The Valley-Westside War

Four

“Open up!” Dan shouted. “Open up in the name of King Zev!”

He didn't know what he would do if the people inside didn't. He couldn't shoot through the door, not with a bow and arrows. The windows were narrow, shuttered slits. Like most modern houses, this one rejected the street. It would have a courtyard inside from which to draw light and air.

He might start a fire if the people inside proved stubborn. That would fix them. Trouble was, it might fix them too well- them and all their neighbors, and maybe the Valley soldiers, too. Starting fires was easy. Putting them out once they got going… That was a different story.

Back in the Old Time, there'd been underground pipes full of water. The pipes were still there. The water wasn't. You couldn't fight fires with buckets and cisterns, not if you expected to win. Everybody dreaded them.

And so Dan dropped any thought of arson, even if he was in the enemy's country. He banged on the door again, louder this time. “Open up!”

Sergeant Chuck had a gun. He could fire through the door if he felt like it. Would he? Dan doubted it. Why should this house be more important than any of the others around here?

Then, to Dan's surprise, the door opened. A middle-aged man with glasses-not common these days, but not unknown- looked out at him. “Yes?” the fellow said in a mild voice. “What do you want?”

“Uh-” Dan felt foolish, which was putting it mildly. He'd been making noise and acting tough-that was all.

Chuck knew what was what. He pointed his musket at the local and growled, “Who are you? What have you got in there?”

“My name is Mendoza,” the man with the glasses answered. “I'm a trader. I'm a peaceable man. I don't want any trouble. All kinds of things are here. If you want them, take them. Things are just-things. They aren't worth getting killed over. I won't try to fight you.”

“Like you could,” Dan said scornfully.

But Sergeant Chuck was thoughtful. “He might cause trouble if he felt like it, Dan,” he said. Then he spoke straight to the trader: “You've seen the elephant once or twice, I expect.”

“Could be,” Mendoza said. “I've fought bandits. Not a lot of traders who haven't. But only a fool or a desperate man takes on soldiers.”

“Especially after they've won,” Chuck said.

“Yes, especially then,” the trader agreed. “So come in-you would anyhow.” He stepped aside. “Take what you want-you'd do that anyhow, too.”

His voice still easy and calm, the sergeant went on, “Suppose we don't just feel like plundering? Suppose we still feel like killing?” Dan didn't, and looked at Chuck in surprise. He'd had his fill of killing for a long time, maybe forever. But if the sergeant hadn't…

“I hope you won't, not in cold blood,” Mendoza replied, a certain bleak calm in his voice. “But if you do, well, if that wouldn't make me a desperate man, I don't know what would.”

How dangerous would he be in a fight? Maybe more dangerous than he seemed at first glance. He was worried, plainly. He might well be afraid. But he wasn't panicked-that seemed obvious. And anybody who could keep his head in a tight spot could cause a lot of trouble.

Was Sergeant Chuck making the same calculation? If he brought up his musket now, what would Mendoza do? What could the trader do?

Two or three more soldiers from the Valley pushed up behind Dan and Chuck. That made everybody relax. The trader might have had some chance against two men. Against so many more? Not a prayer, and he had to know it.

He did. With a sigh, he said, “Well, come on. Here's what I've got. I hope you'll leave me something when you're through.”

“You stay here, Jerry,” Chuck told one of the new arrivals. “Guard the door. Don't let anybody else in.” Jerry didn't look happy. Chuck slapped him on the back. “Don't get all bent out of shape, man. We'll share with you, and you won't get any less than these guys.” He didn't say anything about what he would get himself. He was a sergeant, so he was entitled to more. If you didn't believe it, you just had to ask him.

But his promise did make Jerry happy-or happier, anyhow. “Okay, Sarge. I guess that's fair,” he said.

The trader led the Valley soldiers from the entry hall out into the courtyard. Standing there were a woman about Mendoza 's age and another one who couldn't have been any older than Dan. “My wife and my daughter, Liz,” Mendoza said carefully. Even more carefully, he added, “They aren't loot. That's part of the deal.”

