The Valley-Westside War ct-6 Read online

  She hoped her pause wasn't too obvious. Then she said, “There isn't much profit in Old Time history, or there hasn't been yet.”

  “So why do you do it, in that case?” Dan pounced like a cat jumping on a hamster.

  “It's my hobby, I guess,” Liz answered. “Some people collect teacups or stamps or Old Time baseball cards. Some people have windup trains. Some of them even still work, or I've heard they do, anyhow.”

  “Yeah, I've heard that, too,” Dan said. But he didn't sound convinced. He looked at her in a way she didn't like at all. She would rather have had him following her with his eyes because he thought she was pretty. She knew how to deal with that, and also knew it wasn't dangerous in any serious way. This intent, thoughtful stare, on the other hand… He went on, “I'll tell you what bothers me about your-hobby, like. It gives you the excuse to go to the library and look for things that could hurt my kingdom. I don't want anybody to get away with anything like that. Can you blame me?”

  You bet I can, Liz thought. What irked her was, she was telling the truth-mostly, anyhow. She didn't care about machine guns or hand grenades or tanks. The home timeline had far better weapons than the ones anybody had imagined in 1967. The history of this alternate, finding out exactly where its breakpoint was… that really mattered-to her. anyhow. But she could see she wouldn't be able to explain why in any way that made sense to Dan.

  So she didn't try. She just said, “If you're going to think like that, you'd better put guards around the library and keep everybody from going in and out. It's not just me, you know. Lots of people use the books there. That's what they're for. And you'd better take away all the Old Time encyclopedias you can find. I'm sure they talk about weapons and things, too. Or do you think I'm wrong?”

  He looked too unhappy to think she was wrong. “You're saying everyone who can read may be a spy,” he said slowly. He also sounded plenty unhappy.

  Liz shook her head. “'Most people aren't spies. Fm not a spy, for heaven's sake. I'm just saying you're on my case for no good reason, and I wish you weren't. It really bugs me, man.” Talking that way really bugged her, too, but she couldn't let on. To herself, she sounded like somebody from an ancient sitcom.

  “Sorry.” he said, but she knew he wasn't. He went on, “You got me interested in you, and now I can't help noticing the things you do.”

  That's what I was afraid of-one more thing Liz couldn't say. She did say, “Like, try. Fry as hard as you can.”

  He gave her a nasty look. “What would happen if we did search this place as hard as we could?”

  She glared back at him. She couldn't let him see the threat worried her. “You'd rob us again, same as you did when you came in here the first time. Just 'cause we can't do anything about it doesn't mean we have to like it.”

  “Thai's what you get for ending up on the losing side of a war,” Dan said.

  He wasn't even wrong. Five thousand years of history and countless alternates proved he wasn't. To the victors went the spoils. That was as old as the hills and as new as next week. It could have been worse, too. The Valley soldiers could have decided that Liz and her mother were part of the spoils. Lots of soldiers would have decided exactly that, and then things really would have turned ugly.

  “I'm not a soldier, and I'm not a spy,” Liz said. “I didn't do anything to you. I didn't do anything to the Valley or to King Zev, either.”

  “I guess not.” Yes, Dan agreed, but he didn't seem convinced. “But there's something funny about you. I don't know what it is. but it's there. You can't tell me it's not. You're… more foreign than most Westsiders. How come?”

  “I don't know,” Liz lied. She knew much too well. No matter how much she'd trained and practiced, she wasn't a real Westsider, and nothing could make her one. Somebody who really did belong to this alternate was liable to notice if he looked closely enough. Dan had. His reasons for looking closely weren't the ones that usually tripped up Crosstime Traffic people-he liked her. But that made him wonder about her in the same way as if he hated her.

  He scratched the side of his jaw. Those wispy whiskers rasped under his fingernails. She thought the noise was gross, but she couldn't tell him so. “Well, something funny's going on,” he said. “Something fishy. You know stuff you aren't telling. You're just lucky it's me asking the questions-that's all I've got to say.”

