The Gladiator ct-4 Page 11

  Gianfranco didn't. "Where do you get papers like that?" he asked. Are you a spy? he meant. He hadn't wanted to believe that, but seeing those perfect documents in a false name made him wonder. Or was Silvio Pagnozzi a false name? Gianfranco realized he couldn't be sure.

  Eduardo stopped smiling. "I've told Dr. Crosetti where 1 got them. The fewer people who know, the fewer who can tell."

  That wasn't good enough for Gianfranco. "I've earned the right to know. The Security Police can already slice me into carpaccio or chop me up for salami. If I'm putting my neck on the line, I've got a right to know why."

  "He's right," Annarita said. "I feel the same way."

  Her father looked surprised-mutiny in the family? And Gianfranco was surprised, and tried to hide it. So Dr. Crosetti hadn't told Annarita whatever it was, either. Gianfranco would have guessed she'd know. Evidently not.

  "What do you think?" Annarita's father asked Eduardo.

  "Maybe I'd better tell them," answered the man with the interesting papers.

  "They're children," Dr. Crosetti said.

  Before Gianfranco could get angry, Eduardo said, "If not for them, I'd be wandering the streets right now-or else the Security Police would have grabbed me. They're acting like grown-ups. Don't you think we ought to treat them that way?"

  "Mnirm." Dr. Crosetti made a discontented noise, down deep in his throat. "I wouldn't trust grown-ups with this, either. Who saw you on the stairwell?"

  "Nobody who paid any attention to me. I made a point of looking away from the two or three people who came by-you'd better believe I did," Eduardo said.

  Annarita's father grunted again. "And you may have looked straight into a surveillance camera, too. Those miserable things are common as cockroaches."

  Eduardo smiled again. "They won't have picked me up. I have the power to cloud cameras' minds-or at least to jam their signals."

  "How do you do that?" Gianfranco blurted.

  "It has to do with where I come from," Eduardo said.

  "And where's that?" Annarita asked. "From right around here, by the way you talk."

  "I do come from Milan -from Arese, actually," Eduardo said. Gianfranco and Annarita both nodded-that was a suburb northwest of the city. "But I come from Milan in the Italian Republic, not Milan in the Italian People's Republic."

  "Huh?" Gianfranco said, at the same time as Annarita asked, "What does that mean?" They both amounted to the same thing, even if Annarita was more polite.

  "In my world"-Eduardo brought the phrase out as calmly as if it were something as ordinary as on my block- "Communism didn't win the Cold War. Capitalism did."

  "Marx says that's impossible." Gianfranco brought out the first objection that popped into his head. Others stood in line behind it, waiting their turn.

  "Si," Eduardo said. "What about it? A believer might think the sun goes around the earth because the Bible says the sun stood still. Does that make it true? Do you want to believe something because a book says it's so, or do you want to look at the evidence?"

  "What is your evidence?" Annarita asked, beating Gianfranco to the punch. "So far, we've heard nothing but talk, and talk is cheap."

  "It's also very light," Gianfranco said with a grin. "You can haul boxcars of it with a beat-up old locomotive in Rails across Europe."

  "The game is part of my evidence," Eduardo said. "Do you think it would be legal-or safe-to make it anywhere in this world?"

  Annarita looked very unhappy. "You sound like one of the hardcore people in the Young Socialists' League."

  "I wouldn't be surprised. They're not all blind. I wish they were. My life would be easier," Eduardo answered.

  "How do we know this isn't some sort of fancy scam?" Gianfranco asked.

  Dr. Crosetti beamed at him. "I said the same thing. I didn't think the game was enough, either."

  Eduardo sighed. "By rights, 1 shouldn't show you anything like this. By rights, 1 shouldn't be here at all. I should be back in the home timeline." He looked even more unhappy than Annarita had. "I should have gone home with everybody else. I should have been in The Gladiator before the Security Police raided it. But they must have planned the raid in a place where we didn't have bugs. I thought we'd done a better job of covering them than we must have."

  "You… bugged the Security Police?" Gianfranco said slowly. Eduardo nodded. Gianfranco stared at him. "Nobody can do that-except the Russians, I guess. They can do whatever they want."

