The Gladiator

"You ought to go in and say hello to your friends," he said now.

"I suppose." Eduardo sounded worried, too. "Why don't you kids find another shop to go into? If something's wrong and they nab me, with luck they won't grab you, too. You can call your folks down in Rimini, and they'll come get you."

They would have to come in the Mazzillis' car. Gianfranco's father wouldn't be happy about that. A

She wanted to look at a dress shop while Eduardo went into Three Sixes, but she knew Gianfranco wouldn't be caught dead in there. She chose a record shop instead. Some of the music it sold you could find anywhere. Some, though, only circulated underground most places. Governments had come down hard on what they called degenerate noise for almost a century and a half. People still made it, though, and sold it and listened to it. It was almost as subversive as the stuff The Gladiator sold.

Most places, it got sold under the counter, and played by people who trusted their friends not to inform on them. Here, it was right out in the open where anybody could see it and buy it. Elvis, the Beatles, the Doors, Nirvana-classics, if you liked that kind of thing. There were newer groups, too: the Bombardiers, Counterrevolution, Burn This Record.

"Wow!" Cianfranco stared. "We ought to buy some of this stuff. When's the next time we'll see so much together like this?"

"Probably not a good idea right now," A

"What? Why not?" Gianfranco might have thought she was crazy.

"If our friend ends up getting in trouble, do you want to be carrying anything that could land you in trouble if they snag you?" She didn't need to explain who they were. In the Italian People's Republic, as in every fraternal Communist state around the world, there was always a they.

"Oh," Gianfranco said in a small voice. "Well, I'm afraid that makes sense. I wish it didn't, but it does."

"Next time we're here, maybe," A

"When will that be?" Gianfranco challenged.

"Who knows? A year? Two years?" She shrugged. "Probably no longer than that. Rimini 's a nice place to go on holiday, and San Marino 's easy to get to from there." She began to say more, but then stopped. "Look! Here's, uh, Cousin Silvio."

They both hurried out of the record shop. One look at his face said everything that needed saying. "It's no good?" Gianfranco asked, just to be sure.

"No. It's a trap. Those have to be the Security Police in there," Eduardo said, walking quickly toward the closest stairway. "The place is a snare now, a lure. I didn't expect to recognize anybody in it, but the guy behind the counter didn't know what 1 was talking about when I said something was as rotten as '86."

"I don't, either," A

"In the home timeline, we were playing Vietnam in the World Cup finals in 2086. The ref missed the most obvious offside in the world, Vietnam scored, and we lost 2-1." Eduardo sounded furious as he explained. "We got robbed, right there in broad daylight. No Italian from my world doesn't know about that. This fellow didn't have a clue, so he's from here, not there. I hope the people from the home timeline got away, that's all."

Eleven

Gianfranco was taller than Eduardo, and had longer legs. But he needed to hustle to keep up with the man from another world as they hurried toward the stairs that led down to the Crosettis' Fiat. "What are you going to do now?" he asked, breathing hard.

"I don't know. I just don't know," Eduardo answered.

"Those maybe-capitalist repairmen?" A

"I suppose so." Eduardo sounded anything but thrilled. "They're probably from the Security Police, too. Heaven help the poor fools who go into Three Sixes. Next thing they know, they'll end up in camps wondering what the devil happened."

"And they're the people Italy really needs!" Gianfranco exclaimed.

"Some of them are, maybe," Eduardo said. "But some of the people Italy needs are the ones who'll stay away from a place like that after the Security Police shut down two others. They'll think something's fishy about this one."

"They'd better," A

"Or stupid. Stupid in a particular way," Eduardo said. "Politically stupid."

"Ah," Gianfranco said. Lots of the people who'd been regulars at The Gladiator fit that bill. He probably had himself, and his father was in politics up to his eyebrows. Most people like that were harmless. Even the Security Police recognized as much. But those people left themselves open for trouble when crackdowns came-and crackdowns always came. Everybody had a file. If your file said you went into places where counterrevolutionary sympathizers gathered, that could be all the excuse the authorities needed.

Or maybe they wouldn't need any excuse at all. If they wanted to turn you into a zek, they could turn you into a zek. Who'd stop them?

Nobody. That was the trouble right there.

Going down all those flights of stairs was a lot easier than climbing them had been. When Gianfranco and A

"What is it?" Gianfranco asked.

"They haven't put any tracers in here," Eduardo answered. "That's good, anyhow. You live in a place like this for a while, you start thinking everybody's after you all the time. Instead, it's only some of the people some of the time. Happy day."

Usually, Gianfranco took the possibility of being spied on for granted. Why not? He couldn't do anything about it. Nobody could. And chances were that someone he knew, someone he liked and trusted, sent the Security Police reports about him.

You couldn't guess who all the informers were. If you knew, you'd act different around them, and then what would their reports be worth?

Eduardo kept looking around nervously while he was using the marvelous gadget from the home timeline. "Relax," An-narita told him.

He looked at her as if he thought she'd gone round the bend. Gianfranco knew he did. "I can't relax," Eduardo said. "What if somebody sees me with this thing?"

"What if somebody does?" A

Eduardo blinked, then started to laugh. "Maybe you've got something there."

Gianfranco thought A

"He'll think Cousin Silvio's in military intelligence, or a Russian or a German." A

She was also liable to be right there. The Security Police looked for secrets within secrets, sure. But they weren't equipped to understand a secret that came from outside this whole world. "They don't know the shops are from the home timeline, do they?" Gianfranco asked as Eduardo started the Fiat.

"Not unless they caught somebody and tortured it out of him," Eduardo said, backing the car out of its space. "I don't think they did. Otherwise, they'd know about me. No, I think everybody else got back to the home timeline just fine."

"What kind of evidence would your people leave behind?" A