Universe 7 - [Anthology] Read online

Cathy looked at the frame on the wall. From that distance, the footnote inside was unreadable. She laughed. “Who gives a good goddamn?” she said. After a moment, Wally laughed too.

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  * * * *

  Ambrose Bierce defined history as “An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.” Unfortunately, this has frequently been true also of sf writers’ tales of “future history”: planet-shaking battles fought by jut-jawed heroes while the vast majority of humans live their lives as best they can somewhere in the unrecorded background.

  Here Gene Wolfe, who won a Nebula Award for “The Death of Dr. Island” in Universe 3, tells of a future when endless wars are steadily destroying civilization . . . but the battle is only thunder in the distance; his story is about the non-combatants who try to preserve what they can of past technology. (Nor does Wolfe forget that there are knaves and fools among the nonheroes too.)

  * * * *

  THE MARVELOUS BRASS CHESSPLAYING AUTOMATON

  Gene Wolfe

  Each day Lame Hans sits with his knees against the bars, playing chess with the machine. Though I have seen the game often, I have never learned to play, but I watch them as I sweep. It is a beautiful game, and Lame Hans has told me of its beginnings in the great ages now past; for that reason I always feel a sympathy toward the little pawns with their pencils and wrenches and plain clothing, each figure reprinting many generations of those whose labor built the great bishops that split the skies in the days of the old wars.

  I feel pity for Lame Hans also. He talks to me when I bring his food, and sometimes when I am cleaning the jail. Let me tell you his story, as I have learned it in the many days since the police drew poor Gretchen out and laid her in the dust of the street. Lame Hans would never tell you himself—for all that big, bulging head, his tongue is slow and halting when he speaks of his own affairs.

  It was last summer during the truce that the showman’s cart was driven into our village. For a month not a drop of rain had fallen; each day at noon Father Karl rang the church bells, and women went in to pray for rain for their husbands’ crops. After dark, many of these same women met to form lines and circles on the slopes of the Schlossberg, the mountain that was once a great building. The lines and circles are supposed to influence the Weatherwatchers, whose winking lights pass so swiftly through the starry sky. For myself, I do not believe it. What men ever made a machine that could see a few old women on the mountainside at night?

  So it was when the cart of Herr Heitzmann the mountebank came. The sun was down, but the street still so hot that the dogs would not bark for fear of fainting, and the dust rolled away from the wheels in waves, like grain when foxes run through the fields.

  This cart was shorter than a farm wagon, but very high, with such a roof as a house has. The sides had been painted, and even I, who do not play, but have so often watched Albricht the moneylender play Father Karl, or Doctor Eckardt play Burgermeister Landsteiner, recognized the mighty figures of the Queen-Computers who lead the armies of the field of squares into battle; and the haughty King-Generals who command, and if they fall, bring down all.

  A small, bent man drove. He had a head large enough for a giant—that was Lame Hans, but I paid little attention to him, not knowing that he and I would be companions here in the jail where I work. Beside him sat Heitzmann the mountebank, and it was he who took one’s eyes, which was as he intended. He was tall and thin, with a sharp chin and a large nose and snapping black eyes. He had velvet trousers and a fine hat which sweat had stained around the band, and long locks of dark hair that hung from under it at odd angles so that one knew he used the finger-comb when he woke, as drunkards do who find themselves beneath a bench. When the small man brought the cart through the innyard gate, I rose from my seat on the jail steps and went across to the inn parlor. And it was a fortunate thing I did so, because it was in this way that I chanced to see the famous game between the brass machine and Professor Baumeister.

  Haven’t I mentioned Professor Baumeister before? Have you not noticed that in a village such as ours there are always a dozen celebrities? Always a man who is strong (with us that is Willi Schacht, the smith’s apprentice), one who eats a great deal, a learned man like Doctor Eckardt, a ladies’ man, and so on. But for all these people to be properly admired, there must also be a distinguished visitor to whom to point them out, and here in Oder Spree that is Professor Baumeister, because our village lies midway between the University and Furstenwald, and it is here that he spends the night whenever he journeys from one to the other, much to the enrichment of Scheer the innkeeper. The fact of the matter is that Professor Baumeister has become one of our celebrities himself, only by spending the night here so often. With his broad brown beard and fine coat and tall hat and leather riding breeches, he gives the parlor of our inn the air of a gentlemen’s club.

  I have heard that it is often the case that the beginning of the greatest drama is as casual as any commonplace event. So it was that night. The inn was full of off-duty soldiers drinking beer, and because of the heat all the windows were thrown open, though a dozen candles were burning. Professor Baumeister was deep in conversation with Doctor Eckardt: something about the war. Herr Heitzmann the mountebank – though I did not know what to call him then—had already gotten his half liter when I came in, and was standing at the bar.

