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

“Chess is a pretty intense game,” she remarked to Dave.

He nodded. “It’s a killer. I don’t expect to live beyond forty myself.”

“Thirty,” Bill said.

“Twenty-five is enough time to be a meteor,” said Judy.

Sandra thought to herself: the Unbeat Generation.

Next day Sherevsky played the Machine to a dead-level ending. Simon Great offered a draw for the Machine (over an unsuccessful interfering protest from Jandorf that this constituted making a move for the Machine) but Sherevsky refused and sealed his move.

“He wants to have it proved to him that the Machine can play end games,” Dave commented to Sandra up in the stands. “I don’t blame him.”

At the beginning of today’s session Sandra had noticed that Bill and Judy were following each game in a very new-looking book they shared jealously between them. Won’t look new for long, Sandra had thought.

“That’s the ‘Bible’ they got there,” Dave had explained. “M.C.O.⁠—Modern Chess Openings. It lists all the best open-moves in chess, thousands and thousands of variations. That is, what masters think are the best moves. The moves that have won in the past, really. We chipped in together to buy the latest edition⁠—the 13th⁠—just hot off the press,” he had finished proudly.

Now with the Machine-Sherevsky ending the center of interest, the kids were consulting another book, one with grimy, dog-eared pages. “That’s the ‘New Testament’⁠—Basic Chess Endings,” Dave said when he noticed her looking. “There’s so much you must know in endings that it’s amazing the Machine can play them at all. I guess as the pieces get fewer it starts to look deeper.”

Sandra nodded. She was feeling virtuous. She had got her interview with Jandorf and then this morning one with Grabo (“How it Feels to Have a Machine Out-Think You”). The latter had made her think of herself as a real vulture of the press, circling over the doomed. The Hungarian had seemed in a positively suicidal depression.

One newspaper article made much of the Machine’s “psychological tactics,” hinting that the blinking lights were designed to hypnotize opponents. The general press coverage was somewhat startling. A game that in America normally rated only a fine-print column in the back sections of a very few Sunday papers was now getting boxes on the front page. The defeat of a man by a machine seemed everywhere to awaken nervous feelings of insecurity, like the launching of the first sputnik.

Sandra had rather hesitantly sought out Dr. Krakatower during the close of the morning session of play, still feeling a little guilty from her interview with Grabo. But Doc had seemed happy to see her and quite recovered from last night’s defeat, though when she had addressed him as “Master Krakatower” he had winced and said, “Please, not that!” Another session of coffee and wine-and-seltzer had resulted in her getting an introduction to her first Soviet grandmaster, Serek, who had proved to be unexpectedly charming. He had just managed to draw his game with Sherevsky (to the great amazement of the kibitzers, Sandra learned) and was most obliging about arranging for an interview.

Not to be outdone in gallantry, Doc had insisted on escorting Sandra to her seat in the stands⁠—at the price of once more losing a couple of minutes on his clock. As a result her stock went up considerably with Dave, Bill and Judy. Thereafter they treated anything she had to say with almost annoying deference⁠—Bill especially, probably in penance for his thoughtless cracks at Doc. Sandra later came to suspect that the kids had privately decided that she was Dr. Krakatower’s mistress⁠—probably a new one because she was so scandalously ignorant of chess. She did not disillusion them.

Doc lost again in the second round⁠—to Jal.

In the third round Lysmov defeated the Machine in 27 moves. There was a flaring of flashbulbs, a rush of newsmen to the phones, jabbering in the stands and much comment and analysis that was way over Sandra’s head⁠—except she got the impression that Lysmov had done something tricky.

The general emotional reaction in America, as reflected by the newspapers, was not too happy. One read between the lines that for the Machine to beat a man was bad, but for a Russian to beat an American machine was worse. A widely-read sports columnist, two football coaches, and several rural politicians announced that chess was a morbid game played only by weirdies. Despite these thick-chested he-man statements, the elusive mood of insecurity deepened.

Besides the excitement of the Lysmov win, a squabble had arisen in connection with the Machine’s still-unfinished end game with Sherevsky, which had been continued through one morning session and was now headed for another.

Finally there were rumors that World Business Machines was planning to replace Simon Great with a nationally famous physicist.

Sandra begged Doc to try to explain it all to her in kindergarten language. She was feeling uncertain of herself again and quite subdued after being completely rebuffed in her efforts to get an interview with Lysmov, who had fled her as if she were a threat to his Soviet virtue.

Doc on the other hand was quite vivacious, cheered by his third-round draw with Jandorf.

“Most willingly, my dear,” he said. “Have you ever noticed that kindergarten language can be far honester than the adult tongues? Fewer fictions. Well, several of us hashed over the Lysmov game until three o’clock this morning. Lysmov wouldn’t, though. Neither would Votbinnik or Jal. You see, I have my communication problems with the Russians too.

“We finally decided that Lysmov had managed to guess with complete accuracy both the depth at which the Machine is analyzing in the opening and middle game (ten moves ahead instead of eight, we think⁠—a prodigious achievement!) and also the main value scale in terms of which the Machine selects its move.

“Having that information, Lysmov managed to play into a combination which would give the Machine a maximum plus value in its value scale (win of Lysmov’s queen, it was) after ten moves but a checkmate for Lysmov on his second move after the first ten.