  "They make junk. Everybody here makes junk." Eduardo's flat, take-it-or-leave-it tone was hard to disbelieve. Either he believed himself or he was one devil of an actor. Still gloomily, he went on, "But anyway, I was out shopping when the raid went down. I almost walked into the Security Police when 1 came back."

  "That doesn't do anything toward showing me what I asked for," Gianfranco said.

  "I know. The point of it is, though, I've got my mini in my pocket."

  "Your mini what?" Gianfranco and Annarita asked the question at the same time.

  "My minicomputer, that's what. Against regulations to take it out of the shop, but now I'm kind of glad I did," Eduardo said.

  Gianfranco almost decided on the spot that he was lying. Computers were even more carefully regulated than typewriters. The Security Police knew where every single one of them was, and who was authorized to use it. Hoxha Polytechnic had a couple of small ones, but only the most politically reliable kids could get close to them. And they were the size of a small refrigerator. The idea that anybody could carry one around in his pocket was ridiculous.

  What Eduardo pulled out of his pocket sure didn't look like any computer Gianfranco had seen or imagined. It was smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and made of white plastic. On one side, something was stamped into it. Eduardo's thumb stayed on the emblem most of the time, but when he moved it Gianfranco saw what looked like an apple with a bite taken out of one side. He wondered what that meant.

  Eduardo poked the gadget in a particular way. Then he said, "On," and then he said, "Screen."

  It came out of the top of the little plastic box and spread out like a Japanese fan. It seemed about as thick as a butterfly's wing. At first it was white, but then color spread over it. Gianfranco saw that gnawed apple again, but only for a moment.

  "Tournament," Eduardo said. ''''Rails across Europe fourteen."

  There were the games in the tournament in which Gian-

  128 Harry Turtledove

  franco had just played, all the way up to his loss to Alfredo. "This isn't a computer!" he exclaimed. "This is magic!"

  "No." Eduardo shook his head. "This is technology. Anybody can use it. All you have to do is know how. No hocus-pocus, no abracadabra. You don't have to be a king's son or go to a sorcerers' academy. You just have to walk into a shop, put down a couple of hundred big ones, and it's yours."

  "Big ones?" Annarita said.

  "What we use for money," Eduardo answered. "A hundred euros make a big one all over Western Europe. In the United States, a hundred dollars make a benjamin."

  "What about the Soviet Union?" Annarita beat Gianfranco to the question by a split second.

  "Well, Russia uses rubles," Eduardo answered. "Ukraine uses hryvnia, Belarus uses rubels, Armenia has drams, Georgia has lari, Azerbaijan has manats, Moldova uses lei, Estonia uses krooni, Latvia uses-guess what?-lats, Lithuania uses litai- surprise again, right?-and the Central Asian republics all have their own money, too, but I forget what they call it."

  Gianfranco needed a moment to take all that in and to realize what it had to mean. "You don't have any Soviet Union?" he blurted. He might have been an antelope on the plain, saying, You don't have any lions? to another antelope from some distant grassland.

  "Not for more than a hundred years, not in our timeline." Eduardo chuckled. "You might say Communism withered away."

  "But that's…" Gianfranco's voice withered away before he could bring out impossible. He looked at the computer in the palm of Eduardo's hand. Before he saw it, he wou
ld have said it was impossible. Only the very most important, very most trusted people got to use computers at all. They were just too dangerous, or so the authorities insisted. And no computer looked like a little box that sprouted a screen at an oral command.

  Except this one.

  "What are you doing here?" Annarita asked.

  "Keeping an eye on things, you might say," Eduardo replied.

  But that wasn't the whole answer. It couldn't be- Gianfranco saw as much right away. And he saw what some of the real answer had to be. "You are counterrevolutionaries!" he said.

  Annarita exclaimed softly. Her father blinked. And Eduardo… Eduardo turned red. "We're not the kind who assassinate people or blow things up," he said. "We've seen way too much of that back home. We still have too much of it there."

