The Gladiator ct-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "Well, the remake wasn't anything much, but we had fun anyway." She told him about the foul-up with the newsreel.

  "That's pretty good," he said, smiling. "Or pretty bad, depending on how you look at things. They make movies over again in the home timeline, too, and most of the time you wish they didn't."

  "Why do they, then?" Annarita said. "If you're so free, why don't you make new things all the time?"

  "Because doing old, familiar ones over again makes the studios money," Eduardo answered.

  Annarita's mouth twisted. "Profit doesn't sound so wonderful, then."

  "It's not perfect. Nothing's perfect, far as I can see," Eduardo said. "But it works better than this-most of the time, anyhow."

  "Have they remade Battleship Potemkin in the, uh, home timeline?" Annarita asked. Then another question occurred to her: "Do you even have Battleship Potemkin there?"

  "We've got the original, si," Eduardo replied. "It dates from before the breakpoint. Up till then, everything's the same in both alternates. But here, the Soviet Union won the Cold War. There, the United States did. The United States is still the strongest country in the home timeline. It throws its weight around sometimes, but it doesn't sit on everybody else all the time the way the USSR does here."

  Annarita tried to imagine a world that had branched off from hers somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century. Why did the two alternates separate? Somebody decided something one way here, a different way over there. And this alternate turned out ordinary, and in that one… In that one, they had computers that fit in your pocket. They had a way to travel between alternates.

  They had freedom, too. Annarita had hardly known she missed it till Eduardo's arrival made her think about it. She didn't want to run up barricades and start an uprising the way Gianfranco seemed to, but she could tell what wasn't there and should have been.

  "And yes, they did make Potemkin again in the home timeline," Eduardo said. "This was before I was born, you understand. The remake sank like a rock. When people watch now, they watch the original."

  "In theaters, you mean," Annarita said.

  "Well, there, too," Eduardo said. "But we can get recorded disks with movies on them and watch on our TVs. Or we can pay a little and download the films from the Net and watch them on our computers."

  "You showed me that before," Annarita said. "I still don't see how you can put a whole movie, let alone lots of movies, on a little thing like the one in your pocket."

  He grinned at her. "Easy as pie. You could do it here, too-not as well, but you could. You know enough. Your governments won't let you, though. Anything that spreads information around so easily is dangerous to them."

  Annarita found herself nodding. In a country that registered typewriters like guns and kept computers under lock and key for the trusted elite, the idea that everybody could own a computer and use it all kinds of ways had to seem like anarchy loosed upon the world. But that wasn't the main thing on her mind. "You've just let me see little bits of the movies from your home timeline, to show that they weren't from here," she said. "Could I watch a whole one?"

  "I'm supposed to tell you no," he answered. "You're not supposed to know what things are like there. But sometimes you've got to bend the rules. And so…" He pulled the little box from his pocket and told it to display its screen. Annarita had to lean forward to see well. It wasn't like watching a movie in the theater, or even on TV.

  The movie was called The Incredible^. It wasn't like anything Annarita had ever seen before, or even imagined. It wasn't live action, but it wasn't exactly a cartoon, either. "How do they do that?" she asked partway through.

  "More computers," Eduardo said. "This one's ninety years old. It's a classic, sure, but they can do a lot more now."

  She wasn't fussy. The Incredibles might seem old-fashioned to him, but it was thousands of kilometers ahead of anything people here were doing. And it was a good movie, no matter how they did it. It was funny, and the plot made sense. The writers didn't lose track of details, the way they did too often here.

  When Annarita remarked on that, Eduardo nodded. "It happens in the home timeline, too. Some people are stupid. Some people are lazy. Some are greedy, and out for quick money. But I bet it happens more here, because there's less competition. Bad movies here don't bomb. They just bore people over and over again."

  "Well, you're right." Annarita remembered how many times she'd seen some movies. The authorities put them out there, and they didn't put anything else out there opposite them. If you wanted to go to a movie, you went to one of them. "They call them classics."

