by Fritz Leiber
The shock-headed man’s eyes flashed. “I most certainly do!” At that moment the waiter arrived with a second coffee and wine-and-seltzer. Jandorf seized Doc’s new demitasse, drained it, set it back on the tray with a flourish and drew himself up.
“Tell your readers, Miss Grayling,” he proclaimed, fiercely arching his eyebrows at her and actually slapping his chest, “that I, Igor Jandorf, will defeat the Machine by the living force of my human personality! Already I have offered to play it an informal game blindfolded—I, who have played 50 blindfold games simultaneously! Its owners refuse me. I have challenged it also to a few games of rapid-transit—an offer no true grandmaster would dare ignore. Again they refuse me. I predict that the Machine will play like a great oaf—at least against me. Repeat: I, Igor Jandorf, by the living force of my human personality, will defeat the Machine. Do you have that? You can remember it?”
“Oh yes,” Sandra assured him, “but there are some other questions I very much want to ask you, Mr. Jandorf.”
“I am sorry, Miss Grayling, but I must clear my mind now. In ten minutes they start the clocks.”
While Sandra arranged for an interview with Jandorf after the day’s playing session, Doc reordered his coffee.
“One expects it of Jandorf,” he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug when the shock-headed man was gone. “At least he didn’t take your wine-and-seltzer. Or did he? One tip I have for you: don’t call a chess master Mister, call him Master. They all eat it up.”
“Gee, Doc, I don’t know how to thank you for everything. I hope I haven’t offended Mis—Master Jandorf so that he doesn’t—”
“Don’t worry about that. Wild horses couldn’t keep Jandorf away from a press interview. You know, his rapid-transit challenge was cunning. That’s a minor variety of chess where each player gets only ten seconds to make a move. Which I don’t suppose would give the Machine time to look three moves ahead. Chess players would say that the Machine has a very slow sight of the board. This tournament is being played at the usual international rate of 15 moves an hour, and—”
“Is that why they’ve got all those crazy clocks?” Sandra interrupted.
“Oh, yes. Chess clocks measure the time each player takes in making his moves. When a player makes a move he presses a button that shuts his clock off and turns his opponent’s on. If a player uses too much time, he loses as surely as if he were checkmated. Now since the Machine will almost certainly be programmed to take an equal amount of time on successive moves, a rate of 15 moves an hour means it will have 4 minutes a move—and it will need every second of them! Jandorf bravado to make a point of a blindfold challenge—just as if the Machine weren’t playing blindfold itself. Or is the Machine blindfold? How do you think of it?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. Say, Doc, is it really true that Master Jandorf has played 50 games at once blindfolded? I can’t believe that.”
“Of course not!” Doc assured her. “It was only 49 and he lost two of those and drew five. Jandorf always exaggerates. It’s in his blood.”
“He’s one of the Russians, isn’t he?” Sandra asked. “Igor?”
Doc chuckled. “Not exactly,” he said gently. “He is originally a Pole and now he has Argentinean citizenship. You have a program, don’t you?”
Sandra started to hunt through her pocketbook, but just then two lists of names lit up on the big electric scoreboard.
THE PLAYERS
WILLIAM ANGLER, USA
BELA GRABO, HUNGARY
IVAN JAL, USSR
IGOR JANDORF, ARGENTINA
DR. S. KRAKATOWER, FRANCE
VASSILY LYSMOV, USSR
THE MACHINE, USA (PROGRAMMED BУ SIMON GREAT)
MAXIM SEREK, USSR
MOSES SHEREVSKY, USA
MIKHAIL VOTBINNIK, USSR
TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR: DR. JAN VANDERHOEF
FIRST ROUND PAIRINGS
SHEREVSKY VS. SEREK
JAL VS. ANGLER
JANDORF VS. VOTBINNIK
LYSMOV VS. KRAKATOWER
GRABO VS. MACHINE
“Cripes, Doc, they all sound like they were Russians,” Sandra said after a bit. “Except this Willie Angler. Oh, he’s the boy wonder, isn’t he?”