What could he do about it if Sergeant Chuck decided they were loot? He could get himself killed, that was what. But how much of a ruckus could he (and the women?-they looked uncommonly alert) stir up beforehand? Maybe Chuck decided he didn't want to find out, because he nodded and said, “Sure. Plunder's one thing, but that'd be something else.”

Dan nodded, too, toward Liz. “Hi,” he said. She might not be gorgeous, but she was a long way from ugly.

“Hello,” she said soberly.

“You're not, like, real friendly,” he said.

She shrugged. “I bet I'd like you better if you weren't robbing my house.”

She sounded polite and matter-of-fact, so he couldn't even get mad at her. She was telling the truth, too. One of the other soldiers had gone into a storeroom. He came out with a big grin on his face, a box in his hand, and a cigar in his mouth. “They've got smokes, Sarge!” he exclaimed.

“Far out!” Chuck said. Tobacco was an expensive luxury. The Valley didn't grow much, because it needed land and water for crops that didn't just go up in smoke. But it traded for cigars and pipe tobacco when it could. Old people said the stuff wasn't good for you, but that didn't keep a lot of them from smoking. Dan figured other things were more likely to do him in than a cigar every once in a while.

When the other soldier gave him a handful of them, he stuck one in his mouth and the rest in a front pocket. Chuck had a flint-and-steel lighter. Dan leaned close to get his cigar started. It was a good one, the flavor fine and mild. He blew out a happy cloud of smoke. Then he offered Liz one of the other cigars.

“No, thank you,” she said, her voice still polite but now with an edge in it. “For one thing, I don't smoke. For another thing, don't you feel funny about trying to give me something that's really mine to begin with?”

His ears got hot. “I didn't think of it that way.”

“I guess not,” she answered. Three words, and she made him feel about three inches tall. Not even his mother could do that.

When the soldiers found bourbon and brandy, Chuck limited the plunder there to one bottle apiece. “We are not going to get too drunk to do our jobs,” he growled. “We are not-you hear me?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Dan chorused along with the rest of the men. Like most people, he drank beer or wine instead of water when he could get them. He would mix wine with water if he didn't have enough wine to drink by itself. Drinking water without something in it was asking for the runs.

But brandy and whiskey were a lot stronger than beer and wine. You had to make a pig of yourself to get drunk from beer or wine. Not with the distilled liquors. No wonder Chuck warned his men to go easy.

“What other goodies have you got?” the sergeant asked Mendoza.

With a sigh, the trader said, “I'll show you my cash box. You'd find it anyway.”

Chuck shared out the money. He took more than he gave any of the soldiers he led, but not a lot more. He eyed Mendoza. “This is all the bread you've got, right?”

“Of course it is,” the trader answered, deadpan.

He was lying. Even Dan could see it. But Chuck only laughed. He slapped Mendoza on the back. “You've played pretty fair with us. I'm not going to try and squeeze you for whatever you're holding out.”

“Gee, thanks.” Mendoza somehow managed to sound sincere and sarcastic at the same time.

“I'll even post a guard outside to keep you from getting it twice,” the sergeant went on. “ Dan, you take that slot. Anybody else tries to do a number here, send 'em to me.”

“All right, Sergeant,” Dan said. “But what if it's an officer?”

“Send officers to Lieutenant Hank,” Chuck said. “I'll let him know where it's at with this place.”

“Okay.” Dan nodded. He had his orders. He would follow them. And maybe-who could say?- Liz would come out while he was standing watch. That could be interesting, too.

The shooting was over. They'd got robbed by some of the politest thieves Liz had ever not enjoyed meeting. The Valley soldiers didn't even try to pretend they weren't looting. They took what they wanted and acted as if the Mendozas ought to be grateful they didn't do worse. The devil of it was, Liz knew how many different ways they could have done worse if they'd wanted to.

“They didn't hurt us,” Dad said for about the dozenth time. “Thing are just things. We're all right. That's the only thing that matters.”

Would he have said that if he truly depended on making his living from what the Valley soldiers stole? Liz wouldn't have bet a dollar on it, let alone a Benjamin. Playing the role of merchant lent him a certain detachment a real trader wouldn't have had.

