Curious Notions ct-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "Thank you," Paul called to the cop. He knew why the beggars had come after him. He even sympathized with them. But he couldn't help them all. And he wanted the policeman to see that he was grateful. No matter what he thought of the authorities here, he had to stay on good terms with them. That helped Curious Notions stay in business.

  With a tip of the cap, the policeman answered, "My pleasure, sir." Just as Paul was polite to him, so he was in return. He had no idea who Paul was—Paul didn't think he did, anyhow—but he'd seen that Paul was somebody beggars followed. That made him prosperous. Cops often figured prosperous people were the ones they should be guarding.

  Prosperous people did nothing to discourage that notion, here or in any other timeline.

  Newsboys on street corners waved copies of the San Francisco Chronicle. They shouted out the headlines. The lead story was the Kaiser's visit to Paris. Germany had dominated Europe for more than a hundred fifty years in this alternate. Kaisers often visited Paris. They usually said it was for reasons of state. Had Paul had a choice between Berlin and Paris, he knew he would have visited pretty often, too.

  He gave one of the newsboys a nickel. The kid handed him a Chronicle and three cents. Paul waved away the change, saying, "Keep it."

  "Thank you, sir." The newsboy really was grateful. Three cents would buy something here: gum or candy or something like that. Back in the home timeline, Paul couldn't think of anything you could get for three dollars. This alternate hadn't known inflation, the way his world had.

  It hadn't known a lot of things. He walked along reading the paper. It went on and on about what the Kaiser was doing, and the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the King of England, and the King of Portugal, and even the Emperor of Brazil. It said that the latest rebellion in India had been put down. When crowds refused to break up, the story went on, it became necessary to open fire with machine guns. Native casualties were heavy. Only three white men were hurt, none seriously.

  In the home timeline, that sort of attitude had pretty much disappeared after the Second World War. It was alive and well in this alternate.

  An okay place to visit, if you've got money, Paul thought. You can be comfortable enough. It's not like Agrippan Rome, say, where they still think bad air causes disease. Even so, I wouldn't want to live here.

  Lucy knew something was wrong even before she went in the door after her day's work at the shoe factory. Just the way Mother was yelling at Michael told her that. Her mother sounded not just angry but afraid.

  "What's going on?" Lucy asked when she went inside.

  "Your father hasn't come home from work," Mother answered in a flat voice that tried to hide fear but couldn't.

  "He's working late," Lucy said. Father sometimes did that, though he usually brought work home with him when it was past closing time.

  But Mother shook her head. "No. Old man Lin said the Germans were in the shop this afternoon."

  Ice ran up Lucy's back. "Why?" she exclaimed. "He hasn't done anything to get the Germans mad at him. All he does is fix radios and record players and toasters and things. What's wrong with that?"

  "Nothing," her mother answered. "You know it, and I know it, too. But if the Germans don't know it. . ."

  She didn't go on. She didn't need to go on. The Germans could do whatever they pleased. A lot of the time, they stayed in the background while U.S. officials did their dirty work for them. But when they wanted to, they came out in force.

  What Lucy couldn't understand was why they would want to

  here. She loved her father, but she knew he was an ordinary man. He ran an ordinary little business. Once a month or so, he would play cards with some friends, and sometimes he'd have a little too much to drink before he came home. If the Germans started arresting everybody in San Francisco who did things like that, they'd empty the place in a hurry.

  She couldn't put all that into words. What she did say was, "They must be crazy." She spun a finger by the side of her head.

  "I should hope so," Mother answered. "I just don't know if that will do Father any good, though." The fear came out in the open. People dreaded the Germans exactly because they could do whatever they wanted. They didn't need to be right. They could ruin your life just as easily if they were wrong.

  No sooner had that thought crossed Lucy's mind than someone knocked on the door. It wasn't a cheerful, hello-there-here's-your-friend kind of knock. No. This was an open-right-now-or-I'll-kick-in-the-door knock. Whoever knocked like that would be wearing boots to kick better, too.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! There it was again, echoing up and down the hallway. "What do we do?" Michael squeaked.

