away, through an incredible sea of feet and elbows. His squat, massive body had been an advantage as he plowed through it. Long before he reached the booth Benny had noticed that nobody was flicking in any more. He had dropped the rings and watches then. Regretfully.He remembered the sickening moment just after dialing, when the hinged bottom dropped out of the booth and he was sliding downhill. Others were sliding after him, all around the rim of the bowl, and there were hundreds at the bottom picking themselves up, some looking relieved, some furious. The cops had been on a raised, railed platform at the center of the bowl. A loudspeaker had been telling the crowd what they already knew: that they were at United States Central Riot Control, that they would be processed as fast as possible and released.The police had searched him, photographed him, and sent off the photos for comparison with records of previous riots. His face was on record: he had been in other flash crowds. They had held him. They had hel...
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