With another grunt, Inspector Weidenreich shoved the identity papers back at Paul. He gnawed on his underlip as he stowed the loupe once more. "Everything appears to be in order." He sounded as if he hated to admit even that much. "Appears, I say."
"What's going on?" Paul did his best to seem innocent and ordinary. And so he was—in the home timeline. Here, he counted for neither.
"I ask the questions," the German said.
"Yes, sir." Plainly, this was no time to be rude. As plainly, Elliott hadn't known what he was talking about—and had left town just in time. Paul went on, "We haven't done anything wrong. We have our permit. You see that. We pay all our taxes. I can show you the receipts, if you want."
Weidenreich waved that away. "No, no. I knew as much before I came here. I know who you are. The Kaiser's government knows who you are. What we do not know is what you are."
"I don't understand," Paul said, understanding much too well. No, Elliott hadn't known what he was talking about, not even a little bit. Or had he covered things up on purpose? Too late to worry about that now.
Inspector Weidenreich's wave took in the whole shop. "Then I will make myself very plain, very clear. Where do you get your goods? We have examined them. We have done this with great care, in fact. We have never seen anything like them from any other shop. This makes us wonder. Can you blame us?"
For being nosy? Of course I can. Paul didn't suppose hearing that would make Weidenreich any happier. He said, "We're just lucky that we've been able to set up good connections in Chinatown."
"Aha!" The inspector rubbed his long chin. China was far, far away from Germany. The Chinese said they admitted the Kaiser ruled over them, too. In a certain sense, he and the Germans did. They could nuke China back to the Stone Age if they ever decided to do it. The Chinese couldn't hit back. They didn't have the bomb.
But China was too big a place to be easy to rule. It had too many people for the Germans to keep an eye on all of them, or even very many of them. Almost anything could come out of China. No one would be especially surprised if it did. By Weidenreich's face, he had no trouble believing these electronic gadgets might spring from there.
He took out a small notebook and a fountain pen. "You will provide for me your sources of supply," he said. "Immediately." If a German was going to know any five-syllable word in English, that was likely to be it.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't. I don't know." Paul looked as dumb as he could while still breathing. "I don't handle any of that side of things. I just sell stuff. My dad buys it."
"Where is your father?" Weidenreich asked, scribbling.
"He went out a while ago. I don't know when he'll be back," Paul said, which was true. He knew Dad wouldn't thank him for this, but he didn't see what else he could have said. And Dad hardly ever thanked him for anything.
More scribbles. The inspector said, "I shall return to inquire of him. You may be sure of it. For now, good day." He clicked his heels and marched out. Paul had never seen anyone do that before except in some ancient and very bad movies.
Dad came in a few minutes later. He was chewing on something: he'd gone out for lunch. Seeing Paul's expression, he swallowed. "What's up?" he said. "You look like a goose just walked over your grave."
"It wasn't a goose," Paul answered. "It was a German inspector named Weidenreich."
That got Dad's attention, all right. He said something pungent. Then he said something downright incandescent. Paul just nodded. He felt the same way. But swearing at the Germans—and at Elliott—wasn't going to change anything. His father needed a little while to figure that out. He finally did, and asked, "What did he want?"
Paul shrugged. "About what you'd expect. To see if our permits and papers were in order, to start with. If they weren't, he could have done anything he wanted. My Kennkarte passed a really good inspection. And to find out where we were getting our stuff." He waved at Curious Notion's stock in trade, hardly any of which came from this alternate.
Dad did a little more swearing. "What did you tell him?"
"That we got it from some Chinatown merchant or other—I didn't know who—and that he got it from China."
"Hmm." His father gnawed at the skin by the edge of one thumbnail. "That's not bad. What did he say?"
That's not bad was about as much praise as Paul's father gave. Paul basked in it for a moment. But then he had to say, "He didn't like it a whole lot. He was going to come back here and get all the details from you."
Dad exploded for a third time. This one made the other two seem tame. "What am I supposed to say to him?" he howled after the Big Bang cooled down enough to allow ordinary speech once more.
