MacRoscope (27 page)

The recurring question: why, then, did the destroyer exist? And the recurring answer: data insufficient.

Ivo tried to compliment Groton on his achievements. “I’m just an engineer following instructions,” the man said blithely. It was to a considerable extent the truth, since his position had become analogous to that of a child turning on a television set and sitting back to watch experts at work. But however detailed the program, Groton deserved credit for making it applicable to their situation. It was his heyday.

No longer were they required to walk the barren surface in space suits. An artificial sun replaced the minuscule original star in the sky, and light and heat blazed down upon the landscape twelve hours of each twenty-four, riding the fringe of the force-field. Beatryx planted beans from the ship’s food supplies, and they sprouted in a garden stocked with the protein soil-mockup beside a reservoir of H
₂
O — i.e., a genuine crescent-lake.

Ivo, for his contribution to the good life, arranged to photograph images on the main screen of the macroscope, and made regular prints of Earth newspapers, magazines and books. These the others could read without danger of encroachment by the destroyer, since only its “live” image killed. Far from being a lonely, frozen exile, their stay on Triton had become, in a few active months, an independent vacation.

Groton finally took his turn with Ivo at the macroscope, refusing to claim indefinitely the privilege of moon-side duty that his continuing performance had warranted. “Do the machines good to have time off,” he remarked. “I told ’em to be back on the job 8 a.m. Monday and sober.” For the first time since the onset of this adventure, the two men were together privately when there was time to converse.

Ivo suspected there was a reason for it, since Groton still had important other chores to do and had already proven himself to be an indefatigable worker. Afra had been overshadowed and relegated to the role of technical assistant, and of course Beatryx had been the chief babysitter. Had Groton made time now for a reason?

He had. “You remember I’m interested in astrology,” he said.

That was not the subject Ivo had anticipated. “Yes, you took my birth date and a significant experience.” So long ago, it seemed! Back the other side of the melting — a whole separate existence, receding into memory. And did it make a difference, for the astrological discipline, that the childhood Ivo had made his own was that of Sidney Lanier? He felt a twinge of guilt, but was afraid that an explanation at this point would be awkward. “I also overheard you discussing it with Afra, way back when.”

“Yes. Brilliant girl, but her mind is resistant to certain concepts.” Ivo had become aware of that, too. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t require that anyone else accept my values, and I am confident that astrology can stand on its own merits. But I have been casting horoscopes for each of the members of this party, and there is a certain mystery about you.”

Ivo wondered when the man had found time for this, in the face of the colossal job he had been doing on Triton. Here he shared Afra’s perplexity: how was it that such a competent and realistic engineer was able to take a pseudo-science seriously? Groton did not seem to differentiate between the real and the unreal, yet his approach to all things seemed to be totally practical.

“If you don’t mind,” Groton said after an interval, “I’d like to discuss this with you.”

“Why not? I can’t say I believe in astrology any more than Afra does, but I don’t mind questions.”

“Can you say you know enough about astrology to believe or disbelieve intelligently?”

Ivo smiled. “No. So I guess I’m neutral.”

“It is surprising how certain most people are about what they like or don’t like, or believe or don’t believe, when their information is really too scanty for any meaningful decision. If I had chosen before the fact to disbelieve in the possibility of a signal from space that could build advanced machinery, our residence on Triton would be less comfortable than it is. Prejudice is often expensive.”

It occurred to Ivo that he had just had another lesson in open-mindedness. He had objected to Afra’s views on race, but his own mind had been as one-sided in the matter of astrology. And, like Afra, he
still
couldn’t reverse his standing attitudes; astrology, to him, was essentially fakery. He was as prejudiced as she.

“Still, that’s irrelevant,” Groton said. “What I want to do is give you portions of two descriptions, and have you judge which one fits you best. It’s a kind of psychological exercise — but don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you. This may help me to clear up my problem, and perhaps show you a little of what astrology is in practice.”

“Fire at will.”

“Odd you should choose that wording.” Groton paused to collect his thoughts. “Here is the first description: This person is determined to get on the inside of things and to control the machinery of life. This position always encourages a conscious response to the undercurrents of the moment. At his best he is able to recognize the basic unity of experience, or to bring unsuspected and helpful relations into play; at his worst he is apt to cultivate suspicion or encourage half-baked effort. Life for him must be exciting, and he must be self-reliant. He is essentially fearless, and likes to move quickly and positively, taking the full consequence of whatever he does. He does not care much for abstract considerations, and gives little thought to other people.”

Groton paused. “Now here is the second one: This person is determined to test the mettle of reality in every possible sort of hard effort He desires to bring everything down to a utilitarian basis. At his best he is able to organize or redirect the energies of himself and others to an increased advantage; at his worst he is apt to become wholly malcontent and unsocial. Life for him must be purposeful; he is readily stimulated. He is high-visioned, optimistic, gregarious to a fault and often gullible. He must be challenged to do his best, or he becomes dogmatic and jealous. He is a realist in minor things, a do-or-die idealist otherwise.”

Ivo thought about it. “They’re both so general, and I’m not sure I like either one too much. But the second seems closer. I do like to help people, but too often it doesn’t work out. And I’d much rather earn my way by hard work than do something dramatic. I’m certainly not fearless.”

“This is my impression. Human traits are not portioned off precisely, and we all have a little of everything, so character summations are necessarily vague in spots. But the first hardly describes you. It is Aries the Ram in the twelfth house. Aries is part of the fire element — that’s why I commented on your figure of speech.”

“My — ?”

“You said ‘fire at will.’ ”

“Oh.”

“The second is Aquarius the Water Carrier in the sixth house — air element. I could go on with the other planets — this was the sun, of course — but this differentiation is typical. You appear to fit Aquarius, not Aries.”