Mom winked at Liz. “I think the kid outside on guard duty likes you.”

“Oh, boy. That's all I need,” Liz said. They trained you not to get involved with people from the alternates where you worked. Being people themselves, men and women from Crosstime Traffic sometimes ignored their training. From everything Liz had heard, those affairs almost always ended badly.

She wouldn't have wanted anything to do with even a Westsider. The best of them were dirty and ignorant, racist and sexist and homophobic-by home-timeline standards, anyhow. Those were the standards she had, and she stuck to them.

And the invaders were bound to be worse. The Westsiders saw them as country cousins, people who weren't very bright. Besides, they were invaders. Wouldn't a proper Westsider feel like a traitor for having anything to do with them?

Liz got her answer to that the first time she went to the market. She saw several Westside girls walking and talking with the occupiers. They hadn't wasted any time figuring out which side their bread was buttered on. Older Westside women sniffed at them, but not too loud. Liz was reminded of old black-and-white pictures of German soldiers with Parisian girls during World War II.

She wondered what would happen if Cal and the Westsiders farther south drove the Valley men out of Westwood Village again. How much trouble would these girls be in? Plenty, unless she missed her guess.

Sergeant Chuck had been right-that cash box wasn't the only money the Mendozas had. The Valley soldiers hadn't found the safe, for instance. Even if they had cleaned things out, Dad could get more with the transposition chamber under the house. No wonder he hadn't worried too much about getting robbed. But if somebody took your life, it was gone forever.

With some old coins and some new ones, Liz bought coffee- imported up from Mexico-and some green onions. The onions were local. She carried the purchases back to her house.

The soldier named Dan was doing sentry duty outside. He nodded as she came up. “Hello,” he said.

'“Hello,” she answered. When somebody with a bow and arrows talked to you, you couldn't very well pretend he wasn't there.

“How are you?” Dan asked.

“I'm all right.” Liz wanted to push past him and go on in, but didn't have the nerve. Bad things could happen if he decided she was rude. So she asked, “How are you?” too.

The kid soldier's face lit up. “I'm fine,” he said. “Is it always cool like this here?”

“A lot of the time,” Liz said. Westwood could be ten degrees Celsius cooler than the valley in the summertime. Nobody in America used Celsius in this alternate, though. Some thermometers from Old Time survived, but they were all in Fahrenheit degrees. Liz thought they were dumb. Why 180 degrees between boiling and freezing? Why was freezing thirty-two degrees and not zero? Because Fahrenheit was a weird man-that was the only answer that occurred to her.

“Is it colder in the winter, too?” Dan asked.

“I don't think so. It doesn't snow or anything,” Liz said.

“I saw it snow once,” Dan said. “I was just a little kid. It was like the snowflakes were dancing in the air. It was so pretty. But boy, it was cold!”

Liz couldn't remember the last time it had got cold enough to snow on the Westside. She wondered if her parents could. That wasn't obvious, either. If you lived up in the Valley, you faced weather extremes both ways.

Nodding as politely as she could, Liz went into the house. She felt Dan's eyes on her as she closed the door. How much of a nuisance would he be? Or, on the other hand, how hot and bothered about nothing was she getting? If you shot every guy who looked at a girl and tried to talk to her, the world would get empty mighty fast. She understood that.

But Dan wasn't just a guy back at high school. He was a soldier in a conquering army. If he got angry at her, he could do things a guy at high school never dreamt of. After a moment, Liz shook her head. High-school guys probably did dream of things like that. But they could only dream. Dan didn't have to. He had King Zev's army behind him, after all.

King Zev! Liz didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He ruled a kingdom that wouldn't even be a county supervisor's district back in the home timeline. (Not that the Westside was, or had been, any bigger.) He was the most petty of petty tyrants- except maybe for whatever was left of the Westside City Council. But his men were here, which was what counted now.

She brought the coffee and the onions into the kitchen. “Thanks,” her mother said when she set them down. “Any trouble?”

“Trouble? No, not really,” Liz answered.

Mom shot her a sharp look. “Something, though. What's up, Liz? Is that Dan outside the door again?”

