Tactics of Conquest Read Free Page A

health.”
    “Perhaps you ought to check with the others on this. They might agree to a stay.”
    “I do not know that it is necessary to consult with others,” Five said, rather sharply. “The decisions are to be made by me alone; in the society which we have evolved there are only leaders, no followers, no committees, and I am perfectly able to make a decision which will be binding upon all of us. So, you will play,” Five concluded on that same pitch of controlled hysteria which I had noted in the examining physician, “you will play the matches! The matches will go on I” He stood abruptly, leaving the room in a rather undignified scuttle, allowing the door to bang in the Denebian breeze which wafted through the hallway.
    Ah, well; slowly and grudgingly I began my ablutions preparatory to leaving for the Antares Cluster. It seemed to me that it was not fair for Five to be so imperious about the matter, but on the other hand it also occurred to me in that I simultaneity of vision reserved for truly great minds that the game must go on, the great series of games to decide the outcome of all possibility; and that when one is functioning at such a high level of consequence it is not always possible to invoke the personal touch. The personal touch. Thinking this way I began to feel better and in due course my garb was donned, my ablutions (I urinated, defecated noisily, gargled, to be specific) completed and I went outside to find certain Overlords—Six, Three, Seven and Twenty-One, I believe—waitingfor me. They took me quickly to the spaceport. Although I moped rather sullenly early on, I soon found that my enthusiasm and my sense of conviction returned. By the halfway point of the long flight I had taken out my omnipresent pocket chess set and worked through a series of variations to the Nizimov-Indian Defense which had caught me in the seventh game.
Nirazo
-Indian defense, please excuse, very difficult to keep all of these arcane formulations quite at the tip of the tongue or penpoint.
    In other words, getting me to this fifteenth match was difficult for the Overlords. More difficult for them than this, however, was the decision which I reached on the flight: Since they would not cooperate with me, well, then, I would repay in kind.
    My original intention, good-hearted and benign as everyone knows, was to string out these matches to the forty-first game, the last possible moment. I have nothing against that sector of the universe, that way of life which my opponent represents. I consider it to have the same validity as my own side, and the specter of billions of innocent creatures being slaughtered egregiously by the arrogant Overlords simply because their representative was an inferior player ... this spectacle of injustice, barbarism, madness most distressed me. Apocalypse may be a sanctifying gesture but there is much blood in it.
    So I wanted to extend their lifetime for as long as possible. Why not? Also I wanted to give the Overlords every chance possible to destroy themselves—maybe the damned matches would simply go away. Perhaps the Overlords might wink out of our universe with the same abruptness with which they winked in. They kept on talking about theirlaws of entropy and mysterious geophysical forces; possibly an extension of their stay might result in obliteration. I hope. At least, it seemed like a sensible idea and I wanted if possible to go on to the very end, to game forty-one, before my victory, in order to give this nightmare time to dissolve. Is this not sane?
    But no more. I have reached that decision.
    I will change my way of life: If the Overlords refuse to tolerate my position, if my hapless opponent continues to decline, then responsibility will finally shift from me. My ultimate responsibility, after all, is to that half of the universe which I have been called upon to represent: the forces of moderation, light, reason, justice, compassion, etc., and I must no longer confuse polarities.