The Gladiator

Gianfranco couldn't ignore the ads. He didn't have the practice people here did. In his Italian People's Republic, goods were scarce. There wasn't much competition. If you had something, people rushed out and bought it. Whether it was overcoats or avocados, they didn't know when they would see the like again. But everything seemed to be available all the time here. You had to persuade people to part with their money, make them want to buy your shoes and not Tod's. Gianfranco had no idea who Tod was or whether his-her?-shoes were good or bad. But ads for them were all over the Galleria.

So were ads for Crosstime Traffic. That surprised Gianfranco, though he didn't know why it should have. "You really do work for a capitalist corporation," he said to Eduardo.

"Yes, and I don't think it's evil or gross, either," Eduardo said. "Without Crosstime Traffic, the home timeline would be a mess. Oh, you'll get lots of people who tell you it's a mess anyhow, but it would be a different mess, and a worse one."

He knew what Gianfranco was thinking, all right. In the Italian People's Republic, looking out for a profit first was shameful. It wasn't quite illegal, but you didn't want to get caught doing it. Here… nobody cared.

A lot of the buildings in the Galleria looked the same as the ones in Gianfranco's alternate. They were the same buildings, like La Scala and the Duomo. They'd gone up before the two worlds split apart, so they existed in both. Strange to think of two sets of the same buildings in different worlds.

Or maybe more than two… "How many alternates have the Galleria in them?" Gianfranco asked. Eduardo looked startled. "I don't know. A lot-that's all I can tell you. All the ones where the breakpoint is after it was built. Some of them, though, you don't want to visit."

"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 tu

Gianfranco laughed. "I bet it will."

"What do we do if Gianfranco doesn't come back?" A

"I think we change our names and run off to Australia," A

"How are we supposed to do that?" A

"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," A

264 Harry Turtledove

"I think Gianfranco will be back," A

"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, A

"Don't talk like that, Mother," A

"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!" A

"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," A

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 A

They might not be the same even if he did. A

The knife in A

Her mother was slicing even thi

"Si," A

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. A