The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (18 page)

“Fix it.”

“How?”

“I don’t care how, just
do
it!  We need this to…”  He trails off.

“To what?”

Rook fumes.  “
Just fix it, damn you!
”

“
I can’t.”

“
Why not?!
”

The alien suddenly roars. 
“Because this ship is like its crew, it’s dead and it’s never coming back!”  It’s the first time Bishop has raised his voice, and it takes us back as much as Rook.  “I’m sorry to put it to you like that, perhaps it’s inappropriate, but…you saw my own people down in the cave, you saw how some of their systems still work.  Lifeless husks that are still twitching.  The bodies have some rudimentary systems that still work, but you can’t make them stand up and dance, Rook.  Don’t you see?  Some things that are broken can never be fixed!  Not ever again!”

Rook huffs, and storms off a few paces, hands on his hips.  Finally, he turns back to face the alien.  “
All right, then.  This is…this is not doable.  If we can’t lift it off, then I guess it’s out of the plan.”  He bites out a curse, and kicks the dirt.  The earth shakes.  Off in the distance, Thor’s Anvil erupts anew, giving off low booms, but there is no lightning today.  The only lights are the exterior ones shining out from the Sidewinder.  “Maybe this plan wasn’t meant to happen, anyway.  Maybe it’s like you said, survival of the fittest.  Maybe it’s time for us to bow out of the evolutionary race, let the Cerebs have it all.  I dunno.”

Bishop says nothing to this.  Another temblor carries through the earth.  Whatever massive creature
(s?) stirs beneath us seems to have no thoughts on the matter, either.  So far below, they are supremely unaware of the interstellar struggles.  Rook considers this, and for a moment, seriously contemplates digging into the ground, using the exo-suit and their particle-beam weapons to dive belowground. 
If there really is an ecosystem down there, maybe
…
maybe we could subsist off of it
.

“Tell me the plan.”

Rook turns to look at the alien.  “What?”

Bishop
walks over to him.  “Tell me the plan.”

“What plan? 
My
plan?  What does it matter now?  We can’t even get it off the ground.”  He chuckles mirthlessly.  “Literally.”

“
Still, I would hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because, as you say, what does it matter now?  I can’t confess it to my captors.”  The alien gives him a shrug.  “So come.  Tell me.”

Rook
waves him off, walks away a few paces, and stops.  He looks away at Thor’s Anvil, only visible because of the red-orange molten lava that outlines some of its top and middle features.  Then, he thinks,
The hell with it
. 
Why not?  What does it matter?
  He turns to Bishop.  “My father was a big history buff.  He told me this story.  In the 1700s, there was this machine called the Turk.  It was a chess-playing automaton, built almost two hundred years before the first computers.  It was constructed and unveiled by a man named Wolfgang von Kempelen.  If I’m not mistaken, he meant to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria with it.”

Just then, the ground trembles heavily, and both the Sidewinder and the derelict ship wine and shake.

Rook continues.  “The machine was essentially a giant table, on top of which was a chessboard, and behind which sat a life-sized mechanical human, dressed in Turkish robes and a turban.  In its left arm it held a smoking pipe, and its right hand rested on top of a large cabient connected to the chessboard.  For eighty-four years this machine did a tour of Europe and the Americas, and during that time it defeated some very famous chess players, and even some statesmen.  Hell, it beat Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Bishop perks up here.  “I know
that second name.  It was in some of your ship’s historical files.  He was a statesman and strategist.”

“One of the greatest strategists.  And not too shabby at chess, either
, from what I understand.  Bonaparte wasn’t too happy to be defeated by an unthinking machine.”

“So, the machine worked, then.”
  As an engineer, we can be sure the alien finds this most impressive.

“Oh, yeah
, it worked just fine.  There was only one problem.  It was a fake,” Rook says.  Bishop tilts his head quizzically.  “A mechanical illusion.  See, the interior of the machine was built to look extremely complicated, so that it confused people to look at it.  It was made to look all clockwork, with all sorts of gears and cogs spinning inside.  And it was designed so that if the front and back doors of the cabinet were opened at the same time, a person could see through the machine.”

Bishop tilts his head the other way.  “Someone was inside the machine.”

Rood nods.  “A sliding chair was placed inside, so that the person inside could slide around and hide as observers opened the various doors—it was most likely a dwarf or some skilled contortionist hiding inside, but nobody ever knew for sure.  The chessboard was thin enough to allow for a magnetic link underneath, and each chess piece had a small magnet inside.  The underside of the chessboard had corresponding numbers, one through sixty-four, and allowed the person inside the machine to know which pieces had been moved outside.  He used a system of levers and pulleys beneath to control the mechanical dummy.  Most people focused on the dummy moving around, smoking his pipe, and the theatricality helped with the deception.”

Bishop nods appreciatively.  “A
worthy piece of engineering and misdirection.”

“Many people thought the Turk was powered by supernatural forces.
  It made some people cower in corners once they saw how clever it was, they were so certain dark forces were kept inside.  Matters of intelligence were once revered, and even mistrusted—like riddles, for example, which in the beginning weren’t just games for children, they were matters of life and death because one had to be smart enough to unriddle them, like the riddle of the Sphinx, and Samson’s riddle in the Bible.  Matters of intellect have always frightened people.  Chess was called the ‘game of kings’ not just because of the main pieces, but because kings and wealthy barons would want to show their intelligence by playing the game masterfully.  For a
machine
to be able to beat a man at a game of riddling or a game of chess, or
any
game of intellect…it terrified people.  It got inside their minds, made them question their sanity.”

