He gave her a nasty look. “What would happen if we did search this place as hard as we could?”
She glared back at him. She couldn't let him see the threat worried her. “You'd rob us again, same as you did when you came in here the first time. Just 'cause we can't do anything about it doesn't mean we have to like it.”
“Thai's what you get for ending up on the losing side of a war,” Dan said.
He wasn't even wrong. Five thousand years of history and countless alternates proved he wasn't. To the victors went the spoils. That was as old as the hills and as new as next week. It could have been worse, too. The Valley soldiers could have decided that Liz and her mother were part of the spoils. Lots of soldiers would have decided exactly that, and then things really would have turned ugly.
“I'm not a soldier, and I'm not a spy,” Liz said. “I didn't do anything to you. I didn't do anything to the Valley or to King Zev, either.”
“I guess not.” Yes, Dan agreed, but he didn't seem convinced. “But there's something funny about you. I don't know what it is. but it's there. You can't tell me it's not. You're… more foreign than most Westsiders. How come?”
“I don't know,” Liz lied. She knew much too well. No matter how much she'd trained and practiced, she wasn't a real Westsider, and nothing could make her one. Somebody who really did belong to this alternate was liable to notice if he looked closely enough. Dan had. His reasons for looking closely weren't the ones that usually tripped up Crosstime Traffic people-he liked her. But that made him wonder about her in the same way as if he hated her.
He scratched the side of his jaw. Those wispy whiskers rasped under his fingernails. She thought the noise was gross, but she couldn't tell him so. “Well, something funny's going on,” he said. “Something fishy. You know stuff you aren't telling. You're just lucky it's me asking the questions-that's all I've got to say.”
Liz shook her head. “That's not true.” He glared at her. For a split second, she saw what he would look like if he did hate her. It wasn't pretty. But she made herself go on: “If I were
lucky, nobody would be asking me questions, because I haven't done anything to deserve it.” Her voice broke on the last couple of words. She hadn't planned that, which probably made it even more effective.
“Don't cry!” Dan exclaimed, which almost made Liz laugh instead. Yes, he liked her, and yes, her cracking voice had done her some good. He really sounded alarmed. “I have to ask you these questions, you know,” he said. “It's my Patriotic Duty.” She could hear the capital letters thud into place.
“I think you're using your patriotic duty as an excuse to push people around,” Liz said. And how often had men and women done that In all the different histories of the world? Millions of times, more likely billions. Most of them would have had the purest motives imaginable-in their own minds, anyhow. The people they pushed around might have had a different opinion.
“I am not,” he said angrily. “You tell me all this weird stuff about the Old Time-it's not what I learned in school, that's for sure. And you know too much about the Russians, and everybody knows how bad they are. So what am I supposed to think, anyway?”
“I know what I know,” Liz said with a shrug. And how I know it is none of your business, pal. “I don't know what schools are like in the Valley, or what they teach you there. I don't know what Westside schools are like, either. I'm a traders' brat. Maybe that's what makes me seem different to you. We travel around a lot, so if my folks didn't teach me nobody would. If you want to blame anybody for the way I think, Blame them.”
U Dan did decide to blame them… well, so what? They could disappear back to the home timeline, and so could Liz.
“Where all do you travel?” Dan asked. “Have your folks ever seen real, live Russians with their own eyes? Have you?” He might have been talking about demons with horns and fangs and tails. By the way he asked the question, he probably thought he was.
“I’ve never seen any Russians,” Liz said. “How could I? They're across the ocean.” She gestured toward the west. You could see the Pacific from the tops of tall buildings in West-wood. You could, if you felt like climbing all those flights of stairs to get that high off the ground. You took elevators for granted… till you had to do without them. When you were climbing stairs, who wanted to go more than four or five flights' worth?
“What about your folks?” Dan didn't want to let it alone. Do they worship devils? He didn't say that, but it was what he meant.
“I don't think they ever have. Like I said, how could they?” Liz answered. “But if you really want to know, you'd do better asking them yourself.”
She wondered if he would. Talking with somebody your own age-even grilling somebody your own age-wasn't so hard. Taking on somebody as old as your parents had to be a lot tougher. Sure, Dan wore the uniform of a conquering army. But Dad and Mom wore a different kind of uniform: the beginnings of gray hair and wrinkles and the invisible armor of experience.
She could tell he felt the burden. “Maybe I will,” he said, but not in a way that suggested he was looking forward to it. He got to his feet. “I guess you aren't trying to hurt the Valley. I guess.” He didn't sound sure about that, either-nowhere close. “I don't know just what you are up to, but it's something funny. History!” He shook his head and walked off toward the door. He didn't quite slam it behind him. but he also didn't shut it gently.
Liz didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. The only thing that interested her about this alternate was its history. Dan wouldn't believe her if she told him so. And she couldn't tell him why it interested her, or that she was from the home timeline. She had to go on pretending to be something she wasn't, even if it got her into trouble. The trouble she'd get into if he ever found out what she really was would be even worse.
A rock and a hard place. The devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. They were all clichйs, of course. But now Liz understood how they'd got to be clichйs. They put truth into a handful of words.
She said a handful of words herself. None of them helped much. Saying them made her feel better-for a little while, anyway. Sometimes you took what you could get. even il it wasn't much.
Dan stood in line, waiting for a cook to give him bread and fried chicken and sauerkraut. He hated sauerkraut. It was supposed to be good for you. so the cooks dished it out a couple of times a week. Sergeants kept an eye on you to make sure you really ate it. too.
The stuff even smelled foul. One of the Valley soldiers in front of Dan pointed at the kettle where the sauerkraut bubbled and asked. “Who died?”
“Oh. you're funny,” the cook said. ''Funny like a broken leg, you are.” He also got his revenge. He gave the mouthy soldier a burnt piece of bread and a chicken back with more bone than meat. And he gave him a big helping of sauerkraut.
If the other soldier hadn't, Dan might have joked about the sauerkraut. Sure, he knew annoying the cooks wasn't the smartest thing you could do. But there was a difference between knowing and knowing. When the other soldier popped off and paid for it, that drove the lesson home. Dan didn't say anything at all. He just held out his mess kit. He got a plump thigh, some unscorched bread, and… less sauerkraut than the joker had, anyway.
He sat down on what had been a concrete bus bench. They had those in the Valley, too. The benches survived, while buses were nothing but pictures in Old Time books and magazines and stories that granddads said they'd heard from their granddads once upon a time when they were little kids.
No. no buses on the streets now. No cars. No trucks. Some rich people's carriages had wheels and axles taken from motor vehicles. Some-the super-fancy ones, pulled by big teams of horses-were made from car bodies, with the front part, the part that had held the now-useless motor, cut off to save weight. King Zev had a carriage like that. Its windows still went up and down, even. A few Valley nobles were also lucky enough to travel in style. So were some traders.