Doc nodded. “Not such a boy any longer, though. He’s… Well, speak of the Devil’s children… Miss Grayling, I have the honor of presenting to you the only grandmaster ever to have been ex-chess-champion of the United States while still technically a minor—Master William Augustus Angler.”
A tall, sharply-dressed young man with a hatchet face pressed the old man back into his chair.
“How are you, Savvy, old boy old boy?” he demanded. “Still chasing the girls, I see.”
“Please, Willie, get off me.”
“Can’t take it, huh?” Angler straightened up somewhat. “Hey waiter! Where’s that chocolate malt? I don’t want it next year. About that ex-, though. I was swindled Savvy, I was robbed.”
“Willie!” Doc said with some asperity. “Miss Grayling is a journalist. She would like to have a statement from you as to how you will play against the Machine.”
Angler grinned and shook his head sadly. “Poor old Machine,” he said. “I don’t know why they take so much trouble polishing up that pile of tin just so that I can give it a hit in the head. I got a hatful of moves it’ll burn out all its tubes trying to answer. And if it gets too fresh, how about you and me giving its low-temperature section the hotfoot, Savvy? The money WBM’s putting up is okay, though. That first prize will just fit the big hole in my bank account.”
“I know you haven’t the time now, Master Angler,” Sandra said rapidly, “but if after the playing session you could grant me—”
“Sorry, babe,” Angler broke in with a wave of dismissal. “I’m dated up for two months in advance. Waiter! I’m here, not there!” And he went charging off.
Doc and Sandra looked at each other and smiled.
“Chess masters aren’t exactly humble people, are they?” she said.
Doc’s smile became tinged with sad understanding. “You must excuse them, though,” he said. “They really get so little recognition or recompense. This tournament is an exception. And it takes a great deal of ego to play greatly.”
“I suppose so. So World Business Machines is responsible for this tournament?”
“Correct. Their advertising department is interested in the prestige. They want to score a point over their great rival.”
“But if the Machine plays badly it will be a black eye for them,” Sandra pointed out.
“True,” Doc agreed thoughtfully. “WBM must feel very sure… It’s the prize money they’ve put up, of course, that’s brought the world’s greatest players here. Otherwise half of them would be holding off in the best temperamental-artist style. For chess players the prize money is fabulous—$35,000, with $15,000 for first place, and all expenses paid for all players. There’s never been anything like it. Soviet Russia is the only country that has ever supported and rewarded her best chess players at all adequately. I think the Russian players are here because UNESCO and FIDE (that’s Federation Internationale des Echecs—the international chess organization) are also backing the tournament. And perhaps because the Kremlin is hungry for a little prestige now that its space program is sagging.”
“But if a Russian doesn’t take first place it will be a black eye for them.”
Doc frowned. “True, in a sense. They must feel very sure… Here they are now.”
III
Four men were crossing the center of the hall, which was clearing, toward the tables at the other end. Doubtless they just happened to be going two by two in close formation, but it gave Sandra the feeling of a phalanx.
“The first two are Lysmov and Votbinnik,” Doc told her. “It isn’t often that you see the current champion of the world—Votbinnik—and an ex-champion arm in arm. There are two other persons in the tournament who have held that honor—Jal and Vanderhoef the director, way back.”
“Will whoever wins this tournament become champion?”
“Oh no. That’s decided by two-player matches—a very long business—after elimination tournaments between leading contenders. This tournament is a round robin: each player plays one game with every other player. That means nine rounds.”
“Anyway there are an awful lot of Russians in the tournament,” Sandra said, consulting her program. “Four out of ten have USSR after them. And Bela Grabo, Hungary—that’s a satellite. And Sherevsky and Krakatower are Russian-sounding names.”
“The proportion of Soviet to American entries in the tournament represents pretty fairly the general difference in playing strength between the two countries,” Doc said judiciously. “Chess mastery moves from land to land with the years. Way back it was the Moslems and the Hindus and Persians. Then Italy and Spain. A little over a hundred years ago it was France and England. Then Germany, Austria and the New World. Now it’s Russia—including of course the Russians who have run away from Russia. But don’t think there aren’t a lot of good Anglo-Saxon types who are masters of the first water. In fact, there are a lot of them here around us, though perhaps you don’t think so. It’s just that if you play a lot of chess you get to looking Russian. Once it probably made you look Italian. Do you see that short bald-headed man?”
