The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [46]
"Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too…" the Turk said. "So small, almost insignificant, and yet – they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting? Knight to F3."
And now the Turk was threatening Orphan's queen.
"Did he succeed?"
"Perhaps," the Turk said, "in another time… if the lizards had not appeared… if the Bookman had not existed… Perhaps in that time he had failed. A fanciful notion, but the longer I exist – the longer I live? – I think a lot about the might-have-beens, the what-ifs. About the little places in history where one tiny, minute change can lead to a new and unimaginable future. It's like chess. So many permutations, so many possibilities, probabilities, choices, cross-roads… I think a lot about the future, our future. And I see uncertainty." It stopped, then sighed, the same, repeating sound, each scratch and dim echo a repeat of the last one. There was something desperate and lonely in his voice when he spoke again. "Please, play."
"King to G2," Orphan said. His king moved, now threatening both the Turk's knights. He was in a purely defensive position. None of his pieces had managed to progress across the board. The Turk had brought the battle entirely to Orphan's side. "Damn."
"Knight takes E1," the Turk said, removing Orphan's queen with his long, deft fingers. "Check."
"Damn," Orphan said again. The Turk merely stared at him.
"Rook takes E1," Orphan said at last, removing the Turk's knight from the table.
"Queen to G4," the Turk said. Now there was only a pawn separating the Turk's queen and Orphan's king.
"D2 to D3," Orphan said, moving a pawn. "So Vaucanson succeeded."
"Bishop takes F2," the Turk said, taking Orphan's pawn. The bishop now stood next to the white king and threatened Orphan's rook.
"He built a simulacrum."
"You insist on reducing probabilities to certainties," the Turk murmured, making no sense to Orphan. "But fine, yes. Roughly speaking."
"Rook to H1," Orphan said.
"Queen takes G3," the Turk said, removing the pawn that stood between him and the white king. "Check." He sighed again, and Orphan thought: it must be a recording. A hidden system of miniature discs, perhaps, each with its own sound, a word or a phrase or some non-verbal expression. He wondered whose voice it had originally been, and how old it was. "Who gave you your voice?" he said.
There was a silence. The Turk sat motionless, as if his energy had run out. And Orphan thought, You speak in a dead man's voice.
At last the Turk stirred, his head moving from side to side as if seeking an invisible presence. The lights flickered behind it. "Vaucanson worked for many years on the project," he said. He did not acknowledge Orphan's earlier question. "He was a student of Le Cat, you know –" Orphan didn't, but he remained quiet – "there was quite a lot of animosity between them, towards the end. Le Cat, too, was working on an artificial man." The Turk made a coughing sound, as of a man clearing his throat. When he spoke again his voice was different, deeper and less monotonous, as if someone else was now speaking through him – through it. "'You are working, so I am told, on your artificial man and you are right in doing so. You must not let Monsieur de Vaucanson accept the glory for ideas he may have borrowed from you. But he has applied himself only to mechanics, and has used all his shrewdness for that purpose – and he is not a man who is afraid to take extreme measures.'"
An image of the two men rose in Orphan's mind then, two scientists, each working in secrecy over the inert body of a man who was not a man, each suspicious of the other, careful, always careful not to reveal to the world the work that they were doing… he wondered why, if one was once a pupil of the other, they had fallen out.
"De Cideville wrote that to Le Cat," the Turk said. "Another of Voltaire's friends… But Le Cat's man came to nothing."
"And Vaucanson's? What happened to him?"
"Play," the Turk said.
Orphan, frustrated, glanced at the board. "King to F1," he said reluctantly. The