The Valley-Westside War ct-6

by Harry Turtledove

  Liz didn't look amazed this time-she looked horrified. “If I tell you the answer to that, I'll have to kill you,” she said, and she sounded dead serious.

  “It wouldn't do you any good.” Dan hoped he was right.

  He didn't like the calculating look in Liz 's eyes. “No? You said nobody believed you. If you had an accident…”

  If she really intended to kill him, she'd just try to do it. She wouldn't warn him she was thinking about it-would she? No way, Dan decided. Liz was a lot of things, but not even slightly stupid.

  And the way she'd looked when he guessed sideways… He'd hit on something there, even if he didn't know just what. “How could you be from sideways in time?” he asked. “What's sideways from here?”

  “I'm not supposed to tell you,” Liz answered seriously. “It won't do you any good if you find out, and it won't hurt me any, but I'm not supposed to.”

  “Why not?” Dan said. “Knowing stuff is supposed to help, isn't it?” That was what they taught in school, anyhow.

  “How much can knowing something help when you can't do anything about it even if you know?” Liz said. Dan only shrugged-he couldn't imagine anything like that. She must have seen as much, because she sighed before going on, “Okay. Remember, you asked for it.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  “Yeah, right,” she told him. But she didn't stop talking: “I'll tell you what's sideways from here. Everything is, pretty much. There are alternates where the Nazis won-you know who the Nazis were, right? There are alternates where the Russians won and there was no atomic war. And there's the one I'm from. In my world, there was no atomic war, and the West won. And we just kept going forward from the way things were in 1967. What looks all superscientific and cool to you seems silly and old-fashioned to me. There. That's the truth. What are you going to do about it?”

  “You've got-your people have-all the stuff they had back in the Old Time and then some?” Dan said slowly. If he hadn't seen the secret rooms in her house, he never would have believed it. But he had, and he did.

  Liz nodded. “That's right. You aren't so dumb after all.”

  He'd just thought the same thing about her. “Gee, thanks a lot,” he said. But he had a hard time feeling insulted. “Why aren't you helping us more, then?” he demanded. “Look at us! We're a mess! You could make us more like vou.”

  Maybe for the first time since he'd known her, Liz looked embarrassed. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I really am-I'm sorrier than I know how to tell you. But there's no money in fixing up an alternate. It's that simple. There just isn't. Besides, do you have any idea how big a whole world is? You can't go and fix something that size once it's messed up. Too much to do. Too much even to try.”

  “No money in it.” Dan paid the most attention to the first part of what she said. “What are you doing here, then?”

  She looked even more embarrassed. “Well, my dad got a grant.”

  “A grant?” It sounded like the English word Dan understood, but he didn't know what it meant here.

  Liz nodded. “That's right. He teaches at UCLA-the UCLA in the alternate I come from. We call it the home timeline, but never mind that. Somebody's paying him money to come to this alternate and find out why you guys blew yourselves up.”

  “The Russians did it!” Dan said automatically. “The Reds! The Commies!” He didn't know quite what a Commie was, but it had something to do with being a Russian. He was pretty sure of that.

  “As a matter of fact, [think you're right-here,” Liz said. “But there are some other alternates where we're pretty sure America launched first. And there are a few where the Chinese started the big war, and some where the Nazis did, and even one where the Kaiser's Germany did-and won the war, and still is top dog today. All kinds of different possibilities.”

  Dan thought one of the possibilities, right then, was that his head would explode. It wasn't that he thought Liz was lying to him. He didn't. Nobody could make up a story like that and have so many details straight. But… he'd heard people talk about getting their minds blown. Now he knew exactly what that meant.

  He stabbed out an angry forefinger at her. “What if I tell my officers about you people, about all this?”

  She only shrugged. “What if you do? Who'll believe you? And even if somebody does, what can he do about it?”

  “I'll show you!” He sprang.

