The Valley-Westside War

Eleven

Once upon a time, in both this alternate and the home timeline, the section of Los Angeles called Venice had really had canals. They were long gone there, and they were long gone here, too. The Mendozas ” wagon rolled north through Venice toward the wasteland that was Santa Monica.

Liz tried not to think about the gunfire to the north-to the northeast, now. Not thinking about it wasn't easy, because it got louder and closer every minute. She wasn't calm, or anything close to calm. To keep from driving her parents crazy, she had to pretend she was.

After a while, she wondered if they were pretending, too, so they wouldn't drive her squirrely. If they were, they made better actors than she did.

The farther north she and her folks went, the stranger the looks people gave them. “You fixing to go into the dead zone?” a cobbler called, looking up from the boot he was resoling.

“What if we are?” Dad said.

“Well, plenty of folks go in there,” the local answered. “Not so many come out again. You look like nice people. Wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you.”

A ferret-faced fellow corning out of the tavern next door leered at the Chevy wagon. “Wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you while we ain't around to grab the leftovers,” he said.

“Oh, shut up. Stu,” the cobbler said, and then, to the Mendozas, “Don't pay him no mind. He's got as much in the way of brains as my cat, only I don't have a cat.”

“Er-right.” Dad said. “Any which way, I expect we can take care of ourselves.” He displayed a modern copy, made in the home timeline, of an Old Time Tommy gun.

“Well!” said the cobbler, who didn't seem to know quite what it was. “Pretty fancy piece you got there, buddy.” He turned. “Ain't it. Stu?… Stu? Where the devil did he go?”

He'd turned green and ducked back into the tavern. Liz watched him do it. He knew exactly what Dad was showing off, and how many bullets it could spray. He clearly wasn't a predator-he had no taste for a fight. He was a scavenger. If somebody else did the Mendozas in. he'd scrounge what he could from the things the real robbers didn't want.

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Mom asked as the wagon rolled on. “One of those guns is worth a mint here. We may have people coming after us on account of it.”

“Anybody who tries will be sorry,” Dad said. “We don't just have one Tommy gun-we've got three.”

Liz was anything but thrilled about shooting people. But she wasn't thrilled about people shooting her, either. She supposed she could pull the trigger if she had to. If she did end up killing somebody, she'd probably heave her guts out right afterwards.

When she said so, Dad replied, “As long as it is afterwards. In the meantime, do what you've got to do. You can be sorry about it later.”

“You don't talk like a history professor,” Mom said.

“I hope not,” he told her. “I know enough history to know thinking like a history prof from the home timeline while we're here is liable to get us killed. I don't want that to happen. It's too permanent.”

Houses and shops with people in them got thinner and thinner on the ground. Piles of rubble and obviously empty buildings grew more and more common. But just because a building was obviously empty, that didn't mean it really and truly was empty. Maybe-probably-bandits lurked in some of the sorry structures that looked about ready to collapse under their own weight.

Dad handed Mom and Liz their submachine guns. That put a lot of firepower on display. Were the bandits on vacation? Or did they figure they didn't want to tackle a wagon defended by three Tommy guns? Liz had no way to know. She did know she was glad things stayed quiet.

And then they got into the dead zone. Where the bomb hit, there mostly wasn't enough of anything left to make rebuilding worthwhile. Everything looked charred and melted, even after 130 years. The scrubby weeds pushing up through (-racks in the glassy crust didn't do much to hide that. Nothing could. It was like looking at a dead body in a threadbare suit.

Liz thought about Santa Monica in the home timeline. She thought about the beach and the malls. She thought about all the people, especially on weekends. And she thought about the RAND Corporation. The Russians had likely used a bomb here to make sure they knocked it out.

Well, they did. Along with the United States, they knocked almost everything out. Liz started to cry.

“What's the matter?” Mom asked.

“It's all ruined.” Liz sniffed. “No matter what we do, we can't fix it. It'd be like unscrambling an egg.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong, sweetheart,” Dad told her. “But you're not. All we can do is help a little and try to find out what went wrong.”

“It's not enough!”

