The Valley-Westside War ct-6
Page 24
“Yes, sir. Maybe we will,” Dan answered. What else can I say? he wondered, and didn't see anything else. But he didn't believe it. The traders had too long a start. And they could disappear-they really could. What else was traveling between alternates but disappearing from one and appearing in another one? How were you going to catch somebody who could do that?
Very late that afternoon, a wire came in about somebody who'd got two pairs of denims from some people who might have been Liz and her folks. They were heading east, toward beautiful downtown Burbank. If they got there, King Zev 's soldiers would never lay a hand on them again.
Zev might threaten war to get them… Dan laughed at himself. Not a chance. With the Valley still fighting the Westside and Speedro, Zev couldn't make beautiful downtown Burbank mad at him, too. Fighting one war was bad enough. Fighting two wars at once had to be four times as bad, or maybe eight.
“Do you think they'll stay in beautiful downtown Burbank?” Horace asked him. “Or are they more likely to go somewhere else from there? If they do go somewhere else, where do you think it would be?”
This is the stuff you're supposed to worry about-you're the officer. Dan was learning to think like a sergeant in a hurry. But he did know Liz and her family better than the captain did. “Well, from what we found out, they came up from the south,” he answered “My guess is, they'd go back that way, too. Maybe they've got another watchamacallit-a transposition chamber- down there somewhere.”
“How far down there?” Captain Horace persisted. “The part of the Westside we didn't take? Speedro? Sandago? Teejay?”
“Sir,” Dan said mournfully, “I have no idea.” So many things about Liz and her folks he didn't know. So many things he wanted to know. So many things he knew he'd never find out. So many things he'd wonder about for the rest of his life.
One surfaced right now. If she came from this world or I came from hers, would she have liked me better? He could hope so, anyhow. And that led to another thought. If she was still working in the UCLA library, she and her folks hadn't found all of their answer, whatever it was. Maybe she'd be back one day to look for it. If we make this world more like the one she comes from, would people from there and people from here get along better?
Again, Dan could hope so. And he could do more than hope: he could work to make it so. He realized he suddenly had something to do with however much time he had left. He'd never known a feeling like that before. He… decided he liked it.
“Be it ever so humble, there's no place like… the Stoyadinoviches' trading post.” Dad looked pleased with himself. “That's an old saying I just made up.”
“I never would have guessed.” Liz grinned as she zinged him.
“Now, children.” Mom sounded amused, or maybe just resigned. Liz thought about asking which, then decided she'd rather not know.
“I wish we could have stayed longer this time around, but we did pretty well, anyway,” Dad said. “That stuff we found out about Molotov -nobody knew that about this alternate before.”
“Who's this 'we'?” Mom wondered. “You and your tapeworm? Liz did all the finding. You're just the guy who'll write the articles about it.”
“Guilty,” Dad agreed. “That's guilty, guilty, guilty-always quote from the classics if you can't make up your own old sayings. But I will give her credit. I may borrow, but I don't steal-much. And it's definitely an important lead. If the Soviet government here was more hard-nosed than in the home timeline… Well, it's not a smoking gun, but-”
“A smoking mushroom cloud, don't you mean?” Liz put in. “Or don't I get to make up old sayings, too?”
“That one fits this alternate too well,” Mom said.
Gulls wheeled overhead. You could see the ocean-and, when the wind blew in, as it did more often than not-smell it, too. Its clean salt tang helped cut the usual city reek of Speedro. Sailboats and a few wood- or coal-burning steamboats glided across the water.
Those were only details, though. For the most part. Speedro was like any other part of L.A.-any other part of this whole alternate-after the Fire fell. The buildings were put together from some new bricks and a lot of pieces of what had been here in 1967. There were lots of open spaces, because far fewer people lived here now. Groves of citruses and olives and almonds and avocados grew where houses and shops and factories had stood once upon a time. Pigs and chickens and ducks and turkeys made a racket. So did stray dogs and scrawny children. Speedro's flag-a white sailing ship on a blue background-flew over it all.
