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“Guilty,” Dad agreed. “That's guilty, guilty, guilty-always quote from the classics if you can't make up your own old sayings. But I will give her credit. I may borrow, but I don't steal-much. And it's definitely an important lead. If the Soviet government here was more hard-nosed than in the home timeline… Well, it's not a smoking gun, but-”
“A smoking mushroom cloud, don't you mean?” Liz put in. “Or don't I get to make up old sayings, too?”
“That one fits this alternate too well,” Mom said.
Gulls wheeled overhead. You could see the ocean-and, when the wind blew in, as it did more often than not-smell it, too. Its clean salt tang helped cut the usual city reek of Speedro. Sailboats and a few wood- or coal-burning steamboats glided across the water.
Those were only details, though. For the most part. Speedro was like any other part of L.A.-any other part of this whole alternate-after the Fire fell. The buildings were put together from some new bricks and a lot of pieces of what had been here in 1967. There were lots of open spaces, because far fewer people lived here now. Groves of citruses and olives and almonds and avocados grew where houses and shops and factories had stood once upon a time. Pigs and chickens and ducks and turkeys made a racket. So did stray dogs and scrawny children. Speedro's flag-a white sailing ship on a blue background-flew over it all.
The Stoyadinoviches greeted the Mendozas like long-lost siblings. In this alternate, they were. The two families shared 130 years of experience no one else here had. “What's the password for your safe room down below?” Liz asked.
“ 'Rosebud,'“ George Stoyadinovich answered. “Why? You want to get a soda or something? Long as you stay down there to drink it, help yourself.”
“No, thanks. I was just thinking it's from before the breakpoint, so maybe you ought to change it.” Liz told him what had gone wrong up in Westwood. “We never imagined they could figure out something like that, but they did. The movies of The Lord of the Rings are from the start of this century, but the books are older.”
“I don't think “Rosebud' is a problem,” Dad said. “It's from before the breakpoint, yeah, but it's from a movie. I don't believe there is a book to Citizen Kane . And nobody here has watched any movies since before the big war.”
Liz hadn't thought about that. Slowly, she nodded. The risk with the Stoyadinoviches' password was bound to be smaller than with the one her family had picked. She didn't think there was no risk at all, though.
'“We'll change it,” Mr. Stoyadinovich said. “'I know what we'll use-'Shaquille.' He was from long after the breakpoint.”
“'He played… baseball, didn't he?” Liz knew she was guessing.
Mr. Stoyadinovich and Dad gri
“Did you get any research done up there?” Irma Stoyadinovich asked. “You weren't gone very long.”
'“We did quite a bit, matter of fact,” Dad said. Mom coughed. “Well, Liz did the digging,” he acknowledged. “Looks like the Soviets were more hardline here than they were in the home timeline, so chances are they did push the button first. Can't nail it down a hundred percent, but it seems a lot more likely.”
Mr. Stoyadinovich nodded. “Makes sense. So coming back turned out to be worthwhile?”
“Sure did.” Dad nodded, too.
Mom set a hand on Liz 's shoulder. “Tell them what else your darling daughter did, dear.”
“She KO’d the Valley soldier who recognized her and tried to grab her.” Pride rang in Dad's voice. “That bought us the time we needed to get away.”
“Good for you, sweetheart!” George Stoyadmovich boomed.
“I guess,” Liz said. “I mean, I know it was, but it's sad, too. The only reason Dan did recognize me is because he liked me.”
“Which didn't keep you from kicking him in the head when he needed it,” Dad said.
“I know. But even so…” The fight embarrassed Liz more than it made her proud. It was something she'd needed to do- Dad had that right-but not something she'd wanted to do. “I mean, he was nice enough. If he came from the home timeline, he wouldn't have been too bad.”
“That's more than you ever said before,” Mom told her.
“Well, I'll never see him again, so I can say what I think,” Liz answered. “And even if I did see him again now, he'd want to shoot me, I bet, and not just 'cause he's a Valley soldier. Guys don't keep on liking girls who knock them cold.”
“Well,” Mr. Stoyadinovich said solemnly, twirling his mustache, “you're right.”
Liz didn't tell him how much of the Crosstime secret she'd spilled to Dan. She didn't aim to say anything about that to anyone but her folks. Not that the locals could do anything with it, but all the same… If Crosstime Traffic found out they knew more than they should, the company could assume it was because of what they'd found in the underground rooms.
If Dan hadn't liked her, he wouldn't have listened anyhow. He would have gone on trying to deck her, and he might have done it. She'd needed the breathing space, maybe more than he did. And if he'd decked her, the Valley soldiers might have got her folks, too.
She knew she was talking herself into something, but she didn't much care. A Greek philosopher had called man the rational animal, and that was true. But man was also the rationalizing animal. You did what you had to do or what you wanted to do, and you worried about why later, when you had the chance.
“I got away. We got away,” Liz said. “It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't neat-what is in this alternate? But we did it.”
“That's what counts,” Dad said. Everybody nodded. The Mendozas would go back to the home timeline soon, and Dan… Poor Dan. Liz did feel sorry for him. She wondered what he thought he ought to do now. She was absolutely, positively, sure she'd never find out.