He nodded. “I know. It's what we can do, though. And it's more than most of the bombed-out alternates ever see. Easier and cheaper just to leave them alone. We don't have the people or the resources to do anything else.'“

“We don't want to bother.” Liz made it into an accusation. “We don't care.”

Dad only nodded again. “Mostly we don't,” he agreed. “We're spread too thin the way things are. Anil Crosstime Traffic needs to show a profit, not a loss. And so…”

“So we make like a bunch of vultures and watch things die,” Liz said.

“We do pass on antibiotics when we can.” Did Dad sound defensive'.'' If he didn't, why not? “And we showed them how to make the anthrax vaccine. More of their cows and sheep live, so more of them live, too.”

“Oh, boy.”

Liz's sarcasm was largely wasted, because the gunfire from the Santa Monica Freeway line changed note. Dad paid more attention to that than he did to his own daughter. His head came up like a wolf's when it took a scent. “The Valley soldiers are using that heavy machine gun again,” he said.

“Heaven help anybody coming at them, then,” Mom said.

“Yeah.” Dad nodded one more time. “Only thing I worry about now is whether Cal's boys will try an end-around through the dead zone. If they do, we've got problems.”

But they didn't, not while the light held. Liz wondered why not. Scavengers and scroungers did come in here sometimes. Most people in this alternate stayed away from places where H-bombs had fallen, though. They had to know the fallout wasn't poisonous any more, or the scavengers wouldn't go in. Still, lingering fear or superstition kept almost everybody away.

The sun went down. The stars started coming out. Dad stopped the horses and gave them their feed bags. They chomped happily on oats and hay. The Mendozas, not so happily, ate bread and smoked pork and sauerkraut and raisins. They drank rough red wine that would have got any vintner in the home timeline fired. It was safer than the local water, which was guaranteed to give you the runs.

“Isn't this fun?'' Dad said as they got ready to sleep in the cramped wagon. “Isn't this cozy?”

“Fun?” Liz said. “As a matter of fact, no.”

“Too blasted cozy, if anybody wants to know what I think,” Mom added.

“Everybody's a critic,” Dad said. Liz gave him a dirty look. He could fall asleep in thirty seconds and keep sleeping through anything this side of the crack of doom. Trouble was, he thought everybody else could do the same thing. Most normal human beings couldn't, and he didn't get it.

“Warmer tomorrow,” Mom said. “Breeze isn't off the ocean anymore.”

“That's true.” Dad sniffed. “You can smell the smoke from all the fires.”

The horses could smell it, too, and they didn't like it. They snorted and shifted their feet, as if to say they would rather be somewhere else. Liz would rather have been somewhere else, too. Then she noticed a red-gold glow on the eastern horizon. She watched it for a little while, and decided she wasn't imagining things.

Pointing, she said, “That fire's getting closer.”

“Don't be silly. It's-” Dad broke off. He started watching the fire, too. After a few seconds, he said something incendiary himself. Then he said something even worse: “You're right.''

He jumped out of the wagon. “What are you doing?” Liz asked.

“Harnessing the horses,” he answered. “No fire departments around here worth the paper they're printed on. We've got to get away, because nobody will put that out before it gets here. And horses are faster than people.”

That all made good sense, however much Liz wished it didn't. She also wished he could hitch up the horses faster. The job looked easy, but it wasn't, not if you wanted to do it right.

While he worked, of course, the flames didn't stop. Mom said, “You want to hurry that along there?” She sounded much calmer than she could possibly have felt.

“I am hurrying,” Dad snapped.

“Well, hurry faster,” Mom told him.

The breeze blew harder. It sent a puff of smoke that made Liz cough. Stop that, she thought, but it didn't. After what seemed forever, Dad jumped back into the wagon. He flicked the reins. The horses went off at a trot without so much as a giddyap. They'd probably wondered what was taking so long, too.

From everything Liz had heard, fire made horses stupid.

From everything she'd seen, horses were no big threat to get fives on their AP tests anyway. But, this once, panic worked for the Mendozas. not against them. The horses wanted to get away from the fires, and so did the people they were pulling.

