Tactics of Conquest (2 page)

“You are the greatest chess player in the universe and the entire fate of our way of life depends upon you,” they would point out to me, “because if you win our way of life will continue to flourish and prosper but if you lose the Overlords by decree will declare the curtain to fall upon our way of life and the thousand years of destruction will begin. But that is not to worry about; you cannot lose, but still we would certainly like to make you at peace with yourself,” they would conclude in their provincial, Earth-type accents (I was touched) and then fling themselves against and upon me, their earth-type limbs lunging against mine in a most unsettling and discommoding fashion, their large, Earth-type breasts perching
on my mouth (which in more normal postures was pursed to consider the more intricate possibilities of a Knight’s Fork). I turned all of them away, of course, some regretfully. Sex and championship chess do not mix and it is important at all costs to keep the two activities separate but on the other hand I will admit that some caused me to doubt. The Overlords had provided me with an excellent selection of females. Doubtless they were doing the same to Louis in his room (for all the good that that would do them!) but my will can survive such cheap distractions and one and all I cleared them out of my quarters. After the matches, when I save the universe, it will be a different story, of course.

On the third day, when I had not yet arisen from bed to commence my ablutions before departure to the Antares Cluster, the Overlord whom I know only as Five came into the room, somewhat imperiously I thought (they simply have no sense of privacy; it must be a gestalt-culture), and addressed me as I was still lying on the bed.

“David,” he or it said, “it is important that you arise now. The ship is about to depart. Everyone else is on it and waiting.”

“I don’t feel well,” I said without moving. The Overlords and I have cultivated a relative informality of exchange, but I do admit that I feel a certain sense of strain in addressing them. Xenophobes would understand. “I’m not going to leave.”

“Of course you’re going to leave,” Five said. “I told you, the ship is about to leave. We must hurry.”

“I’m sorry about this,” I said, unmoving, “but I really don’t feel well enough to go. I’m afraid
that I’m forfeiting the game for illness. But go ahead without me; I’ll catch up later on.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” Five said, rather snappishly, I thought. His tentacles waved, his bipodal body became rather purple. (They are somewhat humanoid in appearance, these Overlords, but one cannot forget at any time that they are malevolent creatures who set up this match in order to impose their way of life upon us and they just are not very nice. The purple enhances the xenophobic thrust.) “This is no time for hypochondria, not when you’re due to board now and all facilities in the Cluster have been sold out for a long time. You have an obligation.”

“No. Screw it, I won’t.” There was an airy feeling of departing from ritual in saying this; chess players relish defiance as do no other obsessives. “I have a sore throat.”

“We will cure it.”

“I have chills and fever.”

“That can be worked on.”

“I have cold sweats, even when I lie at rest, and I am afraid that I am not able to think about championship chess right now.”

“Stop it.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “Maybe in a few days I will have recovered. In the meantime, Louis can give a simultaneous exhibition. That surely will take the place of competition and I’ll be better in no time.”

“I am sorry,” Five said, empurpling further. “This is wholly irregular. We never contemplated the possibility of illness holding up the matches. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to summon a physician.”

And saying no more he stalked from the room, leaving me in uneasy balance between the sheets.
In due course a Terran physician came in, quite awed by his patient, needless to say, and subjected me to a rapid if unflattering examination, ending by studying certain parts of my anal opening in a way which gave me a good deal of pain although, disgracefully, the pain was shot through now and then by the need to giggle. “I’m afraid I have no real diagnosis,” he said when he was finished and Five, getting this word from him shortly thereafter (the Overlords respect modesty), brought him back into the room to say, “This must be a lie.”

“Oh no,” the doctor said, “rather it’s a neurasthenic episode of some sort. His gross motor signs are normal. Actually, this may be a fatal illness,” the Earth-type physician concluded with a rather horrid giggle, “but, of course, I do not consider myself to be a definitive final authority on matters of this sort.” Saying no more he fled the room, the old bastard, little tools of his trade dribbling from his case as he went. Since the commencement of the matches, of course, the Overlords have enslaved the entire populations of all planets on which the matches take place, which might account for the doctor’s nerves. It is always psychologically difficult to be glimpsed as a member of a slave-class, but then again he might have been a neurasthenic specimen already working for the Overlords. They spoke of having undercover agents.