  "We answer it," Mother said. "What else can we do?"

  Lucy right behind her, she opened the door. Four enormous German Feldgendarmerie men stood in the hallway. They all wore identical green trench coats—and, sure enough, polished black jackboots. One of them had had his fist raised to knock some more. He lowered it.

  "You are the Woos?" he asked in good if accented English. Then, because there were lots of Woos in Chinatown, he added, "This is the home of Charles Woo, the repairer of electrical goods?"

  "That's right," Mother said. "Where is he? What have you done with him?" She didn't say, What have you done to him? Lucy admired her for that. She went on, "Why do you want to know?"

  "Charles Woo has been detained for interrogation. If he is innocent, nothing will come of it." The secret policeman didn't sound as if he thought that was likely. He turned to his pals and spoke a few words of German.

  Figuring out what the phrase meant didn't turn out to be hard. The Feldgendarmerie men went ahead and turned the place inside out. They threw things on the floor. They opened anything that might be hollow. They didn't care what they smashed. They even took pictures off the wall and looked behind them.

  "What do you want?" Mother wailed as one of the Germans flung clothes out of drawers, "We haven't done anything!"

  "Ha! Now tell me another one," the Feldgendarmerie man said. "Nobody's ever done anything, not in all the history of the world. But things keep getting done anyway. Maybe it's a miracle, eh?" He laughed some more.

  "But we haven't!" Lucy exclaimed. "What do you think we've done?"

  "Oh, yes. You don't know. Of course you don't." The big man's mocking tone filled Lucy with despair. He wasn't going to believe the Woos, no matter what they told him. He went on, "I suppose you'll say you haven't had anything to do with that Curious Notions outfit, too."

  Lucy looked at her mother. Mother looked as surprised as she felt. "But we haven't!" they both said at the same time.

  Sure enough, the man from the Feldgendarmerie didn't believe them. "A likely story! And isn't your husband one of their big suppliers? Of course he is." He liked that of course. He already knew all the answers.

  "He is notl" Lucy shouted. She was too angry now to be scared.

  Besides, she had the feeling she couldn't make things much worse than they were already. "He was just talking the other night about how he doesn't know where the place gets what it sells, because everything they have is so strange."

  "How neat. A built-in alibi. Very clever. But it won't work," the secret policeman said. "And do you know why it won't work? Because the people at Curious Notions have already admitted your father's part in the scheme. So if you deny it, you must be lying, eh?"

  Now the look Lucy and her mother shared was one of horror. "No, they're the liars!" Lucy said. She tried to imagine why the people at Curious Notions would tell that kind of lie. What did they have against her father? He wasn't competition. He didn't sell what they did. He couldn't even fix what they sold. It made no sense.

  "Don't you worry," the German said cheerfully. "We'll get some answers out of him, even if we don't get them out of you." He spoke to his own men: "Well? What about it?"

  They shrugged. "Doesn't look like anything, boss."

  "You see?" Lucy's mother said. "We're innocent. We haven't done an
ything, and neither has my husband."

  "No, that is not how it seems to me," the Feldgendarmerie man answered. "I will tell you how it seems to me. It seems like this. We have found no evidence—-ja, this is true. But does this mean you are not guilty? That I find very unlikely. So it must mean you are very clever. You think you have outwitted us. For the time being, you may even be right. We shall see, though, what further questioning of Herr Charles Woo will bring."

  "You're nuts!" Lucy burst out. "Can't you see that no evidence means we haven't done anything?"

  "Everyone has done something." The Feldgendarmerie man spoke with great assurance. "My job is finding out what it might be."

  A slow, happy smile crossed his face. "I am very good at my job, too."

  After that, he clicked his heels, of all things, as if Lucy and her mother were German noblewomen. He and the goons he led stamped out of the apartment. Lucy stared at her mother. Her mother was staring back. Again, they both said the same thing at the same time: "What are we going to do?"

