Tactics of Conquest (12 page)

“Somewhat better.”

“We can arrange for a complete medical examination after the game if you wish. I was assured, however, before this even began, that you were in the best of health and you are probably only suffering from some fatigue—”

“There’s no time for this,” I say. “I’m given to understand that you’ve lied to us about this match, that we aren’t playing for the fate of the universe at all, but that this is merely an exhibition which is being beamed to all ranges of intelligence, and
you’ve built up all these consequences merely to keep us at a high competitive edge.”

I am really astonished with the way in which this has burst out, but it is too late to stop. “Why did you lie to us?” I say. “It wasn’t nice of you, it didn’t show proper respect; after all, we’re grandmasters—”

“I’m truly shocked,” Five says. His voice has never shown so much concern; the depth of feeling within that voice would be enough to make me weep, if I were more emotional. “Where did you hear this allegation?”

“I won’t discuss it.”

“And is it the basis for your current illness?” A tentacle delicately brushes my forehead. “This is truly terrible,” Five says, “to have rumors of this type get back to you. I knew there were some disgusting elements, representatives of races who are no friends of ours, who were spreading these base and scurrilous lies throughout, but I never expected them to reach you. I would not have thought they would sink this low.”

“Then it’s
not
true,” I say. “You’re telling me that they are lies.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Five says gently. “I’m really horrified by this. It cuts to the center of the match. Now everything is imperiled! We will deal strongly with those spreading lies. What I want to know now is who informed you of this? Was it your opponent?”

Well, there is only one thing to say. “Yes. It was Louis.”

And instantly, like sexual release, there is a flooding sensation of shame, warmth, liquidity: as much as I dislike Louis he
is
a human too, and trapped as I am in this complex and terrible match. Perhaps I should not have betrayed him to Five.
I have never been able to get the question of final loyalties and priorities quite straight; I know that I detest Louis and the Overlords as well (although not Five, my confidant), but whether my higher loyalty is to my noxious opponent or whether it is to the Overlords who have treated us courteously is not clear. A little of one, a little of the other.
Cornme-çi, comme-ça.

“Don’t deal too harshly with him,” I say, “I’m going to beat him badly after all.”

“That is not sufficient retribution!” Five says angrily. I have never seen him in such an emotional state; he has the savage and desperate cast of such creatures in the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of St. John the Divine as those accompanying apocalyptic times: winged beasts, horns, grotesque shapes. “We will destroy this.”

“He said that the idea of this just being a chess match really came from some other source which he couldn’t reveal. Your real quarrel would be with whoever informed him of this.”

“Our real quarrel,” the Overlord says angrily, “must be with those who would interfere with the rules and the progress of the match; our quarrel is with those who would misrepresent to the participants the true nature and terrible consequences of this match, and thus attempt to throw its outcome into jeopardy!” Five stands, seeming to unfurl his scales. “That individual or group of individuals will be dealt with most severely,” he says.

“You mean then that the match is as represented? Exactly as represented?”

“Of course it is, and furthermore, I don’t want you thinking otherwise. We would not lie to you. The match between you and your opponent is for the fate of the universe, the absolute triumph of good over evil, or the reverse. There will be no
second chance for the losing side, but only instant and terrible destruction.”

“I’m
glad to hear that,” I say. In truth I am; I would not dissemble to Five, whom I consider, as I would none of the others, to be something very close to a friend. “To reach this level of competitive tension, to become this involved in the match only to find out that you had lied to us, misrepresented, that it was merely a match—”

“It would be unthinkably disastrous,” the Overlord agrees solemnly. “There would be very little to be said on behalf of the moral values of creatures who would play upon you in this fashion. But fortunately, no harm has been done; you have told us what is disturbing you and in plenty of time for us to take stringent action.”

“I do hope,” I say, bringing him to an absolute halt in his staggering gait toward the door (the Overlords slide like snakes but with the use of their tentacles are also able to pad along like dogs; their gait; I have discovered, is often a very function of their moods) “that you won’t deal harshly with Louis.”

“Oh, not at all. Not at all.”

“We’re in the middle of a match now.”

“Nothing must interfere with the progress of a match,” the Overlord says agreeably. “At all costs the match must go on.”

