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?”