  Next thing he knew, he was on the ground again, with the wind knocked out of him. He fought to breathe. Anything more than that? Forget it. Liz said, “I probably ought to kill you for real, but I won't. You're just doing what you're supposed to do.”

  He tried to knock her off her feet once more, but she was wary this time. He wanted to tell her off, or to yell for help, or to do anything else that might be useful. What with struggling to breathe, he couldn't.

  “Besides, I know you were sweet on me,” Liz added. At this stage, it was insult on top of injury. He thought so, anyway, till she kicked him in the head. He spiraled down into blackness.

  Dad and Mom were taking down the display when Liz came back to the Brentwood market square. “We've got to get out of here,” she said. “Sorry, but we do.”

  “What went wrong?” Dad assumed something must have- and boy, was he ever right.

  Liz told him what had gone wrong. She finished, “If he were only a little bit better-I mean, a little-the Valley soldiers would be asking me questions instead of you.” She hadn't counted all her bruises and scrapes yet. She did count herself lucky that they were only bruises and scrapes.

  “How soon will he wake up? How much will he remember when he does?” Mom asked.

  “I don't know. I kicked him pretty good.” Liz 's foot hurt, too- Dan had a hard head. “But I don't think we ought to waste any time, you know?”

  “Maybe he won't remember anything about the other alternates. We can hope not, anyway.” Dad sighed as he walked over to the horses and led them back to the wagon. “Did you have to tell him about that? We aren't supposed to spill the crosstime secret, you know.”

  “'Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Liz said impatiently. “But even if they've got it here, what can they do about it? They won't have the technology for hundreds of years, if they ever do. And even if they do by then, this'll be a legend if they haven't forgotten all about it.”

  The horses snorted. They didn't want to go back to work at night. Some other merchants were eyeing the Mendozas. The locals had to be wondering why they were getting ready to bail out. That wasn't so good. If the Valley soldiers asked them, they might say which way the wagon went.

  “I did find some stuff about Molotov at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1967,” Liz said. “We aren't leaving with no answers, or I hope we aren't.”

  “ Molotov? At the IAEA? In '67?” Dad fired questions in bursts. Liz nodded after each one. He whistled. “That does sound important.”

  “It shows this alternate had already split off from the home timeline by then,” Mom agreed. “So the breakpoint's somewhere earlier.”

  “Well, we won't worry about where it is right now,” Dad said. “When Dan comes to, the Valley soldiers will all want to find out what our breakpoint is.”

  Liz wouldn't have put it like that, which didn't mean her father was wrong. “How long will he be out?” Mom asked.

  How were you supposed to answer a question like that? “About this long.” Liz mimed how hard she'd kicked him.

  “No way to tell for sure, not with something like that,” Dad said. “Maybe a few7 seconds, maybe a few minutes, maybe longer. Maybe-with a little luck-he won't remember what you were talking about before you punted him.”

  “I wish you didn't have to do that,” Mom said. “In this culture, guys feel ashamed when girls beat them. I know' he liked you, but now all he'll think of is getting even.”

  “In this culture?” Liz and Dad spoke in the same breath, “it's the same way in ours,” Liz added, though she admitted, “It is worse here.” As far as she was concerned, e
verything was worse here. Sexism sure was. Of course, without an industrial society and modem medicine, women really were the wreaker sex. There were plenty of alternates more sexist than this one, which still kept memories of more nearly equal times. But there were also plenty that did better.

  “We can worry about that later, too,” Mom said, and then, to Dad, “Don't you have those horses hitched yet? You said it yourself-no telling when Dan will come to. We don't want to be here when he does.”

  “Were ready.” Dad got behind the wheel of the Chevy wagon to prove it. Liz and Mom jumped in behind him.

  As they rolled away from the Brentwood market square, Mom said, “it's kind of a shame. For somebody from this alternate, he wasn't bad.”

  “I guess,” Liz said, which was politer than Are you out of your mind? but meant the same thing. Dad lit a lantern and set it in a holder on the dashboard. You were supposed to show a light if you drove at night. He hadn't in Santa Monica, but nobody enforced traffic rules there. Here, a wagon without a light was likely to get stopped because it didn't have one. He wanted to look as normal as he could.