“Uh-huh. He's not really trouble. Not trouble trouble, anyhow.”

“I sure hope not,” Mom said. “Do you want to stay inside the rest of the time we're here? If bad things happen while you're away from the house, your father and I can't do much about them till it's too late.”

Liz shook her head. “I don't want to do that. I'm here to learn how to take care of myself in the alternates, right? Hiding like a turtle in its shell is no way to go.”

“We try not to get stuck in the middle of wars. It doesn't always work, but we do try,” her mother said. “If the choice is between staying in and getting raped or murdered, you stay in.”

“ Dan 's not like that-or I don't think so, anyway,” Liz said. “He's just… interested, you know what I mean? And I'm so not interested in him. He's a local, and he's not even a cute local.” She made a face.

“Cute isn't always the only thing that matters,” her mother pointed out. “Is he smart? Is he nice?”

“He's nice enough, I guess,” Liz said. “Smart? I don't know. We haven't talked about anything much more complicated than the weather.” That was literally true. She glanced over at Mom. “Do you think I ought to act friendlier to him? Protective coloration, like some of the girls in the market

square?'

“Not if you really can't stand him. And I didn't mean throw yourself at him or anything. There are lots and lots of good reasons why Crosstime Traffic doesn't want us to get involved with the locals.”

“I know. I was thinking about that a few minutes ago. These people couldn't do anything with the crosstime secret even if we handed it to them on a silver tray, though.”

“Sure, but that's not the only reason why the rules are there. They keep people from getting hurt, too,” Mom said. “No matter how you slice it, we're way different from people in the alternates, especially in low-tech ones like this. But if you can be friendly without…” Her mother paused, looking for the right words.

“Without acting like a floozy?” Liz suggested, acid in her voice.

Her mother made a face much like the one she'd pulled a moment before, but then nodded. “That's close enough. If you can, it might make things easier all the way around.”

“As long as you're not asking me to be easy,” Liz said.

“No, no, no. No, even.” Mom made pushing-away motions. “I want you to be able to live with yourself and to live in a world with Dan in it. Both at the same time, if you can.”

“That'd be good,” Liz said.

Her mother fed some of the roasted coffee beans into an old-fashioned-and very old-coffee grinder, all brass and wood and glass. In the home timeline, it would have been a fancy antique on a shelf. It still worked for a living here. Mom turned the crank. Freshly ground coffee started to fill the hopper. A wonderful aroma wafted through the air. Liz couldn't help smiling as she sniffed. What a shame coffee smelled so much better than it tasted! She thought so, anyhow. Her folks guzzled the stuff.

“Get me a canister, would you?” Mom said, still cranking.

“Sure.” Liz pulled a small one off the shelf. It was yellow plastic. Most of the decal of a green and red hen still survived to show which side was the front. Liz thought it was ugly. Most people from the home timeline would have. She would have bet that most people from the 1960s would have, too.

But nobody in this alternate could make plastic any more. Here, the ugly little canister was a symbol of better days. All the locals who saw it exclaimed over it. And it had an airtight lid. It would keep the ground coffee fresh.

“There we go.” Mom put the coffee in, then made sure the lid was on the way it should be. “Now your father and I can pry our eyes open in the morning.”

“I wish I could,” Liz said. In the home timeline, she got her caffeine from Cokes and chocolate. Cokes and other sodas survived here only as legends. Once in a blue moon, chocolate came up from the south, but it was much rarer and more expensive than coffee. And, once in a blue moon, a CARE package from the home timeline included real Cokes. Those had to stay-and be drunk-in a concealed basement storeroom. It lay behind reinforced concrete and had a passworded voice lock the locals weren't likely to figure out. So she mostly stayed decaffeinated in this alternate. When she had to have a jolt, she put up with coffee's bitterness.

“I don't know why you don't like coffee better,” her mother said. Liz stopped listening. Mom had been telling her that since she was twelve years old and first started trying to drink the nasty brew. What was the point of I don't know why you! The only answer was, Because I don't, that's why. Liz had said it again and again. It didn't seem to help, because Mom didn't want to hear it.

