Charles DeVett & Katherine MacLean

by Cosmic Checkmate

  I stayed with Yasi several days, and each day brought further delightful advances in her womanhood. The complete process involved approximately six weeks, I believe.

  I did not let her mercurial, absorbing presence keep me from my work. Each day I went out, going on with my business. My opinion of the Veldians as being brutal, savage, and sadistic found many instances of confirmation. I watched them fight over some woman in her msst, who was no more than casually interested in either of the contestants; and their rigid mores that were no longer functional.

  I did detect what might have been a universal discontent in their young men. They had a warrior heritage and nature which, with the unity of the tribes, left them with an unrecognized futility of purpose. Also the custom of polygamy-necessary in the old days, and desired still by those able to attain it—left them sexually frustrated. I saw that they did not even know the reason for their discontent, let alone what its solution should be.

  They had an admiration of pointless courage, and a striving for emulation, that saddened me with its emptiness whenever I was forced to witness it. They engaged in games of conflict—with no ill-will on either side, merely for the thrill and the psuedo-Honor of victory—that often left one or the other maimed or crippled. They fought because of their need to share exhilarating conflict. They were the spawn of generations of fighters who, with the passing of the dleeth, had no one to fight except each other.

  They had not quite been able to achieve a successful sublimation of their post-warrior need to fight in the Games. It was not enough—the biological needs of their natures were too strong—and the Games served only as temporary stop-gaps. Their male frustration was potentially explosive.

  Gradually, however, the picture I had of them in my mind altered. As new facts and understanding entered, the lines and pattern shifted and the picture changed. The murky hole began to reveal patches of light; shadows faded into the background; other shadows showed the gray of sadness, where before there had been the black of ugliness.

  The first realization I had of the change in the picture came when I became satisfied that Velda had no crime, other than in rare individual instances. Lying, theft, and deceit were practically unknown. And this because of fineness of racial character, rather than effective legal restraint.

  With the near completion of the picture my dislike for them changed to admiration—tempered by touches of pity and sorrow. Pity when I saw their dissatisfaction, their discontent with their lives, and their not knowing what caused it, or what they could do to combat it.

  And, weighing what I observed of the tide that carried them, I decided that I liked them. The manners and organization of the Veldians—within the framework of their culture—were as simple and effective as their architecture. There was a strong emphasis on pride, on strength and honor, on skill, and on living a dangerous life with a gambler’s self-command, on rectitude, on truth, and the unbreakable bond of loyalty among family and friends. All this I saw and admired.

  I weighed all these observations in my reactions to the Veldians, and toward the end a strange feeling—a kind of wistfulness—came as I observed. I felt kin to them, as if these people had much in common with myself. And I felt that it was too bad that life was not fundamentally so simple that one could discard the awareness of other ways of life, of other values and philosophies that bid against one another for one’s attention, and made one cynical of the philosophy he lives by, and dies for. Too bad that I could not see and take life that directly, and that simply.

  I returned to the power station, and this time I abandoned all caution and examined it thoroughly, both above and below ground. I found no cables, and no way to enter. There was one door at the upper level but it was sealed. I might have realized the small possibility of finding anything there. There were no waterfalls or swift current to supply power, and no evidence of a fuel being consumed. The station was merely a transmitter.

  I climbed a spiral ramp that went around the outside of the station until I reached the top. My thought was that I might see other cities in the distance, or evidence of agriculture, or even points of interest within Hearth that I had missed.

  The top of the tower, I found, was concave, with a four-bladed propeller—parallel to the roof—turning slowly on a spindly rod at its center. The impression I received was of a huge ornamental windmill lying on its side. I had no idea what its purpose might be.

  I sat on the foot wide railing at the edge of the roof and looked out over the wall of the city. There was no evidence of agriculture. On all sides—as far as I could see—was nothing but red sand. Trackless red sand, making small whirlpools in the cold wind, and coming right up to the walls of the city.

  On all sides except one. To my left, stretching out from Hearth until lost in the distance, was a long ribbon of concrete road. On the road were dozens of slowly crawling vehicles that might have been caterpillar trucks of Earth!

  In my mind the pattern clicked into place. Hearth was not typical of the cities of Velda!

  It was an anachronism, a revered Homeplace, a symbol of their past, untainted by the technocracy that was pursued elsewhere. This was the capital city, from which the heads of government still ruled, perhaps for sentimental reasons, but it was not typical. That also was why I had seen so little evidence of an advanced technocracy.

  There was nothing more to be learned on the power station roof. I climbed slowly down the ramp. This then was the end of my quest. I would see and find nothing in Hearth except what Trobt and his Council had probably allowed me to see. For any further search to be effective I would have to leave Hearth, and find the cities where the Veldians had their factories. I wasn’t certain how it would be done, but I would find a way. Perhaps I’d take a tricar and set out along the highway until I reached another city. Even though I had no idea of the range of the small cars, for the present that seemed the best plan. I spent some time bringing my tape record up to date.

  I had a vague sense of foreboding, of feeling that I would never leave Hearth, that this would be my last day of freedom.

