The Valley-Westside War

Five

Dan gave the little old lady in the market square a dirty look. “Fifteen cents for a sandwich?” he said. “What do you think I am, rich or something?”

“No, sir,” she said. “But I have to live, too, you know.”

“I'll give you a dime,” he said. Now she gave him a dirty look, but she nodded. He handed her the little silver coin. She tucked it away and gave him the sandwich, thick with ham and cheese and avocado. He took a big bite. Almost in spite of himself, he smiled. It was a mighty good sandwich.

And thinking about sandwiches made him think about money. Most dimes and quarters and almost all half-dollars were silver. But some were sandwiches themselves, copper at the core with gray metal like the stuff from which they made nickels on the outside. People argued and argued about what those sandwich coins were worth. Nobody nowadays could turn out anything like them, which made some people think they had to be very valuable. But they didn't have any truly precious metal in them, so others preferred real silver. Even wealthy traders quarreled over that one.

The question mattered less to Dan than it did to those wealthy traders. His big problem with coins-silver or sandwich-was that he didn't see enough of them. Common soldiers in King Zev's army made three dollars a month. Yes, he would haggle over every nickel, even if it made little old ladies dislike him.

She's only a Westsider, anyway, he thought as he walked along, munching. Who cares whether she likes me or not?

Sergeant Chuck waved to him. Pointing to what was left of the sandwich, the underofficer said, “That looks tasty. Where'd you get it?”

“That old gal there, the one in the blue-and-yellow bell bottoms.” Dan pointed back toward her. “She'll try and get fifteen cents out of you, but she'll settle for a dime.”

“Cool,” Chuck said. He made more money than Dan -here as anywhere, rank had its privileges, all right-but he wouldn't end up with a fancy house and a four-horse carriage and a bunch of retainers, either. Nickels mattered to him, too. He hurried off to collect his sandwich.

Everything in the market square was peaceable enough. On the surface, Westwood seemed resigned to coming under King Zev's rule. Some people had told Dan that King Zev's taxes were lower than the ones they'd paid the City Council before. He thought they were dumb to admit it. That would only make Zev more likely to bump things up.

But you never could tell, not for sure. Captain Kevin was back on duty, with his arm in a sling. He went on and on about watching out for spies. Some of the Westsiders didn't want- really didn't want-to be ruled by the Valley. They would pass on whatever they could find out to their friends south of the Santa Monica Freeway line. That would mean trouble for the Valley soldiers in Westwood.

So Captain Kevin said, anyhow. He also said you had to remember that spies looked like ordinary people. You couldn't tell who they were by the way they acted, either. They were supposed to act like everyone else-that let them do their spying. So you had to be careful about what you said around any Westsider.

Dan supposed that made sense. It wasn't easy, though, no matter how Captain Kevin made it sound. Dan looked around. Yes, there were Westsiders within earshot. There almost always were. Unless he talked only when he was in the Valley soldiers' encampment, Westsiders would probably hear him. And he couldn't just talk about things that didn't matter.

He looked north, toward the UCLA campus. That was probably worth more than the knowledge any number of spies could steal from the Valley soldiers. Whatever they'd known in the Old Times, the secrets were hidden somewhere in the library… weren't they? And now those secrets belonged to King Zev. If he could figure them out…

Then what? Dan wondered. Would cars start running again? Would airplanes fly? Would refrigerators keep food from spoiling? Would filter tips make cigarettes taste great?

Maybe. But if they would, why hadn't the Westside City Council made all those wonderful things happen? Dan was a good Valley patriot. He was sure King Zev knew more about such things than Cal and the other councilmen. But Zev didn't know enough now to make any of those things happen in the Valley.

A slow smile crossed Dan's face. King Zev's men knew enough to get that heavy machine gun working. Without it, chances were they wouldn't have beaten the Westsiders. If the UCLA library held a book about old machine guns, the locals either hadn't found it or hadn't paid any attention to it.

That Liz… Dan smiled again. She hadn't even thought about machine guns. She'd worried about history, of all the useless things! That would have been funny if it weren't so sad.

The smile faded faster than it had formed. Liz said she was interested in history. How do I know that's true? Dan wondered. He realized he didn't know it, not for sure. Maybe she'd been looking up stuff about machine guns or bazookas or cannons or tanks. (He wasn't quite sure what tanks were, but he knew they were supposed to be very bad news.)

