to fight one other piece at a time; of certain kinds, at that.” Flandry
stared toward his hidden destination. “I imagine the anthropoids are the
pawns. I wonder why. Maybe because they’re the most numerous pieces, and
the computer was lonely for mankind?”
“Computer?” She huddled against him.
“Has to be. Nothing else could have made this. It used the engineering
facilities it had, possibly built some additional manufacturing plant.
It didn’t bother coloring the squares or the pieces, knowing quite well
which was which. That’s why I didn’t see at once we’re actually on a
giant chessboard.” Flandry grimaced. “If I hadn’t … we’d’ve quit,
returned, and died. Come on.” He urged her forward.
“We can’t go further,” she pleaded. “We’ll be set on.”
“Not if we study the positions of the pieces,” he said, “and travel on
the squares that nobody can currently enter.”
After some trudging: “My guess is, the computer split its attention into
a number of parts. One or more to keep track of the wild robots. Two,
with no intercommunication, to be rival chessmasters. That could be why
it hasn’t noticed something strange is going on today. I wonder if it
can notice anything new any longer, without being nudged.”
He zigzagged off the board with Djana, onto the blessed safe unmarked
part of the land, and walked around the boundary. En route he saw a
robot that had to be a king. It loomed four meters tall in the form of a
man who wore the indoor dress of centuries ago, gold-plated and crowned
with clustered diamonds. It bore no weapons. He learned later that it
captured by divine right.
They reached the ancient buildings. The worker machines that scuttled
about had kept them in good repair. Flandry stopped before the main
structure. He tuned his radio to standard frequency. “At this range,” he
said to that which was within, “you’ve got to have some receiver that’ll
pick up my transmission.”
Code clicked and gibbered in his earplugs; and then, slowly, rustily,
but gathering sureness as the words advanced, like the voice of one who
has been heavily asleep: “Is … it … you? A man … returned at last?
… No, two men, I detect–”
“More or less,” Flandry said.
Across the plain, beasts and chessmen came to a halt.
“Enter. The airlock … Remove your spacesuits inside. It is
Earth-conditioned, with … furnished chambers. Inspection reveals a
supply of undeteriorated food and drink … I hope you will find things
in proper order. Some derangements are possible. The time was long and
empty.”
X
–
Djana stumbled to bed and did not wake for thirty-odd hours. Flandry
needed less rest. After breakfast he busied himself, languidly at first
but with increasing energy. What he learned fascinated him so much that
he regretted not daring to spend time exploring in depth the history of
these past five centuries on Wayland.
He was in the main control room, holding technical discussions with the
prime computer, when the speaker in its quaint-looking instrument bank
said in its quaint-sounding Anglic: “As instructed, I have kept your
companion under observation. Her eyelids are moving.”
Flandry got up. “Thanks,” he said automatically. It was hard to remember
that no living mind flickered behind those meters and readout screens.
An awareness did, yes, but not like that of any natural sophont, no
matter how strange to man; this one was in some ways more and in some
ways less than organic. “I’d better go to her. Uh, have a servitor bring
hot soup and, uh, tea and buttered toast, soon’s it can.”
He strode down corridors silent except for the hum of machines, past
apartments that held a few moldering possessions of men long dead, until
he found hers.
“Nicky–” She blinked mistily and reached tremulous arms toward him. How
thin and pale she’d grown! He could just hear her. Bending for a kiss,
he felt her lips passive beneath his.
“Nicky … are we … all right?” The whisper-breath tickled his ear.
“Assuredly.” He stroked her cheek. “Everything’s on orbit.”
“Outside?”
“Safe as houses. Safer than numerous houses I could name.” Flandry
straightened. “Relax. We’ll start putting meat back on those lovely