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doing?" The voice didn't sound as if it belonged to anyone from the Security
Police. It sounded more like that of an ordinary person worried about
burglars.
No matter whose voice it was, Gianfranco ignored it. He turned a corner, then
another, then another. He didn't run that might have drawn unwelcome notice
to him. But he did some pretty fancy walking.
Once he was sure nobody was on his heels, he slowed down, breathing hard. The
man back near The Gladiator had worried that he was a criminal. Now he worried
about running into a real one. That would be irony, wouldn't it? Go off on an
adventure no one in this world could ask, and then get knocked over the head
for whatever you had in your wallet? He shivered, though the summer night was
mild.
Not many people were on the street. The ones who were seemed as nervous of him
as he was of them. That reassured him. He knew he was no sneak thief or
robber. All they knew was that he was tall and might be dangerous.
He turned around a couple of times to figure out where he was he'd gone around
those corners at random when he was getting away from The Gladiator. Then he
nodded to himself. Milan's skyline looked familiar again. Those skyscrapers
that changed it from the home timeline were gone. His apartment building would
be ... over that way.
Off he went. He shrank into a dark doorway when a police car went by. The
carabinieri inside didn't notice him, or else didn't care. The car rolled down
the street.
When he got to the apartment building, he took the stairs. He somehow felt the
elevator would draw too much notice. That was probably foolish, but he didn't
care. He hadn't got used to the elevator yet anyway.
He looked at his watch. It wasn't even one o'clock yet. Ed-uardo had known
what he was talking about. Time or rather, duration really did stand still
inside a transposition chamber. Gianfranco wondered why. From what Eduardo
said, chrono-physicists in the home timeline did, too.
Here was the familiar hallway. Here was the familiar and familial door. He
reached into his pocket. Where the devil were the familiar keys? He'd had
them and now he didn't. They had to be somewhere in the home timeline, or
maybe in the transposition chamber. He felt like pounding his head against the
wall. Instead, he started pounding on the door.
People joked about the midnight knock on the door. They joked so they wouldn't
have to cringe, because those knocks were much too real and much too common.
Even so, Annarita didn't think she'd ever heard one . . . till now.
The terror that filled her also amazed her. That a simple sound could cause so
much fear seemed impossible. No matter how it seemed, she lay shivering in her
bed. She might suddenly have been dropped into crushed ice.
The pounding went on and on. Was it her door? Were they coming for her
parents and for her because of what had happened to Gianfranco?
She almost screamed when the light in her bedroom came on. There stood her
father in his pajamas. "It's not for us," he said. "It's next door."
Half a dozen words that sounded like a reprieve from a death sentence. And, no
two ways about it, they might have been just that. There was a joke that
ended, "No, Comrade. He lives one floor down." Annarita had always thought it
was funny. Now she was living inside it and understanding the relief the poor
fellow who said that had to feel.
Then the knocking stopped the door must have opened.
A split second later, Annarita heard screams and shrieks. At first she thought
the Security Police were beating the Mazzillis. Then she made out Gianfranco's
name. His mother cried, "You're back!"
Annarita jumped out of bed. She ran over and gave her father a hug. "They
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played fair with us," she said. "They didn't have to, but they did."
"A good thing, too," her father said. "I just didn't know what to tell the
Mazzillis any more."
"Shall we go over there?" Annarita asked. "They can't get mad if the noise
woke us up."
"They can find plenty of other reasons to get mad if they want to," Dr.
Crosetti said. "But yes, let's go over. At least they can't blame us for
getting Gianfranco murdered now. That's a good start."
The Crosetti s needed to knock several times before the Mazzillis paid any
attention to them. A lot of noise was still coming from inside the apartment.
But Gianfranco's father finally opened the door. "Ah," he said. "You must have
heard us."
Of course we did. Half of Milan heard you, Annarita thought. Her father only
nodded. "We did," he agreed. "We're glad he's back. We're gladder than we know
how to tell you."
"Is he all right?" Annarita asked.
"He seems to be," Comrade Mazzilli answered cautiously.
"I'm fine." Gianfranco came to the door. He was grinning from ear to ear. "I
couldn't be better." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]