"Because I was curious." But that was no answer, and Stanley Hsu seemed to realize it wasn't. He tried again: "Because I think you're right, and he doesn't belong to San Francisco. The things he sells don't belong to San Francisco, either. They hardly seem to belong to this world at all."
What was that supposed to mean? "They don't come from Mars," Lucy said. The Germans had sent unmanned probes to Mars. It was cold and almost airless and good for nothing—certainly not worth having people go there.
"No, they don't," Stanley Hsu agreed. "But they don't come from any country on Earth, either—not even from Germany. The Feldgendarmerie wouldn't be so interested in Curious Notions if it just smuggled German goods. They don't know where those people are getting them, either."
"Paul said he and his father make them in the basement," Lucy said.
"Heh." Stanley Hsu made a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn't. For the first time, he looked angry. "He was playing with you. He plays with us. He plays with the Feldgendarmerie, too. What will it take before he sees that this is not a game?"
"I don't understand," Lucy said.
"Maybe a man will laugh at the Triads if he does not know them well," the jeweler said. "I can see that, especially if the man is not Chinese. But who in his right mind laughs at the Feldgendarmerie? No one. The Kaiser's secret police are no laughing matter. The whole world knows it. / take the Feldgendarmerie seriously, and I have strong friends on my side. Do the people from Curious Notions? It doesn't seem so, not to me."
It didn't seem so to Lucy, either. She said, "Maybe that's why I had trouble believing Paul when he said he came from San Francisco. If he did, he'd be more like everybody else."
"Just so," Stanley Hsu said. "He would be more like everybody else, and the things Curious Notions sells would be more like what you could buy from everybody else. Since they are not. . ." He didn't go on. .
"Well, what, in that case?" Lucy asked.
For a moment, Stanley Hsu looked just as confused as she felt. "I don't know," he admitted. "But you have to understand that while I am a captain, I am not a general. Other people will hear what you've said, and they will decide what to do next. Once they decide, they will tell me what to do, and I will do it."
He took Lucy by surprise. He gave her orders as if he had every right to do it. So there were people who gave him orders the same way? She hadn't imagined that. He'd seemed a very big fish to her. But she was getting the idea that this new ocean in which she found herself was a much larger and much more dangerous place than she'd ever even dreamt of.
Six
As a customer closed the door behind him, Paul suddenly said, "Hey, Dad, let's take the afternoon off."
"What?" His father frowned. "Close on Sunday afternoon? You know how much money you want to throw away?"
"For once, I don't care," Paul answered. "Let's go somewhere. When I'm here these days, I've always got the feeling somebody's watching me."
"I think you're worrying too much," Dad said.
"I don't," Paul said. "All the growers who don't want to sell to us, those questions Lucy Woo was asking, and Inspector Weidenreich, too. .. It's too much, Dad. I feel like I'm in the crosshairs all the time."
"No need to start getting nervous till they start planting microphones," Dad said with the sort of calm that annoyed Paul instead of making him feel better. His father went on, "They haven't done that yet. Our bug sniffers would have picked it up if they had. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"
"No." Paul shook his head. He couldn't, and he knew it. "I still want to get out of here, though. There's a big soccer game at Kezar Stadium. Can we go?"
Dad yawned. Paul understood that. In the home timeline, soccer was still a minor sport in the United States. People noticed it at World Cup time, then forgot about it for another four years. Things were different here. Whether you backed the Seals or the Missions said a lot about where you lived, how much money you made, and what you did for a living. When the two teams met, it was almost like a civil war in the city.
But then Dad said, "Well, why not? A lot of people who might be customers will go the the game instead."
"Yeah," Paul said, and no more. Better to let his father talk himself into going.
Kezar Stadium was in Golden Gate Park. It was a shabby old oval. It had been built back before Germany beat the USA. No-body'd spent a whole lot of money on it since. But as long as it didn't fall down, they'd keep playing games in it.
Seals backers wore orange and black. They carried trumpets to make noise for their heroes. Missions fans wore brown or tan. They brought drums, all kinds of drums, into the stadium. Both sets of fanatics sneered at ordinary people like Paul and his father who didn't dress up.
The stadium crawled with cops, on foot and on horseback. About every other year, a Seals-Missions match caused a riot, cops or no cops. Oddly, though, Paul felt safer here than he did at Curious Notions. The police here weren't worried about him. All they cared about were rowdies. If police back near Curious Notions noticed him, they were liable to run him in for questioning about the business. He didn't want to have to worry about that for a while.
The trumpets roared and brayed when the Seals—also in orange and black—ran out onto the soccer pitch. Paul's father clapped for the Seals. The people who rooted for them were mostly the ones who were better off. Paul cheered for the Missions. Drums thundered when they came out. More people backed them, but the ones who pulled for the Seals could have bought and sold the Missions fans.
Back and forth across the pitch the two teams ran. They didn't like each other any better than their backers did. The play was often rough. The referee did what he could to keep things on the up and up, but he couldn't be everywhere at once. And players on both sides hammed it up for all they were worth whenever there was anything close to a foul. That didn't make the ref's job any easier.
When the Missions scored first, the drums made the stadium shake. People in brown danced in the aisles. The Seals fans sat there in glum silence. Paul thought the Missions got another goal a few minutes later. The referee waved it off, saying they were offside. Boos rained down on him. Only a few bottles came flying out of the stands, though.
Just before halftime, the Seals tied the match. The bicycle kick their forward scored with was so pretty, even the Missions fans couldn't boo. The trumpets wailed. Most of the people who blew them could only make noise with them—they couldn't really play. They made a lot of noise. Paul's head began to throb.
In the second half, the Seals scored again. Their rooters looked smug, as if they'd expected nothing less. They were the sort of people who would have been Yankee fans in the home timeline. It was like rooting for Microsoft.
Minutes leaked off the clock. The Missions fans pounded on their drums. They shouted at their team to do something—to do anything. They lost more often than they won, on the soccer pitch as well as in life. With about ten minutes left in the match, though, the Missions banged home another goal.
It ended in a 2-2 tie. Soccer here saved overtime for championship games. This one wasn't. The draw sent everyone home . . . not too unhappy. Drums thumped and trumpets wailed as people filed out of the stadium.
"That wasn't bad," Paul said.
"Not too," his father agreed. The lines for eastbound buses were long. People filled up one bus at a time. The ones who couldn't get on waited for the next bus to pull up. They were more patient about waiting in line here than they were in the home timeline. They needed to be, too—they had to do it far more often.
At last, Paul and his father dropped their nickels into the fare box. All the seats were already taken. They stood in the aisle and hung on to the rail when the bus lurched into motion.