"Why do they, then?" Annarita said. "If you're so free, why don't you make new things all the time?"
"Because doing old, familiar ones over again makes the studios money," Eduardo answered.
Annarita's mouth twisted. "Profit doesn't sound so wonderful, then."
"It's not perfect. Nothing's perfect, far as I can see," Eduardo said. "But it works better than this-most of the time, anyhow."
"Have they remade Battleship Potemkin in the, uh, home timeline?" Annarita asked. Then another question occurred to her: "Do you even have Battleship Potemkin there?"
"We've got the original, si," Eduardo replied. "It dates from before the breakpoint. Up till then, everything's the same in both alternates. But here, the Soviet Union won the Cold War. There, the United States did. The United States is still the strongest country in the home timeline. It throws its weight around sometimes, but it doesn't sit on everybody else all the time the way the USSR does here."
Annarita tried to imagine a world that had branched off from hers somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century. Why did the two alternates separate? Somebody decided something one way here, a different way over there. And this alternate turned out ordinary, and in that one… In that one, they had computers that fit in your pocket. They had a way to travel between alternates.
They had freedom, too. Annarita had hardly known she missed it till Eduardo's arrival made her think about it. She didn't want to run up barricades and start an uprising the way Gianfranco seemed to, but she could tell what wasn't there and should have been.
"And yes, they did make Potemkin again in the home timeline," Eduardo said. "This was before I was born, you understand. The remake sank like a rock. When people watch now, they watch the original."
"In theaters, you mean," Annarita said.
"Well, there, too," Eduardo said. "But we can get recorded disks with movies on them and watch on our TVs. Or we can pay a little and download the films from the Net and watch them on our computers."
"You showed me that before," Annarita said. "I still don't see how you can put a whole movie, let alone lots of movies, on a little thing like the one in your pocket."
He grinned at her. "Easy as pie. You could do it here, too-not as well, but you could. You know enough. Your governments won't let you, though. Anything that spreads information around so easily is dangerous to them."
Annarita found herself nodding. In a country that registered typewriters like guns and kept computers under lock and key for the trusted elite, the idea that everybody could own a computer and use it all kinds of ways had to seem like anarchy loosed upon the world. But that wasn't the main thing on her mind. "You've just let me see little bits of the movies from your home timeline, to show that they weren't from here," she said. "Could I watch a whole one?"
"I'm supposed to tell you no," he answered. "You're not supposed to know what things are like there. But sometimes you've got to bend the rules. And so…" He pulled the little box from his pocket and told it to display its screen. Annarita had to lean forward to see well. It wasn't like watching a movie in the theater, or even on TV.
The movie was called The Incredible^. It wasn't like anything Annarita had ever seen before, or even imagined. It wasn't live action, but it wasn't exactly a cartoon, either. "How do they do that?" she asked partway through.
"More computers," Eduardo said. "This one's ninety years old. It's a classic, sure, but they can do a lot more now."
She wasn't fussy. The Incredibles might seem old-fashioned to him, but it was thousands of kilometers ahead of anything people here were doing. And it was a good movie, no matter how they did it. It was funny, and the plot made sense. The writers didn't lose track of details, the way they did too often here.
When Annarita remarked on that, Eduardo nodded. "It happens in the home timeline, too. Some people are stupid. Some people are lazy. Some are greedy, and out for quick money. But I bet it happens more here, because there's less competition. Bad movies here don't bomb. They just bore people over and over again."
"Well, you're right." Annarita remembered how many times she'd seen some movies. The authorities put them out there, and they didn't put anything else out there opposite them. If you wanted to go to a movie, you went to one of them. "They call them classics."
"That would be fine if they really were," Eduardo said. "The original Battleship Potemkin is-no arguments. But a lot of them are just turkeys from the Propaganda Ministry."
" Turkeys?" Annarita needed a second to figure that out. Maybe it was slang in his home timeline, but it wasn't here. When she got it, she laughed. "You know what else was amazing in The Incredibles'?"
"No, but you're going to tell me, so that's all right." Eduardo could tease without making it sting. From everything Annarita had seen, that was a rare talent.
