Tactics of Conquest Read online

  Still, I rather resented the way in which they played me for a naive fool and in truth have never really forgiven them for this episode although I can see their point. Why not?

  She was a splendid bitch in her early thirties: high-heeled and with a suitcase which she opened before the door was fully closed to reveal a stunning array of whips, leather, spikes, lingerie and other fetishistic delights. I had done extensive reading in the literature of sex by that time and knew the significance of all these. “Are you a virgin?” she said, kicking the door closed and chaining it. “That’s what I’ve heard. Virgins are fun.”

  “I am not a virgin,” I lied, “but whether I am or not is hardly the question. The question is what you’re doing here in my room.”

  I motioned to the omnipresent pocket chess set, at this time poised in midst of a replay of the Immortal Game, the Andersson Queen having penetrated to the seventh rank for that masterful sacrifice. “I’m preparing for a match.”

  “A group of your friends told me I was wanted.”

  “Well,” I said, “aha, well, there was no need for them to suggest that; I’m quite happy and fulfilled and I resent this a good deal.” The hotel was in Switzerland, Bern, I believe, although it is difficult to be certain about matters of this sort. As I say, matters tend to jumble together, at least retrospectively, and all cities are the same when one is on the grandmaster circuit. “Perhaps you’d better leave,” I said, “come on, get along with you.”

  “But I can’t,” she said petulantly. “I mean, I can’t do that. They gave me one hundred deutsch-marks to come here and promised me another seventy-five if I would tell them what happened. They said to show you a good time.” Petulance modulated to temper, she swung a foot prettily.

  This admission, so without true affect, struck a chill. Did they consider me so naive? Did they know that through my analytic powers I had long since deduced from pictorial and written pornography the significance and gymnastics of the sex act, had recreated it in my own mind? They had taken me for stupid and I never like being taken for stupid, particularly since I was then leading the Interzonals five and a half to two and a half, I recall, with only two easy games against those also-rans Barker and Still to come. “I’m afraid that you’ve been sent to the wrong room,” I pointed out. “I know everything about sex and I surely don’t want to buy it.”

  This had a rather sanctimonious air because her attitude became defensive. “What do you think I am?” she said, closing the lid on her suitcase of wonders. “And what do you think this is?”

  “Well, all right,” I said, an unaccustomed tenderness intruding. I feel the same way when I have destroyed opponents. “I am truly sorry.”

  “You must think that I’m a whore,” she said, turning to excellent German (I am multi-lingual), backing away, the suitcase dangling from her hand like a scrotal sac. “You must think that they sent me into your rooms for the sick purposes of prostitution, rather than education. I am disgraced; you have disgraced my mother and my father and my forebears—” (at this point my transliterative ability breaks down; she perhaps did not speak this formally). “I can no longer tolerate being treated in such a fashion by such a, young gentleman.” She reached a hand toward the door but was entrapped by her own cunning, for the door she had locked failed to open, of course, and instead of a grandiose exit she was forced to a penitent confrontation. “Very well,” she said, holding the suitcase awkwardly, “you may now dismiss me.”

  “I will do nothing of the sort,” I pointed out. “It has not occurred to me to dismiss you.” At that moment a pure, jolting rage seized me, rage at the other grandmasters who took me for a naive fool, rage at this woman who thought me some kind of crazy fetishist, rage at my own inexperience and choices which I realized for the first time had driven me from knowledge. “I will have my way with you,” I said, and divested myself of my clothing, a, shiny one-piece relaxation suit, on the spot. I stood before her, with the collaboration of the zipper, almost instantaneously nude, and what I always like to refer to as my King’s Rook stiffened and beat beneath me like a little bird winging its way toward a nest. I pushed against her my massive bearlike hands, conveying her to the bed. The suitcase fell from her hand, bounced like a trampoline on the floor and then a lock gave, disgorging whole units of merchandise: rubber casings of some sort, feathers, a dildo, a false breast. “I will show you my capability,” I announced. Dragging her over to the bed, I seized upon her dress with shaking hands and, fumbling and ripping, managed to denude her.

  “You are playing light with my honor,” she said in poorly translated formalese. “I do not think that I can permit such liberties to be taken with my person or my body.” But too late, too late, she was naked beneath me, naked above me and over and under, our two bodies locked together like Pawns meeting in the center of the board in a zigzag confrontation and I felt her Queen’s Pawn beneath me beginning to flower with its own purpose, my King’s Rook writhing and moving into her inexorably.

  “So much for that,” I said when I was done, my Rook now moved to the sixth rank, her Queen wiped off the board, “so much for any of that, now you may take your equipment and go.” I felt a massive disinterest within me as we untangled. I went immediately over to the pocket board and in an excess of concentration worked out the final moves of the Immortal Game, paying no attention to her as she reassembled her clothing, restuffed her valise and so on. I held my position of inattention while she went to the door, struggling with the locks, finally opening the door into the dank alley of corridor. “I will tell them,” she said, “I will tell them what you have done with me,” and then she went quickly, leaving me to my own devices. My elaborate unconcern faded only when I was definitely sure that she had left the hallway. I went to the door, put my entire weight against it and rooted it closed like a rodent, then snapped the locks and went to the bed where I shook convulsively for quite a while, finally deciding that it would be best to don my relaxation suit again and try to think of this no more.

