The house where she and her folks stayed was in Westwood Village, a couple of blocks south of the UCLA campus. It was made from the rubble of the stores and apartments that had stood there when the bombs fell. The house was built around a central courtyard. The style came from Rome through Spain to the New World. It gave both light and shade, and worked well in the California climate.

The windows that looked out on the world were small and barred. Liz could see the UCLA campus through the north-facing ones. She could, yes, but she didn't look that way very often. It hurt too much. Most of the big hospital buildings at the south end of campus never got built in this alternate. The war took care of that, as it took care of so many other things. The buildings that did survive were in sad disrepair. Some of the earlier ones, built before there were any earthquake codes, had crumbled in one shaker or another.

Somebody banged on the big brass knocker bolted to the front door. “You want to get that, Liz?” her father called.

Well, no, not really, was the first thing that crossed her mind. But that was the wrong answer, and she knew it. “Okay,” she said out loud, and went to the door.

Before she opened it, she looked through the little window set above the knocker. The Westsiders patrolled Westwood Village pretty well, but robber bands still skulked in other ruins and came out to raid every now and then. There were freelance thieves, too.

She relaxed when she recognized the man standing in the street. Unbarring the door, she said, “Come in, Colonel Morris.”

“Thank you, Missy,” the Westsider said. In the home timeline, that would have made Liz want to spit in his eye. Here, he was just being polite. His English sounded old-fashioned to her. The language here hadn't changed as much since 1967 as it had in the home timeline.