  "That would be fine if they really were," Eduardo said. "The original Battleship Potemkin is-no arguments. But a lot of them are just turkeys from the Propaganda Ministry."

  " Turkeys?" Annarita needed a second to figure that out. Maybe it was slang in his home timeline, but it wasn't here. When she got it, she laughed. "You know what else was amazing in The Incredibles'?"

  "No, but you're going to tell me, so that's all right." Eduardo could tease without making it sting. From everything Annarita had seen, that was a rare talent.

  "I am going to tell you," she agreed. "All those houses. Rows and rows of houses, with lots of middle-class people- well, middle-class cartoon people-living in them. Even though the movie is animated, it's based on something real, isn't it?"

  "Si," Eduardo said. "But it's based on the United States, where they have more room than they do here. And the United States had more room at the start of the twenty-first century than it does now. But Italy was mostly apartments even then- only rich people had houses."

  "Rich people." Annarita said the words as if they were almost obscene. And, in the Italian People's Republic, they were. "We don't have rich people here." She spoke with more than a little pride.

  Eduardo wasn't impressed. "You ought to have rich people. Rich people aren't what's wrong. Poor people are. Compared to the way people live in the home timeline, everybody here is poor."

  "You can say that," Annarita sniffed. Yes, she took pride in her country the way it was. Who wouldn't? It was hers. Inside, though, she feared Eduardo was right. If everybody in his world had a pocket computer, who could guess what else people there had? He'd talked about fasartas, and she didn't even know just what they did.

  Instead of reminding her of that, he took a different tack: "You know what you have instead of rich people?"

  "What?" she asked suspiciously.

  "Apparatchiks," he said.

  Apparatchiks weren't all bad. They made the wheels of government turn… when the wheels did turn. Gianfranco's father was an apparatchik, though he would have got mad if you said so. Apparatchiks always thought other people were apparatchiks. What they did themselves was important. If you didn't believe it, you could just ask them.

  And Eduardo had hit that nail right on the head. Apparatchiks might not have a lot of money in the bank. But they got the best apartments, the best summer houses, the best cars, and doctors. Annarita's father had this flat because a lot of his patients were apparatchiks.

  Apparatchiks also got to travel more than ordinary people did. Their children got into good universities whether they deserved to or not. If you quarreled with an apparatchik and you were just somebody ordinary, you were in trouble if he took you to court. They might not have money, no, but they sure had privileges.

  "What can we do about that?" Annarita asked.

  "Make those people really work for a living," Eduardo answered. "If they don't do anything useful, throw the bums out."

  "Easy to say. Not so easy to do," Annarita pointed out.

  She wondered if he would deny that and try to make a counterrevolution sound simple. She gave him credit when he didn't. "Well, you're right," he said. "That's why we were trying to come at it sideways. We thought we could get new ideas in with the games."

  "It didn't work," Annarita said.

  "Tell me about it!" Eduardo exclaimed. "We were hoping your government was fatter a
nd lazier than it turned out to be. I'm sure we won't give up, but I'm not sure what we can do right now. I hope like anything I'm not stuck here."

  "What about your friends, wherever they are?" she asked.

  "If they don't find me, I'll have to try to get hold of them sooner or later," he said. "I hope they didn't have to pull out, too. If they did… If they did, I'm in trouble. Sooner or later, the Security Police will start getting closer to me, too." He smiled a crooked smile. "Isn't life grand?"

  He had his wonderful computer. He had the memories of all the things his people could do that no one here knew anything about. And all of that did him not one bit of good. Had anyone in the history of the world-in the history of many worlds-ever been so alone?

  Comrade Donofrio gave Gianfranco his report card. The algebra teacher actually smiled when he did. "You've improved, Mazzilli," he said.

  "Grazie, Comrade," Gianfranco answered.

  He looked at his grade. A B! He hadn't got a B in math since… He couldn't remember the last time he got a B. His grades in his other subjects were up, too. He wouldn't get first honors, but he might get second.

