“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 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 $64,000? Why not $65,000—or $75,000?”
“Beats me,” Dan said. “Do you want me to see if 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 wrapped 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.)
Her mother started braying cumin seeds in a brass mortar and pestle. You didn’t buy them already ground, the way you would in the home timeline. You didn’t punch a button on a food processor, either. Here, you were your own food processor. If you didn’t do the work, it didn’t get done.
“Since I’m sorta stuck being me,” Liz said, as sarcastically as she could, “what do you think I should do about Dan?”
“I told you—put up with him as long as you can,” her mother answered. “If he really gets to be a pain, we can always send you back to the home timeline and say you went away.”
“I suppose.” But Liz didn’t want to go back. “That’d put a black mark on my record, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t look good.” Mom brushed the plucked chicken with olive oil. That was also a local product, and surprisingly good. Unlike apples, olives did great here. She started spreading the ground cumin and some chopped cilantro leaves over the bird. “Part of the reason you come to the alternates is to learn how to deal with the people who live in them.”
“Yeah.” Liz couldn’t have sounded gloomier if she’d tried. “That’s what I figured. Maybe I just ought to hit him over the head with a rock.”
“If you think you can get away with it, and if people here don’t talk about you afterwards, why not?” Mom thrust a long iron spit with a crank handle at one end through the chicken’s carcass and set the bird above the fire. “You want to turn that for a while?”
“Okay.” You were your own rotisserie here, too. Before long, the chicken started to smell good. Cooking over wood gave more flavor than gas or electricity did in the home timeline, though it polluted more, too. The work didn’t keep Liz distracted more than a minute or two. “He’s a pain, Mom, nothing else but. I ought to wear an ugly mask. If I pulled out two of my front teeth, he’d forget I was alive.”
“Mm, maybe not,” her mother said, which wasn’t what she wanted to hear at all. “By now, you know, he doesn’t just think you’re pretty. You’ve fascinated him with your mind, too. Look at the questions he asks you.”
“He’s trying to trap me, you mean,” Liz said. “He can tell I’m not from here. My cover isn’t good enough. I don’t think the way these people do. He knows.”
“Well, turn the chicken anyhow, dear,” Mom said. Liz did, feeling foolish—her attention had lapsed. Her mother went on, “I just think he thinks you’re weird and he thinks you’re pretty and he thinks the combination is interesting.”
She’d put enough thinks in there to make Liz need a few seconds to realize what she meant. When Liz did, she shook her head. “I wish you were right, but it’s more than that. I can tell.”
“In that case, maybe you should go back to the home timeline,” Mom said. “Nobody here can do anything with the crosstime secret—we both know that. But the company sure wouldn’t be happy if the locals worked it out.”
That took no time at all to understand. If Crosstime Traffic wasn’t happy with you, you’d be stuck in the home timeline forever. If Crosstime Traffic really wasn’t happy with you, they’d throw you out on your ear. And who’d ever want to hire you if you couldn’t hack it with the biggest, most important company in the history of the world?
Washed up at eighteen, Liz thought. She knew she was being silly, to say nothing of melodramatic. Part of her did, anyhow. The rest … She’d broken up with a boyfriend the summer before. It wasn’t the end of the world, even if they’d dated for most of a year. She’d known that, or most of her had. It wasn’t, no, but it sure felt as if it were. And this felt the same way. If you lost one boyfriend or one job, how could you be sure you’d ever land another one? You couldn’t.
“Turn the bird, sw
eetheart,” Mom said gently. “The secret won’t come out, and Crosstime Traffic won’t blackball you forever. Right?”
“Right.” Liz knew she sounded shaky. She thought she was entitled to. For one thing, she couldn’t be sure the secret wouldn’t slip out by accident. She couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t get in trouble. And, for another, what business did Mom have reading her mind like that?
“We all may have to go back to the home timeline, and it won’t have thing one to do with you,” her mother said. “If the war heats up again, if the Westsiders try to come back, staying won’t be safe.”
“We’re lucky. We can get away,” Liz said. “Everybody who lives here is stuck in the middle.”
“Turn the chicken,” Mom said one more time.
