The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove Page A

account of that.”
    â€œYou think a revolution—I mean, a counterrevolution—could start at The Gladiator?” If Annarita sounded astonished, she had a good reason—she was.
    â€œStranger things have happened,” Dr. Crosetti said.
    â€œIs that so? Name two,” she told him.
    He laughed again, and wagged a finger at her. He always said that when somebody claimed something stranger had happened. Annarita enjoyed shooting him with one of his own arrows. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, not without admiration.
    â€œWhen I was little, you’d say you would sell me to the gypsies,” she said. “Is that out?”
    â€œI’m afraid so,” her father answered. “If I tried it now, they’d really buy you, and that wouldn’t be good.”
    Gypsies still did odd jobs in the countryside, and sometimes
in the city. When they saw a chance, they ran con games or just stole. Not even more than a hundred years of Party rule had turned them into good collectivized citizens. Annarita didn’t know how they dodged the Security Police so well, but they did.
    â€œWho’s on the committee with you?” her father asked. “Will anybody else go to see The Gladiator in person?”
    â€œLudovico Pagliarone and Maria Tenace,” Annarita answered. “No, I don’t think they’ll go, not unless one of them knows somebody who plays there.”
    â€œWill they listen to you because you were on the spot?”
    â€œMaybe Ludovico will. Maria …” Annarita sighed. “Maria will just say to call the place reactionary without even thinking. She always does things like that. If there’s any chance it might be bad, she wants to get rid of it.”
    â€œMore Communist than Stalin,” her father murmured.
    â€œWhat?” For a second, Annarita didn’t get it.
    Dr. Crosetti explained: “Back in the old days, they would say, ‘More Catholic than the Pope,’ or sometimes, ‘More royal than the king.’ They used to say that in France a lot. Only one king there, not a lot of them the way there were in Italy before unification. But we still need a phrase like that for somebody who goes along with authority because it is authority.”
    â€œWhere did you find these things?” Annarita said. “I bet you were looking in places where you shouldn’t have.”
    â€œAnd so? Who doesn’t?” Her father held up a hand before she could answer. “I’ll tell you who—people like your Maria, that’s who. They go through life with blinkers on, the way carriage horses used to.”
    â€œYou have to be careful when you come out with things like that,” Annarita said slowly.

    â€œWell, of course!” her father said. “That’s part of growing up, learning how to be careful. I don’t think you’re going to inform on me.”
    â€œI should hope not!” Annarita said. In school, they taught about children who informed on their parents or older siblings. The lessons made those kids out to be heroes. Annarita didn’t know anybody who thought they really were. No matter what the state did for you after you blabbed, it couldn’t give you back your family. And chances were none of the people to whom you informed would ever trust you after that, either. They had to know you would betray anybody at all, even them.
    â€œGood,” her father said now, as if he hadn’t expected anything else—and no doubt he hadn’t. “You can talk to Ludovico, then. Maybe between the two of you, you’ll outyell this other girl, and nothing will happen. Sometimes what doesn’t happen is as important as what does, you know?”
    Annarita hadn’t thought about that. It kept cropping up in odd moments when she should have been thinking about her homework for the rest of the night.
    Â 
    Â 
    Gianfranco opened his algebra book with all