  After some time, the next day I think it was, my colleagues asked me rather shyly and with many private glances how my evening had been spent, and I said that it was all right but I still preferred chess (which was only half a lie since I wholly preferred chess). This was some thirty years and two months before the Overlords summoned me to my great and final mission and I give this only in order to yield one of those personal insights which I have been assured are so important to maintain human interest. Actually the event was insignificant.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pawn to King Four

  It is a routine reply move in the Ruy Lopez; it is a move nevertheless with brilliant possibilities. It avoids the dangerous and untrustworthy Queen’s Gambit which, either accepted or declined, is a holy terror; it functions as a blocking response to the dangerous advance of the Pawn to King Five; it shows a brisk willingness to join the issue while actually risking nothing. It is my preferred move in situations of this sort and many articles have been published in the specialist magazines pointing out; that I have brought the Black Pawn to King Four to its highest excess of ramification in this century. It is for this reason as well as many others that the Overlords must have picked me to represent the forces of light.

  The way in which I was selected might require some elucidation. In order for one to sympathize with my position as well as vicariously participate in the struggle, exposition of this sort cannot be neglected and I am eager at all times to please. (I should say that these notes are being transcribed directly from the mouthpiece within my neck which was surgically implanted at the start of the games in order that my reflections and recollections would be available to all of the universe, as well as to the Overlords, for posterity; notes of the match, so to speak. All that I have to do is to talk to myself in a high, inaudible shriek and through the miracle of advanced technology everything is automatically transcribed by stylus by a team of experts located on Sirius. Of this I have been informed.)

  Indeed, bei
ng summoned by the Overlords gave me rather a turn but I was able to understand eventually that there was no easier way to do it. One moment I was in my pajamas in Warsaw, yawning and scratching myself, thinking of all the events of the sections that day which had put me into third place alone in clean, challenging position below Still (whose game had improved enormously in thirty years and two months). The next moment I was in some damp enclosure infected with murk, confronted by a purple, ten-tacled creature whose rather human eyes looked at me in a stolid but satisfied way. “Ah,” the creature said, “I see that the contact has been made, and not a moment too soon, I might add.” It burbled with satisfaction (or at least my anthropomorphic consciousness inferred that this was a satisfied burble; actually it might have been a whine of displeasure at my appearance, although this is hard to say). The important point is that the creature was quite repulsive and horrifying and it took all of my self-control and inner strength, qualities developed through thirty-one years of international grandmaster chess, not to lose control in that void and disgrace myself. “Sit down,” the creature said.

  “Where am I?” I asked. “And who are you, and what is going on, and what is this all about, and so on?” Routine queries all of them, questions one might expect from an amazed and discommoded consciousness, but I must admit that there was little fervor in the questioning and indeed I had no more interest in the prospective answers than the creature might have had in responding to them, for indeed he seemed rather distracted. “All right,” I said rather petulantly, “so be it. Don’t tell me anything. I just want you to know that if I can’t compete tomorrow I’ll not only lose the best chance I’ve ever had of advancing to the Interzonals, I’ll completely destroy their scheduling. Games will be lost by forfeit; audiences will be disappointed; revenues collected will have to be returned and the impoverished grandmasters of Warsaw will have to continue to live in disgrace.”

  Saying this I folded my arms rather sullenly and stared through the murk trying to find some familiar object or geographical site by which I might be able to position myself but it was quite hopeless. It is hard to describe the surroundings except to say that there was little terrestrial about them (I can doubly confirm this now that I have had the opportunity to investigate the extra-terrestrial artifacts of the universe more closely). “So be it,” I said and closed my eyes, opening them immediately as a vivid flare of light penetrated my eyeballs, affording a good jolt of pain.

  “I’m sorry,” the creature said in its perfect if rather flat English, “but you cannot withdraw. Our time is very limited and we are, in addition to this, already severely behind schedule. I am here to advise you that you have been recruited for an important chess match upon which the outcome of the universe will be decided. You may call me One since I am the first of our race whom you have met. There will be others, and as a group you may refer to us as the Overlords.” The creature went on from there to give expository details which I have already discussed: the fact that the universe had reached a difficult point in its development and the Overlords found it necessary to hasten a decision; the fact that the universe which might be understood by my intelligence was in a perpetual struggle between the forces of good and evil, and had now reached a perilous state of imbalance where the two contending forces were evenly matched and could be expected to struggle to no real conclusion for many millennia; the decision of the Overlords that the process could be accelerated through an arbitrary chess match between players representing the two contending forces, at the end of which the winning side could be assumed to have scored a clear victory and the Overlords would then put the other side out of business through the use of incendiary and entropic devices far too complex to be gone into at this time. “You have been selected as one of the representatives,” the Overlord concluded, “and at this moment the other representative, similarly recruited, is being talked to. Which would you rather represent? Good or evil?”

