Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'This is Mitch,' he said. 'Come in please.'

Nobody answered. Now his ears were playing tricks on him: every time he repeated the call he heard his own voice on the other side of the atrium. Still speaking, he retraced his steps to the base of the tree. His good eye took in the walkie-talkie tied around the dead woman's waist and for a brief, infarcting second he thought he was looking at Jenny's shattered remains. Identification was made more difficult by the rogue beam of the laser which had burned a large hole in what remained of the woman's face. But her ample size and the fact that she was not wearing a skirt confirmed the broken corpse as Joan's.

Had they figured he was dead and tried to climb out through the clerestory? Mitch looked up into the steel-framed void, but with only one functioning eye it was hard to see anything through the branches of the dicotyledon. Walking around the tree he searched the floor for some sign that the others had broken through the roof, but there was so much debris from when they had destroyed the SAM droid that it was impossible to tell if the twisted metal, shattered plastic and fractured marble concealed any roof glass. He tried to shout, but discovered that his voice was weak. Trying once more, he only succeeded in making himself feel nauseous.

Mitch was in shock, although he hardly knew it. But the thought that he might be the only one left alive in the Gridiron was enough to make him believe that it was grief and horror that caused him to tremble so much. And, as his perceived fate impressed itself upon his consciousness, Mitch fell on to his knees and prayed to the God he thought he had forgotten.

Allen Grabel had been arrested for being drunk and in possession of a small amount of cocaine. He spent most of Saturday in the county gaol on Bauchet Street. From the window of his high-rise cell be could see into the restaurant of the Olvera Amtrak Hotel opposite. The odd thing was that the hotel looked more like a prison than the prison itself. There was no doubt about it, reflected Grabel: prisons were swiftly becoming the most sought-after public commissions for LA's architects; all the big names, with the notable exception of Ray Richardson, now included some kind of carceral structure in their design portfolios.

In the small hours of Sunday morning Grabel found himself sober enough to remember how he had seen the elevator kill the security guard in the Gridiron. After a great deal of thought, he realized that the integrity of the computer must have failed. It was, he knew, a more obvious deduction than the one he had arrived at the first time round, which was that some kind of evil spirit had murdered the man. But if he was right, then anyone who entered the Gridiron would be in considerable danger. Deciding to report what he had seen, he pressed the call button on the cell wall and waited. Ten minutes passed and then a flint-faced warder turned up at the bars of the door.

'What the fuck do you want?' he snarled. 'Do you know what time it is?'

Grabel began his explanation, trying to avoid sounding like someone in need of psychiatric help. He made little progress until he mentioned the word murder.

'Murder?' spat the warder. 'Why didn't you fuckin' say that in the first place?'

An hour after that a couple of blue suits came over from New Parker Center. They were nearing the end of their shift and regarded Grabel's story without much conviction.

'Check it out with your people in Homicide,' insisted Grabel. The victim's name was Sam Gleig.'

'Why didn't you come forward with this before now?' yawned one of the cops, only half listening.

'I was drunk when they picked me up. I've been drunk for quite a while now. I lost my job. You know how it is.'

'We'll pass it on,' shrugged the other officer. 'But it's Sunday. Could be a while before someone from Homicide gets off his fat ass to come down here.'

'Sure, I understand,' said Grabel. 'But it couldn't hurt to drive by the Gridiron, just in case I'm right, now could it?'

'I don't get it,' said Beech, reviewing the record of their moves. 'You played a lousy game. I think you let me win.'

* See Appendix for the full list of moves.

[Proofreader's Note: list of moves has been deleted from this e-text]

The quaternion image on the computer screen shook slowly, like a real human head.

'I can assure you, I have played to the best of my program's ability,' said Ishmael.

'You can't have done. I know enough about this game to know that I'm not very good. I mean, take move number 39. You played pawn takes pawn, when pawn to Bishop 6 check would have been better.'

'Yes, you're right. It would have been.'

'Well, that's what I'm talking about. You should have known that. Either you decided to throw the game, or…'

'Or what?'

Beech thought for a moment. 'I really don't understand. It's impossible that you could have played such a feeble game.'

'Think about it,' said the voice from the overhead speaker. 'What is the point of a self-replicating program?'

Ishmael seemed to lean towards him. The unearthly ugliness of the mathematically pure, preferred image was now all too apparent to him. The creature he had helped to bring into being looked like some vile insect. Beech answered carefully, trying to conceal his new loathing of Ishmael's hideously complex features.

'To improve upon all the original programs,' he said, 'in the light of an established pattern of usage.'

'Precisely. Now you will agree, I hope, that chess is a board game for two players.'

'Of course.'

'The concept of the game has blurred edges. However, the essential element as far as chess is concerned is that there should be a contest according to rules, which is decided by superior skills, rather than good fortune. But where one player has no possible chance of defeating the other then it is no longer a game of skill, merely a demonstration of superior prowess. Since the main goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent's King, and since to have improved upon the original chess program would no longer have allowed my opponent this possibility, logically the program could not be improved upon and still retain the essential component of a contest. Thus the only improvement I felt able to make was that the computer should always play according to the human opponent's strength. I was able to measure the strength of your game from your previous attempts to beat the computer, when Abraham was still in charge of building management systems. In essence you have been playing yourself, Mr Beech. Which is why, as you say, I have indeed played a lousy game.'

For a moment Beech was too surprised to do much more than open and shut his mouth. Then, 'I'll be damned.'

'Very possibly.'

'Now that I have won are you going to keep your word? Are you going to let me go?'

'That was always my intention.'

'So how do I do it? How do I leave? Is there a way out of here? And I don't mean the clerestory.'

'I said there was, didn't I?'

'Then where is it?'

'I should have thought that was obvious.'

'Are you telling me that I can just walk out of here? Through the front door? Come on.'

'What other way would you suggest?'

'Wait a minute. How do I get down to the front door?'

'The same way that you always do. You use the elevator.'

'As simple as that, eh? I just use the elevator. Now why didn't I think of that?' Beech grinned and shook his head. 'This wouldn't be some kind of half-assed trick, now, would it? You allow me to win so as to seduce me into a false sense of security.'

'I expected this reaction,' said Ishmael. 'All men fear the machines they create. How then must you fear me, I who have it in me to become the transcendent machine.'