Krane took a step forward, bringing him to the bottom of the dais upon which Marmorth’s throne rested.
“These things are of a totally alien culture, Your Highness,” began Krane. “How can we, as humans, even tolerate their existence in our way of life? The very sight of them makes the gorge rise! They are evil–smelling and accursedly–formed! They must all be destroyed, Your Highness! We must ignore the guileful offers of a prisoner–for–prisoner exchange! We will have our fleet in Quorth City within months; then we can rescue our own captured without submitting to the demands of four monsters! In the meantime, why feed these beasts of another world?
“I say, destroy them! Launch all–out attack now! Rescue our people from the alien’s slave camps on Quorth and Fetsa!”
He had been speaking smoothly and forcefully. The nods of assent and agreement from the assembled nobles made Marmorth wary. A complete knowledge of the Quorth–Human war was in his mind, and the plan of Krane sounded clear and fine. Yet, superimposed over it, was his knowledge that this was all merely illusion and that somewhere in the illusion might be a chink in which his errors could lodge. The plan sounded good, but . . .
“No, Krane!” he decided, thinking quickly. “This would be what the aliens want! They want us to destroy our prisoners. That would whip their people at home into such a frenzy of patriotism — we would be engulfed in a month!
“We will consider the alien proposal of prisoner–for–prisoner exchange.”
The rumbles from the massed nobles rose into the cavern of the Star Chamber. There was unrest here.
He had to demonstrate that he was right. “Let them bring in the chain of aliens!” he commanded, clapping his hands. A page went out swiftly.
While the hall waited, Marmorth concentrated fiercely; had he made the proper decision? There seemed to be a correlation between Krane’s challenging of his Theorem of Government in the Council — back in the world outside the corridor — and this proposal he had just defeated.
There was a correlation! He saw it suddenly!
Both his proposal of the Theorem in the Council and his decision here in the illusion had been based on his personal concept of government. Krane’s refutation out there and his proposal here were the opposite. Once again they had clashed.
And this time Marmorth had won!
But had he?
Even as he let the thought filter, the chained aliens were dragged between the massed nobles and cast on their triple–jointed knees before Marmorth’s dais. “Here are the loathesome beings!” cried Krane, flinging his arms high and apart.
It had been a grandstand gesture, and the frog–faced, many–footed beings on the Star Chamber’s floor realized it.
Suddenly, almost as though they were made of paper, the chains that had joined the aliens snapped, and they leaped on the nobles.
Marmorth caught the smile on Krane’s lips. He had been behind this; probably had the chains severed in the corridor outside by some henchman!
Without thinking, Marmorth was off his throne and down the stepped dais, his sword free from its scabbard and arcing viciously.
A hideously warted alien face rose before him and he thrust with all his might! The blade pierced between the double–lidded eyes, and thick ochre blood spurted across his tunic. He yanked the blade free, kicking the dead but still quivering alien from its length. He leaped, howling a familiar battle–cry.
Even as he leaped, he saw Krane’s slash–mouthed smile, and the Lord’s sword swinging toward him!
So it hadn’t been his illusion! It had been Krane’s! He hadn’t chosen the proper course. Krane’s belief at the moment was stronger than his own.
He fended off a double–handed smash from the black–bearded noble, and fell back. They parried and countered, thrust and slashed all around the dais. The other nobles were too deeply involved fighting off the screaming aliens to witness this battle between their King and his Lord.
Krane beat Marmorth back, back!
Why did I choose as I did? Marmorth wailed mentally, berating himself.
Suddenly he slipped, toppling backwards onto the steps. The sword flew from his hand as it cracked against the edge of a step. He saw Krane bearing down on him, the sword double–fisted as his opponent raised it like a stake above his head.
In desperation, Marmorth summoned up all his belief. “It was the right decision!” screamed Marmorth with the conviction of a man about to die. He saw the sword plunge toward his breast as . . .
