Short Fiction Fritz Leiber (free e books to read .txt) 📖

a temperature near absolute zero. However, the result is that the Machine can see eight moves ahead and is capable of being programmed much more craftily.”

“A million times as fast as the first machine, you say, Doc? And yet it only sees twice as many moves ahead?” Sandra objected.

“There is a geometrical progression involved there,” he told her with a smile. “Believe me, eight moves ahead is a lot of moves when you remember that the Machine is errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh-and-blood chess masters have lost games by blunders they could have avoided by looking only one or two moves ahead. The Machine will make no such oversights. Once again, you see, you have the human factor, in this case working for the Machine.”

“Savilly, I have been looking all over the place for you!”

A stocky, bull-faced man with a great bristling shock of black, gray-flecked hair had halted abruptly by their table. He bent over Doc and began to whisper explosively in a guttural foreign tongue.

Sandra’s gaze traveled beyond the balustrade. Now that she could look down at it, the central hall seemed less confusedly crowded. In the middle, toward the far end, were five small tables spaced rather widely apart and with a chessboard and men and one of the Siamese clocks set out on each. To either side of the hall were tiers of temporary seats, about half of them occupied. There were at least as many more people still wandering about.

On the far wall was a big electric scoreboard and also, above the corresponding tables, five large dully glassy chessboards, the White squares in light gray, the Black squares in dark.

One of the five wall chessboards was considerably larger than the other four⁠—the one above the Machine.

Sandra looked with quickening interest at the console of the Machine⁠—a bank of keys and some half-dozen panels of rows and rows of tiny telltale lights, all dark at the moment. A thick red velvet cord on little brass standards ran around the Machine at a distance of about ten feet. Inside the cord were only a few gray-smocked men. Two of them had just laid a black cable to the nearest chess table and were attaching it to the Siamese clock.

Sandra tried to think of a being who always checked everything, but only within limits beyond which his thoughts never ventured, and who never made a mistake⁠ ⁠…

“Miss Grayling! May I present to you Igor Jandorf.”

She turned back quickly with a smile and a nod.

“I should tell you, Igor,” Doc continued, “that Miss Grayling represents a large and influential Midwestern newspaper. Perhaps you have a message for her readers.”

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 blindfold⁠—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! Incidentally it was typical 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