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was already might have been fun. She had more urgent things to worry about,
though. "Well, there is a middle, and I'm in it, just like you," she said.
"The real question is, how do we get out of it?"
"Good question. Real good question. I wish I had a real good answer," he said.
"By now, my people will know something's wrong. But they can't do anything
about it, not while the Feldgendarmerie is sitting in
Curious Notions."
"That's where you go back and forth?" Lucy asked.
Paul nodded, then looked as if he wished he hadn't "Don't ask me stuff like
that," he said. "Don't ask me anything. The less you know, the less they can
get out of you."
Lucy wondered what sort of they he had in mind. The Kaiser's men? The Triads?
Everybody in this whole world? The last seemed the most likely. He really was
a stranger here. "You know how to get in touch with me," Lucy said. "How do I
get in touch with you if I need to?"
"You shouldn't," he said. "If you find out where I'm staying, other people
will, too. You're okay. Other people?" He shook his head. "You know about the
kinds of other people who want to talk to me."
She did, too. She didn't care for his answer, but she saw it made sense. He
had a way of doing that. She said, "I think I'd better go. There are a lot of
things I need to sort out now." She wondered if she'd be able to go to sleep
tonight. She didn't see how.
Her face must have given her away again. Paul laughed not so much because he
thought it was funny, she judged, but because he didn't know what else to do.
"I wish you wouldn't," he said. Then he let out another laugh. "I may as well
wish for the sun not to come up tomorrow, too. I can see that."
"I can't help it," Lucy said. "This is important. You told me so yourself."
"Me and my big mouth," he muttered. But then he waved her away. "Now you know
what you always wanted to. I hope you're not sorry later on."
How could I be? Lucy didn't say it out loud. It was another one of those
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questions where she could already see the answer.
Paul sat at the edge of his lumpy mattress, staring down at the worn carpet.
Every once in a while, he would shake his head. He'd just broken every rule
drilled into him in Crosstime Traffic training. Somebody in this alternate
knew it was an alternate, and he'd admitted as much.
Try as he would, though, he didn't see what else he could have done. Lucy had
already figured most of it
out on her own. That was bad enough. But she'd also said the guys from the
Tongs weren't far behind her.
She couldn't do anything about what she knew (except take it to the Germans,
but she wouldn't do that).
They . . . might be able to. Paul didn't know enough to be sure.
He also didn't know whether he dared visit Stanley Hsu's jewelry store again.
If he showed up there, would the jeweler and his pals grab him and start
trying to pull what he knew out of him? If he didn't show up there, wouldn't
Stanley Hsu forget about getting his father out of jail? He was too likely to
be wrong dreadfully wrong whether he chose to go or to stay away.
Before long, he had the problem solved for him. He was walking up O'Farrell
Street when a Chinese man a couple of years older than he was fell into step
beside him. "You're Mr. Gomes, aren't you?" the fellow asked in a friendly
voice.
Paul hesitated. If he admitted it... If he denied it...
Whether he admitted it or denied it turned out not to matter. Three more
Chinese men fell in around him.
"Why don't you come along with us, Mr. Gomes?" said the one who'd spoken
before. Why don't you come along with us so we don't stomp the stuffing out of
you? hung in the air. The fellow still sounded friendly.
Why wouldn't he? He held all the good cards.
Or did he? "What if I yell for a cop?" Paul said.
All four Chinese men smiled. They were four of the chilliest smiles he'd ever
seen. "Go right ahead," said the one who did the talking. "Be our guest."
He needed a second and a half, tops, to decide that wasn't a good idea. If he
yelled for a cop, the Chinese guys might maim him before the policeman could
do a thing. Even if they didn't, the cop was liable to hang on to him and find
out who he was. As soon as the cop did find out, he was very likely to turn
Paul over to the Feldgen-darmerie for the reward. Falling into the Tongs'
hands might be bad. Falling into the Germans'
hands would be bad. The difference was small, but it was real.
When he didn't yell, his escorts? smiled again. "I thought you had some
brains," the talking one said.
"Do I?" Paul asked bitterly. The men surrounding him didn't answer. They just
kept smiling. In a movie, he could have broken away or knocked all of them
flat.
Here on the dirty, sadly shabby streets of San Francisco, one against four
looked like bad odds. He asked, "Where are you taking me?"
"You'll see," said the man who'd asked his name. Paul wanted to kick him just
for that. He would have bet it was what he'd get for an answer. Then the
fellow added, "It isn't far."
"Thanks a lot," Paul said. The Chinese man grinned at him. He knows what I'm
thinking, Paul realized. He knows, and he's enjoying it.
For whatever it was worth, he told the truth. The Chinese men herded Paul to a
noodle shop a few blocks away. They were good at what they did. They didn't
look as if they were herding him. By the way they acted, they might have been
his buddies. They'd plainly had plenty of practice at their game. He wondered
where they'd got it. That might have been one more thing he was better off not
knowing.
In the shop sat Stanley Hsu and another, older, man in what passed for a sharp [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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