"Niven, Larry - Flash Crowd" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Jerryberry went to help him. It occurred to him that of those present, the policeman was most likely to know what had been going on. The voice in his earpiece told him that others were on their way, even as his eye found them leaving the booths: faces he knew on men carrying cameras like his own. He knelt beside the policeman.
УOfficer, can you tell me what happened?Ф
The uniformed man looked up with hurt, bewildered eyes. He said something that the directional mike picked up, but JenybenyТs ears lost it in the crowd noise. He heard it later on the news. УWhereТs my hat?Ф
Jerrybeny repeated, УWhat happened here?Ф while a dozen C.B.A. men around him were interviewing the crowd, and police were pouring out of the displacement booths. The flow of blue uniforms looked like far more than they were. They had to use their shock-sticks to get through the crowd.
Some of the spectators-shoppers-strollers had decided to leave. A wise decision, but impractical. The nearest booths could not be used at all. They held passengers cased in glass, each trying to get his door open against the press of the mob. Every few seconds one would give up and flick out, and another trapped passenger would be pushing at the door.
For blocks around, there was no way to get into a displacement booth. As fast as anyone left a booth, someone else would flick in. Most were nondescript citizens who came to gape. A few carried big cardboard rectangles carelessly printed in fluorescent colors, often with the paint still wet. A different few, nondescript otherwi~e, had rocks in their pockets.
For Jerryberry, kneeling above the felled policeman and trying to get audible sense out of him, it all seemed to explode. He looked up, and it was a riot.
УItТs a riot,Ф he said, awed. The directional mike picked it up.
The crowd surged, and he was moving. He looked back, trying to see if the policeman had gained his feet. If he hadnТt, he could be hurt.. . but the crowd surged away. In this mob there was no conservation of matter; there were sources and sinks in it, and today all the sinks were sources. The flow had to go somewhere.
A young woman pushed herself close to Jenybeny. Her eyes were wide; her hair was wild. A kind of rage, a kind of joy, made her face a battlefield. УLegalize direct-current stimulus!Ф she screamed at him. She lunged and caught the snout of JenyberryТs camera and mike and pulled it around to face her. УLegalize wireheading!Ф
Jerryberry wrenched the camera free. He turned it toward the big display window in PenneyТs. The glass was gone. Men crawled in the display window, looting. Jenybeny held the camera high, taking pictures of them over the bobbing heads. He had the scene for a momentЧand then three signs shot up in front of the camera. One said УУTANSTAAFL.Ф and one bore a mushroom cloud and the words СPOWER CORRUPTS!Ф and Jertybeny never read the third because the crowd surged again and he had to scramble to keep his feet. There were men and women and children being trampled here. He could be one of them.
How had it happened? HeТd seen it all, but he didnТt understand.
He tried to keep the camera over his head. He got a big brawny hairy type carrying a stack of teevees under his ann, half a dozen twenty-inch sets almost an inch thick. The thief saw the camera facing him and the solenm face beneath, and he roared and lunged toward Jerryberry.
Jerrybeny abruptly realized that there were people here who would not want to be photographed. The big man had dropped his teevees and was plowing toward him with murder on his face. Jerrybeny had to drop his camera to get away. When he looked back, the big man was smashing the camera against a lamp post.
Idiot. The scene was on tape now, in the C.B.A. buildings in Los Angeles and in Denver.
The riot splashed outward. Jenybeny perforce went with it. He concentrated on keeping his feet.
2

The explosive growth of the mall riot has taken enforcement agencies by surprise. Police have managed to hold the perimeter and are letting people through the lines, but necessarily in small numbers.
The screen showed people being filtered through a police blockade, one at a time. They looked tired, stunned. One had two pockets full of stolen wristwatches. He did not protest when they confiscated the watches and led him away. A blank-eyed girl maintained a death grip on a rough wooden stick glued to a cardboard rectangle. The cardboard was crumpled and torn, the Day-Gb colors smeared.
Meanwhile all displacement booths in the area have been shut down from outside. The enclosed area includes fourteen city blocks. Viewers are warned away from the following areas.. . . These scenes were taken by C .B .A. helicopter.
Most of the street lights were out. Those left cast monstrous shadows through the mall. Orange flames flickered in the windows of a furniture store. Diminutive figures, angered by spotlights in the helicopter, pointed and shouted silently into the camera viewpoint. The deep, earnest voice went on: We are getting no transmissions from inside the affected area. A dozen C.B.A. newsmen and an undisclosed number of police in the area have not been heard from....
