Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

"Alternates where the Fascists won?" That was the worst thing Gianfranco could think of.

"Those are bad, but some of them aren't too much worse than yours," Eduardo answered. That gave Gianfranco a look at his own alternate, and at how it seemed to the home timeline, that he hadn't had before. He could have done without it. Eduardo went on, "Those are bad, but the ones where they really went and fought an atomic war are worse."

"Oh." Gianfranco winced. "How many of those are there?"

"Too many. We stay out of most of them," Eduardo said. "They've been knocked too flat to be worth doing business with. They've been knocked too flat to be dangerous, too. Nobody in any of them will find the crosstime secret any time soon."

"I guess not," Gianfranco said. "Do you try to nudge the fascist alternates the way you've been nudging mine?"

"Si," Eduardo said, and not another word.

"Any luck?"

Eduardo doled out two more words: "Not much." A little defensively, he added, "It's not easy. A world is a big place, and we don't have a lot of resources to put into any one alternate."

"I wasn't complaining. I was just wondering," Gianfranco said. "Boy, the buildings may be the same here, but the shops sure aren't." The one they'd just walked past would have got the shopkeeper flung into a camp in his Milan. Here, nobody but a couple of customers walking in paid any attention to it.

"Different alternates, different customs." Eduardo seemed glad Gianfranco had changed the subject. Was he embarrassed the home timeline couldn't do more with alternates it didn't like? Or was he embarrassed it wasn't trying harder? Its first job was to turn a profit. Tf it didn't do that, it wouldn't have the money to try to do anything else.

CROSSTIME TRAFFIC. Gianfranco was surprised the sign in the familiar shopfront didn't say The Gladiator. He knew he shouldn't have been, but he was anyway. "What do we do now?" he asked as Eduardo held the door open for him.

"We give you your cover story. We give you the drugs so you'll stick to it no matter what. Then we wait until midnight and send you home," Eduardo answered. "If they catch you inside and ask you how you got there, tell 'em we had a tunnel that runs all the way from Rimini to Milan. That'll shut 'em up."

Gianfranco laughed. "I bet it will."

"What do we do if Gianfranco doesn't come back?" Annarita's mother asked for about the fiftieth time as the family Fiat neared their apartment building. The Crosettis had never had such a miserable end to an August holiday.

"I think we change our names and run off to Australia," Annarita's father said.

"How are we supposed to do that?" Annarita asked, curious in spite of herself.

"Well, if we change our names, everyone will think we're Australians anyway, so there shouldn't be any trouble." Her father made it sound ridiculously easy. But the accent was on ridiculously.

"You're not helping," Annarita's mother said. "The Mazzil-lis are going to hate us forever. We may have to move, and wish we could go to Australia."

264 Harry Turtledove

"I think Gianfranco will be back," Annarita said.

"He'd better be," her mother said. "Our life becomes impossible if he isn't, and that's nothing next to what happens to the poor Mazzillis. Their only child gone-" She shook her head. "I wouldn't want to keep on living if anything happened to you, Annarita."

"Don't talk like that, Mother," Annarita said. "Just don't. Not about me, and not about Gianfranco, either."

"What worries me is, he's liable to decide he likes it there," her father said. "And if he does, and if they let him, he's liable to decide to stay. A lot of the time, boys that age only think about themselves. What staying there would do to everybody who has to stay here… He may not worry about that for a long time."

"I hope you're wrong!" Annarita exclaimed.

"I hope I'm wrong, too," Dr. Crosetti said. "Eduardo and his friends are more likely to care about what happens here than Gianfranco does, though."

Gianfranco was her boyfriend. When her father criticized him, she felt she ought to leap to his defense. But she couldn't. She was too afraid her father was right. All the marvels the home timeline had to offer… Yes, they would tempt Gianfranco. They would tempt plenty of people from this alternate. And he was young enough and smart enough to start over there if he wanted to-and if they let him.

"Maybe I should fix something for us to eat," her mother said. "I don't think the Mazzillis will want to have supper with us tonight."

"I'll help," Annarita said.

Chopping vegetables and cooking pasta let her lake her mind off her worries for a while. Gianfranco's mother stuck her nose into the kitchen. When she saw Annarita and her mother busy there, she drew back in a hurry. Any other late afternoon, she would have come in and chatted. No, things wouldn't be the same if Gianfranco didn't come back.

They might not be the same even if he did. Annarita frowned when that occurred to her. The Mazzillis would go right on blaming Eduardo for kidnapping him. As far as they knew, Eduardo was the Crosettis' Cousin Silvio. Why wouldn't they think everybody in Annarita's family was responsible in some way?

The knife in Annarita's hand flashed as she cut zucchini into slices almost thin enough to see through. "This is a mess," she said. "Nothing but a miserable, stinking mess."

Her mother was slicing even thinner. "You're not wrong. 1 wish you were. If Comrade Mazzilli weren't who he was, Gianfranco might be able to tell him what was what. But the way things are…"

"Si," Annarita said unhappily. Because Comrade Mazzilli was a Communist Party official, Gianfranco had used him to get the Security Police out of the way so Eduardo and his friends could escape. His father wouldn't like that even a little bit. And again, how could you say he was wrong not to like it?

Supper turned out to be a very unhappy meal. The Crosettis ate quickly to get out of the dining room and let the Mazzillis have it. Annarita thought about going on like that day after day, year after year. It could happen. In the Italian People's Republic, moving away from neighbors who didn't like you was often harder than finding some way to put up with them. But it would be anything but pleasant.

"We'll have to take turns going first," Annarita's mother said with a sigh-she must have been thinking along the same lines.

"I wonder how much trouble Comrade Mazzilli can make for us if he really works at it," her father said. There was another interesting question. Because of his Party rank, he might be able to make quite a bit.

If Gianfranco didn't turn up, he'd have every reason to do just that. Annarita had never dreamt helping someone could do such a good job ol complicating her life.

Thirteen

The door to the transposition chamber opened. Gianfranco hurried out. He didn't remember anything about being drugged. He wasn't supposed to. But what they'd told him while he was out would kick in when the Security Police started grilling him. So people from the home timeline claimed, anyhow. He hoped like anything they knew what they were talking about.

The lights in the subbasement under The Gladiator came on. Motion sensors, Eduardo had told him. He looked back over his shoulder. One instant, the chamber was there. The next, it was gone-gone for good.

"Stuck here," Gianfranco muttered. "Stuck here forever." He said something that should have set off a smoke detector, if there was one here. He would have been just as happy to stay in the home timeline-probably happier. Only the thought of what was bound to be happening to his family and to Annarita's made him come back-that and the obvious unwillingness of the Crosstime Traffic people to let him do anything else. He hadn't argued much. What was the point, when he could see he would lose? Better to jump if you were going to get pushed anyway.