Unicorn Variation Read online

  Unicorn Variation

  Roger Zelazny

  Roger Zelazny

  Unicorn Variation

  Preface from Unicorn Variations: This story came into being in a somewhat atypical fashion. The first movement in its direction occurred when Gardner Dozois phoned me one evening and asked whether I'd ever done a short story involving a unicorn. I said that I had not. He explained then that he and Jack Dann were putting together a reprint anthology of unicorn stories, and he suggested that I write one and sell it somewhere and then sell them reprint rights to it. Two sales. Nice. I told him that I'd think about it.

  Later, I was asked by another anthologist whether I'd ever done a story set in a barroom—and if so, he's like it for a reprint collection he was doing. I allowed that I hadn't. A week or so after that, I attended a wine tasting with the redoubtable George R. R. Martin, and during the course of the evening I decided to mention the prospective collections in case he had ever done a unicorn story or a barroom story. He hadn't either, but he reminded me that Fred Saberhagen was putting together a reprint collection of stories involving chess games (_Pawn to Infinity_). "Why don't you," he said, "write a story involving a unicorn and a chess games, set it in a barroom and sell it to everybody?" We chuckled and sipped. A few months later, I went up to Vancouver, B.C., to be the guest of V-Con, a very pleasant regional science fiction convention. I had decided to take my family on the Inland Passage Alaskan cruise after that. Now right before I left New Mexico I had read Italo Calvino's _Invisible Cities_, and when I read the section titled "Hidden Cities. 4." something seemed to stir. It told of the city where the inhabitants exterminated all of the vermin, completely sanitizing the place, only to be haunted then by visions of creatures that did not exist. Later, during the convention, things began to flow together; and on my way down to the waterfront to board _Prinsendam_, I stopped at a number of bookstores, speed reading all the of the chess sections until I found what I wanted, two hours before sailing time. I bought the book. I sailed. I wrote "Unicorn Variation" in odd moments during what proved a fine cruise. My protagonist is named Martin—any similarity to George (who is a chess expert) is not exactly unintentional. (I'll include a note on the game itself as an afterpiece to the tale.) Later that year the _Prisendam_ burned and sank. The story didn't. I sold it a sufficient number of times to pay for the cruise.

  Thanks, George.

  A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.

  Gone again. Back again. Again.

  Power, you said? Yes. It takes considerable force of identity to manifest before or after one's time. Or both.

  As it faded and gained it also advanced, moving through the warm afternoon, its tracks erased by the wind. That is, on those occasions when there were tracks.

  A reason. There should always be a reason. Or reasons.

  It knew why it was there—but not why it was _there_, in that particular locale.

  It anticipated learning this shortly, as it approached the desolation-bound line of the old street. However, it knew that the reason may also come before, or after. Yet again, the pull was there and the force of its being was such that it had to be close to something.

  The buildings were worn and decayed and some of them fallen and all of them drafty and dusty and empty. Weeds grew among the floorboards. Birds nested upon rafters. The droppings of wild things were everywhere, and it knew them all as they would have known it, were they to meet face to face.

  It froze, for there had come the tiniest unanticipated sound from somewhere ahead and to the left. At that moment, it was again phasing into existence and it released its outline which faded as quickly as a rainbow in hell, that but the naked presence remained beyond subtraction.

  Invisible, yet existing, strong, it moved again. The clue. The cue. Ahead. A gauche. Beyond the faded word SALOON on weathered board above. Through the swinging doors. (One of them pinned alop.)

  Pause and assess.

  Bar to the right, dusty. Cracked mirror behind it. Empty bottles. Broken bottles. Brass rail, black, encrusted. Tables to the left and rear. In various states of repair.

  Man seated at the best of the lot. His back to the door. Levi's. Hiking boots. Faded blue shirt. Green backpack leaning against the wall to his left.

  Before him, on the tabletop, is the faint, painted outline of a chessboard, stained, scratched, almost obliterated.

  The drawer in which he had found the chessmen is still partly open.

  He could no more have passed up a chess set without working out a problem or replaying one of his better games than he could have gone without breathing, circulating his blood or maintaining a relatively stable body temperature.

  It moved nearer, and perhaps there were fresh prints in the dust behind it, but none noted them.

  It, too, played chess.

  It watched as the man replayed what had perhaps been his finest game, from the world preliminaries of seven years past. He had blown up after that—surprised to have gotten even as far as he had—for he never could perform well under pressure. But he had always been proud of that one game, and he relived it as all sensitive beings to certain turning points in their lives. For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best.

  It took up a position across the board from him and stared. The man completed the game, smiling. Then he set up the board again, rose and fetched a can of beer from his pack. He popped the top.

  When he returned, he discovered that White's King's Pawn had been advanced to K4. His brow furrowed. He turned his head, searching the bar, meeting his own puzzled gaze in the grimy mirror. He looked under the table. He took a drink of beer and seated himself.

