The Valley-Westside War

Six

“Attention!” Captain Kevin shouted. Dan straightened and froze in place. Morning inspection. It came every day, and he hated it every time.

Captain Kevin didn't inspect the company in person. Sergeant Chuck prowled through the ranks. Whenever he found somebody with a dirty weapon or ungreased boots or a missing button, he let the unlucky soldier hear about it. Chuck cursed as well as anybody Dan had ever met. No-he cursed as well as anybody Dan had ever imagined, which covered a lot more ground.

Chuck stared at Dan with red-tracked eyes. Dan looked straight ahead and pretended the sergeant wasn't there. After what seemed like forever, Chuck went on to share his good cheer with the next soldier. Dan didn't let out a sigh of relief. That might have brought the sergeant back, which was the last thing he wanted.

After the inspection was over and punishment handed out to soldiers who'd fouled up, Captain Kevin said, “And now we have some good news.”

Dan blinked. He didn't hear that every day. A buzz ran through the company. “Silence in the ranks!” Chuck yelled.

Somehow, though, he seemed less ferocious than usual. “You better listen up now!” he went on. “ Captain Kevin's got something important to say.”

Anything the company commander said was important, just because he said it. So it seemed to Dan, anyhow. He couldn't imagine any common soldier wouldn't think the same.

Kevin strode out front and center. The sling he still wore somehow lent him extra authority-it showed he'd been through the worst war could do. “We aim to be a modern army,” he said. “We aim to have the best weapons we can get. Now we've captured a big Westside arsenal, and so our army gets to take their weapons. Only fair, since we won-right?”

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers chorused, Dan loud among them. Who would say no?

“Cool,” the company commander said. “Because of that, we get to retire fifteen bows and arrows in this company and replace 'em with matchlocks.” He gestured. Two ordnance sergeants wheeled up a cart that probably went back to the Old Time. On it gleamed the modern muskets and their gear. Kevin fished a scrap of paper from his tunic pocket. “The following soldiers will turn in their bows and arrows and become musketeers.” He began reading names.

Dan wanted to hear his. He didn't really expect to-he was very junior-but he wanted to. A matchlock of his own! That would be something. It might even impress Liz. A musketeer had to be a much more important person than a mere archer.

Soldiers came up to claim their muskets and powder horns and leather bullet boxes and ramrods and lengths of slowmatch- string soaked in water and gunpowder that burned at a set, reliable rate. One by one, they returned to the ranks, their faces glowing with pride. Each of them thought he was a much more important person than a mere archer.

Then Captain Kevin said, “ Dan!”

Dan jumped. He hadn't expected to hear his name. But here he was, getting a matchlock of his very own! He hadn't been so happy since… since forever, as far as he could tell.

Sergeant Chuck poked him in the ribs. “Go on, kid, get moving,” the sergeant stage-whispered. “You don't put your fanny in gear, he's liable to decide to give somebody else the gun.”

Kevin wouldn't do that… would he? Dan didn't want to find out. He hurried forward. One of the ordnance sergeants took his bow and bowstrings and his quiver full of arrows. Just for a second, he wondered what would happen to them. Maybe some gray-bearded home guard would get them. Or maybe they'd sit in the arsenal for years and years.

But then Dan forgot all about them, because the other ordnance sergeant handed him his matchlock and everything that went with it. “Take good care of your new stuff,” the sergeant growled.

“I will!” Dan shouldered the musket and returned to the ranks.

The first thing he noticed was that the gun and the bullet box were heavy. The musket weighed a lot more than his bow-stave had. Maybe the bullet box wasn't heavier than the quiver full of arrows, but it packed its weight into much less space. Matchlock bullets were balls of lead, each one as thick as his thumb. They weren't so deadly as the long, pointed rounds Old Time rifles fired, but you still didn't want to stop one with your face or your chest.

Chuck snorted like his father when Dad was exasperated.

