Macroscope

“Mate? Guard?”

Groton sighed. “You really don’t know chess, do you! Here.” He brought out a blackboard and made a checkerboard on it in chalk. Blackboards seemed to be popular among engineers. “The squares are black and white, but forget that for now.” He added some letters. “Here’s the black queen — she’s circled. It could be a black bishop, of course; principle’s the same. She’s on king’s-rook-eight, while all the whites are set up on the seventh and eight ranks, so.” He ignored Ivo’s confusion. “Now white’s pawn is about to be queened, but can’t because it is pi

Ivo contemplated the illustration. “I’m glad it makes sense to you.”

Groton pursued his logic relentlessly. “The king is the game, you see. You can’t allow him to move into check. Your opponent will call you down for incorrect play if you do; there are no pitfalls of that nature in chess. Look — pawn moves up like this, next it’s black’s move and queen checks king. So pawn can’t move, not while it’s pi

“That much I follow. I think. The pawn is like a bodyguard — if it steps out, assassination.”

“Close enough. But here is the rest of it: the pawn is a special piece, especially in this position, because if it gets to the back row it changes into a queen, or any other piece it chooses to. That can change the whole course of the game, because an extra queen in the end-game is a terror.”

“It does look pretty bad for that king, bottled in the corner like that.”

“White pawn promotes into a white queen; that’s good for this king. Matter of fact, it means white can win the game — if that pawn can only move up. That’s why the pin has to be broken; it is the crux of the game.”

“We’re white?”

“Right. And black is some alien intelligence fifteen thousand light-years deep in the galaxy.”

“The destroyer?”

“That’s what I mean. Somebody set up that alien queen, and she has our king threatened, all the way across the board. And all we have are pawns to hold her off.”

“And we’ve lost six pawns already.”

“Right Our seventh and eighth are on the board at the seventh rank. And one of them is pi

“Which one is that — in life, I mean.”

“That one.” Groton aimed a heavy finger at Ivo.

“Me? Because I can use the macroscope a little?”

“Because you can fetch the white queen. Schön.”

“But how am I pi

“I have been wondering about that. You are obviously Schön’s pawn, and he has confirmed his involvement by sending us cryptic little messages. My guess is that he would come to us if he could. He told us why he can’t, if we can only make sense of it.” Groton looked at his diagram. “Now that pawn is pi

“I suppose so, but—”

“And that explains several things, such as the dichotomy in my charts. So it must be right.”

“So what must be right?”

“That you are Schön. The fire element.”

“Sure. And the pin?” Careless words — but the game was over.

“You sat through the sequence that put away Brad and killed the senator. You survived it, probably because you came below its critical limit. But Schön is buried in your mind, unconscious or pe

Ivo nodded. “You take your time, but you do get there.”

“So you were aware of it? I thought it might be hidden from you.” Groton glanced out the port at the frigid plateau, not seeming gratified at his success. “Your horoscope pointed the way, of course. There had to be an explanation for the chart’s failure to match observation, and as is so often the case, the error was in the observation. So now the question is, how do we remove the pin? We can’t get at the queen and we don’t have many pieces on our board. Of course it’s not so simple as I have it — this illustration has loopholes even taken purely as chess — but I could set up a sounder analogy if it were worth the trouble. It seems that the four of us will have to do it if it’s going to be done at all. Do you agree?”

“I think so. But how do you wipe out a memory? And even if you could, Schön probably couldn’t use the macroscope himself. Not with that signal still there.”

“I don’t know. That falls beyond the province of engineering, I fear. But we might hold a meeting on it, let Afra take a crack at it. But one other consideration—”

“I know. What happens when Schön comes. To me.”

“Right.”

“I’m gone. The truth is, I only exist in Schön’s imagination.”

“This, again, is what your horoscope suggested. It spelled out, in the sometimes perplexing way they do, Schön rather than Ivo. Nevertheless you seem pretty real to me.”

“I’m not. When Schön got fed up and decided to leave — which happened when he was about five years old — he did it by inventing an i

“Most people would consider ages five to ten the flower of childhood.”

“Not at 330 Pecker Place! It was all over when I got there. That’s what I meant when I told you before that I had no childhood episode for you. Everything was — set.”

Groton let that sidelight drop. “And Schön never came back?”

“Well, he has to be summoned. That’s my job — to judge when the time is right. But he had no reason to return. Ordinary life is unbearably tedious to him, so he leaves the mundane maintenance to me.”

“He left just because of tedium? But that isn’t very likely, is it? Why would things have to be tedious for Schön? And why would he make his return involuntary — on his part, I mean? I’d be inclined to suspect some more urgent reason for that setup.”

“What else could there be?” Ivo asked uneasily. His own understanding of the conditions of his existence was begi

Groton plainly was not satisfied. “I may take a more careful look at the chart.”

“Best luck. Meanwhile, I’ll just muddle along as well as I can.”

“Muddle? I’d call it a mature adjustment to reality on your part.”

“That’s the nicest description for desperation I’ve heard today! When he wakes — and he’ll have to wake, if the time comes — I’ll be reintegrated into his total personality, and all my memories and aspirations with me, and I’ll be gone. It’s like a planetoid falling into the sun.”

“I was afraid of that. When the pawn queens, it isn’t a pawn any more, not even in part. I can see why you never were anxious to invoke Schön.”

“I’m selfish, yes. Now that I’m here, I want to live. I want to prove myself. I don’t like Schön.”