"I understand," said the professor. "But will Gretchen have enough light in there to read her piece of paper?"
"That was why I wanted to hold the match in the street. With the board in sunshine she will be able to see her paper clearly."
Gretchen was on her knees, looking at the space behind the circuit card. "It is very small in there," she said.
"It is big enough," said Lame Hans. "Do you have the magnet?" And then to the professor: "The pieces are moved by moving a magnet under them. The white pieces are brass, but the black ones are of iron, and the magnet gives them a sliding motion that is very impressive."
"I know," said the professor, remembering that he had felt a twinge of uneasiness whenever the machine had shifted a piece. "Gretchen, see if you can get inside."
The poor girl did the best she could, but encountered the greatest difficulty in wedging herself into the small space under the board. Work in the kitchen of the inn had provided her with many opportunities to snatch a mouthful of pastry or a choice potato dumpling or a half stein of dark beer, and she had availed herself of most of them—with the result that she possessed a lush and blooming figure of the sort that appeals to men like Lame Hans, who having been withered before birth by the isotopes of the old wars are themselves thin and small by nature. But though full breasts like ripe melons, and a rounded comfortable stomach and generous hips, may be pleasant things to look at when the moonlight is streaming through the bedroom window, they are not really well suited to folding up in a little three-cornered space under a chessboard; and in the end poor Gretchen was forced to remove her gown, and her shift as well, before she could cram herself, with much gasping and grunting, into it.
An hour later Willi Schacht the smith's apprentice and five other men carried the machine out into the street and set it in the space that had been cordoned off for the players, and if they noticed the extra weight, they did not complain of it. And there the good people who had come to see the match looked at the machine, and fanned themselves, and said that they were glad they weren't in the army on a day like this—because what must it be to serve one of those big guns, which get hot enough to poach an egg after half a dozen shots, even in ordinary weather? And between moppings and fannings they talked about the machine, and the mysterious Herr Zimmer (that was the name Lame Hans had given) who was going to play it for two hundred gold kilomarks.
Nine chimes sounded from the old clock in the steeple of Father Karl's church, and Herr Zimmer did not appear.
Doctor Eckardt, who had been chosen again to hold the stakes, came forward and whispered for some time with Professor Baumeister. The professor (if the truth were known) was beginning to believe that perhaps Lame Hans had decided that it was best to forfeit after all—though in fact if anyone had looked they would have seen Lame Hans sitting at the bar of the inn at that very moment, having a good nip of plum brandy and then another, while he allowed the suspense to build up as a good showman should.
At last Doctor Eckardt climbed upon a chair and announced: "It is now nearly ten. When the bet was made, it was agreed by both parties that if either failed to appear—or appearing, failed to play—the other should be declared the winner. If the worthy stranger, Herr Zimmer, does not make an appearance before ten minutes past ten, I intend to award the money entrusted to me to our respected acquaintance Professor Baumeister."
There was a murmur of excitement at this, but just when the clock began to strike, Lame Hans called from the door of the inn, "WAIT!" Then hats were thrown into the air, and women stood on toe-tips to see; and fathers lifted their children up as the lame Herr Zimmer made his way down the steps of the inn and took his place in the chair that had been arranged in front of the board.
"Are you ready to begin?" said Doctor Eckardt.
"I am," said Lame Hans, and opened.
The first five moves were made just as they had been rehearsed. But in the sixth, in which Gretchen was to have slid her queen half across the board, the piece stopped a square short.
Any ordinary player would have been dismayed, but Lame Hans was not. He only put his chin on his hand, and contrived (though wishing he had not drunk the brandy) a series of moves within the frame of the fourteen move game, by which he should lose despite the queen's being out of position. He made the first of these moves; and black moved the queen again, this time in a way that was completely different from anything on the paper Hans had given Gretchen. She was deceiving me when she said she did not know how to play, he thought to himself. And now she finds she can't read the paper in there, or perhaps she has decided to surprise me. Naturally she would learn the fundamentals of the game, when it is played in the inn parlor every night. (But he knew that she had not been deceiving him.) Then he saw that this new move of the queen's was in fact a clever attack, into which he could play and lose.
And then the guns around Kostrzyn, which had been silent since the early hours of the morning, began to boom again. Three times Lame Hans' hand stretched out to touch his king and make the move that would render it quite impossible for him to escape the queen, and three times it drew back. "You have five minutes in which to move," Doctor Eckardt said. "I will tell you when only thirty seconds remain, and count the last five."
The machine was built to play chess, thought Lame Hans. Long ago, and they were warlocks in those days. Could it be that Gretchen, in kicking about… ?
Some motion in the sky made him raise his eyes, looking above the board and over the top of the machine itself. An artillery observation balloon (gray-black, a German balloon then) was outlined against the blue sky. He thought of himself sitting in a dingy little shop full of tobacco all day long, and no one to play chess with—no one he could not checkmate easily.
