Harry Turtledove - Curious Notions

As she often did, she stopped in front of the window. The stuff in Curious Notions looked different. It didn't pretend to be wood even when it wasn't. It wasn't ornamented to pieces. Everything was just there, there to do a job and not make a fuss about it. It wasn't stylish. It didn't have to be stylish. It worked, and worked well.

Lucy had got used to the chubby man who bustled around inside the place. She didn't see him there this morning. Instead, two other men, plainly father and son, stood talking behind the counter. She didn't recognize them, but they acted as if they had every right to be there. The father, whose big mustache made him look tough, banged the countertop with his fist to make a point. The son might have been Lucy's age, or maybe a year or two older. He nodded in a way that said he'd heard it before and wasn't much impressed.

Though Lucy could see that, the man with the mustache couldn't. He went on talking. The younger one started tidying things up inside the shop. Every so often, he would nod again. He was polite, but he wasn't interested.

He looked out the window and saw Lucy. He smiled at her. She found herself smiling back. Did he know she'd been standing here watching him for a minute or so? She couldn't tell. She couldn't stay here watching him all day, though. She couldn't be late for work.

Down to Market she went, and then south and west along it toward the factory. She wished she weren't going there. She wished she could do something she enjoyed instead. She didn't want to spend most of her waking hours tending a sewing machine. Only a crazy person would.

But only a crazy person would want to go hungry, either. You couldn't always do what you wanted to do. Sometimes it was what you had to do. Maybe, one of these days, she wouldn't have to go to the factory every day. She could hope. She could dream. Meanwhile . . . she could work.

Some German businessmen came through the place in the middle of the shift. One of them wore a top hat, something she'd seen only in movies before. They all looked fat and pink and rich. They paid more attention to the machines in the factory than to the people working in it. Lucy understood that. They could always replace the workers. The machines would be much more expensive to change.

Even Hank Simmons had to fawn all over the Germans. Seeing the petty tyrant of a foreman humble made Lucy smile again, this time in a nasty way. She kept her head down so nobody else would notice her doing it.

The bell over the front door at Curious Notions tinkled. Paul looked up from his bowl of shrimp and rice. He'd been eating lunch as fast as he could, hoping to finish before another customer came in. No such luck. He shoved the bowl under the counter and put what he hoped was a businesslike smile on his face. "Hello. How can I help you?"

"I am Inspector Weidenreich," said the customer, who turned out not to be a customer after all. "You will show me your Kennkarte and your permit for doing business here. At once." I'll close you down if you don't, his manner declared. His German accent wasn't thick, but you could hear it. That made him an imperial official, not just one who worked for San Francisco or California. It also made him more dangerous.

But papers were not a problem, or Paul hoped they weren't. "Certainly, sir," he said. He took his identity papers from his hip pocket and laid them on the counter. "Here is the Kennkarte." The permit was framed, and hung on the back wall. He set it beside his papers.

Weidenreich examined the business permit first. Paul wasn't worried about that at all. The permit was genuine. The tall, somber-looking inspector—his expression said someone in his family might have died not long before—took the permit out of the frame. He held it in front of a light so he could see the watermark. Finding it was there only made him grunt.

Then he looked at Paul's Kennkarte. He took a jeweler's loupe out of one of his jacket pockets and peered at the papers through it. The forgery was supposed to be perfect. Paul hoped it was.

With another grunt, Inspector Weidenreich shoved the identity papers back at Paul. He gnawed on his underlip as he stowed the loupe once more. "Everything appears to be in order." He sounded as if he hated to admit even that much. "Appears, I say."

"What's going on?" Paul did his best to seem innocent and ordinary. And so he was—in the home timeline. Here, he counted for neither.

"I ask the questions," the German said.

"Yes, sir." Plainly, this was no time to be rude. As plainly, Elliott hadn't known what he was talking about—and had left town just in time. Paul went on, "We haven't done anything wrong. We have our permit. You see that. We pay all our taxes. I can show you the receipts, if you want."

Weidenreich waved that away. "No, no. I knew as much before I came here. I know who you are. The Kaiser's government knows who you are. What we do not know is what you are."

"I don't understand," Paul said, understanding much too well. No, Elliott hadn't known what he was talking about, not even a little bit. Or had he covered things up on purpose? Too late to worry about that now.

Inspector Weidenreich's wave took in the whole shop. "Then I will make myself very plain, very clear. Where do you get your goods? We have examined them. We have done this with great care, in fact. We have never seen anything like them from any other shop. This makes us wonder. Can you blame us?"

For being nosy? Of course I can. Paul didn't suppose hearing that would make Weidenreich any happier. He said, "We're just lucky that we've been able to set up good connections in Chinatown."

"Aha!" The inspector rubbed his long chin. China was far, far away from Germany. The Chinese said they admitted the Kaiser ruled over them, too. In a certain sense, he and the Germans did. They could nuke China back to the Stone Age if they ever decided to do it. The Chinese couldn't hit back. They didn't have the bomb.

But China was too big a place to be easy to rule. It had too many people for the Germans to keep an eye on all of them, or even very many of them. Almost anything could come out of China. No one would be especially surprised if it did. By Weidenreich's face, he had no trouble believing these electronic gadgets might spring from there.

He took out a small notebook and a fountain pen. "You will provide for me your sources of supply," he said. "Immediately." If a German was going to know any five-syllable word in English, that was likely to be it.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't. I don't know." Paul looked as dumb as he could while still breathing. "I don't handle any of that side of things. I just sell stuff. My dad buys it."

"Where is your father?" Weidenreich asked, scribbling.

"He went out a while ago. I don't know when he'll be back," Paul said, which was true. He knew Dad wouldn't thank him for this, but he didn't see what else he could have said. And Dad hardly ever thanked him for anything.

More scribbles. The inspector said, "I shall return to inquire of him. You may be sure of it. For now, good day." He clicked his heels and marched out. Paul had never seen anyone do that before except in some ancient and very bad movies.

Dad came in a few minutes later. He was chewing on something: he'd gone out for lunch. Seeing Paul's expression, he swallowed. "What's up?" he said. "You look like a goose just walked over your grave."

"It wasn't a goose," Paul answered. "It was a German inspector named Weidenreich."

That got Dad's attention, all right. He said something pungent. Then he said something downright incandescent. Paul just nodded. He felt the same way. But swearing at the Germans—and at Elliott—wasn't going to change anything. His father needed a little while to figure that out. He finally did, and asked, "What did he want?"