The Valley-Westside War

He got off the 405 at Victory. “Here we are, in the wonderful, romantic Valley,” he said.

It didn't look wonderful or romantic to Liz. It looked a lot like Westwood: a relative handful of people living in what had been part of a great city. Without imported water and food, the Los Angeles basin couldn't support anything close to the population it had in the home timeline.

Ruined, tumbledown houses and shops spread as far as the eye could see. The dead zone in the Valley lay off to the northwest, where the aerospace factories had stood. The Russians knew that, of course, and gave them a bomb.

A man selling avocados on a street corner called, “What have you got?”

“Blue jeans-genuine Old Time Levi's,” Dad answered. “Top quality, too. I don't have many left.”

“How many avocados you want for a couple of pairs?”

“Whoa,” Dad told the horses. Not stopping would have been out of character. He and the man with the avocados haggled for a while. Levi 's were hard to come by, while avocados grew all over the place in Southern California. On the other hand, as the local pointed out, you couldn't eat blue jeans. When the man threw in a beat-up basket to hold the avocados, Dad made the deal. “We can eat some on the way and give the rest to the Stoyadinoviches,” he said.

“Do we have more to worry about than avocados?” Mom pointed up the street. Marching their way came a platoon of Valley soldiers: archers, musketeers, and a few tough-looking riflemen.

“Well, I hope not.” Dad steered the wagon over to the curb, the way you'd steer a car in the home timeline if an ambulance or a fire engine or police car came at you. The platoon tramped past with no more than a couple of sidewise glances toward the traders.

“Whew!” Liz said as the wagon started rolling again.

“I didn't think the soldiers in Westwood would have got word about us up here so fast,” Dad said. “Still, I wouldn't have liked to find out I was wrong.”

That made Liz look back over her shoulder. She saw the Valley troops, other people on foot, people on horseback, and a few carts and carriages and wagons. Everything looked normal- normal for this alternate, anyhow. She told herself she was jumpy about nothing. Then she told herself to believe she was jumpy about nothing. Herself laughed at her.

“I wish you could step on the gas and make the horses go faster,” Mom said. That made Liz feel better-she wasn't the one with the jitters, then.

“Matter of fact, so do I,” Dad said. “But I can't.” He flicked the reins. Maybe the horses went a tiny bit faster. And maybe they didn't.

Step on the gas. That was a fu

Victory went east, straight as a string for a long way. Dad stopped to rest the horses and bought lunch at a roadside taco stand. He could have done that in the home timeline, too, though people there would have had co

Nuked. In the home timeline, you nuked something when you threw it in the microwave. Oh, it meant using nuclear weapons, too, but most people didn't dwell on that. The home timeline had escaped atomic war, and with a little luck would go right on escaping it.

They didn't have microwaves here. Nuking something meant just one thing in this alternate-destroying it altogether. Studying the way languages changed from one alternate to another was a field that was just taking off.

On they went, on and on and on. Right where Victory finally curved a little south, two customs posts straddled the road. The Mendozas needed only a couple of minutes to clear the Valley post. The men at the other one wore green uniforms, not King Zev 's khaki. “Welcome to beautiful downtown Bur-bank,” one of them said.

It didn't look beautiful to Liz. It didn't look like downtown, either. It looked like the border between a couple of tinpot kingdoms that had forgotten they should have been suburbs.

For some reason, Dad seemed to think the Burbank customs man's greeting was fu

“Anything to declare?” the customs man asked.

“Well, we're traders,” Dad answered. '“We've got what's left of a nice load of Levi 's in the back of the wagon. We sold a good many in the Valley, and I expect we can move some more of them here.”

The customs man took a look at them. “Those are pretty fine, all right. Anybody can see they come from the Old Time. We charge duty on things we make ourselves, so our people will buy from Burbank craftsmen instead of foreigners. Clothes like that, though, with the zippers and everything… We can't make anything quite like 'em ourselves, even if we are getting closer. I don't know where you found these, pal, but I'm jealous. They look like they're brand new.”

“They do, don't they?” Dad still kept his lace straight.

“Yeah.” The customs man sighed. “I wish I had the cash to buy clothes like that. They probably aren't dutiable, but… Maybe I'd better check the regulations.”

“Why don't you find a pair that fits you, sir?” Dad said smoothly. ““Why don't your other inspectors do the same?” A real trader from this alternate probably would have been furious at the polite shakedown. He wouldn't have dared to show it, though. Dad really had no reason to get upset, and plenty of reason to keep these people sweet.

“That's mighty nice of you, pal,” the Burbank customs man said. He turned to his colleagues. “ Melvin! Frodo! C'mere!”

Frodo, Liz thought. Yes, they knew about The Lord of the Rings in this alternate. No wonder the password in the basement hadn't been good enough.

As soon as the Burbank customs men found jeans that fit them, the senior man swung aside the gateway. “Pass on!” he said.

Dad called, “Giddyap!” to the horses. They pulled the wagon through. The customs inspector closed the gate. Liz and Mom and Dad all gri

Captain Horace was not a happy man. “Where the devil are they?” he growled. “They aren't at that Brentwood market square-people saw them go. They aren't anywhere in Westwood that we've been able to find. And I swear they haven't sneaked past us heading south. So where are they?”

“Sir?” Dan said.

“What?” No, Horace wasn't happy, not even a little bit.

“What if they didn't go south, sir?” Dan said-it was about the worst thing he could think of. “What if they went north instead?”

“North?” By the way the officer said it, it might have been a dirty word. “Why the-dickens would they want to go and do a stupid thing like that?”

“If it throws us off the track, like, is it really stupid?” Dan asked.

Captain Horace bit down on that like a man crunching into a cherry pit. His expression was as dour as if he really had bitten down on something painful. “It could be,” he said at last, each word plainly tasting worse than the one before. “Yes, it could be. And if it is, we've wasted an awful lot of time waiting for something to happen when it won't. Why didn't you think of this sooner, confound it?”

“Sir?” was all Dan said. The unfairness of the crack took his breath away. Me? I just made sergeant. You're so smart. Captain Horace, why didn't you think of it for yourself?