The Stoyadinoviches greeted the Mendozas like long-lost siblings. In this alternate, they were. The two families shared 130 years of experience no one else here had. “What's the password for your safe room down below?” Liz asked.
“ 'Rosebud,'“ George Stoyadinovich answered. “Why? You want to get a soda or something? Long as you stay down there to drink it, help yourself.”
“No, thanks. I was just thinking it's from before the breakpoint, so maybe you ought to change it.” Liz told him what had gone wrong up in Westwood. “We never imagined they could figure out something like that, but they did. The movies of The Lord of the Rings are from the start of this century, but the books are older.”
“I don't think “Rosebud' is a problem,” Dad said. “It's from before the breakpoint, yeah, but it's from a movie. I don't believe there is a book to Citizen Kane . And nobody here has watched any movies since before the big war.”
Liz hadn't thought about that. Slowly, she nodded. The risk with the Stoyadinoviches' password was bound to be smaller than with the one her family had picked. She didn't think there was no risk at all, though.
'“We'll change it,” Mr. Stoyadinovich said. “'I know what we'll use-'Shaquille.' He was from long after the breakpoint.”
“'He played… baseball, didn't he?” Liz knew she was guessing.
Mr. Stoyadinovich and Dad grinned in a way that told her she'd guessed wrong. “Basketball,” they said together. She shrugged. As long as he came from after '67, it didn't matter.
“Did you get any research done up there?” Irma Stoyadinovich asked. “You weren't gone very long.”
'“We did quite a bit, matter of fact,” Dad said. Mom coughed. “Well, Liz did the digging,” he acknowledged. “Looks like the Soviets were more hardline here than they were in the home timeline, so chances are they did push the button first. Can't nail it down a hundred percent, but it seems a lot more likely.”
Mr. Stoyadinovich nodded. “Makes sense. So coming back turned out to be worthwhile?”
“Sure did.” Dad nodded, too.
Mom set a hand on Liz 's shoulder. “Tell them what else your darling daughter did, dear.”
“She KO’d the Valley soldier who recognized her and tried to grab her.” Pride rang in Dad's voice. “That bought us the time we needed to get away.”
“Good for you, sweetheart!” George Stoyadmovich boomed.
“I guess,” Liz said. “I mean, I know it was, but it's sad, too. The only reason Dan did recognize me is because he liked me.”
“Which didn't keep you from kicking him in the head when he needed it,” Dad said.
“I know. But even so…” The fight embarrassed Liz more than it made her proud. It was something she'd needed to do- Dad had that right-but not something she'd wanted to do. “I mean, he was nice enough. If he came from the home timeline, he wouldn't have been too bad.”
“That's more than you ever said before,” Mom told her.
“Well, I'll never see him again, so I can say what I think,” Liz answered. “And even if I did see him again now, he'd want to shoot me, I bet, and not just 'cause he's a Valley soldier. Guys don't keep on liking girls who knock them cold.”
“Well,” Mr. Stoyadinovich said solemnly, twirling his mustache, “you're right.”
Liz didn't tell him how much of the Crosstime secret she'd spilled to Dan. She didn't aim to say anything about that to anyone but her folks. Not that the locals could do anything with it, but all the sam
e… If Crosstime Traffic found out they knew more than they should, the company could assume it was because of what they'd found in the underground rooms.
If Dan hadn't liked her, he wouldn't have listened anyhow. He would have gone on trying to deck her, and he might have done it. She'd needed the breathing space, maybe more than he did. And if he'd decked her, the Valley soldiers might have got her folks, too.
She knew she was talking herself into something, but she didn't much care. A Greek philosopher had called man the rational animal, and that was true. But man was also the rationalizing animal. You did what you had to do or what you wanted to do, and you worried about why later, when you had the chance.
“I got away. We got away,” Liz said. “It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't neat-what is in this alternate? But we did it.”
“That's what counts,” Dad said. Everybody nodded. The Mendozas would go back to the home timeline soon, and Dan… Poor Dan. Liz did feel sorry for him. She wondered what he thought he ought to do now. She was absolutely, positively, sure she'd never find out.
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