“Here-you wear them like this.” The sergeant put the bullet box on Dan's belt. The ramrod went there, too. He looped the powder horn over Dan's left shoulder. He wrapped the slow-match around Dan's right upper arm. Dan knew where everything was supposed to go, but he'd never had to worry about it himself before. Now he did. Now he was a musketeer.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. Chuck only snorted again. Dan asked, “Now when do I really get to shoot?”

“New musketeers will start practicing this afternoon.” Chuck answered. “These aren't like Old Time rifles. We make the guns and the bullets and the powder ourselves. They aren't gone forever once we use them up-we can get more whenever we need them. So you'll have plenty of practice.” His smile turned nasty, even for a sergeant's. “And you won't have any excuses for missing what you aim at, you hear?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” Dan said loudly. Saying Yes, Sergeant! as loud as you could was almost always the right answer.

Sure enough, the Valley army had set up a firing range not far from the archery targets. Chuck scowled at the men who stood in front of him, and at the uncertain way they held their matchlocks. “I'm supposed to turn you into proper musketeers?” he growled, rolling his eyes. “It's like asking me to turn a bunch of jackasses into racehorses, and that's the truth. But it's what they told me to do, so I've got to do it.”

Sergeants always said common soldiers were the dumbest things on two legs, so Dan didn't get uptight about one more insult. He'd heard too many. He knew they didn't mean much. If Chuck didn't say crude things about the men under him, he probably wouldn't know what to say.

“Ground your muskets!” he ordered, and held his vertically with the stock on the ground so they would know what he meant. '“Now pour a charge of powder!”

Dan had already discovered that the tip of the powder horn came off. It made a miniature horn, one that held a single charge of powder. He poured in the gunpowder, and then carefully poured it down the muzzle of his musket. One luckless fellow spilled his powder instead. Chuck reamed him up one side and down the other. Dan thanked heaven he hadn't goofed.

“Stuff in your wads!” Chuck said.

In the bullet box, along with the musket balls and a flask of priming powder, were little squares of cloth. Dan took one, folded it up. and stuffed it down the muzzle. He used the ramrod to force it down toward the bottom of the musket barrel.

“Now the bullet!” Chuck said. A couple of men laughed. Chuck glared at them. “Think it's funny, do you? When you're really fighting, you can forget. You can-unless you're trained so you do it right without thinking about it. Most of you lugs don't think real good anyway, so you better get it down pat.”

The bullet in Dan's hand felt heavy, as if it meant business. It was a tight fit when it went into the muzzle. It had to be, or the gas from the burning gunpowder would get around it and not push it forward.

Chuck used the ramrod again. “Ram that baby home,” he said. “Really ram it down there. Don't be shy-you've got to seat it firmly.”

Dan imitated him in that step as he had in the others. He felt the sweat spring out on his forehead as he thrust with the ramrod again and again. You could shoot arrows faster than musket balls. Musket balls carried farther, though. And you were supposed to need less practice once you got the hang of using a matchlock, too.

Once you did, yeah. Till you did…

“Fix your match in the serpentine,” Chuck commanded. The swiveling piece that brought the match down onto the touch-hole had a groove into which the thick string would fit. “Leave a couple of inches sticking out. Now pour your priming powder into the touch-hole. Just a little, mind.”

The priming powder from the small flask in the bullet box was much more finely ground than the ordinary black powder in the powder horn. That made it burn faster and more reliably.

“Now if you were in battle, you'd already have your match burning, right?” Chuck said.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Dan chorused along with the rest of the new musketeers. When it rained, matchlocks weren't good for much. Luckily, that wasn't a worry very often in the Valley or on the Westside.

Chuck had a lighter-a real Old Time Zippo. “I have a devil of a time finding flints for this now, but I manage,” he said. He flicked the Zippo-and it lit. There was no more Old Time lighter fluid. He used strong spirits instead. The flame was blue and almost invisible. “Now nobody pull the trigger till I give the order, you hear?” he warned. “You'll be sorry if you do. Got it? Dig me?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Dan said again. Chuck walked along the line of musketeers, lighting one length of slowmatch after another. The smell of burning gunpowder didn't make Dan think of battle. It smelled like fireworks, and reminded him of the Fourth of July and of October 23, the day the Valley's first king broke away from Los Angeles after the Fire fell.

