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to think about what they did for a living. More than a few of them didn't do
anything visible for a living. They seemed proud of doing nothing, too.
And they figured Paul was in the same boat they were. He didn't do anything
visible, either. If anything, that won him respect in the Tenderloin. A
ferret-faced little man with a scar on one cheek grinned as they passed each
other on the stairs in the middle of the morning. "Beats working, don't it?"
he said.
"Uh-huh," Paul answered with a silly nod. He knew he should have said, Yeah,
out of the side of his mouth.
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But the man with the scar just nodded back and kept going up the stairs.
In this alternate, German college students still dueled with sabers. They got
scars like that. Students at a few American colleges imitated the Germans.
Paul would have bet a thousand benjamins against a dollar that this fellow
hadn't been anywhere close to a college, except maybe to break into a dorm.
He'd probably got his scar in a real knife fight. Paul wondered what had
happened to the man he'd been fighting. Better not to know, maybe.
Getting away from the hotel and back to his neighborhood was a relief. Curious
Notions wasn't in the best part of town, either. Compared to where he was
staying now, though, it looked like paradise.
He ducked into Louie's, the hamburger and frankfurter place where he'd bought
a lot of lunches. There was no McDonald's or Burger King or Jack in the Box in
this alternate. All the hamburger joints and frankfurter stands and pizza
parlors here were mom-and-pops. Behind the counter at Louie's stood ... Louie.
He was a
Greek with slicked-back hair under a white cap that looked like the one Boy
Scouts wore in the home timeline.
He did a double take when Paul walked in. Nobody else was in the little
restaurant. It got busy at lunch and dinner. In between times, no. "What are
you doin' here, kid?" Louie rasped in a voice rough from too many cigarettes.
"You outa your mind or somethin'?"
"I'm trying to find out about Dad," Paul said.
"You'll find out, all right," the cook said. "You'll keep him company in the
calaboose, that's how you'll find out. Feldgendarmerie wants you bad, sonny.
You're hotter'n a two-dollar pistol on Saturday night." He swiped a wet rag
across the counter.
"It was the Germans who got him, then?" Paul asked.
"Who did you expect? Santa Claus and the elves?" Louie lit another Camel. Paul
tried not to flinch.
Smoking in restaurants had been illegal for a hundred years in the home
timeline. Smoking itself wasn't illegal there, but people who smoked did it in
the privacy of their own homes. Smoking in public was as nasty as picking your
nose in public. Paul had never seen Louie do that. But he smoked like a
chimney.
Paul said, "I don't know. I wondered if the Chinese had anything to do with
it."
"Oh. On account of the competition, you mean?" Louie probably had a
grade-school education at best, but
he was no dope. He shook his head. "Nah, wasn't them. This was official.
Besides, they don't like the
Kaiser more than they don't like your old man, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah." Paul nodded.
"But you gotta get lost," Louie said. "There's a reward out for you two
hundred and fifty bucks." That was a lot of money in this alternate. Louie
went on, "Some of the clowns around here, they'd turn in their mother for a
buck ninety-five."
He was probably right. Paul knew that, no matter how much he wished it weren't
so. Trying to sound tough, he said, "I'll be okay."
"Yeah, sure you will. And pigs have wings." Louie waggled his eyebrows and
rolled his eyes. "Go on. Get lost. No, hang on." He held up a hand, like a cop
stopping traffic. This, that, and the other thing went into a paper bag. When
it was bulging, he thrust it at Paul. "Now get lost and if the cops come
around, I never seen you."
The bag held burgers, fries, and some of the honey-soaked baklava that was a
labor of love at Louie's.
"You're a lifesaver," Paul exclaimed. "Here, wait, though. I can pay you for
this stuff."
Louie turned his back. "Like I said, I don't see you. I don't hear you,
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neither. And I'll tell the . . .
Feldgendarmerie the same." Paul didn't know what the Greek word in front of
Feldgendarmerie meant. It wasn't a compliment, though. He was sure of that.
"Thanks," he said. "I won't forget this."
"Ghosts. Who'd figure a lousy Frisco burger joint had ghosts in it?" Louie
wouldn't turn around.
Paul gave up. He hurried out of Louie's place and out of the neighborhood.
Nobody came after him. No policeman's whistle screeched. The bag was heavy
with food. He went over to Union Square, not far away. The Victory Monument
stood here, as it did in the home timeline. The breakpoint between the two
worlds came after the Spanish-American War. In this alternate, that was almost
the last glory the USA had won. Pigeons perched on the bronze figure
representing naval power atop the tall column in the center of the square.
Considering what the birds did to that figure, maybe they stood for air power.
Like so much of this San Francisco, the square looked sad and run down. The
grass needed watering and mowing. The wind swirled dust and wastepaper around
the base of the Victory Monument. No-body'd painted the park benches in a
long, long time. When Paul sat down on one of them, the planks creaked and
shifted. He wondered if it would hold his weight, and got ready to jump in a
hurry.
He gulped down one of the big, juicy hamburgers heavy on the onions and some [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]