Maybe I'm not a good, dutiful soldier, then, he thought. But if he were a bad soldier, he wouldn't pay any attention to her at all, would he? He didn't want to think of himself as a bad soldier. All he wanted to do was get through the time when he had to wear King Zev 's uniform. If he could do that without getting hurt, he could go on with the rest of his life once he took off the uniform.

And if the rest of his life happened to involve Liz… He laughed again. Down deep, he knew why he was paying attention to her. And it had nothing to do with whether he was a soldier-good, bad, or in the middle.

Liz was about as happy to see Dan come to the house as she would have been to come down with a toothache. For people in this alternate, toothaches were no joke. No biological repair here-not even any high-speed drills. No novocaine to let dentists work without hurting their patients. A few dentists did have ether or chloroform to let them pull teeth without causing pain. What that meant, though, was basically that, whenever anything went wrong with a tooth, out it came. Lots of smiles here had gaps in them.

'“Sure must be a bunch of books in that big old library.” Dan stretched before he sat down on a bench in the courtyard.

'“There are,” Liz agreed. She could tell he was sweet on her-she recognized the signs. Maybe, if she didn't encourage him, he would take a hint and go away. Maybe.

“Must be books about all kinds of heavy things,” Dan went on.

''I guess.” Liz wasn't sure just what he meant by heavy. She wasn't sure he was sure, either. Important probably came closest, but that wasn't right, either.

“All that stuff in there from the Old Time,” Dan said. “I bet you could find out a lot about what they knew back then if you could just figure out where to look.”

“That's what I've been trying to do,” Liz answered, interested in spite of herself. “I want to know what really kicked off the war.”

“Yeah, that's what you said.” Dan nodded. “Surprises me, like, that you worry about history and not something you could really use.”

“Huh?” Liz didn't get it. And then she did. He thought she was looking for high tech in the University Research Library. That would have been funny if it weren't so sad. By the home timeline's standards, the ones she was used to, nothing in the URL was high-tech. Technology from 1967 here was as old-fashioned and out-of-date to her as it would have been there. But people here had been able to do much more in 1967 than they could nowadays.

Her understanding must have shown on her face. Nodding again, Dan said, “Now you can dig it, right? I mean, who cares about history when you can look up machine guns?”

“But I don't care about machine guns,” Liz said-which was nothing but the truth.

“Sure you don't,” Dan said-which was anything but agreement. “If you made them, don't you think you or your father could sell them?”

He didn't understand about factories. How could he, in this poor, sorry alternate? “I couldn't make a machine gun. Neither could Dad,” Liz said.

“I bet the Westside could, if it found out how in a book.”

Dan might have been right about that. Liz wasn't sure one way or the other. “If they were looking in the library for things like that, they wouldn't send somebody like me to find them.” Liz said. “'Use your head, man. They'd send a gunsmith who already knew most of what he needed. He'd be after the last few clues-he wouldn't be starting from scratch, the way I'd have to.”

By the look on Dan 's face, he might have taken a big bite out of a lemon. He hadn't thought of that ahead of time, and it plainly made more sense than he wished it did. “Well, maybe,” he said.

“Not maybe-for sure,” Liz said. “Because I don't know diddly squat about machine guns, and I don't care, either.”

“You should care,” Dan said seriously. “If the Westside had a couple of machine guns, you wouldn't have lost the war.”

“Well, sure.” Liz knew she was supposed to be a Westside patriot. Taking the idea seriously wasn't easy. Why would anybody want to fight and die for a silly little excuse for a country like this? But the question, once asked, answered itself. People had fought and died for little tiny countries all through history. Athens. Sparta. Venice. Singapore. Lots of others. She went on with the truth: “Like I told you, I still don't know anything about machine guns.”

“You're a trader.” Dan made money-counting motions. “Where's the profit in finding out about Old Time history?”

Liz started to answer that, then stopped before she stuck her foot in her mouth. She sent Dan a sharp look. He sat there in the courtyard, soaking up sun like a lizard. He had a patchy, scratchy-looking beard. He didn't bathe or wash his uniform often enough. (Liz didn't bathe often enough, either. Nobody in this alternate did. That made it a little easier to take. People said that, where everybody stank, nobody stank. It wasn't quite true, but it came close enough.) He didn't have much education-nobody here did. But he wasn't stupid after all. He might be dangerously smart.

She hoped her pause wasn't too obvious. Then she said, “There isn't much profit in Old Time history, or there hasn't been yet.”

“So why do you do it, in that case?” Dan pounced like a cat jumping on a hamster.

“It's my hobby, I guess,” Liz answered. “Some people collect teacups or stamps or Old Time baseball cards. Some people have windup trains. Some of them even still work, or I've heard they do, anyhow.”

“Yeah, I've heard that, too,” Dan said. But he didn't sound convinced. He looked at her in a way she didn't like at all. She would rather have had him following her with his eyes because he thought she was pretty. She knew how to deal with that, and also knew it wasn't dangerous in any serious way. This intent, thoughtful stare, on the other hand… He went on, “I'll tell you what bothers me about your-hobby, like. It gives you the excuse to go to the library and look for things that could hurt my kingdom. I don't want anybody to get away with anything like that. Can you blame me?”

You bet I can, Liz thought. What irked her was, she was telling the truth-mostly, anyhow. She didn't care about machine guns or hand grenades or tanks. The home timeline had far better weapons than the ones anybody had imagined in 1967. The history of this alternate, finding out exactly where its breakpoint was… that really mattered-to her. anyhow. But she could see she wouldn't be able to explain why in any way that made sense to Dan.

So she didn't try. She just said, “If you're going to think like that, you'd better put guards around the library and keep everybody from going in and out. It's not just me, you know. Lots of people use the books there. That's what they're for. And you'd better take away all the Old Time encyclopedias you can find. I'm sure they talk about weapons and things, too. Or do you think I'm wrong?”

He looked too unhappy to think she was wrong. “You're saying everyone who can read may be a spy,” he said slowly. He also sounded plenty unhappy.

Liz shook her head. “'Most people aren't spies. Fm not a spy, for heaven's sake. I'm just saying you're on my case for no good reason, and I wish you weren't. It really bugs me, man.” Talking that way really bugged her, too, but she couldn't let on. To herself, she sounded like somebody from an ancient sitcom.

“Sorry.” he said, but she knew he wasn't. He went on, “You got me interested in you, and now I can't help noticing the things you do.”

That's what I was afraid of-one more thing Liz couldn't say. She did say, “Like, try. Fry as hard as you can.”

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.”