Lucy smiled as she chopped cabbage in the kitchen with her mother. The Triads had far-reaching connections, all right, but so did she. Theirs reached back to China, the land of (most of) her ancestors. But hers . . . hers reached farther still. Hers reached to a world where Thirty-third Avenue in the Sunset District was a nice place to grow up. How could anyone's connections stretch any farther than that?
Her mother said, "Pass the white pepper, please."
So much for distant worlds. "Here," Lucy said. "Not too much, or Michael will squawk about how spicy everything is." She would have squawked herself, up till a couple of years before. These days, she liked things a lot spicier than she had.
With a small smile, Mother said, "I really do know how much to put in, dear." She sprinkled the pepper into a pot where pork bubbled. "Now for that fine cabbage." In it went. So did two kinds of mushrooms. A smaller, covered pot with rice in it bubbled over a low flame on another burner. Lucy's mother nodded to herself. "Supper in about ten minutes."
"Okay." Lucy looked into the pot with the pork and cabbage and mushrooms. Then she noticed her mother was looking at her. Embarrassed, she asked, "What is it?"
"Nothing." Mother laughed—which only flustered Lucy worse—and then went on, "Or maybe everything. I'm watching you growing up right in front of my eyes. You're starting to do things I don't know about and think thoughts I can't follow. What was going through your head while you were cutting up that cabbage? Your eyes looked like they were a million miles away."
Farther than that. A lot farther than that, Lucy thought. Mother knew all kinds of things. But if Lucy tried to explain about different worlds, would she follow? Lucy didn't think so. She wouldn't have believed it herself if she hadn't had her nose rubbed in it.
Besides, Paul had asked her to keep his secret. She bit down on that as if on a piece of bone in some meat. Who was more important, Paul or Mother? It was Paul's secret, but even so ....
"I don't know," Lucy said. "I'm all confused."
Her mother didn't laugh now. She put an arm around Lucy's shoulder. She had to reach up to do it—Lucy was three inches taller. Mother said, "Whether you know it or not, getting confused some of the time is part of growing up, too. Things are more complicated for you than they were when you were a little girl."
Lucy found herself nodding. Mother was absolutely right about that.
Nine
Paul thought hard about disguises. He had very few clothes to work with. He'd got away from Curious Notions with only what he had on his back. Buying more ate into his cash, so he'd done as little as he could. Luckily, San Francisco's mild climate meant he didn't have to have a lot of different kinds of clothes. Everything could be about the same, and he could mix and match.
He thought about growing a mustache like his father's, but decided it would take too long. He thought about buying a false mustache or a blond wig. The one, though, might not change his looks enough. As for the other . . . He didn't see how he could look like anything but a brunet wearing a blond wig.
If he went out as himself, the men from the Tongs were going to follow him. Since he couldn't do anything about that, he resigned himself to it. He even tried to make it work for him. He stayed in the shabby little room as much as he could stand. When he went out, he went to the most boring places he could find: to the laundry, to a little cafe around the corner, or to the newsstand to buy a paper. Then he'd head back to his room.
This San Francisco had buses, but it didn't have the BART subway lines. He couldn't disappear into a hole in the ground and lose people like that. All he could hope to do was lull them into thinking he was the dullest person in the world, somebody they could follow if they were half asleep.
He still had enough money to leave town. If this were his world, he would have done it if he saw the chance. As things were, he couldn't. He couldn't leave his father, and he couldn't get too far from Curious Notions. Down below the shop was the only way he could get back to the home timeline.
What were they thinking there? When shipments and messages stopped, they'd figure out that something had gone wrong . . . wouldn't they? But if they did, would they try to send somebody to this alternate to find out what? They might. If they did, though, they were liable to walk right into the Feldgendarmerie's hands.
However much Paul wanted to, he didn't see what he could do about that. He did try to get free of his followers one foggy morning. He went into that cafe around the corner—he often ate breakfast there. This time, though, he took off his denim jacket, put on a cloth cap he'd stuffed into his pocket, and left without ordering anything.
He kept his head down, walked with a limp, and muttered to himself in what he hoped sounded like an old man's voice. Maybe all that confused the men from the Tongs. Maybe the fog had more to do with it. Whatever it was, it worked. As soon as he rounded the corner, he sped up. He went left and right at random for several blocks. Every so often, he would pause in a doorway to see if he'd shaken off his followers. When he didn't see anyone, he'd move on.
There he was, on his own. The fog lifted. The sun came out. It turned clear and crisp and lovely, the kind of weather only San Francisco can have—and that San Francisco can have any month of the year. Everything was perfect. Well, almost everything.
He realized he had no idea what to do next.
He couldn't break Dad out of jail singlehanded. If he owned any brains, he wouldn't get anywhere near the jail. The Tongs and the Germans would both be watching it. He thought about going to see Stanley Hsu. The jeweler could tell him what was going on. He thought about it... and then shook his head. Here he was, free, and he wanted to go tell the man from the Tongs that he'd shaken his followers? How stupid was that? Stupid enough, for sure.
Then he thought about going to see Lucy. He laughed at himself. He really was dumb this morning. She'd be working. She liked being a clerk better than running a sewing machine. It paid better, too—not well, but better. Even so, it didn't seem right that somebody younger than he was should be working a fifty-five-hour week at a deadend job.
Nothing about the United States in this alternate seemed right. The country wasn't free. Nobody except the handful of rich people could hope for a decent education—and they had to suck up to the Germans. There was no chance of anything better. Back in an old book he'd read in school, somebody'd called tyranny a boot in the face of mankind forever. The home timeline was lucky. It hadn't worked out like that there. The home timeline had its troubles, but most people were free. Here . . . Here was the boot heel, right in the kisser.
Something else that didn't seem right was leaving somebody as smart and as nice as Lucy Woo stuck in a miserable place like this. Because of what she'd figured out, she was a security risk for the home timeline. But if he ever got the chance, he wanted to show her a Sunset District where even the stray dogs didn't have to look over their shoulders every few minutes.
He walked along for half a block. Then he stopped, kicking at the bumpy, uneven concrete of the sidewalk. He was thinking about what he wanted, not about what Lucy would want. This was her home. Her family was here. Taking her away would be kidnapping, even if it were possible. And she couldn't go for just a visit. That would be—what did Shakespeare call it?—the most unkindest cut of all. She'd know things could be better, and she wouldn't be able to tell anybody. What could be more unfair to her?