“All right!”' Chuck shouted. “Aim at the target!”

Along with the rest of the new musketeers, Dan did just that. It wasn't much more than a hundred yards away, but suddenly it seemed very small. He tried not to let his hands shake. He wanted a bulls-eye more than anything.

Chuck got behind the soldiers with the matchlocks before he gave his next order: “'Fire!”

Dan pulled the trigger. Down came the serpentine. The burning match set off the priming powder around the touch-hole. The priming powder hissed and fizzed. Half a heartbeat later, the main charge went off-Boom! The heavy matchlock bucked against Dan 's shoulder. Flame and a big puff of gray smoke burst from the muzzle.

“Wow!” Dan said, coughing from all the sulfurous smoke. When matchlocks fired a volley, they almost hid what they fired at. Was that where the phrase fog of war came from? Dan wouldn't have been surprised. But now he'd shot off a gun. He really and truly had. He felt proud enough to burst.

“Now its sale to stand in front of you people again,” Chuck said. “I'm going to go over to the target and see how you did.”

“We slaughtered 'em!” a musketeer said.

“Yeah!” Dan nodded. He thought so, too. If he hadn't put his musket ball right through the center of the target…

Chuck walked over, took the paper down from the mound of earth that caught bullets, and carried it back. “Three hits,” he said, displaying the target. It was a lot bigger close up. “Fifteen of you shooting at it, and three hits. Maybe the rest of you would've scared the bad guys a little. Maybe. But three out of fifteen! I know a matchlock's not a real accurate gun. Even so, you can do better than that. You can, and you will, or I'll know the reason why. Reload!”

As Dan started the complicated job of getting another bullet into the matchlock, he realized being a musketeer wasn't just an honor. Like anything else, it was a lot of work.

The first thing Liz noticed when she opened the door and saw Dan standing in the street was the matchlock on his shoulder. The second thing she noticed was how proud of himself he looked. She didn't laugh, though she wanted to. He would have got mad-she could see that.

“You had a bow before,” she said gravely.

“I got promoted,” he said. “I'm a musketeer now.”

Athos, Porthos, or Aramis? she wondered. He might get that. The Three Musketeers was a book here, too. The breakpoint between this alternate and the home timeline lay more than a century after it was written.

But Liz didn't want to talk about Alexandre Dumas with Dan. She just wanted him to go away. “Congratulations,” she said, and then spoiled it on purpose by adding, “I guess.”

“I think I was the youngest soldier in my company to get a musket.” Yes, he wanted to brag about it, no matter how much that made him sound like an idiot. He thought he was hot stuff. All he needed was a plume in his hat, and he could make like d'Artagnan. Never mind that his weapon would've been obsolete in 1750. He didn't care. It was more up-to-date than a bow and arrows, which was all that counted for him.

“Well, good for you,” she said. If he knew how pathetic he was… But she was judging him by the home timeline's standards. He wasn't pathetic here. By the standards of this alternate, he was way cool, and he knew it. A girl who took those standards for granted would think he was way cool, too.

Tough beans, Liz thought. I ain't that girl, even if Mr. Musketeer thinks I am.

And, all too plainly, Dan did. “Can I come in?” he asked. He didn't even dream she would say no. What he really meant was, Can I show off some more?

Liz wanted to tell him to get lost, at least as much to see the look on his face as for any other reason. She wanted to, yes, but she didn't dare. You were supposed to try to get along with the locals when they weren't impossibly obnoxious. If you didn't, you got a black mark in your database, one that would stay there forever. And Dan wasn't… quite… impossible. He ran his mouth, yeah, and he wondered whether Liz was some kind of spy, but he'd always kept his hands to himself.