  At last, when Professor Baumeister paused to emphasize some point, Herr Heitzmann leaned over to them, and in the most offhand way asked a question. It was peculiar, but the whole room seemed to grow silent as he spoke, so that he could be heard everywhere, though it was no more than a whisper. He said: “I wonder if I might venture to ask you gentlemen—you both appear to be learned men—if, to the best of your knowledge, there still exists even one of those great computational machines which were perhaps the most extraordinary—I trust you will agree with me?—creations of the age now past.”

  Professor Baumeister said at once: “No, sir. Not one remains.”

  “You feel certain of this?”

  “My dear sir,” said Professor Baumeister, “you must understand that those devices were dependent upon a supply of replacement parts consisting of the most delicate subminiature electronic components. These have not been produced now for over a hundred years—indeed, some of them have been unavailable longer.”

  “Ah,” Herr Heitzmann said (mostly to himself, it seemed, but you could hear him in the kitchen). “Then I have the only one.”

  Professor Baumeister attempted to ignore this amazing remark, as not having been addressed to himself; but Doctor Eckardt, who is of an inquisitive disposition, said boldly: “You have such a machine, Herr . . . ?”

  “Heitzmann. Originally of Berlin, now come from Zurich. And you, my good sir?”

  Doctor Eckardt introduced himself, and Professor Baumeister too, and Herr Heitzmann clasped them by the hand. Then the doctor said to Professor Baumeister: “You are certain that no computers remain in existence, my friend?”

  The professor said: “I am referring to working computers-machines in operating condition. There are plenty of old hulks in museums, of course.”

  Herr Heitzmann sighed, and pulled out a chair and sat down at the table with them, bringing his beer. “Would it not be sad,” he said, “if those world-ruling machines were lost to mankind forever?”

  Professor Baumeister said dryly: “They based their extrapolations on numbers. That worked well enough as long as money, which is easily measured numerically, was the principal motivating force in human affairs. But as time progressed, human actions became responsive instead to a multitude of incommensurable vectors; the computers’ predictions failed, the civilization they had shaped collapsed, and parts for the machines were no longer obtainable or desired.”

  “How fascinating!” Herr Heitzmann exclaimed. “Do you know, I have never heard it explained in quite that way. You have provided me, for the first time, wi
th an explanation for the survival of my own machine.”

  Doctor Eckardt said, “You have a working computer, then?”

  “I do. You see, mine is a specialized device. It was not designed, like the computers the learned professor spoke of just now, to predict human actions. It plays chess.”

  “And where do you keep this wonderful machine?” By this time everyone else in the room had fallen silent. Even Scheer took care not to allow the glasses he was drying to clink; and Gretchen, the fat blond serving girl who usually cracked jokes with the soldiers and banged down their plates, moved through the pipe smoke among the tables as quietly as the moon moves in a cloudy sky.

  “Outside,” Herr Heitzmann replied. “In my convenyance. I am taking it to Dresden.”

  “And it plays chess.”

  “It has never been defeated.”

  “Are you aware,” Professor Baumeister inquired sardonically, “that to program a computer to play chess—to play well —was considered one of the most difficult problems? That many judged that it was never actually solved, and that those machines which most closely approached acceptable solutions were never so small as to be portable?”

  “Nevertheless,” Herr Heitzmann declared, “I have such a machine.”

  “My friend, I do not believe you.”

  “I take it you are a player yourself,” Herr Heitzmann said. “Such a learned man could hardly be otherwise. Very well. As I said a moment ago, my machine is outside.” His hand touched the table between Professor Baumeister’s glass and his own, and when it came away five gold kilomarks stood there in a neat stack. “I will lay these on the outcome of the game, if you will play my machine tonight”

  “Done,” said Professor Baumeister.

  “I must see your money.”

  “You will accept a draft on Streicher’s, in Furstenwald?”

  * * * *

  And so it was settled. Doctor Eckardt held the stakes, and six men volunteered to carry the machine into the inn parlor under Herr Heitzmann’s direction.

  Six were not too many, though the machine was not as large as might have been expected—not more than a hundred and twenty centimeters high, with a base, as it might be, a meter on a side. The sides and top were all of brass, set with many dials and other devices no one understood.

  When it was at last in place, Professor Baumeister viewed it from all sides and smiled. “This is not a computer,” he said.

  “My dear friend,” said Herr Heitzmann, “you are mistaken.”

  “It is several computers. There are two keyboards and a portion of a third. There are even two nameplates, and one of these dials once belonged to a radio.”

  Herr Heitzmann nodded. “It was assembled at the very close of the period, for one purpose only—to play chess.”

  “You still contend that this machine can play?”

  “I contend more. That it will win.”

  “Very well. Bring a board.”

