Gudsriki (44 page)

The crowd recognized the danger and stopped. They began to back off. Nel understood the gesture and decided not to shoot. Once Vibs had climbed down, she knocked on the shield. Nel opened it and let her climb aboard. The tank was designed for one person, so she sat on Nel's lap with her legs over the side. One of the crowd called out, “How did you tame that thing?”

“Its mom was a friend of ours,” said Vibs, and Nel told the tank to head north. One of the crowd saw where they were heading and shouted.

“You can't go north!”

“Why?” Vibs asked.

“There are Christians that way!”

“We saw plenty of 'em already. We can take 'em.”

“They're worse than the ones to the south! They're tougher up north, and better armed!”

Another: “They're insane! They're monsters! They've killed thousands!”

“I've killed billions,” said Vibeke.

She couldn't have been less deterred. They set off. With eight legs it would make it to Tromsø in a matter of hours, by way of Lycksele.

 

 

“V
OIVOD
,”
SAID
Harvard, “Lycksele is in open rebellion.”

“How?” asked Mishka.

“Father Fortuna was performing an exorcism on a child of two and beat him too hard. The mother attacked him, so he had her executed.”

“But what went wrong?”

“Apparently she was a popular heretic. She questioned your leadership on many occasions. We believe she may have called you the Whore of Babylon. They called her death an excuse to execute other dissidents. The people rioted, and the riot has spread to the entire city.”

“We can't lose Lycksele, not to sectarianism.”

“No, Voivod.”

“I'll take a mission south. Gather penitents.”

“Penitents, Voivod?”

“Penitents. We will show them humility.”

“Will humility be sufficient?”

“Humility and my tank. And a few tornados of fire.”

“Excellent, Voivod.”

 

 

N
EL
COULD
have hung on to the tank as it charged onward, but they elected to stay together in the cockpit. They couldn't close the shield all the way with both on board, so the wind was terrible. Vibs could take the wind, but when they passed a swamp half the flies in Sverige splattered onto her face.

“Stop! Stop Nel! Slow down!”

She took her feet off the accelerators and the tank came to a stop. Vibeke hopped down to the ground to spit some of the insects off her teeth and wiped off her skin. Nel told the tank to lock up and stepped down.

“Are you injured?”

“No, no, it's just bugs.”

Suddenly Nel turned to the north, as if spooked. Vibeke watched but said nothing, well aware Nel's hearing was exceptionally more sensitive than her own. After a moment Vibeke whispered, “What is it?”

“Voices.”

“Hostiles?”

“Unlikely.”

“What are they saying?”

Nel duplicated the voices of two men:

“But you still haven't told me, Allen, what's in your box?”

“Nothing short of the most important thing to survive the war.”

“Will you tell me?”

“I'll tell anyone who will listen. In this box is the board of what might be the last chess game that will ever be played on Earth, and perhaps the greatest game.”

“A chess board?”

“That's why I came here to Lycksele, for the Chess Championship.”

“When was that?”

“It was to have started the day after the bombs.”

“So I guess it never happened.”

“That's just it, it did. A bit late.”

“They had the championship?”

“Of course. The venue was unscathed, and we were all stuck in Lycksele. With their homes burned off the map and nowhere to go, they all stayed to play chess, as planned. It was a strange sense of nobility, or perhaps it was merely a way to cope. We couldn't go outside in any case. There was an ongoing riot. Refugees trying to break into the hotel. But we were safe, for the moment, so we did the one thing that felt normal, that made us feel like the world was still the same, in some way. Though it didn't go at all as planned.”

“What happened?”

“Well, all went well for the first two days. We all watched intently to keep our minds off the war, the impending doom. As far as we knew the radiation would have us all dead within hours. None of us really expected to live through the week, so the chess, it became our lives, the end of our lives. The chess meant everything, because everything else, well…. In any case, the first two days were filled with some of the finest games ever played. Hours of strategies unfolding, all with the knowledge that it could be our last game, that whoever won the championship could be the last chess champion the world would ever see. My brother, who I'd come to see, was out in the first round, but he didn't even mind. We got to watch Sid Schell and Hansel Wenig! In person! Yes, they both lived! Through the war.”

“They're not alive now?”

“No, no…. The masters are no more.”

“What happened to them?”

“That's the thing. The first two days of the championship went well. Schell and Wenig trounced the rest, of course. Schell has been reigning champion since 2229, and Wenig was for five years before that, yet this was the first time they ever played each other. And play they did, the last match for the world championship. We survivors were honored beyond words! To see the two greatest champions vie for the win at the end of the world. We were certain all the history of chess had built up to this single moment, this single battle in the greatest game ever played by mankind, its greatest masters, in person!”

“But what happened?”

“Schell opened with the Englund Gambit! Of all things for the great game, the last game! Wenig took advantage immediately of course! Still, Wenig found himself at a disadvantage soon enough. But there was to be no endgame. Schell pressed his advantage until he managed a promotion, an amazing feat. He sacrificed both his bishops to see the pawn to the eighth, but that was when he did it—he didn't take a queen; he took a knight, and Wenig was in check! We all saw it, victory in seven moves unless, unless! Unless Wenig saw his chance for victory in five and Schell missed it. And that's what we'll never know. That's when the riot burst in. Looking for food, looking for shelter. They didn't know the hotel was a waste housing a few starving old players in its convention hall. They killed indiscriminately; some ate the flesh of the wounded. They ate Sid Schell. They ate Robert King and Kovik Kovacs. I saw Hansel last disappearing into their masses.

