Day Dark, Night Bright

by Fritz Leiber

  He was at the bottom of the stairs when Sandra jumped up and hurried to the balustrade.

  “Hey, Doc!” she called.

  He turned.

  “Good luck!” she shouted and waved.

  He kissed his hand to her and went on.

  People glared at her then and a horrified official came hurrying. Sandra made big frightened eyes at him, but she couldn’t quite hide her grin.

  IV

  Sitzfleisch (which roughly means endurance—”sitting flesh” or “buttock meat”) is the quality needed above all others by tournament chess players—and their audiences.

  After Sandra had watched the games (the players’ faces, rather—she had a really good pair of zoomer glasses) for a half hour or so, she had gone to her hotel room, written her first article (interview with the famous Dr. Krakatower), sent it in and then come back to the hall to see how the games had turned out.

  They were still going on, all five of them.

  The press section was full, but two boys and a girl of high-school age obligingly made room for Sandra on the top tier of seats and she tuned in on their whispered conversation. The jargon was recognizably related to that which she’d gotten a dose of on the floor, but gamier. Players did not sacrifice pawns, they sacked them. No one was ever defeated, only busted. Pieces weren’t lost but blown. The Ruy Lopez was the Dirty Old Rooay—and incidentally a certain set of opening moves named after a long-departed Spanish churchman, she now discovered from Dave, Bill and Judy, whose sympathetic help she won by frequent loans of her zoomer glasses.

  The four-hour time control point—two hours and 30 moves for each player—had been passed while she was sending in her article, she learned, and they were well on their way toward the next control point—an hour more and 15 moves for each player—after which unfinished games would be adjourned and continued at a special morning session. Sherevsky had had to make 15 moves in two minutes after taking an hour earlier on just one move. But that was nothing out of the ordinary, Dave had assured her in the same breath, Sherevsky was always letting himself get into “fantastic time-pressure” and then wriggling out of it brilliantly. He was apparently headed for a win over Serek. Score one for the USA over the USSR, Sandra thought proudly.

  Votbinnik had Jandorf practically in Zugzwang (his pieces all tied up, Bill explained) and the Argentinean would be busted shortly. Through the glasses Sandra could see Jandorf s thick chest rise and fall as he glared murderously at the board in front of him. By contrast Votbinnik looked like a man lost in reverie.

  Dr. Krakatower had lost a pawn to Lysmov but was hanging on grimly. However, Dave would not give a plugged nickel for his chances against the former world’s champion, because “those old ones always weaken in the sixth hour.”

  “You for-get the bio-logical mir-acle of Doc-tor Las-ker,” Bill and Judy chanted as one.

  “Shut up,” Dave warned them. An official glared angrily from the floor and shook a finger. Much later Sandra discovered that Dr. Emanuel Lasker was a philosopher-mathematician who, after holding the world’s championship for 26 years, had won a very strong tournament (New York 1924) at the age of 56 and later almost won another (Moscow 1935) at the age of 67.

  Sandra studied Doc’s face carefully through her glasses. He looked terribly tired now, almost a death’s head. Something tightened in her chest and she looked away quickly.

  The Angler-Jal and Grabo-Machine games were still ding-dong contests, Dave told her. If anything, Grabo had a slight advantage. The Machine was “on the move,” meaning that Grabo had just made a move and was waiting the automaton’s reply.

  The Hungarian was about the most restless “waiter” Sandra could imagine. He twisted his long legs constantly and writhed his shoulders and about every five seconds he ran his hands back through his unkempt tassel of hair.

  Once he yawned self-consciously, straightened himself and sat very compactly. But almost immediately he was writhing again.

  The Machine had its own mannerisms, if you could call them that. Its dim, unobtrusive telltale lights were winking on and off in a fairly rapid, random pattern. Sandra got the impression that from time to time Grabo’s eyes were trying to follow their blinking, like a man watching fireflies.

  Simon Great sat impassively behind a bare table next to the Machine, his five gray-smocked technicians grouped around him.

