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worked by the things Eduardo said and by the things he had, it worked better
than Communism did. The game from a world where Communism lay on what was
Marx's phrase? the ash-heap of history, that was it. The game from a world
with no Security Police.
No wonder it made Gianfranco think dangerous thoughts. No wonder it made him
think political thoughts, economic thoughts.
Annarita laughed at herself. As if political and economic thoughts weren't
dangerous by definition!
"What's funny?" Gianfranco asked, so she must have snorted out loud. She told
him. He thought about it for two or three steps. Then he said, "Ideas like
that shouldn't be dangerous. That's the point, right? to make it so they
aren't dangerous any more."
"Si, that's the point," Annarita said. "The other point is, it hasn't happened
yet, and it won't happen any time soon."
"I know," he said again, and gave her a crooked grin. "I won't slip up,
Annarita. Honest, I won't."
"I didn't think you would," Annarita answered, which was . . . close enough to
true that she didn't feel too much like a liar saying it.
Mechanical noises came from the elevator shaft when she and Gianfranco walked
past it. They looked at it. Annarita saw something close to awe on
Gianfranco's face. Her own probably held the same expression. "Wow!" he said.
"They really are fixing it."
"I don't remember the last time it worked," Annarita said. "Do you?"
He shook his head. "Not really. I was a lot smaller than I am now I know that.
1 remember how hard climbing all those stairs seemed then. Now I'm used to it.
But I could get used to riding the elevator real quick, I bet."
"Me, too." Annarita stopped at the door to her apartment. "See you at dinner.
And congratulations again!"
"Grazie!" Gianfranco grinned at her. "I only get second-class congratulations.
You get first."
"Next year," she said. She'd got first honors plenty of times before, too.
They didn't seem such a big deal to her. For
Gianfranco to earn second honors especially on year-end grades was further out
of the ordinary.
Eduardo was reading the newspaper when she came in. "Ciao" he said. "How did
you do?"
"Pretty well," she answered. "I didn't get the grade in dialectics, though. I
don't know what kind of hoop I was supposed to jump through. Whatever it was,
I didn't."
"Too bad." He shook his head in sympathy. "There's always somebody like that."
"Even in your perfect home timeline?" Annarita teased.
"It's not perfect. All kinds of things wrong there. Our troubles are different
from yours, but we've still got 'em. Some of them, I guess you say, are the
troubles that go with too much freedom," ICduardo answered.
"How can you have too much freedom?" Annarita asked. "Don't you just do
whatever you want then?"
"Sure. I mean, that's what you do, si, but it's not always so simple. If what
I'm doing makes me happy but bothers other people, where do you draw the line?
How much should the state do to take care of poor people and people who don't
want to work? Countries all find different answers."
"Different how?"
"Well, in Italy in most of Europe people pay more taxes, and the countries do
more for their people who don't have so much. In America, taxes are lower, but
the state does less to take care of you. If you make it in America, you can
make it bigger than you can on this side of the Atlantic. If you don't, you'll
have a harder time than you would here."
"Which is better?" Annarita asked.
"Depends on who's answering," Eduardo said, which struck her as an honest
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reply. "Me, I'm an Italian, and I think our way works pretty well. But the
Americans like what they do, too. If they didn't, they'd change it."
"Don't they make everybody do things their way, like the Russians here?"
He shook his head. "They do throw their weight around, but not like that. Most
of the time, anyway."
She wondered how big an exception came with that handful of words. But his
world and hers had been different evidently, very different for a century and
a half. She couldn't expect him to fill her in on all that history in one
lump. She did ask, "So you have teachers who think they're little tin gods,
too?"
"You'd better believe it," he answered. "Every alternate that has teachers has
some like that. They've got the power, and the students don't, and they enjoy
rubbing it in. Human nature doesn't change from one alternate to another. The
way it comes out changes because of religion and technology and culture, but
people are still pretty much people." He winked at her. "I'm a people, aren't
I?"
"I thought so, till now," she answered tartly, and he laughed. She went on,
"This is a world an alternate where
Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism came out on top."
"That's right." Eduardo nodded. "And anybody who can say
'Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism' and make it sound natural the way you do has a
pretty good handle on the dialectic, no matter what your dumb teacher thinks."
Annarita smiled, but she continued with her own train of thought: "And you
come from an alternate where capitalism won."
He nodded again. "That's me."
"Are there . . . alternates where the Fascists won?"
Eduardo nodded one more time. "Yes, and they're just as bad as you'd think
they would be. They're even worse than this one."
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