  “That is not necessary,” Herr Heitzmann said. He pulled a knob at the front of the machine, and a whole section swung forward, as the door of a vegetable bin does in a scullery. But the top of this bin was not open as though to receive the vegetables: it was instead a chessboard, with the white squares of brass, and the black of smoky glass, and on the board, standing in formation and ready to play, were two armies of chessmen such as no one in our village had ever seen, tall metal figures so stately they might have been sculptured apostles in a church, one army of brass and the other of some dark metal. “You may play white,” Herr Heitzmann said. “That is generally considered an advantage.”

  Professor Baumeister nodded, advanced the white king’s pawn two squares, and drew a chair up to the board By the time he had seated himself the machine had replied, moving so swiftly that no one saw by what mechanism the piece had been shifted

  The next time Professor Baumeister acted more slowly, and everyone watched eager to see the machine’s countermove. It came the moment the professor had set his piece in its new position—the black queen slid forward silently, with nothing to propel it.

  After ten moves Professor Baumeister said “There is a man inside.”

  Herr Heitzmann smiled. “I see why you say that, my friend. Your position on the board is precarious.”

  “I insist that the machine be opened for my examination.”

  “I suppose you would say that if a man were concealed inside, the bet would be canceled.” Herr Heitzmann had ordered a second glass of beer, and was leaning against the bar watching the game.

  “Of course. My bet was that a machine could not defeat me. I am well aware that certain human players can.”

  “But conversely, if there is no man in the machine, the bet stands?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Very well.” Herr Heitzmann walked to the machine, twisted four catches on one side, and with the help of some onlookers removed the entire panel. It was of brass, like the rest of the machine but, because the metal was thin, not so heavy as it appeared.

  There was more room inside than might have been thought, yet withal a considerable amount of mechanism: things like shingles the size of little tabletops, all covered with patterns like writing (Lame Hans has told me since that these are called circuit cards). And gears and motors and the like.

  When Professor Baumeister had poked among all these mechanical parts for half a minute, Herr Heitzmann asked: “Are you satisfied?”

  “Yes,” answered Professor Baumeister, straightening up. “There is no one in there.”

  “But I am not,” said Herr Heitzmann, and he walked with long strides to the other side of the machine. Everyone crowded around him as he released the catches on that side, lifted away the panel, and stood it against the wall. “Now,” he said, “you can see completely through my machine—isn’t that right? Look, do you see Doctor Eckardt? Do you see me? Wave to us.”

  “I am satisfied,” Professor Baumeister said. “Let us go on with the game.”

  “The machine has already taken its move. You may think about your next one while these gentlemen help me replace the panels.”

  Professor Baumeister was beaten in twenty-two moves. Albricht the moneylender then asked if he could play without betting, and when this was refused by Herr Heitzmann, bet a kilomark and was beaten in fourteen moves. Herr Heitzmann asked then if anyone else would play, and when no one replied, requested that the same men who had carried the machine into the inn assist him in putting it away again.

  “Wait,” said Professor Baumeister.

  Herr Heitzmann smiled. “You mean to play again?”

  “No. I want to buy your machine. On behalf of the University.”

  Herr Heitzmann sat down and looked serious. “I doubt that I could sell it to you. I had hoped to make a good sum in Dresden before selling it there.”

  “Five hundred kilomarks.”

  Herr Heitzmann shook his head. “That is a fair proposition,” he said, “and I thank you for making it. But I cannot accept.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty,” Professor Baumeister said. “That is my final offer.”

  “In gold?”

  “In a draft on an account the University maintains in Furstenwald—you can present it there for gold the first thing in the morning.”

  “You must understand,” said Herr Heitzmann, “that the machine requires a certain amount of care, or it will not perform properly.”

  “I am buying it as is,” said Professor Baumeister. “As it stands here before us.”

  “Done, then,” said Herr Heitzmann, and he put out his hand.

  The board was folded away, and six stout fellows carried the machine into the professor’s room for safekeeping, where he remained with it for an hour or more. When he returned to the inn parlor at last, Doctor Eckardt asked if he had been playing chess again.

  Professor Baumeister nodded. “Three games.”

  “Did you win?”

  “No, I lost them all. Where is the showman?”

  “G
one,” said Father Karl, who was sitting near them. “He left as soon as you took the machine to your room.”

  Doctor Eckardt said, “I thought he planned to stay the night here.”

  “So did I,” said Father Karl. “And I confess I believed the machine would not function without him. I was surprised to hear that our friend the professor had been playing in private.”

  Just then a small, twisted man, with a large head crowned with wild black hair, limped into the inn parlor. It was Lame Hans, but no one knew that then. He asked Scheer the innkeeper for a room.

  Scheer smiled. “Sitting rooms on the first floor are a hundred marks,” he said. He could see by Lame Hans’s worn clothes that he could not afford a sitting room.

  “Something cheaper.”