  He reached out and moved his Pawn to K4. A moment later, he saw White's King's Knight rise slowly into the air and drift forward to settle upon KB3.

  He stared for a long while into the emptiness across the table before he advanced his own Knight to his KB3. White's Knight moved to take his Pawn. He dismissed the novelty of the situation and moved his Pawn to Q3. He all but forgot the absence of a tangible opponent as the White Knight dropped back to its KB3. He paused to take a sip of beer, but no sooner had he placed the can upon the tabletop than it rose again, passed across the board and was upended. A gurgling noise followed. Then the can fell to the floor, bouncing, ringing with an empty sound.

  "I'm sorry," he said, rising and returning to his pack. "I'd have offered you one if I'd thought you were something that might like it."

  He opened two more cans, returned with them, placed one near the edge of the table, one at his own right hand.

  "Thank you," came a soft, precise voice from a point beyond it.

  The can was raised, tilted slightly, returned to the tabletop.

  "My name is Martin," the man said.

  "Call me Tlingel," said the other. "I had thought that perhaps your kind was extinct. I am pleased that you at least have survived to afford me this game."

  "Huh?" Martin said. "We were all still around the last time that I looked—a couple of days ago."

  "No matter. I can take care of that later," Tlingel replied. "I was misled by the appearance of this place."

  "Oh. It's a ghost town. I backpack a lot."

  "Not important. I am near the proper point in your career as a species. I can feel that much."

  "I am
afraid that I do not follow you."

  "I am not at all certain that you would wish to. I assume that you intend to capture that Pawn?"

  "Perhaps. Yes, I do wish to. What are you talking about?"

  The beer can rose. The invisible entity took another drink.

  "Well," said Tlingel, "to put it simply, your—successors—grow anxious. Your place in the scheme of things being such an important one, I had sufficient power to come and check things out."

  "'Successors'? I do not understand."

  "Have you seen and griffins recently?"

  Martin chuckled.

  "I've heard the stories," he said, "Seen the photos of the one supposedly shot in the Rockies. A hoax, of course."

  "Of course it must seem so. That is the way with mythical beasts."

  "You're trying to say that it was real?"

  "Certainly. Your world is in bad shape. When the last grizzly bear died recently, the way was opened for the griffins—just as the death of the last aepyornis brought in the yeti, the dodo the Loch Ness creature, the passenger pigeon the sasquatch, the blue whale the kraken, the American eagle the cockatrice—"

  "You can't prove it by me."

  "Have another drink."

  Martin began to reach for the can, halted his hand and stared.

  A creature approximately two inches in length, with a human face, a lionlike body and feathered wings was crouched next to the beer can.

  "A minisphinx," the voice continued. "They came when you killed off the last smallpox virus."

  "Are you trying to say that whenever a natural species dies out a mythical one takes its place?" he asked.

  "In a word—yes. Now. It was not always so, but you have destroyed the mechanisms of evolution. The balance is now redressed by those others of us, from the morning land—we, who have never truly been endangered. We return, in our time."

  "And you—whatever you are, Tlingel—you say that humanity is now endangered?"

  "Very much so. But there is nothing that you can do about it, is there? Let us get on with the game."

  The sphinx flew off. Martin took a sip of beer and captured the Pawn.

  "Who," he asked then, "are to be our successors?"

  "Modesty almost forbids," Tlingel replied. "In the case of a species as prominent as your own, it naturally has to be the loveliest, most intelligent, most important of us all."

  "And what are you? Is there any way that I can have a look?"

  "Well—yes. If I exert myself a trifle."

  The beer can rose, was drained, fell to the floor. There followed a series of rapid rattling sounds retreating from the table. The air began to flicker over a large area opposite Martin, darkening within the glowing framework. The outline continued to brighten, its interior growing jet black. The form moved, prancing about the saloon, multitudes of tiny, cloven hoofprints scoring and cracking the floorboards. With a final, hear-blinding flash it came into full view and Martin gasped to behold it.

  A black unicorn with mocking, yellow eyes sported before him, rising for a moment onto its hind legs to strike a heraldic pose. The fires flared about it a second longer, then vanished.

  Martin had drawn back, raising one hand defensively.

  "regard me!" Tlingel announced. "Ancient symbol of wisdom, valor and beauty, I stand before you!"

  "I thought your typical unicorn was white," Martin finally said.

  "I am archetypical," Tlingel responded, dropping to all fours, "And possessed of virtues beyond the ordinary."

  "Such as?"

  "Let us continue our game."

  "What about the fate of the human race? You said—"

  "... And save the small talk for later."

  "I hardly consider the destruction of humanity to be small talk."

  "And if you've any more beer ..."

  "All right," Martin said, retreating to his pack as the creature advanced, its eyes like a pair of pale suns. "There's some lager."

  Something had gone out of the game. As Martin sat before the ebon horn on Tlingel's bowed head, like an insect about to be pinned, he realized that his playing was off. He had felt the pressure the moment he had seen the beast—and there was all that talk about an imminent doomsday. Any run-of-the-mill pessimist could say it without troubling him, but coming from a source as peculiar as this ...

