Tactics of Conquest (6 page)

Now, feeling already blocked, my P—K4 having blunted for all time his fiendish intention to take over the center of the board, Louis has pushed his Queen peremptorily.

It is a characteristic of his. The man tends to panic, tends to respond to pressure poorly by bringing out his heavy pieces before the pace of the game has really given them range or sweep. Now, seeing his Queen emergent, seeing the peculiar, nauseated expression on his face as he quickly looks over the board and then bolts, I know that the game must be mine.

For I have already won. The quick movement of the Queen is Louis’ concession that midway in the second exchange of moves I have
already
overpowered him. I feel a certain sympathy for him at this moment, knowing that backstage he must be in the hands of seconds, gasping, sweating, his face agonized while they try to convince him that he still has a chance ... but he will be vomiting in the lavatory now. (There is a center bowl which I use myself in circumstances of this kind. Surrounded by walls and space it is possible to make the act of regurgitation an almost sacramental and sacrificial one. The sounds
of vomiting, I have always thought, are very close to the sounds of prayer.) And a little after that he will be back at the board to see my own devastating response move which will plunge him even further into gloom. Truly, Louis is in a difficult situation and well he might be, for he represents all of the evil in the world.

It has occurred to me at least once during the course of these matches that I might attempt a secret consultation and rapprochement with Louis, to try to work out something between us to alter or at least extend the course of the matches. As is customary in a series of this sort (the Overlords have set up the match protocol and regulations very much as our own recollected international matches have been; they have no original ideas to contribute), Louis and I stay in the same lodgings, deal with the same people, use the same facilities, although at different times, and are often left to ourselves for hours without supervision, nominal “rest and recuperation” periods during which we are free to wander through the controlled atmospheres of the enclosures in which we have been stationed. (The atmospheres of most of the systems we have visited, of course, would kill us in a trice.) It would be easy, thus, to arrange some secret meeting with him in a deserted part of the hotel; the Overlords for all of their sanctimony are quite stupid in many areas and would probably not even know that such a meeting had taken place. Thus I could find Louis in a corridor or a room of some sort and make a suggestion, say, that we throw games alternately to one another, extending the series as much as possible; and that we then, at the forty-first game, engage in a series of grandmaster draws—shuffling the pieces
around three or four moves and then with bearded nods and smiles conceding a willingness to settle for a draw. It would be possible if we did this to extend the series indefinitely.

The Overlords are authoritarian creatures; they take the rules of their contest quite seriously, and they would be quite unable to challenge a decision, mutually arrived at, to extend the series indefinitely through a series of draws. We might be able to play for the fate of the universe through several months or years, extending our tour indefinitely until finally one or the other of us would die of sickness or old age, throwing the plans of the Overlords into chaos. Meanwhile we could keep on going.

I am a reasonably compassionate man and this thought has at least occurred to me. I know that the eventual outcome of our match can only be disastrous for half the population of the universe. Evil creatures by the billions are going to suffer and die when I vanquish their representative, and even though I am opposed to evil implacably, and have dedicated my life to its conquest—it was not a casual decision for me to represent the forces of light—it is still a rather painful thing for me to think of all those billions winked painfully out of existence, noisome as most of them must be. I am vaguely acquainted with theology, not by any means being one of those chess ignoramuses of whom you have often read who knows little beyond the confines of the board. I know that many of those who have been enlisted now in the cause of evil do not think of themselves as evil at all but have merely been arbitrarily assigned, unhappily caught up in circumstance. These creatures, being no less sentient than those whom
I
represent, have just cause for concern. In any event it has occurred
to me at various points of our tour to make this proposal to Louis.

“Look,” I could say to him, sitting in a rather plush, Earth-type lobby on a far star (the winking globes and lights above giving hideous reminders of what it was like to stay in the Hotel Lucerne in New York during one endless week’s tournament twenty years ago), “we can work this out together. We can draw games indefinitely. I They know little of the intricacies of master chess, I these Overlords, and in any event, it would be entirely fair by the rules of the game. Why not extend this?”

