Harry Turtledove - Curious Notions

Paul shrugged. "About what you'd expect. To see if our permits and papers were in order, to start with. If they weren't, he could have done anything he wanted. My Kennkarte passed a really good inspection. And to find out where we were getting our stuff." He waved at Curious Notion's stock in trade, hardly any of which came from this alternate.

Dad did a little more swearing. "What did you tell him?"

"That we got it from some Chinatown merchant or other—I didn't know who—and that he got it from China."

"Hmm." His father gnawed at the skin by the edge of one thumbnail. "That's not bad. What did he say?"

That's not bad was about as much praise as Paul's father gave. Paul basked in it for a moment. But then he had to say, "He didn't like it a whole lot. He was going to come back here and get all the details from you."

Dad exploded for a third time. This one made the other two seem tame. "What am I supposed to say to him?" he howled after the Big Bang cooled down enough to allow ordinary speech once more.

Paul shrugged again. "I don't know. I couldn't very well tell him the truth, so I gave him the best lie I could come up with. He jumped like I stuck a pin in him when I started going on about China."

"Terrific," his father said sourly. 'The problem is, we only know a few people in Chinatown, and we don't do a whole lot of business with any of them. Inspector What's-his-name can find that out pretty quick, too."

That was part of the problem. It wasn't all of it. The other part was that the merchants in Chinatown might be as curious about Crosstime Traffic's goods as the Germans were. What would they say if Weidenreich started poking around there? Paul didn't know. He hoped he wouldn't have to find out.

"You'll come up with something, Dad," he said.

That could have been sarcasm. Part of it was sarcasm. Part, but not all. When Paul's father chose to use it, he had the gift of gab. He was liable to find some way out of this fix, right there on the spur of the moment. Paul could never do that sort of thing. He was just glad he'd survived with Weidenreich. Dad might do a lot better than surviving.

Or he might not. The gift of gab didn't come through all the time.

"We're liable to have to get out of this alternate altogether. That would be terrible," Dad said, and then, "What are you doing?"

"Finishing my lunch. I was halfway done when Weidenreich came in. He didn't spoil my appetite. I don't know why, but he didn't." He dug into the shrimp and rice again. For once, he had the last word.

"Oh," Lucy Woo's father said heavily. "Those people."

"They don't look so bad," Lucy said. "They just look like . . .

people."

"Well, I suppose they are just people," Father said, and paused

for a big forkful of rice and vegetables. The family ate with fork and

knife more often than chopsticks, though Lucy could use them. Her ancestors had been in the United States since they helped build the transcontinental railroad—almost 250 years now. They were as American as anybody else. They thought so, anyhow. The Germans sometimes had trouble believing it. After Charlie Woo swallowed, he went on, "But they're people who've got things nobody else has. They've got things nobody else knows how to make. I wish I knew how they did it."

"Why? Could you do the same?" Lucy yawned. She couldn't help it. She came home from the shoe factory beat every night.

Her father scratched at the thin, scraggly mustache he wore. "I never had a fancy education," he said, and Lucy nodded. He took another bite of dinner. "I wish I did, but I didn't. I'm just a guy with a soldering iron and a lot of practice taking stuff apart and putting it back together and making it work again."

"You're good at it." Lucy spoke with family pride.

Now Charlie Woo was the one who nodded. "Yeah. I am. Everybody who comes to me knows it. And so I've seen some of the things that Curious Notions place sells."

"And?" Lucy knew she was supposed to ask. If she didn't, her snoopy brother would have beaten her to it.

Her father looked very unhappy. "I can't tell for sure, but I've got the feeling I could know everything there is to know about electric goods and it wouldn't help me a bit if I needed to fix one of those things."

"How come?" This time, Michael beat Lucy to the punch. She couldn't get too mad at him. He'd probably end up running the shop one of these days down the road.

"How come? I'll tell you how come." After another bite, Charlie Woo did: "Because I don't think even one of the big brains could understand some of what I see in the guts. Circuits are tinier and neater than anything anybody else builds. They're more powerful, too. They can do things I wouldn't have figured you could make anything electric do. They almost think for themselves." A bottle of beer sat by his plate. He took a swig from it.

"Why do they have them when nobody else does?"

"You find that out, you win the prize," her father answered. "I don't know. I can't even guess. All I know is, they make me feel stupid. I don't like feeling stupid. I don't like it at all."

Lucy paused to do some eating, too. There was a little pork mixed into the rice and vegetables, more for flavor than anything else. She smiled when her teeth came down on a chunk bigger than most. After savoring it, she asked, "Do you think they make the Kaiser's men feel stupid, too?"

Her father paused with a forkful halfway to his mouth. "That's a good question. The Germans know all kinds of things Americans don't."

"Well, sure." Michael sounded surprised anybody needed to say that. One of the ways Germany stayed on top was by keeping the rest of the world ignorant. That wasn't fair, but it worked.

After dinner, Lucy helped her mother do dishes. They both yawned while they worked. As soon as they finished, they got into pajamas and went to bed. When Lucy's mother wasn't watching Michael, she took in laundry and did housework for people who were too rich and too lazy to take care of their own houses. That left her exhausted at the end of every day. The way it looked to Lucy, anyone who wasn't tired all the time didn't work hard enough.

She did have Sunday off. That meant she got to run around trying to do all the things she wanted to do during the week. When she finally caught up—or finally decided she just couldn't catch up this week—she got to see her friends. They were all working, too, and as tired and busy as she was.

"There has to be a better way," Peggy Ma said as they rode the bus to Golden Gate Park. Busfare was only a nickel. They could wander around the park for as long as they wanted without spending anything except maybe a little on snacks. Peggy's family was no better off than Lucy's.

"A better way." Lucy sighed. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

Instead of wandering very far, they sat down by Stow Lake, spent another nickel on a bag of bread crumbs, and started feeding the ducks. The park birds were fat and pampered. They charged this way and that after the crumbs, quacking loudly and bumping one another out of they way. They had the crazy selfishness of a three-year-old without the brains.

Lucy kept eyeing them, not just because they were pretty and funny. "They'd taste good, wouldn't they?" she murmured. She'd had duck only a couple of times, but she liked it a lot.

So did Peggy. "I was thinking the same thing," she said. "I bet they do disappear every now and then."

Signs in the park warned, IT IS FORBIDDEN TO HARM THE ANIMALS HERE, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. But the ducks were friendly and tame. If you were hungry enough, and thought you could get away with it...

Some coots squabbled with the ducks over bread crumbs. Lucy had never heard of anybody eating coot. The black birds with the red-and-white beaks looked tough and stringy. Screeching jays with dark blue crests hopped in and out, stealing from ducks and coots alike.