“I don’t know where Lucy is.” Paul kept his eyes on some carved jade not far from Stanley Hsu. As long as he was looking at something like that, his face was much less likely to give him away in a lie.

  Whether it did turned out not to matter much. Stanley Hsu’s smile stopped short of his eyes. “Do you really expect me to believe that?” he asked. “She could not have escaped if you did not. Will you try to tell me anything different?”

  More rattling and scraping from the roof made Paul look up. The jeweler ignored the racket. He was good at ignoring anything that didn’t matter to him. That was part of what made him so formidable.

  He went on, “We still have a bargain to finish, too, don’t we? Now you and your father are both free of the Germans. That means we have some talking to do, eh? I look forward to asking you a lot of questions.”

  Paul believed that. He also knew he could afford to answer none of them—not with the truth, anyway. What had Dad said to the Tongs? For that matter, what had Dad said to the Feldgendarmerie ? Dad was looking back at him, but Paul couldn’t tell what his expression meant.

  Dad yawned. So did Stanley Hsu. They both crumpled to the floor. The jeweler banged his head on the counter as he went down. Paul hoped it wasn’t … too bad.

  A couple of minutes after that, Sammy Wong walked in the front door. He wore denim overalls and carried a tool chest. Except for the derby perched on his head, he could have been a repairman in the home timeline. “They out?” he asked.

  “You better believe it.” Paul pointed behind the counter.

  “Okay.” Sammy Wong went over there and gave Paul’s father the antidote for neofentanyl. As Lawrence Gomes grunted and sat up, Wong began breaking into jewelry cases and putting some of the best pieces in the toolchest.

  “Hey!” Paul said. “What are you doing that for?”

  “Let’em think it’s robbery,” the man from Crosstime Traffic answered. “Let’em think the whole thing with Curious Notions was just a setup to rip them off. They’ll want to kill us, of course, a millimeter at a time.” He sounded much too cheerful about that. “They’ll want to kill us, but they won’t believe in crosstime travel, any more than they believe in Santa Claus.”

  “He’s right,” Paul’s father said as he climbed to his feet. He nodded to Sammy Wong. “Nice scheme. Do we know each other?”

  “I don’t think so.” Wong gave Paul’s father his name and went on stealing jewelry. Paul didn’t need long to decide it was a good scheme. The Tongs might decide they’d been conned. That was okay, as far as Crosstime Traffic was concerned. While the Chinese in San Francisco might tear things apart looking for robbers, they wouldn’t look for people from a different alternate.

  Sammy Wong straightened. “Have enough?” Paul’s father asked. Wong nodded. Dad said, “Cool. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Second the motion,” Paul added.

  “No arguments from me,” Wong said. Out the door they went. Paul worried. The police, the Feldgendarmerie, and the Tongs all knew what he and his father looked like. The cops and the Germans just wanted them back. Sammy Wong was right: the Tongs would want them dead.

  The Chinese man from Crosstime Traffic strode along as if he hadn’t a care in the world. So did Dad. Paul did his best to imitate them. He’d seen for himself that acting normal helped fool anybody who might be after you. It wasn’t easy, though. He kept wanting to run, and to look down at the sidewalk so nobody could get a good look at his face.

  When they turned on to Market Street, Paul let out a sigh of relief. True, Market was the main drag, and had more cops on it than other streets did. But it was also packed with people. As long as Paul didn’t do anything to draw policemen’s eyes, why should they notice him? He kept telling himself the same thing over and over.

  They didn’t. He and his father and Sammy Wong got back to the little house south of Market with no one the wiser. They had one problem solved, maybe even one and a half. Too many still lay ahead.

  “We have to be careful around here,” Lucy told Sammy Wong. “We don’t want anyone from the shoe factory to see me.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be so good,” Wong agreed. “Okay, you lead the way around it so nobody’s likely to spot us.” Once they got up on Market Street, he nodded to her again. “Very neat. Very smooth. You know your way around, all right.”

