“Odd you should choose that wording.” Groton paused to collect his thoughts. “Here is the first description: This person is determined to get on the inside of things and to control the machinery of life. This position always encourages a conscious response to the undercurrents of the moment. At his best he is able to recognize the basic unity of experience, or to bring unsuspected and helpful relations into play; at his worst he is apt to cultivate suspicion or encourage half-baked effort. Life for him must be exciting, and he must be self-reliant. He is essentially fearless, and likes to move quickly and positively, taking the full consequence of whatever he does. He does not care much for abstract considerations, and gives little thought to other people.”
Groton paused. “Now here is the second one: This person is determined to test the mettle of reality in every possible sort of hard effort He desires to bring everything down to a utilitarian basis. At his best he is able to organize or redirect the energies of himself and others to an increased advantage; at his worst he is apt to become wholly malcontent and unsocial. Life for him must be purposeful; he is readily stimulated. He is high-visioned, optimistic, gregarious to a fault and often gullible. He must be challenged to do his best, or he becomes dogmatic and jealous. He is a realist in minor things, a do-or-die idealist otherwise.”
Ivo thought about it. “They’re both so general, and I’m not sure I like either one too much. But the second seems closer. I do like to help people, but too often it doesn’t work out. And I’d much rather earn my way by hard work than do something dramatic. I’m certainly not fearless.”
“This is my impression. Human traits are not portioned off precisely, and we all have a little of everything, so character summations are necessarily vague in spots. But the first hardly describes you. It is Aries the Ram in the twelfth house. Aries is part of the fire element — that’s why I commented on your figure of speech.”
“My — ?”
“You said ‘fire at will.’ ”
“Oh.”
“The second is Aquarius the Water Carrier in the sixth house — air element. I could go on with the other planets — this was the sun, of course — but this differentiation is typical. You appear to fit Aquarius, not Aries.”
“And my birth date?”
“Aries.”
“So I’m a misfit. Don’t know where I belong. Whose birthday is Aquarius?”
“I played a hunch from something my wife mentioned. Sidney Lanier.”
Ivo felt a nasty emotional shock. Pseudo-science or not, this was striking pretty close. “So you say I should be fire when I seem to be air. Could you have miscalculated?”
“No. That’s the mystery. I rechecked very carefully and it stands. Your personality is entirely different from the one indicated by your horoscope, and your personal episode only corroborates that difference. I could be mistaken in detail, but hardly to this extent. So: assuming my tenets to be valid, either your birth date is not the one you gave me, or—”
“Or — ?”
“Do you play chess?”
“No.” Ivo did not challenge the abrupt change of subject.
“It happens that I do. I’m not very good at it, but I used to play quite a bit, before I found more important uses for my time. So I believe I know what that message means.”
“Message?”
“Schön’s last. You remember: ‘My pawn is pinned.’ That’s a chess expression.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I think you would, Ivo, but I’ll explain. Each piece in chess has a different motion and a different value. A pawn is a minor piece reckoned at one point and it moves straight ahead, one step at a time. The knight and the bishop are worth three points each, and their motions are correspondingly more intricate and far-ranging. The castle is worth five, and the queen nine or ten, so you see she is a very powerful piece. The pointages are only general guides to strategic value; no numerical score is kept, of course. The queen moves as far as she wants in any direction; it is her mobility that gives her strength, and her presence changes the entire complexion of the game.”
“I don’t entirely follow the explanation, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“Doesn’t matter. The point is, you dare not ignore the queen. She can strike from any distance, while a pawn is severely limited. So the queen can check and even mate the king without danger to herself, but the pawn has to be guarded.”
“Mate? Guard?”
Groton sighed. “You really don’t know chess, do you! Here.” He brought out a blackboard and made a checkerboard on it in chalk. Blackboards seemed to be popular among engineers. “The squares are black and white, but forget that for now.” He added some letters. “Here’s the black queen — she’s circled. It could be a black bishop, of course; principle’s the same. She’s on king’s-rook-eight, while all the whites are set up on the seventh and eight ranks, so.” He ignored Ivo’s confusion. “Now white’s pawn is about to be queened, but can’t because it is pinned. That’s what Schön is talking about.”
Ivo contemplated the illustration. “I’m glad it makes sense to you.”
Groton pursued his logic relentlessly. “The king is the game, you see. You can’t allow him to move into check. Your opponent will call you down for incorrect play if you do; there are no pitfalls of that nature in chess. Look — pawn moves up like this, next it’s black’s move and queen checks king. So pawn can’t move, not while it’s pinned. It has to protect the king.”
“That much I follow. I think. The pawn is like a bodyguard — if it steps out, assassination.”
“Close enough. But here is the rest of it: the pawn is a special piece, especially in this position, because if it gets to the back row it changes into a queen, or any other piece it chooses to. That can change the whole course of the game, because an extra queen in the end-game is a terror.”
“It does look pretty bad for that king, bottled in the corner like that.”
“White pawn promotes into a white queen; that’s good for this king. Matter of fact, it means white can win the game — if that pawn can only move up. That’s why the pin has to be broken; it is the crux of the game.”
“We’re white?”
“Right. And black is some alien intelligence fifteen thousand light-years deep in the galaxy.”
“The destroyer?”
“That’s what I mean. Somebody set up that alien queen, and she has our king threatened, all the way across the board. And all we have are pawns to hold her off.”
“And we’ve lost six pawns already.”
“Right Our seventh and eighth are on the board at the seventh rank. And one of them is pinned — the important one. The one in a position to queen.”
“Which one is that — in life, I mean.”
“That one.” Groton aimed a heavy finger at Ivo.
“Me? Because I can use the macroscope a little?”
“Because you can fetch the white queen. Schön.”
“But how am I pinned?” Groton, now that he was on the trail, was as persistent as Afra.
“I have been wondering about that. You are obviously Schön’s pawn, and he has confirmed his involvement by sending us cryptic little messages. My guess is that he would come to us if he could. He told us why he can’t, if we can only make sense of it.” Groton looked at his diagram. “Now that pawn is pinned by the queen, so that’s you pinned by the destroyer. If that pawn could move even one step, it would be another queen. So it is in effect a queen that is pinned, in the guise of a pawn. They are the same; the one is inherent in the other.”
“I suppose so, but—”