The Divide

“Of course,” Susan said.

He cleared away a stack of magazines from the courtesy table and set up the game. Susan opened with her king’s pawn; John replied in kind. It was a gentle opening, a Giuco Piano, the so-called Quiet Game.

She studied the board. He said, “You think I’ve been avoiding you.”

She was startled out of her thoughts. “Well, I—”

“Because I have been. Not avoiding you personally. It’s just that I didn’t want to face the questions.”

She could only echo, “Questions?”

“The questions you never asked because you were afraid of what I might say. Questions about what I am. About what it’s like, being what I am.”

Susan felt herself blushing. What kind of monster are you?—it was true; the question had never been far away, had it?

She moved a knight, mainly to conceal her nervousness.

“I thought we should talk about it now,” John said. “If you want to.”

“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted. “I’ve tried to imagine it.”

“Did Max ever talk about me—about his work, in any detail?”

“I was never even allowed to see his lab animals. Nothing beyond the cellular level. Not much theory.”

“Part of the problem is that we don’t have an adequate vocabulary. People talk about ‘intelligence’ as if it consisted of certain discrete acts—solving problems, acquiring knowledge and storing it. Most of the standard tests reflect that. But it’s really a superstition. When you talk about intelligence what you’re dealing with is human consciousness, which is not simple or schematic. I think even Max knows better now.”

He advanced his queen’s knight pawn. Susan gazed at the board abstractly; she couldn’t concentrate on the game.

He said, “There’s an evolutionary question about intelligence, what it’s for and how it arose. There’s a theory that intelligence evolved along with the upright posture, and for a similar reason. Among other things, Susan, a neuron is a clock—a timing device. But a single neuron has a widely variable firing time—it’s a clock but not a very good one.” He brought out his king’s knight. “Two neurons are a little better, because the errors begin to average out. Three neurons are better still, and so on. And clocks are good for operations involving timing. For instance, a dog: a dog is fairly good at catching things. But a dog couldn’t throw a rock at a moving target even if the dog were anatomically equipped to do so. Taking aim at a moving target makes demands on the neural clock the dog just can’t meet. Even the primates: you can’t train an ape to throw a baseball with any accuracy. Making an accurate baseball pitch means solving a complex differential equation, and doing it on the molecular level. It takes neurons.”

Susan marched her king’s bishop down the ranks.

“If the theory is correct,” John said, “then we evolved all this neocortical tissue so that we could stand on our hind legs and throw stones. Consciousness—intelligence—was the unforeseen side effect. Because the very calculation, the act of estimating speed and distance, of picking up the stone and taking aim, it exiles you from time. You understand, Susan? ‘If the antelope is there, and I aim over there’—it implies I and thou, self and other, birth and mortality. Makes you human. Not just I am but I was and I will be. Fruit of the tree of knowledge. It makes you the animal that stands just a little bit outside of time.”

His own bishop came rolling out. It was as if his hands were playing chess for him while he spoke. Susan responded with a reflexive pawn move, awed by this outrush of words.

“When Max was doing his work, of course, no one thought of intelligence this way. It was all much more linear: brains were calculating machines and we had better calculators than the apes. And there was no theoretical cap on it—you might imagine building a better brain the way the cybernetics people were upgrading Univac. Building a better human being. I think what Max imagined was a kind of ultimate Socialist Man, rational and benevolent.” John advanced his queen’s pawn a square, smiling to himself. “It didn’t occur to him that he might be creating the more perfect baseball player. Or that a man with more cortical tissue might have more terrifying dreams. Or that ‘intelligence’ is a kind of exile from temporal experience—that he might be engineering a creature more wholly alienated than anything that had walked the earth before. Lost in time. Your queen’s pawn.”

“What?” Susan was startled.

“You’re thinking of moving your queen’s pawn. Not a bad move, actually.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“There are only so many reasonable moves available—and you’re a reasonable player. But cautious, sometimes timid. That rules out a few things. Also, it’s not hard to tell what part of the board you’re focused on. And there are clues when you’re about to move. You lean forward a little. You clench your right hand. Yes, it’s that obvious.”

“I don’t like the idea of being so—transparent.”

“No one does.”

She hesitated, then pushed the pawn anyway. He continued, “This is by way of a warning.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You see, I know why you’re here. Here in this room, here with me. You’re here because you have the unusual perversion of falling in love with amiable monsters. And that’s what you mistook me for.”

This is the kind of monster I am, he was saying: a genuine one, and not amiable at all.

She should have answered with something polite and distancing (to reassure him); or she should have stood up and walked out (because he was right). She did neither. She was feeling reckless and disoriented; she obeyed a momentary impulse and stared back at him. “What about you? You don’t feel anything? You’re so g-goddamn aloof! That’s why you told me your life story that day in Kensington Market? That’s why you came back from your island?” She clenched her fists under the table. “Tell the truth: do you at least l-like me?”

He blinked—it wasn’t the question he had been expecting. Maybe, she thought, that was a good sign.

The room was silent for a moment; she could hear the ventilators humming.

“I could lie,” John said slowly. “How would you know?”

“I wouldn’t. I would trust you.”

“I’ve lied to other people. Cheated other people. Stolen from them.” He looked away. “Once I made love to a woman and left the bed wondering whether I’d committed an act of bestiality. That’s a stu

“Then answer my question.”

He looked back at the board. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I like you.” Regarded her calmly. “You’re thinking of moving your queen’s bishop.”

Damn his infuriating confidence! “No,” she said, “I’m not”

“No?”

Obeying another impulse: “My knight. There—see? If I move him back into the first rank I uncover the rook’s threat on your queen. While you’re getting her out of harm’s way, the knight takes the black bishop.” She lifted the knight and thumped it down defiantly.

John stared at the board. Surprised him again, Susan thought. Finally he advanced his queen, developing a threat toward her rook … but the rook was defended; his bishop was not. She took the piece.

Seven moves later he had cut through her pawn ranks and opened the white king to attack. But his own defenses were a shambles; his castled king was locked in by her rooks. She was coordinating a strong final assault when he advanced his queen through an opening she had not noticed. “Mate,” he said breathlessly.

But he was sweating. He looked up at her, and the look on his face now was the expression of a frightened child.

Susan understood suddenly what this tepid victory implied.

“Oh,” she said. She reached for his hand across the table; it was feverishly warm. “John—”