Red Tide Read online

  RED TIDE

  LARRY NIVEN

  ADDITIONAL WORKS BY

  BRAD R. TORGERSEN

  &

  MATTHEW J. HARRINGTON

  THE STELLAR GUILD SERIES

  TEAM-UPS WITH BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  MIKE RESNICK

  SERIES EDITOR

  Copyright Statment

  Red Tide copyright © 2014 by Larry Niven. All rights reserved. A shorter and different version of Red Tide was published in 1973 as Flash Crowd. Dial at Random copyright © 2014 by Larry Niven. All rights reserved. Sparky the Dog copyright © 2014 by Brad R. Torgersen. All rights reserved. Displacement Activity copyright © 2014 by Matthew J. Harrington. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

  Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Rider, Manor Thrift, The Stellar Guild, and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor, LLC, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.

  This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.

  Series edited by Mike Resnick.

  ISBN (DIGITAL): 978-1-61242-133-9

  ISBN (PAPER): 978-1-61242-132-2

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  A GREETING FROM THE SERIES EDITOR

  WELCOME TO THE STELLAR GUILD. In every book we’ve combined a new novella by an established star with a novelette or novella—a prequel, sequel, or companion piece—by a protégé of the star’s own choosing. Our first few books featured Kevin J. Anderson, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Nancy Kress, and Eric Flint—and the very first book in the series, Tau Ceti, by Kevin and his protégé, Steven Savile, won the Lifeboat To The Stars Award.

  This time we’re doing something just a little different. Our star, Larry Niven, has been one of the brightest in the field of science fiction for about half a century now—and for this book he has two protégés, Matthew J. Harrington and Brad R. Torgersen. While Larry and Gregory Benford (the science columnist for our Galaxy’s Edge magazine) were busy collaborating on the bestselling Bowl of Heaven, he suggested that Matthew and Brad study his novella “Flash Crowd” for the venue, the time and place and conditions, that he wanted them to write about. When they had each completed their novelettes and Larry had finished Bowl of Heaven, he went to work expanding “Flash Crowd,” which is now “Red Tide,” and then as a bonus he wrote a new story, “Dial at Random,” which is just a few words shy of novelette length itself.

  We think it’s a unique team-up, and we hope you’ll like it as much as we do.

  Mike Resnick

  A Word From Larry Niven

  THIS BOOK TAUGHT ME a writer’s lesson.

  In 1973 I had promised Robert Silverberg a story about teleportation. My notion was that my form of teleportation would obey all the conservation laws of high school physics. When inspiration didn’t come, I used a writer’s trick: I made two lists.

  First, I listed everything I would expect to happen if teleport booths became commercial. What happens to airports, to traffic, newspapers, etc. Second, who gets hurt? (Following one of Theodore Sturgeon’s rules. He who gets hurt is your main character.) I wrote Bob a story from those lists. With a new universe to play with, I wrote four more stories, crime stories.

  N-Space is a collection Tor published in 1990. For that book Robert Gleason collected quotes about me from a variety of sources. David Brin accused me of stealing his ideas before he’d thought of them: “If you think that the territory of notions is limited, then the hard SF writer is like a wildcat miner drilling into resources that are shrinking … If their reasoning is true—and I don’t think it is—one of the reasons is that you have writers like Larry Niven out there mining out whole veins and leaving nothing left for the rest of us to explore.” I was pleased and flattered and grateful to David for doing this, and I never considered that there might be anything in it. I don’t believe ideas are limited either.

  So it’s late 2012, and here comes Mike Resnick with a suggestion. Let’s get an established writer (me) together with a younger writer, and we’ll each write a new story set in the same fictional universe! This notion isn’t a crapshoot: Mike has been trying it and it works. “Great!” I said. “We’ll use the Flash Crowd universe. It’s forty years old and hasn’t hardly been touched. And I’ve got a novice in mind,” and I offered Matthew Harrington. He’d written several dynamite stories for the Man-Kzin War volumes, and we’d done a novel too (The Goliath Stone). Mike had a writer in mind too, and that was Brad Torgersen. I didn’t know Brad as well, but heyyy. We agreed to put two younger writers in this volume, and I’d shorten my novella. Hah! Less work.

  So I sat down to write. I made some notes, and got stuck. David Brin had used the word “rapacious,” and he was right. Sonofabitch. Forty years ago, a younger Larry Niven had moved into the territory of rationalized teleportation and stripped it of every implication, leaving nothing for me.

  Well, not quite. I was stuck for three or four months. But I remembered an old idea, never touched, and I wrote “Dial at Random.” Meanwhile Brad suggested that without the rules laid out in “Flash Crowd” our readers could be left hopelessly confused. I agreed, and told Mike. In the end, and with Brad’s help, I rewrote and expanded “Flash Crowd” into “Red Tide.” Start reading there.

  Larry Niven

  BOOK ONE: RED TIDE

  LARRY NIVEN

  PROLOGUE

  BARRY JEROME JANSEN WAS TWELVE years old when he witnessed the last recorded car-on-car traffic accident in the state of California.