  My depression led me to stop in one of the drinking stalls in the market place. I found an empty couch against a far wall, ignoring a lounger who eyed me hopefully, wanting a Game, I knew.

  I was served the one product they sold, a thick, honey-colored liquor that I had never heard named. I tried one tentative swallow. The liquor burned a path across my tongue and down my throat, bringing tears to my eyes. It was certainly not as mild as it appeared. The second swallow was easier.

  The voices around me had quieted while I drank. I looked up apprehensively, but everyone’s attention was directed toward the front of the room. About them all was an air of expectancy, a beneath-the-surface excitement. I followed their gaze—to a woman who stood just within the entrance.

  She was dressed all in white, and stood cool and poised, very sure of herself. Her figure had none of the sterile bleakness of the boy-girls. It was rounded firmly, slim at the waist and swelling ripely above and below. Her body was well fleshed, and sensuous. As she walked now across the front of the room a thin slit running down the length of her blouse alternately parted and closed, exposing a narrow section of her breasts and diaphragm. It was a quite stimulating revelation.

  This, it developed, was their entertainment, their floor show, except that the woman did not dance or act, she merely walked, which obviously was entertainment enough. I followed her every movement with fascination, and when once her glance idly paused on mine I became suddenly shy, awkward, and excited. I was glad when she moved on for I was certain that otherwise my carefully contained reserve would have broken.

  Now she came down the center isle and as she neared me I caught a sweet delicate scent of musk that instinctively I knew came from the very pores of her flesh.

  On Earth certain rather prissy mores forbid mention of the part the female scent plays in sexual stimulation, though everyone knows of it. Here it is not cloaked behind pseudogentility. The woman�
��s eighth year, her fertility period, is called her msst, from the name of the scent she exudes.

  And now I was exposed to it for the first time, and a slow pulse began to throb thickly in my throat, from within came a rush of stimulation, and a sudden hunger grew in my tissues. With amazement I realized that it was all the biological response of my glands to her mere presence—and her scent. I reached out blindly for my goblet and drained it.

  I left the drinking place soon after—and outside found Trobt waiting for me!

  IX

  As I might have expected, Trobt showed no sign of anger with me for having evaded his guards and fleeing into the City. His was the universal Veldian viewpoint. To them all life was the Game—with the difference that it was played on an infinitely larger Board. Every man and every woman with whom the player had contact, direct or indirect, were pukts on the Board. The player made his decisions, and his plays, and how well he made them determined whether he won or lost. His every move, his every joining of strength with those who could help him, his every maneuver against those who would oppose him, was his choice to make, and he rose and fell on the wisdom of his choice. Game, in Velda, means Duel, means struggle and the test of man against the opponent, Life. I had made my escape as the best play as I saw it. Trobt would have no recriminations.

  Neither of us discussed the coming Final Game. I was prepared, mentally to meet it anytime; however, Trobt’s attitude seemed to indicate that it had been indefinitely postponed. Why, I could not tell.

  The following day Trobt did not return to his government offices. He shut himself in his recreation room and stayed until early evening. His meals were served him there.

  When finally he came out he was pale and his face, not tense, but appearing as though it had only that moment relaxed after a long strain. He had the look of a man who after a prolonged struggle has just made a difficult decision.

  “Would you care to play the Game?” he asked. I stood perplexed. Why the evidence of stress, if it led to such a simple request? I would have been happy to play him anytime. “This will be the most difficult game you’ve ever had— Game or chess,” he finished.

  There had been something more bepind the request then. When I. nodded he surprised me again by calling for our cloaks. I pulled mine on and followed him out to the tricar ramp.

  We drove diagonally away from the River Widd. Hearth is quite narrow so our journey was short. However, the section in which we stopped was old and poorly lighted. Many of the houses were abandoned, and most of the others were run down.

  We parked our tricar on a side avenue and walked perhaps a hundred yars. “If you can win this Game perhaps we will have to change our opinion of you Humans,” Trobt said on the way. He spoke-as though in jest, but I saw more behind his words than he intended me to see. Here might be a chance, at last, to do a positive service for my side.

  We stopped at the door of a small one-story stone house and Trobt tapped with his fingernails on a hollow gong buried in the wood.

  After a minute a curtain over the door glass was drawn back and an old woman with straggly gray hair peered out at us. She recognized Trobt and opened the door.

  We went in. Neither Trobt nor the old woman spoke. She turned her back after closing the door and went to stir embers in a stone grate.

  Trobt motioned with his head for me to follow and led the way into a back room.

  “Robert O. Lang,” he said, “I would like you to meet YondtL”

  I looked across the room to where Trobt indicated. My first impression was of a great white blob, propped up on a couch and supported by the wall at its back.

  Then the thing moved. Moved its eyes. It was alive. Its eyes told me also that it was a man. If I could call it a man.

  His head was large and bloated, with blue eyes, washed almost colorless, peering out of deep pouches of flesh. He seemed to have no neck; almost as though his great head were merely an extension of the trunk, and separated only by puffy folds of fat. Other lappings of flesh hung from his body in great thick rolls.