Six
“Attention!” Captain Kevin shouted. Dan straightened and froze in place. Morning inspection. It came every day, and he hated it every time.
Captain Kevin didn’t inspect the company in person. Sergeant Chuck prowled through the ranks. Whenever he found somebody with a dirty weapon or ungreased boots or a missing button, he let the unlucky soldier hear about it. Chuck cursed as well as anybody Dan had ever met. No—he cursed as well as anybody Dan had ever imagined, which covered a lot more ground.
Chuck stared at Dan with red-tracked eyes. Dan looked straight ahead and pretended the sergeant wasn’t there. After what seemed like forever, Chuck went on to share his good cheer with the next soldier. Dan didn’t let out a sigh of relief. That might have brought the sergeant back, which was the last thing he wanted.
After the inspection was over and punishment handed out to soldiers who’d fouled up, Captain Kevin said, “And now we have some good news.”
Dan blinked. He didn’t hear that every day. A buzz ran through the company. “Silence in the ranks!” Chuck yelled. Somehow, though, he seemed less ferocious than usual. “You better listen up now!” he went on. “Captain Kevin’s got something important to say.”
Anything the company commander said was important, just because he said it. So it seemed to Dan, anyhow. He couldn’t imagine any common soldier wouldn’t think the same.
Kevin strode out front and center. The sling he still wore somehow lent him extra authority—it showed he’d been through the worst war could do. “We aim to be a modern army,” he said. “We aim to have the best weapons we can get. Now we’ve captured a big Westside arsenal, and so our army gets to take their weapons. Only fair, since we won—right?”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers chorused, Dan loud among them. Who would say no?
“Cool,” the company commander said. “Because of that, we get to retire fifteen bows and arrows in this company and replace ’em with matchlocks.” He gestured. Two ordnance sergeants wheeled up a cart that probably went back to the Old Time. On it gleamed the modern muskets and their gear. Kevin fished a scrap of paper from his tunic pocket. “The following soldiers will turn in their bows and arrows and become musketeers.” He began reading names.
Dan wanted to hear his. He didn’t really expect to—he was very junior—but he wanted to. A matchlock of his own! That would be something. It might even impress Liz. A musketeer had to be a much more important person than a mere archer.
Soldiers came up to claim their muskets and powder horns and leather bullet boxes and ramrods and lengths of slowmatch—string soaked in water and gunpowder that burned at a set, reliable rate. One by one, they returned to the ranks, their faces glowing with pride. Each of them thought he was a much more important person than a mere archer.
Then Captain Kevin said, “Dan!”
Dan jumped. He hadn’t expected to hear his name. But here he was, getting a matchlock of his very own! He hadn’t been so happy since … since forever, as far as he could tell.
Sergeant Chuck poked him in the ribs. “Go on, kid, get moving,” the sergeant stage-whispered. “You don’t put your fanny in gear, he’s liable to decide to give somebody else the gun.”
Kevin wouldn’t do that … would he? Dan didn’t want to find out. He hurried forward. One of the ordnance sergeants took his bow and bowstrings and his quiver full of arrows. Just for a second, he wondered what would happen to them. Maybe some gray-bearded home guard would get them. Or maybe they’d sit in the arsenal for years and years.
But then Dan forgot all about them, because the other ordnance sergeant handed him his matchlock and everything that went with it. “Take good care of your new stuff,” the sergeant growled.
“I will!” Dan shouldered the musket and returned to the ranks.
The first thing he noticed was that the gun and the bullet box were heavy. The musket weighed a lot more than his bowstave had. Maybe the bullet box wasn’t heavier than the quiver full of arrows, but it packed its weight into much less space. Matchlock bullets were balls of lead, each one as thick as his thumb. They weren’t so deadly as the long, pointed rounds Old Time rifles fired, but you still didn’t want to stop one with your face or your chest.
Chuck snorted like his father when Dad was exasperated. “Here—you wear them like this.” The sergeant put the bullet box on Dan’s belt. The ramrod went there, too. He looped the powder horn over Dan’s left shoulder. He wrapped the slowmatch around Dan’s right upper arm. Dan knew where everything was supposed to go, but he’d never had to worry about it himself before. Now he did. Now he was a musketeer.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. Chuck only snorted again. Dan asked, “Now when do I really get to shoot?”
