Tactics of Conquest (7 page)

“Something is terribly wrong!” he is shouting. “It’s not fair, it’s not right, do you understand, this match must now stop at once I” Then some aspect of his voice, his posture in struggle, connects and he becomes familiar to me. I remember who he is. Strange that I would not have known it immediately but I am of course under mental strain.

He is a senior official of FIDE, the Federation International, which controls Earth-type chess. He is furious. “This is ridiculous!” he shrieks. He must have stolen aboard one of the spaceships, smuggling himself away like precious contraband. Then again, he may have won approval from the Overlords to come along as a representative of the International. Who is to know? “We have not approved this match,” he is saying, his honest face streaked with rage and pain. “We have not certified this competition; we have not selected these competitors. This match is being conducted in violation of the statutes which control and organize our great game itself!”

Finally, at this last outburst, the guards establish some control over the struggling figure, and with a series of vicious clouts and punches, they hustle him off the stage. “I am going to protest!” he shouts. “The match is disallowed!” Then there is a thud and wholly discommoded he collapses, surrounded by a mass of guards, and is taken off the stage by a back exit.

It is a horrifying breach of match etiquette, to rush the stage. It is further complicated by the fact that the felon is a representative of the governing body of chess on our planet. But the match must go on, and I am able with some difficulty to
restrain rage. I rub my hands against one another, feeling the gnarled palms come into themselves with the aspect of chipped glass. I wring them, shake my head and attempt once again to project myself into the board.

It is not as easy it was before, however, and momentarily the pieces shimmer, glisten, take on a different aspect, become almost gelatinous as if they were to melt and begin to run through the squares of the board in red and black. There is an instant when I think that I might faint, so horrifying has been this assault on my concentration.

Instead I come to my feet, avoiding only at the last instant that deadly contact which would sweep the board from the table, and stagger toward the rear of the stage through haze and smoke (all races, all audiences smoke incessantly—time and again I have cited my asthma but they will not listen) and for a deadly moment kinesthetic sense, and memory itself, desert me. I am stumbling through an amorphous mix like an amnesiac animal, unable to deduce my identity or the reason for my being here.

Then I find myself surrounded by Overlords, more of them than I have seen at any time heretofore. Ten or eleven of them have surrounded me, having leapt from their observation posts. Their tentacles grip. A projective device zooms in, cold steel glinting; undoubtedly a closeup of my tortured features is at this moment being beamed to billions throughout the universe. “I can’t take it,” I find myself groaning and gasping, “I simply can’t take it.”

“Don’t worry about this,” an Overlord says, “a mistake.”

“I’ve tried to be reasonable. I’ve tried to cooperate but I can’t have this kind of demonstration.
I can’t have the stage being rushed by members of the audience. How can I concentrate?”

“It is highly unfair,” another Overlord agrees. Their voices and personalities are interchangeable. I have never been able to successfully individuate them except by the numbers. Nevertheless I suspect that this one might well be my old friend Five who more than any of them has shown me the sympathy and understanding I am truly due.

“We’ll see that this person is taken care of,” the Overlord says. “He must be severely disturbed.”

“I mean,” I say, surrounded by tentacles, burying my forehead in a rosily purplish substance which feels like the scales of a fish, but obscurely comforting for all of that, “I’m doing the best I am able.”

“Of course you are.”

“It isn’t easy here. The least you can do is to give me a decent environment in which to play. How can I tolerate this otherwise? Consider my position and all of them out to get me anyway. I tell you, I can’t stand this any more at all!”

“Of course you can’t stand it,” the same Overlord agrees sympathetically, “and there’s no reason why you should. I promise that this individual will be dealt with most severely.” There is a sense of murmured consultation among the many forms which surround me: seven I think it is, although in this enmeshing of tentacles and stalks it is difficult to enumerate, it might be as few as four and then again it might be as many as twelve. Who knows? The physical aspects of the Overlords have always been something about which I wished to remain ignorant; call me xenophobic and be gone. “Most severely,” the Overlord says once again. “And now I suggest that you put this most
unfortunate incident out of mind and return to the board. Your clock is running, you know, and it would be unwise to use up time. We can’t stop the clocks simply because you’re having a breakdown.”