A lot of the time, Dad would be sensible when Mom wasn't. Not here. He liked coffee, too, and couldn't see why other people didn't. Where coffee was concerned, Liz couldn't win.

(And sometimes Mom could be sensible where Dad wasn't. Anything that had to do with boys… Dad wasn't as bad as some of her friends' parents, but he wasn't good, either-not even close. Liz hadn't said much about Dan to him. She worried what he would do if she did.)

“It'll be okay, Liz.” Her mother might have picked her fretting right out of her head. She wondered if somebody'd hooked up a news crawl above her eyes and connected it to her brain while she wasn't looking.

“Well, I hope so.” She let it go at that.

Guard duty in front of the Mendozas' didn't last as long as Dan wished it would have. Pretty soon, things in Westwood Village settled down. The Westsiders started getting used to the idea that King Zev's men were there to stay. And the Valley soldiers stopped carrying off everything that wasn't nailed down.

A lot of men went farther south, to hold the Santa Monica Freeway line against any Westside counterattacks. Maybe they'd push past the old freeway themselves. That would be something! Captain Kevin's company stayed behind in West-wood, though. Somebody had to remind the locals that they'd changed hands.

One Valley soldier got knocked over the head, and nobody owned up to it. Not long after that, five Westsiders were hanged from lampposts. (A lot of the posts still stood, as they did in the Valley, but their lamps hadn't shone since the Old Time.) “Next time, it will be ten,” Lieutenant Hank warned. “You can't play those games with us, not after your soldiers lost.”

Nobody bushwhacked any more Valley soldiers.

Dan was glad of that. He didn't want to walk his patrols always looking over his shoulder, wondering if some Westsider with a brick or a knife was sneaking up behind him. He was starting to realize he didn't make a great soldier. Oh, he could do the job. But he liked people too well-he didn't want to hurt anybody. Some of the men in his company seemed to think the Westsiders had it coming just because they were Westsiders. Dan didn't feel that way.

Liz, for instance…

He got assigned to patrol the UCLA campus because he could read a map and wouldn't get lost. UCLA had a reputation even up in the Valley. It was supposed to be a place where Old Time knowledge still lived. Not everybody liked that-too many people remembered what Old Time knowledge had done to the world.

But when you thought about cars and planes and light that made nighttime bright as day and medicines that made people healthy all the time and all the other lost marvels, hadn't there been at least as much good as bad in those days? Dan thought so.

And then he stopped thinking about stuff that would never be anything but pictures in books with yellowing pages. (Even the pictures were marvelous. He knew what photographs were, but hardly anyone could take them anymore.) There was Liz, walking south from the direction of the tall building that looked like a waffle on its side.

He waved. “Hi! What are you doing here?”

“I was in the library.” She pointed toward the lower, plainer building to the left and in back of the big waffle.

“What were you doing there?”

“Reading things. What do you think I'd be doing in a library, fishing?”

Dan's ears heated. He'd got zinged, and he knew it. “What were you reading about?” he asked, figuring that was safe enough.

When Liz paused before she answered, he wondered if he was right. What was she doing there? Looking for ways to make Valley soldiers' uniforms catch fire or something of that sort? Dan didn't think anyone could do anything like that, but he wasn't sure. He also wasn't sure where science stopped and magic started, or which worked better. Few people he knew were.

After that hesitation, Liz said, “I was trying to find out why the Fire fell from the sky.”

“The Russians did it,” Dan said automatically. That was one of the first lessons you learned in school. He'd never seen a live Russian. He didn't think anybody from the Valley-or the Westside-had. They lived far, far away, if any of them were still alive. The Fire fell on them, too-lots of it. Schoolbooks went on and on about the revenge America took.

“I've heard that the Russians say we did it,” Liz said. Before Dan could even get mad-the nerve of some people!- she went on, “But that's not what I meant, anyhow. Even if the Russians did do it, I was trying to find out why they wanted to blow up the whole world.”

“Because they were evil, godless Communists.” Dan parroted another lesson. He didn't know just what Communists were, only that they were evil and godless.