He gathered the light about him, sweeping his hands through the dripping colors, making them shift and flow. He saw the figure of Krane, standing haughtily in the bank of yellow, and he gathered the blue to himself in a coruscating ball.
Fearsomely he bellowed his challenge, “This is my illusion, Krane! Watch as I kill you!”
He balled the blue in his hand and sent it flying, dripping sparks and color as it shot toward the black–bearded man.
They both stood tall and spraddle–legged in the immensity of they-knew–not–where. The colors dripped from the air, making weird patterns as they mixed.
The blue ball struck in front of Krane and exploded, cascading a rich flood of chromatic brilliance into the air. Krane laughed at the failure.
He gathered the black to him, wadding it in strong and supple fingers. He wound up, almost as though it were a sport, and flung the wadded black at Marmorth.
The older man knew he had not yet built enough belief to withstand this onslaught. If the black enfolded him he would die in the never- ending limbo of nothingness.
He thrust hands up before his face to stop the onrush of the black, but it struck him and he fell, clutching feebly at a washy stringer of white.
He fell into the black as it billowed up to surround him.
This was not his illusion! It could not be, for he was vanquished! Yet he was not dead, as he had felt sure he would be. He lay there, thinking.
He remembered all the effort he had put in on the Political Theorem. The Theorem he had proposed in the Council. It had represented years of work — the culmination of all his adult thought and effort; and, he had to admit, the Theorem was soundly based on his own view of the Universe.
Then the presumptuous Krane had offended him by restating the Theorem.
Krane had, of course, twisted it to his own evil and malicious ends — basing it anew on his conception of the All.
There had been a verbal battle. There had been the accusations, the clanging of the electric gavel, the remonstrances of the Compjudge, the shocked expressions of the other Councillors! Till finally Marmorth had been goaded by the younger man into the duel. Into the silver corridor.
Only one of them would emerge. The one who did would force his own version of the Theorem on the Council. To be accepted, and used as a basis for future decisions and policy. Each Theorem — Marmorth’s monumental original, and Krane’s malformed copy — was all–inclusive.
It all revolved, then, around whose view of the Universe, whose Theorem, was the right one. And it was inconceivable to Marmorth that Krane could be correct.
Marmorth struck out at the black! Mine, mine, mine! he shouted soundlessly. He lashed into the nothingness. My Theorem is the proper one! It is true! Krane’s is based on deceit!
Then he saw the stringer of white in his hand. So this was Krane in the ascendant, was it? Now came the moment of retaliation!
He whipped the stringer around his head, swaying as he was, there in the depthless black. The stringer thickened. He cupped it to him, washing it with his hands, strengthening it, shaping and molding it.
In a moment it had grown. In a moment more the white had burst forth like a ripe blossom and flooded all. Revealing Krane standing there, in his breechclout, massaging the pale pink between his fingers.
“Mine, Krane, mine!” he screamed, flinging the white!
/> Krane blanched and tried to duck. The white came on like a sliver of Forever, streaking and burning as it rode currents that did not exist. Then the light shattered, blazed into thousands of spitting fragments. As Marmorth realized they had nullified each other again, that the illusion was dissolving around them, he heard Krane bellow, as loud as Marmorth himself, had, “Mine, Marmorth, mine!”
The colors ran. They flowed, they merged, they sucked at his body, while he …
Shrank up against the glass wall next to Krane. They both stared in fascinated horror as the huge, ichor–dripping spider–thing advanced on them, mandibles clicking.
“My God in Heaven!” Marmorth heard Krane bellow. “What is it?” Krane scrabbled at the glass wall behind him, trying to get out. They were trapped.
The glass walls circled them. They were trapped with the spider–thing and each other, trapped in the tiny tomb!
Marmouth was petrified. He could not move or speak — he could hardly sense anything but terror. Spiders were his greatest personal fear. He found his legs were quivering at the knees, though he had not sensed it a moment before. The very sight of the hairy beasts had always sent shudders through him. Now he knew this was an illusion — his illusion. He was in the ascendant!
