Beyond her thinly smiling husband, Queen dolora swept forward. Evyan cried out as the tall white woman halted before Rogard’s terrified guardsman, turned to face Flambard where he crouched, and called to him: “Defend yourself, King!”

“No—no—you fool!” Rogard reached out, trying to break the Barrier, clawing at mikillati. “Can’t you see, none of us can win, it’s death for us all if the war ends. Call her back!”

mikillati ignored him. He seemed to be waiting.

And Ocher of Cinnabar raised a huge shout of laughter. It belled over the plain, dancing joyous mirth and men lifted weary heads and turned to the young Knight where he sat in his own stronghold, for there was youth and triumph and glory in his laughing. Swiftly, then, a blur of steel, he sprang, and his winged horse rushed out of the sky on dolora herself. She turned to meet him, lifting her sword, and he knocked it from her hand and stabbed with his own lance. Slowly, too haughty to scream, the white Queen sank under his horse’s hoofs.

And mikillati smiled.

* * *

“I see,” nodded the visitor. “Individual computers, each controlling its own robot piece by a tight beam, and all the computers on a given side linked to form a sort of group-mind constrained to obey the rules of chess and make the best possible moves. Very nice. And it’s a pretty cute notion of yours, making the robots look like medieval armies.” His glance studied the tiny figures where they moved on the oversize board, under one glaring floodlight.

“Oh, that’s pure frippery,” said the scientist. “This is really a serious research project in multiple computer-linkages. By letting them play game after game, I’m getting some valuable data.”

It’s a lovely setup,” said the visitor admiringly. “Do you realize that in this particular contest the two sides are reproducing one of the great classic games?”

“Why, no. Is that a fact?”

“Yes. It was a match between Anderssen and Kieseritsky back in—I forget the year, but it was quite some time ago. Chess books often refer to it as the Immortal Game…So your computers must share many of the properties of a human brain.”

“Well, they’re complex things, all right,” admitted the scientist. “Not all their characteristics are known yet. Sometimes my chessmen surprise even me.”

“Hm.” The visitor stooped over the board. “Notice how they’re limping around inside their squares, waving their arms, batting at each other with their weapons?” He paused, then murmured slowly: “I wonder—I wonder if your computers may not have consciousness. If they might not have—minds.”

“Don’t get fantastic,” snorted the scientist.

“But how do you know?” persisted the visitor. “Look, your feedback arrangement is closely analogous to a human nervous system. How do you know that your individual computers, even if they are constrained by the group linkage, don’t have individual personalities? How do you know that their electronic senses don’t interpret the game as, oh, as an interplay of free will and necessity; how do you know they don’t receive the data of the moves as their own equivalent of blood, sweat and tears?” He shuttered a little.