The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove Page A

capitalist for that,” Gianfranco said. “I think you make a perfect Marxist, as a matter of fact.”
    Both the clerk and Alfredo raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?” Eduardo asked.
    â€œYou have the ability to give us a place to sit, and we have a need to play your games,” Gianfranco said. “What could be better?”
    Eduardo looked thoughtful, but Alfredo laughed and wagged a finger at Gianfranco. “You’ve got it backwards, amico . It’s from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. By that logic, Eduardo ought to be paying us.”
    â€œWorks for me.” Gianfranco held out his hand, palm up.
    Eduardo had a can of Fanta on the counter. He made as if to pour some soda into Gianfranco’s hand. Gianfranco jerked it away. That set all three of them laughing.
    Alfredo said, “I’ve got a question for you, Eduardo, if I can ask it without getting wet.”

    â€œWell, you can try,” Eduardo said, but he made a point of keeping his hand near the can.
    â€œWhere do you get your games?” Alfredo asked. “I’ve looked all over Milan, and this is the only place that sells them.”
    â€œOf course it is,” Eduardo said. “This is the only place in town where the elves make their deliveries.”
    Gianfranco laughed again. He’d got the same kinds of answers when he asked questions like that. But Alfredo frowned and said, “Come on, Eduardo. You can do better than that. What am I going to do, take your answer to the Security Police?”
    â€œWell, you might,” the clerk said. That turned Alfredo’s frown into a scowl. You couldn’t say much worse about a man than that he was an informer. Gianfranco wondered why that was true, when so many people really were informers. Memories of days gone by, he supposed. But before Alfredo could say anything everybody would regret, Eduardo went on, “You see, the true secret is that we have a sharashka full of zeks down in the basement, and they turn out the games for us.”
    That was only a little less unlikely than the story about the elves. A sharashka was a lab where privileged prisoners went on working for the state. If they came through, they might get their terms cut. If they didn’t, they went back to being ordinary zeks. Somebody who knew his Dante once called sharashkas the first circle of Hell: they were bad, but you knew there were worse places. That was the kind of joke you could repeat only to the people you trusted most. The USSR had got some good work out of sharashkas . The Germans and the Chinese also used them a lot. They weren’t so common in Italy and most other fraternal Communist countries.

    Gianfranco clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Now I know you’re telling us lies, Eduardo,” he said sadly.
    â€œOh, you do, do you?” The clerk stood on his dignity. “And how do you know that?”
    â€œBecause The Gladiator hasn’t got a basement.”
    For some reason, that set all three of them off. They laughed so loud, somebody came out of the back room to complain that players there couldn’t concentrate on the games. “And that’s important ,” he finished, as if they were too dense to know it.
    â€œ Sorry ,” Eduardo said. The irate gamer rolled his eyes and went back to his board and his cards and his dice. Eduardo and Gianfranco and Alfredo laughed harder than ever. That life should get in the way of the games … Well, heaven forbid!
    As Gianfranco had seen during the game, Alfredo was stubborn. When the laughter faded, the older man said, “You still didn’t answer my question.”
    â€œWhy don’t you ask other places why they don’t have them?” Gianfranco said.
    Alfredo looked at him as if he wasn’t so bright after all. “I’ve done that,” he said. “They tell me they can’t get them. They say they