  "Hire a lawyer?" Lucy asked, trying to answer the desperate question.

  Her mother laughed. The sound was so high and shrill, it wasn't far from hysteria. "Where would we get the money? And even if we had it, why would the Germans pay any attention to what a lawyer says? It sounds like they think we're some kind of spies. How's that for ridiculous?" She laughed again, sounding even wilder than before.

  "I'll tell you what's ridiculous," Lucy said grimly. "What's ridiculous is the people at Curious Notions saying they got their stuff from Father. Why would they do that? It's a lie. Father wants to know where they get it himself."

  "Who knows if they even did?" her mother said. "That German might have made it up just to confuse us."

  Lucy hadn't thought of that. After a few seconds, she shook her head. "No, that's too crazy, Mother. There is something funny about Curious Notions. Father noticed. Would it be any big surprise if the Feldgendarmerie noticed, too?"

  "What difference does it make?" Bitterness filled her mother's voice. "They've got your father. That's the only thing that matters. If we had the money, we might pay them to let him go. But they'd just laugh at the sort of bribe we're able to give. They'd throw us in jail for insulting them."

  She was bound to be right. E you had enough money, you could get away with anything. The Woos had never had enough money. There were Chinese moneylenders who might give them enough this once. Lucy knew why her mother hadn't said anything about them. Better to be in trouble with the Germans than with the moneylenders. The Germans would kill you, and without a second thought. The moneylenders would kill your children, gloat about it, and then kill you. Father wouldn't deal with them no matter what.

  But did no matter what really stretch this far?

  "They just look like ordinary people." Lucy knew she sounded bewildered. "We're ordinary people, too. Why would they want to pick on us?"

  "Who cares what they look like?" her mother answered. "They've got some scheme going. We must have got in the way. If you're little, that's all it takes. People who are big think they can step on you, and they're usually right."

  How could you argue with that? Everything that went on proved how true it was. "It's not fair," Lucy said.

  "What is?" her mother replied, another question without an answer. Mechanically, she started picking clothes up off the floor, folding them, and putting them back in drawers. Just as mechanically, Lucy helped her. Lucy's hands knew what to do with sweaters and undershirts and unballed socks. As long as her hands were busy, the clamor in her head eased a little.

  It eased, but it didn't go away. The same questions kept gnawing at her. Why had Curious Notions lied about her father? Where did the shop get the gadgets it sold? Why were the Germans so interested in it?

  And, above those, the one that really mattered: what would the Feldgendarmerie do with—do to—Father?

  Three

  Curious Notions stayed open on Sundays. It did a lot of its business then. People who were too busy the rest of the week came in to spend their money. Paul wondered if he would have enough game sets and portable stereo players to last till the next shipment from the home timeline came in.

  Not everybody who walked through the door could afford to buy. Merchandise stayed in cases or firmly fastened to walls till customers showed cash. Things got stolen every now and again even so. That annoyed Paul, but less than it would have had the store been his personal source of income. As things were, theft was Crosstime Traffic's worry, not his.

  An Asian girl not far from his own age walked up and down the aisles. She paused now here, now there. Her clothes were neat but shabby. Paul didn't think she could afford to get anything, but she didn't seem to want to leave. She kept looking around at the other customers. He began to wonder if she was there to pick pockets, not to look at fancy electronics. But she didn't get near anybody else. In fact, she shied away from other people.

  After a while, Paul discovered she was watching them hoping they would go away. That took some time. Finally, though, she was the only person in the place besides him. Even then, she needed a moment to get up the nerve to come to the counter.

  Maybe she wanted to buy something after all. "What can I help you with today?" Paul asked in his smoothest tones.

  The answer he got was not what he expected. The Asian girl glared at him as if she'd just found him on the bottom of her shoe. In a fierce whisper, she said, "What have you done to my father?"