  “I’d better,” she said. “This is my city, after all.” How much longer will it be my city? How different. will that other San Francisco be? Is that other San Francisco real? Sometimes, when she was feeling what she’d once thought of as sensible, she had trouble believing it. But nothing that had happened to her lately was even close to sensible. When common sense stopped making sense, you stopped using it, didn’t you? That was only … sensible.

  She tugged at a wisp of hair that had got loose. She was wearing it pulled back into a ponytail, not falling free on both sides of her face. She had on more makeup than she usually used, too. It made her look older, and not much like the self she was used to.

  She remembered the not-quite-hidden-enough glances Paul had sent her way before she went out the door. She thought they meant he found the changes interesting. She hoped so.

  Then she stiffened and worried about things that mattered right this minute. Here came a Feldgendarmerie man. People got out of his way, where they wouldn’t have for any American. He walked past Lucy and Mr. Wong without even seeing them. Sure as sure, to the Germans all Chinese looked alike.

  The streets around her father’s shop had a funny kind of familiarity. When she was little, she’d come here all the time. Since she’d got a job of her own, though, she’d gone there instead. So she mostly remembered what things had looked like a few years before. Some of the shops had new owners now. Some had closed. A few had opened. Things weren’t quite right, but she wasn’t always sure just how they were wrong. She kept blinking and looking around, trying to figure out what had changed.

  “You’re not going in,” Sammy Wong reminded her. “Too big a chance they’d recognize you. That’s one place they will be watching, to see if you show up.”

  “I know,” Lucy said. “It’s okay. We’ll do it just the way you planned.”

  “Good.” Wong eyed her. “You’re a solid kid. Paul was right about that much.”

  With a shrug, she answered, “I know what needs doing.”

  “I think maybe we both just said the same thing.” Wong chuckled. “One thing the Feldgendarmerie won’t be looking for is an old guy bringing in a radio to get it fixed.” The radio he was carrying really didn’t work. Lucy liked that. It showed attention to detail.

  There was the shop. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to. The dragon with the electric-plug tail sprawled across the window. Sammy Wong steered Lucy to the little café across the street. The fellow behind the counter was new. She’d never seen him before. Better yet, he’d never seen her before. He didn’t know she was Charlie Woo’s daughter. She ordered fried rice with pork and sat down where she could keep an eye on her father’s shop.

  A man in the café seemed to be watching the shop more than he was eating. Maybe she was imagining that. Then again, maybe she wasn’t. The man didn’t pay any attention to her.

  She knew what Sammy Wong would be doing across the street. He’d wait till he was the only customer—he probably wouldn’t have to wait long. Then he’d show her father the TV pictures he’d shot of her. The camera was smaller than her closed fist. The screen was just a little square of plastic with some switches and controls on the back. Nobody in this San Francisco had anything like either one. They’d helped convince her that other Sunset District really was out there … somewhere. If they didn’t convince her father of the same thing, nothing ever would.

  Mr. Wong came out of the shop as she finished the fried rice. He looked down the street, as if towards a friend, and nodded twice. Lucy got up and left the café. This was the part that made her nervous. She crossed the street and walked by in front of the shop. She didn’t go in. She didn’t even look in the window. She just wanted to show Father she really was okay. But if that man in the café realized who she was … That wouldn’t be good at all.

  She came up to Wong. “Everything all right?” she asked quietly.

  He nodded one more time. “They’ll be there. Now let’s us disappear.”

  They didn’t go right back to the house south of Market They made sure nobody was following them first. But Sammy Wong was grinning before very long. So was Lucy. They’d sneaked right under the Germans’ noses, and they’d got away with it. How could anything go wrong now?

  Thirteen

  It was after dark. Streetlights near Curious Notions were few and faint. That was true of street lights in most parts of this San Francisco. Cold, clammy fog rolled in off the bay. Paul was nervous even so. If somebody spotted him now, everything could still go horribly wrong.

  And it wasn’t just him. His father was there, too, and Lucy, and her folks. Sammy Wong didn’t think anybody had followed Lucy’s father and mother and little brother to their meeting with him. He was just about sure nobody’d followed them all from the meeting to the now very crowded little house where everyone had stayed.

