Harry Turtledove - The Valley-Westside War

Dan nodded. The machine gun was much more deadly than any cougar ever born. Cougars would have climbed trees to get away from the Westsiders' mutant dog. The gun had killed it easy as you please.

“Oh, wow!” Somebody pointed ahead. “Look at all the houses and stuff.”

Some of those buildings were too big and fancy to be houses. UCLA was down there somewhere. Its bear had gone into the Westside flag- Dan knew that much. It was supposed to be a store of wisdom, too.

How much good had its wisdom done the Westside. though? If the people who lived there were wise, would they have picked a fight with the Valley? Dan didn't think so. The Westsiders were probably sorry now. Being sorry was easy, but it usually came too late to do any good.

The other soldier pointed again, this time to the southwest. “Oh, wow!” he repeated. “Is that the ocean? Can it be?”

Dan 's eyes followed the man's outstretched index finger. Off in the distance, where things got blue and hazy, the land did seem to end. Something even bluer lay beyond it. The Pacific? “The sea,” Dan murmured, awe prickling through him. “The sea!”

In a moment, all the Valley soldiers were chanting it: “The sea! The sea!” How many of them had ever seen it before? Maybe a few of the officers had, and some who came from widely traveled merchant families. But for most of the Valley men, the sea was only a vast mystery-or it had been, till now.

One reason they could see it was that a bomb had flattened Santa Monica. Whatever tall buildings had stood there were nothing but melted stumps now. Dan wondered why no bomb had come down on the rest of the Westside. That would have taken care of those people once and for all.

Did the Westsiders feel the same way about the Valley? Wondering whether they did never occurred to Dan.

More and more panicky Westside soldiers ran through West-wood Village. All of them went from north to south. None seemed interesting in fortifying the area against an attack from the Valley. Was that good news or bad? Liz wasn't sure.

“I think we're going to get occupied,” her father said.

Liz thought so, too. “What will the Valley soldiers do?” she asked nervously.

“Well, they won't shoot up the village and smash things with cannonballs,” her mother answered. “If the Westsiders tried to make a stand here, they would.”

As the sun set, somebody knocked on the Mendozas ' door. Dad opened it. There stood Cal in his trademark white Stetson and plaid jacket. A couple of bodyguards with rifles followed him. “You boys can wait outside,” he told them as he stepped over the threshold.

“But-” one of the guards began.

“It's okay,” Cal said flatly. “If I have to worry about these people, no place is safe for me.” As Liz 's father closed the door, Cal muttered, “And maybe no place is. The way things are going…”

“What can we do for you, sir?” Dad asked.

“I hear you have a way to keep things safe for people,” Cal said. “Is that so?”

A stout safe, one that looked as if it came from the Old Time, was hidden in a storeroom. In fact, it came from the home timeline. The locals wouldn't be able to break into it… though they might torture the combination out of someone. Dad could also take stuff back to the home timeline if he had to or wanted to.

He picked his words with care: “There's safe, and then there's safe. If someone puts a gun to my head, I won't get killed to hang on to something for somebody else.”

“No, no. I understand that,” Cal said. “But within reason, you can, right? And you can make things hard to find, right?”

“Sometimes. If things work out the way they should.” Dad was playing it as cagey as he could. Liz didn't blame him a bit.

Cal didn't seem to be fussy. “Here.” He thrust a large leather pouch at Liz 's father. “Hang on to this till I can come back and get it. I hope that won't be long. I hope I can rally our forces and lead us to the victory we deserve. I aim to try.” He suddenly ran out of bluster. “But you never can tell. Hang on to it, like I said. If I don't come back for it, I'll see if I can find some kind of way for you to get it back to me. Is that a deal?”

“That's a deal,” Dad said. It wasn't one that committed him to much.

“Good!” Cal stuck out his hand. Dad shook it. Cal made as if to tip his hat, then went out the door and hurried away. He and his bodyguards trotted around a corner. After that, Liz couldn't see them anymore.

“What did he give you?” she asked her father.

Dad hefted the pouch. “A lot of what's in here has to be gold. Nothing else that takes up so little room is so heavy.” He grinned wryly. “Oh, it could be lead, but I don't think so.”

“Why don't you look?” Liz said. “He didn't tell say you couldn't or anything. He didn't even ask you not to.”

She watched Dad fight temptation and lose. The expressions chasing one another across his face were pretty funny. “You're right,” he said after maybe ten seconds. “Let's go in the kitchen, where we can spread stuff out.”

Mom was chopping up tomatoes when Liz and Dad came in. Everything here got done by hand. Liz had found out about chickens the hard way. But there were no food processors here. No fancy bread machines, either. Making food was work, a lot oi work. Keeping it fresh was even more work-no refrigeration, either. If you didn't want to eat it the day you made it, or the day after that, you had to salt it or smoke it or dry it.

“What have you got there?” Mom asked. She seemed glad of any excuse to knock off for a while.

“ Cal gave it to Dad,” Liz answered.

“He's heading into, ah, political exile,” Dad added. “He hopes he'll be back, but he's not making like Douglas Mac-Arthur.”

“He'd better not, not with that hat and that coat,” Mom said. “So what did he leave behind?”

“We're going to find out.” Dad opened the pouch and spilled its contents onto a table with a Formica top and iron legs with peeling chrome trim: an Old Time relic. Some of the gold that spilled out was old coins. Some was rings and bracelets and necklaces. Some was just lumps, where a goldsmith had melted stuff down.

“So you're deeper into the banking business,” Mom said to Dad.

“Looks that way,” he agreed.

“Anything else in the pouch? Hope, maybe? “ Liz had been studying Greek mythology, and it rubbed off.

“I'll find out.” Her father reached inside. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper. It was modern, not from the Old Time. Ironically, that meant it would last better. It wasn't cheap wood pulp that started turning brown the day it got made. Instead, it came from old rags, the way paper had when it was just invented.

As Dad turned it over, Liz saw a wax seal and some upside-down writing on the other side. “What does it say?” she asked.

“ 'Open only if you know I'm dead,'“ Dad answered.

“Are you going to pay attention to that?” Mom asked.

He thought about it, then nodded. He didn't look very happy, though. “I guess I am,” he said. “ Cal might come back and get his stuff.”

“Yeah, and then you wake up.” Mom wasn't sarcastic very often, but she could be dangerous when she let fly.

As if to underscore what she said, bursts of gunfire came from the north-from not nearly far enough away. Screams said somebody'd been wounded. Running feet and galloping hooves added to the racket outside. As far as Liz could tell, they were all going from north to south. If those weren't more Westsiders getting out while the getting was good, Liz would have been amazed.

“See?” Mom said.

Dad spread his hands, palms up. “This is now. Who knows what things will look like next year, or even next week? Maybe the Valley's machine gun will break down. Maybe it'll run out of ammo. Or maybe the Westsiders will scrounge one of their own. Cal won't be happy if he comes back and finds out we've been snooping.”