The Best of Gene Wolfe

by Gene Wolfe

  “I’m sorry you’ve had a poor time of it, but now you can relax. There’s nothing more to do until he’s convinced the machine is broken and irreparable.”

  Lame Hans looked at him as though in some surprise. “You didn’t see the signs? They are posted everywhere.”

  “What signs?”

  “He’s offering to bet two thousand kilomarks that no one can beat the machine.”

  Herr Heitzmann shrugged. “He will discover that it is inoperative before the contest, and cancel it.”

  “He could not cancel after the bet was made,” said Lame Hans. “Particularly if there were a proviso that if either was unable to play, the bet was forfeited. Some upright citizen would be selected to hold the stakes, naturally.”

  “I don’t suppose he could at that,” said Herr Heitzmann, taking a swallow of schnapps from the glass before him. “However, he wouldn’t bet me—he’d think I knew some way to influence the machine. Still, he’s never seen you.”

  “Just what I’ve been thinking myself,” said Lame Hans, “on my hike.”

  “It’s a little out of your line.”

  “If you’ll put up the cash, I’d be willing to go a little out of my line for my tenth of that kind of money. But what is there to do? I make the bet, find someone to hold the stakes, and stand ready to play on Saturday morning. I could even offer to play him—for a smaller bet—to give him a chance to get some of his own back. That is, if he has anything left after paying off. It would make it seem more sporting.”

  “You’re certain you could beat him?”

  “I can beat anybody—you know that. Besides, I beat him a score of times yesterday; the game you saw was just the first.”

  Herr Heitzmann ducked under the threatening edge of a tray carried by an overenthusiastic waiter. “All the same,” Herr Heitzmann said, “when he discovers it won’t work . . .”

  “I could even spend a bit of time in the machine. That’s no problem. It’s in a first-floor room, with a window that won’t lock.”

  And so Lame Hans left for our village again, this time considerably better dressed and with two thousand kilomarks in his pocket. Herr Heitzmann, with his appearance considerably altered by a plastiskin mask, left also, an hour later, to keep an eye on the two thousand.

  * * *

  But,” the professor said when Lame Hans and he were comfortably ensconced in his sitting room again, with pipes in their mouths and glasses in their hands and a plate of sausage on the table, “but who is going to operate the machine for us? Wouldn’t it be easier if you simply didn’t appear? Then you would forfeit.”

  “And Heitzmann would kill me,” said Lame Hans.

  “He didn’t strike me as the type.”

  “He would hire it done,” Hans said positively. “Whenever he got the cash. There are deserters about who are happy enough to do that kind of work for drinking money. For that matter, there are soldiers who aren’t deserters who’ll do it—men on detached duty of one kind and another. When you’ve spent all winter slaughtering Russians, one more body doesn’t make much difference.” He blew a smoke ring, then ran the long stem of his clay pipe through it as though he were driving home a bayonet. “But if I play the machine and lose, he’ll only think you figured things out and got somebody to work it, and that I’m not as good as he supposed. Then he won’t want anything more to do with me.”

  “All right, then.”

  “A tobacconist should do well in this village, don’t you think? I had in mind that little shop two doors down from here. When the coaches stop, the passengers will see my sign; there should be many who’ll want to fill their pouches.”

  “Gretchen prefers to stay here, I suppose.”

  Lame Hans nodded. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve been all over, and when you’ve been all over, it’s all the same.”

  * * *

  Like everyone else in the village, and for fifty kilometers around, I had seen the professor’s posters, and I went to bed Friday night full of pleasant anticipation. Lame Hans had told me that he retired in the same frame of mind, after a couple of glasses of good plum brandy in the inn parlor with the professor. He and the professor had to appear strangers and antagonists in public, as will be readily seen, but this did not prevent them from eating and drinking together while they discussed arrangements for the match, which was to be held—with the permission of Burgermeister Landsteiner—in the village street, where an area for the players had been cordoned off and high benches erected for the spectators.

  Hans woke (so he has told me) when it was still dark, thinking that he had heard thunder. Then the noise came again, and he knew it must be the artillery, the big siege guns, firing at the Russians trapped in Kostrzyn. The army had built wood-fired steam tractors to pull those guns—he had seen them in Wriezen—and now the soldiers were talking about putting armor on the tractors and mounting cannon, so the knights of the chessboard would exist in reality once more.