She almost wished he wouldn't. If he tried feeling her up, that would give her a real excuse for having nothing to do with him afterwards. His silly talk and strutting weren't nearly enough, not by themselves. And since they weren't…

“I guess you can,” Liz said with a sigh she didn't even try to hide. Dan never noticed it. She hadn't thought he would. She would have bet a hundred Benjamin ’s against a dollar that he wouldn't, in fact. But winning the almost worthless dollar wouldn't have mattered to her.

Once he walked into the house, she had to be more polite. This alternate had rules about hospitality. A guest was a guest. She brought Dan orange juice and bread and olive oil, and had some herself. They sat on a bench in the courtyard. She wasn't going to take him to her room-no way. That would have given him ideas he didn't need. Oh, he probably had them already, but he wouldn't do anything about them, not out here. She couldn't be so sure of that in a more private place. There was such a thing as asking for trouble.

But right this minute Dan was too full of himself-and of his super-duper matchlock musket-to turn into that kind of nuisance. He unslung the musket and asked, “Do you want to know how it works?”

“Oh, I'm dying to,” Liz said in a tone that couldn't mean anything but. You must be out of your mind, Charlie.

Dan didn't get it. She might have known-she had known- he wouldn't. He walked her through the whole complicated process of loading and firing the gun. The only reason she would have wanted to know that was so she could shoot him with it. If he couldn't buy a clue, could he at least rent one?

Not a chance. After he'd gone through his rigmarole, he said, “And then, after you've been shooting, you have to clean the inside of the barrel. Gunpowder builds up in there-we call it fouling.” By the way he said it, he might have coined the word himself.

Liz knew she had to give him some kind of answer. Big deal was the first thing that came to mind. Somehow, she didn't think he'd appreciate it. She tried something safer: “How about that?” You couldn't get into too much trouble with three little words that didn't mean anything.

“Did you know any of this stuff before?” Dan didn't ask it quite smoothly enough. He wasn't just interested in her. He still halfway thought she was some kind of spy. Maybe more than halfway.

She shook her head. “No, not really. I told you-I'm not into guns.”

“No. You're into history. And that's just freaky,” Dan said.

Who was it who'd said, “History is bunk”? Henry Ford, that was who- Liz remembered it from a question on an AP test, and from reading Brave New World. Lots of people-most people, even-in the home timeline had thought so, right up into the middle of the twenty-first century.

But when you could go from one alternate to another, when you could see how one change in history altered everything that sprang from it, and when you needed to figure out how the changes worked, history wasn't bunk any more. Along with chronophysics. history was one of the underpinnings of Crosstime Traffic. In the home timeline, that made it a very big deal indeed.

But not here. Here, it was still bunk. People were still trying to get out from under the disaster history had dropped on them 130 years before. Understanding exactly why the disaster happened was a luxury they had no lime for.

She couldn't explain that to Dan. So she pointed to his precious matchlock and said, “Do you think you'd be carrying that if somebody wasn't interested in history?”

He looked at her as if she'd started speaking Russian. “Huh?” he said.

“It's true.” she told him. ''We can't make guns like the ones they had just before the Fire fell, right?”

“Well, sure. Everybody knows that,” Dan admitted. “But what's it got to do with history? Or matchlocks?”

''Matchlocks come from a time hundreds of years before the Fire fell. They aren't a new invention. They're a, a reinvention, I guess you'd call it,” Liz said. “After the Fire fell, somebody who knew the history of guns must have figured, Well, let's use these-they're the best we can make with what we've got left.”

She waited. Would he think she was crazy? Would he understand any of what she was talking about? Or would he think she was making things up to freak him out?

He looked at the matchlock, and at the powder horn on his belt. “I guess the same thing's true about machine guns, huh?” he said after a few seconds.

Liz nodded. “Only more so, because they're more complicated.”

“Okay. I guess you make sense. I hadn't thought about it like that before,” Dan said. But before Liz could get too happy about enlightening him, he went on, “You sure know a lot about guns for somebody who says she doesn't know anything about guns.”

Oops, she thought. She threw her hands in the air, playacting only a little. “I don't know squat about guns. I don't care about guns-”

“But-” Dan interrupted.

