The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

isn’t?” A lot of the time, not being interested in politics was the safest road to take. If you didn’t stick your neck out one way or the other, nobody could say you were on the wrong side.
    â€œShe seemed nice, though. She’s smart—you can tell,” Eduardo went on.
    â€œUh-huh,” Gianfranco said. Nobody ever went, He’s smart—you can tell about him. He got by, and that was about it.

    â€œShe really did seem interested,” Eduardo said. “Do you suppose she’ll come back and play?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Gianfranco said in surprise. “I didn’t even think of it.” A few girls did come to The Gladiator. Two or three of them were as good at their games as most of the guys. But it was a small and mostly male world. Some guys who had been regulars stopped coming so often—or at all—when they found a steady girlfriend or got married. Gianfranco thought that was the saddest thing in the world.
    â€œIt would be nice if she did,” Eduardo said. “People find out pretty girls come in here, we get more customers. That wouldn’t be bad.”
    â€œI guess not.” Gianfranco didn’t sound so sure, mostly because he wasn’t. One of the reasons he liked coming to The Gladiator was that not so many people knew about the place. The ones who did were crazy the same way he was. They enjoyed belonging to something halfway between a club and a secret society. If a bunch of strangers who didn’t know the ropes started coming in, it wouldn’t be the same.
    Eduardo laughed at him. “I know what the difference between us is. You don’t have to worry about paying the rent—that’s what.”
    â€œYou don’t seem to have much trouble,” Gianfranco said. Along with the games and books and miniatures and models The Gladiator sold, it got all the gamers’ hourly fees. It had to be doing pretty well—the Galleria del Popolo wasn’t a cheap location.
    â€œWe manage.” Eduardo knocked on the wood of the countertop. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy or anything. And we can always use more people. It’s the truth, Gianfranco, whether you like it or not.”

    â€œYou just want to indoctrinate them,” Gianfranco said with a sly smile. “You want to turn them all into railroad capitalists or soccer-team capitalists or whatever. By the time you’re done, there won’t be a proper Communist left in Milan.”
    Eduardo looked around in what seemed to Gianfranco to be real alarm. After he decided nobody’d overheard Gianfranco, the clerk relaxed—a little. “If you open your big mouth any wider, you’ll fall in and disappear, and that’ll be the end of you,” he said. “And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, either.”
    â€œOh, give me break,” Gianfranco said. “I was just kidding. You know that—you’d better, all the time and money I spend in this joint.”
    â€œNobody jokes about capitalists. They’re the class enemy,” Eduardo said.
    â€œCarlo and I were joking about them while we played. We aren’t the only ones, either. You hear guys like that all the time,” Gianfranco said.
    â€œThat’s in the game. It’s not real in the game, and everybody knows it’s not. I was talking with your girlfriend about that.”
    â€œShe’s not my girlfriend.”
    â€œThe more fool you,” Eduardo said, which flustered Gianfranco. The clerk went on, “As long as you know you’re only being capitalists in a game, everything’s fine. Games are just pretend.”
    â€œNot just,” Gianfranco said. “That’s what makes your games so good—they feel real.”
    â€œSure they do, but they aren’t,” Eduardo said. “What happens if you go out into Milan and try to act like a capitalist? The Security Police arrest you, that’s