“I won’t even think of it,” he would say (I know Louis so well that the conversation uncoils itself as easily as the moving out of Knight-and-Bishop preparatory to a castle). “Why should I collaborate with you at all? I’m going to destroy you.”

“But you don’t understand, you fool, that I’m going to destroy
you
and in any event, whoever wins, many, many billions of creatures are going to die. Think of all the suffering.”

“There will be no suffering. Anyway, that’s hardly my problem, is it? I’m merely doing a job.”

“Listen, Louis, I’m trying to be reasonable about this. The fate of the universe is still in our hands, regardless of what the Overlords say. Besides, wouldn’t you like to extend the matches indefinitely? There are whole sectors of the universe I that we can see; it’s hardly an experience available to most Earthmen.”

“I’m not interested in that,” he says stubbornly. Really, the man is impossible; a rigid, authoritarian personality, reaction-formation I think they call it. “That’s not my problem at all; my duty is
to play out the match, represent the forces at my command, demolish you and bring an end to this.”

“Really, Louis, you’re being most unreasonable. Don’t you understand that I’m going to beat you? Besides that, you represent the forces of evil.”

“It’s not a question of what I represent. Remember, the Overlords have instructed us that it’s completely arbitrary: What we think of as good and evil mean nothing to them. Anyway, David, you haven’t got a chance in these matches. I’m already leading five games to two and I haven’t even attempted anything original yet.”

“We could at least draw a couple of matches, couldn’t we? There hasn’t been a draw so far, which is very unusual in grandmaster chess. If you change your mind and come around to my way of thinking, it’s going to look strange to the Overlords if we start to draw without having established precedent. Let’s stalemate a few, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, David, but you do not understand the conditions.” A certain pomposity overtakes Louis at odd moments; it would assault him now. “You’re asking us to cheat by prior agreement and that’s against the rules. We could even be brought up on charges.”

“By whom?”

“By—”

“There’s no governing body, there’s no federation, it’s all going to end.”

“I’m sorry, David. You’re counseling collaboration. I have half a mind to go to the Overlords on this. They’d take strong action; in fact, you might be disqualified. You wouldn’t like that. You’d be in worse trouble than you are already.”

“You’re impossible.”

“No, you are.”

“You’re a pompous, officious fool. Don’t you have any loyalty to a fellow grandmaster?”

“I’ll report you to the Overlords, David. I really will.”

“I dare you to do it.”

“I’ll recite the full contents of this conversation ‘to them. I’m sure they’ll be interested enough to want to take it up with you further. I have nothing more to say; you are no man of honor.”

No. This would not work at all. It is clear why Louis and I can reach no arrangement. The match must go on its accustomed course, straight through to his destruction. Nevertheless, this must be said and in the network of the mind I will say it: I have tried. Surely I have tried. His condition is not my fault.

Queen to Queen Bishop Three. Queen to Queen Bishop Three. While Louis vomits somewhere in a rear stall, the putrid waters of his intestines merging with the chemically treated fluids of the Deneb System, I contemplate this move. Louis has always had this tendency to develop his majors too rapidly; it is a serious failing. Commentators have noticed this. I have brought it to their attention.

Well I remember how in the Berlin Interzonals Louis wedged open his Rook file with a stupid and premature castle which allowed Barker, his opponent, to penetrate to the seventh rank with his Queen. The mop up was deadly and almost immediate: A Rook doubled the Queen and placed Louis into almost immediate
zugzwang
and his resignation followed but five moves later. Barker (whose game has improved although still well below my level) discussed this with me later over cruller and tea, having accepted Louis’ collapse
with a rare grace which touched me although I would rather that he had spat in the fool’s eyes.

“He has aspects of brilliance,” Barker conceded, “but he cannot handle the majors properly. It is a pity.” He stuffed the cruller into his mouth, began to chew with a series of rather disgusting noises and gestures ... quite repulsive, really.