Paul shrugged again. "I don't know. I couldn't very well tell him the truth, so I gave him the best lie I could come up with. He jumped like I stuck a pin in him when I started going on about China."
"Terrific," his father said sourly. 'The problem is, we only know a few people in Chinatown, and we don't do a whole lot of business with any of them. Inspector What's-his-name can find that out pretty quick, too."
That was part of the problem. It wasn't all of it. The other part was that the merchants in Chinatown might be as curious about Crosstime Traffic's goods as the Germans were. What would they say if Weidenreich started poking around there? Paul didn't know. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out.
"You'll come up with something, Dad," he said.
That could have been sarcasm. Part of it was sarcasm. Part, but not all. When Paul's father chose to use it, he had the gift of gab. He was liable to find some way out of this fix, right there on the spur of the moment. Paul could never do that sort of thing. He was just glad he'd survived with Weidenreich. Dad might do a lot better than surviving.
Or he might not. The gift of gab didn't come through all the time.
"We're liable to have to get out of this alternate altogether. That would be terrible," Dad said, and then, "What are you doing?"
"Finishing my lunch. I was halfway done when Weidenreich came in. He didn't spoil my appetite. I don't know why, but he didn't." He dug into the shrimp and rice again. For once, he had the last word.
"Oh," Lucy Woo's father said heavily. "Those people."
"They don't look so bad," Lucy said. "They just look like . . .
people."
"Well, I suppose they are just people," Father said, and paused
for a big forkful of rice and vegetables. The family ate with fork and
knife more often than chopsticks, though Lucy could use them. Her ancestors had been in the United States since they helped build the transcontinental railroad—almost 250 years now. They were as American as anybody else. They thought so, anyhow. The Germans sometimes had trouble believing it. After Charlie Woo swallowed, he went on, "But they're people who've got things nobody else has. They've got things nobody else knows how to make. I wish I knew how they did it."
"Why? Could you do the same?" Lucy yawned. She couldn't help it. She came home from the shoe factory beat every night.
Her father scratched at the thin, scraggly mustache he wore. "I never had a fancy education," he said, and Lucy nodded. He took another bite of dinner. "I wish I did, but I didn't. I'm just a guy with a soldering iron and a lot of practice taking stuff apart and putting it back together and making it work again."
"You're good at it." Lucy spoke with family pride.
Now Charlie Woo was the one who nodded. "Yeah. I am. Everybody who comes to me knows it. And so I've seen some of the things that Curious Notions place sells."
"And?" Lucy knew she was supposed to ask. If she didn't, her snoopy brother would have beaten her to it.
Her father looked very unhappy. "I can't tell for sure, but I've got the feeling I could know everything there is to know about electric goods and it wouldn't help me a bit if I needed to fix one of those things."
"How come?" This time, Michael beat Lucy to the punch. She couldn't get too mad at him. He'd probably end up running the shop one of these days
down the road.
"How come? I'll tell you how come." After another bite, Charlie Woo did: "Because I don't think even one of the big brains could understand some of what I see in the guts. Circuits are tinier and neater than anything anybody else builds. They're more powerful, too. They can do things I wouldn't have figured you could make anything electric do. They almost think for themselves." A bottle of beer sat by his plate. He took a swig from it.
"Why do they have them when nobody else does?"
"You find that out, you win the prize," her father answered. "I don't know. I can't even guess. All I know is, they make me feel stupid. I don't like feeling stupid. I don't like it at all."
Lucy paused to do some eating, too. There was a little pork mixed into the rice and vegetables, more for flavor than anything else. She smiled when her teeth came down on a chunk bigger than most. After savoring it, she asked, "Do you think they make the Kaiser's men feel stupid, too?"
Her father paused with a forkful halfway to his mouth. "That's a good question. The Germans know all kinds of things Americans don't."
"Well, sure." Michael sounded surprised anybody needed to say that. One of the ways Germany stayed on top was by keeping the rest of the world ignorant. That wasn't fair, but it worked.
