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The Valley-Westside War ct-6

Page 15

by Harry Turtledove


  '“Cause it's what we've got,” said the sergeant who didn't take care of dogs.

  “And “cause that rotten villain messed up the trail before it got to the trader's house,” added the one who did. “He put down something that almost made 'em jump out of their skins.” That was saying something-the bloodhounds had a lot of skin to jump out of. The sergeant went on, “It was as bad as though somebody turned on an Old Time electric flashlight right in front of your face.”

  “Wow,” Dan said. “Oh, wow.” Electric lights were supposed to be bright, all right. He didn't know exactly how bright, because he'd never seen one work. He didn't know anybody who had, either.

  “Yeah,” the dog handler said. “So if we ever do catch this guy, we'll make him sorry. You bet we will.”

  “I bet he's sneaky,” Dan said. “He looks sneaky. He sounds sneaky, too-I’ve talked with him.” Was that really fair? Dan remembered Luke teasing him. If that didn't exactly make the trader sneaky, it came close enough, didn't it?

  “He must be, or he wouldn't have got away from us,” said the sergeant without the dogs.

  “If we want to catch him, we'd better be sneaky, too,” said the one in charge of the bloodhounds.

  “If he's still here for us to catch,” the other sergeant said. “If he got over the freeway line, he's a gone goose.”

  “How could he do that?” Dan asked. “We have it plugged tight.”

  Both sergeants looked at him as if he were still making messes in his drawers. “Kid, if he's that sneaky, chances are he can find a way,'“ the one without the dogs replied. His voice was surprisingly gentle. He might have been explaining that the Easter Bunny wasn't real.

  “Well, maybe,” Dan admitted. The Valley soldiers were watching out for an attack from the south, not for one man trying to get past them and going that way.

  “But if he is that sneaky…” the dog handler said.

  “Yeah? What about it?” The other sergeant wasn't much impressed.

  “Listen,” said the three-striper with the bloodhounds. They put their heads together and talked in low voices. Dan did his best to listen without seeming to. The sergeants must have noticed, because they moved a couple of steps farther away. Dan muttered under his breath. He hadn't caught much anyway.

  The older men both nodded. Then they headed back up Westwood Boulevard toward Westwood Village. They said not a word to Dan about whatever they'd decided. He thought that was rude. W hat did they figure? That he'd tell Luke what they were up to if he knew?

  After a moment, he decided that had to be just what they figured. He couldn't remember the last time anything had made him angrier. He was a good Valley patriot. So what if he thought a Westside girl who knew Luke was cute? That had nothing to do with anything.

  He could see himself explaining all this to the sergeants. He could see them both listening, and then laughing their heads off. And, because he could see all that so very well, he didn't even bother to try.

  Nightfall in Westwood, the sun sinking towards and then into the Pacific. Far fewer tall buildings between Liz and the ocean than there would have been in the home timeline. The bomb that flattened Santa Monica into glass took out the ones that were there in 1967, and not many had gone up since.

  As twilight deepened toward true night, Luke came down from his hiding place between the ceiling and the roof. He tipped his hat to the Mendozas again. “Like I said, much obliged to you folks. You saved my bacon there.”

  “When you go after somebody with dogs, most of the time you don't deserve to catch him,” Dad said.

  Luke started to say something, then checked himself. “You know what? I'm gonna have to think about that one for a while.”

  “Probably won't do you any lasting harm,” Liz 's father remarked.

  Again, the trader started to answer. Again, he seemed to think better of it. He sent Dad a cautious stare. “You're trouble, you know that?”

  “Oh, no. He has no idea,” Liz said before Dad could get a word in.

  That made him and Luke both look at her. They both started to laugh at the same time. “Heaven help her boyfriends, man,” Luke said.

  “I don't know what you're talking about.” Dad answered, deadpan. They laughed again, louder. Liz let out an indignant squawk. For some reason, her father and the hairy trader from Speedro thought that was funnier yet.