  “You didn't tell Dan what kind of wheels we had or anything?” Mom asked.

  “No way.” Liz started to laugh. “I told him all the big secrets, but none of the little ones.”

  “Well, the big ones will freak him out even if he does remember them,” Dad said. He turned right on to Sunset Boulevard. Sunset ran all the way to the ocean here, the same as it did in the home timeline. The resemblance ended there.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Liz said. “'Let him tell whoever he wants. Nobody'll believe him. And even if somebody does, what can they do about it?”

  “Be more alert for people from the home timeline,” Dad answered, which was something Liz hadn't thought of. “We need to warn the Stoyadinovich.es about that.”

  A squad of Valley foot soldiers came east on Sunset toward them. Liz tensed. One of the soldiers called, “You folks are out late.” The men kept marching. Liz tried not to be too noisy with her sigh of relief. She must have done well enough-none of the Valley men stopped and looked back at her.

  When they got to the 405 and Sepulveda Boulevard, Dad turned right again and went down onto Sepulveda. “What are you doing?” Mom asked with exaggerated patience. “Speedro's the other way.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “If they're looking for us anywhere, they'll be looking at the Santa Monica Freeway line and at the edge of things between Westwood and Santa Monica. If we go north instead-“

  “We go up into the Valley,” Mom broke in. “Is that where we want to be?”

  Good question, Liz thought.

  But Dad said, “Sure. Why not? It's the last place the soldiers down here will look for us. And we can go east from there, go around the dead zone in downtown L.A., and get back to Speedro. That's better than trying to sneak south through Santa Monica, don't you think? What else would they be looking for?”

  That was also a good question-a better one than Liz wished it were. Dad liked to take a backwards slant on things. Sometimes that worked really well. Sometimes it didn't work at all. But Santa Monica, especially after the latest fire, wasn't any place Liz wanted to be.

  “How much can they learn from what they find in our house?” Mom asked.

  “Not enough.” Dad sounded confident as he guided the wagon up the onramp to the 405. “They'll see that electric lights shine, that refrigerators keep things cold, and that Coke tastes good. And what can they do with any of that?”

  A horse-drawn wagon plodding along a freeway built for speeding cars seemed almost unbearably sad to Liz. It also went a long way toward proving Dad's point.

  Thirteen

  When Dan woke up, he felt as bad as if somebody had kicked him in the head. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and then. “Oh, wow!” Somebody had kicked him in the head-he remembered that much. And now he wished his head would fall off so he didn't have to put up with the pounding, throbbing ache in there.

  Somebody… Who? That didn't come back right away. But he hadn't decided to lie down here on the ground in the gloom by himself. No. He'd been talking with someone, and they'd had an argument, and then a fight.

  “I lost,”' he said sadly. “I must have lost.” That didn't make him feel like much of a soldier. He looked around, though turning his head hurl. too. Come to that, almost everything hurt. Twilight hadn't altogether faded. The sun had been setting when whatever happened, happened. So he hadn't been out too long.

  Whoever'd licked him hadn't taken his matchlock. That was good. He imagined trying to tell Sergeant Chuck how he'd lost it. That would have hurt worse than the thumping he'd taken. Hard to believe, but it would have. What would Chuck have done to him for losing his gun to a Westside rebel? Nothing pretty.

  Or was it a Westside rebel? “ Liz!” he exclaimed, and with the name things started flooding back. He hadn't just lost- he'd lost to a girl!

  And what were they talking about before she tried using his poor aching skull for a football? He had trouble coming up with that. It made him mad-it was important. He was sure it was. It was even more important than his humiliating defeat. Where did she learn to fight like that?

  “Must have been in the home timeline,” Dan muttered. For a second, the words didn't mean anything to him-they were only words. Then he remembered what lay behind them. A whole world where the Fire didn't fall! A whole world where they still had electricity and refrigerators and Coca-Cola! A whole world… that didn't give two cents for this one. A whole world… that just wanted to find out what had gone wrong in this one, that didn't care anything about fixing it up.