  Standing outside an ice cream shop, Barry was spectating an impromptu parade of vintage automobiles, all being driven along the historic Highway 1. The cars were headed north, to a classic auto convention in San Francisco. Drivers smiled at the pedestrians who came out to gawk. Convertible tops were down. Engines mutually rumbled—the kind of sound that was odd in Barry’s ears, but which seemed to elicit a gleam of pleasant reverie from Barry’s father’s eyes. Before quickly being replaced by a too-familiar, taciturn glare.

  On that late Sunday morning, Barry paid his father no mind. Barry was rapt. Watching the cars roll past was a little like watching a fleet of stagecoaches trundle by: pieces of famous technology, each passing into history. Overall, the automobile was an amazing machine. The useful lifespan of which had lasted roughly about as long as the typewriter. Not bad. Cars had been essential to the genesis of the 21st century. But now their day was over.

  Barry felt an instinct to salute.

  He got a shock when a polished, purple El Camino nosed into the back of a gleaming, steel-grey Jaguar.

  It was a quick sound: scrunch!

  Almost immediately, Barry and his father were politely shouldered out of the way by a young woman with a camera in her hand.

  She had on a headset and was talking quietly into the microphone b
oom that delicately traced along one cheek, down toward her thin-lipped mouth. She was also freckled and wearing shorts with a tank top. Perhaps all of nineteen years old?

  Barry instantly assumed she was a tourist.

  But … no.

  She held herself with entirely too much poise. And seemed to be conversing as if in a detached manner.

  A small crowd gathered as the drivers each exited their cars, surveyed the damage, then began shaking their heads.

  And almost as fast, a pair of uniformed California Highway Patrol officers appeared. The two women—still wearing characteristic mirror-lensed aviator sunglasses—had come without a car of their own.

  And while they began to discuss the details of the wreck with the owners—one cop directing traffic around the accident, while the other cop typed up a ticket on her digital pad—Barry merely stared at the girl with the camera. She was slowly scanning her device back and forth, all the way around the scene. And though Barry couldn’t hear precisely what she was saying, he suspected that what she was saying was important.

  And he was right.

  Later that evening when Barry and his father returned home, there on the news was the evidence: high-resolution footage of the scene of the accident, including the accident itself. No injuries reported, thankfully. Just some bruised feelings between hobbyists who’d now be spending even more money to repair and revitalize their expensive collectible contraptions.

  As Barry watched the news and listened to the slow, confident words of the young woman speaking over the footage, he felt an electric tickle at the back of his brain. The woman wasn’t much older than him, yet she was right there, detailing events. Making history.

  For an instant, Barry and his father flashed into view. Both of them had their eyes focused on the wreck.

  “The lady we saw today,” Barry asked, “the one with the camera—is she a reporter?”

  Eric Jansen was seated in his use-worn easy chair in the family’s smallish living room. Most nights he kept to his e-reader, giving the TV no thought.

  Realizing he’d been asked a question, Barry’s father looked up: eyes tired.

  “They don’t call them reporters anymore, but yes. We were just dumb-fool fortunate enough to be standing there when that fender bender happened. It seems silly now, that this kind of thing makes the evening news. A few years ago nobody cared about a wreck unless it was a multi-car pileup on the Interstate.”

  Barry’s father sighed, and went back to his e-reader.

  But Barry had been struck dumb.

  The idea, of capturing that moment … on the scene, in the instant, recording it all for the masses … a kind of fame, yes. But a kind of power, too!

  Barry looked around at the modest, anonymously decorated house he’d lived in ever since he was a toddler, and swore to himself that he’d become just like the woman with the camera.

  ***

  “In the old days we used to call you cub reporters,” said the collection desk controller for the Golden State Bulletin-Gazette. She was past middle-aged, with a head full of cornrows which had just begun to turn silver at the roots. Her brown skin was nicely complexioned, and her eyes were sharp: the kind of eyes that told you in one glance they’d seen it all before.

  Barry was standing with five other teenagers just behind the collection desk proper, where the controller—Sharlaqueen—was giving them their orientation. Theirs was not a paid gig, of course. This was strictly intern work. The kind of thing intended to teach and season raw novices. Of which Barry was one in a long line to have passed through Sharlaqueen’s hands.

  “Now we’re newstapers?” said the teen to Barry’s left, a tallish Chinese fellow who seemed so full of energy he couldn’t keep still.

  “Not yet,” Sharlaqueen said. “Do any of you know what the difference is, between a proper newstaper—and some idiot with a digital phone camera?”

  The six youths slowly shook their heads.

  “It’s the ability to keep cool under fire,” Sharlaqueen said. “This is not a crazy home movies production we run at the Bulletin-Gazette—pushing out shit videos of your friends doing faceplants off their skateboards. The Golden State Bulletin-Gazette is a serious news source, and gets fifteen million unique hits per day. Our advertisers are depending on us to keep our content professional. Got it?”