  “Well, I'm gonna slide on out of here,” Luke said when he was done with his uncouth guffaws. That was how Liz thought of them, anyway. Luke went on, “Thanks one more time for putting me up, my friend.” He might have been talking about a night on the couch, not a day in a hiding place Liz hadn't even known about.

  “Any time,” Dad said, just as casually. ““You want to be careful out there, you know what I mean?”

  “I can dig it. man.” As if to prove as much, Luke dropped his right hand to one of his pistols. “And I expect I can take care of myself.”

  “Okay, okay.” Dad spread his hands to show he hadn't meant anything much. “I wasn't hassling you or anything. But in case those Valley guys haven't forgotten about you…”

  The trader sneered. Liz didn't think she'd ever seen anybody more than twelve years old do that before, but she did now. “Negative perspiration,” he said. She had to translate that into something that resembled the English she knew. Don't sweat it, he had to mean. Then why didn't he say so? He did go on. “If I can't give ‘em the slip, I don't deserve to get out of here. They're from the Valley, after all.” He laced the word with scorn.

  “Yeah, well, just remember, that's what the Westsiders thought, too. Look what it got them,” Dad said.

  Luke didn't want to listen. “I'll send you a postcard, man,” he said. That would have been snarky in the home timeline. Given what the mails were like in this alternate, it was a lot snarkier here.

  Out the door he went. Dad barred it behind him, then let out a sigh. “Well, I'm not sorry to see him go,” he said.

  “And why is that?” Liz asked. “Just because he put us all in danger?”

  “Might have a little something to do with it,” her father replied.

  Then things outside came unglued. Liz had heard the bloodhounds baying the night before. Now they sounded twice as excited-and twice as fierce, too. A voice with a Valley accent yelled, “Hold it right there, freak!”

  After maybe half a second, another voice yelled from a different place: “Keep your hands away from your guns, or it's the last dumb thing you ever do!”

  Dad said something under his breath that probably wasn't any hotter than what Liz was saying under hers. She didn't know why the Valley soldiers hadn't believed the Mendozas ' story last night, but they hadn't. And that meant nothing but trouble.

  Outside, Liz heard running feet. A gun banged-a matchlock musket, not an Old Time repeater. Someone shouted, “Hold it!” again. Then another matchlock fired. A cry of pain split the night. “Got him!” said the voice that had told Luke to hold it.

  “Oh, wow!” Dad said, which fit what Liz was thinking almost perfectly. For one thing, the Valley soldiers look a long chance. Their matchlocks weren't very accurate. They would have to reload after firing. If they'd both missed Luke, they would have been at his mercy. But one of them got him.

  And Oh. wow! fit too well another way, too. Now the Valley soldiers knew Luke had come out of this house. They wouldn't be very happy about that. From their point of view, they had every right to be unhappy.

  Liz didn't care about their point of view. She did care about the hassles that were bound to come.

  And they did, in no time at all. Soldiers started pounding on the door. “Open up in the name of King Zev!” they shouted. “Open up in there!”

  “What do we do, Dad?” Liz asked. “We can't let them in!”

  “Tell me about it!” Her father was usually cool as an iceberg in January. Not now. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard him so rattled. He raised his voice: “ Sarah! Call for a chamber!”

  “I'm d
oing it!” Mom answered. She didn't sound exactly calm, either.

  “We hear you!” the soldiers yelled. “Open up!” When the Mendozas didn't, something thumped against the door-a man's shoulder, Liz thought.

  “How strong is the bar?” she asked. It wasn't a question she'd ever thought she would have to worry about.

  “We'll find out, won't we?” Now Dad sounded more like his usual self. But that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear, either. More quietly, he went on, “I think we'd better head for you-know-where.”

  That was smart. He didn't want the goons outside to hear that they were heading for the subbasement. The goons didn't know the house had a subbasement. Maybe Luke would tell them about the attic hiding place. But he couldn't talk about the subbasement, because he also didn't know about it.

  More thumps came from the door, and then one that brought a groan and a crackle as the hinges started to give way. The Valley soldiers bayed in triumph. “C'mon! Hit it again!” one of them said.

