"We have crazy people locked up in a psychiatric hospital who make them up," Eduardo told her.

She blinked. He really did like to see how close to the wind he could sail. Everybody knew the Party put troublemakers in psychiatric hospitals. Getting into one of those places was easy. Coming out? Coming out was a different story.

Everybody knew that, but hardly anybody talked about it. If you talked about it to the wrong people, you might wind up inside a psychiatric hospital yourself. But Eduardo didn't seem worried. He grinned at her.

Annarita wondered if he was a provocateur. Maybe the whole store was a front, a trap to catch dissidents. Would everybody who played games in here end up in a psychiatric hospital or in jail or in a labor camp or dead? She didn't like to think so, but the authorities could be sneaky. Everybody knew that, too.

She walked over to the shelves. There were titles like Making Your Corporation Profitable and Economics of Club Ownership alongside others like Greece and Rome at War. "You sell… interesting books," she said.

"Well, if they weren't interesting, who'd buy them?" Ed-uardo spread his hands and answered his own question: "Nobody, that's who. Then I couldn't make my living having fun. I'd have to do something honest instead." He grinned again.

Even though Annarita grinned back, she still found herself wondering about him and about what the shop sold. "Some of these books look almost… capitalist," she said, wondering how he would answer.

"They are," he said simply.

"But-how can you sell them, then?" Annarita asked. Anybody would have-she was sure of thai.

"Because they're just for the games," he replied. "Everybody who buys them knows it. If there were real capitalists, that would bring back the bad old days. But these are like books on chess openings and endgames. They help people play belter, that's all."

He was as smooth as silk, as slick as olive oil. That only made Annarita wonder about him more. "You can't use books on openings and endgames in the real world," she said. "You could use these. It would be wrong, but you could do it." She had to make sure she said thai, in case a camera and a mike were picking up her words. You never could tell. Never. "Somebody who bought one might get the wrong ideas about the way things are supposed to work. How does the stale let you sell them?"

"You're smart. Not many people asked questions like that." Eduardo sounded admiring. Then people in the back room started yelling. "Excuse me," he said, and ducked back there. A moment later, Annarita heard him yelling, too. He could call people some very rude things without really cursing. He could make them laugh while he did it, too, which was a rarer talent.

He came out a few minutes later shaking his head. "Argument over the rules. Dumb argument over the rules. Where were we, pretty lady?"

Annarita pegged him for the sort who gave out compliments as readily as insults. That meant she didn't need to take them seriously. She said, "You were telling me how you get away with selling books like these."

"That's right." Eduardo nodded. "Nothing fancy about it. We do it the same way the Church gets away with teaching what it teaches."

"This isn't religion. This is economics," Annarita said severely.

"Of course. But a lot of what the Church says goes against science and against dialectical materialism and against Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. Everybody who thinks about it would say that's so. Why does the state let the Church do it, then?" Because people would riot if the state didn't, Annarita thought. Eduardo had a different answer: "Because it's religion, that's why. What the Church says only counts in religion, nothing else. And what we sell here only counts in our games, nowhere else. See? It's simple, really."

He made it sound simple, anyway. How many complications lurked under that smooth surface? Quite a few, unless Annarita missed her guess. But some of what he said was likely true, or the Security Police would have closed this place down. Unless he belongs to the Security Police, she reminded herself. She wondered how she could find out.

Gianfranco counted out his latest payment for delivering Russian oil to Paris. "Twenty-three million there," he said, as if the bright play-money bills were real. "That puts me at 509 million." As soon as you went over 500 million, you won. Carlo was still a good sixty million away.

"Si, you got me," he said, and stuck out his hand across the board. Gianfranco shook it. Carlo went on, "When we got into that second price war, that ruined me. You were smart there, Gianfranco. I didn't think you'd do anything like that."

"I'm not always as dumb as I look," Gianfranco said, which made the university student laugh. They got up and went out to the front counter together.

"Who won?" Eduardo asked.

Gianfranco stuck his thumb up. Carlo stuck his down. That was what you did at The Gladiator. The people who ran the shop hadn't started it. The people who played there did. In the ancient Roman arenas, a raised thumb was a vote for sparing a downed gladiator's life. A lowered one was a vote to finish him off. Somebody who knew that must have done it for a joke the first time. Now everybody did.

"Let's see…" Eduardo pulled out a chart. "Gianfranco beats Carlo in Rails across Europe. Gianfranco, that means you play Alfredo next. Carlo, you go down into the losers' bracket, and you play Vittorio."

"I'll beat him." Carlo didn't lack confidence. Common sense, sometimes, but never confidence.

"Alfredo?" Gianfranco didn't sound so bold. "He'll be dangerous. He studies the game all the time." Alfredo was older than Eduardo. He wore a mustache, and it had some white hairs in it. He was out of school, so he didn't have to worry about homework and projects and things. He had a job, but who took jobs seriously? He spent as much time at work as he could get away with on his hobby, and just about all the time after he got home. He was a fanatic, no two ways about it.

"Hope the dice go your way," Eduardo said. "If you have enough luck, all the other guy's skill doesn't matter. Might as well be life, eh?"

"Si." That was Carlo, still looking for a way to console himself after losing.

"It's a long game," Gianfranco said. "Most of the time, the dice and the cards even out."

"Well, in that case you'd better pray, because Alfredo will eat you for lunch like fettuccine," Carlo said. "I've got to go. Ciao." He walked out without giving Gianfranco a chance to snap back at him.

"He thought he'd beat you," Eduardo said.

"I know. He figured I was a kid, so I wouldn't know what I was doing," Gianfranco said. "I guess I showed him." Then, cautiously, he asked, "What did Annarita think of the place?" He still didn't want to tell Eduardo she was investigating The Gladiator.

"She seemed interested," answered the man behind the counter. "She's more political than you are, isn't she?"

Gianfrarrco knew what that meant-Annarita was asking questions. He just laughed and said, "Well, who 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.

"She seemed nice, though. She's smart-you can tell," Eduardo went on.

"Uh-huh," Gianfranco said. Nobody ever went, He's smart-you can tell about him. He got by, and that was about it.

"She really did seem interested," Eduardo said. "Do you suppose she'll come back and play?"

"I 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.