The displacement booths had come suddenly. One year, a science fiction writer's daydream. The next, A.D. 1992, an experimental reality. Teleportation. Instantaneous travel. Another year and they were being used for cargo transport. Two more, and the passenger displacement booths were springing up everywhere in the world.
By luck and the laws of physics, the world had had time to adjust. Teleportation obeyed the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Conservation of Momentum. Teleporting uphill took an energy input to match the gain in. potential energy. A cargo would lose potential energy going downhill. And it was over a decade before JumpShift Inc. learned how to compensate for that effect. Teleportation over great distances was even more heavily restricted by the Earth's rotation.
Let a passenger flick too far west, and the difference between his momentum and the Earth's would smack him down against the floor of the booth. Too far east, and he would be flung against the ceiling. Too far north or south, and the Earth would be rotating faster or s1ower; he would flick in moving sideways, unless he had crossed the equator.
But cargo and passengers could be displaced between points of equal longitude and opposite latitude. Smuggling had become impossible to stop. There was a point in the South Pacific to correspond to any point in the United States, most of Canada, and parts of Mexico.
Smuggling via the displacement booths was a new crime. The Permanent Floating Riot Gangs were another. The booths would allow a crowd to gather with amazing rapidity.
Practically any news broadcast could start a flash crowd. And with the crowds the pickpockets and looters came flicking in.
When the booths were new, many householders had taken to putting their booths in living rooms or entrance halls. That had stopped fast, after an astounding rash of burglaries. These days only police stations and hospitals kept their booths indoors.
For twenty years the booths had not been feasible over distances greater than ten miles. If the short-distance booths had changed the nature of crime, what of the long distance booths? They had been in existence only four years. Most were at what had been airports, being run by what had been airline companies. Dial three numbers and you could be anywhere on Earth.
Flash crowds were bigger and more frequent.
The alibi was as dead as the automobile.
Smuggling was cheaper. The expensive, illegal transmission booths in the South Pacific were no longer needed. Cutthroat competition had dropped the price of smack to something the Mafia wouldn't touch.
And murder was easier, but that was only part of the problem. There was a new kind of murder going around.
Hank Lovejoy was a tall, lanky man with a lantern jaw and a ready smile. The police had found him at his office-real estate-and be bad agreed to come immediately.
"There were four of us at the Sirius Club before Alicia showed up," he said. "Me, and George Larimer, and Jeff Walters, and Jennifer-wait a minute-Lewis. Jennifer was over at the bar, and we'd like asked her to join us for dinner. You know how it is in a continuity club: you can talk to anyone. We'd have picked up another girl sooner or later."
Hennessey said, "Not two?"
"Oh, George is a monogamist. His wife is eight months pregnant, and she didn't want to come, but George just doesn't. He's not fey or anything, he just doesn't. But Jeff and I were both sort of trying to get Jennifer's attention. She was loose, and it looked likely she'd go home with one or the other of us. Then Alicia came in."
"What time was that?"
"Oh, about six fifteen. We were already eating. She came up to the table, and we all kind of waited for Jeff to introduce her and ask her to sit down, she being his ex-wife, after all." Lovejoy laughed. "George doesn't really understand about Jeff and Alicia. Me, I thought it was funny."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, they've, been divorced about six years, but it seems he just can't get away from her. Couldn't, I mean," he said, remembering. Remembering that good old Jeff had gotten away from her, because someone had smashed her skull.
Hennessey was afraid Lovejoy would clam up. He played stupid. "I don't get it. A divorce is a divorce, isn't it?"
"Not when it's a quote friendly divorce unquote. Jeff's a damn fool. I don't think he gave up sleeping with her, not right after the divorce. He wouldn't live with her, but every so often she'd, well, she'd seduce him, I guess you'd say. He wasn't used to being alone, and I guess he got lonely. Eventually he must have given that up, but he still couldn't get her out of his hair."
"See, they belonged to all the same clubs and they knew all the same people, and as a matter of fact they were both in routing and distribution software; that was how they met. So if she came on the scene while he was trying to do something else, there she was, and he had to introduce her. She probably knew the people he was dealing with, if it was business. A lot of business gets done at the continuity clubs. And she wouldn't go away. I thought it was funny. It worked out fine for me, last night."
"How?"
"Well, after twenty minutes or so it got through to us that Alicia wasn't going to go away. I mean, we were eating dinner, and she wasn't, but she wanted to talk. When she said something about waiting and joining us for dessert, Jeff stood up and suggested they go somewhere and talk. She didn't look too pleased, but she went."
"What do you suppose be wanted to talk about?" Lovejoy laughed. "Do I read minds without permission? He wanted to tell her to bug off, of course! But he was gone half an hour, and by the time he came back Jennifer and I had sort of reached a decision. And George had this benign look he gets, like Bless you my children. He doesn't play around himself, but maybe he likes to think about other couples getting together. Maybe he's right; maybe it brightens up the marriage bed."
"Jeff came back alone?"
"That he did. He was nervous, jumpy. Friendly enough; I mean, he didn't get obnoxious when he saw how it was with me and Jennifer. But he was sweating, and I don't blame him."
"What time was this?"
"Seven twenty."
"Dead on?"
"Yah."
"Why would you remember a thing like that?"
"Well, when Jeff came back he wanted to know how long he'd been gone. So I looked at my' watch. Anyway, we stayed another fifteen minutes and then Jennifer and I took off."
Hennessey asked, "Just how bad were things between Jeff and Alicia?"
"Oh, they didn't fight or anything. It was just ... funny. For one thing; she's kind of let herself go since the divorce. She used to be pretty. Now she's gone to seed. Not many men chase her these days, so she has to do the chasing. Some men like that,"
"Do you?"
"Not particularly ... I've spent some nights with her, if that's what you're asking. I just like variety. I'm not a heartbreaking man; I run with girls who like variety too."
"Did Alicia?"
"I think so. The trouble was, she slept with a lot of gays Jeff introduced her to. He didn't like that. It made him look bad. And once she played nasty to a guy who turned her down, and it ruined a business deal."
"But they didn't fight."
"No. Jeff wasn't the type. Maybe that's why they got divorced. She was just someone he couldn't avoid. We all know people like that."
"After he came back without Alicia, did be leave the table at any time?"
"I don't think so. No. He just sat there, making small talk. Badly."
George Larimer was a writer of articles, one of the few who made good money at it. He lived in Arizona. No, he didn't mind a quick trip to the police station, he said, emphasizing the quick. Just let him finish this paragraph-and he breezed in five minutes later.