It was going to be closer than it had any business being. In the home timeline, Dad would have been on his cell phone yelling his head off. A water-dropping plane or helicopter would have splatted the leading edge of the flames. That would have slowed them down enough to let endangered people get away. And, of course, in the home timeline, they wouldn't have been stuck in a horse-drawn wagon to begin with.

No cell phones here. No water-dropping airplanes or copters, either. And the wagon was the fastest way to escape they had. The only other choice was getting out and running. If the horses freaked and stood still, they would have to try that. Liz didn't think it seemed like a whole lot of fun.

Things ran past them in the night. Coyotes and raccoons and feral cats hated the fire, and feared it, too. So did rats and mice and hamsters and squirrels and… everything, really.

When she looked back on that night, none of it stuck in her mind as a whole lot of fun. The fire got closer and closer and hotter and hotter. The smoke got thicker and nastier, till she felt as if she were smoking about ten packs of cigarettes every time she breathed in. Mom gave her a hanky soaked in water to put over her nose and mouth. It helped some-till it dried out. That didn't take nearly long enough. She soaked it herself the next time. Mom splashed the fabric of the wagon to keep embers from catching.

Mom also rigged makeshift breathing masks for herself and Dad. “Shall I make some for the horses, too?” she asked.

“I don't think they'd put up with it,” Dad answered. “Besides, do you want to stop and find out?”

Mom automatically looked back over her right shoulder. So did Liz. and wished she hadn't. The Harries were much too close, much too big, and much, much too hot. Dad's question kind of answered itself. In case it didn't, Mom took care of things: “Now that you mention it, no.”

“About what I figured.” Dad snapped the whip above the horses' backs. They were already doing all they could, but he wanted to make sure they kept on paying attention.

“What happens if the smoke gets them?” Liz asked through the bit of cloth that wasn't keeping as much smoke out of her lungs as she wished it would.

'“We jump down and we hold on to each other and we hustle,” Dad said. “Next question?”

Liz decided she didn't have a next question. The answer to the one she'd just asked gave her plenty to chew on all by itself.

Mom looked over her shoulder again. Liz admired her nerve. She didn't want to know exactly how close those leaping, crackling flames were. If things were going to turn out badly, couldn't it be a surprise? If you knew you were about to get roasted… Well, what could you do? Scream, maybe, and then stick an apple in your mouth.

Except she didn't have an apple. She didn't think the flames would stop when she was just done to a turn, either-not that it would matter to her one way or the other at that stage of things.

Then Mom said, “We're gaining.”

“What?” Liz wasn't sure she'd heard right. Nobody ever talked about how loud a really big fire was up close. The people who knew things like that were mostly either firefighters or dead.

“We're gaining,” Mom said again. Liz could hear her better this time. Maybe Mom talked louder. Maybe they were a little farther from the flames. If they were…

“We're gaining!” Liz said joyfully.

She looked over her shoulder then. The flames were still too close, but they weren't way too close any more. That looked like progress, all right.

“Just hope sparks and embers don't set the wagon roof on fire,” Dad said. Liz gave him a reproachful stare, not because that wasn't possible but because it was. They couldn't stop it if it did happen, so she didn't want to hear about it.

Heart pounding as loud as the flames were roaring, she looked over her shoulder once more. The fire was definitely farther away now. She approved of that. She would have approved even more if it were a mile beyond the moon.

A few minutes later, Dad let the horses slow down. “I'm pretty sure we're good,” he said. “It's burning straight west, pretty much, and we've got north of it.”

“What do we do now?” Mom asked.

“How about we sleep for a week?” Dad said.

“Works for me,” Liz said. “And you know what else? I bet we've got so much soot on our faces, nobody can recognize us.”

“That works, too,” Mom said. “I was going to say we should wash in the morning, but maybe not. In the meantime…”

In the meantime, Liz had no trouble at all falling asleep in the wagon.

Back in the Valley, Dan hadn't thought about sleeping on asphalt wrapped in no more than a blanket. That didn't mean he couldn't do it. If you got tired enough, you could sleep anywhere. He proved that: Sergeant Chuck had to shake him awake when the sun came up the next morning.