“You mean the one facing the Machine and talking to Jandorf?”
“Yes. Now that’s one with a lot of human interest. Moses Sherevsky. Been champion of the United States many times. Avery strict Orthodox Jew. Can’t play chess on Fridays or on Saturdays before sundown.” He chuckled. “Why, there’s even a story going around that one rabbi told Sherevsky it would be unlawful for him to play against the Machine because it is technically a golem—the clay Frankenstein’s monster of Hebrew legend.”
Sandra asked, “What about Grabo and Kratower?”
Doc gave a short scornful laugh. “Krakatower! Don’t pay any attention to him. A senile has-been, it’s a scandal he’s been allowed to play in this tournament! He must have pulled all sorts of strings. Told them that his lifelong services to chess had won him the honor and that they had to have a member of the so-called Old Guard. Maybe he even got down on his knees and cried—and all the time his eyes on that expense money and the last-place consolation prize! Yet dreaming schizophrenically of beating them all! Please, don’t get me started on Dirty Old Krakatower.”
“Take it easy, Doc. He sounds like he would make an interesting article. Can you point him out to me?”
“You can tell him by his long white beard with coffee stains. I don’t see it anywhere, though. Perhaps he’s shaved it off for the occasion. It would be like that antique womanizer to develop senile delusions of youthfulness.”
“And Grabo?” Sandra pressed, suppressing a smile at the intensity of Doc’s animosity.
Doc’s eyes grew thoughtful. “About Bela Grabo (why are three out of four Hungarians named Bela?) I will tell you only this: That he is a very brilliant player and that the Machine is very lucky to have drawn him as its first opponent.”
He would not amplify his statement. Sandra studied the scoreboard again.
“This Simon Great who’s down as programming the Machine. He’s a famous physicist, I suppose?”
“By no means. That was the trouble with some of the early chess-playing machines—they were programmed by scientists. No, Simon Great is a psychologist who at one time was a leading contender for the world’s chess championship. I think WBM was surprisingly shrewd to pick him for the programming job. Let me tell you—No, better yet—”
Doc shot to his feet, stretched an arm on high and called out sharply, “Simon!”
A man some four tables away waved back and a moment later came over.
“What is it, Savilly?” he asked. “There’s hardly any time, you know.”
The newcomer was of middle height, compact of figure and feature, with graying hair cut short and combed sharply back.
Doc spoke his piece for Sandra.
Simon Great smiled thinly. “Sorry,” he said, “but I am making no predictions and we are giving out no advance information on the programming of the Machine. As you know, I have had to fight the Players’ Committee tooth and nail on all sorts of points about that and they have won most of them. I am not permitted to re-program the Machine at adjournments—only between games (I did insist on that and get it!) And if the Machine breaks down during a game, its clock keeps running on it. My men are permitted to make repairs—if they can work fast enough.”
“That makes it very tough on you,” Sandra put in. “The Machine isn’t allowed any weaknesses.”
Great nodded soberly. “And now I must go. They’ve almost finished the count-down, as one of my technicians keeps on calling it. Very pleased to have met you, Miss Grayling—I’ll check with our PR man on that interview. Be seeing you, Savvy.”
The tiers of seats were filled now and the central space almost clear. Officials were shooing off a few knots of lingerers. Several of the grandmasters, including all four Russians, were seated at their tables. Press and company cameras were flashing. The four smaller wallboards lit up with the pieces in the opening position— white for White and red for Black. Simon Great stepped over the red velvet cord and more flash bulbs went off.
“You know, Doc,” Sandra said, “I’m a dog to suggest this, but what if this whole thing were a big fake? What if Simon Great were really playing the Machine’s moves? There would surely be some way for his electricians to rig—”
Doc laughed happily—and so loudly that some people at the adjoining tables frowned.