  "What other kind could there be?" Annarita sounded bewildered. Gianfranco understood why. Anyone who grew up on the history of the glorious October Revolution and the civil war that followed learned how violence and force drove history forward.

  But Eduardo said, "We try to change people's minds. The government and social structure you have now are the thesis. There hasn't been a new antithesis here in a long time, because the powers that be suppress any ideas they don't like. We were doing our best to make one, and to aim for a better synthesis."

  He talked in terms of Marx's dialectic. But he and his friends plainly were-had been-aiming to overthrow the ideas that lay behind the Italian People's Republic, if not the republic itself.

  "What will you do?" Gianfranco asked. "They're on to you. You won't change any minds in the Security Police."

  Instead of answering, Eduardo turned to Dr. Crosetti.

  "They're smart," he said. "Between them, they've come up with the same questions you did."

  "They've come up with better ones," Annarita's lather said. "And I'd like to know what you're going to do, too."

  "So would I," Eduardo said bleakly. "If I can be Cousin Silvio for a while, that would sure help. But they'll be watching The Gladiator like a hawk from now on. Same with The Conductor's Cap down in Rome. Those are two of the places where I could get back to my own timeline. 1 can't do it just anywhere. I don't sprout wings, and it wouldn't help if I did."

  "You didn't say those were the only two places." Gian-franco felt like a detective listening for clues. "Where are the others?"

  "There's only one more-if it's still open," Eduardo answered. "It's… Maybe I'd better not say. I've said way too much already. I'll probably get in trouble for it if I do get home, but I'll worry about that later. I'm in trouble right here. When you're in this kind of mess, you do what you have to do, that's all."

  Gianfranco thought about pushing him, then decided that wasn't a good idea. Instead, he grinned at Annarita. "So you've got a new cousin, do you?"

  "1 guess I do," she said, and nodded at Eduardo. "Ciao, Cousin Silvio."

  "Ciao, Cousin Annarita," Eduardo answered gravely. He didn't look much like her, but cousins didn't have to.

  Pointing to him, Gianfranco said, "You're going to have to pay a price lor my silence, you know."

  "Gianfranco!" Annarita sounded as if she'd just found him in her apple.

  "How much?" Eduardo sounded worried, or maybe down-right alarmed. "Most of the time, it would be easy, but I can't get my hands on a whole lot of cash right now. Having the Security Police on your tail will do that to you." He managed a wry chuckle that he probably didn't mean.

  "What kind of price have you got in mind, Gianfranco?" By the way Dr. Crosetti asked the question, he'd pitch Gianfranco through a wall head first if he didn't like the answer.

  But Gianfranco only grinned. "Rails across Europe. Lots and lots of Rails across Europe!7'

  Annarita started to giggle. Her father managed a thin smile. Gianfranco got the idea that that was the same as cracking up for most people. Eduardo's laugh was full of relief. "Well, that can probably be arranged. You'll wipe the floor with me, though. 1 just sell the games. I didn't play them a whole lot."

  "1 bet you're sandbagging," Gianfranco said. "That way, you can beat me and then look surprised."

  "If 1 beat you, I will look surprised. I promise."

  "Can three play?" Annarita asked.

  Gianfranco and Eduardo both looked surprised. "Well, yes," Gianfranco said, "but…" Are you sure you really want to? was what he swallowed this time.

  "I was having fun with the game we started," she said. "I'd like to play some more… if the two of you don't mind."

  "It's all right with me," Eduardo said. "How could I tell my cousin no?" He winked again.

  That left it up to Gianfranco-except he didn't really have a choice. If he said no, he'd look like a jerk. And, even though Annarita didn't know what she was doing yet, she was plenty smart. If she wanted to, she could learn. "Why not?" he said. "Three people complicate things all kinds of interesting ways."

  Eduardo laughed out loud again. Dr. Crosetti coughed dryly. Annarita looked annoyed. Gianfranco wondered what he'd said that was so funny.

  Annarita feared the Security Police would swoop down on her apartment and cart Eduardo off to jail. She also feared they would cart her whole family off with him. They did things like thai. Everybody knew it.