  Rage filled him. Was that fair? Not even close! If they could catch Liz and her folks, maybe they could… Do what? Dan wondered. Something, anyhow. They had to be able to do something. He heaved himself to his feet and started dogtrotting back to the house where the traders-the traders from that other world-had lived.

  He was in good hard shape, the way a soldier needed to be. He should have made it back to that house without even breathing hard-it wasn't much more than a mile. He took about three strides and then stopped, fighting not to be sick. He'd never got kicked in the head before, not by a girl, not by a horse, not by anybody or anything. He didn't know how very badly that kind of injury could mess someone up-adventure stories didn't talk about such things. He might not have known, but he found out in a hurry. Trying to do anything fast left him dizzy and wondering if his skull would split in two. As a matter of fact, he hoped it would.

  But he had to get back, even if he couldn't do it fast. If he couldn't run, he would walk. If I can't walk, I'll crawl, he thought. It didn't quite come to that. He could walk, as long as he didn't try to hustle.

  Little by little, he realized he was glad the sun had gone down. The torches and lamps he saw as he got into Westwood seemed to pierce his eyes and stab his brain like needles. Cooking odors and the general town stink were much stronger than usual, too. He gulped several times. He was hungry, but maybe it was just as well he had an empty stomach.

  The traders' house still had guards posted in front of it, and torches in the sconces by the front door. Dan narrowed his eyes against what felt like an intolerable glare. The torchlight let the sentries get a good look at him. “Look what the cat dragged in,” one of them jeered.

  “Drinking on duty?” the other one asked.

  “I've got three stripes now. You can't talk to me like that,” Dan said. The men stiffened to attention-rank did have its privileges. That his speech wasn't slurred also helped. He went on, “Is Captain Horace still in there?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the sentries chorused-they didn't sound snotty any more. One of them ventured, “Uh, what happened to you, Sergeant?”

  “What's it look like? I got beat up.” Dan didn't say Liz had done it. He supposed he would have to tell Horace, but he didn't want these yahoos being the first to know.

  He went inside. He went downstairs. He had to squint even harder against elect
ric lights than he had against the torches-they were that much brighter. Captain Horace stared at him. As the sentry had, he asked, “What happened to you?”

  '“Sir, I saw Liz -you know, the traders” daughter-coming out of the UCLA library. I came up to her. and I… I lost the fight, that's all.”

  Horace 's eyebrows leaped for the sky. “How in blazes did a girl whip you?”

  “Sir, she fights better than our dirty-fighting coaches. That's the truth.”

  “Where could she have learned to fight like that?” the officer demanded.

  “In the home timeline, sir,” Dan answered. “It’d have to be.”

  “What the devil is the home timeline?”

  Dan explained-as well as he could, anyhow. Looking back, he didn't know how good a job he did. All he knew was the little Liz had told him. And he was trying to remember it after she'd knocked him cold.

  When he got done. Captain Horace said, “That's the craziest thing I ever heard in my life.”

  “Yes. sir.” Dan said. You didn't want to argue with officers. Even when you were right, you were wrong if you did something like that. But the electric lights overhead hurt his sensitive eyes. Pointing to them, he went on, “Where in this world do we have lights like that? Where do we have all the other stuff here? Where do we have Coca-Cola?”

  “That's a… good question, Sergeant,” Horace said slowly. “And I wish I had a good answer for you. This Liz was heading north, you say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then she and her folks are likely at the Brentwood market square, eh? We'll send some men up there right away.” The captain scowled. “But chances are they'll already be gone. I wouldn't hang around, anyway, not after I got into a fight with one of King Zev 's soldiers.” In his own way. he was tactful. He didn't remind Dan that Liz had not only got in a fight but won it. “So we'll also pass the word to the border stations. They must have come up from the south, right?”