Would they have found out how to go between alternates here? She doubted it. She doubted it like anything, in fact-that had happened only once. (Or if it had happened more than once, nobody from Crosstime Traffic had ever found any evidence of it.) Other high-tech alternates exploited the rest of the Solar System as best they could. Too bad it was a less inviting place than science-fiction writers from the mid-twentieth century thought it would turn out to be.
Still other high-tech alternates ruthlessly limited population and energy use. If they couldn't get more, they'd make do with less. That worked, after a fashion, but Liz was glad she didn't live in one of those alternates. They were tyrannies, and tight ones. They had to be, to keep people from having too many babies and consuming too much. She'd grown up free, and was glad of it.
She scanned all the stories she could find about Russia and Vietnam and the Middle East. None of them grabbed her by the arm and yelled, Hey! Look at me! I’m different! She had the data, though. Maybe her folks could run with it if she couldn't.
When the sun got low in the west, she put away the bound volume and left the library. No electric lights here. None anywhere in this alternate except in the secret rooms of the house the Mendozas had used and at the Stoyadinovich.es' place down in Speedro. The locals would never find any of those.
Dan didn't know why he came back to the UCLA campus. He was tempted to go into the big, fancy library. If he could find out anywhere whether time travel was possible, that would be the place.
But he didn't think he could. If somebody back then knew how to do that, it would have been a heavy-duty secret, a bigger secret than the Fire. And something else occurred to him as he tramped along the cracked, weed-infested concrete. Why would anybody from the Old Time want to see this? They had things so much better back then. Everybody knew that. Next to what they'd had and thrown away, what was left was just a mess. People were lucky anything at all was left-if this counted for luck.
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.