  His earlier elation had fled. He was no longer in top form. And Tlingel was good. Very good. Martin found himself wondering whether he could manage a stalemate.

  After a time, he saw that he could not and resigned.

  The unicorn looked at him and smiled.

  "You don't really play badly—for a human," it said.

  "I've done a lot better."

  "It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game."

  "I am pleased that you were not wholly bored," Martin said. "Now will you tell me what you were talking about concerning the destruction of my species?"

  "Oh, that," Tlingel replied. "In the morning land where those such as I swell, I felt the possibility of your passing come like a gently wind to my nostrils, with the promise of clearing the way for us—"

  "How is it supposed to happen?"

  Tlingel shrugged, horn writing on the air with a toss of the head.

  "I really couldn't say. Premonitions are seldom specific. In fact, that is what I came to discover. I should have been about it already, but you diverted me with beer and good sport."

  "Could you be wrong about this?"

  "I doubt it. That is the reason I am here."

  "Please explain."

  "Are there any beers left?"

  "Two, I think."

  "Please."

  Martin rose and fetched them.

  "Damn! The tab broke off this one," he said.

  "Place it upon the table and hold it firmly."

  "All right."

  Tlingel's horn dipped forward quickly, piercing the can's top.

  "... Useful for all sorts of things," Tlingel observed, withdrawing it.

  "The other reason you're here... ." Martin prompted.

  "It is just that I am special. I can do things that the others cannot."

  "Such as?"

  "Find your weak spot and influence events to exploit it, to—hasten matters. To turn the possibility into a probability, and then—"

  "_You_ are going to destroy us? Personally?"

  "That is the wrong way to look at it. It is more like a game of chess. It is as much a matter of exploiting your opponent's weaknesses as of exercising your own strengths. If you had not already laid the groundwork I would be powerless. I can only influence that which already exists."

  "So what will it be? World War III? An ecological disaster? A mutated disease?"

  "I do not really know yet, so I wish you wouldn't ask me in that fashion. I repeat that at the moment I am only observing. I am only an agent—"

  "It doesn't sound that way to me."

  Tlingel was silent. Martin began gathering up the chessmen.

  "Aren't you going to set up the board again?"

  "To amuse my destroyer a little more? No thanks."

  "That's hardly the way to look at it—"

  "Besides, those are the last beers."

  "Oh." Tlingel stared wistfully at the vanishing pieces, then remarked, "I would be willing to play you again without additional refreshment... ."

  "No thanks."

  "You are angry."

  "Wouldn't you be, if our situations were reversed?"

  "You are anthromorphizing."

  "Well?"

  "Oh, I suppose I would."

  "You could give us a break, you know—at least let us make our own mistakes."

  "You've hardly done that yourself, though, with all the creatures my fellows have succeeded."

  Martin reddened.

  "Okay. You just scored one. But I don't have to like it."

  "You are a good player. I know that... ."
<
br />   "Tlingel, if I were capable of playing at my best again, I think I could beat you."

  The unicorn snorted two tiny wisps of smoke.

  "Not _that_ good," Tlingel said.

  "I guess you'll never know."

  "Do I detect a proposal?"

  "Possibly. What's another game worth to you?"

  Tlingel made a chuckling noise.

  "Let me guess: You are going to say that if you beat me you want my promise not to lay my will upon the weakest link in mankind's existence and shatter it."

  "Of course."

  "And what do I get for winning?"

  "The pleasure of the game. That's what you want, isn't it?"

  "The terms sound a little lopsided."

  "Not if you are going to win anyway. You keep insisting that you will."

  "All right. Set up the board."

  "There is something else that you have to know about me first."

  "Yes?"

  "I don't play well under pressure, and this game is going to be a terrific strain. You want my best game, don't you?"

  "Yes, but I'm afraid I've no way of adjusting your own reactions to the play."

  "I believe I could do that myself if I had more than the usual amount of time between moves."

  "Agreed."

  "I mean a lot of time."

  "Just what do you have in mind?"

  "I'll need time to get my mind off it, to relax, to come back to the positions as if they were only problems... ."

  "You mean to go away from here between moves?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. How long?"

  "I don't know. A few weeks, maybe."

  "Take a month. Consult your experts, put your computers onto it. It may make for a slightly more interesting game."

  "I really didn't have that in mind."

  "Then it's time you're trying to buy."

  "I can't deny that. On the other hand, I will need it."

  "In that case, I have some terms. I'd like this place cleaned up, fixed up, more lively. It's a mess. I also want beer on tap."

  "Okay. I'll see to that."

  "Then I agree. Let's see who goes first."

  Martin switched a black and a white Pawn from hand to hand beneath the table. He raised his fists then and extended them. Tlingel leaned forward and tapped. The black horn's tip touched Martin's left hand.