The Gladiator

Dr. Crosetti beamed at him. "I said the same thing. I didn't think the game was enough, either."

Eduardo sighed. "By rights, 1 shouldn't show you anything like this. By rights, 1 shouldn't be here at all. I should be back in the home timeline." He looked even more unhappy than A

"You… bugged the Security Police?" Gianfranco said slowly. Eduardo nodded. Gianfranco stared at him. "Nobody can do that-except the Russians, I guess. They can do whatever they want."

"They make junk. Everybody here makes junk." Eduardo's flat, take-it-or-leave-it tone was hard to disbelieve. Either he believed himself or he was one devil of an actor. Still gloomily, he went on, "But anyway, I was out shopping when the raid went down. I almost walked into the Security Police when 1 came back."

"That doesn't do anything toward showing me what I asked for," Gianfranco said.

"I know. The point of it is, though, I've got my mini in my pocket."

"Your mini what?" Gianfranco and A

"My minicomputer, that's what. Against regulations to take it out of the shop, but now I'm kind of glad I did," Eduardo said.

Gianfranco almost decided on the spot that he was lying. Computers were even more carefully regulated than typewriters. The Security Police knew where every single one of them was, and who was authorized to use it. Hoxha Polytechnic had a couple of small ones, but only the most politically reliable kids could get close to them. And they were the size of a small refrigerator. The idea that anybody could carry one around in his pocket was ridiculous.

What Eduardo pulled out of his pocket sure didn't look like any computer Gianfranco had seen or imagined. It was smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and made of white plastic. On one side, something was stamped into it. Eduardo's thumb stayed on the emblem most of the time, but when he moved it Gianfranco saw what looked like an apple with a bite taken out of one side. He wondered what that meant.

Eduardo poked the gadget in a particular way. Then he said, "On," and then he said, "Screen."

It came out of the top of the little plastic box and spread out like a Japanese fan. It seemed about as thick as a butterfly's wing. At first it was white, but then color spread over it. Gianfranco saw that gnawed apple again, but only for a moment.

"Tournament," Eduardo said. ''''Rails across Europe fourteen."

There were the games in the tournament in which Gian-

128 Harry Turtledove

franco had just played, all the way up to his loss to Alfredo. "This isn't a computer!" he exclaimed. "This is magic!"

"No." Eduardo shook his head. "This is technology. Anybody can use it. All you have to do is know how. No hocus-pocus, no abracadabra. You don't have to be a king's son or go to a sorcerers' academy. You just have to walk into a shop, put down a couple of hundred big ones, and it's yours."

"Big ones?" A

"What we use for money," Eduardo answered. "A hundred euros make a big one all over Western Europe. In the United States, a hundred dollars make a benjamin."

"What about the Soviet Union?" A

"Well, Russia uses rubles," Eduardo answered. "Ukraine uses hryvnia, Belarus uses rubels, Armenia has drams, Georgia has lari, Azerbaijan has manats, Moldova uses lei, Estonia uses krooni, Latvia uses-guess what?-lats, Lithuania uses litai- surprise again, right?-and the Central Asian republics all have their own money, too, but I forget what they call it."

Gianfranco needed a moment to take all that in and to realize what it had to mean. "You don't have any Soviet Union?" he blurted. He might have been an antelope on the plain, saying, You don't have any lions? to another antelope from some distant grassland.

"Not for more than a hundred years, not in our timeline." Eduardo chuckled. "You might say Communism withered away."

"But that's…" Gianfranco's voice withered away before he could bring out impossible. He looked at the computer in the palm of Eduardo's hand. Before he saw it, he would have said it was impossible. Only the very most important, very most trusted people got to use computers at all. They were just too dangerous, or so the authorities insisted. And no computer looked like a little box that sprouted a screen at an oral command.

Except this one.

"What are you doing here?" A

"Keeping an eye on things, you might say," Eduardo replied.

But that wasn't the whole answer. It couldn't be- Gianfranco saw as much right away. And he saw what some of the real answer had to be. "You are counterrevolutionaries!" he said.

A

"What other kind could there be?" A

But Eduardo said, "We try to change people's minds. The government and social structure you have now are the thesis. There hasn't been a new antithesis here in a long time, because the powers that be suppress any ideas they don't like. We were doing our best to make one, and to aim for a better synthesis."

He talked in terms of Marx's dialectic. But he and his friends plainly were-had been-aiming to overthrow the ideas that lay behind the Italian People's Republic, if not the republic itself.

"What will you do?" Gianfranco asked. "They're on to you. You won't change any minds in the Security Police."

Instead of answering, Eduardo turned to Dr. Crosetti.

"They're smart," he said. "Between them, they've come up with the same questions you did."

"They've come up with better ones," A

"So would I," Eduardo said bleakly. "If I can be Cousin Silvio for a while, that would sure help. But they'll be watching The Gladiator like a hawk from now on. Same with The Conductor's Cap down in Rome. Those are two of the places where I could get back to my own timeline. 1 can't do it just anywhere. I don't sprout wings, and it wouldn't help if I did."

"You didn't say those were the only two places." Gian-franco felt like a detective listening for clues. "Where are the others?"

"There's only one more-if it's still open," Eduardo answered. "It's… Maybe I'd better not say. I've said way too much already. I'll probably get in trouble for it if I do get home, but I'll worry about that later. I'm in trouble right here. When you're in this kind of mess, you do what you have to do, that's all."

Gianfranco thought about pushing him, then decided that wasn't a good idea. Instead, he gri

"1 guess I do," she said, and nodded at Eduardo. "Ciao, Cousin Silvio."

"Ciao, Cousin A

Pointing to him, Gianfranco said, "You're going to have to pay a price lor my silence, you know."

"Gianfranco!" A

"How much?" Eduardo sounded worried, or maybe down-right alarmed. "Most of the time, it would be easy, but I can't get my hands on a whole lot of cash right now. Having the Security Police on your tail will do that to you." He managed a wry chuckle that he probably didn't mean.