He didn't want to believe that about her. But how much did what he wanted to believe have to do with anything? She could talk about history all she wanted. II she was really studying flamethrowers or even A-bombs, what she talked about didn't matter.

Dan shook his head. She could study A-bombs as much as she wanted. Nobody nowadays was able to make them work. Maybe that meant God loved mankind too much to let it blow itself up twice. (But why didn't He love mankind too much to let it blow itself up once, then?) Or maybe the people of Old Times had used up all the atoms there were. Whatever the reason, the Fire hadn't fallen from the sky since 1967. All kinds of other bad things had happened since then, but not that one.

He pulled his thoughts back to Liz. He needed to ask her some questions about what she was really doing at the LCLA library. Then he started to laugh. If he truly believed she was trouble, wouldn't he turn her over to his superiors? Sure he would. A good, dutiful soldier would, anyhow.

Maybe I'm not a good, dutiful soldier, then, he thought. But if he were a bad soldier, he wouldn't pay any attention to her at all, would he? He didn't want to think of himself as a bad soldier. All he wanted to do was get through the time when he had to wear King Zev's uniform. If he could do that without getting hurt, he could go on with the rest of his life once he took off the uniform.

And if the rest of his life happened to involve Liz… He laughed again. Down deep, he knew why he was paying attention to her. And it had nothing to do with whether he was a soldier-good, bad, or in the middle.

Liz was about as happy to see Dan come to the house as she would have been to come down with a toothache. For people in this alternate, toothaches were no joke. No biological repair here-not even any high-speed drills. No novocaine to let dentists work without hurting their patients. A few dentists did have ether or chloroform to let them pull teeth without causing pain. What that meant, though, was basically that, whenever anything went wrong with a tooth, out it came. Lots of smiles here had gaps in them.

'“Sure must be a bunch of books in that big old library.” Dan stretched before he sat down on a bench in the courtyard.

'“There are,” Liz agreed. She could tell he was sweet on her-she recognized the signs. Maybe, if she didn't encourage him, he would take a hint and go away. Maybe.

“Must be books about all kinds of heavy things,” Dan went on.

''I guess.” Liz wasn't sure just what he meant by heavy. She wasn't sure he was sure, either. Important probably came closest, but that wasn't right, either.

“All that stuff in there from the Old Time,” Dan said. “I bet you could find out a lot about what they knew back then if you could just figure out where to look.”

“That's what I've been trying to do,” Liz answered, interested in spite of herself. “I want to know what really kicked off the war.”

“Yeah, that's what you said.” Dan nodded. “Surprises me, like, that you worry about history and not something you could really use.”

“Huh?” Liz didn't get it. And then she did. He thought she was looking for high tech in the University Research Library. That would have been funny if it weren't so sad. By the home timeline's standards, the ones she was used to, nothing in the URL was high-tech. Technology from 1967 here was as old-fashioned and out-of-date to her as it would have been there. But people here had been able to do much more in 1967 than they could nowadays.

Her understanding must have shown on her face. Nodding again, Dan said, “Now you can dig it, right? I mean, who cares about history when you can look up machine guns?”

“But I don't care about machine guns,” Liz said-which was nothing but the truth.

“Sure you don't,” Dan said-which was anything but agreement. “If you made them, don't you think you or your father could sell them?”

He didn't understand about factories. How could he, in this poor, sorry alternate? “I couldn't make a machine gun. Neither could Dad,” Liz said.

“I bet the Westside could, if it found out how in a book.”

Dan might have been right about that. Liz wasn't sure one way or the other. “If they were looking in the library for things like that, they wouldn't send somebody like me to find them.” Liz said. “'Use your head, man. They'd send a gunsmith who already knew most of what he needed. He'd be after the last few clues-he wouldn't be starting from scratch, the way I'd have to.”

By the look on Dan's face, he might have taken a big bite out of a lemon. He hadn't thought of that ahead of time, and it plainly made more sense than he wished it did. “Well, maybe,” he said.

“Not maybe-for sure,” Liz said. “Because I don't know diddly squat about machine guns, and I don't care, either.”

“You should care,” Dan said seriously. “If the Westside had a couple of machine guns, you wouldn't have lost the war.”