“And besides,” I say as stumps and tentacles begin to prod me back toward the board, “it’s not even true what he’s saying; the match is being properly conducted under all FIDE rules.”

“Of course it is, and you have no reason for concern.”

“We’re using the clocks, we’re using seconds, and a team of referees, and we’re playing under all the approved conditions. He has no right, absolutely no right at all,” I point out, “to say that the match isn’t sanctioned.” My chair grates into my shins, I feel little stabs and shivers of pain. “The trouble with FIDE is that it’s a completely trivial organization,” I say, managing to sit once again while Overlords surround me, massage my shoulders protectively, bring cool cloths across my face, tickle the back of my neck. “They’re not interested in chess, in improving the structure of the game, they’re only interested in their miserable little prerogatives, in continuing to maintain a stranglehold over the game.”

I shift nervously, aware that I am receiving a great deal of attention. “It’s a petty bureaucracy,” I say, “it’s completely arbitrary and stupid and I won’t have anything to do with it any more. Instead I’ll chart my own course. That’s what I’m going to do.”

The Overlords murmur their agreement, apparently enjoying my forthrightness, still working over me, the cloths gathering in the center of my face to form a cool, open tent in which damp I would gladly disappear. But, of course, the towels are taken away.

“All right,” I say then, the glaring light even more offensive after this momentary retreat to darkness, “all right, I’ll go on and do the best I can, but I want you to know that I won’t be responsible. I won’t be responsible for anything that happens from here on in. After all, it’s your responsibility to keep the stage clear, and I can hardly play my best or come to a sufficient level of concentration if I’m going to be subjected to stuff like this.” Once again they indicate agreement. It is obvious that they are trying to placate me for their own reasons.

Well, certainly they want the match to go on but somehow the thought that I am being humored strikes a cold and deadly rage into my heart and I turn upon them once more, conscious that more booms have been lowered, that the lights are even brighter and that I now address the largest, most involved audience in the history of sentience. “I warn you,” I say, “I want to warn you that this kind of thing makes the match itself suspect; it is possible that the winner can be disqualified, that the match can be wiped out because of the kind of incident we’ve seen. I’m not at all sure that the results of this match would stand up in any kind of examination procedure.”

And having said this I turn my fullest attention to the board once more, already tossing the Overlords from consciousness. Let them stew about that for a while! Let them think of what this might do to their own timetable, to their eagerness to get the match rolling, let them deal with their own headquarters and superiors as they will. It is not my problem: It is definitely theirs, and they will have much to ponder for a while. Only the board matters.

Momentarily purged I manage to swaddle my-self
in concentration again although I cannot quite forget the image of the FIDE official rushing the stage. His face was congested with blotches of the sheerest fury. It must be difficult. It must be very difficult for him. It is a strange match and one being run without the consultation of the Federation. As I have already pointed out, this petty bureaucracy severely dislikes having its prerogatives disturbed. Of course it is quite likely that aspects of behavior like this will put them out of business. I would not mind that. I would not mind that very much at all; I have never had much use for FIDE or for any of those governing bodies, for that matter, which I consider to be little more than elaborate collection agencies contriving to harass the pure and dedicated practitioners of this Royal Game.

The first internationally recognized chess champion, Paul Morphy of New Orleans, never played after his twenty-fifth birthday. The refusal of the British master, Staunton (after whom the contemporary competitive design was named), to play Morphy while the younger man was on a European tour is supposed to have driven Paul insane: He spent the last thirty years of his life as a non-practicing lawyer, scion of a wealthy family, walking the streets of the city and mumbling to himself about humiliations. Later in his life Steinmetz, the first official (as opposed to merely “recognized”) world champion, begged to meet Morphy who finally agreed only on condition that the meeting was for ten minutes and chess was not discussed. Morphy eventually died of tuberculosis. Annals do not reveal if he and Steinmetz ever met.