“Miss Grayling, that is a wonderful idea! I will probably steal it for a short story. I still manage to write and place a few in England. No, I do not think that is at all likely. WBM would never risk such a fraud. Great is completely out of practice for actual tournament play, though not for chess-thinking. The difference in style between a computer and a man would be evident to any expert. Great’s own style is remembered and would be recognized— though, come to think of it, his style was often described as being machine-like…” For a moment Doc’s eyes became thoughtful. Then he smiled again. “But no, the idea is impossible. Vanderhoef as Tournament Director has played two or three games with the Machine to assure himself that it operates legitimately and has grandmaster skill.”
“Did the Machine beat him?” Sandra asked.
Doc shrugged. “The scores weren’t released. It was very hush-hush. But about your idea, Miss Grayling—did you ever read about Maelzel’s famous chessplaying automaton of the 19th Century? That one too was supposed to work by machinery (cogs and gears, not electricity) but actually it had a man hidden inside it— your Edgar Poe exposed the fraud in a famous article. In my story I think the chess robot will break down while it is being demonstrated to a millionaire purchaser and the young inventor will have to win its game for it to cover up and swing the deal. Only the millionaire’s daughter, who is really a better player than either of them… yes, yes! Your Ambrose Bierce too wrote a story about a chessplaying robot of the clickety-clank-grr kind who murdered his creator, crushing him like an iron grizzly bear when the man won a game from him. Tell me, Miss Grayling, do you find yourself imagining this Machine putting out angry tendrils to strangle its opponents, or beaming rays of death and hypnotism at them? I can imagine…”
While Doc chattered happily on about chessplaying robots and chess stories, Sandra found herself thinking about him. A writer of some sort evidently and a terrific chess buff. Perhaps he was an actual medical doctor. She’d read something about two or three coming over with the Russian squad. But Doc certainly didn’t sound like a Soviet citizen.
He was older than she’d first assumed. She could see that now that she was listening to him less and looking at him more. Tired, too. Only his dark-circled eyes shone with unquenchable youth. A useful old guy, whoever he was. An hour ago she’d been sure she was going to muff this assignment completely and now she had it laid
out cold. For the umpteenth time in her career Sandra shied away from the guilty thought that she wasn’t a writer at all or even a reporter, she just used dime-a-dozen female attractiveness to rope a susceptible man (young, old, American, Russian) and pick his brain…
She realized suddenly that the whole hall had become very quiet.
Doc was the only person still talking and people were again looking at them disapprovingly. All five wall-boards were lit up and the changed position of a few pieces showed that opening moves had been made on four of them, including the Machine’s. The central space between the tiers of seats was completely clear now, except for one man hurrying across it in their direction with the rapid yet quiet, almost tip-toe walk that seemed to mark all the officials. Like morticians’ assistants, she thought. He rapidly mounted the stairs and halted at the top to look around searchingly. His gaze lighted on their table, his eyebrows went up, and he made a beeline for Doc. Sandra wondered if she should warn him that he was about to be shushed.
The official laid a hand on Doc’s shoulder. “Sir!” he said agitatedly. “Do you realize that they’ve started your clock, Dr. Krakatower?”
Sandra became aware that Doc was grinning at her. “Yes, it’s true enough, Miss Grayling,” he said. “I trust you will pardon the deception, though it was hardly one, even technically. Every word I told you about Dirty Old Krakatower is literally true. Except the long white beard—he never wore a beard after he was 35—that part was an out-and-out lie! Yes, yes! I will be along in a moment! Do not worry, the spectators will get their money’s worth out of me! And WBM did not with its expense account buy my soul—that belongs to the young lady here.”
Doc rose, lifted her hand and kissed it. “Thank you, mademoiselle, for a charming interlude. I hope it will be repeated. Incidentally, I should say that besides… (Stop pulling at me, man!—there can’t be five minutes on my clock yet!)… that besides being Dirty Old Krakatower, grandmaster emeritus, I am also the special correspondent of the London Times. It is always pleasant to chat with a colleague. Please do not hesitate to use in your articles any of the ideas I tossed out, if you find them worthy—I sent in my own first dispatch two hours ago. Yes, yes, I come! Au revoir, mademoiselle!”
