Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

So there, Annarita thought. Now she had to nod, even if she didn't much want to. Gianfranco was right. All the men from the home timeline weren't just ready to try to get away. They were eager. Even if this was home to Annarita and Gianfranco, it was something much less pleasant to them. Annarita said the only thing she could: "Do they understand how big a chance they're taking?"

Gianfranco didn't answer right away. His head swiveled towards a statuesque blonde who was tan, not pink, and whose gold suit covered as little of her as was legal, or maybe a little less than that. Annarita didn't kick sand at him. She couldn't have said why not, but she didn't.

When he still didn't answer, she repeated her question- pointedly. "Oh," he said, as if coming back from a long way away. "Well, why wouldn't they?"

"Because they aren't from here. That's the point," Annarita said. "They don't really know how dangerous those people are."

"Well, those people don't know all the tricks they've got, either," Gianfranco replied. "Things should even out."

She wouldn't be able to change his mind. She could see that coming like a rash-one of her father's favorite lines. "The worst thing that can happen to the Security Police is, they get embarrassed. The worst that can happen to Cousin Silvio and the others is a lot worse than that."

"But the best that can happen is, they get away. And then people from the home timeline come back here and figure out some other way to nudge us along toward freedom." Gian-franco's face lit up-and he wasn't looking at a pretty Swedish girl this time. He was seeing something inside his own head, something he liked even better than pretty girls. "One of these days, we can be just like the home timeline ourselves!"

"1 don't want to be just like them," Annarita said, and his eyes widened and his mouth shaped an astonished 0. He couldn't have been any more shocked if she'd slapped him in the face. She went on, "I don't. I want to be what we're supposed to be. We're not the same as they are, and we can't be now. We've grown apart for too long. They do lots of things better than we do. But you know what? I bet we do some things better than they do, too."

Gianfranco didn't believe a word of it. "Like what?"

"Take care of each other, maybe," Annarita said. "And I bet we're a lot better at being happy with what we've got."

"Well, sure we are," Gianfranco said. "Next to them, we haven't got much. We'd better be happy with it."

"Yes, we'd better," Annarita agreed. That seemed to take Gianfranco by surprise. She went on, "Being happy with what you've got-it's not all bad, you know. If you're not happy with what you have, one of the things you can do is take away what somebody else has and keep it yourself. That's part of what capitalists do."

"That's part of what our schoolteachers say capitalists do," Gianfranco retorted. "Have you seen anybody from the home timeline really act that way?"

"Well… no," Annarita said slowly. How much of what she'd learned-how much of what everybody in the Italian People's Republic learned-in school was true? How much was just propaganda? She didn't know. She couldn't know, not for sure. Ff a fish always lived in muddy water, it wouldn't know that water could be clean and clear, either. But she added, "We're not seeing everything that those people do, either. They may have reasons for behaving one way here and some other way back in their home timeline."

Now she watched Gianfranco look thoughtful and a little unhappy, the way she had a moment before. She liked him better for that-it showed his mind wasn't closed. He also spoke slowly when he replied, "I suppose that's true for some of them. But I don't like to think Ed-uh, Cousin Silvio-would."

"No, I don't, either," Annarita said-and if her prompt agreement made Gianfranco jealous, then it did, that was all.

If it did, he didn't show it. She liked him better for that, too. "If he gets back to the home timeline, he can do anything he wants," he said. "But sooner or later-sooner, I hope-his people will come back here. And when they do, we ought to help them any way we can."

Annarita nodded. She almost said, Well, what can we do? But she and Gianfranco were doing everything they could now. They'd already kept Eduardo out of the hands of the Security Police for a long time. With some luck, they would help him and his friends back to the home timeline.

With some luck… How good was Gianfranco's plan? She could see that it might work. But she could also see that it might go horribly wrong. And if it did, it would come down on everyone's head. She wasn't even close to sure Gianfranco could see that.

Twelve

Gianfraneo's heart pounded as he and his father and two policemen from San Marino in their silly uniforms trudged up the stairs toward the city's top level. One reason his heart pounded was that he'd already climbed a lot of stairs. If you lived in San Marino, you got your exercise whether you wanted it or not.

Still, nerves made his heart thutter, too. He thought Anna-rita thought he didn't think anything could go wrong. Thinking that was so twisted, it made him smile. But she wasn't right. He knew this might not work. He knew there would be trouble if it didn't-and there might be even if it did. He just didn't see any other scheme that had even a small chance of getting Eduardo and his comrades back where they belonged.

"It is very unfortunate that you let this shop go on operating," his father said to the policemen. "Very unfortunate. There was one like it in Rome, and they shut it down. There was one like it in Milan, and we shut it down." By the way he said it, he might have closed down The Gladiator all by himself. He hadn't had anything to do with it, but the Sammarinese policemen didn't need to know that.

"Si, Comrade," they said together. All they knew was that an important-well, a fairly important-Party official from Italy was up in arms about The Three Sixes. Well, no. They also knew they wanted to get him out of their hair.

But that wouldn't be so easy. Gianfranco's father kept thundering while he climbed. "My own son told me about this place," he said. "My own son! If he could find it, if he knew there was a problem with it, why couldn't you? Why didn't you:

He didn't say anything about the way Gianfranco had haunted The Gladiator. He was a practical working politician, after all. He knew you talked about what strengthened your case and ignored what didn't.

By the time they all got to the topmost level, Gianfranco's shirt was sticking to him. The policemen looked half wilted, maybe more. Gianfranco and his father wore light, comfortable clothes. Those dumb uniforms were made of wool. They had to feel like bake ovens under the summer sun.

"Why couldn't the stinking shop be lower down?" one of the policemen grumbled.

"We ought to jug the clowns who run it just for being so high up," the other one said. Gianfranco grinned. If they got mad at the people in the shop, that only helped. He was glad they weren't mad at his father-or, if they were, they weren't showing it.

They tramped toward the castle with anger in their eyes. "Now where is this place?" Gianfranco's father asked him. His tone said he was too important a personage to bother looking for the sign himself.

Most of the time, that would have annoyed Gianfranco. Here, he knew his father was talking that way to impress the policemen, so it didn't… quite so much.

He pointed. "There it is, Father."

"Right out in the open!" his father exclaimed, as if a hidden gaming shop could have done much business. "Well, we'll put a stop to that!"

He tramped into The Three Sixes, the policemen in his wake. Gianfranco came in, too. He wished he were coming to play Rails across Europe or even one of the other games. But if he were, his name would go on a list. Those weren't men from the home timeline behind the counter. They belonged to the Security Police.