“Sorry. I don't know what you want me to say.” Dad spread his hands and shrugged. “I'm not a prophet, not from the Bible and not one of the new ones, either.”

“I hope not!” Liz told him. “You're not dirty and shaggy-enough, anyway.” Dad laughed, not that she was joking. In the years since the Fire fell, plenty of people had said they knew why God let it happen. So far, none of their preachings held a very big audience. But who could guess what the holy books in this alternate would look like a thousand years from now? In the middle of the second century, how many people thought Christianity would turn out to be such a big deal?

“I wonder how much Luke has found out on his own,” Dad said in musing tones. “Probably more than I could have told him. Cal will pay him plenty, I bet.”

“But you've got Cal 's money,” Liz said.

“I've got some of it. I'd be amazed if Cal gave me all of it, or anything close to all of it,” Dad said. “'If he's going to get people in Speedro to do things for him, he'll have to pay them off. And he likes to live high on the hog, and that costs money, too-not as much as it would in the home timeline, but a lot, anyway.”

Liz started to say something, then stopped. Dad had thought about a few things she hadn't. “What happens if what's left of the Westside and Speedro do beat the Valley?” she asked at last.

“I don't know that, either,” he replied. “I'm not sure they can, because I don't know what all they've got. I didn't know the Valley had that heavy machine gun, and it made all the difference in the last round. Even if they do win. I don't think Cal can go over the hill and invade the Valley. He'd be nuts if he tried. The most he can hope for is getting Westwood back.”

“Which means the shooting would all be right here,” Liz said, and her father nodded, none too happily. She went on, “We never would have had any of this trouble if he hadn't built that dumb wall across the 405.” The idea that there could be a wall across what was, in the home timeline, one of the two or three busiest freeways in the world told what a disaster this alternate had known.

Dad nodded. “And do you know what that shows?”

“No? What?” Liz said.

“That even smart people can do dumb things. He thought he could get away with it. He thought King Zev would put up with it. He thought he could beat the Valley if Zev didn't put up with it. And he was wrong every time.”

“You should have talked him out of it,” Liz said.

“Get real. For one thing, he didn't ask me. He was head of the City Council-he still is, for all the good it does him-and I'm just a trader. Besides, why do you think he would have listened even if I got a chance to talk to him about it? There's a particular kind of smart person who thinks everybody around him is a dope. Is that Cal, or isn't it?”

“Sure sounds like him,” Liz admitted. “But that kind of smart person isn't as smart as he thinks he is.”

“Not usually, no,” Dad agreed. “You don't find that out till too late a lot of the time, though. A lot of really smart people go a long way on their own before they foul up. Afterwards, you wonder how much further they could have got if they realized other people are really people, not just ladder rungs for them to step on. You treat somebody like a rung, pretty soon he'll break under your foot.”

“Then you go splat,” Liz said.

“That's about the size of it.” Dad sighed. “Way things are now, I wish we could bulletproof the walls here.”

“You think the new fight's coming soon, then.” Liz said in dismay.

“Don't you?” Dad said. “ Cal wouldn't have sent Luke up here to find out what we know if he didn't aim to move. Luke wouldn't be sniffing around on his own if he didn't want to bring something back. He's sure Cal will pay oil if he does. Cal wouldn't pay off if he weren't going to move. And so…”

“Yeah. And so,” Liz said. Everything fit together, almost as neatly as in a geometry proof. But no geometry proof since the days of Archimedes had got anybody killed.

“Cheer up.” Dad told her. “Like I said, you'll be rid of Dan. That's something, anyhow.”

“Something, yeah,” Liz answered. “I don't want him to get shot, though-I don't hate him or anything.” She sighed. “You just want to yell at these people, you know? They had their great big stupid war, but they go on fighting these little wars that are even stupider. Don't they learn anything from history?”

“The first thing you learn from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history, or not for long,” her father answered. “People used to say that in the home timeline, but now that we can look at a bunch of different histories we see it's true in all of them. People are like that. You wish we weren't, but we are.”

“We already got stuck at the edges of one battle. I don't want to get stuck in the middle of another one,” Liz said.

“Well, who does?” Dad said. “If it gets too bad, we disappear. I already told you that.”

“Yeah, I know you did,” Liz replied. If they were all here at the house when trouble came, they could do that. If they weren't, if one of them or two of them or all of them happened to be out in Westwood… But Dad was ignoring even the possibility. Liz called him on it.

He spread his hands. “I don't know what you want from me.

The fighting won't get here right away. We'll know it's coming ahead of lime. And when we do know, we'll be able to come back to the house, so we won't get stuck. Right?”

“I sure hope so,” Liz said.

“You have to have some confidence that things will work out. Otherwise, you can't do your job,” Dad said.

“I guess,” Liz answered. “I'd like that better if this weren't an alternate that's had an atomic war.” She got the last word. Then she had to decide if she really wanted it.

Eight

“'Musketeers… shoulder arms!” Sergeant Chuck yelled.

Proudly, Dan did. He wondered whether the other new musketeers had that tiny moment of hesitation, too. He still had to work to remember he was a musketeer, not a no-account archer any more. The few remaining archers in Captain Kevin 's company were already carrying their bows ready to string and shoot.

''Riflemen… shoulder arms!” the sergeant shouted.

Their faces serious, the riflemen obeyed. With their fancy Old Time guns and cartridges, they could hit targets far beyond any a musketeer could hope to reach. But they took chances musketeers didn't, too. A musket wouldn't explode unless you loaded several charges of powder into it without lowering the match to the touch-hole. Old Time cartridges were just plain old nowadays, you never could tell about them till you pulled the trigger. Most of the time, they did what they were supposed to- you wouldn't dare use them if they didn't. Sometimes, though, they didn't do anything at all. And every once in a while, one would blow up in your face and wreck your rifle… and you. Riflemen needed steady nerves-and nerve, period.

Chuck nodded to Kevin. “All ready, sir.”

“Very good, Sergeant.” The company commander had the sling off, but his left arm still wasn't what it had been before he got shot. He raised his voice: “Forward… march!”

Along with the rest of the Valley soldiers, Dan tramped south down Westwood Boulevard toward the Santa Monica Freeway line. Some of the people on the sidewalk glanced at the marching men. Others just went about their business. Quite a few of them were bound not to like the Valley men. You couldn't tell which ones, though. They knew better than to show a company's worth of armed men that they were hostile.

Then the company had to stop, because a wagon full of beer barrels drawn by six big horses clattered across Westwood Boulevard from a side street. Sergeant Chuck yelled at the driver. So did some of the soldiers. The fellow on the wagon spread his hands, as if to say, What can I do? It's my job.