“Well, sure.” Liz knew she was supposed to be a Westside patriot. Taking the idea seriously wasn't easy. Why would anybody want to fight and die for a silly little excuse for a country like this? But the question, once asked, answered itself. People had fought and died for little tiny countries all through history. Athens. Sparta. Venice. Singapore. Lots of others. She went on with the truth: “Like I told you, I still don't know anything about machine guns.”

“You're a trader.” Dan made money-counting motions. “Where's the profit in finding out about Old Time history?”

Liz started to answer that, then stopped before she stuck her foot in her mouth. She sent Dan a sharp look. He sat there in the courtyard, soaking up sun like a lizard. He had a patchy, scratchy-looking beard. He didn't bathe or wash his uniform often enough. (Liz didn't bathe often enough, either. Nobody in this alternate did. That made it a little easier to take. People said that, where everybody stank, nobody stank. It wasn't quite true, but it came close enough.) He didn't have much education-nobody here did. But he wasn't stupid after all. He might be dangerously smart.

She hoped her pause wasn't too obvious. Then she said, “There isn't much profit in Old Time history, or there hasn't been yet.”

“So why do you do it, in that case?” Dan pounced like a cat jumping on a hamster.

“It's my hobby, I guess,” Liz answered. “Some people collect teacups or stamps or Old Time baseball cards. Some people have windup trains. Some of them even still work, or I've heard they do, anyhow.”

“Yeah, I've heard that, too,” Dan said. But he didn't sound convinced. He looked at her in a way she didn't like at all. She would rather have had him following her with his eyes because he thought she was pretty. She knew how to deal with that, and also knew it wasn't dangerous in any serious way. This intent, thoughtful stare, on the other hand… He went on, “I'll tell you what bothers me about your-hobby, like. It gives you the excuse to go to the library and look for things that could hurt my kingdom. I don't want anybody to get away with anything like that. Can you blame me?”

You bet I can, Liz thought. What irked her was, she was telling the truth-mostly, anyhow. She didn't care about machine guns or hand grenades or tanks. The home timeline had far better weapons than the ones anybody had imagined in 1967. The history of this alternate, finding out exactly where its breakpoint was… that really mattered-to her. anyhow. But she could see she wouldn't be able to explain why in any way that made sense to Dan.

So she didn't try. She just said, “If you're going to think like that, you'd better put guards around the library and keep everybody from going in and out. It's not just me, you know. Lots of people use the books there. That's what they're for. And you'd better take away all the Old Time encyclopedias you can find. I'm sure they talk about weapons and things, too. Or do you think I'm wrong?”

He looked too unhappy to think she was wrong. “You're saying everyone who can read may be a spy,” he said slowly. He also sounded plenty unhappy.

Liz shook her head. “'Most people aren't spies. Fm not a spy, for heaven's sake. I'm just saying you're on my case for no good reason, and I wish you weren't. It really bugs me, man.” Talking that way really bugged her, too, but she couldn't let on. To herself, she sounded like somebody from an ancient sitcom.

“Sorry.” he said, but she knew he wasn't. He went on, “You got me interested in you, and now I can't help noticing the things you do.”

That's what I was afraid of-one more thing Liz couldn't say. She did say, “Like, try. Fry as hard as you can.”

He gave her a nasty look. “What would happen if we did search this place as hard as we could?”

She glared back at him. She couldn't let him see the threat worried her. “You'd rob us again, same as you did when you came in here the first time. Just 'cause we can't do anything about it doesn't mean we have to like it.”

“That's what you get for ending up on the losing side of a war,” Dan said.

He wasn't even wrong. Five thousand years of history and countless alternates proved he wasn't. To the victors went the spoils. That was as old as the hills and as new as next week. It could have been worse, too. The Valley soldiers could have decided that Liz and her mother were part of the spoils. Lots of soldiers would have decided exactly that, and then things really would have turned ugly.

“I'm not a soldier, and I'm not a spy,” Liz said. “I didn't do anything to you. I didn't do anything to the Valley or to King Zev, either.”

“I guess not.” Yes, Dan agreed, but he didn't seem convinced. “But there's something funny about you. I don't know what it is. but it's there. You can't tell me it's not. You're… more foreign than most Westsiders. How come?”

“I don't know,” Liz lied. She knew much too well. No matter how much she'd trained and practiced, she wasn't a real Westsider, and nothing could make her one. Somebody who really did belong to this alternate was liable to notice if he looked closely enough. Dan had. His reasons for looking closely weren't the ones that usually tripped up Crosstime Traffic people-he liked her. But that made him wonder about her in the same way as if he hated her.

