The Valley-Westside War ct-6 Read online

  Right now, they were fluorescing or doing whatever fluorescents did. And Fm not there to see them, Dan thought angrily. I have to stay out here to try to make sure Cat's soldiers don't sneak up and murder us. It hardly seemed fair.

  You couldn't tell you were going anywhere when you rode in a transposition chamber. And, in a very real sense, you weren't going anywhere. You got out in exactly the same place as the one you'd left. The same place, yes, but not the same alternate.

  Details, details, Liz thought. Traveling between alternates was as boring as flying coach. More boring, really. You didn't have a video screen inside a transposition chamber, and you couldn't look out the window. Transposition chambers had no windows. And if they did, all you'd see out of them was Nothing, with a capital N. She sighed. She just had to sit in her seat and sog, like breakfast cereal soaking up milk.

  Going between the home timeline and the nuked alternate didn't seem to take any longer than coming back had. In reality, neither took any time at all. But the body perceived something that felt like time while the chamber shuttled between worlds. Duration, the chronophysicists called it.

  A few lights on the control panel at the front of the chamber went from amber or red to green. “We're here.” the operator announced.

  Liz and her mother and father stepped out of the transposition chamber. The bare, concrete-walled chamber in which they stood was a lot like the one from which they'd departed. But it wasn't the same chamber. And, even if they were in the same place, they were also in a new place. They'd left San Pedro, the harbor district of Los Angeles, in California, in the United States. Now they'd come to the independent Kingdom of Speedro.

  Behind them, the transposition chamber disappeared. Chambers never hung around long once they'd delivered their passengers. The} always had something else to do, some other alternate to go to.

  “Hello, there.” someone called from up above, where the trap door opened. “We knew you were coming, so we baked a cake!”

  The Stoyadinoviches, who ran Crosstime Traffic's Speedro trading center, turned out to be very nice people. A lot of the sailors and fishermen in Speedro were descended from Serbs, so the Stoyadinoviches fit right in. And. just as George said, his wife-her name was Irma -really had baked a cake. It was sweetened with honey and raisins, because sugar w?as rare and expensive here. That didn't mean it wasn't good.

  George Stoyadinovich had an amazing mustache. Asterix and Obelix and even Vitalstatistix would have envied it. The ends hung down onto his chest. He also had a good grasp of what was going on in Speedro. “Yeah, they're all hot to help the Westside,” he said. “If Cal gets Westwood back, Speedro will take some of the South Bay as payment for giving him a hand.”

  “And if Cal doesn't get Westwood back. Speedro will grab some of the South Bay anyhow,” Irma Stoyadinovich added. “In that case, the Westside won't be strong enough to do anything about it.”

  “Can we get over the border between Speedro and the Westside?” Dad asked.

  “Sure.” Mr. Stoyadinovich nodded, which made his soup-strainer waft up and down. “Long as you're carrying something the Westside army can use-bullets, boots, whatever-they'll give you a big hug and a kiss.”

  “'What's going on up at the Santa Monica Freeway line?” Liz asked.

  Both Stoyadinoviches frowned. “Well, that's a long way off,” Mrs. Stoyadinovich said. It wasn't more than forty-five minutes by car, unless the traffic was bad. But that was in the home timeline. Here, it was a couple of days away, at least.

  “Yeah, we aren't so sure about the news we get from up there,” George Stoyadinovich agreed. “Most of the time, it's gone through six or eight people by the time it gets to us. Who knows how weird it gets while it's doing that? It's like playing telephone at a party, you know?”

  Liz nodded. By the time a phrase got whispered from a dozen mouths into a dozen ears and came back to the person who started it, it sounded nothing like what that person said at first.

  “There isn't much shooting right now-we're pretty sure of that,” Mr. Stoyadinovich went on. “You guys are going to try to sneak back up into Westwood, right?”

  “Gotta do it,” Dad answered. “We got the grant to see why things went kablooie here, and the YRL's the best place to look.”

  “The URL,” Mom reminded him. “It's the URL here.”