Many of the rioters are armed. A C.B .A. helicopter was shot down early today but was able to crash-land beyond the perimeter. Close shot of a helicopter smashed against a brick wall. Two men being carried out on stretchers, in obvious haste. The source of weapons is not known. Police conjecture that they may have been looted from KerrТs Sport Shop, which has a branch in the mall.
How did it all start?
The square brown face looking out of the tridee screen was known throughout the English-speaking world. When news was good, that wide mouth would smile enormously, the filter cigarette in the middle of it smoldering delicately between white front teeth. It was not smiling now. That expression was more earnest; it was shaken.
Jenyberry Jansen looked back with no expression at all.
He had thrown away his camera and seen it destroyed. He had dropped his coin purse and ear mike into a trash can. Not being a newsman was a good idea during the mall riot. Now, an hour after the police had let him through, he was still wandering aimlessly. He had no goal. Almost, he had thrown away his identity.
He stood in front of an appliance-store window, watching teevee. The deep, precise voice of Wash Evans was audible through the glassЧbarely.
How did it all start?
Evans vanished, and Jenybeny watched scenes taken by his own cam-
era. A milling crowd, mostly trying to get past a disturbance. . . a blueuniformed man, a brawny woman with a heavy purse... . The officer was trying to arrest a suspected shopljfter, who has not been ident~fied, when this man appeared on the scene.
Picture of Jertyberry Jansen, camera held high,~ caught in the view of another C.B.A. camera.
Barry Jerome Jansen, a roving newstaper. It was he who reported the disturbance (The woman swung her purse. The policeman went down, his arms half-raised as if to hide his head.) and reported it as a riot, to this man. Bailey, at his desk in the C.B.A. building. Jenybeny twitched. Sooner or later he would have to report to Bailey. And explain where his camera had gone.
HeТd picked up some good footage, and it was being used. A string of bonuses waiting for him. . . unless Bailey docked him for the cost of the camera.
George Lincoln Bailey sent in a crew to cover the disturbance. He also put the report on teevee, practically live, editing it as it came. At this point anyone with a teevee, anywhere in the United States, could see the violence being filmed by a dozen veteran C.B .A. newstapers.
The square dark face returned. And then it all blew up. The population of the mall expanded catastrophically, and they all started breaking things. Why? Wash Evans flashed a white grin with a cigarette in it. Well, it seems that there are people who like riots.
Jerryberry cocked his head. He had never heard it put quite like that.
Now, that seems silly. Who would want to be caught in a riot? Wash Evans had long, expressive fingers with pink nails. He began ticking off items on his fingers. First, more police, to stop whatТs being reported as a riot. Second, more newstapers. Third, anyone who wants publicity. On the screen behind Wash Evans signs shot out of a sea of moving heads. A girlТs face swelled enormously, so close she seemed all mouth, and shrieked, УLegalize wireheading!Ф
Anyone with a cause. Anyone who wants the ear of the public. There are newsmen here, man! And cameras! And publicity!
Behind Evans the scene jumped. That was Angela Monk coming out of a displacement booth! Angela Monk, the semi-porno movie actress, very beautiful in a dress of loose-mesh net made from white braided yarn, very self-possessed in the split second before she saw what sheТd flicked into. She tried to dodge back inside and to hell with the free coverage. A yell went up; hands pulled the door open before she could dial again; other hands pulled her out.
Then there are people who have never seen a riot in person. A lot of them came. What they think about it now is something else again.
Now, all of these might not be a big fat percentage of the public. How many people would be dumb enough to come watch a riot? But that little percentage, they all came at once, from all over the United States and some
other places, too. And the more there were, the bigger the crowd got, the louder it gotЧthe better it looked to the looters. Evans folded down his remaining finger. And the looters came from everywhere, too. These days you can get from anywhere to anywhere in three flicks.
Scenes shifted in EvansТs background. Store windows being smashed, a subdued wail of sirens. A C.B.A. helicopter thrashing bout in midair. An ape of a man carrying stolen tridees under one ann. Evans looked soberly out at his audience. So there you have it. An unidentified shoplifting suspect, a roving newsman who reported a minor disturbance as a riotЧ УGood God!Ф Jerrybeny Jansen was jolted completely awake.
УTheyТre blaming me!Ф

УTheyТre blaming me, too,Т said George Bailey. He ran his hands through his hair, glossy shoulder-length white hair that grew in a fringe around a dome of suntanned scalp. УYouТre second in the chain. IТm tired. If only they could find the woman who hit the cop!Ф
УTheyhavenТt?Ф
УNot a sign of her. Jansen, you look like hell.Ф
УI should have changed suits. This one s been through a riot.Ф JerryberryТs laugh sounded forced, and was. УIТm glad you waited. It must be way past your quitting time.Ф