He scratched the side of his jaw. Those wispy whiskers rasped under his fingernails. She thought the noise was gross, but she couldn't tell him so. “Well, something funny's going on,” he said. “Something fishy. You know stuff you aren't telling. You're just lucky it's me asking the questions-that's all I've got to say.”

Liz shook her head. “That's not true.” He glared at her. For a split second, she saw what he would look like if he did hate her. It wasn't pretty. But she made herself go on: “If I were

lucky, nobody would be asking me questions, because I haven't done anything to deserve it.” Her voice broke on the last couple of words. She hadn't planned that, which probably made it even more effective.

“Don't cry!” Dan exclaimed, which almost made Liz laugh instead. Yes, he liked her, and yes, her cracking voice had done her some good. He really sounded alarmed. “I have to ask you these questions, you know,” he said. “It's my Patriotic Duty.” She could hear the capital letters thud into place.

“I think you're using your patriotic duty as an excuse to push people around,” Liz said. And how often had men and women done that In all the different histories of the world? Millions of times, more likely billions. Most of them would have had the purest motives imaginable-in their own minds, anyhow. The people they pushed around might have had a different opinion.

“I am not,” he said angrily. “You tell me all this weird stuff about the Old Time-it's not what I learned in school, that's for sure. And you know too much about the Russians, and everybody knows how bad they are. So what am I supposed to think, anyway?”

“I know what I know,” Liz said with a shrug. And how I know it is none of your business, pal. “I don't know what schools are like in the Valley, or what they teach you there. I don't know what Westside schools are like, either. I'm a traders' brat. Maybe that's what makes me seem different to you. We travel around a lot, so if my folks didn't teach me nobody would. If you want to blame anybody for the way I think, Blame them.”

If Dan did decide to blame them… well, so what? They could disappear back to the home timeline, and so could Liz.

“Where all do you travel?” Dan asked. “Have your folks ever seen real, live Russians with their own eyes? Have you?” He might have been talking about demons with horns and fangs and tails. By the way he asked the question, he probably thought he was.

“I’ve never seen any Russians,” Liz said. “How could I? They're across the ocean.” She gestured toward the west. You could see the Pacific from the tops of tall buildings in West-wood. You could, if you felt like climbing all those flights of stairs to get that high off the ground. You took elevators for granted… till you had to do without them. When you were climbing stairs, who wanted to go more than four or five flights' worth?

“What about your folks?” Dan didn't want to let it alone. Do they worship devils? He didn't say that, but it was what he meant.

“I don't think they ever have. Like I said, how could they?” Liz answered. “But if you really want to know, you'd do better asking them yourself.”

She wondered if he would. Talking with somebody your own age-even grilling somebody your own age-wasn't so hard. Taking on somebody as old as your parents had to be a lot tougher. Sure, Dan wore the uniform of a conquering army. But Dad and Mom wore a different kind of uniform: the beginnings of gray hair and wrinkles and the invisible armor of experience.

She could tell he felt the burden. “Maybe I will,” he said, but not in a way that suggested he was looking forward to it. He got to his feet. “I guess you aren't trying to hurt the Valley. I guess.” He didn't sound sure about that, either-nowhere close. “I don't know just what you are up to, but it's something funny. History!” He shook his head and walked off toward the door. He didn't quite slam it behind him. but he also didn't shut it gently.

Liz didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. The only thing that interested her about this alternate was its history. Dan wouldn't believe her if she told him so. And she couldn't tell him why it interested her, or that she was from the home timeline. She had to go on pretending to be something she wasn't, even if it got her into trouble. The trouble she'd get into if he ever found out what she really was would be even worse.

A rock and a hard place. The devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. They were all clichès, of course. But now Liz understood how they'd got to be clichès. They put truth into a handful of words.

She said a handful of words herself. None of them helped much. Saying them made her feel better-for a little while, anyway. Sometimes you took what you could get. even if it wasn't much.

Dan stood in line, waiting for a cook to give him bread and fried chicken and sauerkraut. He hated sauerkraut. It was supposed to be good for you. so the cooks dished it out a couple of times a week. Sergeants kept an eye on you to make sure you really ate it. too.

