Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

that time had gone by. He decided he had made a mistake in asking again for the screens. It was easier to watch those damned lights blink than have them blink in his imagination.

Oh, if chess could only be played in intergalactic space, in the black privacy of one’s thoughts. But there had to be the physical presence of the opponent with his (possibly deliberate) unnerving mannerisms⁠—Lasker and his cigar, Capablanca and his red necktie, Nimzowitsch and his nervous contortions (very like Bela Grabo’s, though the latter did not see it that way). And now this ghastly flashing, humming, stinking, button-banging metal monster!

Actually, he told himself, he was being asked to play two opponents, the Machine and Simon Great, a sort of consultation team. It wasn’t fair!

The Machine hammered its button and rammed its queen across the electric board. In Grabo’s imagination it was like an explosion.

Grabo held onto his nerves with an effort and plunged into a maze of calculations.

Once he came to, like a man who has been asleep, to realize that he was wondering whether the lights were still blinking behind the screens while he was making his move. Did the Machine really analyze at such times or were the lights just an empty trick? He forced his mind back to the problems of the game, decided on his move, checked the board twice for any violent move he might have missed, noted on his clock that he’d taken five minutes, checked the board again very rapidly and then put out his hand and made his move⁠—with the fiercely suspicious air of a boss compelled to send an extremely unreliable underling on an all-important errand.

Then he punched his clock, sprang to his feet, and once more waved for Vanderhoef.

Thirty seconds later the Tournament Director, very red-faced now, was saying in a low voice, almost pleadingly, “But Bela, I cannot keep asking them to change the screens. Already they have been up twice and down once to please you. Moving them disturbs the other players and surely isn’t good for your own peace of mind. Oh, Bela, my dear Bela⁠—”

Vanderhoef broke off. Grabo knew he had been going to say something improper but from the heart, such as, “For God’s sake don’t blow this game out of nervousness now that you have a win in sight”⁠—and this sympathy somehow made the Hungarian furious.

“I have other complaints which I will make formally after the game,” he said harshly, quivering with rage. “It is a disgrace the way that mechanism punches the time-clock button. It will crack the case! The Machine never stops humming! And it stinks of ozone and hot metal, as if it were about to explode!”

“It cannot explode, Bela. Please!”

“No, but it threatens to! And you know a threat is always more effective than an actual attack! As for the screens, they must be taken down at once, I demand it!”

“Very well, Bela, very well, it will be done. Compose yourself.”

Grabo did not at once return to his table⁠—he could not have endured to sit still for the moment⁠—but paced along the line of tables, snatching looks at the other games in progress. When he looked back at the big electric board, he saw that the Machine had made a move although he hadn’t heard it punch the clock. He rushed back and studied the board without sitting down. Why, the Machine had made a stupid move, he saw with a rush of exaltation. At that moment the last screen being folded started to fall over, but one of the gray-smocked men caught it deftly. Grabo flinched and his hand darted out and moved a piece.

He heard someone gasp. Vanderhoef.

It got very quiet. The four soft clicks of the move being fed into the Machine were like the beat of a muffled drum.

There was a buzzing in Grabo’s ears. He looked down at the board in horror.

The Machine blinked, blinked once more and then, although barely twenty seconds had elapsed, moved a rook.

On the glassy gray margin above the Machine’s electric board, large red words flamed on:

Check! And mate in three

Up in the stands Dave squeezed Sandra’s arm. “He’s done it! He’s let himself be swindled.”

“You mean the Machine has beaten Grabo?” Sandra asked.

“What else?”

“Can you be sure? Just like that?”

“Of cour⁠ ⁠… Wait a second.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I’m sure.”

“Mated in three like a potzer,” Bill confirmed.

“The poor old boob,” Judy sighed.

Down on the floor Bela Grabo sagged. The assistant director moved toward him quickly. But then the Hungarian straightened himself a little.

“I resign,” he said softly.

The red words at the top of the board were wiped out and briefly replaced, in white, by:

Thank you for a good game

And then a third statement, also in white, flashed on for a few seconds:

You had bad luck

Bela Grabo clenched his fists and bit his teeth. Even the Machine was being sorry for him!

He stiffly walked out of the hall. It was a long, long walk.

III

Adjournment time neared. Serek, the exchange down but with considerable time on his clock, sealed his forty-sixth move against Sherevsky and handed the envelope to Vanderhoef. It would be opened when the game was resumed at the morning session. Dr. Krakatower studied the position on his board and then quietly tipped over his king. He sat there for a moment as if he hadn’t the strength to rise. Then he shook himself a little, smiled, got up, clasped hands briefly with Lysmov and wandered over to watch the Angler-Jal game.

Jandorf had resigned his game to Votbinnik some minutes ago, rather more surlily.

After a while Angler sealed a move, handing it to Vanderhoef with a grin just as the little red flag dropped on his clock, indicating he’d used every second of his time.

Up in the stands Sandra worked her shoulders to get a kink out of her back. She’d noticed several newsmen hurrying off to report in the Machine’s first win. She was thankful that her job was limited to special