The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (17 page)

“The exponential number?” probes Bishop
, cuing up another game and making an opening move.  He’s White, and opens with pawn to E4.

Rook
mirrors Bishop’s move with Black pawn to E5, interfering with his opponent’s plan to play D4.  A classic King’s Pawn Opening.  “Yeah, a major problem with chess for
computers
was always, ‘How do you solve the exponential problem?’  If a person has eight possible moves, then for each of those moves, the other player has eight possible
counter
-moves, and for each of those counter-moves there are eight other counter-moves.  On and on and on it goes.  As a matter of fact, there are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe.  No computer can compute that, no computer is that powerful.  At least, none that Man ever created, and none, I suspect, that even the Cerebs ever created.”  He shrugs.  “Then there’s also a problem with imagination.”

Bishop
moves his queen-side knight to F3, combining defense of the pawn with control of the D4 square, refusing to commit another pawn.  Not a bad response.  “How so?”

“Computers are good for looking at things the way they are
right now
, assessing the situation, collating all the data, and extrapolating a little, making simulations of the future,” he replies, responding with knight to C6.  “Variables cause them all sorts of trouble, though, and human imagination, including simple brute force or just a seemingly stupid sacrifice, can be a major variable.  Over time, they became more sophisticated—computers, I mean—but not so sophisticated that they solved the exponential problem
and
the imagination problem.”

“Are you sure about that?  Some of your ship’s historical files indicate that in 1997, a company called IBM created a computer called ‘Deep Blue’ that defeated the Grand Master named
Garry Kasparov, considered by some to be the greatest chess player that ever lived.”

Rook smirks.  “Actually, that’s not how it happened, but that’s how IBM wanted
people to
think
it happened.  In actual fact, Kasparov
defeated
Deep Blue in their first games in 1996.  But then in the rematch a year later, the computer acted, in the words of most computer and chess experts at the time, ‘most unnaturally.’  See, most people, including Kasparov, believed IBM cheated, somehow using other chess champions behind the scenes.  It performed just too well after having been so abysmally destroyed the year before.”

“It was
a hoax?”

“That’s what most experts
who researched it believed.  Just a sophisticated illusion.  Deep Blue itself was kept under lock and key, and even during the matches no one was allowed to see it, it was hidden behind curtains and inside other rooms.  It was even more suspicious that IBM refused a rematch.  This, after Kasparov had been kind enough to offer
them
a rematch the year before.  The question everybody was asking was, ‘Why didn’t IBM allow the rematch?’  IBM never let Kasparov redeem himself, to prove that it was all bullshit, and they wouldn’t let anybody see the computer.  They disassembled Deep Blue and destroyed much of it soon after so that no one could see exactly how the machine worked.”

“Why would they
conduct such an elaborate hoax?” asks Bishop.

“Because the day after Deep Blue beat Kasparov, IBM’s stock went up fifteen percent
, and it was all because of the victory against Kasparov.  Imagine the plummet if it was all proven to be a hoax.  So you see, once again, a human element is needed to play this game, especially at a master level.”  He adds, “Your move, by the way.”

After a moment,
Bishop moves a piece. 
Interesting
, Rook thinks.  The most common played move in this situation was bishop to B5.  Here, Bishop moved his knight to C3, which, according to chess theory, was the “quietest” continuation possible.  A very subtle move, not aggressive at all, and amateur players often thought it was a mistake until the trap was sprung later. 
This puts us in a classic Three Knights Game
.  The question is, did Bishop do it by mistake, or was he up to something?

“And you think
these exponential and imaginative problems will never be solved by computers?” the alien says.

Rook is still looking over the chessboard, considering Bishop’s move, and wondering for the first time how much skill the Ianeth has been holding back. 
“Not without accepting the fact that an organic brain is an upgrade, and not a downgrade.”  He considers moving his bishop to B4. 
It’s playable, but maybe too early, because White can play knight to D5
…
so how about bishop to C5
…
? 

Apparently Bishop notices his hesitation.  “You’re taking a while to think.  Why aren’t you playing knight to D5?  It seems the most logical move.”

“That’s too dangerous,” Rook says.  “If I do that, you can take the E5 pawn and grab back some material with a fork at D4.”

“Fork?”

“You haven’t covered tactics yet?”  Rook finds that hard to believe, considering the Ianeth’s ability to absorb vast amount of historical data.
That’s suspicious
.  “A fork is an attack that causes two separate threats.  It doesn’t matter that the opponent sees the move coming, your opponent can’t rescue
both
of his attacked pieces.  They have to choose one or the other.  Knights and pawns are especially good at it.”

“I see.”

“With a fork, the point isn’t always to try for one piece or another, the point is to make your opponent sweat.  The point is to mess with his head, affect the rest of his game with that one move, that one agonizing decision.”

“I see.”

Do you?
thinks Rook, watching the game progress. 
How well do you see?
  He decides on a move to G6, hoping to prepare it for F5 or transpose it into a classic Scotch Game, if he gets a counter-attack at D4.  As he watches the chess pieces moving, though, Rook believes he’s witnessing an emerging pattern, an increasingly sneaky and sophisticated plot.  The pieces move slowly, and there are lures…
My God, how long has he been pretending to be ignorant?

He doesn’t let on to his suspicion—maybe that wouldn’t be appropriate in this deception play the Ianeth were so fond of?—so he just keeps playing,
watches closely.  Suddenly, Bishop starts making several obvious mistakes, too obvious for how well he was previously playing.

Bishop manages to even pin one of Rook’s pieces for the first time—a pin being any time a defending piece cannot move, because it would expose a more valuable piece to attack.

