"White," Iskander said without hesitation. He sat down at the table, opposite the alien, and said, "King's pawn-one to king three, level one, cube one."
A board at the side of the roam lit up: KP-1, K3-1-1.
"KP-1, K2-2-1," was the answering move.
Iskander nodded. The alien was not going to make orthodox answers, but evidently it wanted to send its pieces out through all dimensions of the "board." But Iskander had chosen white, and he was going to attack so vigorously that the alien would not be able to pursue its own schemes.
Methodically taking his pieces cube by cube across the fourth dimension of the game, he hunted the alien's lesser pieces, first, and then its king. The alien was given to skillful use of the knights, cutting across several dimensions of the board at once, and making it hard for Iskander to keep in his mind the complicated structure of the game's hypothetical playing field. Vaguely, he remembered that he and Mbara had once built a representation of a hyper-cube out of two cubes linked by diagonals which should (if they could have gone in another direction through a fourth dimension) have been perpendiculars. Then they had marked their hyper-cube off into tinier hyper-cubes, making a board to play on, instead of playing the game entirely in their heads. But the board was clumsy, and getting at the pieces was a bore; so in the end they found it simpler to do without it.
Iskander concentrated on getting rid of the dangerous knights. Two he got rid of in equal trades, and one in a trade of bishop for knight. He sacrificed a rook for the fourth, after much hesitation. The rooks, too, made confusing cross-dimension moves, but they only cut across one dimension at a time. He made the sacrifice and looked up to find his opponent's wide grey eyes fixed on him. He met the gaze steadily, wondering if it was respect or curiosity. The alien's eyes fell as it turned to consideration of its next move. Iskander found himself trying to imagine what material could reproduce the shifting colors that made up that grey. It wasn't usual to put eyes into chess figures—they weren't meant to be that realistic—but he decided that a chess piece made to that model ought to include eyes, anyway.
The alien took a strand of its hair in its fingers and fidgeted with it as it thought. The line of green flickered brightly against its skin.
That gesture could not be anything but nervousness, Iskander thought, and he played with renewed confidence.
After four hours or so, it occurred to him that his bladder hurt intolerably. He was surprised. Tournament players were used to sitting without relief longer than that. Then he remembered how long it had been since his last tournament and realized that he felt weak, besides. His head hurt, his chest hurt, his hands and feet were cold. "Excuse me," he said, "I need to stop for a few minutes."
The alien blinked several times, then stood up and stretched, shivering all its muscles in turn. "Acceptable," it said. It bowed and left through the door opposite the one Iskander had used.
Iskander bowed in turn, cautiously, and looked around him. He raised his eyebrows at seeing Miriam still there in the room. "How are you enjoying the game?" he said facetiously.
"Very much."
On second thought, Iskander corrected himself, she probably did understand much of what was going on, following the game through their reactions to the moves.
Dr. Hudek looked frankly bored and unhappy.
Iskander smiled at him and started out. He stumbled at the doorway, and Hudek promptly came alive, catching him so swiftly that it looked easy.
"Are you all right, sir?" said Hudek.
"I'm tired, I think."
The doctor looked at him skeptically, but simply said, "Yes. Rest a little before you start again. That may help."
When they resumed play, a half hour later, Iskander felt better, although he could tell that he was weaker than before, because he could feel the weight of his head. He propped it in his hands, and it stopped bothering him.
After two hours more, Iskander announced, "Three moves to mate." He sat back and let his head droop against his chest.
The alien looked thoughtfully at the panel recording their moves and said, "I concede. Thank you. A brilliant game."
"Thanks," Iskander muttered. He thought perhaps he should think of a lengthier and more gracious response, but before he could find one, the alien spoke to Miriam.
"Madam Chairman, I have misapprehended. You travel to near stars, but you have not fourth-dimensional drive to go to far ones. So?"
Her smile shriveled into a blank poker face. She hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yes, that's essentially so. How do you know it?"
