Free The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove

class for a moment, Mazzilli.”
    Gianfranco didn’t follow him for a second. The algebra teacher spoke a French-flavored dialect of Italian that sounded peculiar in Milanese ears. When Gianfranco did get it, he gulped. Had he botched things again? “Sì, Comrade Donofrio,” he said, no matter how much he wanted to say no.
    â€œGrazie.” The teacher walked on.
    Only then did Gianfranco look down to see how he’d done. There was his score, written in red—100 % . He blinked, wondering
if he was seeing straight. He hadn’t got all the problems right on a math assignment since … He couldn’t remember his last perfect score on a math paper. He wondered if he’d ever had one before.
    And he wondered why Comrade Donofrio wanted to see him. What could be better than a perfect paper?
    He tried to follow along as the teacher went through today’s material. It didn’t make as much sense as he wished it did. Could he get another perfect homework paper? He had his doubts, but he hadn’t expected even one.
    When the other students left the room, Gianfranco went up to the teacher and said, “You wanted to see me, Comrade?”
    â€œThat’s right, Mazzilli.” Comrade Donofrio nodded. “You did very well on the last assignment. Did you have any, ah, special help with it?”
    A light went on in Gianfranco’s head. He thinks I cheated , he realized. But he said, “No, Comrade,” and shook his head.
    â€œWell, let’s see how you do on another problem, then,” Comrade Donofrio said.
    â€œAll right.” Gianfranco didn’t know what else he could say. He just hoped he didn’t make a mess of this one. If he did, the algebra teacher would be sure he’d had somebody else do the homework for him. If I got good grades all the time, he wouldn’t suspect me . But he didn’t get good grades all the time. He usually didn’t care enough about them to work hard. Thanks to the game, he’d got interested in these problems.
    Comrade Donofrio pulled a book off his desk. Maybe it was the algebra book he’d used when he was in high school. It looked like an old book, and he wasn’t a young man. He flipped through it till he found the page he wanted. “Here. Let’s see you do problem seventeen.”

    Gianfranco looked at it. It was a train problem, so he didn’t have to pretend. But it was more complicated than the ones he’d done the night before. Just a lot of steps , he told himself. You’ve done them in other problems. Now you need to do them all at once .
    Instead of numbers and times, he tried to picture squares on the board and dice rolls. It helped. He also tried not to do anything dumb, like multiplying seven times six and getting thirty-five, which had messed him up for fifteen minutes on one of the homework problems.
    If you just kept at it, this problem wasn’t that bad. He looked up and gave Comrade Donofrio the answer: “Four hours twenty minutes, 390 kilometers.”
    The teacher grunted. Then he worked the problem himself on a piece of scratch paper. He was much quicker and more confident about attacking it than Gianfranco was. When he got done, his bushy eyebrows jumped. “You’re right!” He sounded surprised. No—he sounded amazed.
    Gianfranco grinned like a fool. He wanted to turn cartwheels, right there in the classroom. “I really can do them!” He was telling himself at least as much as he was telling Comrade Donofrio.
    â€œWell, so you can.” Yes, the algebra teacher looked and sounded as if he didn’t want to believe it. “I gave you a hard one. Let me see your work.”
    â€œHere you are, Comrade.” Gianfranco gave him the paper where he’d scribbled.
    Comrade Donofrio studied it. Still reluctantly, he nodded. “Your method is correct, no doubt about it. If you did so well on the rest of your papers, you would have