He moved a pawn, and the black bishop slipped out of the king's row to tighten the net.
If he won, they would have to pay him. Heitzmann would think everything had gone according to plan, and Professor Baumeister, surely, would hire no assassins. He launched his counterattack: the real attack at the left side of the board, with a false one down the center. Professor Baumeister came to stand beside him, and Doctor Eckardt warned him not to distract the player. There had been seven more than fourteen moves—and there was a trap behind the trap.
He took the black queen's knight and lost a pawn. He was sweating in the heat, wiping his brow with his sleeve between moves.
A black rook, squat in its iron sandbags, advanced three squares, and he heard the crowd cheer. "That is mate, Herr Zimmer," Doctor Eckardt announced. He saw the look of relief on Professor Baumeister's face, and knew that his own was blank. Then over the cheering someone shouted: "Cheat! Cheat!" Gray-black pillbox police caps were forcing their way through the hats and parasols of the spectators.
"There is a man in there! There is someone inside!" It was too clear and too loud—a showman's voice. A tall stranger was standing on the topmost bench waving Heitzmann's sweatstained velvet hat.
A policeman asked: "The machine opens, does it not, Herr Professor? Open it quickly before there is a riot."
Professor Baumeister said, "I don't know how."
"It looks simple enough," declared the other policeman, and he began to unfasten the catches, wrapping his hand in his handkerchief to protect it from the heat of the brass. "Wait!" ordered Professor Baumeister, but neither one waited; the first policeman went to the aid of the other, and together they lifted away one side of the machine and let it fall against the railing. The movable circuit card had not been allowed to swing back into place, and Gretchen's plump, naked legs protruded from the cavity beneath the chessboard. The first policeman seized them by the ankles and pulled her out until her half-open eyes stared at the bright sky. Doctor Eckardt bent over her and flexed her left arm at the elbow. "Rigor is beginning," he said. "She died of the heat, undoubtedly."
Lame Hans threw himself on her body weeping.
Such is the story of Lame Hans. The captain of police in his kindness has allowed me to push the
machine to a position which permits Hans to reach the board through the bars of his cell, and he plays chess there all day long, moving first his own white pieces and then the black ones of the machine, and always losing. Sometimes when he is not quick enough to move the black queen I see her begin to rock and to slide herself, and the dials and the console lights to glow with impatience; and then Hans must reach out and take her to her new position at once. Do you not think that this is sad for Lame Hans? I have heard that many who have been twisted by the old wars have these psychokinetic abilities without knowing it; and Professor Baumeister, who is in the cell next to his, says that someday a technology may be founded on them.
UNICORN VARIATION
Roger Zelazny
A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.
Gone again. Back again. Again.
Power, you said? Yes. It takes considerable force of identity to manifest before or after one's time. Or both.
As it faded and gained it also advanced, moving through the warm afternoon, its tracks erased by the wind. That is, on those occasions when there were tracks.
A reason. There should always be a reason. Or reasons.
It knew why it was there—but not why it was there, in that particular locale.
It anticipated learning this shortly, as it approached the desolation-bound line of the old street. However, it knew that the reason may also come before, or after. Yet again, the pull was there and the force of its being was such that it had to be close to something.
The buildings were worn and decayed and some of them fallen and all of them drafty and dusty and empty. Weeds grew among floorboards. Birds nested upon rafters. The droppings of wild things were everywhere, and it knew them all as they would have known it, were they to meet face to face.
It froze, for there had come the tiniest unanticipated sound from somewhere ahead and to the left. At that moment, it was again phasing into existence and it released its outline which faded as quickly as a rainbow in hell, that but the naked presence remained beyond subtraction.
Invisible, yet existing, strong, it moved again. The clue. The cue. Ahead. A gauche. Beyond the faded word SALOON on weathered board above. Through the swinging doors. (One of them pinned alop.)
Pause and assess.
Bar to the right, dusty. Cracked mirror behind it. Empty bottles. Broken bottles. Brass rail, black, encrusted. Tables to the left and rear. In various states of repair.
Man seated at the best of the lot. His back to the door. Levi's. Hiking boots. Faded blue shirt. Green backpack leaning against the wall to his left.
Before him, on the tabletop, is the faint, painted outline of a chessboard, stained, scratched, almost obliterated.
The drawer in which he had found the chessmen is still partly open.
He could no more have passed up a chess set without working out a problem or replaying one of his better games than he could have gone without breathing, circulating his blood or maintaining a relatively stable body temperature.
It moved nearer, and perhaps there were fresh prints in the dust behind it, but none noted them.
It, too, played chess.
It watched as the man replayed what had perhaps been his finest game, from the world preliminaries of seven years past. He had blown up after that—surprised to have gotten even as far as he had—for he never could perform well under pressure. But he had always been proud of that one game, and he relived it as all sensitive beings do certain turning points in their lives. For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best.