  Didn’t think. Just about sure. When you were talking about most things, those little phrases didn’t matter so much. When you were talking about freedom, about getting back to the home timeline … Paul wanted to be sure. He couldn’t. Knowing he couldn’t ate at him.

  “Go on around the corner,” Wong said. “I’ll be with you in about ten minutes. Then we’ll all go back to Curious Notions. And then we’ll go.”

  He made it sound very easy. Paul hoped it would be. He had trouble believing it. Nothing in this alternate had ever been easy. But then he shook his head. He’d got out of the Feldgendarmerie jail. That had gone as smoothly as anyone could please. This could, too. And from could to would wasn’t far. Only ten minutes away, he thought.

  Before they all walked into Louie’s, Paul made sure no cops were in there stuffing their faces with burgers and fries. That would complicate things, and things were complicated enough already. But, except for Louie, the place was empty. It wasn’t the sort of night that brought customers out in droves.

  The Greek fry cook looked up from a crossword-puzzle magazine when the bell over the door jingled. He did a better double take than any Paul had ever seen on the movies or TV. Those were rehearsed. This one was the real McCoy.

  “You!” Louie said hoarsely. “Both of you! What are you, nuts? You aren’t just hot. You glow in the dark.” He said something in Greek that sounded as if it glowed in the dark. Then he pointed at the Woos. “I don’t know who the Devil you people are, but you’ve probably got everybody and his brother after you, too.”

  Lucy’s father gulped and made as if to get out of the hamburger joint in a hurry. Her mom set a hand on his arm. “It’s all right. I think it’s all right, anyhow,” she said. “They wouldn’t bring us to anyone who’d sell us out.”

  “They’ve been wrong before,” her father pointed out.

  Louie said something else explosive in Greek. “That’s for the cops,” he added in English. “It goes double for the Feldgendarmerie.”

  The San Francisco police and the German secret police weren’t the only ones who wanted Paul and his dad and the Woos. Nobody said anything about that. What Paul’s father did say was, “As long as we’re here, we might as well have some baklava.”

  Hamburgers and franks were one thing. Baklava was something else. Baklava hit Louie where he lived. He made a small ceremony of cutting big slices and putting them on half a dozen paper plates. Lucy exclaimed in delight when she dug in. So did her brother. Paul wondered if they’d ever had it before. He would have bet they hadn’t.

  Dad set a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. That was a lot of money here. When Louie started to make change, Dad said, “Don’t bother.”

  The cook glared and went on pulling money out of the cash box. “I pay my way. You don’t need to give me nothin’ to keep my mouth shut.”

  Paul was afraid his father had made a bad mistake. Whatever Louie didn’t have, he had pride enough for three men. But Dad saved things, saying, “That’s not why I did it. Call it a good-bye present. We’re not going to be around much longer.”

  “You sure won’t, not with all the people you got mad at you,” Louie said. But he tucked the twenty away “Okay, pal, since you put it that way. Thanks.”

  What if something went wrong inside Curious Notions? What if Wong didn’t come back? Then we won’t be around here much longer. Dad would be right. But so would Louie. Paul didn’t want not to be around Louie’s way.

  His stomach had started churning overtime when the door to Louie’s finally opened. In strolled Sammy Wong. “Let’s go, folks,” he said. “Everything’s just the way it ought to be.”

  Everybody hurried out into the night. Louie lifted his cap off his head in a sort of salute. “Can this be real?” Lucy’s father muttered. Paul didn’t think he was supposed to hear that, but he did.

  “Hang on for one second.” Wong paused in a particularly dark stretch of street. “You need the antidote, so the anesthetic inside the shop doesn’t knock you out.”

  He gave everybody a shot. Lucy’s little brother yipped when he saw people getting stuck. She knew how to keep him from doing anything more than yip. “Are you going to be a baby, Michael?” she said. “I can get a shot without making a fuss.” And she did. After that, you could have set Michael on fire and he wouldn’t have let out a peep.