  Barry nodded dumbly. He was sure he didn’t get it. Yet. But he did remember the woman he’d seen at the car wreck, when he was younger. She’d watched and narrated the whole thing like she had ice in her veins. No excited exclamations, nor any herky-jerky movements. Smooth as silk. That’s what Barry wanted to be, too.

  He still wondered how much that woman had made for her footage. Which eventually broadcast all over California, and nationally too—once the newswires picked it up as a color piece.

  Barry had heard rumors that such a spot—going viral—could net a newstaper tens of thousands of dollars. Riches beyond imagination for a young man Barry’s age. All he needed was experience. A track record to hang his hat on, and peddle either to the permanent hiring office at the Bulletin-Gazette or elsewhere.

  Sharlaqueen was right. Any fool could use a digital device to snap footage. It took a steady hand and a steady mind to be a pro.

  Barry was itching to go, despite his father’s reluctant approval.

  Anything to get out of the damned house …

  “This is the nerve center,” Sharlaqueen said, motioning her arm across her desk. “I keep tabs on every newstaper on the Bulletin-Gazette’s books. Any time anyone’s got something for me to look at, the alert comes here. Where I evaluate the material—either live or recorded—and determine whether or not to push it to the team upstairs.”

  “So you control what’s news?” asked a girl to the other side of the Chinese boy. She was overly short, and somewhat plump, but with an inquisitive bearing.

  “I suppose you could say I am a first-level filter,” Sharlaqueen said. “And I’ve been doing this job for longer than any of you children have been alive. So if you want to get in good with the Bulletin-Gazette, you’d better pay attention to the directions I’ll be giving you. Send me too much bullshit, and I’ll order your internship scrubbed. I don’t have time to waste with amateurs. From this point forward you all should start thinking and acting like newspeople. Understood?”

  A short chorus of yes-ma’ams.

  They were each given an expensive set of gear: a stabilized camera, with microphone, and a headpiece. The total cost of which was made quite plain, due to the fact that if any of them lost or damaged the equipment, it would be assessed against them as a credit debt.

  When Barry had the temerity to ask how the Golden State Bulletin-Gazette could afford to trust teenagers with such pricey electronics, Sharlaqueen informed them that it was a calculated risk. One that usually made the company more money than it lost, in the form of quality newstapers who developed into competent deliverers of bona fide content. Which kept the readership and viewership happy, and thus the advertising dollars remained consistent.

  His first day on the job, Barry spent his time fumbling around the Bulletin-Gazette offices. Under the watchful eye of one of the veteran special interest newstapers who’d come in at Sharlaqueen’s request. To train the new batch of interns on how to use the stabilized camera system to full effect, how to move slowly and talk without too much umm and errrr, as well as how to look for potentially newsworthy footage.

  “You won’t know it until it happens,” he finally said.

  The man’s name was Horace Lamarquez—a name Barry recognized from the news. Horace had done a lot of local and even a few national pieces. Not precisely a famous newstaper, Horace nevertheless had the chops to know what he was talking about. Barry listened intently, and raised his hand to ask questions.

  Which he did quite often.

  “Yes, Barry?” Horace said.

  “If we won’t know it until it happens, what’s the point in going out to try to look for it?”


  “It’s like this,” Horace said, fingering the moustache under his nose. “A good newstaper never stands still. She gets out into the city, or into the world, and she learns to have an instinct for what might happen, and where. Of course, some of the best newstaper footage in recent memory is the kind no person could possibly plan for. Remember the four-alarm fire last week? One of my friends was standing in line at a store in the very shopping mall where the fire happened. He had the good sense to turn his camera on. That footage went national. My friend’s now going to take a vacation in the Bahamas.”

  The teenagers chuckled.

  But Barry was suddenly seeing dollar signs.

  The right newstaper, at the right place, at the right time …

  Luck would favor the intrepid, or so Barry hoped.

  He started his adventure the next day.

  ***

  On the street, it wasn’t nearly as easy as Barry had imagined it would be. And some of the first clips he sent back to Sharlaqueen got bounced with some rather unflattering commentary. Her critiques were pointed. Almost hurtful. But Barry tried to take it in stride. He’d come to the internship believing that newstaping was his future. A way out of his father’s house. A path to, if not fame per se, at least a little bit of fortune. And a chance to be part of things larger than any single person. Momentous, even?

  After the first day of fruitless effort, and then the second, and then the third, Barry caught himself wistfully wishing for a disaster. Like the mall fire Horace had mentioned. Mayhem! Explosions! Maybe a tsunami? An earthquake ought to provide work for a thousand newstapers, full-time.

  Then Barry quietly quashed these thoughts, and berated himself for ever thinking them in the first place.

  Being on the scene for something bad, and actively hoping for something bad, were two entirely different things. Barry wasn’t quite comfortable with himself for having gone down that road. What did it say about his character?