The Gladiator ct-4 Read online

  Comrade Donofrio pulled a book off his desk. Maybe it was the algebra book he'd used when he was in high school. It looked like an old book, and he wasn't a young man. He flipped through it till he found the page he wanted. "Here. Let's see you do problem seventeen."

  Gianfranco looked at it. It was a train problem, so he didn't have to pretend. But it was more complicated than the ones he'd done the night before. Just a lot of steps, he told himself. You've done them in other problems. Now you need to do them all at once.

  Instead of numbers and times, he tried to picture squares on the board and dice rolls. It helped. He also tried not to do anything dumb, like multiplying seven times six and getting thirty-five, which had messed him up for fifteen minutes on one of the homework problems.

  If you just kept at it, this problem wasn't that bad. He looked up and gave Comrade Donofrio the answer: "Four hours twenty minutes, 390 kilometers."

  The teacher grunted. Then he worked the problem himself on a piece of scratch paper. He was much quicker and more confident about attacking it than Gianfranco was. When he got done, his bushy eyebrows jumped. "You're right!" He sounded surprised. No-he sounded amazed.

  Gianfranco grinned like a fool. He wanted to turn cartwheels, right there in the classroom. "I really can do them!" He was telling himself at least as much as he was telling Comrade Donofrio.

  "Well, so you can." Yes, the algebra teacher looked and sounded as if he didn't want to believe it. "I gave you a hard one. Let me see your work."

  "Here you are, Comrade." Gianfranco gave him the paper where he'd scribbled.

  Comrade Donofrio studied it. Still reluctantly, he nodded. "Your method is correct, no doubt about it. If you did so well on the rest of your papers, you would have a much higher mark in this course. Why have you mastered these problems and not the others?"

  "I think it's because of Rails across Europe " Gianfranco said.

  He waited for the teacher to ask him what the devil that was. Instead, Comrade Donofrio looked astonished all over again. "You play that game, too?"

  "Si, Comrade," Gianfranco said after he picked his chin up off his chest. "But… I've never seen you at The Gladiator."

  "No, and you won't," Comrade Donofrio said. "But a friend and I play every Saturday afternoon. We play, and we drink some chianti, and we talk about how to make the world a better place."

  "And how do you make it a better place?" Gianfranco asked.

  Comrade Donofrio actually smiled. Gianfranco hadn't been sure he could. "Well, the chianti helps," he said.

  "If-" But Gianfranco stopped. He'd been about to say something like, If the world ran more the way the game does, that might help. Eduardo would call him a fool if he spoke up like that, and Eduardo would be right. Why should he trust Comrade Donofrio? Because he got one algebra problem right? Because they both enjoyed the same game? Those weren't good enough reasons-not even close.

  "You'd belter go," the teacher said. "You'll be late to your next class if you don't hustle." As Gianfranco headed for the door, Comrade Donofrio murmured, "Rails across Europe? Who would have imagined that?"

  Since Gianfranco was at least as surprised about his algebra teacher as Comrade Donofrio was about him, he didn't say anything. But I got the problem right! he thought as he hurried down the hall.

  Annarita had a class with Filippo Antonelli. She gave him her report on The Gladiator, saying, "This is what the committee decided." Actually, it was what she'd decided, and she'd got Ludovico to go along. She was beginning to suspect a lot of things in the world looked that way.

  "Grazie," Filippo said, putting the report into his binder. "Maria Tenace already gave me her minority report. She's not very happy with you or Ludovico."

  "She's never very happy with anybody," Annarita answered. That was certainly true. "She got outvoted, and she should have."

  "I looked at her report," said the head of the school's Young Socialists' League. "She's… very vehement."

  "She's throwing a tantrum," Annarita said. "If she weren't doing it in committee work, somebody would send her to bed without supper. Just what she deserves, too, if you want to know what I think."

  "Well, yes." But Filippo laughed nervously. "Even so, she's dangerous to cross, because she knows other people who think the same way she does."