  It took another minute of absorbed inspection before I saw that he had no arms, and that no legs reached from his body to the floor. The entire sight of him made me want to leave the room and be sick.

  “Robert O. Lang is an Earthian who would challenge you, sir,” Trobt addressed the monstrosity.

  The other gave no sign that I could see but Trobt went to pull a Games table at the side of the room toward us. “I will serve as his hands,” Trobt said.

  The pale blue eyes never left my face.

  I stood without conscious thought until Trobt pushed a chair under me. Mentally I shook myself. With unsteady hands—I had to do something with them—I reached for the pukts before me. “Do you … Do you have a choice— of colors, sir?” I stammered, trying to make up for my earlier rudeness of staring.

  The lips of the monstrosity quivered, but he made no reply.

  All this while Trobt had been watching me with amusement. “He is deaf and speechless,” Trobt said. “Take either set. He will use the other.”

  Absently I pulled the red pieces toward me and placed them on their squares.

  “In deference to you as a visitor, you will play ‘second game counts,’ ” Trobt continued. He was still enjoying my consternation. “He always allows his opponent the first move. You may begin when you are ready.”

  With an effort I forced myself to concentrate on the playing board. My start, I decided, must be orthodox. I had to leam something of the type of game this—Yondtl—played. I moved the first row right hand pukt its two oblique and one left squares.

  Yondtl inclined his head slightly. His lips moved. Trobt put his hand to a pukt and pushed it forward. Evidently Trobt read his lips. Very probably Yondtl could read ours also. /

  We played for almost an-hour with neither of us losing a man.

  I had tried several gambits; gambits that invited a misplay on Yondtl’s part. He made none. When he offered I was careful to make no mistake of my own. We both played as though this first game were the whole contest.

  Another hour went by. I had deliberately traded three pukts with Yondtl, in an attempt to trick him into a misplay. None came.

  I tried a single decoy gambit,’ and when nothing happened, followed with a second decoy. Yondtl countered each play. I marveled that he gave so little of his attention to the board. Always he seemed to be watching me. I played. He played. He watched me.

  I perspired.

  Yondtl set up an overt side pass that forced me to draw my pukts back into the main body. Somehow I received the impression that he was teasing me. It made me want to beat him down.

  I decided on a crossed-force double decoy gambit. I had never seen it employed. Because, I suspect, it is too involved, and open to error by its user. Slowly and painstakingly I set it up and pressed forward.

  The Caliban in the seat opposite me never paused. He matched me play for play. And though his features had long since lost the power of expression, his pale eyes seemed to develop a blue luster. I realized, almost with a shock of surprise, that that fat caricature of a man was happy—intensely happy.

  I came out of my brief reverie with a start. Yondtl had made an obvious play. I made an obvious counter. I was startled to hear him sound a cry somewhere between a muffled shout and an idiot’s laugh, and my attention jerked back to the board.

  I had lost the game!

  My brief moment of abstraction had given Yondtl the opportunity to make a pass too subtle to be detected with part of my faculties occupied elsewhere.

  We began the second game—and still I hadn’t found a weakness in my opponent. Worse, I had learned that any slight lapse of attention on my own part would be fatal.

  Now I had to play a flawless game, while still searching for Yondtl’s weak point. The obvious course, I decided, would be to try a play of elimination. I had used it often before to find an opponent’s weakness. I could play it in such a way as to be almost certain not to make a msita
ke. The worst I could get would be a stand-off. And perhaps Yondtl could not play as perfect a game with fewer pieces. I’d find out.

  Slowly, carefully, I moved my pukts, taking every opportunity for a safe exchange. After each play, and particularly after each exchange, I looked for signs of error, or at least uncertainty, in Yondtl’s play. I found none. With each lessening of pukt numbers I tried new gambits. Always Yondtl matched them.

  The game ended when we had each one pukt left. It was no game.

  I admitted to myself that for some time I had been looking for signs of weariness in Yondtl. I was exhausted, and would have liked an excuse to quit for the night. The glisten of happiness in his eyes burned unwearily.

  I pushed back my chair. “I’ve had enough for tonight,” I told Trobt. If I were to do the Humans a service I would have to rest before trying Yondtl the next time.

  We made arrangements to meet again the following evening, and let ourselves out. The old woman was nowhere in sight.

  On the drive back it was I who was silent. I had a fairly definite presentiment that I had met my match, and perhaps more.

  When we reached Trobt’s home he left me for a minute and came back with a flagon of liquor and two goblets. He filled both and gave one to me. I held my glass wonderingly as he raised his in a silent toast, then drained it. He was as near to showing exhilaration as I’d ever seen him.

  “Tonight,” he said, speaking Earthian, “I feel a need to talk. Will you bear with me?”

  I smiled my agreement.

  “Why am I happy?” he asked. “Because you have met a Veldian you can’t beat,” he answered himself. “Always before there was this small doubt in my mind. Here, I said, is this Earthian, whipping us at our own Game. True, he may be the best of the Earthians. But he is beating the best of the Veldians. Are the Humans then more intelligent? Tonight it was answered. Our best is better than your best!”