Curious notions, p.25
Curious Notions,
p.25
So had Mother, come to that. But she didn’t seem to be having too bad a time. She didn’t feel the need to know why things worked, the way Father did. She just needed to know how they worked, and she was fine. When Lucy walked into the kitchen to see if she needed a hand, she found her chopping green onions in the food processor and heating something in the microwave. Till she came here, she’d never seen a food processor or a microwave. That didn’t mean she couldn’t figure out what they were good for.
“Want any help?” Lucy asked her.
“Not me.” Her mother shook her head. “I’m doing fine.” She paused. “I heard what you and your father were talking about in there. I think you’re right. I think we’ll all do fine after a while.”
The telephone rang. There were telephones in the San Francisco Lucy had left, but there hadn’t been one in the Woos’ apartment there. In this San Francisco, phones were everywhere, either in buildings or carried around. Wherever you went, you heard snatches of other people’s conversations. Paul carried a telephone. He’d got a couple of calls while they were at the zoo. Lucy wasn’t sure she liked that. The phone here rang again. “I’ll get it,” she said, and dashed off to do just that. “Hello? … Oh, Paul. Hello!” Maybe carrying a phone around wasn’t so bad after all.
When Sammy Wong told Paul he’d never work for Crosstime Traffic again, Paul had done his best to convince himself it didn’t matter. The way his heart thudded when he and his father walked into the Crosstime Traffic San Francisco office said he’d lied to himself. He wanted to go out to the alternates again. He wanted to make a career of it. If he couldn’t, if he was stuck in the home timeline … That would be pretty hard to take.
His father looked nervous, too, though he tried to hide it. Dad had been going out to the alternates for years. What would he do if his bosses said he couldn’t any more?
Paul sighed. When I told Lucy how good the home timeline was, this is the stuff I didn’t talk about. But it’s here. It’s real.
All the security procedures were real, too. They had to show their IDs. They had to get their retinas and their fingerprints scanned. They went through metal and explosives and biohazard detectors. Terrorists were also real. They liked to strike Crosstime Traffic operations. Why not? The company was big and rich. They’d hit Romania not so long before. They could hit the USA, too.
“Go ahead,” a guard said after everything checked out okay. “Your action hearing is set for room 582.” He didn’t call it a disciplinary hearing, but that was what it was.
A board of three women and two men sat waiting for Paul and his father. The chairwoman said, “These proceedings will be videorecorded for the archives and for further review if needed. Do you understand and agree?” She sounded bored. How many times had she said the same thing?
Dad nodded. Paul said, “Yes.”
A man with a white handlebar mustache said, “Summarize the events in San Francisco in alternate 3477 from the time of your arrival there to the time of your departure. Keep your summary focused on the problems you ran into.”
“Be brief,” the chairwoman added.
Paul and his father looked at each other. Paul said, “The biggest problem we had was that two sets of locals were already much too curious about Curious Notions.”
“No,” Dad said. “The biggest problem was that we didn’t know they were till too late.”
“For whatever it may be worth to you, we have had some things to say to the person who operated the shop before you took it over,” the chairwoman said.
So Elliott did get in trouble, Paul thought. He couldn’t feel too sorry for Elliott. If the other man had warned Dad and him … Well, how much would have been different? Some, maybe.
“We still need to know what you did, though, and why,” said the man with the white mustache. He was plainly number two on the board. “We need to know how the locals closed down the shop, why you failed to block that, and what you told them while they held you.”
“They came in with submachine guns and yelled, ‘Hands high!’” Paul’s father answered. “The only way I could have blocked that was with a tank.”
“We didn’t give away the crosstime secret, either, and the Germans and the Tongs were both sniffing after it,” Paul added. He didn’t say anything about Lucy. But he hadn’t given her the secret. She’d figured it out on her own. And besides, she was here in the home timeline. No matter what she knew, she wasn’t going to spread it.
“What about your interrogations?” the chairwoman asked.
Dad said, “I told more lies than a software salesman.”
“I don’t think the Feldgendarmerie ever thought crosstime travel was really and truly possible,” Paul said. “They would have asked different questions—they would have asked harder questions—if they had. The Tongs came a lot closer, but they don’t have anywhere near the know-how the Germans do.”
