Harry Turtledove - The Valley-Westside War

That was one side of the dime. The other side was, where did all that stuff in the traders' house come from if it didn't come from the Old Time? Nobody nowadays could make any of those things and keep them working. Fluorescent lights? A refrigerator? Coca-Cola? A door that opened when you said the right word? No, none of that was part of the world Dan knew.

He laughed at himself. He didn't know which world he was really in, not any more. If Mellon hadn't made the door open, the next thing he would have tried was Open, sesame! He was pretty sure Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was nothing but a made-up story. But when you ran into marvels like the ones under the traders' house, how could you be certain about anything?

You couldn't. It was that simple.

There was Bunche Hall. The University Research Library sat a little north and a little west of the taller building. Dan still wondered how the devil Liz and her folks had managed to disappear from her house. So did a lot of other people from the Valley. If they didn't have a time-travel machine, what did they have?

He laughed again. He told himself he wouldn't have been real surprised to see Liz come out of the URL, just the way she had before all this weird stuff started.

Two heartbeats later, Liz came out of the URL, just the way she had before all this weird stuff started. Dan turned out to be wrong. He was so surprised, he tripped over his own feet and barely saved himself from falling on his face.

The wild stumble and flail kept him from yelling out her name. As he caught himself, he realized that might not be such a good idea. She and her folks were fugitives, after all. They wouldn't want anybody to know they were back in Westwood. If Liz found out he knew, wouldn't she disappear right before his eyes?

Could she do that? He shrugged. He didn't know she couldn't, and he didn't want to take the chance.

So instead of yelling, he followed her. She headed north- away from the house where she'd been staying-as if she had not a care in the world. He skulked along behind her, using everything he'd learned as a soldier not to be noticed. It was getting dark, which helped him.

What to do, what to do? If he just trailed her, she'd have a chance to get away when he went off to tell somebody about it and get help. If he grabbed her, she might disappear. When all your choices were bad. which one did you pick? The one that didn't look worst, whichever that happened to be.

He decided she had less chance of disappearing if he grabbed her than she did of getting away if he left her alone for a while. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. But at least he was doing something. She'd almost got to Sunset Boulevard when he broke cover and ran toward her, calling. “Halt in the name of King Zev!”

She whirled. There was just enough light to let him see that she looked as astonished as he had a few minutes earlier. Then he was on her. If she wouldn't halt, he had to make her do it.

Next thing he knew, she'd grabbed his outstretched arm. He went up over her shoulder, flew through the air with the greatest of ease-and with a startled grunt-and landed, thump!, on his back.

Liz made a mistake then. She had pretty good combat reflexes, but not perfect ones. Instead of getting out of there as fast as she could, she stood and admired what she'd done. And Dan had combat reflexes of his own. Crashing to the ground made them kick in. He snaked an arm around her ankle and brought her down. She let out a startled grunt of her own, and then a squawk when her bottom bounced off the dirt.

He was bigger and stronger than she was. She had more skill. She didn't mind fighting dirty, either. She tried to do something that would have ended the fight in a hurry, but he took her knee on the point of his hip instead. It hurt, but it didn't ruin him.

“Is that how they fought in the Old Time?” he panted.

“Are you nuts? What are you talking about?” she said, and then, cautiously, “Truce?”

He thought about it. As cautiously, he nodded. “Truce.”

They both got to their feet. She didn't try to kick him again where it would do the most good. He couldn't try to shoot her- his matchlock wasn't loaded. Just clouting her with the musket took a moment to cross his mind. By the time it did, she'd moved back too far to let him do it. Could he run her down if he had to? Maybe. Probably, even. Did he want to? That was a different question.

“What am I talking about?… I'll tell you what.” Dan was still panting. Liz didn't seem to be. Did that mean he couldn't run her down? If they just talked, he wouldn't have to find out. “Coca-Cola. Electric lights. Mellon . That's what.”

She looked almost comically amazed. “You've read The Lord of the Rings!”

“I didn't know I wasn't supposed to,” Dan answered.

“But the movies are from the start of the twenty-first century,”' she said, more to herself than to him. “Are the books that much earlier?”'

“What movies?” Dan asked. He had only a vague idea of what a movie was-sort of like TV, only bigger; sort of like a play, except it wasn't really there in front of you. It was like a photo that moved. He knew what photos were. He'd seen them. People still knew how to take them, even if not in color any more. How they were supposed to move… that, he didn't understand. He didn't know anything about movies of The Lord of the Rings. He was sure nobody else did, either, especially not movies from around the year 2000. Nobody could make movies then-it was after the Fire fell.

And Liz clapped both hands over her mouth, the way somebody would after blurting out a secret she didn't mean to tell. “Oh-!” she said, and then something that would have made Sergeant Chuck 's ears turn green.

Dan was almost too surprised to be shocked-that was not the kind of thing he expected to hear from a girl he liked. But neither was talk about movies. “You really are a time traveler from the days before the Fire fell!” he exclaimed. “Nobody wanted to believe me. Everyone said I was nuts.”

“You are nuts,” Liz said. “You can't travel forwards and backwards in time-it's impossible.” She had a scratch on her cheek, and a bigger one on the heel of her hand.

Dan noticed he had sore ribs along with an ache on his hipbone where her knee had got him. She'd hurt him other places, too, but those were the bad ones. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “So how did you get here-sideways?”

Liz didn't look amazed this time-she looked horrified. “If I tell you the answer to that, I'll have to kill you,” she said, and she sounded dead serious.

“It wouldn't do you any good.” Dan hoped he was right.

He didn't like the calculating look in Liz 's eyes. “No? You said nobody believed you. If you had an accident…”

If she really intended to kill him, she'd just try to do it. She wouldn't warn him she was thinking about it-would she? No way, Dan decided. Liz was a lot of things, but not even slightly stupid.

And the way she'd looked when he guessed sideways… He'd hit on something there, even if he didn't know just what. “How could you be from sideways in time?” he asked. “What's sideways from here?”

“I'm not supposed to tell you,” Liz answered seriously. “It won't do you any good if you find out, and it won't hurt me any, but I'm not supposed to.”

“Why not?” Dan said. “Knowing stuff is supposed to help, isn't it?” That was what they taught in school, anyhow.

“How much can knowing something help when you can't do anything about it even if you know?” Liz said. Dan only shrugged-he couldn't imagine anything like that. She must have seen as much, because she sighed before going on, “Okay. Remember, you asked for it.”