Five turned upon me then a look both querulous and penetrating, allowing the silence to magnify itself over a period, a veritable hush falling over my little suite (to say nothing of the bed in which I was lying) while he pondered all of my aspects hopefully.

“I hope you’re not trying to make problems,” he said.

“Oh no,” I said a little too eagerly, “no, I’m not trying to make things difficult at all; I just don’t feel well.”

“Because we have an enormous stake in these matches,” Five said. “After all, you must realize that we are poising our entire future plans upon how you and your opponent do, David.”

“Well, of course.”

“You were both carefully selected from many billions to carry on the contest and you had better not fail us now. We don’t like failures.”

“I understand that,” I said. Already I regretted the haste of my action, to say nothing of how impulsively I had arrived at it. Throwing a match through feigned illness suddenly struck me as a rather stupid idea considering, as Five had pointed out, the stakes involved. But then again, as I have noted, I was already too deeply committed to my posture to back out without embarrassing results. “I’m sure that I’ll feel better within a day or so.”

“A day is not satisfactory.”

“In fact it might only be hours,” I said, backing away but still stubborn. “I can’t just leap out of bed, you know. Perhaps the match could be set back—”

“I’m really afraid not,” Five said. “We’re on a tight schedule with these matches, as you know. Commitments have already been made: One hundred and fifty billion intelligent creatures of all species are participating through a complicated communications network and any delay in the matches would have catastrophic results at this time. Also,” Five added rather dourly, “also, we have our own problems, scheduling commitments and so on, of which you must be well aware. If it
does go to the final game, the forty-one-match series must be completed by a certain date. Our stay in this universe, you see, is severely affecting laws of entropy and geophysics with which I won’t bore you. If we overstay the period we risk destroying the very fabric of your universe which, as you know, is merely a small and trivial cosmology to us but rather important to you. Also, we would die here with you.”

“All right,” I said, “very well.” It occurred to me, and not for the first time I must admit (everything going on has happened at least twice before), that all of the Overlords, but particularly Five, tend to have a rather melodramatic streak. Like grandmasters themselves, they build up issues out of all proportion to their real worth. It is very difficult for a man in my position to play chess for the outcome of the universe, in short, but this was insignificant to the Overlords. I had a dilemma.

“All right,” I said again, tossing the sheets rather petulantly and then trying to sit, “if that’s the way you feel about it I’ll try to compete. But I must warn you that I’m just not in top form and that there’s a good likelihood that I’ll lose the game. Perhaps I’ll lose a whole
series
of games. One must be in top physical condition to play successfully; it’s an athletic endeavor, as you know, so I can hardly promise you a fair contest.”

The Overlords believe in fairness. They have insignificant morals, true, but have insisted from the beginning that this must be a fair contest, an even match, that we must play at a serious and spirited level, otherwise the exercise will be worthless. So I knew that this would strike Five in an area of grave vulnerability.

“Very well,” he said and indeed did appear
shaken. “We will take that into account, the fact of your illness and that you will perhaps be unable to perform at the best level. Still and all ... the matches must go on.”

“Only if I am well.”

“Regardless of your health.”

“Perhaps you ought to check with the others on this. They might agree to a stay.”

“I do not know that it is necessary to consult with others,” Five said, rather sharply. “The decisions are to be made by me alone; in the society which we have evolved there are only leaders, no followers, no committees, and I am perfectly able to make a decision which will be binding upon all of us. So, you will play,” Five concluded on that same pitch of controlled hysteria which I had noted in the examining physician, “you will play the matches! The matches will go on I” He stood abruptly, leaving the room in a rather undignified scuttle, allowing the door to bang in the Denebian breeze which wafted through the hallway.