  Dad made a face. He hated making mistakes- Liz took alter him there. Mom was more easygoing about it. Rut if he said that around locals, they'd wonder where the devil he came from. And it was such an easy slip to make. Liz shook her head. No wonder Dan got so curious-or suspicious-about her. Did she betray herself every time she opened her mouth? She could hope not. anyway.

  That mustache made Mr. Stoyadinovich 's frown a fearsome thing. “Well, you know what you're doing, I guess. But if they chased you out of there once, I sure wouldn't want to go back so soon.”

  “If the grant runs out…” Dad didn't go on. or need to.

  Mr. and Mrs. Stoyadinovich both nodded, “Yeah, I know that song,” he said. “But watch yourselves just the same.”

  “You've got a wagon and a team for us. don't you?” Mom said.

  “Sure do.” the Stoyadinoviches said in chorus. George went on, “You'll dig it. Body's made from an Old Time station wagon, so it'll hold a lot, and you'll look rich. And the horses are as gentle as you please.”

  To Liz, that mattered more than the rest. Till she came here, horses were animals that ran races or lived on farms. She'd never dreamt how important they could be in alternates where machines didn't work. Oh, she'd known, but she hadn't seen with her own eyes. That made all the difference in the world.

  Now how will I get back into the URL? she wondered. Somebody from her family would have to figure out a way. Well, they still had some time to think about it. They wouldn't get up to the Westside right away. In an alternate like this, nothing happened in a hurry.

  Ten.

  Dan pulled the trigger on his matchlock. The serpentine swept down. The glowing end of the match set off the priming powder around the touch-hole. The charge inside the barrel of the gun exploded. The matchlock bucked against Dan 's shoulder.

  Sergeant Chuck went down the range to examine the target.

  “How'd I do?” Dan called after him.

  “Well, you hit it.” Chuck didn't sound as happy as he should have. Like a lot of sergeants, he was allergic to sounding happy, no matter what. And he had another bone to pick with Dan: “I don't see how you hit it. You aren't getting enough practice, and you know you aren't.”

  “I can't help it, Sergeant,” Dan said. “They want me to help them find out stuff about the traders' house.” He didn't mention Liz 's name. That would only have set Chuck off again.

  Chuck turned out to need zero help from him. “So they found electric lights there. Big deal!” he said. “All I've got to tell you is, they may have found electric lights, but they're ruining somebody who was a pretty good soldier.”

  That might have been the first time he'd ever said he thought Dan made a pretty good soldier. It was just like him to say it so it suggested Dan had been but wasn't any more. “If I'm all ruined and everything, Sergeant, how did I hit the target?” Dan asked.

  “Luck,” Chuck answered at once. '“Nothing but dumb luck.”'

  “I bet I do it again.” Dan knew he was taking a chance. The matchlock wasn't a very accurate weapon. Even a good shot could go astray. If his did, Chuck would make him pay for it. Oh, would he ever!

  But the sergeant shook his head. “Nah, don't bother. Even if you hit, it doesn't really prove anything. Besides, you're getting soft because you're not exercising enough. You can't tell me you are, either.”

  Since Dan couldn't, he tried to change the subject: “I'm just doing what the officers tell me to do. Sergeant.”

  “Yeah, like officers know anything,” Chuck said scornfully. “Are they gonna figure out electric lights? Get serious! Are you gonna help 'em figure those lights out? What do you know about
electricity?”

  “Nothing, Sergeant.” Dan gave the only honest answer he could.

  “Well, then!” Triumph filled Chuck 's voice.

  “But neither does anybody else,” Dan said.

  “And you're gonna be the one who finds out? Ha! Don't make me laugh.”

  Even though Dan didn't think that was real likely, either, he didn't like the sergeant teasing him about it. And he had a good way to get Chuck off his back: “I do need to go back. They want me there.”

  “The more fools them,” Chuck said. But he couldn't tell Dan not to go, not when Dan had orders. He did tell Dan to clean his musket first. Dan did. He took keeping the musket clean very seriously.

  Then he hurried off to the traders” house on Glendon. Even if Liz hadn't lived there, he would have been glad to go. Every time the electric lights came on (and how? by magic?), he fell as ii he were back in the Old Time. Ii he only had some gasoline, he might have gone looking for an automobile, to see if he could make it start.

