The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove Page A

couldn’t be the first set of zealots to notice them. They were still here, though. That argued they had ways of protecting themselves.
    But Gianfranco had more urgent things on his mind. “Is Alfredo here yet?” he asked.
    Eduardo grinned. “Eager, aren’t we?”
    â€œI don’t know about you, but I sure am,” Gianfranco answered, grinning back. “I know he’s tough, but if I beat him, I make the finals, and I’ve never come close before. That would be a big deal, right?”
    â€œIf you think it would, then it would.” In a sly voice, Eduardo went on, “Would you get that excited about finishing in the top two in your class?”
    â€œI don’t think so!” Gianfranco said. “Are you going to go all Stakhanovite on me? I thought I could get away from all that stuff as soon as I left school.”
    â€œYou’re probably working harder here than you are there,” the clerk said.
    â€œYes,” Gianfranco said, and then, in the same breath, “No.”
    â€œWhich is it?” Eduardo asked. “You can’t have that one both ways, you know.”
    â€œMaybe I try harder here than I do in school,” Gianfranco
said. “I wouldn’t be surprised. But this isn’t work , you know what I mean? I want to come here. I have fun here. Going to school …” He shook his head. “It’s like going to a camp. You do it because you have to, not ’cause you want to. They make you do things, and they don’t care if you don’t care about them. You’ve got to do ’em anyway.” He eyed Eduardo. “Does that make any sense to you?”
    â€œSome, maybe, but not as much as you think it does,” Eduardo answered. “You’ve never been inside a camp—I know that. But do you know anybody who has?”
    â€œThe janitor at our building—he’s a zek, I’m pretty sure,” Gianfranco said. The word for a camp inmate sounded about as un-Italian as anything could. Just about every European language had borrowed it from Russian, though. There wasn’t a country without camps these days, and there wasn’t a country without people who’d done their terms.
    â€œWell, ask him whether he’d rather do algebra and lit or chop wood and make buildings and starve,” Eduardo said. “See what he tells you.”
    â€œI hear what you’re saying. But school still makes you do stuff you don’t care about and you don’t want to do,” Gianfranco said. “That’s what I don’t like.”
    â€œSome of that stuff, you end up needing it,” Eduardo said. “You maybe don’t think so now, but you do.”
    â€œOh, yeah? How much algebra have you done since you got behind that counter?” Gianfranco asked.
    Eduardo looked wounded, which made Gianfranco think he’d scored a hit. But the clerk said, “All right, so I don’t have to know X equals twenty-seven. Even so, algebra and your languages make you think straight. You need that, especially with some of the other stuff they put you through.”

    Which other stuff did he mean? Literature? History the way schools taught it? Dialectical materialism and Marxist philosophy? That was how it sounded to Gianfranco. But he couldn’t ask Eduardo to say more, not without seeming to want to entrap him. And Eduardo couldn’t say more on his own, not without asking to get denounced.
    Before Gianfranco could figure out a way around his dilemma, the bell over the front door rang. In walked Alfredo, with his graying mustache. He looked rumpled and smelled of tobacco smoke. “ Ciao , Eduardo,” he said, and then, grudging Gianfranco a nod, “ Ciao .”
    â€œ Ciao ,” Gianfranco answered.
    â€œShall we do it?” Alfredo didn’t sound excited or anything. He just sounded as if he wanted to get Gianfranco out of the way so he could go on to