  By then, Liz was hotfooting it down the stairs to the storerooms in the regular basement. The room with the computer link to the home timeline was there. When Mom came out, the door she closed behind her was all but invisible. Its hinges were a lot stronger than the ones to the front door. All the same, she carried the MacBook under her arm. “It's coming, which means it's here,” she said.

  The door to the subbasement was as well concealed as the one to the computer room. Dad latched it from below after Liz and her mother hurried down the stairs. Then he followed them, his shoes clattering on metal stairs. The transposition chamber waited for them. Its door slid open automatically.

  “Trouble, eh?'“ the operator said as they got inside.

  “Oh. maybe a little,'“ Dad answered dryly-yes, he had himself back together again. After what felt like fifteen minutes and was really no time at all, they were back in the home timeline-which didn't mean their hassles were over.

  Nine

  Dan was pacing his patrol beat atop the Santa Monica Freeway when Sergeant Chuck and another private from the company came up to him. “ Sidney will take the rest of your shift,” Chuck told him. “Some guys down below need to talk to you pronto.”

  “What's happening?” Dan asked.

  “If they needed to talk to me, they would've talked to me.” Chuck jerked his thumb towards a ladder leading down on the north side of the freeway. “Go on. Get moving.”

  “Okay. Uh, yes, Sergeant.” Dan corrected himself in a hurry. Chuck didn't even growl at him, which proved things were weird.

  When he got to the bottom, he wasn't astonished to see the dog handler and the other sergeant he'd spoken with before. He was surprised to see a captain with them. He came to attention and saluted. “Musketeer Dan, reporting as ordered!”

  “At ease.” the captain said, and Dan let his spine relax. “ Max and Mike here”-the captain pointed to the two sergeants-”and your Chuck say you probably know more about the traders on Glendon than anybody else from the Valley does. Is that the straight skinny?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” Dan answered. “I mean, I was over there a few times, but that's all.”

  “You liked the girl.” The captain didn't make it a question. Dan nodded-it was true. He hoped it didn't land him in trouble. The captain said, “''Well, that puts you one jump ahead of everybody else.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dan said. When you were a common soldier, that was always the right answer to give an officer.

  “Come on, then,” the captain told him. “Maybe you'll be able to help us figure out where the devil they've gone.”

  “Gone?” Dan felt like somebody trying to play a game whose rules he didn't know. “I heard some gunshots last night…”

  “That was us, when we caught that so-and-so of a Luke,” the captain said. “ Max got him right where he won't sit down for quite a while.” The sergeant who was usually in charge of the bloodhounds looked proud of himself. The captain went on, “Then we went and broke down the door to the Mendozas ' house. They were in there-we could hear 'em talking to each other.”

  ''They were-and then they weren't.” Sergeant Max snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like that.”

  “Where’d they go?” Dan asked. “Did they have some secret way out?”

  “Well, we turned Rocky and Bull winkle loose in there to see if they could find the freshest trail.” Max looked unhappy.

  “What happened? Did they disappear into a wall or something?” Dan thought such things were impossible. He thought so, yeah… but you never could tell.

  “Almost,” the dog handler answered. “The hounds went down to the basement, and they just kind of parked there, right in the middle of the floor. And there's nothing there. So maybe the mutts are wrong. It can happen, I guess. But I sure don't know where else those people could've gone.”

  “They didn't get out the back door,” Sergeant Mike put in. “'We had somebody posted there, and they just didn't. Besides, that door's still barred from the inside.”

  “Was Luke in that house, sir? Did he have a hiding place there?” Dan asked the captain.

  “We talked to him about that. He finally told us where it was at,” the officer replied. Dan wondered how they'd persuaded Luke to talk. Some things, he decided, he might be better off not knowing. The captain still didn't look very happy. “We found the hideout. We could have looked for a month if we didn't know it was there, and we never would have. No sign the traders had used it, though.''

  “Oh.” Dan chewed on that. “Where'd they go. then?”