  Captain Horace had put sentries at the front door. He didn't want anybody who wasn't supposed to be there gelling in and gawking at the lights. The sentries knew who Dan was. He had no trouble getting past them.

  Sergeant Max and his bloodhounds were in the courtyard. By now, the bloodhounds knew who Dan was. too. They came over and sniffed Ins boots. He patted their heads and scratched them behind the ears. They looked as happy as you could if your face was made for saying your grandmother had just died.

  “Do you expect them to find anything here after all this time?” Dan asked Max.

  The sergeant shook his head. “Nah, not really. But I can give ‘em a rest from running around, so that's cool, you know? They re good dogs. They won’t get into any trouble.”

  “Okay.”“ Dan said. If you argued with a sergeant, you lost unless you were an officer. Sometimes you lost even if you were an officer. A lot of young lieutenants let their sergeants run their platoons. More often than not, that was smart, too, because sergeants usually had a better notion of what was going on.

  Dan went downstairs. He wanted to look at the electric lights again. Even if he didn't understand them, he liked being around them. They told him something about how marvelous Old Time really was. To have lights like those whenever you wanted them… How cool was that?

  Captain Horace was clown there, too, with a gray-haired man whose hair stuck out in tufts that went every which way. Dan recognized him straight off. Dr. Saul was the closest thing to a scientist the Valley had. Up till now. Dan had thought he was the smartest man in the world.

  Maybe he was… these days. But now Dan couldn't help wondering how he stacked up against a real Old Time scientist. Was he still smart, or nothing but a bumbling fool? Then again, no matter how clever the Old Time scientists were, they went and blew up the world. How smart did that make them, really?

  Right now, Dr. Saul was pitching a fit. “Those lights have got to have a power source somewhere!” he shouted at Captain Horace.

  “Where?” the officer asked-reasonably. Dan thought. ''What does it look like?”

  “I don't know!” Yes, Dr. Saul sounded plenty peeved. “If I knew things like that, I'd be able to do them myself. Where do the wires from the fluorescent tubes go?”

  “Beats me.” Captain Horace sounded cheerful admitting how ignorant he was. “Far as I know, nobody's looked. There are wires up there, you say?”

  Dan thought Dr. Saul would blow a gasket. He wasn't quite sure what a gasket was. but the scientist sure looked ready to blow something. He tore at his hair. Dan had never seen anybody do that before, though people talked about tearing their hair all the time. No wonder Dr. Saul 's looked as if he'd never heard of a comb. Maybe he was lucky to have anv hair at all.

  “Nobody's looked?” he roared, loud enough to raise echoes in the basement under the basement. ''Are you people blind, or just really, really stupid? Why haven't you looked?” He suddenly rounded on Dan. “Why haven't you looked?” he demanded, as if it were all Dan 's fault.

  “Sir, I don't know anything about electricity. I don't know anything about wires,” Dan answered. “I'm still learning how to take care of a matchlock.”

  “Well, do you suppose you can learn to get me a ladder?” Dr. Saul said. “Somebody's got to do the work around here.” By the way he said it, he meant he had to do everything himself. But he didn't have to find a ladder and then lug it down two flights of stairs. That was work for the likes of Dan.

  Once the ladder was in place, Dr. Saul climbed it as nimbly as a monkey. That was one more thing people said without thinking about. How nimble were monkeys? Dan had never seen one. He didn't know anybody who had, either.

  The scientist got a cover off so he could look right at the fluorescent tube under it. He cautiously reached out and touched the tube. “Isn't it hot?” Dan asked.

  “No. I didn't think it would be.” But Dr. Saul sounded relieved enough to show he hadn't been sure. He gave the tube a twist, and it came away from something set into the ceiling, lt also stopped glowing, which made the underground room noticeably gloomier.

  “Did you kill it?” Captain Horace asked.

  “No, no, no.” Dr. Saul shook his head. His hair went on moving after his head stopped. *'I want a look at the socket.” Cautiously, he lugged at the socket. “It's set into the concrete, confound it. The wire must go through there.”

  “Are you sure there's a wire?” the officer said.