Ah, well; slowly and grudgingly I began my ablutions preparatory to leaving for the Antares Cluster. It seemed to me that it was not fair for Five to be so imperious about the matter, but on the other hand it also occurred to me in that I simultaneity of vision reserved for truly great minds that the game must go on, the great series of games to decide the outcome of all possibility; and that when one is functioning at such a high level of consequence it is not always possible to invoke the personal touch. The personal touch. Thinking this way I began to feel better and in due course my garb was donned, my ablutions (I urinated, defecated noisily, gargled, to be specific) completed and I went outside to find certain Overlords—Six, Three, Seven and Twenty-One, I believe—waiting
for me. They took me quickly to the spaceport. Although I moped rather sullenly early on, I soon found that my enthusiasm and my sense of conviction returned. By the halfway point of the long flight I had taken out my omnipresent pocket chess set and worked through a series of variations to the Nizimov-Indian Defense which had caught me in the seventh game.
Nirazo
-Indian defense, please excuse, very difficult to keep all of these arcane formulations quite at the tip of the tongue or penpoint.

In other words, getting me to this fifteenth match was difficult for the Overlords. More difficult for them than this, however, was the decision which I reached on the flight: Since they would not cooperate with me, well, then, I would repay in kind.

My original intention, good-hearted and benign as everyone knows, was to string out these matches to the forty-first game, the last possible moment. I have nothing against that sector of the universe, that way of life which my opponent represents. I consider it to have the same validity as my own side, and the specter of billions of innocent creatures being slaughtered egregiously by the arrogant Overlords simply because their representative was an inferior player ... this spectacle of injustice, barbarism, madness most distressed me. Apocalypse may be a sanctifying gesture but there is much blood in it.

So I wanted to extend their lifetime for as long as possible. Why not? Also I wanted to give the Overlords every chance possible to destroy themselves—maybe the damned matches would simply go away. Perhaps the Overlords might wink out of our universe with the same abruptness with which they winked in. They kept on talking about their
laws of entropy and mysterious geophysical forces; possibly an extension of their stay might result in obliteration. I hope. At least, it seemed like a sensible idea and I wanted if possible to go on to the very end, to game forty-one, before my victory, in order to give this nightmare time to dissolve. Is this not sane?

But no more. I have reached that decision.

I will change my way of life: If the Overlords refuse to tolerate my position, if my hapless opponent continues to decline, then responsibility will finally shift from me. My ultimate responsibility, after all, is to that half of the universe which I have been called upon to represent: the forces of moderation, light, reason, justice, compassion, etc., and I must no longer confuse polarities. Therefore the decision I have made on the Antares flight is to be implemented; from now on I play without restraint. I intend to destroy my opponent, to smash, pulverize, and humiliate him and by proxy his damned Overlords (they are as much Louis’ fault as mine) and then bring this wretched series to a conclusion. I am behind nine games to five: I intend to win twenty-one to five. Sixteen games, thirty-two days from now, the series will be over. Having been stretched to the ultimate of patience I am now convinced only of this: Gentlemen, I will fulfill my commitments.

So here I am. Here I am in the Antares Cluster, another of that damned set of planets and stars through which our series, like a mad, bedraggled member of dismembered or discredited royalty, has wandered these weeks. From Saturn to Alpha Centauri, from Sirius to the Cluster of the Pleiades, my opponent and I have wandered, surrounded by chess sets, chess writings, Overlords,
travel consultants, reporters, crewmen, technicians, and equipment, through uncharted light years in the billions. Our little whores’ colony has trundled through the first fifteen of the forty-one high bidders for the Match of the Universe.

On Saturn my opponent had had a cold; the idiot blew sniffles and snot from his nose turned rabbity by his congestion with a quivering forefinger. On Betelgeuse a strange epidemic which caused yellowing and drying of the external genitalia (I did not want to know too much about this) made it necessary for us to play in strict quarantine. In the Pleiades I lost my temper over a missed fianchetto and drank too much. On the Dog Star a referee died in the midst of a match, emitting a strange bark (appropriate for the Dog Star), and collapsing in a gangrenous fit on the floor amidst a little halo of extra chess pieces with which he had been playing ... oh, this series has been chock-full of events, but really it has had a sameness, a repetition of the constants, the same enclosures, the same uttermost delimitation of space.