Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

"How do you do that?" Annarita didn't really believe she could do it if he told her how. She didn't believe it, but she hoped.

"Experience," her father said.

That made her angry. "Experience is what grown-ups say when they mean, 'Go away, kid. Get lost.'"

Her father laughed again, this time with something closer to real amusement. "Well, sweetheart, you've got something there. Ten years ago, you were a little girl. Ten years ago, I was pretty much the same as I am now. I have a wider platform than you do. Only time can give you one like it."

"Your hair had less gray in it," Annarita said. "Pictures show that, anyway-you look about the same to me."

"I had a little more hair, too." Her father touched his temples, where it had receded. "You hadn't given me so much gray then. These past few weeks, I'm surprised my hair hasn't turned white."

"Ts it as bad as that?"

He shook his head. "It's worse. If we get caught, all this is kaput. Kaput, you hear? Gone. Lost. Forever. You always get the dirty end of the stick after they let you out of camp. You're just a zek after that, not a person any more. If they let you out. For something like this, they might not."

"They don't keep people forever." Like anyone else, Annarita had a good notion of what happened after you vanished into the netherworld of the camps.

"No, they don't." Her father nodded, but he looked grim. "But they don't always let them out, either. Sometimes people die in there. Heart failure, the death certificates say, or, Brain hemorrhage. A 9mm bullet can cause either one."

Annarita bit her lip. Again like anyone else, she knew those things could happen. But she didn't like to think about them. She especially didn't like to think about them happening to her.

When she said so, her father's mouth tightened. He didn't get angry at her very often, but he did now. She'd disappointed him. "Anything that can happen can happen to you. If you don't know that here and here"-he tapped his forehead, then his belly-"you don't know anything."

He was right, which didn't make Annarita any happier.

"What are we going to do?" she wondered out loud.

"You should have asked that when you brought your stray puppy home and asked if we could keep it," her father said.

"Edu-Silvio's no puppy!"

"No. He's more dangerous than a puppy ever could be."

"Why didn't you send him away, then?"

"I probably should have." Her father sighed. "But he made me too curious. He persuaded me he really isn't from here, from this world, at all. 1 never imagined anyone could do that. It's one reason I let him stay. And the other one is even simpler-it was already too late to kick him out."

"Why?" Annarita said. "He carries a computer in his pocket, not a gun like a gangster. What could he do?"

"He could get caught by the Security Police, that's what," her father answered. "And after that, he could tell them he was here."

"He wouldn't do that!" she exclaimed.

"He wouldn't want to, I'm sure. When they start squeezing, what you want has nothing to do with anything." Her father looked and sounded very unhappy. "So they would find out he was here, and we didn't turn him in. And not turning him in is as bad to them as sheltering him. So if I'm going to be hung, I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb."

Annarita eyed him. "All his talk about freedom has you going just like Gianfranco, doesn't it?"

"I don't want to admit that. I'm supposed to be too old and cynical to care about such things," her father said. "But yes, I'm afraid it does. And 1 am afraid, because I can't see how this is likely to end up well for anybody."

"If he gets away, if he goes back to the home timeline, then it's as if he were never really here," Annarita said.

"If pigs had wings, we'd all carry umbrellas," her father said.

That made her blink. He wasn't usually so blunt. "Everything will be fine," she said.

He got up from his chair, walked over, and kissed her on top of the head. "I wish I were seventeen again. Then I could close my eyes and all my problems would disappear just like that." He snapped his fingers.

"I'm not an ostrich. I don't stick my head in the sand," Annarita said. "And if you think I do, you ought to listen to Gianfranco."

"Boys are born radicals at that age. They want Causes." The way her father said it, she could hear the capital letter. He went on, "It makes them good soldiers, too. The captain says, 'Take that hill for the country,' and they go, 'Yes, sir!' instead of, 'What? Are you nuts? I'll get shot!'"

"Freedom is a good cause, si?" Annarita said.

"One of the best," her father answered. "But it's also one of the ones most likely to get somebody shot."

Nine

"Time!" the teacher said loudly. "Put your pencils down now. Do not mark any more answers on your tests. Pass your papers forward immediately."

Gianfranco let out a long, loud, weary sigh. Most of the time, such an uncouth noise would have landed him in trouble. Now it was just one of a chorus. He waggled his wrist back and forth, trying to work out writer's cramp. Something inside the wrist cracked as if it were a knuckle. He stared at it in dismay. It wasn't supposed to do that… was it?

The last final. Everything was over for the year. Well, almost over. Everybody had to come back Monday to get report cards marked. Teachers would spend the weekend figuring out what everybody's grades were. That was a lot of work, but Gianfranco didn't worry about it. The only thing he worried about was what marks he'd end up with.

A year earlier, he wouldn't have cared much about that. But when you started doing well, you wanted to do better. He wouldn't have believed that before, but it turned out to be true.

After counting the exams, the teacher nodded. "I have all your papers," he said formally. "You are dismissed."

Again, there was more noise than usual as the students got up. Something in Gianfranco's back popped, too. Fm wearing out, he thought. / need oiling or something.

As he walked toward the entrance to wait for Annarita, another thought crossed his mind. Fll be a junior next year. Where did the time go? Hadn't he been in primary school just a little while ago? No matter what he felt like, the answer was no.

Annarita got there less than a minute after he did. "How'd it go?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I'll know for sure on Monday. It didn't seem too bad, though." He made as if to knock on wood. "How about you?" he said.

"I'm glad it's over," Annarita said. "I hope it turned out all right." She always talked that way. Anybody who didn't know her would think she was worried. Gianfranco knew better. She always came through.

"Want to go to a movie to celebrate finishing?" Gianfranco asked.

"We can do that," Annarita answered. Gianfranco hoped that meant she wasn't saying yes to be nice. Better than saying no, he thought. She went on, "What I want to do right now is go home and catch up on my sleep. That would be wonderful."

"Sure, but do you have five years to do it in?" he said. She laughed, for all the world as if he were kidding. He knew how hard she worked.

They left Hoxha Polytechnic behind for another school year. She would be a senior when they came back in six weeks. She would have to worry about the university and the rest of her life. Gianfranco wasn't ready for that yet. He wondered whether Annarita was.

Maria Tenace came up to Annarita and wagged a finger in her face. "You'll never be president of the Young Socialists' League!" she said. "Never!"

"I wasn't really worried about it," Annarita said.

"You were wrong about The Gladiator," Maria continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" She lovingly sang the word. "And you're going to pay for it. Pay! Pay! Pay!" Then she waltzed off without giving Annarita a chance to answer.