The alien curved its arm and hand around to point out Iskander. "Chess master's style. He plays as one not used to thinking in all directions at once—takes only three dimensions at a time."
"I see."
The alien curved its hand down to point out its briefcase. "When you have time, Madam Chairman, we will speak more. There is a concept among your peoples I find most difficult to translate: 'national sovereignty'." It used the native term, but its pronunciation was so awkward that they did not recognize the words until after the mike had given them the entire speech.
"It is difficult to understand," Miriam said equably. The diplomatic smoothness of years was back on her face. "We can discuss it later. Doctor…" She and Hudek helped Iskander from the room.
Hudek had a wheelchair waiting outside that time. Silently, he trundled Iskander back to the room where he had wakened and laid him down on the couch.
"Thank you," said Iskander, squirming deeper into the soft fabric. "Very kind of… Very…"He began rubbing at his left arm. "It hurts," he said crossly. He was quiet for a minute, then smiled. "Thanks, Miriam. Lovely game. And now I don't have to go back to the home."
A rook slid over the inside curve of the torus and back up to knock off a knight before the pieces slowed and were still.
Miriam sat down by Iskander and took his right hand. Beside her, Hudek was listening to Iskander's chest. He scowled and took out a needle to inject a painkiller. Then he bent over Iskander's face, breathing air into the lungs. He kept that up for a long time, but nothing happened. At last he gave it up.
"Do you realize you've just killed a man?" he asked, as quietly as he could. "For nothing?"
"For nothing?" Miriam said. She remained as she was for a few moments more. Then she set the hand down and kissed Iskander's cheek. She pulled herself out of the chair and held out her arm to be given Hudek's support as she made her way back to work.
VON GOOM'S GAMBIT
Victor Contoski
You won't find Von Goom's Gambit in any of the books on chess openings. Ludvik Pachman's Moderne Schachtheorie simply ignores it. Paul Keres' authoritative work Teoria Debiutow Szachowych mentions it only in passing in a footnote on page 239, advising the reader never to try it under any circumstances and makes sure the advice is followed by giving no further information. Dr. Max Euwe's Archives lists the gambit in the index under the initial V. G. (Gambit), but fortunately gives no page number. The twenty-volume Chess Encyclopedia (fourth edition) states that Von Goom is a myth and classifies him with werewolves and vampires. His Gambit is not mentioned. Vassily Nikolayevitch Kryilov heartily recommends Von Goom's Gambit in the English edition of his book, Russian Theory of the Opening; the Russian edition makes no mention of it. Fortunately Kryilov himself did not—and does not yet—know the moves, so he did not recommend them to his American readers. If he had, the cold war would be finished, and possibly the world.
Von Goom was an inconspicuous man, as most discoverers usually are; and he probably made his discovery by accident, as most discoverers usually do. He was the illegitimate son of a well known actress and a prominent political figure. The scandal of his birth haunted his early years, and as soon as he could legally do so he changed his name to Von Goom. He refused to take a Christian name because he claimed he was no Christian, a fact which seemed trivial at the time but was to explain much about this strange man. He grew fast early in life and attained a height of five fe
et four inches by the time he was ten years old. He seemed to think this height was sufficient, for he stopped growing. When his corpse was measured after his sudden demise, it proved to be exactly five feet four inches. Soon after he stopped growing, he also stopped talking. He never stopped working because he never started. The fortunes of his parents proved sufficient for all his needs. At the first opportunity, he quit school and spent the next twenty years of his life reading science fiction and growing a mustache on one side of his face. Apparently, sometime during this period, he learned to play chess.
On April 5, 1997, he entered his first chess tournament, the Minnesota State Championship. At first, the players thought he was a deaf mute because he refused to speak. Then the tournament director, announcing the pairings for the round, made a mistake and announced, "Curt Brasket—White; Van Goon—Black." A small, cutting voice filled with infinite sarcasm said, "Von Goom." It was the first time Von Goom had spoken in twenty years. He was to speak once more before his death.