“The way we escaped will keep the Germans and the Chinese in that alternate from figuring out we came from a different one,” his father put in. He was ready to take credit for that even if it hadn’t been his idea.
But the chairwoman called him on it: “By the reports I’ve read, Special Operative Wong had more to do with your escape than you did. Do you disagree?”
Dad looked as if he wanted to. He also looked as if he knew he couldn’t get away with it. Reluctantly, he shook his head. Paul said, “No, we don’t. It’s true.”
“All right.” The man with the white mustache looked at Paul. “And what have you got to say for yourself about wandering away from the … the Palace Hotel?” He had to check a monitor set into the table to get the name right.
Paul’s heart sank. If they were going to blame him for that … But they had a right to. “What can I say?” he answered harshly. “I blew it. I was going stir-crazy, and I went out, and I got nabbed. Nobody’s fault but mine. I was really, really dumb.”
He and his father got a few more questions. Then the members of the board put their heads together and muttered among themselves. The chairwoman looked up and said, “Please wait outside for a few minutes.”
Dad managed a nod. Paul just walked out. In the hallway, Dad said, “The condemned men ate a hearty meal.” Paul turned away. He couldn’t stand jokes just then.
He waited what seemed like forever. By his watch, it was sixteen minutes. The door opened. “Please come in,” said one of the women on the board.
In they went. The chairwoman looked from Dad to Paul and back again. “You both made mistakes,” she said. “Your testimony and the reports of others all show that. But the situation had been developing before you arrived, and you both showed energy and imagination in trying to deal with the emergency. We don’t expect you to be perfect. We do expect you to try. We got that from both of you.” Her eyes swung to Paul. “We also expect you won’t go wandering off again when you’re not supposed to. Special Operative Wong seems to believe you won’t.”
“He does?” Paul knew he squeaked. He couldn’t help it. He’d thought Sammy Wong would nail his hide to the wall. “I won’t, ma’am. I promise!”
“That should do.” The chairwoman gave him and his father a wintry smile. “You are both cleared to resume crosstime duty, you”—that was aimed at Paul—“as your education permits. Any questions? No? Very well, then. That will be all.”
Out in the corridor, Dad stuck out his hand. Paul grabbed it and shook it. They both let out identical sighs of relief. Paul took his phone off his belt. He didn’t need its memory to punch in the number he wanted. He knew it by heart. “Hello, Lucy? It’s me. We’re okay—not great, maybe, but okay … . Yeah, both of us. And about that movie tonight …”
Tor Books by Harry Turtledove
The Two Georges (by Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove)
Household Gods (by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove)
The First Heroes (edited by Harry Turtledove and Noreen Doyle)
Between the Rivers
Into the Darkness
Darkness Descending
Through the Darkness
Rulers of the Darkness
Jaws of Darkness
Out of the Darkness
Conan of Venarium
Gunpowder Empire
Curious Notions
In High Places
(writing as H. N. Turteltaub)
Justinian
Over the Wine-Dark Sea
The Gryphon’s Skull
The Sacred Land
Owls to Athens
THE IMPERIAL JACKBOOT
Everybody talked about the midnight knock on the door. It was such a cliché—and held so much truth—the Imperial German censors had given up trying to stop that talk. It showed up in books, in movies, in radio plays, and even—for those who had the money—on TV.
The knock that woke Lucy Woo and her family didn’t come at midnight. It came at ten after three, as she saw when she stared at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Yawning, more than a little punchy, she staggered out of bed. The pounding at the door went on and on. It would wake the neighbors, too. They wouldn’t be happy about that. Lucy yawned again. She had bigger worries than the neighbors right now.
Her mother turned on a lamp in the living room. They both blinked at the sudden explosion of light. Then Mother did something Lucy admired forever. She went to the door and asked, “Who is it?”
That question had only one possible answer. But that Mother had the nerve to ask it … ! The pounding stopped. A gruff male voice said, “The Feldengendarmerie of Imperial Germany. Open at once, in the name of Kaiser!”
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CURIOUS NOTIONS: CROSSTIME TRAFFIC—BOOK TWO
Copyright © 2004 by Harry Turtledove
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429915069
First eBook Edition : February 2011
First edition: October 2004
First mass market edition: December 2005
Harry Turtledove, Curious Notions