  I admit that I was rather stunned. “I don’t understand that at all,” I said.

  “Oh,” the Overlord said, with a very human shrug, “I forget the system under which you people live, the ethos which penetrates the universe of which I am speaking, the forces and highly charged emotions behind those two qualities. Actually, you know, it’s completely arbitrary. Good, evil—the point is that they are implacably opposed forces in your universe and the struggle and structure of existence comes from contention between those two poles. Actually, we go completely beyond such concepts. They are quite arbitrary, you know. It makes no difference; the important thing, alas, is just to get that struggle over with. Which would you rather have? You were recruited first by a millisecond, so you have first choice.”

  “You mean we’re truly going to play for the fate of the universe?”

  “Exactly,” the Overlord said, “a forty-one-game chess match to be broadcast throughout all the civilized sectors of your universe so that everyone may witness it; coverage by all races, media, and so on. Consider it an opportunity.”

  “But why chess? Why me? Why this planet?”

  “Because chess in the judgment we have made is ideal for such a final judgment; it is a, methodical game with absolutely no element of luck and therefore there can be no complaints by the loser that he was unjustly handled. Chess is known only to your planet, and to answer your other question, we wanted two accomplished chess players who were as evenly matched as possible. According to studies carried out over a long period of time by our excellent statisticians, your opponent and you are the most evenly matched living chess players. There’s not a bit of difference between you. No other two chess players are as close in true and potential abilities. There’s no other reason.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s quite astonishing.” Events of this sort are always quite astonishing, compounded by the fact that for all my brilliant, logical play I have a rather superstitious and intuitive cast of mind which enabled me to take this rather amazing interview in context. “Who is my opponent?”

  “Louis Wilson,” the Overlord said. “You know him rather well, of course.”

  “Louis Wilson!” I said. “Why, that’s absolutely amazing! We grew up together.”

  “We know that.”

  “I’ve been playing on the grandmaster circuit with Louis for over three decades. How can I possibly play against him for the fate of the universe?”

  “Why not?” the Overlord said and brushed the query away with a casual tentacle. “It’s better to get involved in crucial issues with friends than with enemies, isn’t it? Besides, you know his game quite well, I take it.”

  “That’s absolutely astonishing,” I said, noticing a thin, high odor, not unpleasant but strangely sweet and sticky in the nostrils. “Is that cyanide?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid it is,” the Overlord said regretfully. “We had to select a mutually agreeable environment for this first interview; later on we can build up your tolerance to our atmosphere, of course, but for the moment it was felt necessary to arrive at a compromise of low cyanide content for myself but, unfortunately, rather high for you. We’ll have to get you out of here, I fear; you’re apt to collapse within a few moments. We still want to know whether you’d rather play for good or evil, however.”

  “I’d rather play for good,” I said firmly, “if that’s all the same to you. I certainly wouldn’t want to represent the forces of entropy.”

  The Overlord shrugged delicately and said, “As you please.”

  “Am I going back to Warsaw now?”

  “Oh no. I’m afraid that that tournament has already been disbanded. You are going to be transported to an excellent terrestrial-type environment on the settled moon of Titan, satellite of Saturn, and from there preparations for the match will be made, the match to begin tomorrow on your time schedule. I’m afraid that we’re quite behind schedule as I told you,” the Overlord said. Then I was whisked away from there at such horrifying speed and with such intensity that my next recollection is of the panelling in the ro
om on Titan which, as the Overlord had promised, was indeed quite terrestrial.

  From that moment on I was enmeshed in preparations for the match. I had my own set of seconds, of course, all provided by the Overlords, who did their best to make me comfortable. I also had my own crew of technicians and dieticians and physicians to make my lot easier, and I understand that Louis did as well. Media and publicity, however, were cooperative efforts; the press releases and biographies during the match emanated from the same set of offices on Sirius to avoid what the Overlord told me would otherwise have been wasteful duplication.

  It is odd that of all people, Louis and I should be thrust into such juxtaposition. There are elements of irony here, and the publicity materials have not been shy of those ironies. Although I am a much better player than Louis (stupidly the Overlords got it all wrong; I do not see how our abilities can be compared; he is a plodding, methodical player whereas I am inventive and brilliant, and he has never competed for a world championship whereas I got to the quarter-finals a quarter of a century ago and was defeated only after a stupid blunder which I will not rehash at this point), there is no question of the similarity of our backgrounds, a co-mingling of history and purpose which even now amazes me.

  We grew up together in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York; we began to play competitive chess at the same time; we advanced in the spectrum of the chess hierarchy at graduated intervals only weeks apart, and ultimately we traveled through the world together, our careers paralleling, dovetailing with stunning occlusion. All along, of course, it was well known by those who really followed the game that I was a far superior player to Louis and that indeed he had fastened himself upon me, sheer doppelganger, leaching from me the greatest of my own techniques in order to improve his own mediocre game, his defenses and strategies copied from me, even his public image, a mixture of gruffness and deference, stolen from my own personality (which is, nevertheless, far more pleasing than his, to say nothing of the fact that I am also a much handsomer man).