“I don't!” Liz interrupted right back. “I know something about history. It's not the same thing. Can't you see that?” It wasn't quite the same thing, anyway. She hoped he wouldn't think it was.

She watched him wrestling with it. “Well, maybe,” he said. “But you know about Russians, too.”

He'd never let her live that down, would he? “I don't know a whole lot about them-I really don't,” she said.

“You know more than any right-thinking American's got any business knowing,” Dan said.

Most of the time, he thought of himself as belonging to the Valley. It was his kingdom, and Zev was his king. The Westside was a different country to him and to his fellow soldiers-and to the Westsiders, too. But he remembered the murdered United States on the Fourth of July… and whenever he talked about the Russians.

“It's a democracy, isn't it?” Liz said. Democracy was still a potent word here, even if it didn't mean what it had before the Fire fell. Duties got split up so lots of people did them-that was democracy. The rulers on the Westside called themselves city councilmen and not dukes-that was democracy, too. Liz went on, “So I have the right to find out about whatever I want to, don't I?”

''Maybe you do.” Dan sounded troubled. “But just because you have it doesn't mean you should use it. We gave the Russians what they deserved. After all, they hit us first.”

Not if you listen to them. But he wouldn't want to hear that. And nobody knew who'd launched the first missiles. After 130 years, it mattered only to historians. This alternate was too busy trying to take care of itself to have the time to train historians and give them a chance to work. If not for people like her family, people from the home timeline, nobody would try to find out till all the best evidence had crumbled to dust.

A lot of evidence had already crumbled. Liz wasn't sure she and her folks would ever be sure what had happened here. At least they were trying to find out, though. The survivors of the nuclear exchange-here and in Russia-were too busy blaming each other to care about the truth, whatever it turned out to be.

She frowned at Dan. “You're saying I shouldn't try to know what's so if that doesn't go along with what people believe.”

“Right on!” He didn't try to deny it. “If all the people believe it, it's so. That's democracy, too, isn't it?”

No! She wanted to scream it. But that was democracy, at least the way they used the word here. “I'm sorry, but I want to know what's what no matter what,” she said. She knew she could have put it better, but too bad. “Everybody here on the Westside thought we'd beat your army, but we didn't turn out to be right enough, did we?”

“I should say not. We creamed you.” Dan frowned again, this time at himself. “Okay, though. I guess I see what you're trying to say.”

Liz breathed a silent sigh of relief. She'd wondered if he would. A lot of the time, if somebody knocked a hole in your argument, you just pretended it wasn't there. She was glad Dan would admit there was a difference between what everybody thought and what was true.

“A long time ago, people thought the earth was flat. They thought it was the middle of things, too, and the sun went around it,” she said.

“It sure looks flat,” Dan said. “They teach us in school that the earth goes around the sun, but I'm dogged ii I understand why. I don't know ii I believe it, either. It looks like it ought to be the other way around, doesn't it? I mean, you can see the sun move and everything. Just, like, watch our shadows.”

Tears stung Liz's eyes. In another 130 years, people in this alternate probably would think the earth was flat again. They would think the sun went around it. If your own eyes told you so… If everybody's eyes said the same thing… That was democracy, wasn't it?

Sure it was. And it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

“If you try to figure out the phases of the moon, or how the planets move, you get better answers if you put the sun in the middle than you do if you put the earth there,” Liz said.

“But I don't much care about the phases of the moon. I don't care about the planets at all,” Dan said. “How do you figure that stuff out, anyway?”

“It takes more math than I know how to do,” Liz admitted.

“There you go,” Dan said. “Even if it’s true, it's complicated. But I can see the sun. There it is, right up there.” He pointed at it, squinting and blinking. “If you watch for a while, you'll see it move, too.”

“No, you'll see the earth turning.” Liz wasn't about to quit.

“You sound like my teacher.” Dan laughed. “She taught what was in the book, but who says the book was right? Maybe it was one of those waddayacallits-fiction books, that's what I want to say. I mean, it just stands to reason. You can see how little the sun is. and how big the earth is. How could we go around that and not the other way around?”