  When it didn't happen right away, she relaxed-a little. Gianfranco's family took Cousin Silvio for granted. She'd never thought his folks were very bright or very curious. Up till now, that had always seemed a shame to her. All of a sudden, it looked like a blessing in disguise.

  Nobody thought anything was strange when Gianfranco dragooned Cousin Silvio into playing his railroad game. Gianfranco would have dragooned the cat into playing if it could roll dice instead of trying to kill them. And if Annarita played too, well, maybe she was just being polite for her cousin's sake.

  And maybe she was, at least at first. But Rails across Europe was a good game, no two-or three-ways about it. It got harder with three players. Whoever got ahead found the other two ganging up on him… or her.

  At school, Ludovico backed Maria's motion to change the minority report about The Gladiator to the majority. The motion passed without much comment. Annarita didn't argue against it. How could she, when the Security Police had closed the place down-and when she had a fugitive in her apartment pretending to be her cousin?

  Victory made Maria smug. "Nice you finally quit complaining," she said to Annarita after the meeting. "It would have been even better, though, if you'd given some proper self-criticism. Some people will still think you're a capitalist backslider."

  "I'll just have to live with it," Annarita said. Maria had no idea how much of a capitalist backslider she really was.

  And Maria also had no idea that she had such good reasons for being a backslider. All Maria knew about capitalism was what she'd learned in school. It was dead here, and the people who'd killed it spent all their time afterwards laughing at the corpse. They honestly believed the system they had worked better than the one they'd beaten.

  Annarita had believed the same thing. Why not? It was drummed into everybody every day, even before you started school. Every May Day, the whole world celebrated the rise of Communism and scorned the evils of capitalism. Nobody had any standards of comparison.

  Nobody except Annarita and her father and mother and Gianfranco. Eduardo talked about a world without the Security Police, a world where people could say what they wanted and do as they pleased without getting in trouble with the government. Well, talk was cheap. But people in Eduardo's world had invented machines that took them across the timelines to this one. No one here even imagined such a thing was possible.

  "It isn't possible here," Eduardo said when she mentioned that. "You don't have the technology to go crosstime."

  The offhand way he said it made her mad. He might have been telling her that her whole world was nothing but a bunch of South Sea Islanders next to his. "We can do all kinds of things!" she said. "We've been to the moon and back. Why do you say we couldn't build one of your crosstime
engines or whatever you call them?"

  "Because you can't," he answered, and took his computer out of his shirt pocket. "See this?" Reluctantly, she nodded. She knew her world had nothing like it. He went on, "Anybody-everybody-back home carries one of these, or a laptop that's a little bigger and stronger. This one's nothing special, but it's got more power than one of your mainframes. Our real computers-the ones you can't carry around-are a lot smarter than this one."

  How could she help but believe him? He was there, in her front room, holding that impossible gadget. The more of what it could do he showed her, the more amazed she got. It played movies-movies she'd never seen, never heard of, before, which argued that they didn't come from her world. It created letters and reports. It did complicated math in the blink of an eye. It had a map that showed all of Italy street by street, almost house by house.

  That impressed her, both because the map was so interesting and because he was allowed to have it. "A lot of maps here are secret," she said.

  "I know," Eduardo answered, and let it go right there. She'd always taken secrecy for granted. You couldn't trust just anybody with information… could you? In two words, he asked her, Why can't you? She found she couldn't tell him.

  One question she did ask was, "Well, why do you bother with us at all if we're so backward?"

  "Oh, you're not," he said. "You aren't as far along as we are, but there are plenty of low-tech alternates where the people would think this was heaven on earth. You could be free. We think you ought to be free. We think everybody ought to be free. We were trying to nudge you along a bit, you might say."

  "With game shops?" Annarita asked.

  "Sure," Eduardo said. "There's an old song in my timeline about a spoonful of sugar helping medicine go down easier. If we just showed up here and said, 'No, no, you're doing everything all wrong,' what would happen?"

  "The Security Police would come after you," Annarita answered. "But they came after you anyway."

  "Si," he said mournfully. "But it took them longer, and we got to spread our ideas more than we would have if we tried to go into politics or something."