The machine was not perfect. It
could be tricked. It could make
mistakes. And—it could learn!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressedyoung women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded theChicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human intereststories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chesstournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered.
Not that there weren't enough humans around, it was the interest thatwas in doubt. The large hall was crammed with energetic dark-suitedmen of whom a disproportionately large number were bald, wore glasses,were faintly untidy and indefinably shabby, had Slavic or Scandinavianfeatures, and talked foreign languages.
They yakked interminably. The only ones who didn't were scurryingindividuals with the eager-zombie look of officials.
Chess sets were everywhere—big ones on tables, still biggerdiagram-type electric ones on walls, small peg-in sets dragged fromside pockets and manipulated rapidly as part of the conversationalritual and still smaller folding sets in which the pieces were the tinymagnetized disks used for playing in free-fall.
There were signs featuring largely mysterious combinations of letters:FIDE, WBM, USCF, USSF, USSR and UNESCO. Sandra felt fairly sure aboutthe last three.
The many clocks, bedside table size, would have struck a familiarnote except that they had little red flags and wheels sprinkled overtheir faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. ThatSiamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struckSandra as a particularly maddening circumstance.
Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding thefirst American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternatepairs who hadn't made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandramuch further out of the world.
Overheard scraps of conversation in reasonably intelligible Englishwere not particularly helpful. Samples:
"They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pureBarcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyonepushes the King Pawn."
"Hah! In that case...."
"The Russians have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations andthey'll gang up on the Machine at adjournments. What can one New Jerseycomputer do against four Russian grandmasters?"
"I heard the Russians have been programmed—with hypnotic cramming andsomno-briefing. Votbinnik had a nervous breakdown."
"Why, the Machine hasn't even a Haupturnier or an intercollegiatewon. It'll over its head be playing."
"Yes, but maybe like Capa at San Sebastian or Morphy or Willie Anglerat New York. The Russians will look like potzers."
"Have you studied the scores of the match between Moon Base andCircum-Terra?"
"Not worth the trouble. The play was feeble. Barely Expert Rating."
Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing aboutthe game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring withthe powers at the Space Mirror, but that now had begun to weigh onher. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed, to walk out this minute,find a quiet bar and get pie-eyed in an evil, ladylike way.