Liz's sigh made him feel as if he'd got zinged again, but he didn't understand why. She sounded very patient, though, when she asked, “What would they say about us?”

“Who cares?” Dan blurted. The idea that anybody might care what the Russians said had never crossed his mind till this moment. Neither had the idea that the Russians might say anything at all.

“Well, if that's how you feel…” Liz started to turn away.

That wasn't just a zing. Again, she made Dan feel about three inches tall.

“Wait!” he said. If she didn't like him, he could deal with that. If she scorned him, if she thought he was a jerk, that was a different story. He desperately cast about for a way to go on which wouldn't leave her with the notion that he drooled whenever he wasn't careful. He surprised himself by finding one: “How do you know what the Russians say?”

Liz pointed back toward the library again. “A lot of it's in there. The records are still pretty good.”

“Those would be records for the Old Time, though,” Dan said, and Liz nodded. See? I'm not so dumb after all! He wanted to shout it. Instead, he went on, “How do you know what the Russians say now about what happened way back then?”

This time, the look she gave him was cautious and measuring. No, you aren't so dumb. Does that make you less of a pest or more? Dan didn't know that was what she was thinking, but he would have bet on it. “Traders talk to other traders,” she said, picking her words with care. “News comes in from farther away than you'd think sometimes. It doesn't move fast, but it moves.”

“News ordinary people don't hear?” Dan asked, an edge in his voice. Most of the time, he liked being ordinary fine. Ordinary people were what democracy, even King Zev's democracy, was all about, weren't they? But sometimes being ordinary meant not finding out what the secret stuff, the good stuff, was all about. He didn't like thinking he was on the outside trying to look in.

“No, it's not news ordinary people don't hear,” Liz told him. “You're hearing it from me, aren't you? But sometimes traders do hear it first.”

Dan thought about that. His nod was grudging, but it was a nod. “I guess that's fair,” he said, and then, “Do you have any trader news on where Cal's hiding? Big reward for whoever catches him.”

“No, I don't know about that.” Did Liz speak too quickly now? Or am I imagining things? Dan wondered. After a moment, he decided he probably was. He didn't know Liz well enough to be sure how she usually talked.

“Well, go on,” he said, and pointed south toward her house. “Nobody told me people couldn't look in the library. I'm not sure how much point there is to it after all these years, but it doesn't hurt anything.”

“Wow! Thanks a bunch!” When Liz was sarcastic, she was really sarcastic. She walked-stalked-past Dan with her nose in the air. If she'd wounded him with weapons, not words, she would have left him dead on the half-overgrown paving stones. As things were, he watched her get smaller and smaller till she finally walked around a building and disappeared. Even then, he had to remind himself to get back on patrol.

“I messed up,” Liz said when she got back to the house. “I think I talked my way out of it, but I messed up.”

“What did you do?” Dad asked. He was arranging a tray of fancy brass belt buckles. The Valley soldiers liked them well enough to pay through the nose for them.

Liz explained how she'd told Dan what the Russians in this alternate thought about who started the nuclear war. “We learn that when we go through training,” she said. “It didn't occur to me till too late that he wouldn't know anything about it.”

“I should have these on belts.” Dad pointed to the buckles. “Then I could take a belt and give you a whipping with it.”

Hardly anybody in the home timeline spanked even little children. It was thought of as the next thing to child abuse, or maybe not the next thing but the abuse itself. But things were different in this alternate, as they were in so many. Kids here got walloped all the time, walloped and worse. And so, for a split second, Liz thought Dad meant it. Then, when she noticed the twinkle in his eye-too late, as usual-she could only glare.

“You're impossible!” she said.

“Thank you. I do my best,” he answered, not without pride. “But you did talk yourself out of it?”

“I'm pretty sure,” Liz said. “He didn't seem suspicious when we got done. Jealous, maybe, but not suspicious. I wasn't even lying, or not very much-traders do get news before other people a lot of the time.”

“I know that, thank you.” When Dad was sarcastic, he didn't lay it on with a trowel the way Liz did. He underplayed instead. A lot of the time, that made him more dangerous, not less. After a moment, he went on, “I don't mind if he's jealous. Envy's a nice, ordinary feeling.”

