Charles DeVett & Katherine MacLean

by Cosmic Checkmate

  “Explain.”

  Your willingness to hazard, and eagerness to battle is no weakness when you are armed with superior weapons, and fighting against an opponent as disorganized, and as incapable of effective organization as the Ten Thousand Worlds, against your long-range weapons and subtle traps.

  “Why do you say the solution is only temporary?”

  You cannot win the war. You will seem to win, but it will be an illusion. You will win the battles, kill billions, rape Worlds, take slaves, and destroy ships and weapons. But afterwards you will be forced to hold the subjection. Your numbers will not be expendable. You wiU be spread thin, exposed to other cultures that will influence you, change you. You will lose skirmishes, and in the end you will be forced back. Then will come a loss of old ethics, corruption and opportunism will replace your honor and you will know shame and dishonor—your society will soon be weltering back into a barbarism and disorganization which in its corruption and despair unU be nothing like the proud tribal primitive life of its first barbarism—you wiU be aware of the change and unable to return.

  They maneuvered about that answer for a long time. Going through it again and again. But this time they were not harsh or aggressive. They stopped often and went to the glass wall and returned arid asked again, in a different way.

  I understood their perplexity. They could not accept what I told them because to them winning was only a matter of a military victory, a victory of strength; they had not experienced defeat as a weakness from within. My words only made them uneasy.

  The last time one of my questioners returned from the glass partition he asked, “Do we have any other weakness?”

  Your women. Would I never stop? They were picking my brain to defeat my own race.

  “Explain.”

  They are ‘set’ for the period when they greatly outnumbered their men. Your compatible ratio is eight women to one man. Yet their number is one to one. Further, they produce too few children. Your manpower must ever be in small supply. Worse, it sponsors a covert despair and sadism in your young men—a hunger and starvation to follow instinct, to win women by courage and conquest and battle against danger—that only a war can restrain.

  “The solution?”

  Beat the Federation. Be in a position of free access to their women.

  But the final ignominy was yet to come.

  Dimly I heard the sound of a question from the glass wall. “Do you have a means of reporting back to the Ten Thousand Worlds?”

  The answer came. Yes. Buried somewhere inside me is a nerve-twitch tape. Flesh pockets of chemicals are stored there also. When my body temperature drops fifteen degrees below normal the chemicals wiU be activated and will use the tissues of my body for fuel and generate sufficient energy to transmit the information on the tape back to the Ten Thousand Worlds.

  Just before the black walls of oblivion that rimmed my vision closed in, I heard, “That will be enough.”

  I recognized the voice as Trobt’s.

  XI

  I awoke in’ my bedroom in Trobt’s home. I was tired, and very weak. The ordeal of the questioning lingered in my mind like fragments of a nightmare. Impressions of it came and went. I felt nothing, for my emotions had not yet been able to work their way up through my weariness. I had only the certainty that when they did my reaction would be bitter.

  Trobt found me in this state of mental stasis. I looked at his face for some sign of triumph, or contempt. I read neither there.

  ,1 was past caring. I felt alone, more alone than I had ever been before. “Was I unconscious long?” I asked, only little interested in what the answer might be.

  “This is the next evening,” Trobt answered gently. “You were kept under sleep while the chemicals in your body were removed.”

  My first emotion reached the surface then. And with it went any last hope I might have had. Before, when the situation seemed hopeless, I had had the consolation of knowing that my death would at least benefit the Ten Thousand Worlds. Now even that was gone. I had left only the nauseating knowledge that I was the worst kind of traitor.

  Trobt read my thoughts correctly. “You had no power to prevent it,” he said.

  I turned my face from him.

  In the space of the next few minutes a queer phantasm passed through my mind. With the realization that I had no slight hope left came what I recognized as shock. I knew then how a man could be physically unhurt, yet driven, so hard that his mind was no longer able to face what it saw. It substituted a false knowledge then for the reality that was too harsh to bear. That way lay madness.

  My mind became coldly logical. As clear, cool, and crisply logical as it is possible for a human mind to become. I began thinking new thoughts, savoring deliciously the wealth of wisdom behind them. I reviewed my past actions, my life, with its aspirations and frustrations, and I saw them as something that I understood fully now for the first time. Philosophies and problems of the universe that had been only dimly comprehended before were easily grasped with an idly passing thought. And too trivial for further contemplation. I had found the supreme wisdom—the only perfect happiness. Never again would I ever be perplexed or troubled. Before me lay serenity. The serenity of an infinity of knowledge and understanding. And behind it all lurked one other bit of perception: my thoughts were those that only a lunatic could have!

  Trobt’s perspicacity saved me. He had watched me those few minutes and now he said, “Only a coward runs.”

  He had seen what was happening, seen that I was fleeing back into my own mind. That the only way to stop that running was to sting me into staying and fighting.

  I hung on grimly.

  Two days later I visited Trobt at work.

  At the car ramp I found a guardian leaning idly against a stone pillar. He smiled as I came up to him. “I will watch you die,” he said.

  The words were spoken with neither rancor or hate. But they did irritate. I shrugged. “Is there any reason why I can’t leave here?” I asked.