Yawning, Dan started to sit up straight. Then he didn't. You never could tell whether Westside snipers were waiting for somebody to do something that dumb. Chuck was on his hands and knees. He'd been ready to push Dan down if Dan forgot where he was. Since Dan didn't, Chuck relaxed.

Relaxed or not, he didn't look so good. He needed a shave, and smoke from last night's watchfires streaked his cheeks and forehead. “Boy, Sarge, you ought to clean up,” Dan said.

“Look who's talking. You'd stop a clock at fifty yards,” Chuck retorted. He was probably right. Dan had been firing a matchlock musket all day. Every time the gun went off, it belched out a great cloud of fireworks-smelling gunpowder smoke. How much of that was he wearing on his face?

“What do we do today?” Dan asked.

“Wait and see what our loving neighbors to the south try,” Chuck said-or something like that, anyhow. “If they want more trouble, we can give it to them. If they sit tight, we're not going to go after them or anything. What would the King of the Valley do with land south of the Santa Monica Freeway?”

Rule it? Dan thought. As soon as he did, he wondered, But how'? It would take a long time to get messages and orders back and forth between Zev's palace up in Mortriridge and these lands way down here. Back in the Old Time, people said, you could talk to anybody right away, no matter how far apart the two of you were. Radio, TV, telephones… Dan believed in them, but they weren't around anymore. The telegraph survived-where people didn't steal wires for their copper, anyway-but who really wanted to pay attention to orders in Morse code? Dan knew he wouldn't.

“Have they started shooting yet?” he asked.

“No. but it's still early,” Sergeant Chuck answered. “I don't know that they won't, and neither does anybody else.”

Dan's stomach growled. It had ideas of its own, and wasn't shy about letting the rest of him know about them. '“Will anyone bring us breakfast?” he asked.

“I heard they were supposed to be making sandwiches, but I sure haven't seen any.” Chuck looked around. “Wait-speak of the devil.”

Kitchen helpers with big cloth sacks crawled up and down the freeway dealing out sandwiches and Old Time soda bottles full of watered wine. Dan's sandwich was smoked pork and pickled tomato on a hard roll: something that wouldn't go bad in a hurry. He made it disappear in a hurry, so how long it would keep didn't matter. Chuck's breakfast was the same, and vanished even faster.

“It's not bacon and eggs and hash browns, but it'll do,” the sergeant said.

“Yeah, Sarge, but think what army cooks'd do to bacon and eggs and hash browns,” Dan said. Chances were the cooks would do fine by them. He didn't let that bother him. Complaining about army cooks probably went all the way back to the Old Time.

“They're pretty lousy, all right,” Chuck agreed. Sergeants complained about cooks, too. Sergeants complained about everything. It was part of their job.

Here and there, Valley soldiers started standing along the freeway line. When nobody fired at the first few, more men did the same. Dan and Chuck stood up at the same time: not soon enough to take a big chance, and not late enough to seem yellow. Getting shot wasn't part of anybody's job… except when it was.

“ Dan! Musketeer Dan!” somebody farther down the freeway called.

“I'm here!” Dan sang out. “What's happening, man?”

“They want you back at the traders' house, so step on it,” the messenger answered.

“May I go, Sergeant?” Dan asked.

“How can I say no?” Chuck replied. “If the Westsiders attack, we'll just have to try and fight the war without you. I don't know that we've got much of a chance then, but we'll do our best.”

Propelled by such pungent sarcasm, Dan was glad to get away. He let the messenger lead him down to the level of the ordinary streets and take him back to the house where Liz had lived. (Of course, her parents had lived there, too, but he didn't think about them very much.)

With electric lights down there in the bottom basement, could they have had TV and a telephone, too? A moment's thought made Dan decide that was silly. What would they watch? Whom would they call?

He couldn't ask the messenger. You weren't supposed to gossip about what was in that house. He would be violating an order if he did, and he'd be making the other soldier violate one, too. He kept quiet.

