“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 oi 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 loo 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?”