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Title: Check and Checkmate

Author: Walter Miller

Illustrator: TOM BEECHAM

Release Date: June 16, 2010 [EBook #32837]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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CHECK and CHECKMATE

By WALTER MILLER, Jr.

Illustrated by TOM BEECHAM

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction January 1953.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was

renewed.]

Victory hinges not always on the mightiest sword, but often on lowly subterfuge. Here is a classic

example, with the Western World as stooge!

John Smith XVI, new President of the Western Federation of Autonomous States, had made a

number of campaign promises that nobody really expected him to fulfill, for after all, the campaign

and the election were only ceremonies, and the President—who had no real name of his own—had

been trained for the executive post since birth. He had been elected by a popular vote of

603,217,954 to 130, the dissenters casting their negative by announcing that, for the sake of national

unity, they refused to participate in any civilized activities during the President's term, whereupon

they were admitted (voluntarily) to the camp for conscientious objectors.

But now, two weeks after his inauguration, he seemed ready to make good the first and perhaps

most difficult promise of the lot: to confer by televiewphone with Ivan Ivanovitch the Ninth, the

Peoplesfriend and Vicar of the Asian Proletarian League. The President apparently meant to keep to

himself the secret of his success in the difficult task of arranging the interview in spite of the lack of

any diplomatic contact between the nations, in spite of the Hell Wall, and the interference stations

which made even radio communication impossible between the two halves of the globe. Someone

had suggested that John Smith XVI had floated a note to Ivan IX in a bottle, and the suggestion,

though ludicrous, seemed not at all unlikely.

John XVI seemed quite pleased with himself as he sat with his staff of Primary Stand-ins in the

study of his presidential palace. His face, of course, was invisible behind the golden mask of the

official helmet, the mask of tragedy with its expression of pathos symbolizing the self-immolation

of public service—as well as protecting the President's own personal visage from public view, and

hence from assassination in unmasked private life, for not only was he publicly nameless, but also

publicly faceless and publicly unknown as an individual. But despite the invisibility of his

expression, his contentment became apparent by a certain briskness of gesticulation and a certain

smugness in his voice as he spoke to the nine Stand-ins who were also bodyguards, council-

members, and advisors to the chief executive.

"Think of it, men," he sighed happily in his smooth tenor, slightly muffled by the mask.

"Communication with the East—after forty years of the Big Silence. A great moment in history,

perhaps the greatest since the last peace-effort."

The nine men nodded dutifully. The President looked around at them and chuckled.

"'Peace-effort'," he echoed, spitting the words out distinctly as if they were a pair of phonetic

specimens. "Do you remember what it used to be called—in the middle of the last century?"

A brief silence, then a Stand-in frowned thoughtfully. "Called it 'war', didn't they, John?"

"Precisely." The golden helmet nodded crisply. "'War'—and now 'peace-effort'. Our semantics has

progressed. Our present 'security-probe' was once called 'lynch'. 'Social-security' once meant a

limited insurance plan, not connoting euthanasia and sterilization for the ellie-moes. And that word

'ellie-moe'—once eleemosynary—was once applied to institutions that took care of the

handicapped."

He waited for the burst of laughter to subside. A Stand-in, still chuckling, spoke up.

"It's our institutions that have evolved, John."

"True enough," the President agreed. "But as they changed, most of them kept their own names.

Like 'the Presidency'. It used to be rabble-chosen, as our ceremonies imply. Then the Qualifications

Amendment that limited it to the psychologically fit. And then the Education Amendment

prescribed other qualifying rules. And the Genetic Amendment, and the Selection Amendment, and

finally the seclusion and depersonalization. Until it gradually got out of the rabble's hands, except

symbolically." He paused. "Still, it's good to keep the old names. As long as the names don't change,

the rabble is happy, and say, 'We have preserved the Pan-American way of life'."

"While the rabble is really impotent," added a Stand-in.

"Don't say that!" John Smith XVI snapped irritably, sitting quickly erect on the self-conforming

couch. "And if you believe it, you're a fool." His voice went sardonic. "Why don't you try

abolishing me and find out?"

"Sorry, John. I didn't mean—"

The President stood up and paced slowly toward the window where he stood gazing between the

breeze-stirred drapes at the sun-swept city of Acapulco and at the breakers rolling toward the distant

beach.