  He knew Annarita would get first honors. She always did. He knew he would hear about it from his parents, too. If she does it, why don't you? How many times had he heard that? More than he wanted to, anyhow. But if he came home with some kind of honors for a change, maybe they wouldn't rag on him so much.

  And he did. He got a B+ in history to put him over the top. That was another bolt out of the blue. If Rails across Europe hadn't got him interested in the subject, he never could have done it. But the game had, and he did.

  He missed The Gladiator. Even with Eduardo next door, he missed the camaraderie and the arguments and the games with different people. He missed having somewhere besides home to go when school let out. He missed the models and the books.

  Those books! No wonder you couldn't find them anywhere else! A lot of them came from what Eduardo called the home timeline. Nobody there thought they were subversive. They were just… books. And that, or so it seemed to Gianfranco, was how things were supposed to be.

  He even got a B- in literature, though he didn't think he had much of a future as a poet. Italian would just have to go on making do with Dante. Gianfranco Mazzilli had other things on his plate.

  First among those other things was taking his report card home and showing it off. He walked back with Annarita and showed it to her. "Good for you, Gianfranco," she said, really sounding pleased. "You mother and father will be happy for you."

  "I know you've got a better one," he said.

  "So what?" she answered. "You haven't even been interested till now. It's hard to do good work if you don't care."

  "Si," he said, and left it right there. Had he said anything more, he might have started babbling out thanks. Annarita understood! He hadn't thought anybody in the world did. In that glowing moment, he wasn't far from being in love.

  And what would she do if he said something like that? She wouldn't laugh in his face-she was too nice. But she wouldn't take him seriously, either. He didn't feel like listening to jokes, even from Annarita, so he kept his mouth shut.

  When he got up to the apartment, his mother was out shopping and his father hadn't come home yet. That left him all dressed up with no place to go. Like an atheist at his own funeral, he thought. Even with a good report card, he didn't feel like starting in on his homework right away.

  He turned on the TV. He'd always taken it for granted before. Now he saw that the picture wasn't nearly so sharp as the one on the screen of Eduardo's impossible handheld computer. The colors weren't so bright and vivid, either. Gianfranco wanted a machine like that. He wanted a world where everybody used a machine like that.

  He had… this. Four channels showed different flavors of propaganda. The news told him how the goals for the twenty-third Five-Year Plan were being exceeded. The goals for the other Five-Year Plans had all been exceeded, too. So why weren't things better?

  On another channel, a Russian and an Italian were hunting down an American spy. If a villain wasn't a Nazi, he was bound to be an American. Sometimes he was an American who wanted to bring back the Nazis. These days, the USA was harmless. It did what the USSR told it to do. If it didn't, it suffered. Sometimes it suffered anyway, just because it had been the Soviet Union 's most dangerous rival before the Russians won the Cold War.

  Eduardo said the USA was top dog where he came from. Gianfraneo wondered what that was like. Were all the villains on American TV Russians? The ones who weren't Nazis, anyhow? He wouldn't have been surprised.

  But Eduardo also said the USA was where the idea for computers came from. He said some of the games The Gladiator sold-had sold-came from there. That made Gianfranco think better of it than he would have otherwise.

  The door opened. In came his father, with a heavy briefcase. "Buon giorno, Father," Gianfranco said. "How are you?"

  "Tired," his father answered. "Some of the people in the provincial planning administration are donkeys. Real donkeys. They should have reins and harness, so they could haul bread carts around. We'd get some use out of them that way." He sank into a chair with a martyred sigh.

  He came home complaining about the people he worked with maybe one day in three. "Guess what?" he said.

  "I don't know," his father said. "Will you fetch me a bottle of beer?"

  "Sure." Gianfranco brought him one from the refrigerator. Then he said, "Guess what?" again.

  His father drank half the bottle at one long, blissful pull. "Ah!" he said. "That's good. Takes the edge off the day-know what I mean?"

  "I suppose." Gianfranco liked wine much better than beer. He tried once more: "Guess what?"