"I am going to tell you," she agreed. "All those houses. Rows and rows of houses, with lots of middle-class people- well, middle-class cartoon people-living in them. Even though the movie is animated, it's based on something real, isn't it?"
"Si," Eduardo said. "But it's based on the United States, where they have more room than they do here. And the United States had more room at the start of the twenty-first century than it does now. But Italy was mostly apartments even then- only rich people had houses."
"Rich people." Annarita said the words as if they were almost obscene. And, in the Italian People's Republic, they were. "We don't have rich people here." She spoke with more than a little pride.
Eduardo wasn't impressed. "You ought to have rich people. Rich people aren't what's wrong. Poor people are. Compared to the way people live in the home timeline, everybody here is poor."
"You can say that," Annarita sniffed. Yes, she took pride in her country the way it was. Who wouldn't? It was hers. Inside, though, she feared Eduardo was right. If everybody in his world had a pocket computer, who could guess what else people there had? He'd talked about fasartas, and she didn't even know just what they did.
Instead of reminding her of that, he took a different tack: "You know what you have instead of rich people?"
"What?" she asked suspiciously.
"Apparatchiks," he said.
Apparatchiks weren't all bad. They made the wheels of government turn… when the wheels did turn. Gianfranco's father was an apparatchik, though he would have got mad if you said so. Apparatchiks always thought other people were apparatchiks. What they did themselves was important. If you didn't believe it, you could just ask them.
And Eduardo had hit that nail right on the head. Apparatchiks might not have a lot of money in the bank. But they got the best apartments, the best summer houses, the best cars, and doctors. Annarita's father had this flat because a lot of his patients were apparatchiks.
Apparatchiks also got to travel more than ordinary people did. Their children got into good universities whether they deserved to or not. If you quarreled with an apparatchik and you were just somebody ordinary, you were in trouble if he took you to court. They might not have money, no, but they sure had privileges.
"What can we do about that?" Annarita asked.
"Make those people really work for a living," Eduardo answered. "If they don't do anything useful, throw the bums out."
"Easy to say. Not so easy to do," Annarita pointed out.
She wondered if he would deny that and try to make a counterrevolution sound simple. She gave him credit when he didn't. "Well, you're right," he said. "That's why we were trying to come at it sideways. We thought we could get new ideas in with the games."
"It didn't work," Annarita said.
"Tell me about it!" Eduardo exclaimed. "We were hoping your government was fatter and lazier than it turned out to be. I'm sure we won't give up, but I'm not sure what we can do right now. I hope like anything I'm not stuck here."
"What about your friends, wherever they are?" she asked.
"If they don't find me, I'll have to try to get hold of them sooner or later," he said. "I hope they didn't have to pull out, too. If they did… If they did, I'm in trouble. Sooner or later, the Security Police will start getting closer to me, too." He smiled a crooked smile. "Isn't life grand?"
He had his wonderful computer. He had the memories of all the things his people could do that no one here knew anything about. And all of that did him not one bit of good. Had anyone in the history of the world-in the history of many worlds-ever been so alone?
Comrade Donofrio gave Gianfranco his report card. The algebra teacher actually smiled when he did. "You've improved, Mazzilli," he said.
"Grazie, Comrade," Gianfranco answered.
He looked at his grade. A B! He hadn't got a B in math since… He couldn't remember the last time he got a B. His grades in his other subjects were up, too. He wouldn't get first honors, but he might get second.
He knew Annarita would get first honors. She always did. He knew he would hear about it from his parents, too. If she does it, why don't you? How many times had he heard that? More than he wanted to, anyhow. But if he came home with some kind of honors for a change, maybe they wouldn't rag on him so much.
And he did. He got a B+ in history to put him over the top. That was another bolt out of the blue. If Rails across Europe hadn't got him interested in the subject, he never could have done it. But the game had, and he did.
He missed The Gladiator. Even with Eduardo next door, he missed the camaraderie and the arguments and the games with different people. He missed having somewhere besides home to go when school let out. He missed the models and the books.