"There ought to be a law," Gianfranco said.

"There are laws," Annarita said. "People don't pay any attention to them."

"That trolleyman should have photographed the guy's license plate," Gianfranco said. "When they found out who he was, they could have fixed him good."

"Maybe the trolleyman did," Annarita said.

"Yeah, maybe." Gianfranco sounded as if he liked the idea. Annarita wasn't so sure she did. They already had so many ways to keep an eye on you. Who needed a motorman with a camera? Even typewriters were registered. As far as the Italian People's Republic was concerned, they were more dangerous than assault rifles. And computers… Her school had a couple, which made it special, but only the most trusted teachers and the very most trusted students got to use them.

She thought the progress to real Communism, the kind where the state withered away, would come faster if people could more freely use the tools they had. No matter what she thought, she kept her ideas to herself. What you didn't tell anybody, you couldn't get in trouble for.

While she was thinking dark thoughts, her feet kept walking. She turned right and then left and then right again. She hardly noticed the apartment blocks and shops she passed.

"We're here," Gianfranco said.

"Si," Annarita said. "We're here. Oh, boy." Gianfranco laughed. He was more likely to say something like that. She was the good student-he just squeaked by. But she couldn't make herself get excited about school today.

Enver Hoxha Polytechnic Academy was named for a Communist hero, but not for an Italian Communist hero. Hoxha had administered Albania for most of the second half of the twentieth century. A lot of Italians laughed at Albanians, their neighbors across the Adriatic Sea. Few did it it where Albanians could hear them, though. Albanians were supposed to have nasty tempers, and to be fond of carrying knives.