And so, fairest Childe David, it is slim thanks you get for your hero’s work, and it’s only the thought that you desire no other that prevents me from being even more ashamed of my own attitude. Perhaps in years to come . . . But we shall never meet again, I’m sure of that. Fare thee well, my little “innocent abroad,” and may only benevolent spirits accompany you on your journey to your homeland.
Love,
Stephany
I took the letter up to my room and tucked it away in my suitcase, along with such memorabilia as train schedules, ticket stubs, guidebooks and British coins. Then I got into my sleeveless sleazy black gown (the last time, I thought—but not with as much sadness as I’d anticipated) and set out for the Master’s lodge.
The Master’s guests that evening, besides myself, consisted of a young Russian engineer (let out of the Soviet Union to study British-American computers), a Japanese botanist whose English required great leaps of imagination on the part of his interlocutor, and two English dons—a historian and a mathematician. The Master greeted me cordially and provided introductions. Then he took me aside and said：
“Odd business, that, with the Westchurch manuscript. Why do you suppose Trevor-Finch removed it from the library?”
“That was partly my doing, Sir Henry,” I said. “I thought it might substantiate certain legends in the professor’s family.”
“Damned high-handed of Trevor-Finch, I must say. Still, we won’t make an issue of it. The College appreciates the way in which you’ve cooperated with the police in this matter—and the way in which you’ve resisted blandishments from the press. Are you still greatly bothered by reporters?”
“No. They’ve lost interest in me by now. I think Scotland Yard is continuing its investigation, in secret.”
“Much the better way, I’m sure. And Duke’s has avoided a messy scandal, which surely would have damaged our current fund-raising campaign. The only loser in the whole affair, then, was yourself.”
“I can live with it,” I said, and we dropped the matter.
We dined in comparative splendor, served by the Master’s personal valet in the oak-paneled dining room with a view of the Master’s private garden. The long, dark table glowed with exquisite silver and china, a large silver candelabrum as the centerpiece. It was growing dusky and the valet deftly applied a match to each of the long candles before pouring our wine.
I was seated next to the mathematician, who turned and said, “Sorry about your research having gone to smash. That’s the trouble with a field like yours. I mean, if it’s not written down in a book someplace, you have nothing to work with, do you? It’s all so pathetically transient. Now, the laws of mathematics, on the other hand, are incorruptible. If every human record were wiped out tomorrow, the truths of mathematical science would still be there for us to rediscover.”
He was baiting the historian, an old enemy, just across from us. “Now, see here, Maxley,” the historian said. “You damned mathematicians would be in a pretty fix if the humanists hadn’t preserved the discoveries of the past. Do you really mean to say you could recreate the work of centuries . . . ?”
“Give me a computer,” Maxley said, “and—’’
“Yes, but what if I blew up your computer? That’s a record too, isn’t it?”
The Japanese botanist gazed with incomprehension at the heated Englishmen, and I thought I saw the young Russian smirking behind his wineglass. The valet served roast chicken and bread sauce.
“It’s the whole ‘two cultures’ thing again, isn’t it?” Sir Henry said. “We pride ourselves on being a community of scholars, but when you get right down to it, we’re quite isolated in our separate fields. I wonder if we can ever bridge the gap that’s opened up between us.”
I noticed that dusk had fallen over the Master’s garden and that the dining room was also growing darker. The candelabrum glimmered with concentrated brightness and the silver, china and glassware reflected its light, but the men around the table had suddenly become dark shapes without faces, voices without substance.
‘‘Perhaps what you need,” I heard myself say, barely able to distinguish my own hands upon the table, “is the kind of seminar we sometimes have in America, where men from various fields take up broad intellectual topic—a sort of forum where papers are read and debated.”
“Yes, that’s a possibility,” the Master said. “But do we want anything quite so formal as all that? Couldn’t we perhaps . . .”
But I had ceased listening now that I had said what was expected of me. I gazed at the silvery glow of the candelabrum and, as my vision went slightly out of focus, I saw its light expand and shimmer like an unearthly flame, like a nebula blazing light as it spread out across the darkness, its glowing gases cooling and solidifying to form myriads of new stars which would twinkle alone in the universal night. If I stared long enough, I hoped and almost believed, I would see those stars come together once again, coalescing with one another to banish darkness in a blaze of cleansing light.
Acknowledgements:
This special 40th Anniversary edition of Celestial Chess would not have been possible without the generous support of Thomas D. Bontly, the author’s son, and Marilyn Bontly, to whom this book is dedicated.
Special thanks to Thomas Kent Miller who championed Celestial Chess for many years and introduces the novel for the Bruin Books edition.
Much gratitude also goes to Donald A. Anderson, who revealed Celestial Chess to us with his literary astrolabe.
As always, kudos to the Bruin Team: Hung, Michelle and Culpeo.
Celestial Chess Page 29