“It can be dangerous, too,” Liz said. “When the Valley soldiers were stealing things here-”

“I know. That was bad, and it might have been worse. Sometimes you get stuck, that's all.”

“It's not supposed to work this way,” Liz said. “We've got the subbasement where the transposition chamber comes. If we can get down there-”

“Everything's golden. But that's if we can,” Dad reminded her. “Remember all the stuff they tell you in training, 'cause it's true. Life doesn't come with a guarantee. Anything that can happen can happen to you.”

Remembering that stuff and liking it were two different things. “I don't know how many releases I had to sign before I could get in a transposition chamber at all. Enough to get sick of them-I know that,” Liz said. “But I figured it was all-”

“Lawyer talk?” Dad interrupted her again.

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, it is and it isn't.” Her father sighed. “They make you sign those releases because doing this is dangerous. Sometimes people don't come back. If anyone going out to an alternate didn't promise ahead of time not to sue if something went wrong, Crosstime Traffic couldn't stay in business. Some alternates look safer than others, but you never can tell. Your mother and I wouldn't've brought you here if we'd known this stupid war would start.”

“Would you have come yourselves?” Liz asked.

Dad sighed again. “Yeah, probably. But that's different. We're grownups. We can figure the odds for ourselves.”

That made Liz mad. “You think I can't.”

“You're not as good at it,” he said, which only made her madder. He held up a hand. “Don't start throwing things at me. You're as smart as you'll ever be-I'm not saying you aren't.”

“What are you saying, then?” Liz hoped she sounded dangerous. She sure felt dangerous.

“If we were computers, you'd have as much RAM as I do. But I've got more programs and files on my hard disk than you do. That means I can judge some things better than you can, because I've got more data than you do.” Dad grinned one of his patented crooked grins. “And one of the things you have trouble judging is the idea that you have trouble judging things.”

“So how am I supposed to get better at it?” Liz demanded.

“Do things. Sometimes you'll be right. Sometimes you won't. With a little luck, you'll start figuring out why, and how you can do better next time. It's called growing up. There's no way to hurry it much. Sometimes your folks need to give you a hand where you may not know enough to make a good choice by yourself.”

“If you were so smart, you would have seen the war coming yourselves,'“ Liz said. “You can make mistakes, too, and calling them bad choices doesn't make them anything but mistakes.”

“I didn't say it did. I'm not perfect-even if I can play perfect on TV.” Dad winked. Liz made a face at him. He went on, “Somebody who's a little older has more experience and a better chance to get things right, that's all. But it doesn't matter how old you are-sometimes you'll still mess up. That's part of being human.”

Liz wanted to stay angry, but he didn't make it easy. If he'd said he had all the answers and she didn't have any… But he hadn't said anything like that. He'd just said he probably had more than she did. And he was probably right, no matter how little she cared to admit it.

“Okay,” she said. Sometimes life was too short for a quarrel. “I scanned some more Newsweeks at the library today.”

“That's good.” Her father seemed relieved to talk about more ordinary things, too. “What kind of shape are they in?”

“Not real good,” Liz answered. “The paper's getting crumbly. They're not as bad as something like TV Guide-those fall apart if you look at them sideways. But I've got to be careful handling them just the same.”

Back in the home timeline, magazines like that were preserved in a nitrogen atmosphere. They were also scanned, so electronic images would survive even if paper didn't. Here… Considering what had happened here, it was a miracle that anything from before the big war was still around.

The librarians at this UCLA didn't fully understand what a treasure they had. They did their jobs as much because their parents and grandparents had done them as because they loved books themselves. But, in the end, why they did them didn't really matter. As long as they could preserve things till civilization revived and appreciated them again, they were doing something worthwhile.

“What's the name of that book? You know-the one with the funny title,” Liz said, not quite out of the blue.

Dad knew which book she meant, too. “A Canticle for Leibowitz” he said. “Yeah, that one fits this alternate pretty well. And you know what else? It was written before the war started, so there's probably a copy in the URL.”

“I wonder if the librarians ever found it,” Liz said.