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He shut his door as quietly as he could. He walked down the hall to the elevator. A real, live elevator
operator ran it. "Lobby," Paul said, and tipped him a nickel when he got out. The doorman didn't seem to
think anything of someone heading out in the wee small hours. He opened the door with one hand while
lifting his top hat from his head with the other.
It was chilly. It was foggy. Paul's breath came out in clouds. The street lights might have been ghosts of
themselves. He stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled along. He could have been anybody out there,
anybody at all. It felt wonderful.
Most of the shops and restaurants were closed. He did get that hamburger, though, at a place full of
tough-looking men and the women who kept them company. Nobody gave him a second glance. He ate
fast and got out, coughing from the cigarette smoke that hung in the air. People here smoked a lot more
than they did in the home timeline. Maybe they didn't know how dangerous it was. Maybe they just didn't
care.
He heard a soft clicking on the sidewalk behind him. Stray dog, he thought. A moment later, the dog came
up beside him. It was almost the size of a Shetland pony. The instant he recognized it as an Alsatian, he
realized it wasn't a stray. And he realized he was in trouble.
A hard hand fell on his shoulder. "You are Paul Gomes," a German-accented voice said. "Come wiuh me at
once. You are under arrest."
Eleven
Somebody on one of the other shifts had lost a worker's folder. Lucy poked through all the logical places it
might be. When it didn't turn up in any of them, she had to start thinking about illogical places. She checked
the file for fired employees. It wasn't there. She checked the file for deceased employees and there it
was.
She couldn't imagine why anyone would have put it there. The woman whose file it was remained very
much alive. Lucy worked a few stations away from her, and still saw her every day. But how things could
get misfiled no longer surprised Lucy. She'd seen worse than this. She pulled out the file at least it was in
the right place alphabetically and took it to Mrs. Cho.
"Here you are," she said, not without pride.
Her supervisor checked the name, then smiled. "Oh, good. I was afraid it was gone forever. That would
have been a nuisance. Where did you find it?"
"Somebody put it in with the dead ones," Lucy answered.
Mrs. Cho laughed. "Haven't run into that for a while." The laugh and the smile that went with it vanished as
if they'd never been. "If I knew who, I can think of a folder that would belong in the fired file."
She wasn't kidding. Lucy could tell. Mrs. Cho put up with inexperience and fumbling around. You had to, or
every new worker would drive you nuts. But she would not stand for incompetence from people who
should have known better. If they didn't shape up to suit her, they were gone. Sometimes she didn't even
give them the chance to shape up. One mistake of the wrong kind was plenty.
"What now, Mrs. Cho?" Lucy had learned she should always look for something to do. It didn't have to be
important. As long as it made her look busy, that was fine. The one thing the people over her couldn't stand
was to see her sitting around and twiddling her thumbs.
Before her supervisor could answer, the front door flew open. It swung through an arc of 180 degrees and
slammed into the wall. Half a dozen big men in trench coats and high-crowned caps that made them look
even bigger charged into the room. Three of them carried pistols. The other three had submachine guns.
"Hands high!" one of them shouted.
People dropped what they were doing literally. Papers cascaded down onto the floor and splashed across
it. Several clerks screamed. Everyone's fingers pointed straight toward the ceiling. All the other people in
the big room looked as scared as Lucy felt.
"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Cho tried to sound as tough with the Feldgendarmerie men they
couldn't be anything else as she did with the people who worked for her. She didn't have much luck. Her
voice wobbled and squeaked.
"We ask the questions," said the German who'd ordered hands raised. "Where is" he paused to check a
paper he pulled from his pocket "Lucy Woo?"
Even before he spoke her name, Lucy knew it was coming. She had not a prayer of running or hiding.
Every eye turned toward her. In a very small voice, she said, "Here I am."
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