“That works, too,” Mom said. “I was going to say we should wash in the morning, but maybe not. In the meantime…”
In the meantime, Liz had no trouble at all falling asleep in the wagon.
Back in the Valley, Dan hadn't thought about sleeping on asphalt wrapped in no more than a blanket. That didn't mean he couldn't do it. If you got tired enough, you could sleep anywhere. He proved that: Sergeant Chuck had to shake him awake when the sun came up the next morning.
Yawning, Dan started to sit up straight. Then he didn't. You never could tell whether Westside snipers were waiting for somebody to do something that dumb. Chuck was on his hands and knees. He'd been ready to push Dan down if Dan forgot where he was. Since Dan didn't, Chuck relaxed.
Relaxed or not, he didn't look so good. He needed a shave, and smoke from last night's watchfires streaked his cheeks and forehead. “Boy, Sarge, you ought to clean up,” Dan said.
“Look who's talking. You'd stop a clock at fifty yards,” Chuck retorted. He was probably right. Dan had been firing a matchlock musket all day. Every time the gun went off, it belched out a great cloud of fireworks-smelling gunpowder smoke. How much of that was he wearing on his face?
“What do we do today?” Dan asked.
“Wait and see what our loving neighbors to the south try,” Chuck said-or something like that, anyhow. “If they want more trouble, we can give it to them. If they sit tight, we're not going to go after them or anything. What would the King of the Valley do with land south of the Santa Monica Freeway?”
Rule it? Dan thought. As soon as he did, he wondered, But how'? It would take a long time to get messages and orders back and forth between Zev's palace up in Mortriridge and these lands way down here. Back in the Old Time, people said, you could talk to anybody right away, no matter how far apart the two of you were. Radio, TV, telephones… Dan believed in them, but they weren't around anymore. The telegraph survived-where people didn't steal wires for their copper, anyway-but who really wanted to pay attention to orders in Morse code? Dan knew he wouldn't.
“Have they started shooting yet?” he asked.
“No. but it's still early,” Sergeant Chuck answered. “I don't know that they won't, and neither does anybody else.”
Dan 's stomach growled. It had ideas of its own, and wasn't shy about letting the rest of him know about them. '“Will anyone bring us breakfast?” he asked.
“I heard they were supposed to be making sandwiches, but I sure haven't seen any.” Chuck looked around. “Wait-speak of the devil.”
Kitchen helpers with big cloth sacks crawled up and down the freeway dealing out sandwiches and Old Time soda bottles full of watered wine. Dan 's sandwich was smoked pork and pickled tomato on a hard rolclass="underline" something that wouldn't go bad in a hurry. He made it disappear in a hurry, so how long it would keep didn't matter. Chuck 's breakfast was the same, and vanished even faster.
“It's not bacon and eggs and hash browns, but it'll do,” the sergeant said.
“Yeah, Sarge, but think what army cooks'd do to bacon and eggs and hash browns,” Dan said. Chances were the cooks would do fine by them. He didn't let that bother him. Complaining about army cooks probably went all the way back to the Old Time.
“They're pretty lousy, all right,” Chuck agreed. Sergeants complained about cooks, too. Sergeants complained about everything. It was part of their job.
Here and there, Valley soldiers started standing along the freeway line. When nobody fired at the first few, more men did the same. Dan and Chuck stood up at the same time: not soon enough to take a big chance, and not late enough to seem yellow. Getting shot wasn't part of anybody's job… except when it was.
“ Dan! Musketeer Dan!” somebody farther down the freeway called.
“I'm here!” Dan sang out. “What's happening, man?”
“They want you back at the traders' house, so step on it,” the messenger answered.
“May I go, Sergeant?” Dan asked.
“How can I say no?” Chuck replied. “If the Westsiders attack, we'll just have to try and fight the war without you. I don't know that we've got much of a chance then, but we'll do our best.”
Propelled by such pungent sarcasm, Dan was glad to get away. He let the messenger lead him down to the level of the ordinary streets and take him back to the house where Liz had lived. (Of course, her parents had lived there, too, but he didn't think about them very much.)
With electric lights down there in the bottom basement, could they have had TV and a telephone, too? A moment's thought made Dan decide that was silly. What would they watch? Whom would they call?
He couldn't ask the messenger. You weren't supposed to gossip about what was in that house. He would be violating an order if he did, and he'd be making the other soldier violate one, too. He kept quiet.
When he got to the house, he asked Captain Horace, “What's up. sir?”
“You know the way you found the door down into the room with the electric lights?” the Valley officer said.
“Yes. sir.”
“Well, we found another door like that,” Horace said.
“Under the basement, sir?” Dan asked. “What's in it?” He could imagine all kinds of things, each more marvelous than the last. A TV set that worked? An auto that worked? Why think small? What about an airplane that worked? If only you could fly!
But Captain Horace shook his head. “No, not under there. It's set into the wall in the regular basement, the room above the one with the lights.”
“Oh.” Dan knew he sounded disappointed. A room there wouldn't be so big. You couldn't put a car into it. let alone an airplane. But maybe you could put other cool stuff in there. “How do we get in?”
“I hope you can help us figure that out,” Horace said. “So far, we haven't had much luck.”
As if to show what he meant, somebody started banging on the wall with what had to be a sledgehammer. Boom! Boom! Boom! The racket made Dan 's head ache. “Got to be a better way than that,” he said.
“It'd be nice if there were,” the captain agreed. “What can you come up with? If you can get us in there without tearing the place apart. I’ll make you a sergeant on the spot.”
Dan imagined three stripes on his sleeve. He imagined the look on Sergeant Chuck 's face when the underofficer saw him with three stripes on his sleeve. That look would be worth ten dollars-no, twenty. And twenty dollars was a lot of money. “I'll do what I can,” he said.
“See what you come up with, that's all. We don't expect miracles.” Horace 's mouth twisted in a crooked grin. “I sure wouldn't mind one, though.” He went to the top of the stairs and shouted down to the basement: “Knock it off!… Knock it off!” Mercifully, the banging stopped. Horace breathed a sigh of relief. “That's better. Now the top of ray head doesn't want to fall off.”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said again. He'd had the same idea. He thought like a captain-or the captain thought like him! What would Sergeant Chuck say about that if he were ever rash enough to mention it out loud? Something interesting and memorable-he was sure of that.
He went downstairs. A burly Valley common soldier was leaning on the handle of his sledgehammer. The musclebound man didn't look sorry to take a break. Nodding to Dan, he said, “You're the guy with smart ideas, huh?”
“I don't know. We'll see,” Dan said. “Where's this door at. anyway?”
“In the wall there. If you look real close, you can just see the crack,” the other soldier answered, pointing. “I sure hope you psych something out, man. This wall's gotta be reinforced concrete, or else whatever's tougher than that. I could keep banging away at it from now till everything turns blue, and I don't know if I'd ever bust in.”
“Okay.” Dan peered at the wall the way he’d peered at the floor when he found the trap door. He wasn't sure he would have spotted this hairline crack if the muscular man hadn't pointed it out. He wondered how anybody'd found it in the dim light down here.