“I think that his basic problem might be a lack of patience,” Barker said, “although again—” taking a sip of coffee, swilling it around, mingling the fluid with the crumbs of cruller, “—perhaps he overestimates his abilities and finds himself more surprised than any of us when time and again his premature attack with the majors finds itself most thwarted. Difficult to say,” Barker added, putting the cruller in the coffee, twirling it until it became encrusted with sugar and the fluid of the coffee, and then, opening his mouth wide, put the cruller into his mouth like sacrament, rubbing together his palms with a groan of satisfaction. “Don’t you think so?”

It was difficult for me, sitting at the table in this rather crowded coffee shop at Bern, to keep a calm and inscrutable expression. But I tried. It is the very
corporeality
of life which I find repellent and this is one of the reasons why I find chess appealing: Here we have a highly abstract, coldly mathematical game devoid of odors, scents, implications, belches, coughs, sniffles, accusations and all of those elements which so contribute to the making of what non-masters erroneously call “real life.” There is a certain pleasure in abstraction; I would not diminish it.

This aversion to the normally material waste-and-flow of mortality may be a little abnormal but it is abnormal only in the richer sense of the word, a deviation which raises me to a higher level altogether.
So it was difficult, looking at Barker (who now having finished his cruller turned upon me a pair of eyes as brightly impenetrable as a puppy’s), to keep good control over myself. “Perhaps,” I said, “perhaps. But then again he may be a weak player.”

“Weakness is no excuse,” Barker said, extending a forefinger, licking it with a flourish, then, his tongue working like a butterfly’s, doing the same to the remaining fingers on his left hand. “There are good; players, weak players, brilliant players and unsound ones, but at all levels the personality will hold. Each game is an individual expression I of its maker; ten different weak players will be I weak in a different way and having done some I readings in psychology I think that our friend Louis suffers from a failure of self-confidence. Are you ill? You look sick; I hope that nothing has made you sick,” Barker said.

But it was too late. Too late, too late: stomach churning like an engine missing cylinders I was rearing from the table, making my way to the lavatory located by the coffee shop, clutching bowels and intestines. Holding also I a terror born of the certainty that I was about to disgrace myself, I was able, tentatively, to make it all the way into that enclosure before losing lunch. The scar of that encounter, I wish to make quite clear, remains deep within me even though the information imported by Barker was quite useful and has helped me in further encounters with Louis. Beyond question he does indeed bring out the majors too quickly. He lacks self-confidence. This last move of his bespeaks that tendency more eloquently than ever I could.

Louis has retired behind the screens now. Vivid images of his humiliation scuttle across
my mind as I lean forward intently to the board, plotting out what will pin him further. But at that moment—

Ah, well, chess is inconstancy, and there seems to be a kind of disturbance in the audience. I sense a fluttering. Billows of light cascade over the stage and there is a series of choking screams which necessarily rivet full attention. Concentration completely broken, I stare across that expanse of stage where I see that a large man has somehow broken the security cover and has rushed the stage, struggling with several guards. The guards are of various races; some are humanoid while others appear to be more exotic and the aspect of this man being surrounded by an alien and degenerated mass is quite shocking. It reminds me of certain magazine covers I recall from my difficult youth in which Humanity was seen to be Struggling in the Grip Of Disgusting Aliens. The aspect is so shocking and yet so interesting that the chess-pieces literally dwindle. Haze consumes them and I look at the intruder.

He is trying rather desperately to flee the security personnel, but he cannot break their grip. Nevertheless, driven as he is by some demonic strength he is able to pull away just enough to close further ground between himself and me and all of the time he is talking, inexhaustibly talking.

“You must stop this,” he says, “it’s totally unreasonable; we cannot go on this way.”

Is this true? Conviction can sometimes carry the day; I give it credence, hunched over, saying nothing. This situation is the problem of the security personnel, of course, and not for anything would I interfere with them. I see that they have the intruder under at least partial control; he is trying to reach me but there is no way that he can
break the wall of arms, legs, tentacles, appendages and horns which surround him and therefore he must settle for desperate bellows.