“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
The Valley-Westside War J 11
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.
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.