  The firing continued, booming across the dry plain, and he went to the window to see if he could make out the flashes, but could not. He put on a thin shirt and a pair of cotton trousers (for though the sun was not yet up, it was as hot as if the whole of Brandenburg had been thrust into a furnace) and went into the street to look at the empty shop in which he planned to set up his tobacco business. A squadron of Ritters galloped through the village, doubtless on their way to the siege. Lame Hans shouted, “What do you mean to do? Ride your horses against the walls?” but they ignored him. Now that the truce was broken, Von Koblenz’s army would soon be advancing up the Oder Valley, Lame Hans thought. The Russians were said to have been preparing powered balloons to assist in the defense, and this hot summer weather, when the air seemed never to stir, would favor their use. He decided that if he were the commissar, he would allow Von Koblenz to reach Glogów and then . . .

  But he was not the commissar. He went back into the inn and smoked his pipe until Frau Scheer came down to prepare his breakfast. Then he went to the professor’s room where the machine was kept. Gretchen was already waiting there.

  “Now then,” Professor Baumeister said, “I understand that the two of you have it all worked out between you.” And Gretchen nodded solemnly, so that her plump chin looked like a soft little pillow pressed against her throat.

  “It is quite simple,” said Lame Hans. “Gretchen does not know how to play, but I have worked out the moves for her and drawn them on a sheet of paper, and we have practiced in my room with a board. We will run through it once here when she is in the machine; then there will be nothing more to do.”

  “Is it a short game? It won’t do for her to become confused.”

  “She will win in fourteen moves,” Lame Hans promised. “But still it is unusual. I don’t think anyone has done it before. You will see in a moment.”

  To Gretchen, Professor Baumeister said, “You’re sure you won’t be mixed up? Everything depends on you.”

  The girl shook her head, making her blond braids dance. “No, Herr Professor.” She drew a folded piece of paper from her bosom. “I have it all here, and as my Hans told you, we have practiced in his room, where no one could see us.”

  “You aren’t afraid?”

  “When I am going to marry Hans, and be mistress of a fine shop? Oh, no, Herr Professor—for that I would do much worse things than to hide in this thing that looks like a stove and play a game.”

  “We are ready, then,” the professor said. “Hans, you still have not explained how it is that a person can hide in there when the sides can be removed allowing people to look through the machinery. And I confess I still don’t understand how it can be done, or how the pieces are moved.”

  “Here,” said Lame Hans, and he pulled out the board as Herr Heitzmann had done in the inn parlor. “Now will you assist me in removing the left side? You should learn the way it comes loose, Professor—someday you may have to do it yourself.” (The truth was that Hans was not strong enough to handle the big brass sheet by hi
mself and did not wish to be humiliated before Gretchen.)

  “I had forgotten how much empty space there is inside,” Professor Baumeister said when they had it off. “It looks more impossible than ever.”

  “It is simple, like all good tricks,” Lame Hans told him. “And it is the sign of a good trick that it is the thing that makes it appear difficult that makes it easy. Here is where the chessboard is, you see, when it is folded up. But when it is unfolded, the panel under it swings out on a hinge to support it, and there are sides, so that a triangular space is formed.”

  The professor nodded and said, “I remember thinking when I played you that it looked like a potato bin, with the chessboard laid over the top.”

  “Exactly,” Lame Hans continued. “The space is not noticeable when the machine is open, because this circuit is just in front of it. But see here.” And he released a little catch at the top of the circuit card, and pivoted it up to show the empty space behind it. “I am in the machine when it is carried in, but when Heitzmann pulls out the board, I lift this and fit myself under it; then, when the machine is opened for inspection, I am out of view. I can look up through the dark glass of the black squares, and because the pieces are so tall, I can make out their positions. But because it is bright outside, but dim where I am, I cannot be seen.”

  “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 comes in 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 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.

  Dr. 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 it was best to forfeit after all—though in fact, if anyone had looked, he would have seen Lame Hans sitting at the bar of the inn at that very moment, having a pleasant nip of plum brandy and then another, while he allowed the suspense to build up as a good showman should.

  At last Dr. Eckardt climbed upon a chair and announced: “It is 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 tiptoes 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 Dr. 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 feels 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’s 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,” Dr. 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. Lame Hans 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 Dr. Eckardt warned him not to distract the player. There had been seven more than fourteen moves—and there was a trap behind the trap.

  Lame Hans 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,” Dr. Eckardt announced. Lame Hans saw the look of relief on Professor Baumeister’s face, and knew t
hat 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 sweat-stained 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.

  Dr. Eckhardt 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 permitted 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.