Tactics of Conquest Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands, conveying her to the bed. The suitcase fell from her hand, bounced like a trampoline on the floor and then a lock gave, disgorging whole units of merchandise: rubber casings of some sort, feathers, a dildo, a false breast. “I will show you my capability,” I announced. Dragging her over to the bed, I seized upon her dress with shaking hands and, fumbling and ripping, managed to denude her.
    “You are playing light with my honor,” she said in poorly translated formalese. “I do not thinkthat I can permit such liberties to be taken with my person or my body.” But too late, too late, she was naked beneath me, naked above me and over and under, our two bodies locked together like Pawns meeting in the center of the board in a zigzag confrontation and I felt her Queen’s Pawn beneath me beginning to flower with its own purpose, my King’s Rook writhing and moving into her inexorably.
    “So much for that,” I said when I was done, my Rook now moved to the sixth rank, her Queen wiped off the board, “so much for any of that, now you may take your equipment and go.” I felt a massive disinterest within me as we untangled. I went immediately over to the pocket board and in an excess of concentration worked out the final moves of the Immortal Game, paying no attention to her as she reassembled her clothing, restuffed her valise and so on. I held my position of inattention while she went to the door, struggling with the locks, finally opening the door into the dank alley of corridor. “I will tell them,” she said, “I will tell them what you have done with me,” and then she went quickly, leaving me to my own devices. My elaborate unconcern faded only when I was definitely sure that she had left the hallway. I went to the door, put my entire weight against it and rooted it closed like a rodent, then snapped the locks and went to the bed where I shook convulsively for quite a while, finally deciding that it would be best to don my relaxation suit again and try to think of this no more.
    After some time, the next day I think it was, my colleagues asked me rather shyly and with many private glances how my evening had been spent, and I said that it was all right but I still preferred chess (which was only half a lie since Iwholly preferred chess). This was some thirty years and two months before the Overlords summoned me to my great and final mission and I give this only in order to yield one of those personal insights which I have been assured are so important to maintain human interest. Actually the event was insignificant.

CHAPTER TWO
Pawn to King Four
    It is a routine reply move in the Ruy Lopez; it is a move nevertheless with brilliant possibilities. It avoids the dangerous and untrustworthy Queen’s Gambit which, either accepted or declined, is a holy terror; it functions as a blocking response to the dangerous advance of the Pawn to King Five; it shows a brisk willingness to join the issue while actually risking nothing. It is my preferred move in situations of this sort and many articles have been published in the specialist magazines pointing out; that I have brought the Black Pawn to King Four to its highest excess of ramification in this century. It is for this reason as well as many others that the Overlords must have picked me to represent the forces of light.
    The way in which I was selected might require some elucidation. In order for one to sympathize with my position as well as vicariously participate in the struggle, exposition of this sort cannot be neglected and I am eager at all times to please. (I should say that these notes are being transcribed directly from the mouthpiece within my neck which was surgically implanted at the start of the games in order that my reflections and recollections would be available to all of the universe,as well as to the Overlords, for posterity; notes of the match, so to speak. All that I have to do is to talk to myself in a high, inaudible shriek and through