It took up a position across the board from him and stared. The man completed the game, smiling. Then he set up the board again, rose and fetched a can of beer from his pack. He popped the top.
When he returned, he discovered that White's King's Pawn had been advanced to K4. His brow furrowed. He turned his head, searching the bar, meeting his own puzzled gaze in the grimy mirror. He looked under the table. He took a drink of beer and seated himself.
He reached out and moved his Pawn to K4. A moment later, he saw White's King's Knight rise slowly into the air and drift forward to settle upon KB3. He stared for a long while into the emptiness across the table before he advanced his own Knight to his KB3.
White's Knight moved to take his Pawn. He dismissed the novelty of the situation and moved his Pawn to Q3. He all but forgot the absence of a tangible opponent as the White Knight dropped back to its KB3. He paused to take a sip of beer, but no sooner had he placed the can upon the tabletop than it rose again, passed across the board and was upended. A gurgling noise followed. Then the can fell to the floor, bouncing, ringing with an empty sound.
"I'm sorry," he said, rising and returning to his pack. "I'd have offered you one if I'd thought you were something that might like it."
He opened two more cans, returned with them, placed one near the far edge of the table, one at his own right hand.
"Thank you," came a soft, precise voice from a point beyond it.
The can was raised, tilted slightly, returned to the tabletop.
"My name is Martin," the man said.
"Call me Tlingel," said the other. "I had thought that perhaps your kind was extinct. I am pleased that you at least have survived to afford me this game."
"Huh?" Martin said. "We were all still around the last time that I looked—a couple of days ago."
"No matter. I can take care of that later," Tlingel replied. "I was misled by the appearance of this place."
"Oh. It's a ghost town. I backpack a lot."
"Not important. I am near the proper point in your career as a species. I can feel that much."
"I am afraid that I do not follow you."
"I am not at all certain that you would wish to. I assume that you intend to capture that pawn?"
"Perhaps. Yes, I do wish to. What are you talking about?"
The beer can rose. The invisible entity took another drink.
"Well," said Tlingel, "to put it simply, your—successors—grow anxious. Your place in the scheme of things being such an important one, I had sufficient power to come and check things out."
" 'Successors'? I do not understand."
"Have you seen any griffins recently?"
Martin chuckled.
"I've heard the stories," he said, "seen the photos of the one supposedly shot in the Rockies. A hoax, of course."
"Of course it must seem so. That is the way with mythical beasts."
"You're trying to say that it was real?"
"Certainly. Your world is in bad shape. When the last grizzly bear died recently, the way was opened for the griffins—just as the death of the last aepyornis brought in the yeti, the dodo the Loch Ness creature, the passenger pigeon the sasquatch, the blue whale the kraken, the American eagle the cockatrice—"
"You can't prove it by me."
"Have another drink."
Martin began to reach for the can, halted his hand and stared.
A creature approximately two inches in length, with a human face, a lion-like body and feathered wings was crouched next to the beer can.
"A mini-sphinx," the voice continued. "They came when you killed off the last smallpox virus."
"Are you trying to say that whenever a natural species dies out a mythical one takes its place?" he asked.
"In a word—yes. Now. It was not always so, but you have destroyed the mechanisms of evolution. The balance is now redressed by those others of us, from the morning land—we, who have never truly been endangered. We return, in our time."
"And you—whatever yo
u are, Tlingel—you say that humanity is now endangered?"
"Very much so. But there is nothing that you can do about it, is there? Let us get on with the game."
The sphinx flew off. Martin took a sip of beer and captured the Pawn.
"Who," he asked then, "are to be our successors?"
"Modesty almost forbids," Tlingel replied. "In the case of a species as prominent as your own, it naturally has to be the loveliest, most intelligent, most important of us all."
"And what are you? Is there any way that I can have a look?"
"Well—yes. If I exert myself a trifle."
The beer can rose, was drained, fell to the floor. There followed a series of rapid rattling sounds retreating from the table. The air began to flicker over a large area opposite Martin, darkening within the glowing flame work. The outline continued to brighten, its interior growing jet black. The form moved, prancing about the saloon, multitudes of tiny, cloven hoofprints scoring and cracking the floorboards. With a final, near-blinding flash it came into full view and Martin gasped to behold it.
A black unicorn with mocking, yellow eyes sported before him, rising for a moment onto its hind legs to strike a heraldic pose. The fires flared about it a second longer, then vanished.
Martin had drawn back, raising one hand defensively.
"Regard me!" Tlingel announced. "Ancient symbol of wisdom, valor and beauty, I stand before you!"
"I thought your typical unicorn was white," Martin finally said.
"I am archetypical," Tlingel responded, dropping to all fours, "and possessed of virtues beyond the ordinary."
"Such as?"
"Let us continue our game."
"What about the fate of the human race? You said—"
"…And save the small talk for later."
"I hardly consider the destruction of humanity to be small talk."
PAWN TO INFINITY Page 3