But how hideously in the ascendant. He wondered, almost hysterically, if he could control the illusion — use it against Krane.
The spider–thing advanced on them, the soft plush pads of its hundred feet leaving dampness where it stepped.
Krane fell to his knees, moaning and scratching at the glass floor. “Out, out, out, out . . . ” he mumbled, froth dripping from his lips.
Marmorth realized this was his chance. This fear was a product of his own mind; he had lived with it all his life. He knew it more familiarly than Krane — he could not cancel it, certainly, but he could utilize it more easily than the other.
Here was where he would kill Krane. He pulled himself tightly to the wall, sweating palms flat to the glass, the valley of his backbone against the cool surface. “I’m right! The Theorem as I stated it i–is c–correct!” He said it triumphantly, though the note of terror quivered undisguised in his voice.
The spider–thing paused in its march, swung its clicking, ghastly head about as though confused, and altered direction by an inch. Away from Marmorth. It descended on Krane.
The black–bearded man looked up, saw it coming toward him, heard Marmorth’s words. Even on the floor, half–sunk in shock, he shouted, pounding his fists against the floor of glass, “Wrong, wrong, wrong! You’re wrong; I can prove my Theorem is correct! The basic formation of the Judiciary should be planned in an ever–decreasing system of — ”
Marmorth didn’t even listen. He knew it was drivel! He knew the man was wrong! But the spider–thing had stopped once more. Now it paused between the two of them, its bulk shivering as though caught in a draft.
Krane saw the hesitation on the monster’s part, and rose, the old confidence and impudence regained. He wiped his balled fists across his eyes, clearing them of tears. He continued speaking, steadily, in the voice of a fanatic. The man just could not recognize that he was wrong.
“You’re insane, man!” Marmorth interjected, waving his hands with fervor. “The economy must be balanced by a code of fair practices with a guild system blocking efforts on the part of the Genres to rise into the control of the main weath!” He went on and on, outlining the original — the only true — Theorem.
Krane, too, shouted and gesticulated, both of them suddenly oblivious to the monstrous, black spider–thing which had stopped completely between them, vacillating.
When Marmorth stopped for an instant to regain his breath, the beast would twist its neckless head toward him. Marmorth would then speed up his speech, spewing out detail upon detail, and the beast would sink back into uncertainty.
It was obviously a battle of belief. Whichever combatant had more conviction — that one would win.
They stood and shouted, screamed, outlined, explained and delineated for what seemed hours. Finally, as though in exasperation, the spider–thing began to turn. They both watched it, their mouths working, words pouring forth in twin streams of absolute, sincere belief.
They watched while . . .
The starships fired at each other mercilessly. Blast after blast exploded soundlessly into the vault of space. Marmorth found his fingers twisted in the epaulette at his right shoulder.
As he watched Krane’s Magnificent–class destroyer wheel in the control–room screens, a half–naked, blood–soaked and perspiring crewman burst into the cabin’s entrance–well.
“Captain, Captain, sir!” he implored.
Marmorth looked over the plastic rail, down into the well.
“What?” he snapped with brittleness.
“Cap’n, the port side is riddled! We’re losing pressure from thirteen compartments. The reclamation mile is completely lost! The engineers group was in one of the compartments along that mile, Cap’n! They’re all bloated and blue and dead in there! We can see them floating around without any . . . ”
“Get the hell out of here!” Marmorth turned, lifting an ornamental paperweight from his chart–board and flinging it with all his strength at the crewman. The man ducked and the ornamental paperweight bounced off the bulkhead, snapping pieces from its intricate bulk.
“You maniac!” the man yowled, leaping back out of the well, through the exit port, as Marmorth reached for another missile.
Marmorth shut his eyes tight, blanking out the shuddering ship, space, the screens, everything.
“Right, right, right, right, right! I’m right!” he shouted, lifting clenched fists.