When he got to the house, he asked Captain Horace, “What's up. sir?”

“You know the way you found the door down into the room with the electric lights?” the Valley officer said.

“Yes. sir.”

“Well, we found another door like that,” Horace said.

“Under the basement, sir?” Dan asked. “What's in it?” He could imagine all kinds of things, each more marvelous than the last. A TV set that worked? An auto that worked? Why think small? What about an airplane that worked? If only you could fly!

But Captain Horace shook his head. “No, not under there. It's set into the wall in the regular basement, the room above the one with the lights.”

“Oh.” Dan knew he sounded disappointed. A room there wouldn't be so big. You couldn't put a car into it. let alone an airplane. But maybe you could put other cool stuff in there. “How do we get in?”

“I hope you can help us figure that out,” Horace said. “So far, we haven't had much luck.”

As if to show what he meant, somebody started banging on the wall with what had to be a sledgehammer. Boom! Boom! Boom! The racket made Dan 's head ache. “Got to be a better way than that,” he said.

“It'd be nice if there were,” the captain agreed. “What can you come up with? If you can get us in there without tearing the place apart. I’ll make you a sergeant on the spot.”

Dan imagined three stripes on his sleeve. He imagined the look on Sergeant Chuck's face when the underofficer saw him with three stripes on his sleeve. That look would be worth ten dollars-no, twenty. And twenty dollars was a lot of money. “I'll do what I can,” he said.

“See what you come up with, that's all. We don't expect miracles.” Horace's mouth twisted in a crooked grin. “I sure wouldn't mind one, though.” He went to the top of the stairs and shouted down to the basement: “Knock it off!… Knock it off!” Mercifully, the banging stopped. Horace breathed a sigh of relief. “That's better. Now the top of ray head doesn't want to fall off.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said again. He'd had the same idea. He thought like a captain-or the captain thought like him! What would Sergeant Chuck say about that if he were ever rash enough to mention it out loud? Something interesting and memorable-he was sure of that.

He went downstairs. A burly Valley common soldier was leaning on the handle of his sledgehammer. The musclebound man didn't look sorry to take a break. Nodding to Dan, he said, “You're the guy with smart ideas, huh?”

“I don't know. We'll see,” Dan said. “Where's this door at. anyway?”

“In the wall there. If you look real close, you can just see the crack,” the other soldier answered, pointing. “I sure hope you psych something out, man. This wall's gotta be reinforced concrete, or else whatever's tougher than that. I could keep banging away at it from now till everything turns blue, and I don't know if I'd ever bust in.”

“Okay.” Dan peered at the wall the way he’d peered at the floor when he found the trap door. He wasn't sure he would have spotted this hairline crack if the muscular man hadn't pointed it out. He wondered how anybody'd found it in the dim light down here.

When he said as much, the guy with the sledgehammer said, “ Dr. Saul went over the whole wall with a magnifying glass. That's how.”

“Oh,” Dan said. “How… scientific of him.” You had to be thorough to do something like that. You also had to be a little bit crazy, or more than a little bit. Except if it paid off. the way it had here, you weren't really crazy, were you? Or maybe you were, and lucky, too.

“What are you gonna do?” The other soldier didn't sound as if he thought Dan could do anything. A moment later, he explained why: '“ Dr. Saul tried everything under the sun. He sure couldn't get in.”

“Groovy.” Dan had just been thinking how lucky Dr. Saul was. Well, so much for that. He eyed the almost invisible door. He eyed the sledgehammer, and the broad-shouldered, sweaty soldier who'd been swinging it. He eyed the tiny handful of concrete chips on the floor. No. brute force didn't seem to be the way to go.

What then? If you couldn't break down a door, how did you go about tricking one? He remembered a story he'd read, one that seemed to have been all the rage right around the time the Fire fell. It wasn't a true story-or people nowadays didn't think so. anyhow. But the wizard and his followers had got stuck outside a door into a mountainside that didn't want to open.

Dan pointed at this one. “Friend!” he said. Nothing happened. He laughed at himself. He might have known. Then another idea struck him. What was that word?