The stuff even smelled foul. One of the Valley soldiers in front of Dan pointed at the kettle where the sauerkraut bubbled and asked. “Who died?”

“Oh. you're funny,” the cook said. ''Funny like a broken leg, you are.” He also got his revenge. He gave the mouthy soldier a burnt piece of bread and a chicken back with more bone than meat. And he gave him a big helping of sauerkraut.

If the other soldier hadn't, Dan might have joked about the sauerkraut. Sure, he knew annoying the cooks wasn't the smartest thing you could do. But there was a difference between knowing and knowing. When the other soldier popped off and paid for it, that drove the lesson home. Dan didn't say anything at all. He just held out his mess kit. He got a plump thigh, some unscorched bread, and… less sauerkraut than the joker had, anyway.

He sat down on what had been a concrete bus bench. They had those in the Valley, too. The benches survived, while buses were nothing but pictures in Old Time books and magazines and stories that granddads said they'd heard from their granddads once upon a time when they were little kids.

No. no buses on the streets now. No cars. No trucks. Some rich people's carriages had wheels and axles taken from motor vehicles. Some-the super-fancy ones, pulled by big teams of horses-were made from car bodies, with the front part, the part that had held the now-useless motor, cut off to save weight. King Zev had a carriage like that. Its windows still went up and down, even. A few Valley nobles were also lucky enough to travel in style. So were some traders.

Dan hadn't seen any carriages like that here in Westwood. He was sure there were some. The big shots here were just as rich as the ones in the Valley, probably richer. But most of them didn't get rich by being dumb. They weren't showing off what they owned, not when King Zev ruled this place now instead of their pet City Council.

Sergeant Chuck came up. He had two juicy-looking drum-sticks in his mess kit. A sergeant didn't need to butter up the cooks the way ordinary soldiers did. A cook who got in trouble with a sergeant would pay for it.

“What's happening, Dan?” Chuck asked.

'“Not much, Sergeant.” Dan stood up so Chuck could sit down on the bench. The sergeant did. Dan didn't have to give up his place-nothing in the rules said he did, anyhow. But Chuck would have remembered if he didn't. Sergeants had long memories, too.

“How's that chick at the traders' house?” Chuck grinned as he asked the question. That meant he knew Dan liked Liz. A sergeant who was worth his pay kept track of what was going on with his men.

“She's okay. She's kind of weird, though,” Dan said.

“Well, Westside chicks are supposed to be that way,” Chuck said. That was an article of faith among Valley men. The Westsiders thought people from the Valley were a bunch of hicks, but what did they know?

“Not weird like that. Not weird weird.” Dan wondered if he was making any sense at all. Chuck nodded, so maybe he was. He went on, “I mean, she's into history, if you can dig that.”

“History?” Chuck gnawed the meat off one of those drumsticks. Then he shook his head. After he swallowed the fried chicken, he said, “Yeah, that's pretty freaky, all right. How'd you find out?”

“She was coming back from the UCLA fancy library. I asked her what she was doing, and that's what she told me,” Dan said.

Chuck's eyes narrowed. So did his mouth. “Could be a cover for something else, something nastier.”

“I thought so, too,” Dan answered. “But she really does know stuff about Russians and things, and she doesn't know much about guns. If they were trying to get stuff out of the library, wouldn't they have picked somebody who does?”

“We would-that's for sure,” Chuck said. “The Westsiders, though… they're kinda far-out, so who knows for sure?” He paused. “Russians, eh? How does she know about Russians?”

“I'm not quite sure,” Dan admitted. “The way she made it sound, traders hear stuff ordinary people don't. Do you think that's true?”

Chuck scratched his head. “Don't know for sure. I guess it could be. They travel more than most people do. that's for sure.” He cocked his head to one side, studying Dan. “I bet you've been trying like anything to find out what she does know.”

“Well… yeah.” Dan was embarrassed. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he didn't want his private likes and dislikes to get in the way of his duty, either.

“Don't sweat it, man,” Chuck said, understanding his tone. “If you want to like her, you can like her. Plenty of our guys have got Westside girlfriends for themselves. Long as you remember you're a Valley soldier, everything's cool.”

“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 864,000? Why not $65,000-or 875,000?”

“Beats me,” Dan said. “Do you want me to see ii 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 ease, 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, sweetheart,” 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.