The world champion of the nineteen-thirties and forties, Alexander Alekhine, stands as a collaborator
with the Nazis (author of a scurrilous monograph on “Jewish chess” represented by Reshesvsky and others, a cowardly, conservative game) and also urinated on flowers, floors, tables and opponents during matches. It was not the urination so much as disrobing during the act that distressed the keepers of the clubs. Alekhine also drank heavily and would occasionally vomit during tense moments in key matches, occasionally on the board.

Adolf Andersson, author of the Immortal Game, challenged God publicly, in his last years, to a game of chess. “I’ll give him Pawn and move,” said Andersson.

Robert James Fischer, the reigning world champion at the time the Overlords came, was famed for his many eccentricities, including reactionary politics, an expressed desire to “really smash people and make them suffer,” a compulsive tardiness, a refusal to deal with women because they were “weakies” (that is, lousy chess players), and a difficult relationship with his mother. Shortly after winning the world championship to whose possession he had dedicated his life Fischer went into seclusion amidst rumors that his mental balance had disintegrated.

Boris Spassky, the man Fischer defeated for the world championship, daydreamed a lot. Pictures of the match catch him in a series of odd postures, eyes soft within the head, reeling within, a strange tentative clutching in his hands simulating embrace.

Chess, it would seem, is afflicted with a madness which has skewered masters of all generations. Whether it is a madness of the genes which drives one to chess or whether it is merely the effect of undue concentration forced on an initially normal
psyche is not now known. In any case, chess masters are commonly considered to be among the least stable of individuals. Perhaps as a group only science-fiction writers have a similar collective insanity, and it is thus doubly surprising that in this welter of madness I have been able to cultivate my own stability, a fresh flower amidst the mud, a pure, bright rose in the stink. I am known as “the gentle grandmaster” and in no way at all have I ever betrayed this superb image.

But if there were ever a time to come apart, to be sure, that time would be now, what with the pressures and tensions. But despite my unfortunate outburst toward the FIDE official I have rarely felt more in command than I do at this moment. In fact, the outburst over, various pockets of instability emptied, I am even calmer than previously and once again my attention tests itself against the board.

The question is how I will take best advantage of the premature Queen exposition. One way is to immediately bring out a Knight for a slashing check and subsequent Queen-trap. (This was the technique which Spassky the dreamer used against Fischer the eccentric in that immortal eleventh game of their series.) I find the concept of peremptory check somewhat dull. It would work, of course; it is book chess, precisely what the standard texts and practitioners would recommend ...

But I have dedicated my life to playing with originality, to finding the unconventional solution to the conventional mysteries. I would not wish to do anything so unimaginative as to merely Queen-check. Better to begin an attack of my own, a slow, proficient gathering of the forces, terminating some eight or nine moves hence in a slashing,
definitive attack deep into the corridors left unguarded by the Queen.

There is plenty of time. My clock moves on but the longer that I may extend Louis’ agony the better I will like it. There must be some sadism in my personality which I will not attempt to deny. I like to smash them. I like to torment them. I like to see them suffer.

Louis returns to the board, unaccompanied by his seconds. His gait is weaving and ponderous, his feet seem to meet the highly polished surfaces of the floor unevenly and there is a rather paretic gallop to this walk, an unsightly and unholy gleam to the eyes which I have not previously noted. Undoubtedly he has been drinking back there, although how he has managed to get hold of alcohol during a match is beyond me. There are resources to Louis, however, which I would not deny. The man is a bit of an alcoholic. He has a reputation on the circuit for secret drinking in quantity behind locked doors late at night. For years he has managed to control this habit, to be so secretive about it that it is known only to a few sophisticates like myself who have been with him for many years. But perhaps at this stage of our encounter he does not care any more.