  Liz shook her head. “That's not true.” He glared at her. For a split second, she saw what he would look like if he did hate her. It wasn't pretty. But she made herself go on: “If I were

  lucky, nobody would be asking me questions, because I haven't done anything to deserve it.” Her voice broke on the last couple of words. She hadn't planned that, which probably made it even more effective.

  “Don't cry!” Dan exclaimed, which almost made Liz laugh instead. Yes, he liked her, and yes, her cracking voice had done her some good. He really sounded alarmed. “I have to ask you these questions, you know,” he said. “It's my Patriotic Duty.” She could hear the capital letters thud into place.

  “I think you're using your patriotic duty as an excuse to push people around,” Liz said. And how often had men and women done that In all the different histories of the world? Millions of times, more likely billions. Most of them would have had the purest motives imaginable-in their own minds, anyhow. The people they pushed around might have had a different opinion.

  “I am not,” he said angrily. “You tell me all this weird stuff about the Old Time-it's not what I learned in school, that's for sure. And you know too much about the Russians, and everybody knows how bad they are. So what am I supposed to think, anyway?”

  “I know what I know,” Liz said with a shrug. And how I know it is none of your business, pal. “I don't know what schools are like in the Valley, or what they teach you there. I don't know what Westside schools are like, either. I'm a traders' brat. Maybe that's what makes me seem different to you. We travel around a lot, so if my folks didn't teach me nobody would. If you want to blame anybody for the way I think, Blame them.”

  U Dan did decide to blame them… well, so what? They could disappear back to the home timeline, and so could Liz.

  “Where all do you travel?” Dan asked. “Have your folks ever seen real, live Russians with their own eyes? Have you?” He might have been talking about demons with horns and fangs and tails. By the way he asked the question, he probably thought he was.

  “I’ve never seen any Russians,” Liz said. “How could I? They're across the ocean.” She gestured toward the west. You could see the Pacific from the tops of tall buildings in West-wood. You could, if you felt like climbing all those flights of stairs to get that high off the ground. You took elevators for granted… till you had to do without them. When you were climbing stairs, who wanted to go more than four or five flights' worth?

  “What about your folks?” Dan didn't want to let it alone. Do they worship devils? He didn't say that, but it was what he meant.

  “I don't think they ever have. Like I said, how could they?” Liz answered. “But if you really want to know, you'd do better asking them yourself.”

  She wondered if he would. Talking with somebody your own age-even grilling somebody your own age-wasn't so hard. Taking on somebody as old as your parents had to be a lot tougher. Sure, Dan wore the uniform of a conquering army. But Dad and Mom wore a different kind of uniform: the beginnings of gray hair and wrinkles and the invisible armor of experience.

  She could tell he felt the burden. “Maybe I will,” he said, but not in a way that suggested he was looking forward to it. He got to his feet. “I guess you aren't trying to hurt the Valley. I guess.” He didn't sound sure about that, either-nowhere close. “I don't know just what you are up to, but it's something funny. History!” He shook his head and walked off toward the door. He didn't quite slam it behind him. but he also didn't shut it gently.

  Liz didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. The only thing that interested her about this alternate was its history. D
an wouldn't believe her if she told him so. And she couldn't tell him why it interested her, or that she was from the home timeline. She had to go on pretending to be something she wasn't, even if it got her into trouble. The trouble she'd get into if he ever found out what she really was would be even worse.

  A rock and a hard place. The devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. They were all clichйs, of course. But now Liz understood how they'd got to be clichйs. They put truth into a handful of words.

  She said a handful of words herself. None of them helped much. Saying them made her feel better-for a little while, anyway. Sometimes you took what you could get. even il it wasn't much.

  Dan stood in line, waiting for a cook to give him bread and fried chicken and sauerkraut. He hated sauerkraut. It was supposed to be good for you. so the cooks dished it out a couple of times a week. Sergeants kept an eye on you to make sure you really ate it. too.

  The stuff even smelled foul. One of the Valley soldiers in front of Dan pointed at the kettle where the sauerkraut bubbled and asked. “Who died?”