  What was that supposed to mean? Annarita feared she knew-he was saying Maria had connections with the Security Police, or somebody like that. "What should we have done, then? Said this place was corrupt when it isn't?" she asked, thinking, / hope it isn't, anyway. If it is, I've given Maria enough rope to hang me. She went on, "That wouldn't be right. Think about what could happen to the people who work there-and to the people who just play there. Do you think they're all right-wing obstructionists who get together to plot how to bring back capitalism and exploit the workers?"

  68 Harry Turtledove

  "No, of course not," Filippo said, which proved he was still in touch with reality. "I know some kids from this school go there. In fact, I know a couple of people who do. Don't you?"

  "Si," she said. If he asked her who, she intended to duck the question. What he knew, he might have to report one of these days. Yes, he led the Young Socialists' League. Yes, he would probably end up with a job in the government, and one of the things the government did was make sure the Italian people didn't get out of line. Even so, he understood how the system worked. As long as he didn't officially know something, he wasn't responsible for doing anything about it. And so he stayed away from the question that would have led to knowing.

  When Annarita didn't name any names, Filippo just nodded and said, "Well, there you are."

  "Do you think this report will be the end of it?" Annarita asked.

  "1 sure hope so," he answered. "And I hope you're right. If you turn out to be wrong, if people at The Gladiator really are messing with the wrong kind of politics, Maria won't let you forget it. She won't let you get away with it, either."

  A nasty chill of fear ran up Annarita's spine. Filippo was bound to be right about that. She didn't let him see that she was worried. If she had, it would have been the same as admitting she wasn't so confident about the report. "What could they be doing there?" she said.

  "I don't know of anything. I guess you don't know of anything, either," Filippo answered. "Just hope you're right, that's all. I hope you're right, too, because I'm accepting your report, not Maria's. Don't make the League look bad."

  Don't make me look bad, he meant. Once he did accept the report, his reputation would be on the line with it, too. The person at the top was responsible for what the people in the organization did.

  "I won't, Filippo," Annarita told him, responding to everything under the words as well as what lay on the surface.

  "I didn't think you would," he said. "You've got good sense. After I graduate, are you going to head up the league yourself?"

  "I've thought about it." Annarita knew it would look good on her record. "Maybe I've got too much good sense to want all the trouble, though, you know?"

  "Si. Capisco." He nodded. "I ought to get it. Most of this year's been pretty easy, but when it gets ugly, it gets ugly." He smiled a crooked smile. "I'll bet you'd say yes if Maria were graduating with me."

  "Maybe I would." Annarita smiled, too. Filippo was acting nicer than he usually did. "But there's bound to be at least one person like that every year, isn't there?"

  "Well, I haven't seen a year when we didn't have one," Filippo admitted. "Pierniccolo, two years ahead of me…" He rolled his eyes. "His father really is a captain in the Security Police, so he had a head start."

  "He'll probably end up with a fancy car and a vacation home on the beach by Rimini," Annarita said. Going to the Adriatic for the summer, or even for a bit of it, was every Milanese's dream. Not all of them got to enjoy it. Her family and the Mazzillis went, but they stayed in a hotel, not a place of their own. A red-hot Communist from a Security Police family was bound to have the inside track for things like th
at.

  "I can't help but think…" Filippo Antonelli didn't finish.

  That he didn't spoke volumes all by itself. He'd started to say something unsafe and thought better of it. He shook his head. "Let it go."

  "I understand," Annarita said. Both their smiles were rueful. People got so they automatically watched their tongues. Most of the time, you hardly even noticed you were doing it. Every once in a while, though… Annarita wondered what it would be like to say whatever she had on her mind without worrying that it would get back to the Security Police.

  Somewhere in a police file drawer sat a folder with her name on it. Whatever word informers brought on her went in there. Maria might well go to the trouble of writing out a denunciation. All the same, Annarita didn't think the folder would be very thick. She didn't go out of her way to cause trouble. Nothing the authorities had, wherever they got it from (and the informers you didn't know about, the ones who seemed like friends, could be more dangerous than out-and-out foes like Maria), would make large men in ill-fitting suits knock on her door in the middle of the night.