Von Goom did not win the Minnesota State Championship. He lost to Brasket in twenty-nine moves. Then he lost to George Barnes in twenty-three moves, to K. N. Pedersen in nineteen, Frederick G. Galvin in seven, James Seifert in thirty-nine, Dr. Milton Jackson (who was five years old at the time) in one hundred and two. Thereupon, he retired from tournament chess for two years.
His next appearance was December 12, 1999, in the Greater Birmingham Open, where he also lost all his games. During the remainder of the year, he played in the Fresno Chess Festival, the Eastern States Chess Congress, the Peach State Invitational and the Alaska Championship. His score for the year was: opponents forty-one; Von Goom zero.
Von Goom, however, was determined. For a period of two and one-half years thereafter he entered every tournament he could. Money was no obstacle and distance was no barrier. He bought his own private plane and learned to fly so that he could travel across the continent playing chess at every possible occasion. At the end of the two and one-half year period, he was still looking for his first win.
Then he discovered his Gambit. The discovery must surely have been by accident, but the credit—or rather the infamy—of working out the variations must be attributed to Von Goom. His unholy studies convinced him that the Gambit could be played with either the White or the Black pieces. There was no defense against it. He must have spent many a terrible night over the chessboard analyzing things man was not meant to analyze. The discovery of the Gambit and its implications turned his hair snow white, although his half mustache remained a dirty brown to his dying day, which was not far off.
His first opportunity to play the Gambit came in the Greater New York Open. The pre-tournament favorite was the wily defending Champion, grandmaster Miroslav Terminsky, although sentiment favored John George Bateman, the Intercollegiate Champion, who was also all-American quarterback for Notre Dame, Phi Beta Kappa and the youngest member of the Atomic Energy Commission. By this time, Von Goom had become a familiar, almost comic, figure in the chess world. People came to accept his silence, his withdrawal, even his half mustache. As Von Goom signed his entry card, a few players remarked that his hair had turned white; but most people ignored him. Fifteen minutes after the first round began, Von Goom won his first game of chess. His opponent had died of a heart attack.
He won his second game too when his opponent became violently sick to his stomach after the first six moves. His third opponent got up from the table and left the tournament hall in disgust, never to play again. His fourth broke down in tears, begging Von Goom to desist from playing the Gambit. The tournament director had to lead the poor man from the hall. The next opponent simply sat and stared at Von Goom's opening position until he lost the game by forfeit.
His string of victories had placed Von Goom among the leaders of the tournament, and his next opponent was the Intercollegiate Champion John George Bateman, a hot-tempered, attacking player. Von Goom played his Gambit, or if you prefer to be technical, his Counter Gambit, since he played the Black pieces. John George's attempted refutation was as unconventional as it was ineffective. He jumped to his feet, reached across the table, grabbed Von Goom by the collar of his shirt and hit him in the mouth. But it did no good. Even as Von Goom fell, he made his next move. John George Bateman, who had never been sick a day in his life, collapsed in an epileptic fit.
Thus, Von Goom, who had never won a game of chess in his life before, was to play the wily grandmaster, Miroslav Terminsky, for the championship. Unfortunately, the game was shown to a crowd of spectators on a huge demonstration board mounted at one end of the hall. The tension mounted as the two contestants sat down to play. The crowd gasped in shock and horror when they saw the opening moves of Von Goom's Gambit. Then silence descended, a long, unbroken silence. A reporter who dropped by at the end of the day to interview the winner found to his amazement that the crowd and players alike had turned to stone. Only Terminsky had escaped the holocaust. The lucky man had gone insane.
A few more like results in tournaments and Von Goom became, by default, the chess champion of America. As such he received an invitation to play in the Challengers Tournament, the winner of which would play a match for the world championship with the current champion, Dr. Vladislaw Feorintoshkin, author, humanitarian and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Some officials of the International Chess Federation talked of banning the Gambit from play, but Von Goom took midnight journeys to their houses and showed them the Gambit. They disappeared from the face of the earth. Thus it appeared that the way to the world championship stood open for him.