Before he could remember it, the guy with the sledgehammer started laughing at him. “f know what you're doing,” he said. “My folks read me that story, too. But it's only, like, a story, man.”

Never argue with somebody with a sledgehammer, especially when his shoulders are twice as wide as yours. That was an old rule Dan had just made up. Instead of arguing, he said, “Yeah, it's only a story. What have I got to lose, though? I mean, do you want to pound reinforced concrete for however long it takes?”

The other soldier looked at the pitifully small bits of concrete he'd managed to break loose. He looked at Dan. His wave of invitation was almost a bow. “Go for it, man.”

“I will, as soon as I…” Dan snapped his fingers. The Elvish word did come back to him! He pointed at the doorway, even though he had no idea whether that made any difference. “ Mellon!” he said.

Silently and without any fuss, the door swung open.

Valley soldiers did guard the west-facing approaches to West-wood. Liz supposed that made sense. With all the fighting the day before, the Westsiders might have tried to sneak a column through the dead zone. But she'd hope she and her folks would be able to get into Westwood and start selling their jeans before the occupiers noticed they were around.

No such luck. The soldier who seemed to pop up out of nowhere didn't have a matchlock. He carried an Old Time rifle. His U.S. Army helmet was two lifetimes old. “Halt!” he called, and his voice said they'd belter do it. “Who are you people, and what are you doing here?”

“Whoa!” Dad called to the horses. He pulled back on the reins. The animals stopped. Then he said, “We were coming up here with a load of denim pants-genuine Old Time Levi's, fresh like they were made yesterday-when all the shooting started. We couldn't go through, so we went around. And here we are.”

“ Levi 's fresh like yesterday, huh?” The rifleman laughed.

“I've heard traders sling it before, but you've got more nerve than anybody. How about telling me one I'll believe?”

“Pull out a pair, Liz,” Dad said, cool as a superconductor. “Let Doubting Thomas here see for himself.”

“Sure.” Liz scrambled over the seat and into the back of the wagon. She grabbed a pair of jeans and showed them to the soldier. “See? With a zipper and everything.” The only trousers in this alternate that didn't close with buttons used zippers recycled from Old Time clothes. But not many zippers still worked, and not many tailors bothered with them. Buttons did the job. Zippers were mostly for show, the way cuff buttons on suit jackets were in the home timeline.

Before asking for a closer look, the Valley soldier called. “Hey, Harvey!”

“Yo!” A voice came from nowhere. “What's happening, man?”

“Cover me. I need to check something out.”

“You got it.” Harvey still didn't show himself.

“Now let me see those jeans,” the soldier who'd challenged the wagon told Liz. She didn't make any sudden moves when she handed them to him. Maybe his father was a tailor, or maybe he was when he didn't carry a gun. He felt the fabric. He held the pants up against the sun to see if they had any thin spots. He worked the zipper several times and peered at the way it was sewn to the rest of the fly. The more he examined them, the more surprised he looked.

“See?” Liz said.

“Yeah.” The Valley rifleman seemed to nod in spite of himself. “Unless this is just one supercool pair to show people… You've got a whole bunch of these in the back there?”

Liz nodded. “You better believe it. Look for yourself if you want to. We're no ripoff artists.” She made herself sound angry, the way a trader who'd been unfairly challenged naturally would.

“I'll do that.” the soldier said. His expression said a lot of the people who protested hardest were the biggest thieves. That only made Liz mad for real. Nobody liked getting called a liar, even if just by a raised eyebrow.

And she wasn't lying. She walked around to the back of the wagon and pointed to the big old stack of Levi's. “Go ahead. Pick any pair you want.”

The rifleman trusted her far enough to sling his weapon for a moment, anyhow. He leaned forward and pulled a pair out of the middle of the stack. He gave them the same once-over he had with the ones Liz offered him. When he finished, he said, “Well, I take my hat off to you.” And he really did lift the old-fashioned steel pot off his head. “These are the real McCoy. I don't know where you found 'em, but I bet we'll want to buy 'em. Pass on, Miss. Pass on.”