After dinner, Lucy helped her mother do dishes. They both yawned while they worked. As soon as they finished, they got into pajamas and went to bed. When Lucy's mother wasn't watching Michael, she took in laundry and did housework for people who were too rich and too lazy to take care of their own houses. That left her exhausted at the end of every day. The way it looked to Lucy, anyone who wasn't tired all the time didn't work hard enough.
She did have Sunday off. That meant she got to run around trying to do all the things she wanted to do during the week. When she finally caught up—or finally decided she just couldn't catch up this week—she got to see her friends. They were all working, too, and as tired and busy as she was.
"There has to be a better way," Peggy Ma said as they rode the bus to Golden Gate Park. Busfare was only a nickel. They could wander around the park for as long as they wanted without spending anything except maybe a little on snacks. Peggy's family was no better off than Lucy's.
"A better way." Lucy sighed. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
Instead of wandering very far, they sat down by Stow Lake, spent another nickel on a bag of bread crumbs, and started feeding the ducks. The park birds were fat and pampered. They charged this way and that after the crumbs, quacking loudly and bumping one another out of they way. They had the crazy selfishness of a three-year-old without the brains.
Lucy kept eyeing them, not just because they were pretty and funny. "They'd taste good, wouldn't they?" she murmured. She'd had duck only a couple of times, but she liked it a lot.
So did Peggy. "I was thinking the same thing," she said. "I bet they do disappear every now and then."
Signs in the park warned, IT IS FORBIDDEN TO HARM THE ANIMALS HERE, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. But the ducks were friendly and tame. If you were hungry enough, and thought you could get away with it...
Some coots squabbled with the ducks over bread crumbs. Lucy had never heard of anybody eating coot. The black birds with the red-and-white beaks looked tough and stringy. Screeching jays with dark blue crests hopped in and out, stealing from ducks and coots alike.
Off beyond the fragrant pine trees, music started playing. Lucy remembered a band shell stood over there. By the thumping drums and blatting tuba, that was a German military band performing. "Do you want to go over and watch?" Lucy asked.
Peggy shook her head. "I'd rather stay here. If I just listen to them and don't see the uniforms, I'll enjoy the music a lot more."
"Okay." Lucy was happy enough to sit on the bench. The sun shone warm on her face, but the breeze blowing in off the ocean kept it from being too annoying. She said, "You'd think we could take care of ourselves without the Germans around, too, wouldn't you?"
"You'd think—" Peggy broke off. A policeman strolled up the path. He was plump and well fed, and twirled his nightstick by the leather thong. Tipping his hat to the two girls, he walked on.
"You'd think we could speak our minds without worrying about whether some dumb flatfoot heard us," Lucy said when he'd got out of earshot.
"He might not have done anything," Peggy said. Lucy nodded. That was true. On the other hand, the cop might have run them in if he'd heard. You never could tell. Peggy knew as much, too. Otherwise, she wouldn't have shut up when he came by.
Thinking about the police only made Lucy blue. "I wish everybody would just leave us alone," she said. She wasn't sure whether us meant her and Peggy, all the Chinese in San Francisco, all of San Francisco, or all of the United States. All those things at once, probably.
"Maybe we ought to go home," Peggy said. Seeing that cop had taken the fun out of her day, too.
"Maybe we should." Lucy scattered the last of the bread crumbs. The ducks didn't care who ran the world. All they cared about was getting fed. Up till now, Lucy had never wondered whether ducks were smarter than people. Suddenly, though, that looked like a pretty good question.
Paul wandered through Chinatown. He didn't look as if he was going anywhere in particular. Truth to tell, he wasn't. He also wasn't much impressed. Just as this San Francisco as a whole seemed a sad, shabby imitation of the one in the home timeline, this Chinatown wasn't much, either. A lot of the shops were marked with Chinese characters as well as ordinary letters, but most of the people inside them spoke only English. In this alternate, Chinese immigration had stopped a long time ago. People in this San Francisco went through the motions of being Chinese, but plenty of them had forgotten what it meant.