  A flushed-faced, tall, distinguished-looking elderly gentleman was standing by the Machine’s console. Dave told Sandra it was Dr. Vanderhoef, the Tournament Director, one-time champion of the world.

  “Another old potzer like Krakatower, but with sense enough to know when he’s licked,” Bill characterized harshly.

  “Youth, ah, un-van-quish-able youth,” Judy chanted happily by herself. “Flashing like a meteor across the chess fir-ma-ment. Morphy, Angler, Judy Kaplan…”

  “Shut up! They really will throw us out,” Dave warned her and then explained in whispers to Sandra that Vanderhoef and his assistants had the nervous-making job of feeding into the Machine the moves made by its opponent, “so everyone will know it’s on the level, I guess.” He added, “It means the Machine loses a few seconds every move, between the time Grabo punches the clock and the time Vanderhoef gets the move fed into the Machine.”

  Sandra nodded. The players were making it as hard on the Machine as possible, she decided with a small rush of sympathy.

  Suddenly there was a tiny movement of the gadget attached from the Machine to the clocks on Grabo’s table and a faint click. But Grabo almost leapt out of his skin.

  Simultaneously a red castle-topped piece (one of the Machine’s rooks, Sandra was informed) moved four squares sideways on the big electric board above the Machine. An official beside Dr. Vanderhoef went over to Grabo’s board and carefully moved the corresponding piece. Grabo seemed about to make some complaint, then apparently thought better of it and plunged into brooding cogitation over the board, elbows on the table, both hands holding his head and fiercely massaging his scalp.

  The Machine let loose with an unusually rapid flurry of blinking. Grabo straightened up, seemed again about to make a complaint, then once more to repress the impulse. Finally he moved a piece and punched his clock. Dr. Vanderhoef immediately flipped four levers on the Machine’s console and Grabo’s move appeared on the electric board.

  Grabo sprang up, went over to the red velvet cord and motioned agitatedly to Vanderhoef.

  There was a short conference, inaudible at the distance, during which Grabo waved his arms and Vanderhoef grew more flushed. Finally the latter went over to Simon Great and said something, apparently with some hesitancy. But Great smiled obligingly, sprang to his feet, and in turn spoke to his technicians, who immediately fetched and unfolded several large screens and set them in front of the Machine, masking the blinking lights. Blindfolding it, Sandra found herself thinking.

  Dave chuckled. “That’s already happened once while you were out,” he told Sandra. “I guess seeing the lights blinking makes Grabo nervous. But then not seeing them makes him nervous. Just watch.”

  “The Machine has its own mysterious pow-wow-wers,” Judy chanted.

  “That’s what you think,” Bill told her. “Did you know that Willie Angler has hired Evil Eye Bixel out of Brooklyn to put the whammy on the Machine? S’fact.”

  “… pow-wow-wers unknown to mere mortals of flesh and blood—”

  “Shut up!” Dave hissed. “Now you’ve done it. Here comes old Eagle Eye. Look, I don’t know you two. I’m with this lady here.”

  Bela Grabo was suffering acute tortures. He had a winning attack, he knew it. The Machine was counter-attacking, but unstrategically, desperately, in the style of a Frank Marshall complicating the issue and hoping for a swindle. All Grabo had to do, he knew, was keep his head and not blunder—not throw away a queen, say, as he had to old Vanderhoef at Brussels, or overlook a mate in two, as he had against Sherevsky at Tel Aviv. The memory of those unutterably black moments and a dozen more like the
m returned to haunt him. Never if he lived a thousand years would he be free of them.

  For the tenth time in the last two minutes he glanced at his clock. He had fifteen minutes in which to make five moves. He wasn’t in time-pressure, he must remember that. He mustn’t make a move on impulse, he mustn’t let his treacherous hand leap out without waiting for instructions from its guiding brain.

  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 his nervous 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 had 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 case! 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 exaltation. 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 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.

  Day Dork, Night Bright

  “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 endgames,” 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 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.