  “None,” he answered, civilly enough. “I’d be happy to drive you anywhere you wish.” “Good,” I answered. “Take me to the Games building.”

  He drove with the hairsbreadth impetuosity of all the Veldians.

  At the entrance to the Games building a pedestrian snarled as I passed and spat on the ground. “I will watch you die,” he grated. For some reason I seemed to be well-known now. Though hardly well liked.

  We had to, go through Lyagin’s office to reach the interior of the building. The old man glanced up as I entered behind the guardian. He rose when he recognized me and came toward me, “You are a man, sir,” he said, gripping my wrist in a feeble hand.

  I found myself standing, unable to answer. His greeting and manner were too unexpected. I had received too little respect on this world to accept it now without surprise. I stammered my thanks and went on.

  Trobt put down a stylus when I entered his office and greeted me as though he had been expecting me.

  I made no display of perfunctory conversation. I was in a mood for direct intercourse only. “I’d like to know if you still intend to kill me,” I said.

  “You need not fear,” Trobt answered readily. “We will give you the torture whenever you ask.”

  “You mean that you won’t do it until I tell you I’m ready?” I asked. He’d caught me unprepared, and I made a hasty change of plans.

  “Why would we?”

  Again I realized how much there still remained to learn of these people. And how I never would know them completely. The background necessary for that would take a lifetime of living—as one of them. Half in jest, I asked, “What if I postponed it forever?”

  He smiled as though I had uttered an absurdity. “We both know you won’t,” he answered.

  “How do you know that?” I challenged.

  “You wouldn’t permit it.”

  “Do you actually think I’m eager to die?” I asked.

  “All Velda knows you are eager for the Fina
l Game.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Do they see me as a madman?”

  “They see you as you are. They cannot conceive of one man challenging a planet, except to win himself a bright and gory death on a page of history, the first man to deliberately strike and die in the coming war. Not an impersonal clash of battleships, but a man declaring battle against men. Every citizen is waiting to see you die—gloriously. We would not deprive you of that death. Our admiration is too great. We want the symbolism of your blood now just as greatly as you want it yourself.”

  Trobt too lacked the background to understand the other side. All this while he had interpreted my presence here in this fantastic way. And I suspected that I had no arguments to convince him differently. Was there anything more for me to say?

  From the time I had been captured in the City I’d suspected that Trobt had planned to let me escape. He had lured me to a different kind of maze test, allowed me freedom of search, so that I could learn about them. But what I had learned would never leave Velda. Instead he had subjected me to the questioning, to turn the knowledge I had gained to their own advantage. So that they might know what to guard against in themselves. Also, my actions must have given them better knowledge of their opponent in the upcoming duel of races.

  This proved once again how well Trobt had learned my trick of the second game. He had used it, deliberately losing in his effort to hold a lone Human, so that I would expose myself, and the fighting weaknesses of my kind, before the real fight began.

  And I was back where I had been at the beginning.

  I thought of the old histories of Earth. Of the warrior race of North American Indians. A captured enemy must die. But if he had been an honorable enemy he was given an honorable death. He was allowed to die under the stress most familiar to them. Their strongest ethic was a cover-up for the defeated, the universal expressionless suppressal of reaction in conquering or watching conquest, so as not to shame the defeated. Public torture—with the women, as well as warriors, watching—the chance to exhibit fortitude. That was considered the honorable death, while it was a shameful trick to quietly slit a man’s throat in his sleep without giving him a chance even to fight—to show his scorn of flinching under the torture.

  “I would like to show you something that will interest you,” Trobt said. He walked to a window. “Over here.”

  I went and stood at his side. Outside a crowd filled every square foot of a large courtyard and spilled out into the street. They all seemed to be staring up toward us, intently. “What are they looking at?” I asked.

  “There is a vision screen just below our window,” Trobt answered. “They are watching it. They have been all day. There are hundreds of other screens about the City, all as crowded with spectators as this one.”

  “What do they watch?”

  “Follow me.” Trobt led the way through a corridor and out a side door of the building. We stood in the doorway at the edge of the crowd where we could see the vision screen.

  Its picture showed a group of men circling two in the center. One was short and stocky; the other deep-chested and bearded. Both held short knives in their right hands— and both were blindfolded!

  There was a brief flurry of sudden movement from the two men in the center and the shorter fell back clutching his neck at the juncture of his left shoulder. Blood poured out from between his fingers.

  The crowd muttered and gave brief cheers. Here and there voices said, “A wounded dleeth! He makes big tracks! I will watch how far he goes in the Final Game!”

  The bearded man, of course, was I.

  “What is this?” I asked Trobt.

  “We had scanners everywhere when you escaped. Only at rare intervals were you out of our sight.”

  “You did allow me to escape then?”

  “Of course. I thought you understood.

  “I believe I do,” I said. “And those pictures?”

  “Are a transcript of your actions during the time you were free in Hearth.”

  It had not been unexpected. This man had surprised me too often with his brilliant handling of me—and my situation—for me to be taken aback now. “Did the Veldians know that you had deliberately allowed me to escape?”

