Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

Finding a place to park in a strange town was always an adventure. At last, Gianfranco's father managed. It was only a block and a half from the hotel, so he felt entitled to be proud of himself. Everybody was in a good mood carrying luggage to the lobby.

Gianfranco's father gave their name there. The clerk looked down his nose at them and said, "Do I have a record of your reservation? I don't see you here. I have Crosettis from Milan, but no Mazzillis."

Gianfranco gulped. His mother gasped. His father said, "Do you know who I am? I'm the second Party secretary in the Milanese Bureau of Records. Now let me talk to your manager right this minute. Is he a Party member?"

That wasn't likely. The clerk, looking worried now instead of enjoying himself, shook his head. "No, uh, Comrade. Hold on. I'll get him."

As if by magic, the manager found the "missing" reservation. The Mazzillis went to their room. "He wanted to squeeze money out of us," Gianfranco's father said as soon as the door closed behind them. "Well, he picked the wrong people to annoy, he did. Gianfranco, go back to the lobby and wait for the Crosettis. Don't let him play games with them."

"But he said he already had their reservation," his mother said.

"He said that to us," his father answered. "He'll probably tell them he has ours but not theirs. Or he will unless Gianfranco's there to give him the lie."

When Gianfranco got to the lobby, the clerk was saying he had no reservation for a big blond man who spoke Italian with a guttural accent. "But this is an outrage!" the blond man spluttered. "Most inefficient!"

A few minutes earlier, Gianfranco would have thought so, too. Now he decided the hotel was very efficient-at gouging its customers. The blond man demanded to see the manager, too. He didn't have the clout Gianfranco's father did. He also didn't seem to realize the manager expected to get paid off. At last, the manager proposed a fee for fixing the reservation. Fuming, the blond man paid.

Gianfranco read soccer scores and game reports in a newspaper. He waited for about twenty minutes before the Crosettis came in. Then he walked over to them and started chatting. They had no trouble with their reservation. The clerk gave him a dirty look. He smiled back as if he couldn't imagine why.

"This ought to be fun," Eduardo said.

"Are you talking about the beach or the mountains?" Annarita's father asked.

"Oh, the beach," Eduardo answered. San Marino lay in the mountains. Gianfranco could see how that wouldn't be fun for the man from another world. It would be work-or it might be disaster, if the authorities had closed down the other shop his people ran here.

What would he do then? What could he do then? Settle down here and try to stay out of the Security Police's way? Hope his people would come back and look for him? Gianfranco didn't see what other choice he had. He would probably feel like a sailor shipwrecked on some distant shore who knew he would never see home again.

But those repairmen, Rocco and his pal, came from around here, too. Maybe they also came from Eduardo's world. And maybe they didn't. If the other shop was shut, Eduardo would have to find out.

"Yes, the beach will be nice," Dr. Crosetti said. "Remember, use plenty of sunscreen. Some people think a nice tan is worth anything, but you pay for it down the road. Not just skin cancer, but a hide like a rhino's, too."

Gianfranco and Annarita and Eduardo all looked at one another. It wasn't that her father was wrong. From everything Gianfranco had ever heard, Dr. Crosetti was right. Still… A doctor could take a lot of fun out of a vacation.

Annarita didn't think the beach was so nice. The competition was too fierce. The tall, fair girls from the north fascinated Italian men. Blondes had intrigued Mediterranean men since Greek and Roman days, and the tradition lived on. And the girls from Germany and Scandinavia flaunted what they had. Their suits, what there was of them, made Annarita's seem dowdy by comparison.

They didn't worry about skin cancer, either. Some of them were turning brown. Some were turning golden. Some were just turning red, the red of a roast before it went into the oven. They didn't care. They laughed about it. "So good to see the sun," one of them said in throaty Italian. The sun was sure seeing- and baking-a lot of her.

Most of them lay on their towels or strolled along the sand. A few went into the Adriatic. It was warm-or warm enough- in August, though it would cool down once summer ended. It wasn't like Hawaii or even North Africa, where you could swim the year around.

When Annarita remarked on that, her father nodded and looked east, towards Albania. "No, but it stays hot all the time on the far side of the water," he said.

Albania was not a happy place. As far as Annarita could tell, it had seldom been a happy place. Enver Hoxha, after whom her school was named, had backed China against the USSR after Stalin died. When the Soviet Union won the Cold War, it paid Albania back by pretending the sorry little country wasn't there. No aid went in. Nothing but trouble came out.

These days, the government in Tirane was pro-Moscow. The hills seethed with pro-Chinese guerrillas, and with bandits who didn't like anybody further removed than their own first cousins. Several fraternal Socialist countries, Italy among them, had soldiers in Albania trying to put down the bandits and the rebels. They weren't having much luck.

A couple of tall blond men walked by, talking in a language full of consonants and flat vowels. Norwegian? Swedish? An-narita couldn't tell. Big blond men did nothing for her. From what she could see, the northern men didn't find small, dark women especially wonderful, either. Oh, well.

"Dio raior Eduardo pointed. "A cormorant just flew by."

"He's fishing," Annarita's father said. "He must have some luck around here, or he would have starved by now."

"Well, I expect I'll go fishing pretty soon, too," Eduardo said. "Fishing for answers, I mean."

"I'd rather see the mountains than the beach," Annarita said. She liked the idea of the sea, not least because she lived hundreds of kilometers away from the real thing. The idea of the sea in her mind, though, didn't include a beach packed with scantily clad foreigners.

Her father sighed. "I wish Cousin Silvio were going up to San Marino by himself," he said. He and her mother knew. They weren't happy, but they weren't-quite-saying no.

"If we can help him get there without any trouble, we should," Annarita said.

"I'm not thinking about what happens if he gets there without any trouble," her father said. "I'm thinking about what happens if there is some. You have no idea what being a zek is like. And it's worse for a woman, believe me."

"Whatever happens, it won't land on Annarita and Gian-franco," Eduardo said. "I'll tell the authorities they didn't know anything about it."

"If something goes wrong, what happens after that will be up to the gentlemen in the jackboots. You won't have anything to say about it," Dr. Crosetti retorted. But he still didn't tell Annarita she couldn't go.

Maybe he got distracted. A blond girl with a tiny suit and a dancer's arched-back, catlike strut certainly seemed to distract Eduardo. Annarita's father also noticed her. He would have had to be blind, or more likely dead, not to. Most of the time, Annarita would have despised her on sight. But if she helped keep the argument from taking off, maybe she wasn't so bad after all.

Gianfranco didn't have much legroom in the back of the Croset-tis' Fiat. He'd probably feel folded up like an accordion by the time they got to San Marino. He also wished Annarita would have sat back here with him, not in front with Eduardo. The other way did look more natural, but he wished she were back here anyhow.