They didn't go to the market square just south of the UCLA campus. Thai was too close to their old house. There was another market square, a ritzier one, north of Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. The only reason that square was ritzier was that the neighborhood had been ritzier before the Fire fell-and still was.

As Dad guided the horses towards it, he said, “If we were proper traders, we'd go to the other market. It's bigger, and there are more Valley soldiers around.”

“All the more reason for staying away,” Mom said.

“That's what I was thinking,” Dad agreed. “The people who do buy from us may think we're kind of dumb for setting up there, but they won't think we're anything more than kind of dumb.”

“You hope,” Mom said.

Dad nodded. “You bet I do.”

“It's not too bad,” Liz said. “The library's up near the north end of campus. We won't be any farther from it than we were before… as long as the librarians don't tip off the Valley soldiers as soon as I go in there.”

“I know it can happen. I hope it won't,” Dad said. “They're all people who've been there since the City Council ran things. Maybe there's a quisling or two, but we can hope not, anyhow. With a little luck, we'll get the job done yet.”

“That would be good,” Liz said.

“That would be wonderful,” Mom said. “Not seeing this alternate again wouldn't break my heart.”

“Get used to it, hon. If we land another grant, we'll be back one of these days,” Dad said. By the look on her face, Mom had no trouble curbing her enthusiasm. Ignoring her expression, or at least pretending to, Dad went on, “That's what happens when you have an academic specialty: you keep coming back to it. I'll be coming back here when the beard I'm not wearing right now is all white-if I can keep getting grant money.”

“And if you don't have WANTED posters with your face on them in every little kingdom from Frisco all the way down to Teejay,” Mom added.

“Well, yes, there is that.” By the look on his face. Dad kind of liked the idea. He glanced over at Liz. “Of course, by then we won't have Liz to help get us in trouble.”

“Hey, what are you blaming me for? You were the one who decided to hide Luke,” Liz said.

“Yeah, but if Dan didn't think you were cute, none of the other Valley soldiers would have paid any special attention to us,” Dad said.

“I can't help that!” Liz knew her voice went higher and shriller than she would have liked.

“I didn't say you could,” Dad answered, which was… sort of true. “But you won't come to this alternate to stir up the boys here by the time my beard's all white. You'll be through with school by then, and you'll find some other alternate to be especially interested in-or maybe something in the home timeline: who knows?-and then you'll-”

“If you say I'll stir up the boys there-well, don't say it, that's all,” Liz broke in.

'“You can't prove I was going to,” Dad said.

“You're lucky she can't, too,” Mom told him. “If she could, you'd be in even more trouble than you've already got yourself into.”

“And they said it couldn't be done!” Dad sounded proud of himself for being such a pest. He probably was. He's not the stuffy kind of professor, anyway, Liz thought. That would be worse… I think.

Dad sure wasn't stuffy after they got set up in the Brent-wood market square. He put some Levi's out on a card table with folding legs that could have come from the Old Time. (Like the jeans, it really came from the home timeline.) Then he started yelling and carrying on about how wonderful they were. He even pulled out a bugle. Heaven only knew where he'd got that. Maybe from the Stoyadinoviches? Wherever, he blew a long, tuneless blast on it. He couldn't have been hokier if he tried. And he was trying… all kinds of ways.

And it worked. The people who lived in Brentwood put down silver for the Levi's. Pair after pair disappeared. Before too long, a Valley sergeant strode over to inspect the goods. He wasn't a warrior. He was at least fifty, with a pot belly and shrewd eyes. He was a quartermaster sergeant: somebody who got fighting men what they needed to fight with. Mo army in the world kept going without people like that, and they won exactly zero glory.

This one didn't seem to care. He examined the jeans even more carefully than the Valley rifleman had. He carried a magnifying glass to help his aging eyes look at them up close. Once he was satisfied, he said, “How many pairs have you got left?” Dad told him. He nodded and asked, “What's your price?” Again, Dad told him. Liz waited for the sergeant to pitch a fit. He just said. “Okay. I'll take fifty pairs, assorted sizes.”

It was as simple as that.