The repairman suddenly stopped being bored. He thumped his elbows down on the counter and leaned forward. "That lousy ref," he growled. "We were robbed, nothing else but. If Korea hadn't got that goal-"
"Vietnam. It was Vietnam," Eduardo said, his own excitement rising. Gianfranco wondered who was testing whom. He decided they were testing each other. They both needed to.
"Si, you're right. It was." The repairman nodded.
Now Eduardo did some prodding: "It was the plainest hand ball anybody could see-except the blind fool didn't."
"No, no, no. It was an offside. Don't you remember anything?"
Eduardo took a deep breath. "I remember as much as any Italian from the home timeline would."
"So do I." The repairman came out and threw his arms around him and gave him a bear hug. They started dancing, right there in the middle of the shop. To Gianfranco's eyes, they couldn't have looked much sillier if they tried.
"I've been stuck here for months!" Eduardo exclaimed. "Now all I have to do is hop in a transposition chamber and I'm home."
"A transposition chamber? Here?" The repairman's face fell.
"Yes, here," Eduardo said impatiently. "The next closest one's in San Marino, and the Security Police are running that shop."
"Tell me about it!" the repairman said. "That's where we came through, and it's where we were going to go back from. Except now we can't."
Eduardo made as if to pound his head on the counter. "This isn't fair. It just isn't fair," he said. Gianfranco would have been screaming. In a way, Eduardo was, too, but in a quiet tone of voice. He went on, "I finally manage to connect with other people from the home timeline, and what good does it do me? Not even a little bit, because you're as stuck as I am."
" 'As I am'? Not 'as we are'?" The man in the coveralls jerked his thumb at Gianfranco. "Who's the kid? And how come you're running your mouth in front of him? If this is some kind of setup-"
"It isn't. He's all right. Odds are the Security Police would have nabbed me after they closed down The Gladiator if he didn't find me a place to stay," Eduardo said.
"Yeah?" The repairman gave Gianfranco a dubious look. "What have you got to say for yourself, kid?"
"Well, to begin with, stop calling me kid" Gianfranco said. "My name's Gianfranco. And it sounds like you need to get back into the shop in San Marino if you're going to go back to the home timeline."
"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock," the repairman said. "The only trouble is, we need to do it without making the Security Police land on us with both feet. I suppose you've got a way to manage that?" His sarcasm had a nastier edge than Eduardo's, which usually invited you to share the joke. When this guy gibed, the joke was likely to be on you.
But Gianfranco nodded. "I do. Or maybe I do, anyway."
Annarita and Gianfranco walked along the beach, their feet sometimes in the water, sometimes not, as little waves went in and out. A blond man with a dreadful sunburn jogged past. Annarita thought he was intent on putting in as many kilometers as he could before he burned to a crisp. By the look of him, he was almost there. A kid kicked a soccer ball around. He couldn't have been more than eight, but he was already pretty good.
"Do you really think this will work?" Annarita said. If she and Gianfranco couldn't talk safely here, they couldn't anywhere. Of course, that was also possible. And if they couldn't, they'd find out the hard way.
He shrugged. "I don't know. We have a chance. If you've got any better ideas, I'd love to hear them."
Farther up on the sand, two teams were whacking a volleyball back and forth over a net. Most of the men and women were almost as badly burnt as the jogger. They were all laughing and grinning. Annarita couldn't understand why toasting your brains out was supposed to be so much fun. Maybe the Germans and Scandinavians never saw the sun at home, so they had to overdo it when they went on holiday. All the same…
She tried to pull her mind back to the business at hand. "Your father won't know what he's getting into, will he?"
"Well, no," Gianfranco admitted. "He wouldn't do it if he did." He looked a challenge at her. "Go on. Tell me I'm wrong."
She couldn't, and she knew it. "How much trouble will he get into if this all works out the way you want it to?"
"Shouldn't be too much," Gianfranco said confidently. "He's a Party official. He'd be doing the best job he knew how to do. Nobody could hold it against him."
"No? Are you sure?" Annarita didn't usually play devil's advocate, but it seemed natural here. "When something goes wrong, people almost always hold it against somebody. That way, they don't have to blame themselves."
"If it goes the way it's supposed to, nobody will even know anything's happened-nobody but us, I mean," Gianfranco said.
"If things always went the way they were supposed to, we'd all be happier. Richer, too, chances are," Annarita said.
"Well, what's our other choice?" Gianfranco asked. "Leaving the people from the home timeline stuck here for good. Do you want to do that?"
His voice held a certain edge. Yes, he was still a little jealous of Eduardo. And maybe he had reason to be if Eduardo did get stuck here. Seventeen and thirty made a scandal, but twenty-two and thirty-five could make a match. Annarita didn't know if that would happen. She didn't know if she wanted it to happen. But she did know it wasn't impossible-and so did Gianfranco.
She sighed and picked her words with care: "No, he should go home if he can. But remember that if he can. Better Cousin Silvio should get an apartment and a job here than the Security Police should catch him and grill him and throw him in a camp. And they would grill him-over a hot fire. Or do you think I'm wrong.'
If he said yes to that, she would know he wasn't thinking very well at all. But he didn't. She gave him credit. "You're not wrong," he answered. "I didn't mean that. I don't want those goons grabbing him-who would? But he's ready to try it. So are the guys from the repair shop. They don't want to spend the rest of their lives here."
So there, Annarita thought. Now she had to nod, even if she didn't much want to. Gianfranco was right. All the men from the home timeline weren't just ready to try to get away. They were eager. Even if this was home to Annarita and Gianfranco, it was something much less pleasant to them. Annarita said the only thing she could: "Do they understand how big a chance they're taking?"
Gianfranco didn't answer right away. His head swiveled towards a statuesque blonde who was tan, not pink, and whose gold suit covered as little of her as was legal, or maybe a little less than that. Annarita didn't kick sand at him. She couldn't have said why not, but she didn't.
When he still didn't answer, she repeated her question- pointedly. "Oh," he said, as if coming back from a long way away. "Well, why wouldn't they?"
"Because they aren't from here. That's the point," Annarita said. "They don't really know how dangerous those people are."
"Well, those people don't know all the tricks they've got, either," Gianfranco replied. "Things should even out."
She wouldn't be able to change his mind. She could see that coming like a rash-one of her father's favorite lines. "The worst thing that can happen to the Security Police is, they get embarrassed. The worst that can happen to Cousin Silvio and the others is a lot worse than that."
"But the best that can happen is, they get away. And then people from the home timeline come back here and figure out some other way to nudge us along toward freedom." Gian-franco's face lit up-and he wasn't looking at a pretty Swedish girl this time. He was seeing something inside his own head, something he liked even better than pretty girls. "One of these days, we can be just like the home timeline ourselves!"