“And my birth date?”

“Aries.”

“So I’m a misfit. Don’t know where I belong. Whose birthday is Aquarius?”

“I played a hunch from something my wife mentioned. Sidney Lanier.”

Ivo felt a nasty emotional shock. Pseudo-science or not, this was striking pretty close. “So you say I should be fire when I seem to be air. Could you have miscalculated?”

“No. That’s the mystery. I rechecked very carefully and it stands. Your personality is entirely different from the one indicated by your horoscope, and your personal episode only corroborates that difference. I could be mistaken in detail, but hardly to this extent. So: assuming my tenets to be valid, either your birth date is not the one you gave me, or—”

“Or — ?”

“Do you play chess?”

“No.” Ivo did not challenge the abrupt change of subject.

“It happens that I do. I’m not very good at it, but I used to play quite a bit, before I found more important uses for my time. So I believe I know what that message means.”

“Message?”

“Schön’s last. You remember: ‘My pawn is pinned.’ That’s a chess expression.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I think you would, Ivo, but I’ll explain. Each piece in chess has a different motion and a different value. A pawn is a minor piece reckoned at one point and it moves straight ahead, one step at a time. The knight and the bishop are worth three points each, and their motions are correspondingly more intricate and far-ranging. The castle is worth five, and the queen nine or ten, so you see she is a very powerful piece. The pointages are only general guides to strategic value; no numerical score is kept, of course. The queen moves as far as she wants in any direction; it is her mobility that gives her strength, and her presence changes the entire complexion of the game.”

“I don’t entirely follow the explanation, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is, you dare not ignore the queen. She can strike from any distance, while a pawn is severely limited. So the queen can check and even mate the king without danger to herself, but the pawn has to be guarded.”

“Mate? Guard?”

Groton sighed. “You really
don’t
know chess, do you! Here.” He brought out a blackboard and made a checkerboard on it in chalk. Blackboards seemed to be popular among engineers. “The squares are black and white, but forget that for now.” He added some letters. “Here’s the black queen — she’s circled. It could be a black bishop, of course; principle’s the same. She’s on king’s-rook-eight, while all the whites are set up on the seventh and eight ranks, so.” He ignored Ivo’s confusion. “Now white’s pawn is about to be queened, but can’t because it is pinned.
That’s
what Schön is talking about.”

Ivo contemplated the illustration. “I’m glad it makes sense to you.”

Groton pursued his logic relentlessly. “The king is the game, you see. You can’t allow him to move into check. Your opponent will call you down for incorrect play if you do; there are no pitfalls of that nature in chess. Look — pawn moves up like this, next it’s black’s move and queen checks king. So pawn
can’t
move, not while it’s pinned. It has to protect the king.”

“That much I follow. I think. The pawn is like a bodyguard — if it steps out, assassination.”

“Close enough. But here is the rest of it: the pawn is a special piece, especially in this position, because if it gets to the back row it changes into a queen, or any other piece it chooses to. That can change the whole course of the game, because an extra queen in the end-game is a terror.”

“It does look pretty bad for that king, bottled in the corner like that.”

“White pawn promotes into a
white
queen; that’s good for this king. Matter of fact, it means white can win the game — if that pawn can only move up. That’s why the pin has to be broken; it is the crux of the game.”

“We’re white?”

“Right. And black is some alien intelligence fifteen thousand light-years deep in the galaxy.”

“The destroyer?”

“That’s what I mean. Somebody set up that alien queen, and she has our king threatened, all the way across the board. And all we have are pawns to hold her off.”

“And we’ve lost six pawns already.”

“Right Our seventh and eighth are on the board at the seventh rank. And one of them is pinned — the important one. The one in a position to queen.”

“Which one is that — in life, I mean.”

“
That
one.” Groton aimed a heavy finger at Ivo.

“Me? Because I can use the macroscope a little?”

“Because you can fetch the white queen. Schön.”

“But how am I pinned?” Groton, now that he was on the trail, was as persistent as Afra.

“I have been wondering about that. You are obviously Schön’s pawn, and he has confirmed his involvement by sending us cryptic little messages. My guess is that he would come to us if he could. He told us why he can’t, if we can only make sense of it.” Groton looked at his diagram. “Now that pawn is pinned by the queen, so that’s you pinned by the destroyer. If that pawn could move even one step, it would be another queen. So it is in effect a queen that is pinned, in the guise of a pawn. They are the same; the one is inherent in the other.”

“I suppose so, but—”

“And that explains several things, such as the dichotomy in my charts. So it must be right.”

“So
what
must be right?”

“That you are Schön. The fire element.”

“Sure. And the pin?” Careless words — but the game was over.

“You sat through the sequence that put away Brad and killed the senator. You survived it, probably because you came below its critical limit. But Schön is buried in your mind, unconscious or penned in somewhere. He doesn’t get burned because your mind takes the brunt, and you’re just a pawn. But the moment he comes out — when you turn queen — that memory is there, waiting to blast him. And he knows it. So he
can’t
come out; his pawn is pinned.”

Ivo nodded. “You take your time, but you do get there.”

“So you were aware of it? I thought it might be hidden from you.” Groton glanced out the port at the frigid plateau, not seeming gratified at his success. “Your horoscope pointed the way, of course. There had to be an explanation for the chart’s failure to match observation, and as is so often the case, the error was in the
observation
. So now the question is, how do we remove the pin? We can’t get at the queen and we don’t have many pieces on our board. Of course it’s not so simple as I have it — this illustration has loopholes even taken purely as chess — but I could set up a sounder analogy if it were worth the trouble. It seems that the four of us will have to do it if it’s going to be done at all. Do you agree?”