  “Of course I am. Of course there is,” Dr. Saul said. “This isn't magic, you know. But we'd have to chip away that concrete to get at the wire and trace it back to the power source.” He muttered to himself. “We'd probably break something.”

  If “we” suddenly started chipping concrete, who would do the real work? It wouldn't be Dr. Saul. He thought about things-he didn't actually do them. It wouldn't be Captain Horace or any sergeant. No, it would be somebody a lot like Dan, somebody who wasn't good for anything else. They'd look at it like that, anyhow.

  Dan slid up the stairs and out the trap door while Dr. Saul was still talking. Nobody noticed him go. Who paid attention to common soldiers? When you needed one, you went and grabbed him. Otherwise, forget it.

  By the time they might have thought about needing Dan, he was already back on the Santa Monica Freeway line with the rest of his company. He could hope they would grab somebody closer to chip concrete.

  They likely did. They didn't come grab him. anyhow. That suited him fine.

  Liz had seen several wagons like the one the Stoyadinoviches gave the Mendozas. It was made from an old Chevrolet, a brand still alive in the home timeline. The engine and the fenders and the roof were gone. Losing the engine saved a lot of weight. Losing the fenders saved weight, too, and let the wainwright install big wooden wheels with iron rims to replace metal wheels and rubber tires that had rotted away. And in place of the roof were iron hoops and a cloth cover that reached up much higher and let the auto body hold more.

  When Liz looked at the team hitched to that contraption, she cracked up. “What's so funny?” George Stoyadinovich asked. “They're good horses-you won't find better ones this side of Santa Anita.”

  “I'm sure they are,” she said. “But… It's a car, right? And what's a car? A horseless carriage, right? And so this is a horseless carriage-with horses! How crazy is that?”

  Mr. Stoyadinovich thought about that for a few seconds. Then he started to laugh, too. “I never looked at it that way before.” He turned to Dad. “Keep an eye on her. She's dangerous.”

  “Really? I never would have noticed,” Dad said, deadpan. Mr. Stoyadinovich laughed harder than ever. Liz stuck her nose in the air and sniffed. That only made Mrs. Stoyadinovich and Morn bust up. Liz glared at her mother; who ignored her. Sometimes you couldn't win.

  ““You've got a pretty good cargo there, too,” Mr. Stoyadinovich said. “People go out and party when they find Old Time Levi's in good shape. And they should, because it doesn't happen very often any more. An
d the ones you're taking north, they're just like new.” He winked.

  Liz knew what the wink meant. The jeans in the wagon weren't just like new, from some unearthed clothing store. They were new, from the home timeline. The locals wouldn't know the difference. These were special trade Levi 's, made in a style that wouldn't have been out of place in the 1960s.

  The Chevy wagon's doors and front seal were still intact. The windshield could have survived, but the driver needed to be able to use the reins when he sat behind the steering wheel.

  “Is that a cool set of wheels or what?” George Stoyadinovich said, winking again.

  By the standards of this alternate, the wagon was without a doubt a cool set of wheels. By the standards of the home timeline… “I think it's what,” Liz said.

  For a moment, George didn't get it. Then he did, and laughed twice as hard to show he did. “You are a troublemaker,'“ he said. He aimed his right forefinger at Liz and brought his thumb down. “Bang!”

  She mimed being shot, and staggered all over the place. “Too much ham in your sandwich,” Dad told her.

  “Let's go.” Mom was the relentlessly practical one in the family. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we make it up to the Westside again.”

  Dad sat behind the wheel. Springs creaked when Liz got in beside him. The old upholstery had long since rotted away. The new upholstery was leather, which made Liz a little queasy. People in the home timeline didn't think leather was quite so bad as fur, but they used imitations almost all the time. There were no imitations here. All the Old Time Naugahyde was long gone, and Naugas seemed to be extinct in this alternate. So the locals used the real stuff, and didn't lose any sleep about it. This couldn't have been any more real-it smelled powerfully of cow.

  “Giddyap!” Dad flicked the reins. He had a whip, too, in case the horses didn't feel like moving. But they leaned into the traces and started to pull. Slowly at first, then at a more respectable speed, the wagon headed toward the Harbor Freeway. It had its southern end in Speedro.