But Liz 's father just shook his head. “No.”

“Can I see the magazines? I need to be sure of that.” Dan said.

With a shrug. Liz 's lather said, “Sure. Why not? “You'll probably arrest me if I try to tell you no. And the magazines really are what I said they are. Handle them carefully-that's all I ask. I paid more than a dollar apiece for them.”

“So much?” That anybody would spend so much money for something to read blew Dan 's mind. Yes. the trader said he would make money on the magazines sooner or later. How could he. though, when he threw away silver like that?

Into the courtyard Dan went. Savory odors wafted from the kitchen. Dan 's nostrils twitched. If that wasn't going to be a mutton stew, his nose needed rewiring. He wondered why people said things like that. What did wires have to do with your nose? Wires had to do with electricity, and electricity was one more thing they'd had in the Old Time that they didn't any more. Somebody had once written that electricity would propel a streetcar better than a gas jet and give more light than a horse. The person who read that to Dan said it was supposed to be a joke, but neither one of them got it.

“Here are the magazines,” Liz 's lather said.

The ginger-whiskered trader- Luke -had been right: they were funky. Some of them had rockets on their covers. Others talked about gas mileage for cars. Dan paged through them. He didn't see anything that had to do with weapons. Even if they were weird, they seemed harmless.

He gave them back to Liz 's father. “I can't figure out why you think they're so cool.”

“We were going to go to the moon.” The older man pointed up. There it was, a little more than half full, pale and white in the blue daylight sky. “To the moon, Dan. We'd already sent rockets up there. I've seen pictures that they took of craters and things, just before they crashed down onto it. And we were going to send people after them. People, all the way to the moon and back! And then we used the rockets to blow ourselves up instead. But we were so close.” He held his index fingers maybe half an inch apart.

“What's that got to do with these?” Dan pointed to the magazines. The familiar musty smell of old, old paper came from them.

“They were sure we were going. They knew we could do it,” Liz 's father said. “What if we really had? What would we have done after that?” He tapped a magazine, one with a rocket on the front, with his finger. “These tell the stories of what might have been.”

“And look what we have instead.” All of a sudden, Dan 's heavy matchlock didn't seem so wonderful. It was about as fancy a weapon as people nowadays could make. Everything else was on the same level. And they could have gone to the moon instead! Tears stung his eyes, tears of rage and embarrassment. “Isn't this a wonderful world we gave ourselves?”

“A little bit at a time, it does get better,” Liz 's father said. “The time right after the Fire fell, that was really bad.”

“That's what they say,” Dan agreed. “It'll be a lot better once King Zev gets done licking the Westside.”

“Well, maybe,” the trader said. “Do you think King Zev is the one who'll put the United States back together again?”

“Don't be silly!” Dan exclaimed. “Everybody knows Los Angeles is only a little part of the old United States. It would have to be Zev's son, maybe even his grandson.”

“Right,” Liz 's father said, and Dan had left the house before he even thought to wonder whether the older man meant it.

Liz couldn't seem to poke her nose outside without seeing Luke. When she went up to UCLA, she would spot him sunning himself on the grass or playing solitaire. When she went into the market square to buy vegetables, he'd be gnawing on a baked potato or haggling over the price of a cheese sandwich.

He always looked innocent. Some people had a knack for that. He didn't quite have a halo glowing above his broad-brimmed hat, but he seemed as if one might pop out any minute. That made Liz suspicious. From what she'd seen, people who worked so hard to project that air of innocence were often chameleons. And what Luke might be hiding…

She had a pretty good idea there. Dad didn't want to spy for Cal and the rest of the Westside bigwigs who'd got thrown out of Westwood. If Luke could find out what Cal wanted to know, he'd get the payoff.

At first, that was the only thing Liz thought of. Then something else occurred to her, and she started to worry. “What if the Westsiders throw the Valley soldiers out again?” she asked her folks over supper. She'd earned her tacos. She'd made the tortillas from cornmeal, and she'd chopped up the beef that went into them. They tasted especially good to her because of that-and, no doubt, because all the ingredients were fresh as could be.

“Well, what if they do?” Mom said. “We did business with them before. We can do business with them again.”

“But now they asked us to help them, and Dad told them no,” Liz said. “How happy will they be about that?”

Her father paused to dab at his chin with a napkin. The tacos weren't neat, no matter how tasty they were. “The worst thing that happens is, we go back to the home timeline a little early,” he said. “That wouldn't break my heart.” He gave her a crooked smile. “And then Dan would be out of your hair, and it wouldn't even look bad. What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing… if they give you some warning first,” Liz said. “Then we get away, sure. But what if they just grab you off the street or something? They can do whatever they want in that case.”

One of the lessons Crosstime Traffic taught was, Anything that can happen can happen to you. People who worked in the alternates sometimes lost sight of that. They sometimes paid for losing sight of it, too. People everywhere lost sight of it too often. In the home timeline, the price might be your job or your lover. In the alternates, it could easily be your neck.

“I don't think that will happen,” her father said. “They've got no reason to grab me, not like that.”

“No? What about Luke?” Liz said. “ Dan wondered about us before. And now he's asking questions about somebody who really does want us to spy for the Westside? That's not good.”

“ Luke 's managed to live through a whole swarm of things we can't even imagine,” Dad replied. “I don't think he'll lose any sleep about a Valley soldier who barely needs to shave.”

The fuzz on Dan 's chin and cheeks and upper lip was a pretty sorry excuse for a beard. “I wish the guy were dumb,” Liz said. “He's just ignorant, though. Now I understand the difference.”

Her father made clapping motions that produced silent applause. Liz 's ears got hot. “Congratulations,” Dad said, less sarcastically than he might have. “A lot of people never do figure that one out.”

“That's 'cause most of them don't go out to the alternates, I guess,” Liz said. “Everybody's ignorant in this alternate, but you can still tell who's smart and who isn't. Cal 's pretty smart. Dan 's pretty smart. Luke -”

“Would be a CEO or something in the home timeline,” Dad broke in. “No flies on Luke, no, sir.”

“How smart is King Zev?” Liz asked.

“Well, I haven't met him, so I don't know for sure,” her father answered. “Finding that heavy machine gun in good working order won him the war. You don't need to be smart to have something like that happen-you just need to be lucky. He's got some pretty good officers-I do know that. But I have the feeling he's not the brightest bulb in the hardware store. How come?”

“I wondered,” Liz said. Her father made an exasperated noise. She went on, “If the Westside and Speedro team up to try to take Westwood back, how well will Zev do against Cal and his buddies?”

“Ah. Gotcha.” Dad nodded. “That's a good question. The only good answer I can find is, Well find out.''

“Thanks a bunch. I could have done that well myself,” Liz said.