The explosion came in two parts, as though two torpedoes had been struck almost simultaneously. The ship rocked and heeled. Bits of metal sheared through the outer bulkheads, crashed against the opposite wall.
As the lights went dead, and the screams drove into his brain, Marmorth shouted his credo once more, with all the force of his conviction, with all the power of his lungs, with all the strength in his gasping body.
“I’m right! May God strike me dead if I’m not right! I know I’m right, I made an inexhaustible . . .
“Check!” he finished, opening his eyes and looking back down at the chessboard. The pieces had, happily, not moved. He still had Krane blocked off.
“I say check,” he repeated, smiling, steepling his fingers.
Krane’s black–bearded face broke into a wry grimace.
“Most clever, my dear Marmorth,” he congratulated the other with sarcasm. “You have forced me to touch a bishop.”
Marmorth watched as Krane, with trembling fingers, reached down to the jet bishop. It was carved from stone, carved with such care and intricacy that its edges were precisely as they had been desired by the master craftsman. They were razor sharp.
The pieces were all cut the same. Both the blanched alabaster pieces before Marmorth, and the ebony–stone players under Krane’s hand. The game had been constructed for men who played more than a “gentleman’s game.” There was death in each move.
Marmorth knew he was in the ascendant. Each of them had had two illusions — that remembrance was sharp — and this was Marmorth’s. How did he know? The older man looked down at the intricately–carved chess pieces. He was white, Krane was black. As clear as it could be.
“Uh, have you moved?” Marmorth inquired, his voice adrip with casualness. He knew the other had not yet touched his players. “I believe you still lie in check,” he reminded.
He thought he heard a muted, “Damn you!” under Krane’s breath, but could not be certain.
Slowly Krane touched the player, carefully sliding the fingers of his hand across the razor–thin, razor–sharp facets. The piece almost slid from his grasp, so loosely was he holding it, but the move was made in an instant.
Marmo
rth cursed mentally. Krane had calculated beautifully! Not only was his king blocked out from Marmorth’s rook — Marmorth’s check–piece — but in another two moves (so clearly obvious, as Krane had desired it) his own queen would be in danger. In his mind he could hear Krane savoring the words: “Garde! I say garde, my dear Marmorth!”
He had to move the queen out of position.
He had to touch the queen!
The most deadly piece on the board!
“No!” He gasped.
“I beg your pardon?” said Krane, the slash–mouth opening in a twisted grin.
“N–nothing, nothing!” Teeth clenched, Marmorth tried to concentrate.
There was little chance he could maneuver that thousand–edged queen without bleeding to death for his trouble. Lord! It was a problem without a viable solution. It was… what?… a double–edged dilemma. If he did not move, Krane would win. If he won, it was obvious that Marmorth would die. He had seen the deadly dirk’s hilt protruding slightly from Krane’s cummerbund when the other had sat down. If he did move, he would bleed to death before Krane’s taunting eyes.
You shall never have that pleasure! he thought, the bitter determination of a man who will not be defeated rising in him.
He approached the queen, with hand, with eye.
The base was faceted, like a diamond. Each facet ended in a cutting edge so sensitive he knew it would sever the finger that touched it. The shape of the upper segments was involved, gorgeously- made. A woman, arms raised above her head, stretching in tension. Beautiful — and untouchable.
Then the thought struck him: Is this the only move?
Deep within his mind he calculated. He could not possibly recognize the levels on which his intellect was working. In with his chess theory, in with his mental agility, in with his desire to win, his Theorem rearranged itself, fitting its logic to this situation. How could the Theorem be applied to the game? What other paths, through the infallible truth of the Theorem — in which he believed, now, more strongly than ever before — could he take?
Then the alternative move became clear. He could escape a rout, escape the garde, escape the taunting smile of Krane by moving a relatively safe knight. It was not a completely foolproof action, since the knight, too, was a razored piece of death, but he had found a way to avoid certain defeat by Krane’s maneuverings.