The Valley-Westside War by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History
Published: 2011-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

Of course he doesn't know any of that, Dan realized. The trader had just set eyes on Liz for the first time. (Unless he'd come up here before the Valley took Westwood. But Dan thought that unlikely. The man would have talked about her differently if he had.) How could he know that Dan went over there whenever he found the chance? How could he know Dan was on his way over there now? Simple—he couldn't.

Or could he? His leathery, weathered face was much too cunning as he said, “Well, have a nice day, pal,” and ambled off.

He didn't look back over his shoulder to see whether Dan knocked on Liz's door. Maybe that meant he didn't care. Then again, maybe it meant he already had a pretty good notion of what Dan would do.

Steaming, Dan tramped right past that door. He was, after all, supposed to be on patrol. But he looked back over his shoulder after he'd gone half an extra block. No sign of the trader. If the miserable fellow had hung around to see what Dan would do. he was gone now. And if he was gone now? . . .

Dan hurried back to Liz's house and knocked on the door. The barred little telltale at eye level opened up. Dan didn't think those were Liz's eyes on the other side of it. He turned out to be right, because a man's voice said, “Oh, it's you. Wait a second.”

A thud meant the man was taking down the bar that held the door closed. When it swung wide, Dan found himself looking at Liz's father. “Hello,” he said politely—he couldn't bring himself to call anybody in occupied Westwood sir. “Is Liz at home?”

Her father nodded. “Yes, she is, but you can't see her right now. She's busy in the kitchen.

We've got to eat—nothing we can do about that—and getting food ready takes a lot of time.”

Dan nodded, too. He remembered his mother working a lot in her kitchen. He also remembered her grumbling about it. Chopping and cutting and plucking and gutting and tending the fires and cleaning up afterwards . . . Sometimes she'd dragooned him into helping, but women did most of the work in there.

“Ask you something?” Dan said.

“I make a point of never saying no to a musketeer who's carrying his gun,” Liz's father answered. Dan wondered if he was telling the truth. Like the other trader, he was bound to have weapons of his own. But he wasn't showing any right now. And so ...

“Why did you buy freaky magazines from that whiskery-scoundrel?”

Liz's father looked startled for a moment. Then he smiled. “You must have run into Luke.”

“If that's his name,” Dan said. “But you didn't answer my question. Why did you? It could matter to the Valley.” He wanted the trader to understand he wasn't just being snoopy on his own.

“I don't see how,” Liz's father said. “I'm interested in those kinds of magazines myself, the same way Liz is. They remind me how much we lost when the Fire fell.

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