  “Oh. you're funny,” the cook said. ''Funny like a broken leg, you are.” He also got his revenge. He gave the mouthy soldier a burnt piece of bread and a chicken back with more bone than meat. And he gave him a big helping of sauerkraut.

  If the other soldier hadn't, Dan might have joked about the sauerkraut. Sure, he knew annoying the cooks wasn't the smartest thing you could do. But there was a difference between knowing and knowing. When the other soldier popped off and paid for it, that drove the lesson home. Dan didn't say anything at all. He just held out his mess kit. He got a plump thigh, some unscorched bread, and… less sauerkraut than the joker had, anyway.

  He sat down on what had been a concrete bus bench. They had those in the Valley, too. The benches survived, while buses were nothing but pictures in Old Time books and magazines and stories that granddads said they'd heard from their granddads once upon a time when they were little kids.

  No. no buses on the streets now. No cars. No trucks. Some rich people's carriages had wheels and axles taken from motor vehicles. Some-the super-fancy ones, pulled by big teams of horses-were made from car bodies, with the front part, the part that had held the now-useless motor, cut off to save weight. King Zev had a carriage like that. Its windows still went up and down, even. A few Valley nobles were also lucky enough to travel in style. So were some traders.

  Dan hadn't seen any carriages like that here in Westwood. He was sure there were some. The big shots here were just as rich as the ones in the Valley, probably richer. But most of them didn't get rich by being dumb. They weren't showing off what they owned, not when King Zev ruled this place now instead of their pet City Council.

  Sergeant Chuck came up. He had two juicy-looking drum-sticks in his mess kit. A sergeant didn't need to butter up the cooks the way ordinary soldiers did. A cook who got in trouble with a sergeant would pay for it.

  “What's happening, Dan?” Chuck asked.

  '“Not much, Sergeant.” Dan stood up so Chuck could sit down on the bench. The sergeant did. Dan didn't have to give up his place-nothing in the rules said he did, anyhow. But Chuck would have remembered if he didn't. Sergeants had long memories, too.

  “How's that chick at the traders' house?” Chuck grinned as he asked the question. That meant he knew Dan liked Liz. A sergeant who was worth his pay kept track of what was going on with his men.

  “She's okay. She's kind of weird, though,” Dan said.

  “Well, Westside chicks are supposed to be that way,” Chuck said. That was an article of faith among Valley men. The Westsiders thought people from the Valley were a bunch of hicks, but what did they know?

  “Not weird like that. Not weird weird.” Dan wondered if he was making any sense at all. Chuck nodded, so maybe he was. He went on, “I mean, she's into history, if you can dig that.”

  “History?” Chuck gnawed the meat off one of those drumsticks. Then he shook his head. After he swallowed the fried chicken, he said, “Yeah, that's pretty freaky, all right. How'd you find out?”

  “She was coming back from the UCLA fancy library. I asked her what she was doing, and that's what she told me,” Dan said.

  Chuck 's eyes narrowed. So did his mouth. “Could be a cover for something else, something nastier.”

  “I thought so, too,” Dan answered. “But she really does know stuff about Russians and things, and she doesn't know much about guns. If they were trying to get stuff out of the library, wouldn't they have picked somebody who does?”

  “We would-that's for sure,” Chuck said. “The Westsiders, though… they're kinda far-out, so who knows for sure?” He paused. “Russians, eh? How does she know about Russians?”

  “I'm not quite sure,” Dan admitted. “The way she made it sound, traders hear stuff ordinary people don't. Do you think that's true?”

  Chuck scratched his head. “Don't know for sure. I guess it could be. They travel more than most people do. that's for sure.” He cocked his head to one side, studying Dan. “I bet you've been trying like anything to find out what she does know.”

  “Well… yeah.” Dan was embarrassed. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he didn't want his private likes and dislikes to get in the way of his duty, either.

  “Don't sweat it, man,” Chuck said, understanding his tone. “If you want to like her, you can like her. Plenty of our guys have got Westside girlfriends for themselves. Long as you remember you're a Valley soldier, everything's cool.”