“What does this have to do with our predicament?”

Thor’s Anvil rumbles, erupting louder and angrier.  A geyser of lava slowly begins to climb the dark sky.  Rook looks around at the world he’s been driven to.  “My father told me that when you’re playing chess, you play the person, not the pieces.  The pieces are just a means to get inside the opponent’s mind.”  He looks at the Ianeth.  “We have to get inside their heads.”

“How?”

“By making them think they’re up against something they’re not.  That was the plan, anyway.”

“How do you mean?” the alien urges.

“Look, Napoleon and all those chess masters couldn’t have just been duped by some dwarf who just happened to be a chess prodigy.  It was the Turk
itself
, it got inside their heads.  The
idea
of the machine.  They thought they were playing against something…grander.  Bigger.  A machine with a soul, some genius thing with satanic properties.  It worried them, made them make mistakes.  It probably also rubbed at their pride—they became self-conscious, aware of how foolish they’d look if they lost to a dumb machine.”  He looks at the sky.  “When we first landed on Kali, I got to thinkin’ about those stations up there, and everything we’ve got down here.  We’ve got all these resources—the derelict, the stations, even the corpses here—but they’re all dead things.  Inert.  And I started thinking two things: first, how do you use dead things as a resource?  And second,” he says, turning to look at Bishop.  “How would history have changed if Napoleon and his fleet had faced the Turk equivalent of a battle fleet?”

Bishop
remains quiet for a moment, then nods.  “I thought I understood the relevance of this game of chess, but I can see now it runs much deeper with you.  It is your language.”

He snorts out a laugh.  “My father would’ve been proud to hear you describe me that way.  But yeah, the way I see it, the way he
taught
me, chess is as much a game of psyching your opponent out as anything.”

Bishop
stares at him.  “Psyching?”

Rook nods.  “In matches, it wasn’t uncommon for a Grand Master to figure out his opponent’s pet peeves and exploit them.  If the opponent didn’t like the smell of nicotine or smoke, then you lit a cigar, or at least placed it on the table nearby to suggest you might light it later.  If your opponent didn’t like a certain person being in the audience, perhaps an old enemy or an ex-wife, then you might make sure that that person sits in the front row to watch the match.”

“Psychological warfare,” Bishop notes.  “Your father taught you this with chess?”

“My father
taught me history.  A lot of the psych warfare stuff was drilled into us in the Sidewinder Program at ASCA.  I’m a saboteur, remember?  A kind of fighting engineer like you.  My prime directive was to stealthily enter warzones, and undermine my opponents.  One of the main lessons we learned in SODD training was that sabotage isn’t always about just a direct win, sometimes it’s best used to demoralize.”

“
I see.  So, the defense stations, the derelict ship, even our comrades’
corpses
—they would all be cogs in your Turk?”

“Yes.”

“And this Turk of yours, where is it?”

Rook waves his hands.  “It’s all around us.  It’s Kali.”

“Fascinating.  And, you believe it could genuinely demoralize them, and give us an edge.”

“Even machines can be psyched out.  And
the Cerebs are still part organic, and organic things have fears.”

Bishop nods. 
“And you really don’t think the Cerebs would be able to see past your ruse?  They
are
the most highly-advanced computers ever to cross the stars, after all.  You don’t think they’ll be able to figure out that you have me to help you, or that you’re behind all of…well, whatever it is you wish to build?”

“Maybe.  But a smart guy on my planet once said that there’s nothing so deceptive as an obvious fact.  When something’s too obvious, it makes it harder to believe, especially in tense situations with aggressive and intelligent opponents.”

“You have a lot of confidence in this ploy.”

“
Had confidence,” Rook corrects, now suddenly deflated by the realization of reality.  “We’re missing an important cog in the machine now.”  He looks at the derelict ship.  “If we can’t get this thing into orbit, then the plan’s efficiency is cut in half, maybe more.  Hell, it might not even be worth doing without—”

“What if I told you I could give you this cog?”

Rook looks at him.  “What do you mean?”

“What if I knew of a way to get this
derelict ship into orbit, but that it meant doing something exceedingly dangerous?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“There is something I believe could help us, but it means going to a planet not too far from here.  A very dangerous planet.”

“There are no other planets around here.  The only readings we got when we entered the system were of space debris
, that heat wave bouncing off or wake, and a…”  Rook trails off.

The gravitic distortion
, he thinks.  He suddenly recalls it, the strange reading that caught his attention upon approach to Kali, the one coming from beyond the dying star.  He also recalls telling Bishop about it, and that Bishop dismissed it outright. 
He lied to me again
.

For a moment, all of Kali goes silent, even Thor’s Anvil simmers down, and all we can hear is the silence between the two
of them.  Finally, Rook says, “What have you been hiding?”

“It didn’t register a
s a planet because it’s gravitational field isn’t…functioning properly.”

“Bishop,” he says slowly, “what have you been hiding from me?”

The alien says nothing for a moment, undoubtedly looking for the right words.  “You were concerned I might get captured and confess, and perhaps I had similar concerns about you.  I’m telling you now because you’ve trusted me with your plan,” Bishop says.

It takes a little mulling over, but eventually Rook decides he’s willing to accept that.  “Alright, then.  Out with it.  What’s the deal with it?”

“The planet was one of only three planned fortress worlds—used during times of war with our own kind, the project scale was amplified when the Cerebs appeared, and it was hoped that, along with Kali, such places could provide a lasting refuge in the darkness.  It was a place where we hoped to go and repel the rest of the galaxy.”  He emphasizes, “And I do mean
repel
.”