Liz wanted to stay angry, but he didn't make it easy. If he'd said he had all the answers and she didn't have any… But he hadn't said anything like that. He'd just said he probably had more than she did. And he was probably right, no matter how little she cared to admit it.
“Okay,” she said. Sometimes life was too short for a quarrel. “I scanned some more Newsweeks at the library today.”
“That's good.” Her father seemed relieved to talk about more ordinary things, too. “What kind of shape are they in?”
“Not real good,” Liz answered. “The paper's getting crumbly. They're not as bad as something like TV Guide-those fall apart if you look at them sideways. But I've got to be careful handling them just the same.”
Back in the home timeline, magazines like that were preserved in a nitrogen atmosphere. They were also scanned, so electronic images would survive even if paper didn't. Here… Considering what had happened here, it was a miracle that anything from before the big war was still around.
The librarians at this UCLA didn't fully understand what a treasure they had. They did their jobs as much because their parents and grandparents had done them as because they loved books themselves. But, in the end, why they did them didn't really matter. As long as they could preserve things till civilization revived and appreciated them again, they were doing something worthwhile.
“What's the name of that book? You know-the one with the funny title,” Liz said, not quite out of the blue.
Dad knew which book she meant, too. “A Canticle for Leibowitz” he said. “Yeah, that one fits this alternate pretty well. And you know what else? It was written before the war started, so there's probably a copy in the URL.”
“I wonder if the librarians ever found it,” Liz said.
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 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.