  “They didn’t while you were in the City. But now they do. The transcript has been shown repeatedly since. Yet they watch with undiminished fascination. Even’ parts such as your sleeping under the City, they watch with as much interest as if they were witnessing a great drama.”

  Someone in the crowd at our side said, “I will watch him die!”

  “They hate me, don’t they?” I asked Trobt.

  “What you just heard was a compliment. Some do hate you, naturally. They hate you as the representative of their Enemy. But to the great majority you are a hero. The entire planet admires you, for you are the enemy, come to challenge us—alone; the test champion come to decide the battle, the best contesting the best. And so they want to see you when you fight to maintain your honor.”

  Here was this unshakable viewpoint again.

  “You have captured the imagination,” Trobt said. “And - when you die in the manner I know you must, you will undoubtedly become the greatest Enemy-hero in our history.” I was a hero. Still they would kill me.

  XII

  That night I dreamed of the Veldians. I was surrounded by thousands of them, all speaking at the same time, shouting at me, explaining themselves, in jumbled, broken phrases: Honor … courage . . . birthright … inherited … old survival traits … the world belongs … strong … love danger . . , hardship … not only to bear, but to love … Danger . , . harshness … violence … war … valuable factors … progress. Must be… passionate. Without it… impotence.

  Weaklings … inefficient … must perish. Struggle … existence … strong and progeny … survive. Weak and progeny … die. Strong survive … each birth . . strength increases. Weak cannot be allowed … survive … society must excrete.

  Mercy … pity … paralyzing luxury. Waste. Crippled … diseased … incompetent … defectives … must not be allowed … or strength gone.

  I awoke soaked with perspiration.

  That afternoon a visitor lightened my day.

  Yasi.

  I had almost forgotten her, so much had happened in the few days since I left her. But the cool sweetness in her smile and her kiss brought back a flood of tenderness.

  Trobt and I had found her waiting in his game room when we entered. He smiled now at our joyful meeting.

  Yasi, however, had eyes only for me. “Observe,” she commanded me, once again parading herself for my inspection.

  The burgeoning of her womanhood was quite apparent in her body form, and in the creamy pinkness that had blossomed in her cheeks. She was not yet quite a complete woman. She reminded me of an Earth girl, in secondary school, pert, vivacious, and just beginning to recognize her imminent chrysalis. She would very soon be as much woman as any man could ask.

  “Do you find me pleasing, Robert O. Lang?” she asked, with a kind of singing in her voice.

  I answered by taking both her hands in mine, and letting her read in my eyes how I felt about her. The warmth of her came to me through our hands, and I was as happy as I could have been on this alien world.

  “Why then did you not return for me?” she asked. “Is it that you do not think me proper?” She turned appealingly to Trobt. “Will you tell him that I am worthy?”

  Trobt was enjoying my inability to keep up with her

  conversational sprightliness. He nodded solemnly, however. “She is the youngest of Lyagin,” he said. “Long an honorable family of Velda. By our standards she is a very beautiful girl.” He paused. “I consider you a most fortunate man.” “And so you see?” she demanded.

  “Yasi. Yasi.” I folded her slim body in my arms. “I needed no one to vouch for you,” I told her. “To me you are everything that is wonderful.” At that moment I was very sincere.

  This time she was quiet, but I could feel
her very much alive in her supple body.

  I forgot my cares for the afternoon she spent with me. The following morning the annotator awoke me. And the answer to everything was there—lying in my hands like a gift waiting to be opened!

  I dressed hurriedly and went downstairs, where I found Trobt strolling in his gardens.

  “One question,” I said, ignoring his nod of greeting. “Do you still regard war between Velda and the Federation as inevitable?”

  “Of course.”

  “There will be no war,” I stated. “And you will not kill me.” He looked at me as though I had spoken gibberish.

  My next words, I knew, would shock him. “I’m going to ask you to allow me to return to our worlds,” I said. “I am going to recommend unconditional surrender.”

  Trobt’s head which he had turned away swiveled sharply back to me. His mouth opened and he made several motions to speak before succeeding. “Are you serious?”

  “Very,” I answered.

  Trobt’s face grew gaunt and the skin pressed tight against his cheekbones—almost as though he were making the surrender rather than I. “Is this decision dictated by your logic,” he asked dryly, “or by faintness of heart?”

  I did not honor the question enough to answer it.

  Neither did he apologize. “You understand that unconditional surrender is the only kind we will accept?”

  I nodded wearily.

  “Will they agree to your recommendation?”

  “No,” I answered. “Humans are not cowards, and they will fight—as long as there is any slightest hope of success.

  I will not be able to convince them that their defeat is inevitable. But I can prepare them for what is to come. I hope to shorten the conflict immeasurably.”

  “I can do nothing but accept,” Trobt said, after a moment of thought. “I will arrange transportation back to Earth for you tomorrow.” He paused and regarded me with expressionless eyes. “You realize that an enemy who surrenders without a struggle is beneath contempt?”

  The blood crept slowly into my cheeks. It was difficult to ignore his taunt. “Will you give me six months before you move against us?” I asked. “The Federation is large. I will need time to bring my message to all.”