“New musketeers will start practicing this afternoon,” Chuck answered. “These aren’t like Old Time rifles. We make the guns and the bullets and the powder ourselves. They aren’t gone forever once we use them up—we can get more whenever we need them. So you’ll have plenty of practice.” His smile turned nasty, even for a sergeant’s. “And you won’t have any excuses for missing what you aim at, you hear?”
“Yes, Sergeant!” Dan said loudly. Saying Yes, Sergeant! as loud as you could was almost always the right answer.
Sure enough, the Valley army had set up a firing range not far from the archery targets. Chuck scowled at the men who stood in front of him, and at the uncertain way they held their matchlocks. “I’m supposed to turn you into proper musketeers?” he growled, rolling his eyes. “It’s like asking me to turn a bunch of jackasses into racehorses, and that’s the truth. But it’s what they told me to do, so I’ve got to do it.”
Sergeants always said common soldiers were the dumbest things on two legs, so Dan didn’t get uptight about one more insult. He’d heard too many. He knew they didn’t mean much. If Chuck didn’t say crude things about the men under him, he probably wouldn’t know what to say.
“Ground your muskets!” he ordered, and held his vertically with the stock on the ground so they would know what he meant. “Now pour a charge of powder!”
Dan had already discovered that the tip of the powder horn came off. It made a miniature horn, one that held a single charge of powder. He poured in the gunpowder, and then carefully poured it down the muzzle of his musket. One luckless fellow spilled his powder instead. Chuck reamed him up one side and down the other. Dan thanked heaven he hadn’t goofed.
“Stuff in your wads!” Chuck said.
In the bullet box, along with the musket balls and a flask of priming powder, were little squares of cloth. Dan took one, folded it up, and stuffed it down the muzzle. He used the ramrod to force it down toward the bottom of the musket barrel.
“Now the bullet!” Chuck said. A couple of men laughed. Chuck glared at them. “Think it’s funny, do you? When you’re really fighting, you can forget. You can—unless you’re trained so you do it right without thinking about it. Most of you lugs don’t think real good anyway, so you better get it down pat.”
The bullet in Dan’s hand felt heavy, as if it meant business. It was a tight fit when it went into the muzzle. It had to be, or the gas from the burning gunpowder would get around it and not push it forward.
Chuck used th
e ramrod again. “Ram that baby home,” he said. “Really ram it down there. Don’t be shy—you’ve got to seat it firmly.”
Dan imitated him in that step as he had in the others. He felt the sweat spring out on his forehead as he thrust with the ramrod again and again. You could shoot arrows faster than musket balls. Musket balls carried farther, though. And you were supposed to need less practice once you got the hang of using a matchlock, too.
Once you did, yeah. Till you did …
“Fix your match in the serpentine,” Chuck commanded. The swiveling piece that brought the match down onto the touch-hole had a groove into which the thick string would fit. “Leave a couple of inches sticking out. Now pour your priming powder into the touch-hole. Just a little, mind.”
The priming powder from the small flask in the bullet box was much more finely ground than the ordinary black powder in the powder horn. That made it burn faster and more reliably.
“Now if you were in battle, you’d already have your match burning, right?” Chuck said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” Dan chorused along with the rest of the new musketeers. When it rained, matchlocks weren’t good for much. Luckily, that wasn’t a worry very often in the Valley or on the Westside.
Chuck had a lighter—a real Old Time Zippo. “I have a devil of a time finding flints for this now, but I manage,” he said. He flicked the Zippo—and it lit. There was no more Old Time lighter fluid. He used strong spirits instead. The flame was blue and almost invisible. “Now nobody pull the trigger till I give the order, you hear?” he warned. “You’ll be sorry if you do. Got it? Dig me?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Dan said again. Chuck walked along the line of musketeers, lighting one length of slowmatch after another. The smell of burning gunpowder didn’t make Dan think of battle. It smelled like fireworks, and reminded him of the Fourth of July and of October 23, the day the Valley’s first king broke away from Los Angeles after the Fire fell.
The Valley-Westside War Page 10