  Paul blinked. Was she nuts? Did she think he was somebody else? "Miss, I haven't done anything to your father," he said carefully. "Why do you think I have? No offense, but I don't even know who he is."

  "He's Charlie Woo, that's who," she said, as if he ought to know who Charlie Woo was. His expression must have shown he didn't. That only made her angrier. She pointed a forefinger. "Don't try to pretend you don't know about him, either. You can't fool me. When the Feldgendarmerie arrested him, they said you people said you got your stuff from him. That's a lie, and you know it!" She was quivering with fury.

  And then the name did ring a bell. He'd had his lunch across from Charlie Woo's little shop. Yes, Woo was one of the men Dad had fingered for Inspector Weidenreich. He'd been nothing but a name in the phone book to Paul. But names in the phone book didn't have angry teenage daughters. Charlie Woo, on the other hand . . .

  "You do know something!" the girl exclaimed. "Don't try to tell me different, either. I can see it in your face."

  Paul had never been a very good poker player. "I—" he began, and stopped. He didn't know where to go from there.

  "Why did you do it? Why?" Charlie Woo's daughter demanded. "The Germans have him in jail, and they won't let him go. What are we going to do? I've got a little brother. How are we supposed to make ends meet without Father? What can we do?" She looked ready to burst into tears—either that or take a gun from her purse and start shooting.

  And the strange thing was, he didn't see how he could blame her. Right before his eyes, she stopped being somebody from an alternate, somebody who mattered to him no more than a character in a video game, and turned into a human being. He still understood why his father had done what he did. Now, though, he also understood what that had done to Charlie Woo's family. Till this girl came in, he hadn't cared. Curious Notions' troubles with the Germans had counted for more. Things suddenly looked different.

  "I'll do what I can," Paul said. "I don't know how much that will be, but we'll find out."

  Now she stared at him as if she couldn't believe her ears. "You will?" She sounded astonished, too.

  "I said so, didn't I?" Paul answered, and wondered how much trouble he'd just let himself in for. "Uh, I'm Paul. What's your name?"

  "Lucy," she said, and then, "Why did you get my father in so much trouble if you're willing to help him now?"

  That was a good question. He wished he had a good answer for it. Since he didn't, he said, "It was a mistake, that's all. I'll see if I can fix it." That seemed better tha
n telling her, My dad and I didn't think of your father as a human being at all. We just needed to get Inspector Weidenreich out of our hair for a while.

  "What will you do?" Lucy asked. She wasn't quite giving him a my-hero look, but she wasn't measuring him for a coffin, either.

  There was another question for which he wished he had a good answer. Again, he did the best he could: "I don't think the Germans will listen to me all by myself. But I've got some pretty good connections with American policeman and officials, people the Germans will pay attention to."

  He waited to see if that would surprise her. It didn't. She just nodded. "You'd have to, to stay in business, wouldn't you? If you need bribe money, we can give you . . . some." By the way she bit her lip, the Woos didn't have a lot.

  "I think it'll be all right," Paul said gently. The home timeline could give him as much of this America's money, real or counterfeit, as he wanted. He couldn't tell that to Lucy. He couldn't tell her anything about the home timeline. He was just glad small-time—and sometimes not so small-time—corruption was a way of life here. When he said he had connections, she believed him.

  "When will I know if you've done anything?" she asked. "When will I know you aren't stringing me along?"

  She had a good notion of the way the world could work, all right. "Meet me in the Japanese garden in Golden Gate Park day after tomorrow, about three o'clock," he said.

  "I'll be at my job," Lucy said bleakly. "I can't get away. I especially can't get away with Father locked up."

  She looked too young to have a full-time job. In the home timeline, she would have been. Things were different here. Paul said, "What time do you get off?"

  "Six o'clock," she answered.

  "Can you meet me there at six-thirty, then?" he asked. She nodded. He held out his hand. She shook it. They had a bargain— what sort of bargain, Paul didn't know yet.