Instead of walking over to a column and banging her head on it, Liz said, “A mountain looks little cause it’s a long ways off. The sun's a lot farther away than any mountain. Of course it looks small.”

“Ninety-three million miles,” Dan said. “That's what the book said in school, anyhow. But how could there be that many miles? And even if there were, how would anybody know how many there were? You couldn't go all that way yourself. You'd be traveling forever.” And you would run out of air. And you would roast as you got closer to the sun. And a lot of other things. Liz didn't mention any of them. She didn't remember how you went about learning how far it was from the earth to the sun. Since she didn't, she couldn't very well explain it to Dan.

What she did say was, “Well, if they knew that stuff back in the Old Time, chances are they were right about it.”

Dan grunted. “Yeah, I guess that's true,” he said.

Liz had won the argument. Then she wondered if she'd cheated. He was trying to be logical about things, to argue from what he could see. She'd hit him over the head with authority. Wasn't that like the Church coming down on Galileo because he said the earth moved?

The difference, she told herself, was that the Church was wrong and she was right. But the churchmen had thought they were right. And they'd had authority on their side, too.

So she felt pretty rotten when Dan left. But he didn't give her any more trouble about Russians, anyhow. Whether the sun went around the earth or vice versa wouldn't get him so excited.

She hoped.

After practicing like a maniac, Dan could load his matchlock almost fast enough to keep Sergeant Chuck happy. He was no slower than the rest of the new musketeers. Chuck screamed at all of them impartially.

“You have to keep up with the men who've been doing this for years!” the sergeant shouted. “A volley's not a volley if everybody doesn't shoot together. So move, you stupid, clumsy lugs! Move!”

Dan rammed his bullet home and brought the musket up to his shoulder. So did the rest of the new men, all at about the same time-except for one luckless fellow who dropped his ramrod. What Chuck called him would have curdled milk.

"I'm sorry. Sergeant,” the soldier said miserably.

“You do that in the middle of a real battle and you'll be sorry you're dead, you-” Chuck found a few more compliments to pay the luckless musketeer. Then he growled, “Are we ready at last? We'd better be, don't you think? Let's find out. Ready… Aim… Fire!”

Dan pulled the trigger. The match came down on the priming powder in and around the touch-hole. Hiss-Boom!- Kick. He coughed as the smoke went up his nose.

The musketeer just to his left puffed on a cigar. A lot of the men who carried matchlocks smoked either cigars or a pipe. That meant you usually had a hot coal handy if you needed to get your match going again. Dan didn't usually smoke all that often, but he knew a good idea when he saw one.

Chuck walked out to the target and brought it back. He showed the soldiers the punctures their musket halls had made. “Well, you're starting to scare the enemy, even if you don't always hit him.” But he wasn't about to let them think that was good enough. He went out to the far end of the range and set up a new target. “Now let's see how last you can give me another volley. I want everybody ready when I give the command. Go!”

It would have been easier if Chuck hadn't gone on yelling at them while they reloaded. Dan wanted to hate him for that, but found he couldn't. He'd been in battle by now. He knew how much noise and chaos there was. You had to block it all out if you were going to do your job. If you let it rattle you, you endangered yourself and your buddies.

Nobody dropped his ramrod this time. If anyone had, Chuck would have eaten him raw-probably without salt. And the volley went off in a close-packed set of thunderclaps that left Dan 's ears ringing. People who'd used guns a lot also tended to use hearing trumpets. But what could you do?

“Well, you weren't too slow.” Sergeant Chuck said. That was about as much praise as the underofficer ever doled out. He retrieved the target. When he came back, he looked like somebody trying hard not to smile. “Seems like some of those… people would have stopped lead, that's for sure. Now let's see you do it again, so I know it's no fluke.“

Some of the musketeers groaned-but none of the men at whom Chuck was looking directly. He would have blistered them if they'd tried getting away with that. Dan didn't want to fire another volley, either. But he wanted to do the shooting and not get shot if he had to fight some more, so he kept practicing without making any noise.