  “Here we are.” Sammy Wong opened the front door to Curious Notions. Paul tried to smell neofentanyl in the air. He couldn’t, of course. It had no odor. That was one of the things that made it so useful. The other was that it would stop a charging elephant in its tracks. Paul remembered yawning in the Feldgendarmerie jail. Then he remembered waking up when Sammy Wong gave him the antidote. In between? As far as he could prove, there was no in between.

  “Down to the basement,” Paul’s father said briskly. “And then down to the subbasement.” By the way he said it, it might have been his plan.

  Paul found one more thing to worry about. What would the German secret police think when they found the subbasement? Nobody could put the file cabinet that hid the trap door back where it belonged. He shrugged. After so many enormous worries, that was a small one.

  Down to the basement they hurried. Michael went last so he could slide down the banister instead of walking down the stairs. Paul didn’t think he would have done that in the dark when he was eleven years old. Lucy’s kid brother was a piece of work, all right.

  Sammy Wong shone a flashlight on the file cabinet. “Let’s do it,” he said.

  Another flashlight beam stabbed out from behind Paul. “You will put your hands up at once, all of you,” a German-accented voice said. “In the Kaiser’s name, you are all under arrest.” Spinning, Paul saw a tall man in Feldgendarmerie uniform wearing a pig-snouted gas mask. He had a flashlight in his left hand. His right held a pistol aimed at Wong.

  The German paid no attention to Michael Woo, who stood right beside him. Michael might have hit him or kicked him in the shins. Instead, he did something even better. He reached up and yanked off the German’s mask.

  After an outraged yelp, the Feldgendarmerie man sucked in a breath of air. That was all he needed to do. His eyes rolled up in his head. He didn’t even yawn, the way Paul had. He just crumpled to the floor. The pistol fell from his hand and skittered away, luckily without going off.

  Lucy ran over to Michael. She gave him a big, smacking kiss. He yelped louder than the German had, and did kick her. She yelped, too.

  “Come on,” Paul said. “Let’s get out of here as fast as we can, before anything else happens.”

  Not even his father argued with him. Dad went over to the file cabinet and shoved it out of the way. By then, Sammy Wong had his little automatic out. “I’ll go first,” he said. “The stuff wouldn’t have got into the subbasement till now. If they’ve found it and they’ve got somebody waiting down there …”

  But they didn’t. It was empty. Plainly, no one had been in there since the Feldgendarmerie seized Curious Notions. Paul hurried to the computer set off to one side from where the transposition chamber would appear. “Wake up,” he told it, and the screen came to life. Lucy exclaimed at that. So did her father.

  “Voice signature recognized,” the computer said. “Go ahead.” Lucy and her father did some more exclaiming. Paul only half heard them. He spoke the code phrase that meant everything was okay and nobody was holding a gun to his head. Then he called for a chamber as fast as the home timeline could send one. His words showed up on the screen as he said them. Even Michael Woo exclaimed at that. Again, Paul hardly noticed. He hoped the Crosstime Traffic people were monitoring this chamber’s equivalent in the home timeline.

  Wong scattered a little bit of white powder on the floor in one corner of the room. He dropped a gold coin near it. “What’s that for?” Paul asked.

  “Let the Germans think we were smuggling,” the older man answered. “That’s a normal kind of thing, just like stealing jewelry is a normal kind of thing. If they think it’s smuggling, they won’t think about alternates. Them not thinking about alternates is what we want.” The transposition chamber appeared out of nowhere. The door opened. Wong asked, “Paul, did you warn the home timeline about neofentanyl?”

  “Oops,” Paul said.

  Oops it was. The chamber operator passed out as soon as she got a whiff of the air in the basement. Enough neofentanyl had come in through the trapdoor to knock her for a loop. Sammy Wong picked her up off the floor and gave her the antidote. She was not happy, to say the least.

  “Never mind that,” Paul’s father said as he and everybody else hurried into the transposition chamber. “You can yell at us later. Just get us out of here now.”

  The door slid shut. After that, nothing seemed to happen. “Is it all right?” Lucy asked. “Are we supposed to feel something?”