The IF Reader of Science Fiction

by Anthology

  First prize in this tournament meant incredible wealth—transportation money and hotel bills for more than a score of future tournaments. But more than that, it was one more chance to blazon before the world his true superiority rather than the fading reputation of it. “ . . .Bela Grabo, brilliant but erratic . . .” Perhaps his last chance.

  When, in the name of Heaven, was the Machine going to make its next move? Surely it had already taken more than four minutes! But a glance at its clock showed him that hardly half 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 her nercous 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 easel 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 exultation. 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.

  V

  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 articles.

  “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. “MCO—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 i
t’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 lads 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 lic-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. A human chess master would have seen, a trap like that, but the Machine could not, because Lysmov was maneuvering in an area that did not exist for the Machine’s perfect but limited mind. Of course the Machine changed its tactics after the first three moves of the ten had been played—it could see the checkmate then—but by that time it was too late for it to avert a disastrous loss of material. It was tricky of Lysmov, but completely fair. After this we’ll all be watching for the opportunity to play the same sort of trick on the Machine.

  “Lysmov was the first of us to realize fully that we are not playing against a metal monster but against a certain kind of programming. If there are any weaknesses we can spot in that programming, we can win. Very much in the same way that we can again and again defeat a flesh-and-blood player when we discover that he consistently attacks without having an advantage in position or is regularly overcautious about launching a counter-attack when he himself is attacked without justification.”

  Sandra nodded eagerly. “So from now on your chances of beating the Machine should keep improving, shouldn’t they? I mean as you find out more and more about the programming.”

  Doc smiled. “You forget,” he said gently, “that Simon Great can change the programming before each new game. Now I see why he fought so hard for that point.”

  “Oh. Say, Doc, what’s this about the Sherevsky end game?”

  “You are picking up the language, aren’t you?” he observed. “Sherevsky got a little angry when he discovered that Great had the Machine programmed to analyze steadily on the next move after an adjournment until the game was resumed next morning. Sherevsky questioned whether it was fair for the Machine to ‘think’ all night while its opponent had to get some rest. Vanderhoef decided for the Machine, though Sherevsky may carry the protest to FIDE.

  “Bah—I think Great wants us to get heated up over such minor matters, just as he is happy (and oh so obliging!) when we complain about how the Machine blinks or hums or smells. It keeps our minds off the main business of trying to outguess his programming. Incidentally, that is one thing we decided last night—Sherevsky, Willie Angler, Jandorf, Serek, and myself—that we are all going to have to leam to play the Machine without letting it get on our nerves and without asking to be protected from it. As Willie puts it, ‘So suppose it sounds like a boiler factory even—okay, you can think in a boiler factory.’ Myself, I am not so sure of that, but his spirit is right.”

  Sandra felt herself perking up as a new article began to shape itself in her mind. She said, “And what about WBM replacing Simon Great?”

  Again Doc smiled. “I think, my dear, that you can safely dismiss that as just a rumor. I think that Simon Great has just begun to fight.”

  VI

  Round Four saw the Machine spring the first of its surprises.

  It had finally forced a draw against Sherevsky in the morning session, ending the long second-round game, and now was matched against Votbinnik.

  The Machine opened Pawn to King Four, Votbinnik replied Pawn to King Three.

  “The French Defense, Binny’s favorite,” Dave muttered and they settled back for the Machine’s customary four-minute wait.

  Instead the Machine moved at once and punched its clock.

  Sandra, studying Votbinnik through her glasses, decided that the Russian grandmaster looked just a trifle startled. Then he made his move.

  Once again the Machine responded instantly.

  There was a flurry of comment from the stands and a scurrying-about of officials to shush it. Meanwhile the Machine continued to make its moves at better than rapid-transit speed, although Votbinnik s
oon began to take rather more time on his.

  The upshot was that the Machine made eleven moves before it started to take time to ‘think’ at all.

  Sandra clamored so excitedly to Dave for an explanation that she had two officials waving at her angrily.

  As soon as he dared, Dave whispered, “Great must have banked on Votbinnik playing the French—almost always does—and fed all the variations of the French into the Machine’s ‘memory’ from MCO and maybe some other books. So long as Votbinnik stuck to a known variation of the French, why, the Machine could play from memory without analyzing at all. Then when a strange move came along—one that wasn’t • in its memory—only on the twelfth move yeti—the Machine went back to analyzing, only now it’s taking longer and going deeper because it’s got more time—six minutes to move, about. The only thing I wonder is why Great didn’t have the Machine do it in the first three games. It seems so obvious.”

  Sandra ticketed that in her mind as a question for Doc. She slipped off to her room to write her “Don’t Let a Robot Get Your Goat” article (drawing heavily on Doc’s observations) and got back to the stands twenty minutes before the second time-control point. It was becoming a regular routine.

  Votbinnik was a knight down—almost certainly busted, Dave explained.

  “It got terrifically complicated while you were gone,” he said. “A real Votbinnik position.”

  “Only the Machine out-binniked him,” Bill finished.

  Judy hummed Beethoven’s “Funeral March for the Death of a Hero.”

  Nevertheless Votbinnik did not resign. The Machine sealed a move. Its board blacked out and Vanderhoef, with one of his assistants standing beside him to witness, privately read the move off a small indicator on the console. Tomorrow he would feed the move back into the Machine when the play was resumed at the morning session.