Rook catches Bishop in a skewer.  That’s the reverse of a pin.  It occurs when two pieces are attacked in a line—rank, file, or diagonal, as long as it’s a straight line.  Ducks lined up in a row, so to speak.  When the more valuable piece out front moves out of the way, it leaves the piece behind it open for capture.

“Checkmate.”
 
Almost too easy, and now I know why
.

“Copy that,” Bishop says, betraying nothing.
  “Good game.  I’m all finished here.  I’ll be there momentarily.”

Rook
now considers the depths of the alien’s mind.  He thinks back on their conversation.  He thinks back to what Bishop said about rescuing him, and wonders what else he might be concealing.  And it suddenly occurs to him that he’s never actually asked Bishop how he ended up a captive of the Cerebs.  “Hey, Bishop, mind if I ask a personal question?”

“Go ahead, friend.”

“How did you get caught by the Cerebs?”

Silence.

“Did you hear me?”

“Copy that.  I’m all finished he
re.  I’ll be there momentarily.”

Rook determines to never bring it up again.
 
If he doesn’t want to talk about it, neither do I
.

Ten minutes later,
Bishop steps back onto the Sidewinder.  Finally, they’re all done with the stations.  At the end of the twelve-day work haul, Bishop sits in the co-pilot’s seat, not panting and not looking tired. 
How do Ianeth express exhaustion, I wonder?
Rook thinks, cycling up for takeoff.  “We ready?”

“We’re ready.  All twelve stations are now slaved to me.  Just give me the word when and where you want them moved.”

“Let’s get some rest.  We’ve earned it.  We’ll test the mass drivers tomorrow.”

“I can assure you they all work fine, though some may be slower than others—”

“I prefer no vagaries,” Rook says.  Vagaries foster illusions, and illusions are intense handicaps if not kept in check.  He knows this, and he wants to know exactly how well these spheres can move.  “We’ll test them tomorrow.”

Rook
tries to stay awake to work some more on telemetry, but the body asserts its own imperatives.  He sleeps, but wakes up in the middle of the night cycle to a series of loud thuds.  Getting up with his pistol ready, he moves down the main corridor and finds the Ianeth in the forward hold, arched back and with both hands and feet on the floor, performing some variation of the push-up that must only make sense to Ianeth biology.  Over the last few weeks, he’s noticed Bishop doing more of this late-night exercising.  “Somethin’ on your mind, pal?  Somethin’ keeping you up?”  The alien doesn’t respond.  Rook goes back to sleep, and in the morning they begin moving the spheres around.

Dozens of enormous, mile-wide panels open up all around the spheres, on every hemisphere, and though some don’t work as well as hoped, they do enough to get the defense stations moving around.  “Let’s move this one here to…Sector twenty-seven.”

“Affirmative, friend.”

It takes ten minutes to move the stations a thousand miles. 
Not too shabby for something the size of a small state
, Rook thinks.  “How the hell do those drivers move that much mass?”

“Our most powerful mass drivers uti
lized an annihilated anti-exomatter mixture.”

“Very nice.  Go ahead and return them all to their home positions.”

“Affirmative.  Where do you want me to move them after that?”

“Nowhere right now.  And hopefully not for a while longer.  We’ve got other work to do, finishing up the
derelict ship.”

Six more days of hard labor.  Rook skips quite a few
meals, and Bishop almost never eats.  A few simple tests are run on the old ship, enough to see that its thrusters are coming online and the main console is communicating with them.  A bit of fuel is going to have to be sacrificed from their Sidewinder in order to get the derelict moving, though.

Finally
they step back and watch the ship’s thrusters activate—its vertical thrusters are all but shot, but it can at least hover off the ground a few feet.  Rook syncs the ship’s slave circuit to his wrist computer to control it remotely, gliding it carefully out of the cave.  He even runs it through a clumsy landing.  He gives Bishop an approving nod, but it’s a bit premature.  One of the pistons on a landing strut ruptures, and the whole thing cants to one side.

“
Well,” he sighs.  “At least we got her out.”

“I must
once more voice my concern over towing this thing into orbit.  The keel-frame is the most dangerous sort of structural problem—it’s the core of a ship like this.  If the core is shaky, and if it starts to come apart, it will do so in large pieces falling towards the ground, smashing to pieces.”

“I think we can do it.”

“This planet may only have point-two stronger gravity than Earth, but that’s significant, despite how tough these Sidewinders were made.  With a battered keel-frame like this one has, that extra point-two is dangerous.  Also, these ships were designed with systems to counter gravity in order to lift off. 
None
of those systems are currently working on the derelict.”

“But the vertical thrusters will—”

“Provide only enough upward thrust to lighten the load a little, but once we reach the upper atmosphere, there will be turbulence.  The ship is too damaged to bleed off those effects.”  The alien looks at Rook seriously.  “I’m telling you, friend, this is what I do.  It is my job.  I was born into it.  If you lift this ship off, the problems are going to compound.  The
g
’s and the velocity necessary to escape the atmosphere will cause great turbulence, it will shake this ship to its foundations, and the shattered keel-frame which runs through the whole ship will buckle and cause systemic problems.  This whole thing will shake itself apart.”

A few seconds of gnawing on their problem. 
We got us a whole passel o’ problems with this thing, as ol’ Badge used to say
.  “Well, we’ll have to find a way.”

“There is no way.”

“Then we work some more on it until we find a—”

“We can’t.  Sometimes a thing is so badly broken it isn’t
reparable, unless you tear it apart completely and start with a new keel-frame and rebuild from scratch, which would take two people months to rebuild.  You saw how the support strut gave out.  That’s just one of a myriad of problems that—”