Unknown to Von Goom, however, the night before he arrived in Portoroz, Yugoslavia, the site of the tournament, the International Chess Federation held a secret meeting. The finest brains in the world gathered together seeking a refutation to Von Goom's Gambit—and they found it. The following night, the most intelligent men of their generation, the leading grandmasters of the world, took Von Goom out in the woods and shot him. The great humanitarian Dr. Feorintoshkin looked down at the body and said, "A merciful end for Van Goon." A small, cutting voice filled with infinite sarcasm said, "Von Goom." Then the leading grandmasters shot him again and cleverly concealed his body in a shallow grave, which has not been found to this day. After all, they have the finest brains in the world.
And what of Von Goom's Gambit? Chess is a game of logic. Thirty-two pieces move on a board of sixty-four squares, colored alternately dark and light. As they move they form patterns. Some of these patterns are pleasing to the logical mind of man, and some are not. They show what man is capable of and what is beyond his reach. Take any position of the pieces on the chessboard. Usually it tells of the logical or semi-logical plans of the players, their strategy in playing for a win or a draw, and their personalities. If you see a pattern from the King's Gambit Accepted, you know that both players are tacticians, that the fight will be brief but fierce. A pattern from the Queen's Gambit Declined, however, tells that the players are strategists playing for minute advantages, the weakening of one square or the placing of a Rook on a half-opened file. From such patterns, pleasing or displeasing, you can tell much not only about the game and the players but also about man in general, and perhaps even about the order of the universe.
Now suppose someone discovers by accident or design a pattern on the chessboard that is more than displeasing, an alien pattern that tells unspeakable things about the mind of a player, man in general and the order of the universe. Suppose no normal man can look at such a pattern and remain normal. Surely such a pattern must have been formed by Von Goom's Gambit.
I wish the story could end here, but I fear it will not end for a long time. History has shown that discoveries cannot be unmade. Two months ago in Camden, New Jersey, a forty-three year old man was found turned to stone staring at a position on a chessboard. In Salt Lake City, the Utah State champion suddenly went screaming mad. And, last week in Minneapolis, a woman studying chess suddenly gave birth to twins—although she was not pregnant at the time.<
br />
Myself, I'm giving up the game.
KOKOMU
Daniel Gilbert
Doorbell: wind-chimes of bamboo and glass gracing a Shinto shrine. But it was not a doorbell, and Samuel Kagami adjusted his thinking. The jamasura, a large procaryotic cell with electronic call-extensors, responded as was its function, chiming when a hand touched the door.
Neither was it a door.
The T6-screen, a series of unicellular giants linked in symbiotic unity, whose cytoplasm had been design-engineered for tensile strength, weatherproofing, and opacity, formed the splendid arched doorway to Samuel Kagami's home. The arch signified a marvel of neo-biotic construction available only to the elite of the Western Nipponese Consolidat. The Tō-screen parted as Kagami approached, and he greeted his visitor.
"Chokki san. May you give me five."
"Kagami san, this is also right on." The plump Neobiotix field representative, clad in conservative grey knickers and shoulder coat, an aluminum brechet at his knee, bowed, signaling an end to the exchange of formal pleasantries. Kagami bowed also and indicated the livingroom with a sweep of his hand.
He hoped the sweep had been well-timed and correct.
Chokki removed his platform-zoris and set them on the tatami, suddenly reduced a full fifteen centimeters in height. "I received your call only this morning. Forgive my tardiness."
"No apology necessary. But accepted," said Kagami. "I am most grateful that you have traveled so far to see me. It was not an inconvenience I hope?"
"None. My pleasure."
Kagami smiled uneasily and led his guest into the livingroom. The cochin lanterns and moribana floral arrangements lent the room a traditional appearance, yet Kagami felt, as always, that something still was lacking. "Excuse my forwardness then. May I come to the point and dispense with politic?"
PAWN TO INFINITY Page 19
