Instead, she smiled-sweetly-and said, “Well, have you got an answer for it?”

Dad coughed. She wasn't supposed to push like this. She didn’t much care, not when the Westsider insulted her without even knowing he was doing it.

“I have the only answer I need,” Colonel Morris said. “Whatever the City Council tells me to do, I do it.”

I'm just following orders. How many people in how many alternates said the same thing? How much grief did they cause when they did? Too much- Liz knew that.

“How long will we have to wait for the guns?” the colonel asked Liz 's father. He tried to ignore her now. Was that better than patronizing her? Was it worse? Was it as bad in a different way?

“It'll be a while, sir,” Jeff Mendoza answered. “Long way down to Sandago.” It wasn't even two hundred kilometers. If traffic on the 405 wasn't bad, you could get to San Diego in a couple of hours. You could in the home timeline, anyhow. If you were traveling in a horse-drawn wagon in this alternate, the town with the rubbed-down name was more like a week away.

“Well, do what you can,” Colonel Morris said. “We need those guns, especially the six-shooters. See you later.” He sketched a salute to Dad, nodded to Liz, and left.

After the door was barred behind the local, Dad turned to Liz and said, “You can't poke him with a pin whenever you feel like it, you know.”

“I guess not,” she said. “But he ticked me off.”

“He didn't even realize he was doing it.”

“That's the point,” Liz said. “I sure knew.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Her father sounded half annoyed, half amused.

“Send me home. I don't like it here very much,” Liz answered. “Or if you can't do that, let me go up to the campus.”