Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

Whenever anybody asked you about ideology, you were smart to play dumb. When a man from the Security Police asked you, you were really smart to play dumb. "I don't know. I leave all that stuff for my father," Gianfranco said. "Besides, how can nineteenth-century trains have an ideology?"

"You'd be amazed, kid. You'd be absolutely amazed," the officer told him. And what was that supposed to mean? Probably that when the Security Police went looking for ideology in a game, they'd find it whether it was there or not.

Gianfranco went right on playing dumb. "Can I go now?" he asked.

"In a minute," the fellow from the Security Police said. "Have you seen any of the people from this shop since we shut it down?"

"No, Comrade," Gianfranco said, almost truthfully.

"If you do, you will report them to us at once." The officer did his best to make that sound like a law of nature.

"Of course, Comrade." Gianfranco did his best to make the man believe he thought it was. As long as you were playing by the rules the government and the security forces set, you could get away with skirting them most of the time.

"You'd better. This is serious business. How could these spies run loose in our country without showing up in our records?" Now the man from the Security Police made it sound as if the people who ran The Gladiator were violating a law of nature.

"Spies? What is there to spy on here?" Gianfranco asked.

"That's not your worry," the officer snapped. Gianfranco knew what that had to mean, too. The man had no clue, and neither did his bosses. He gave Gianfranco one more scowl, then jerked his thumb in an unmistakable gesture. "All right, kid. Get lost."

Gianfranco didn't wait for him to change his mind. Away he went, before the officer could have second thoughts.

He had some thoughts of his own-confused ones. Eduardo and the others at The Gladiator were no more spies than he was. No matter what the Security Police thought, the idea was ridiculous. But how had they kept from landing in the files? That was quite a trick, whatever it was. Gianfranco wished he could have done it himself.

The invisible man. The man who wasn't there. He imagined strolling through Italian society untroubled by the authorities, because officially he didn't exist. The people at The Gladiator and The Conductor's Cap had done it-for a while, anyhow. But once they got noticed, not being in the records must have drawn more attention to them. Bureaucrats and security men were probably climbing the walls trying to figure out how they managed it.

And how had they all vanished at just the right moment? Plainly, the Security Police hadn't caught them. Just as plainly, the Security Police wished they had.

Gianfranco laughed to himself. Anything that made the Security Police unhappy seemed like good news to him.

He spotted a former opponent heading toward The Gladiator. Waving, he called, "Ciao, Alfredo. It's no use."

"They're not open?" Alfredo's voice registered despair.

"It's not just that they're not open," Gianfranco said. "The Security Police are crawling all over the place."

"Don't they have more important things to do than pitching fits about people who run a little gaming shop?" Alfredo said. "What are we going to do?"

"They think they're a pack of spies," Gianfranco said. That made Alfredo laugh like a loon. But then Gianfranco explained how the people at The Gladiator weren't in any official records, and Alfredo stopped laughing.

"No way!" he exclaimed.

"Well, if you want to tell the Security Police there's no way, you can go do that," Gianfranco said. "But do you think they'll listen to you?"

"They would have to come from Mars, not to get into the files," Alfred said, and Gianfranco nodded-he'd had the same thought. Alfredo went on, "Or maybe they really are spies. But spies would act like foreigners, and those people are as Milanese as we are."

Again, Gianfranco had had the same idea. "None of this makes any sense," he said.

"I'm sure it does-to somebody," Alfredo said. "But not to us." He looked unhappy again. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going crazy without the tournaments. Ever been around somebody who just quit smoking? I'm like that."

He hadn't quit. He lit a cigarette, and smoked in quick, nervous puffs. Gianfranco stepped to one side to get away from the smoke, which made him cough.

Alfredo either didn't notice or didn't care. From what Gianfranco had seen, most smokers worried more about keeping their own habit going than about what nonsmokers thought. Lots of people in Italy smoked. For as long as anyone could remember, the government had said it wasn't healthy. That only went to show that even the government had its limits.

"What are we going to do?" Alfredo asked as he crushed the butt under his shoe. "You know what? We all ought to get together and rent a hall where we could play. It wouldn't be that expensive, not if everybody chipped in."

He was a great Rails across Europe player. How smart was he away from the game board? Not very, not as far as Gianfranco could see. "Maybe," Gianfranco said, as gently as he could. "But don't you think the Security Police would visit us as soon as we did anything like that?"

"What? Why would they?" No, Alfredo didn't get it.

"Why did they visit The Gladiator?" Gianfranco asked.

"Because they're… foolish." Alfredo didn't say everything he might have. He wasn't too foolish himself. He wouldn't call the Security Police a pack of idiots-or worse-in front of Gianfranco, whom he didn't know well. But he got the message across. And then, with a mournful nod, he went on his way.

Gianfranco started back toward his apartment building. He wished he hadn't come to the Galleria in the first place. Seeing the Security Police swarming over The Gladiator brought him down-and it was dangerous. He knew that officer could have arrested him.

He went past Hoxha Polytechnic. A chorus was singing the praises of the Communist Party and the illustrious General Secretary. Rehearsal for May Day, Gianfranco thought, and then, What's so great about the Party, if it goes after places like The Gladiator?

His mind shied away from that like a frightened horse. You couldn't think such thoughts. It was too dangerous-they might show on your face. If he'd been thinking What's so great about the Party? while the Security Police officer grilled him, the fellow would have been all over him the way a cat jumped all over a mouse.

He was almost home when somebody called his name: "Gianfranco! Hey, Gianfranco, you've got to help me!"

"Eduardo!" Gianfranco knew the voice-and knew he was in trouble no matter what he did-even before he turned. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"They're after me!" said the clerk from The Gladiator, which Gianfranco already knew. "You've got to help me!"

"Well, I'll try," Gianfranco said, and that told him what kind of trouble he was in.

Six

Annarita hated regular Russian verbs. Irregular Russian verbs drove her crazy. She consoled herself that things could have been worse. Comrade Montefusco said that Polish, a close cousin to Russian, had separate masculine, feminine, and neuter forms for verbs. Annarita tried to imagine little children learning a language that complicated. They evidently could. She wondered how.

When Gianfranco came into the kitchen, she was ready to put the Russian aside for his game. Her mother would cluck, but she didn't care. Then she got a good look at his face. "What's wrong?" she asked, adding, "You look like somebody who just saw a ghost."

"That's not funny," Gianfranco said. "Come out with me for a second, will you?"

"All right." Annarita closed the book and got up. "What's going on? You don't usually act this way."

He didn't try to tell her it was nothing. She would have brained him with the Russian book if he had. It was big and square and heavy-she might have fractured his skull. All he said was, "You'll see."