“But I saved the board. When the walls first gave in, when they stood against the mob, knowing they were to die, I was given the responsibility of carrying the board downstairs. Others tried to protect the players, themselves, but I had been given a great responsibility too. I rushed the board to a secluded janitorial closet. There I found glue. I carefully glued the pieces in place on their positions, kept the captured pieces. I made this box for them out of some foam from the chairs and wood from the walls.”

“So that's what's in your box?”

“Yes! The last moment of the last great chess game the world will ever see. All chess, the millennia of its play that built up to that one game. It has ended in a great mystery, you see. The ultimate, I mean ultimate in its literal sense, the last snapshot of chess, the last moment in chess is here, in this very box.”

“May I?”

“Of course! I plan to show this enigma to anyone who will look, and then to spend what remains of my life preserving this moment. Find a museum, or found one if I must, if I can. Then whatever happens to mankind, however long we persist in the mayhem around us, there's a chance chess will survive. That game of logic and strategy, one of our species' greatest inventions, in my opinion. The radiation will kill us both soon, of course. But the pinnacle event that took place here, it will—”

Nel stopped.

“Well?” asked Vibeke, “what happened?”

“Someone is approaching them.”

Vibeke waited. Nel spoke in a new voice, a soft and inviting woman's voice that sounded incredibly wrong coming from Nel.

“Hello, friends! Do you have a moment to talk about the Lord?”

“We're talking about chess, but you're welcome to—”

“I don't know what chess is.”

“Chess is a game, a very fun game, in fact, where two players face off with all kinds of pieces, and use strategy to try to capture their opponent's king. I'd be happy to teach you.”

“I'll tell you what, how about you teach me to play chess, and I'll teach you something in return.”

“Sounds fair enough.”

“Okay, then, what do we do first?”

“First we set up the board. I have this extra travel set right here. These are the pieces. This little one is called a pawn. It can usually only move one space at a time, and only forward. But it can capture other pieces only by moving diagonally, like this. On a pawn's first move, it also has the option of moving two spaces or one. And best of all, if it makes it to the other side of the board, it can become any other piece in the game, even a queen or a knight.”

“That's great! My turn. Did you know you're in incredible danger right now?”

“Have been since the war, flicka.”

“Oh, not of dying. It's what happens after you die.”

“After I die I won't be around to mind. Now this… is a rook. It can move as many spaces as you want in either direction, like this or this, but it can't move diagonally.”

“Got it! You know that when you die, though, part of you still exists. Your consciousness, your awareness, that goes on. And it can go to one of two places. It can go to heaven, where you'll be happy, or it can go to hell, which is a world of fire and pain. Imagine every kind of pain you ever felt, every kind of sadness and misery, and imagine feeling all those all at once forever!”

“What makes you think any of that?”

“Oh, I know it to be true. I know it absolutely. I'll tell you after your turn.”

“Certainly. This is a knight. It moves in an L shape like this. It can move in any L shape around it, here, here, here, any of these. It can also jump over other pieces. It's the only piece that can.”

“I like that piece. I know there's a hell because of the most important book ever written.”

“
Mein System
by Aron Nimzowitsch?”

“No, no, the Holy Bible! It holds all the secrets, all the knowledge, everything they never taught you in school. Here it is. It starts with the creation of mankind, by God.”

“Ah, this is about God, then?”

“Yes, yes it is!”

“Then you'll love this next piece. It's called a bishop.”

“Excellent! We have those too.”

“I'll bet. Ours can move as far as it wants diagonally, but only diagonally.”

“Our bishops are better, I think.”

“How so?”

“They can save you from hell.”

“And how do they do that?”

“By teaching you to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Do you know who Jesus Christ is?”

“I've heard a bit of what you're talking about. Christianity, that's the one with forgiveness for everything, right? And baptism?”

“Yes! It is! And that book? The Bible? Here's the amazing thing: it predicted the war. Every detail of it! It proves that these are the last few days before the end of the world.”

“I can believe that they are indeed. My turn?”

“Your turn!”

“This piece, the queen, she can move in any direction as far as she wants, straight or diagonal.”

“Neat! We have a queen too!”

“That's lovely! What's her name?”

“Her name is Mishka.”

Vibeke's attention was suddenly refocused at maximum.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure you can. Then I'll tell you about the king.”

“I'm really glad! She's on her way here now. I'm one of her scouts. I'm like a pawn!”

“I'll bet you are. Why is she coming here?”

“Allen, I'm going, let's go.”

“Wait, Paul—”

“It's called an auto-da-fé.”

“Auto-da-fé…. What's an auto-da-fé?”

“You see, Lycksele is full of some very bad people. People who would go to hell if Mishka didn't help them. But she's coming to help them all!”

“How will she help them?”

“Tell me about your king first.”

“Allen, I'm out of here. Come with me or don't.”

“Okay…. Well, he can move in any direction, but only one space at a time. When he's threatened, that's called check and you have to get him out of danger. You can never move your king into danger, because then he could be captured, and you'd lose. When he's threatened and can't get out of danger, the game is over, and that's called checkmate. Now what's Mishka coming to do?”

“I really like chess. It's a really interesting game, and I'm grateful that you told me how to play!”

Vibeke heard a sound coming from the woods. A cracking sound. Every few seconds.

“And I know deep down you're a good person, and I think you'll go to heaven when the time comes.”

There was a low moaning between the cracks. Chanting. “
Gospodi, pomilui
.”

“When will the time come? Who are these people?”

Vibeke could see them, naked people walking, limping through the trees, whipping themselves. Bleeding everywhere.

“We're all sinners, Allen. And if we're going to go to heaven, we all have to give up our material obsessions and embrace the spiritual.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only thing that really matters in life is the spiritual. Worldly possessions only condemn us to hell! Our possessions become our master, and one cannot serve two masters. This greed, like the greed you have for this game, it blinds you from the one true light, Jesus Christ.”