  She hoped.

  "I wish-" she began, and then she stopped.

  "What?" Filippo asked.

  "Nothing," Annarita said, and then, "I'd better head for home."

  As she walked out of Hoxha Polytechnic, she knew she'd been right on the edge of saying something really dumb. She shook her head. That wasn't right. She'd been on the edge of saying something risky. Saying risky things was dumb, but what she almost said wasn't dumb at all. She sure didn't think so, anyhow.

  I wish it weren't like this. I wish we could speak freely. I wish the Security Police would leave us alone. I wish there were no Security Police.

  Tf she did say something like that, what would happen? She'd get labeled a counterrevolutionary. She'd get taken somewhere for what they called reeducation. If she was lucky, they'd let her out after a while. Even if they did, though, her chances for making it to the top would be gone forever.

  If she wasn't so lucky, or if they thought she was stubborn, she'd go to a camp after reeducation. She'd probably only get five years, ten at the most-she was still young, so they'd give her the benefit of the doubt. But she'd stay under suspicion, under surveillance, the rest of her life.

  Just for saying people ought to be free of the Security Police. For saying people ought to be free, period.

  That's not right, she thought. It really isn't. She looked around in alarm, as if she'd shouted it as loud as she could. She hadn't, of course, but she worried all the way home anyway. Maybe she really was a counterrevolutionary after all.

  Four

  "You're helping me in school," Gianfraneo told Eduardo the next time he walked into The Gladiator.

  "Don't say that." The clerk thrust out the index and little fingers of his right hand, holding the other two down with his thumb-a gesture against the evil eye. "Who'd come in here if he thought we were educational?"

  "But you are. What would you call it?" Gianfranco pointed to the shelves full of books.

  "That stuff?" Eduardo shook his head. "That's only to help people play the games better. Games are just games. How can they teach you anything?"

  Gianfranco might not be sharp in school. But he could hear irony, even if he didn't always call it by its right name. "You're trying to fool me," he said now. "Lots of people have learned lots of things from your books."

  "Now you know our secret," Eduardo whispered hoarsely. "And do you know what happens to people who find out?"

  "Tell me," Gianfranco said, curious in spite of himself.

  Eduardo used another gesture, with thumb and forefinger-he aimed an imaginary pistol at Gianfranco. "Bang!" he said.

  Even though Gianfranco laughed, he wasn't a hundred percent comfortable doing it. Eduardo was joking-Gianfranco thought Eduardo was joking-but he sounded a little too serious. If The Gladiator had a real secret, he might do everything he could to keep it.

  How much was that? How much could people at a little shop like this do if somebody powerful-say, the Security Police-came down on them? Gianfranco's first thought was, Not much. But after a moment, he started to wonder. The Young Socialists' League at Hoxha Polytechnic couldn't be the first set of zealots to notice them. They were still here, though. That argued they had ways of protecting themselves.

  But Gianfranco had more urgent things on his mind. "Is Alfredo here yet?" he asked.

  Eduardo grinned. "Eager, aren't we?"

  "I don't know about you, but I sure am," Gianfranco answered, grinning back. "I know he's tough, but if I beat him, I make the finals, and I've never come close before. That would be a big deal, right?"

  "If you think it would, then it would." In a sly voice, Eduardo went on, "Would you get that excited about finishing in the top two in your class?"

  "I don't think so!" Gianfranco said. "Are you going to go all Stakhanovite on me? I thought I could get away from all that stuff as soon as I left school."

  "You're probably working harder here than you are there," the clerk said.

  "Yes," Gianfranco said, and then, in the same breath, "No."

  "Which is it?" Eduardo asked. "You can't have that one both ways, you know."

  "Maybe I try harder here than I do in school," Gianfranco said. "I wouldn't be surprised. But this isn't work, you know what I mean? I want to come here. I have fun here. Going to school…" He shook his head. "It's like going to a camp. You do it because you have to, not 'cause you want to. They make you do things, and they don't care if you don't care about them. You've got to do 'em anyway." He eyed Eduardo. "Does that make any sense lo you?"

