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Mrs. Cho wouldn't bother me any more."
"Good. That's very good," Mother said. She and Father were suddenly all smiles.
Lucy didn't say anything about the way she'd had to prod Mr. Lee to get what was right. She'd got it. How
she'd got it would only worry her parents. Thinking back on how she'd got it, though, made her smile, too.
Paul scratched the marmalade cat under the chin and by the side of its jaw. Purring, it closed its eyes and
gave him a kitty smile. "You like that, don't you?" he said. "I thought so. You're not the only cat I know that
does."
The cat pushed its face into his hand. It purred louder than ever. He wondered how such a friendly beast
had turned into a stray. Then he laughed. It was hardly a stray any more. It was his cat, the Curious
Notions cat.
He straightened. The cat twined itself between his legs. Whenever he looked around in this San Francisco,
the skyline jolted him. The biggest reason for the jolt was that there wasn't much of a skyline. No high-rise
hotels and office towers, no Transamerica Tower looking like an SST sticking up from the ground, not much
of anything. In the home timeline, they built tall and did everything they could to quakeproof what they built.
They could do a lot, too. Here . . .
Here, they couldn't do nearly so much. They couldn't afford nearly so much, either. And so they'd kept the
laws the San Francisco and Los Angeles of the home timeline had given up, the laws that said a building
couldn't be taller than so many stories. It made for a much duller-looking city. It also made for a city that
couldn't hold as much or accomplish as much as the one he'd grown up in.
If San Francisco were a German city . . . The Kaiser's architects and engineers knew plenty about building
skyscrapers. Berlin and Munich and Hamburg and Breslau soared up to the heavens. But the Germans
weren't interested in building in the United States. They weren't interested in having American builders
learn their tricks, either. They took secrecy seriously, and they were good at it.
After Paul shook his head at the sorry skyline, his gaze dropped to the sidewalk again. He wondered who
was watching him. Who was watching the shop? He couldn't pick out anybody on the street. He wished he
could. He suspected both the Germans and the Tongs were keeping an eye on everything he and his father
did. He wanted to be able to watch the watchers, too. That might help keep him safe.
No matter what he wanted, he wasn't going to get it. The only familiar faces were those of other
shopkeepers and neighbors. If the Feldgendarmerie or the Chinese had hired some of them to spy, he'd
never know till too late. If they hadn't, if they used other people, they moved them in and out too often to let
him spot them.
But the spies were there, whether he saw them or not. He was sure of it. That wasn't a logical feeling,
though logic also said they'd be around. He felt it with the pit of his stomach, with the hair at the back of his
neck. It was the feeling you got when somebody stared at you from behind. Your body could tell, even if
your head couldn't.
Shaking his head again, he went inside. The cat scooted in, too. It was doing that more and more often. It
knew which side its bread was buttered on. Paul's father saw it. He said, "You're the one who cleans up
after that fuzzy freeloader."
"I know," Paul said patiently. After a few seconds, he added, "I think we should get out of here just
disappear."
"Crosstime Traffic wouldn't like it," his father said.
"Would they like somebody grabbing us and squeezing us?" Paul asked. "That's what's going to happen.
Don't you feel it, too, Dad? If Elliott couldn't, he really was blind."
"If I started worrying whenever I felt something, I'd be looking over my shoulder every minute of every
day. That's no way to live," his father said. "Besides, we need to be in place to keep an eye on things here."
"There are others in this alternate to do that," Paul said. "They aren't being watched like we are, either."
"There aren't that many others in this alternate. There aren't that many in any one alternate. The home
timeline is spread too thin," Dad said. Paul wished he could argue about that. But he knew how true it was.
His father went on, "Besides, how do you know they aren't being watched, too?"
Paul grunted. He didn't know that. Crosstime Traffic people traded. They had to Crosstime Traffic wasn't
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