  “Good question.” The captain looked hard at him. “C'mon back to the house with us. If anybody on our side has a chance of figuring it out. you're the one.”

  “Yes. sir. I'll try, sir.” Dan felt he had to add. “I don't think I can promise you anything.”

  Lp Westwood Boulevard he went with Sergeant Max and Sergeant Mike and the captain, whose name he still didn't know. Some of the other Valley soldiers on the street gave him stern looks, others stares full of sympathy. He felt embarrassed. A common soldier in the company of two sergeants and an officer almost had to be in Dutch.

  Well, maybe I am, Dan thought. Maybe I just don’t know it yet.

  They turned right on Wilshire and went over to Glendon. which was the next street east. Then up a couple of blocks towards UCLA, and there stood the house, with soldiers outside the front door. They saluted as the captain approached.

  If they couldn't find Liz and her folks, how am I supposed to? Dan wondered. / don't know where they're hiding. Maybe they really did work magic and disappear. He shrugged. He had to try.

  He went inside with the officer and the underofficers. Everything was familiar, but everything was very quiet. The captain took him to a ladder leaned up against the inner courtyard wall. “Go on up,” the older man said. “Have a look.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dan said, and he did. Sure enough, it was a hiding place, about as comfortable as a cramped one could be. “This is where Luke was?” he asked.

  “He says so,” the captain answered. “Do you know about any others?”

  “No, sir. I didn't know about this one,” Dan said. “I guess the only way to find others would be to take a close look at all the walls and ceilings.”

  “We'll do that… eventually.” The captain didn't sound thrilled about it. Dan had trouble blaming him. He went on, “Now come down from there and have a look at the basement.”

  ““Yes, sir,” Dan said again, and descended. He followed the captain and Mike and Max downstairs to the below-ground level. It held crates full of trade goods and sacks of beans and barley and parched corn-about what he would have expected.

  Sergeant Max stepped on a flagstone. “This is where Rocky and Bullwinkle think they went,” he said. “But it's just floor.”

  “I guess.” Dan got down on his hands and knees. Only a couple of lamps burned in there. “Could I have one of those?” he said. Even though he forgot the please, Max handed him one.

  The smell of the
hot olive oil took him back to when he was a little tiny kid. He held the lamp as close to the floor as he could.

  “What are you looking for?” Max asked.

  “Beats me. Anything, really.” Dan held his nose as close to the floor as he could, too. He squinted, staring as hard as he could. His sight hadn't started to lengthen, so he could peer closer than the captain or the sergeants could. He tried to stick his fingernail into a crack between flagstones. Then he thrust the blade of his belt knife into the crack. Excitement surged in him. “The dogs are right, I bet. This looks like a doorway, see?” He traced a rectangle with the knife. “And the cement here isn't just like the rest of it.”

  The captain stood on the rectangle and stomped hard. He cocked his head, considering the sound. “Might be something hollow under there. What do you boys think?” The question included the sergeants. It plainly didn't include Dan.

  Mike stomped, too. He was a big, heavyset man with a lot of weight to put behind his boot. “Dog my cats if there isn't, sir. Now how do we go about prying it up?”

  They tried the most basic way first: they wedged another knife in there and used it for a lever. The blade promptly snapped. It was Sergeant Max 's knife. He had several unpleasant things to say.

  They ended up needing army engineers. The engineers had trouble getting the door up, too. They dug up a flagstone beside the door, only to discover concrete beneath it. “Something funny's going on here,” one of the engineers said. “I wonder if this is an Old Time fallout shelter.”

  Dan shuddered at the thought. Fallout was poison-he knew that much. Nobody in the Valley knew much more.

  “If it is, it would make a perfect hiding place now, wouldn't it?” the captain said.

  “'Sure would,” the engineer agreed. “I bet there's a lock on the other side of that trap door. Gonna take some work to break it. But with that other stone gone, we've got more room to pry.”

  They needed till late afternoon before they finally defeated the lock. “You found the door, kid,” the captain told Dan. “You can go down there first if you want to.”

 

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