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started to adopt Curious Notions. He hoped it was all right, and that someone else was giving it handouts
these days.
Sammy Wong snorted. "Yeah, yeah. But even if it's not, it's every bit as much trouble as if it were. The
Germans and the Triads and her folks will all be wondering what's happened to her." Paul would have put
Lucy's folks first, but he saw Wong's point.
"If we'd left her in jail, they'd know what was happening to her. And so would I." He glared at Wong. "I bet
you've broken all the mirrors in your house so you don't have to look at them."
With a shrug, the older man answered, "When you've got a mug like mine, looking in the mirror never was
much of a thrill." That made Paul glare in a different way. Wong ignored him and went on, "You really do
complicate my life. You complicate things for the company, too. Lucy knows too much." A stab of fear
shot through Paul. Sammy Wong ignored that, too. He said, "Now we've got to do something with her.
Probably with her whole blinking family, too."
For a second, Paul thought he'd said do something to her. He braced himself to jump the man from
Crosstime Traffic. He knew that would likely get him nothing but a set of lumps, but he was going to try it.
Even if he did knock Wong cold, he'd stay stuck in this alternate forever or till Crosstime Traffic brought
in somebody else and hunted him down. All the same . . .
Then he heard what Sammy Wong had really said. He gaped. "What what can we do with them?" he
stammered.
"Get 'em out of this alternate, if we can," Wong answered. He pointed at Paul again, this time with his
thumb upraised to make his hand into a gun. "Kid, you would not believe the kind of forms you're gonna
have to fill out when you get home. Would not believe. Serves you right, too. When we have to extract
somebody from an alternate, and especially when we have to extract a bunch of somebodies . . . You
miserable nuisance."
Paul went right on gaping. "You mean we do that?" He shook his head in disbelief. "In all the training we
got, they said we never do stuff like that. Never, with a capital N, no matter what."
"Yeah, well, there are plenty of good reasons for that, too. I bet you can figure out most of 'em for
yourself." Sammy Wong proceeded to spell out what he meant in spite of what he'd just said. Grownups did
that too often, as far as Paul was concerned. "Biggest one is, we want people to act like we never do it. If
they thought there were times they could smuggle a boyfriend or a girlfriend 'cause that's what it's
usually about back to the home timeline, they'd do it too often. People in the alternates would start
wondering what was going on. And besides, not everybody from the alternates can fit into the home
timeline. Most of the time, moving people is a lot a lot more trouble than it's worth. Every once in a
while . . ." He shrugged. "Every once in a while, you have to fill out all those stupid forms."
"The Woos could fit in," Paul said eagerly. "This alternate isn't as far along as we are, but it's pretty well up
there. They work hard. They speak English. They're even Americans, sort of."
"Yeah, sort of," Wong said. "And sort of not, too. To be real Americans, they'll have to stop looking over
their shoulders all the time. But I won't say you're nuts not on account ofthat, anyway." By the look on his
face, not all was forgiven or forgotten. Oh, no. He went on, "Now we've just got to make it happen."
He made it sound easy. Paul wished he thought it were. "How?" he asked.
"Way I see it, we've got four problems," the man from Crosstime Traffic said. "We've got to get your dad
away from the Triads. We've got to make the Woos disappear. We've got to get to the transposition
chamber. And we've got to do all that so nobody not the Feldgen-darmerie, not the Triads, nobody is
any the wiser about what we really are and where we're really from. Am I forgetting anything?"
"I don't think so." Paul knew he sounded troubled. "That seems like enough all by itself."
"One step at a time, that's all." Wong reached out and clapped Paul on the shoulder. Paul would have
thought he'd resent the attention. Instead, he was oddly glad to have it. The man from Crosstime Traffic
went on, "Anyway, I wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Now go back to sleep."
"Yeah, right," Paul said. Sammy Wong laughed. Ten minutes later, Paul was snoring.
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