Several volleys later, the smoke was making tears run down his face from eyes that felt as if they had ground glass in them. “Well, that'll probably do for today,” the underofficer said. He grinned a crooked grin. “If I told you to load for another one, chances are you'd aim it at me. And you might even hit what you were aiming at. I don't think it’s real likely, but I don't want to take the chance, either. So we'll knock off for the day.”

He stood only a few feet from his weary students, not a hundred yards down the range. If they turned their matchlocks on him, he would have more holes than a colander, and he had to know it. But he didn't want to admit, to himself or to the musketeers, that they were getting the hang of it.

They were plenty glad to knock off for the day. The sun was sliding down the western sky toward the nuclear glass and rubble of Santa Monica and toward the Pacific beyond it. Supper soon, and then sleep, except for the ones unlucky enough to draw evening sentry duty.

Dan always looked forward to sleep. He did enough on any day of soldiering to leave him tired. Garrisoning Westwood wasn't so bad as the strike through the Sepulveda Pass, though. Then he'd always wanted to curl up and grab what rest he could. He'd always wanted to, and never been able to. He didn't know how much sleep he'd got in that mad dash south. He did know it wasn't enough.

Fowls were roasting on spits above cookfires. Cooks basted them with chilies and cilantro and other spices in olive oil. The delicious smell made Dan 's stomach growl. He could hardly wait till the savory birds got done.

Sergeant Chuck reacted differently. Pointing to the birds, he said. “I wonder whose goose they're cooking.”

“Oh, wow!” Dan groaned. “After a joke like that, Sergeant, it ought to be yours.” You could be rude to a superior as long as you used proper military courtesy when you did it… and as long as you picked your spot with care.

Chuck grinned at Dan. “I've got no shame. How's your girl, and what's she really pulling out of the UCLA library?”

“She's not my girl,” Dan said regretfully. Liz was polite, but he could tell she liked him less than he liked her. He didn't know what he could do about that. So far, he hadn't been able to do anything. Sighing, he went on, “you know what we talked about the last time I was over there?”

“Tell me,” Chuck said.

“You're gonna laugh,” Dan said. The sergeant shook his head and held up his right hand, as if to swear he wouldn't. Thus encouraged, Dan went on, “'Whether the earth really does go around the sun like you learn in school.”

Chuck stared at him, then threw back his head and let loose. He didn't just laugh-he howled. “I'm sorry,” he said at last, not sounding sorry at all. “You go visit a pretty girl, and you talk about that? The moon and the stars and how pretty they are, sure. But the sun and the earth? C'mon, man! You can do better than that.”

“See? I told you you would.” Dull embarrassment made Dan 's ears burn. It also heated his defiance. “And you know what else? It was interesting, too.” So there, he thought.

“Okay, okay. Don't get all uptight about it. I said I was sorry,” Chuck replied. Dan realized you didn't get an apology out of a sergeant every day, not if you were a common soldier. “So what does she think about that? Me, I don't know if the teachers are as smart as they think they are.”

“I'm with you,” Dan said. “If the people in the Old Time were all that smart, would they have let the Fire fall? So they didn't know everything there was to know-you can bet your sweet hippy on that.”

“There you go,” Chuck said. “That sure makes sense to me. How'd Liz like it?”

“Not even a little bit,” Dan answered. “You hear her talk, the earth spins around to make days, and it goes around the sun to make years.”

“You know what?” Sergeant Chuck said as they lined up to get their pieces of chicken or duck or whatever the cook dished out. “The real deal is, so what? I mean, who cares? It doesn't make a penny's worth of difference in your life or mine. It wouldn't matter if the earth was shaped like a .50-caliber bullet. We're just going to see this little bit of it, and that's all.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. Back in the Old Time, you could fly all over the world. Those people might not have been all that smart-must have been human, in other words-but they knew more than their modern descendants. That seemed unfair to Dan. He wondered what Liz thought about it. She knew a lot. Did she miss not knowing even more?