One of the men came in and said something to Picardin; “teléfono” was the only word I caught, but the rest of it apparently told the police captain that it was important, because he got up and went out to get it. While he was out there, I contemplated my situation. A week ago I had only been dimly aware that this city existed, and although I suppose I knew it must have police stations, it would not have occurred to me that I would be sitting in one. Worse yet, from my standpoint, I was clearly a really long way from home myself, now, because I was in one of the worlds where Saigon was called Ho Chi Minh City, which meant I was somewhere outside my home group of worlds by some considerable distance; there were no Reichs here. That seemed like a good enough thing, but from the cursory perusal of the notes Helen and I had been able to do, if you got away from National Socialism, you found yourself in the world of the Puritan Party, or the ones where Communist Russia had conquered the Earth, or the ones where America had gone up in a nuclear civil war of some kind in the early 1980s. There were some other families of worlds, as well, we thought, but we hadn’t gotten them sorted out yet.
At the moment, if the name Ho Chi Minh City was the clue that I thought it was, we were probably in one of the Communist-descended lines, which wasn’t where either Helen or I had come from. Clearly ConTech existed in this world, and so did Geoffrey Iphwin, but would the Geoffrey Iphwin of this world even recognize our names? If he did, would we be his employees, and would he be sending any help?
I tried to leave that question thoroughly alone, but unfortunately it was about the only source of amusement I had, except perhaps for meditating upon the way my wrists hurt where they were cuffed to the chair. The room itself offered only whitewashed concrete block walls, a spotless black floor with a drain that made me wonder if perhaps in this particular version of Mexico the police might be even a little bit inclined to brutality, and two fluorescent fixtures with thin metal dividers just below the glowing tubes. The only decor was the door, painted pale hospital green, with a big dead-bolt lock on the other side; the bolt itself was visible in the gap between the door and the jamb, but it looked like you’d need a welding torch to get through it, the door seemed convincingly hard to break, and anyway I wasn’t going to get anywhere near it unless I got out of the handcuffs, which I had no idea of how to do.
Perhaps I would be better off considering just how far away from any kind of home or help we might be, after all. Or just thinking about how much my wrists hurt.
The door opened, and Jesús Picardin came in, with Helen walking after him. She had all her weapons in a wire basket, exactly like the one in which Picardin had my wallet, belt, computer, and belt phone. “We’ll have to move quickly,” Picardin said, his voice low and hushed.
Helen, behind him, had a tense but friendly little smile, and she nodded at me, indicating that I was supposed to cooperate in this, whatever “this” might be. Picardin undid the handcuffs and handed me my things; I put the belt on, the wallet in my pocket, and made sure everything was good to go. “I’m not sure how long Geoffrey Iphwin will be able to keep Esmé on the phone. She was shouting at him, you know. I’m afraid that for some reason or other she blames him for the death of Billie Beard, and this Esmé does not have the memories of Billie that I do—or that the Esmé I know does. But if we can get past the front office, we can probably go get the prisoner released.”
“If I thank you for our release in Saigon—” I began.
“Your charming partner has already done so. She said this was the second time I had gotten you released. I never did know what became of that pile of documents I faxed, but I’m very glad that it did you good. Let’s hurry. Quietly now.” He hustled us down a long corridor past two rooms full of busy cops talking to the usual array of battered, hopeless, angry, bewildered, and exhausted people that you see in a police station.
Once we were clear of those areas, we moved at a dead run, through hallway after hallway, following Picardin. He managed to tell us in a low voice that we were going the long way round in hopes of not being seen before we reached the prisoner’s cell.
We knew what Ulrike Nordstrom looked like from the photo Iphwin had sent to us, and besides she was the only one in her row of cells; it looked like they didn’t arrest many women as dangerous offenders around here. She was short and pale blonde, a little heavy, and she wore her hair in a sort of bowling-ball cut. She immediately jumped up and said, “Lyle! Helen! Am I glad to see you! What are you doing here?”
Helen and I glanced at each other, and I said, “Er, we know you from your photograph, but how do you know us?”
“It’s me. It’s Ulrike! Lyle, you and I were married for five years, and Helen was my maid of honor. Right after college. It can’t have been that long.”
Picardin was looking at us very, very intently, and didn’t seem to be the least bit pleased, but he unlocked the cell door and let her out anyway. “I have a key for a back service exit,” he said, “so we can get you out of here. But I wish someone would tell me things before they become surprises.”
“We all wish that very much,” Helen said.
Picardin handed her papers and wallet back to Ulrike. She seemed to be pouting, and from the way she was watching me, I got the distinct impression that at one time this expression had been some kind of private signal between Ulrike and whatever Lyle it was that she had married. She was getting angry at me, I guessed, because I wasn’t receiving the signal. We hurried after Picardin, down the hall, and out the door he motioned us through. “We’ll be in touch, I’m sure,” he said. “I just hope I can figure out the rules of this world before I make any mistakes that are too big.”
At the end of the long dark alley, we found a street that seemed to be deserted, and, knowing nothing more than that the lake, where ConTech’s jump boat was, was west, that was the way we headed. We hurried on for a few blocks without seeing anything move—the sun would be coming up in a few minutes, and apparently this neighborhood was too affluent to have people who worked early mornings, but not affluent enough to have servants coming in at this hour.
After a few blocks without seeing anyone, we relaxed, and Ulrike said, “Lyle, I don’t know where to begin. Your family sponsored me to come to New Zealand, after the war, and I came and lived at your house, and when I first got there I was thirteen, you were eleven, and your brother Neil was fifteen. Doesn’t any of this ring any bells?”
“Oh, it rings all sorts of bells,” I said. “Just not the ones you might think.” The white buildings around us seemed like tombs, or a movie set, no lights on in them—not just ordinary city and household darkness, but no lights, not even one left on accidentally, or a child’s night-light, or a light for finding the bathroom. This was getting stranger and stranger. The street, too, was strangely dusty and encrusted with old dust-drifts on top of the cracked and broken pavement; didn’t anyone ever sweep the streets around here? “In the last few days I’ve learned that memories are one of the least trustworthy things you can find. Trust me on what I remember. Four years before I was born, my parents were in a car wreck, with my newborn brother, Neil. They lived, but he was killed. I never knew him.”
“That can’t be!” Ulrike exclaimed. Helen put a heavy hand on Ulrike’s shoulder and a gentle finger across her lips, murmuring something about not being away from police yet. “I remember Neil perfectly,” Ulrike protested. “Great big guy, wonderful sense of humor, star athlete—I might have gotten somewhere with him if he hadn’t been gay. You don’t remember he was lost on the Elizabeth III when that was sunk?”