  "Some, maybe, but not as much as you think it does," Eduardo answered. "You've never been inside a camp-I know that. But do you know anybody who has?"

  "The janitor at our building-he's a zek, I'm pretty sure," Gianfranco said. The word for a camp inmate sounded about as un-Italian as anything could. Just about every European language had borrowed it from Russian, though. There wasn't a country without camps these days, and there wasn't a country without people who'd done their terms.

  "Well, ask him whether he'd rather do algebra and lit or chop wood and make buildings and starve," Eduardo said. "See what he tells you."

  "I hear what you're saying. But school still makes you do stuff you don't care about and you don't want to do," Gianfranco said. "That's what I don't like."

  "Some of that stuff, you end up needing it," Eduardo said. "You maybe don't think so now, but you do."

  "Oh, yeah? How much algebra have you done since you got behind that counter?" Gianfranco asked.

  Eduardo looked wounded, which made Gianfranco think he'd scored a hit. But the clerk said, "All right, so I don't have to know X equals twenty-seven. Even so, algebra and your languages make you think straight. You need that, especially with some of the other stuff they put you through."

  Which other stuff did he mean? Literature? History the way schools taught it? Dialectical materialism and Marxist philosophy? That was how it sounded to Gianfranco. But he couldn't ask Eduardo to say more, not without seeming to want to entrap him. And Eduardo couldn't say more on his own, not without asking to get denounced.

  Before Gianfranco could figure out a way around his dilemma, the bell over the front door rang. In walked Alfredo, with his graying mustache. He looked rumpled and smelled of tobacco smoke. "Ciao, Eduardo," he said, and then, grudging Gianfranco a nod, "Ciao."

  "Ciao," Gianfranco answered.

  "Shall we do it?" Alfredo didn't sound excited or anything. He just sounded as if he wanted to get Gianfranco out of the way so he could go on to something serious. It was intimidating.

  After a moment, Gianfranco wondered if it wasn't intimidating on purpose. If it was an act… If it was an act, it was a good one. He made his own nod as casual as he could, as if he knew he was a tough guy, too. "Si," he said, sounding almost bored. "Let's."

  Eduardo had heard him being all bubbly before. The clerk had to know he was faking his cool now
. But Eduardo didn't let on. He played fair-and why not? The Gladiator got the same fee no matter who won.

  Gianfranco and Alfredo went into the back room. Other games were already going there. The Gladiator had games going from the minute it opened till the time when the clerks kicked everybody out so they could close up. "Good luck," Gianfranco said as the two of them sat down.

  Alfredo looked surprised. He seemed to have to make himself nod in return. "Thanks," he said. "You, too." He couldn't keep himself from adding, "It's a game of skill, though."

  "Well, sure," Gianfranco said. "That's what makes it fun." Alfredo sent him a measuring stare. Gianfranco felt under the microscope. Part of the skill in the game was figuring out how the guy on the other side of the board thought.

  They rolled for first build. That was luck, like seeing who went first in a chess game. Gianfranco outrolled Alfredo, so he got to start. Against some players, it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other. Against Alfredo, he figured he needed every edge he could get.

  He would have expanded faster against some players. If some people saw you get a big railroad net in a hurry, they lost heart. Gianfranco played a more careful game against Alfredo. Somebody who knew what he was doing would wait till you got overextended, then attack your weak routes, drive you out of cities where you didn't have a strong grip, and take them over for himself.

  Alfredo played as if Gianfranco weren't there. That was intimidating, too. It said he thought he could do whatever he pleased, and that Gianfranco didn't have a chance to stop him.

  Their first clash came over Turin. The northern Italian city- Milan 's rival in everything from style to soccer-made engines you could ship to Moscow for a nice profit. Alfredo got there first. But Gianfranco had a route from Copenhagen to Turin, and Danish butter did well there. He used the profit from the first load to buy a stronger, faster engine to bring in more. And he built toward Moscow himself.