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 Feldgen-darmerie."
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. "/ 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.