One Strange Party
By Mind Alone
Larry Niven, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June, 1966.
part 2
It was one strange party, all right. Just to get you placed, it all took place six years ago, in July of 1972, during the four-day weekend break in the summer semester at UCLA. The oil companies were rich then, and General Motors was worth three times what it is now.
We changed all that. We knew it was coming, but we didn’t expect to have to pay for it. We were young. Expecting something for nothing is part of being young.
There were seven couples here, fourteen of us out of the twenty in Larsen’s class, plus raymond C.F. Larsen himself. Pat couldn’t have invited more. As it was, some of had been on the couches last night, and would be tonight. Pat — Patricia Blacksman, the riches girl in the class — had invited as many as she could, and substituted where she got turned down, until she had enough to jam the wide stone bungalow which was Happy Days, her grandparent’s Lake Arrowhead retreat.
We wore sweaters and sports jackets, having discarded the swim suits earlier, and we looked like any group of UCLA students working out the fate of the world with drinks in our hands. But if you watched long enough you’d see the differences. You’d see somebody vanish and reappear elsewhere with a fresh drink or a handful of mixed nuts or a cigarette stolen from one of Pat’s crystal-and-silver cigarette boxes. You’d hear a skinny senior describing the teleporting society in Bester’s The Stars My Destination as if he’d thought it up all by himself; and you’d see that the five people around him were listening, really listening. You’d see Carol, ostensibly with me, flickering from clump to clump of drinkers as she tried to keep up with two arguments and a gossip session.
Larsen’s class was the world’s only class in teleportation. It was going to change the world. We were going to change the world. We felt the responsibility, yes we did. Throughout most of the big living room the talk dealt with noting else.
Teleportation is the gentle art of wishing yourself from place to place. And it works; it works fine, once you know how. The fifteen in our little party seemed to shift like a mirage. Watching them hurt the eyes. Pat Blackman was even busier than Carol, emptying ash trays, seeing that everyone had a drink, changing record and generally playing perfect hostess, all at distance-annihilating jumps like the flicker of a worn film. Ten minutes ago she’d stopped a flight by sheer diplomacy, when Tim Something tried to save a moment by teleporting into the john when Linda Baird was already there. In the middle of the room, tall and cadaverous and twenty-two years older than anyone else, Dr. Raymond C. F. Larsen was holding forth.
In this Sunday series of posts I will be “re-publishing” pulp science fiction short stories that have long since gone out of print. When possible I will seek out author’s and estates for permission.