WOO'S ELECTRIC REPAIR, a sign said. Below it was a dragon whose tail ended in a plug. That was cute, but it wasn't much more than cute. Would somebody who really felt Chinese have used such a sign? Paul hoped not, anyway.
He went into the little cafe across the street and ordered spare ribs and fried rice. The spare ribs came slathered in a sweet pinkish purple sauce. The fried rice was greasy enough to lube a car. Paul sighed. Chinese food here wasn't what it was in the home timeline, either.
While he ate, he kept an eye on Woo's Electric Repair. It was one of the places Dad had named for Inspector Weidenreich. He'd got the names out of a city directory, but the inspector wouldn't figure that out for a while. Maybe Weidenreich wouldn't figure it out at all. He was looking for plots, after all. If these people denied doing business with Curious Notions, wouldn't he think they were lying and trying to hide something?
That would be too bad for the locals. Paul supposed he ought to feel sorry for them. He had a hard time doing it, though. They weren't from his world. That made them seem a little less real to him.
No policemen burst into Woo's shop while he ate and watched. He hadn't really expected that they would. He had hoped so, though. It would have livened up his day.
When he left the caf6, he checked to see if he was being followed. He couldn't be sure what Weidenreich might have in mind. Paul didn't spot anybody who looked out of place.
He wished for a cell phone to call Dad and make sure everything was okay back at the shop. They existed in this alternate, but they were supersecret, superfancy German military gadgets. You couldn't walk down the street with one plugged into your ear, the way people did in the home timeline.
Space travel and satellites here had got off to a much slower start than they had back home, too. There, World War II had given them an enormous boost. Here, they'd stayed toys for hobbyists for years and years. It was well into the twenty-first century before they'd got good enough to make the Kaiser's government sit up and take notice. The first man to fly to the moon in this alternate was still alive. There hadn't been a second man. The flight was nothing but an enormous stunt.
A few high-tech alternates worked hard at exploiting the Solar System. They were running out of resources on Earth, the same way the home timeline had been fifty yea
rs earlier. They didn't know about crosstime traffic, so they had to do the best they could with what they had.
Trouble was, it wasn't very good. The Solar System turned out to be a less inviting place than people had thought back in the middle of the twentieth century. No oceans full of dinosaurs on Venus. No canals on Mars, and no Martians, either. Savage radiation belts around Jupiter. No decent real estate anywhere.
One alternate was terraforming Mars: crashing huge icy asteroids from the outer Solar System into it to give it oceans and enough oxygen to breathe. But that would take years and years to finish. Even after it was done, it wouldn't solve Earth's problems. It would just give people the chance to have problems somewhere else.
"Can you spare a quarter, sir, or even a dime?" The tired, hopeless, whining voice brought Paul back to the here-and-now. A woman had her hand out. At her feet, a toddler slept on a grimy wool blanket. If not for the little girl, Paul would have walked on. You couldn't help everybody. You'd go crazy if you tried. That was one of the first lessons crosstime travel taught.
But sometimes you could help some people. A toddler didn't deserve to go hungry. Paul dug in his pocket and pulled out a quarter. In the home timeline, twenty-five cents was too small an amount to worry about. So was twenty-five dollars, come to that. Here, though, a quarter was worth five or six benjamins: enough for a meal, if not for a fancy one.
The woman's face lit up. How many people had walked by pretending she wasn't there? "God bless you, sir!" she exclaimed.
Paul nodded and walked on. He hoped other beggars wouldn't notice what he'd done. But they did, of course. They always did. He had men and women follow him along the street. When he didn't give to them the way he had to the woman with the toddler, they got angry. They shook their fists and called him names. He'd been afraid that would happen. It made him sorry he'd given anything to anybody. Then he was ashamed of feeling that way.
A policeman with a large wart on his nose pointed to the beggars with his billy club. "Break it up, you bums!" he boomed. "Leave the gentleman alone!" Still grumbling, they obeyed. They knew he would have used the club if they didn't.
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