“And I will deal with him myself. I think that his defeat will be adequate reprisal.”

“Oh, I should say,” the Overlord agrees ponderously. “I should certainly say.” He drags himself out of the room. “Stay until you feel entirely better,” the Overlord says, “although of course you’ll have to lose some of your clock-time. There’s no way that we can alter those rules; time must be
charged against you. But you will be back to play shortly, won’t you?”

“Oh, definitely,” I say. The conversation has taken on a curious formality. “Oh, very definitely, we have got to play under the rules of international chess or there would be no point to this at all. I’m feeling much stronger now. I’m sure that I’ll be able to come out quite shortly.”

“Well, that’s excellent,” Five says gravely. He vanishes from the doorway, leaving me to my own devices.

It is a very strange room; now that I have an opportunity to inspect it more closely at my leisure, I can see that all the furnishings are exquisitely fabricated; they appear to be cheap, terrestrial artifacts (doubtless this is the attempt of the Overlords to make us feel at home). But when they are touched they fail to yield in the way that normal furnishings would do: Even ordinary wood has a distinct texture, springiness, resilience, willingness to
give
under the pressure of a hand, but nothing in this room seems to yield in any fashion. Rather, putting my hand against the couch, I feel a grainy response, then the material seems to press itself
upward
against my hand in a rather firm and insistent fashion. Then there is a feeling of engorgement, of lips opening underneath my hand and then something which feels like a tongue licks me gently. I start, yank my hand back and look at the couch. It glints pinkly, innocently, Not me, it seems to be saying, it must be purely within your mind.

I leap to my feet and find that I am much stronger than I was when entering the room, and able to maintain a rigid standing posture and a little scuttling walk without weakness of any sort. With determination I stride from one side of the
room to the other, extending my scuttle into a stalk. There is no increase in my respiration or heartbeat; it is apparent that my attack, if that is what I must call it, has now passed. The couch and the furnishings look stolid in the room; it must have been some effort of the imagination which had imparted life to them. There is nothing more to be done here. I am using up time on my clock, I go to the door.

The doorknob comes into my hand innocently, shyly, and then with a horrid intimacy it seems to caress me. Something very much like a finger curls its way through my palm, running against the lines of my hand. (I have always associated this gesture, at least in the limited reading that I have done, with sexual invitation of some sort, and therefore the sensation is a rather horrid one.) I bring my hand back from the doorknob as if I had gotten a shock, and look into the moist surfaces of my palm as if for some stain of implication. My palm smiles back at me in little lines, innocent of touch; if anything has happened to it, once again it must have been in my mind. This is, however, a very strange room. Once more I reach out toward the doorknob and this time it yields and without motion. I open it and step out into the hall.

The murmurs of the arena instantly overcome me. The room I left must have been excellently soundproofed; within its confines I heard nothing. But I have rarely heard an audience as clangorous as this one. There are murmurs, sighs, whispers, even a handclap or two, and although this seems hard to believe I think that I can also hear the sound of booing. Such conduct at a master game is just about unheard of. The audience may not be familiar with the etiquette of these things. Not
all the audiences where we have played have been knowledgeable; in fact, there are sectors of the galaxy, the Overlords tell me, where chess is unheard of and where there has been an educative campaign prior to our debarkation. My hasty departure might have been interpreted by the audience as an act of cowardice, an apparent desertion of the game under fire. This knowledge adds fuel to the fire of my posture and I move back into the playing area determined to do nothing to disgrace myself and determined to bring the match now to a rapid conclusion. I can no longer tolerate this. There is no reason for them to have booed me. I cannot make them pay for this disgrace, so I will make Louis pay.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting?” I remember having said to Louis in one or another of the tenements of our youth when we were growing up together, going the Marshall Chess Club route together, discovering and sharing our growing proficiency in chess, our hostility momentarily abated in this sense of shared wonder. (There was actually a period of several years in our youth when we were what might be called “best friends”; prodigies enjoying the attention we were getting at about the same time, for the same reasons. It was only a little later that Louis’ megalomania asserted itself to destroy our relationship, even though, up until the very end of it, I reacted to his loutishness with disbelief and tried to rescue what I thought of as a sentimental tie. None of this, therefore, is my fault. He deserves everything that is coming to him.) “Wouldn’t it be interesting if someday we could play chess for the fate of the entire world?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Louis said. Even then he
had a highly literal mind and refused to speculate, refused to investigate alleys and byways of implication which, for me, are the veritable spices of life. “It’s only a game, a silly trivial game.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s war. It’s life.”