"No, my power is of the rabble," he confessed, "and I am their friend." He turned to look at them

and laugh. "Should I build my power on men like you? Or the Secondary Stand-ins? Baa! For all

your securities, you are still stooges. Of the rabble. Do you obey me because I control military

force? Or because I control rabble? The latter I think. For despite precautions, military forces can be

corrupted. Rabble cannot. They rule you through me, and I rule you through them. And I am their

servant because I have to be. No tyrant can survive by oppression."

A gloomy hush followed his words. It was still fourteen minutes before time for the televiewphone

contact with Ivan Ivanovitch IX. The President turned back to the "window". He stared "outside"

until he grew tired of the view. He pressed a button on the wall. The window went black. He

pressed another button, which brought another view: Pike's Peak at sunset. As the sky gathered gray

twilight, he twisted a dial and ran the sun back up again.

The palace was built two hundred feet underground, and the study was a safe with walls of eight-

inch steel. It lent a certain air of security.

The historic moment was approaching. The Stand-ins seemed nervous. What changes had occurred

behind the Hell Wall, what new developments in science, what political mutations? Only rumors

came from beyond the Wall, since the last big peace-effort which had ended in stalemate and total

isolation. The intelligence service did the best that it could, but the picture was fuzzy and

incomplete. There was still "communism", but the word's meaning had apparently changed. It was

said that the third Ivan had been a crafty opportunist but also a wise man who, although he did

nothing to abolish absolutism, effected a bloody reformation in which the hair-splitting Marxist

dogmatics had been purged. He appointed the most pragmatic men he could find to succeed them,

and set the whole continental regime on the road to a harsh but practical utilitarian civilization.

A slogan had leaked across the Wall recently: "There is no God but a Practical Man; there is no Law

but a Best Solution," and it seemed to affirm that the third Ivan's influence had continued after his

passing—although the slogan itself was a dogma. And it might mean something quite non-literal to

the people who spoke it. The rabble of the West were still stirred to deep emotion by a thing that

began, "When in the course of human events—" and they saw nothing incongruous about Tertiary

Stand-ins who quoted it in the name of the Federation's rule.

But the unknown factor that disturbed the President most was not the present Asian political or

economic situation, but rather, the state of scientific development, particularly as it applied to

military matters. The forty years of non-communication had not been spent in military stasis, at

least not for the West. Sixty percent of the federal budget was still being spent for defense. Powerful

new weapons were still being developed, and old ones pronounced obsolete. The seventh John

Smith had even conspired to have a conspiracy against himself in Argentina, with resulting civil

war, so that the weapons could be tested under actual battle conditions—for the region had been

overpopulated anyway. The results had been comforting—but John the Sixteenth wanted to know

more about what the enemy was doing.

The Hell Wall—which was really only a globe-encircling belt of booby-trapped land and ocean,

guarded from both sides—had its political advantages, of course. The mysterious doings of the

enemy, real and imagined, were a constant and suspenseful threat that made it easy for the Smiths to

keep the rabble in hand. But for all the present Smith knew, the threat might very well be real. He

had to find out. It would also be a popular triumph he could toss to the rabble, bolstering his

position with them, and thereby securing his hold on the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Stand-

ins, who were becoming a little too presumptuous of late.

He had a plan in mind, vague, tentative, and subject to constant revision to suit events as they might

begin to occur. He kept the plan's goal to himself, knowing that the Stand-ins would call it insane,

dangerous, impossible.

"John! We're picking up their station!" a Stand-in called. "It's a minute before time!"

He left the window and walked calmly to the couch before the televiewphone, whose screen had

come alive with the kaleidoscope patterns of the interference-station which sprang to life as soon as

an enemy station tried to broadcast.

"Have the fools cut that scatter-station!" he barked angrily.

A Stand-in grabbed at a microphone, but before he made the call the interference stopped—a few

seconds before the appointed time. The screen revealed an empty desk and a wall behind, with a

flag of the Asian League. No one was in the picture, which was slightly blurred by several relay

stations, which had been set up on short notice for this one broadcast.

A wall-clock peeped the hour in a childish voice: "Sixteen o'clock, Thirdday, Smithweek, also

Accident-Prevention Week and Probe-Subversives Week; Happy 2073! Peep!"

A man walked into the picture and sat down, facing John Smith XVI. A heavy-set man, clad in

coveralls, and wearing a red rubber or plastic helmet-mask. The mask was the face of the first

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