"When you find out about other alternates—worlds where things didn't happen the way they did in this one—act surprised, okay? You're not supposed to know anything about that. You're not supposed to know big time."
That was one more bit of slang nobody from this San Francisco would have used. Lucy didn't have any trouble figuring out what it meant, though. "I'll remember," she promised.
"Okay," Paul said. Lucy wondered how many different worlds— alternates, he called them—there were where people said that. Then she wondered how many there were where people didn't. And then she wondered which number was bigger. She had so many questions, so few answers. But now, if everything went right, she'd have the chance to find some of them, anyway. No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Paul said, "Ask you something?"
Lucy laughed. "Sure. Go ahead. But I was just thinking about all the questions I want to ask you."
"About alternates and things?" he asked, and Lucy nodded. He managed a laugh, too, but it sounded self-conscious. "That isn't the kind of thing I was going to ask you."
"Well, what is?"
"When we get this mess straightened out—i/we get it straightened out—and you're all settled in the home timeline and everything, you still want to go to that movie with me?"
"Yes, I would like to," Lucy said seriously. "It will probably take a while for us to get used to how you do things there, and it would be nice to know somebody who already knows his way around." She frowned. That hadn't come out quite the way she wanted it to. It sounded as if his knowing his way around was the only reason she would want to go out with him. She tried again: "It would be nice to be friends with somebody who already knows his way around." There. That was better.
Paul tipped an imaginary cap. "Happy to play tour guide for you, ma'am. All tips gratefully accepted."
"You're ridiculous," she said. He bowed sitting down, as if she'd paid him a compliment. One of her nine million questions came to the surface: "What are movies like in the—the home timeline, did you call it?"
'That's right. But that's one more thing you can forget you ever heard, too, okay?" Paul thought for a little while. "They're mostly dumb, but they're not dumb the same way they are here. Here they're kind of sappy, at least to me. Boy finds out he's really a duke's nephew so he can marry the countess he's in love with, that kind ofthing."
"Sure," Lucy said. She'd seen at least four movies with plots like that. They were a way to kill a couple of hours. Her whole family could go for eighty-five cents—three quarters, plus a dime for Michael till he turned twelve. That was a pretty good deal.
"Well, when we make movies, what we mostly do wrong is use too many special effects—too much trick photography, you'd say," Paul told her. "We can do more of those, and fancier ones, than you can here. And sometimes, if we see lots of things blowing up or funny-looking people from other planets or ghosts or werewolves or whatever, we don't care if there's any real story behind them. But what you remember is mostly the spectacular stuff, not the people."
"People are what matter," Lucy said.
"They ought to be, anyhow," Paul agreed.
"How much does it cost to get into a movie in the, uh, home timeline?" she asked.
"Usually about 800 dollars," he answered. She gave him a nasty look, sure he was pulling her leg. He held up his right hand— he might have been taking an oath. "It really does, so help me. But a dollar there isn't like a dollar here. It isn't even like a penny here. Dollars are teeny-tiny small change. Benjamins start to be real money. A benjamin is a hundred dollars, so a movie costs eight benjamins or so."
Lucy thought about that. "So one of your benjamins—what you call a hundred dollars—is worth about three cents of our money?"
"Three cents, a nickel—something like that." Paul sounded as if it didn't matter much. To him, it didn't: "What difference does it make, as long as people have the money they need to buy what they want? And they do, or most of them do. They're better off than people are here."
She wondered if she ought to believe him. To try to find out, she asked, "Can they afford the things you were selling in Curious Notions?"
Instead of answering right away, Paul broke out laughing. "Lucy, that stuff is junk in the home timeline. We make it for the export market. We don't use it ourselves. We've got better—lots better—at home. You'll see."
Lucy had trouble believing that. To her father, what Curious Notions sold was far ahead of the state of the art. The Triads and the Germans felt the same way. Junk? But the way Paul said it make her take him seriously. And if he and Sammy Wong and their people could travel back and forth between worlds, what could they do when they stayed at home? Maybe, before too long, she'd find out.
The front door opened. In came Wong. He was carrying a great big sack. By the way he handled it, it was bulky but not heavy. When he dumped it on the floor, four tightly rolled sleeping bags spilled out. Lucy caught his eye. He nodded back to her. "Three for your family—and one for your dad, Paul."
"How do we get him back?" Tension tugged at Paul's voice.
Sammy Wong grinned. "I think I've got something worked out."
Not long before, Paul had been wild to go out on the streets of San Francisco. Now he wished he could stay in. Whenever he saw a cop, he wanted to run. He didn't—he knew better—but he wanted to. He and Lucy had to be hotter than a two-benjamin pistol. But as long as he acted as if he belong here, knew where he was going, and knew he had a right to get there, nobody paid much attention to him. Evening twilight helped make him harder to recognize from any distance, too.
Even though he had the address, he almost walked past Stanley Hsu's jewelry shop. It didn't go out of the way to call attention to itself. He paused with one foot in midair when he spotted the plain door with the right number on it. Then he opened the door and went inside.
The jeweler was working on something—an earring, Paul thought—behind the counter. He looked up when the bell above the door rang. "Young Mr. Gomes!" he said. "It really is you. I tell you frankly, I had trouble believing it."
"I'm here." Paul rubbed at his left upper arm. "Where's Dad?" A scrabbling noise came from overhead. "And what's that?"
Stanley Hsu shrugged. "A repairman on the roof. My landlord warned me he would be there. Not a Feldgendarmerie man, believe me. As for your father . . ." He went into the back room. When he came out, Lawrence Gomes was with him.
"Good to see you!" Paul exclaimed. A little to his surprise, he found himself meaning it. He and Dad were like cats and dogs a lot of the time. But they were still family. That counted. And, in this dangerous alternate, they were both from the home timeline. That might have counted for more.
Stanley Hsu studied Paul. "How on earth did you get out of the Feldgendarmerie jail? Do you have any idea how upset the Germans are?"
"I'll tell you something, Mr. Hsu—I'm not very happy with the Germans, either," Paul said. With luck, the jeweler wouldn't notice that he hadn't answered his questions.
But Stanley Hsu did. Paul wasn't very surprised. The jeweler didn't miss much. He said, "And is it true that you brought Miss Woo out with you? I gather she is also among the missing from the jail?" Paul's father stirred at that. For a wonder, though, he kept his mouth shut.
"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?"