  “You know I wouldn't do anything else!” Dan exclaimed.

  “Sure, sure.” Chuck nodded. “I'd really hassle you if I had anything to worry about there.” He paused for a bite of bread. “She say anything about what's going on south of the Santa Monica Freeway line?”

  “No, Sergeant.” Dan answered truthfully. “What is going on south of the freeway, anyhow?”

  “Beats me.” Chuck said. “But we can't push any farther- the Westsiders are still hanging tough down there. If they make

  The Valley-Westside War J 11

  a deal with Speedro… Well, that could cause everybody a lot of trouble.”

  “Could cause the Westside a lot of trouble,” Dan said. “If they let Speedro's soldiers in to fight us, how do they chase 'em out again afterwards?”

  “Sounds like the $64,000 question to me,”' Chuck said. “But I've heard some talk about it, so I wondered if your girlfriend said anything.”

  “She's not my girlfriend,” Dan said, so sorrowfully that the sergeant laughed. Ears hot, Dan changed the subject: “The $64,000 question… People say it, but can you imagine anybody who's really got that much money?”

  “I bet the king does,” Chuck said. After a moment's thought, Dan nodded. That might be true. Of course, the king collected taxes from all over the Valley. Chuck added, “I wonder why we say it. And why 864,000? Why not $65,000-or 875,000?”

  “Beats me,” Dan said. “Do you want me to see ii I can find out what Liz knows about whatever's happening down south?”

  “Sure. Maybe the Russians will tell her all about it.” Chuck laughed loudly at his own wit. Dan laughed, too. When a sergeant made a joke, any common soldier who knew what was good for him thought it was funny.

  Chuck dug into his sauerkraut. He ate every bit that the cook had given him, and he didn't complain or make faces, no matter how bad the pickled cabbage tasted. In his own way, he was setting an example for the men under him. If Dan had noticed he was setting an example…

  But Dan 's mind was on other things. He did his best not to grin from ear to ear. Now he had another excuse to hang around Liz, to see what she knew, and to see if he could get her to like him. He couldn't have been happier. He didn't even stop to ask himself how happy she'd be.

  “How do I get rid of this guy, Mom?” Liz asked. “This side of shooting him, I mean. He hasn't been any bad trouble, but he sticks like glue.”

  Her mother was plucking a chicken. No, no neatly w
rapped plastic-covered packages in the butcher's shop at the supermarket, not in this alternate. If you wanted meat, you had to deal with it yourself. Mom paused for a moment. “As long as he's not bad trouble, why worry about it?”

  “Because he sticks like glue.” Liz wondered why Mom couldn't see how obvious that was. “He likes me, and I don't like him-for sure not that way. He doesn't know much, and most of what he thinks he knows is wrong, and he doesn't take enough baths, either. And he thinks I'm some kind of spy or something.”

  “Nobody's perfect,” Mom observed. The look Liz sent her said she wasn't perfect herself-not even close. For a wonder, Mom noticed. She stopped plucking pinfeathers and added, “Now you see why we've got all these rules against getting involved with people from the alternates.”

  “Sure.” Liz had long since figured that out. She threw her hands in the air. “But what we really need are rules to keep people from the alternates from wanting to get involved with us.”

  Her mother smiled, which made Liz want to throw the mostly plucked chicken out the window. She needed sympathy, and what was Mom doing? Laughing at her! “If you could put on a mask that made you ugly and if you talked like an idiot, that might do the trick,” her mother said. “Hand me the cumin there, would you?”

  Liz did, but doing it only made her angrier. For one thing, Mom seemed to think getting the chicken ready for dinner was more important than the way Dan kept bothering her. For another, she was tired of cumin and cilantro. The locals used them in everything this side of apple pie, and her mother naturally cooked the way people here did. (Apples were rare, imported luxuries in this Southern California. The trees grew fine, but they needed frost to make fruit. Even in the Valley, where it got colder than it did on the Westside, freezes didn't come every year-or every other year, either.)