  His father paused with the beer bottle halfway to his mouth. "What?" he said at last, and the bottle finished the journey.

  "I got second honors," Gianfranco said.

  "No kidding?" That made his father stop without emptying the beer. "Not bad, kid, not bad." Then he said what Gianfranco knew what he would say: "I bet Annarita made first."

  "She did." Gianfranco couldn't very well deny it, not when it was true. "She always does. Some people are like that."

  "Greasy grinds." But his father caught himself. "Can't say Annarita's one of those. She's smart, but she's not stuck-up about it." He did kill the beer then, and set the bottle on the little table next to his chair. "But you got second, eh? How about that? Your first time. Way to go."

  "Grazie" Gianfranco said.

  The way his father looked at the beer bottle, he was thinking about having another one. But he didn't get up, and he didn't send Gianfranco after it, either. "What took you so long?" he asked. "I didn't think you'd ever do it. I didn't think you cared enough."

  "Up till this semester, I didn't," Gianfranco said. "Things seemed to get more interesting, though, so I guess I worked harder."

  "Well, a little hard work never hurt anybody much," his father said.

  Maybe that was a joke. Then again, maybe it wasn't. That joke about pretending to work and pretending to get paid ran through Gianfranco's mind. Workers got money, but a lot of the time money couldn't buy what they wanted. When the wait for things like TVs and cars and apartments was so long, getting excited about money wasn't easy. Getting excited about work wasn't easy, either.

  His father proved as much, saying, "Sometimes I don't know why I bother getting upset with those asini. How much will it matter ten years from now? How much will it matter ten days from now?"

  Before Gianfranco could answer, his mother walked in. "They had the outfit I wanted in the window at three different shops," she said unhappily. "But when I went in, two were sold out and it was a two months' wait at the third one. Sometimes I think you can only buy things with a prescription."

  "If that were so, the Crosettis would have more, and they don't," his father said. "Guess what, though?"

  "What?" his mother asked. Only one try-Gianfraneo was jealous.

  His father pointed at
him. "Second honors."

  "Gianfranco?" His mother's eyes went big and round. She couldn't have been more surprised had his father said he'd been kidnapped by green men from outer space. "How about that?"

  "Not bad, eh?" his father said. "I don't think he takes after either one of us. Must be the milkman."

  "Oh, stop that, you-man, you," his mother said. "Besides, when did this building ever have a milkman? Not since before we lived here, that's for sure."

  "All right. The plumber, then," his father said.

  His mother made as if to throw her purse at his father. She seemed satisfied when he ducked. Then she turned back to Gianfranco. "So why didn't you do this a long time ago? The Crosetti girl always does, regular as clockwork."

  There it was again, thrown in his face in a different way. It would have made him angrier if he hadn't known ahead of time it was coming. He shrugged. "I don't know. Things seem more interesting now."

  "Annarita's smart. Maybe he thinks he has to be smart, too, if he wants to keep taking her out." His mother talked about him as if he weren't there. That did make him mad.

  "Whatever works," his father said. Then he did the same thing: "That can't be all of it, though. The grades are for more time than when he started going out with her."

  "Is there anything else you want to say about me?" Gian-franco asked. "Do you want to talk about my shoes, maybe? Or this cut I got shaving my chin?"

  "No, I don't think we need to worry about those." His father didn't even notice the sarcasm, which only ticked him off worse. "And your beard isn't as heavy as mine, I don't think, so you won't cut yourself very often."

  "My father and my brother-your Uncle Luigi, Gian-franco-only have to shave maybe once every other day," his mother said, so she didn't get it, either. Gianfranco wondered how he'd ended up stuck with such totally normal parents. It didn't seem fair, not when he prided himself on being strange.

  "You'll have to tell that Silvio. He'll be happy for you," his father said. "He looks like the kind who got high marks in school."

  "Much good it did him," his mother said. "Here he is, scrounging off of family instead of going out and finding work for himself."