“That’s what they tell you in the books. That’s what the so-called experts say because they like to build themselves up and give their readers the feeling that they’re big, important men. Actually, it’s a very trivial pastime, and everyone who’s ever played chess knows that I’m telling you the truth. It has nothing to do with life at all. Most good chess players, masters and such, are snivelling, maladjusted wrecks, and the only thing they can do at all is to play chess well. If they didn’t have that they’d go crazy.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, letting these disgusting allegations go by, “even if what you’re saying is true—and I don’t believe a word of it, not for a second—what would it be like to play chess with the whole world riding on the outcome? That would be exciting.”

“Why not the whole universe? Why stop at the world?”

“Don’t make a fool of me,” I said, irritated. “Come on, Louis, admit it: The prospect tantalizes you.”

“Nothing tantalizes me because anything would be even worse than what we’ve got now.”

“I don’t understand you, Louis. But think now, I everybody watching us, knowing that we held their fate in our hands. The tension, the suspense, as if their very lives were under our control (which of course they would be). Louis, if we were playing for the fate of the world, or—all right, even the universe—then
we’d
be in command.”

“It would be one hell of a universe if they had to play chess to decide its fate.”

“Not necessarily. It could be fun.”

“No, it wouldn’t,”
Ye
said, rolling on a clear spot in the Canarsie junkyard to lean on an elbow, looking out toward a blanket of clouds which came across our vision suddenly. “What kind of a universe would it be now if you had to play chess to decide how it was turning out?”

“You’re not looking at this the right way. Come on, Louis, admit the truth. Does chess make any less sense than God?”

Louis thought about this for a while as we looked at the clouds. Queens, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Pawns swam across our field of vision along with certain other pieces known only in fairy chess: the Dragon, the Caretaker, the Drowned Giant. I regarded them with speculative interest, fairy chess being a game for which I have great contempt though a, lot of grandmasters like it. Feeling myself momentarily suspended in a kind of perfect peace, I was in accord with the elements, which one rarely is in this world or out of it, the junkyards of Canarsie possessing a kind of vague bucolic charm. In the air was the smell of fish and frogs, and an errant flight of birds stalked the clouds and then disappeared. “Probably not,” Louis agreed after a while, “when you come to think of it, it doesn’t.”

“Right, Louis.” I had come in second in the Marshall Juniors the week before, a stunning show of strength—Louis ill, absent—and I felt that I had moved far ahead of him already in the annals of Caissa. “It’s a beautiful, logical, perfectly shaped game with a beginning, a middle and an end. Now, you can’t say that about God. It isn’t the same.”

“You’re not such a hot chess player, David. You have a lot of weaknesses.”

“I’m still better than you, and you haven’t answered the question.”

“Question?” Louis said. “I didn’t know there was a question, I didn’t know that there was anything before us.” He turned toward me then, his eyes suddenly limpid and open and looking at me. As I felt myself being drawn into his intensely empty, bleakly staring eyes, I realized that there was no one in all of the world who knew that we were here at this moment: not my father (who was, of course, struggling with accounts receivable at some miserable warehouse in the Red Hook district), not Louis’ mother, a waitress who in her; widowhood struggled through existence in an Atlantic Avenue hamburger and steak restaurant’ (many were the times that Louis and I had thought about getting his mother and my father together, but it had never worked out; these two dismal adults had once gone to a movie together and had returned separately hours later, refusing comment), not anyone in the Marshall Chess Club; just Louis and myself lying side by side on the blind and irrevocable flats of Brooklyn. Something passed between us at that moment. There must! have been a transaction of some sort, some calculation too intimate and dreadful to bear articulation. As I moved toward him, the true ominousness of the situation assaulted me. Louis and I were on the verge of buggery.