Starborne by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online Page A

to guide her across the room.
    “ This is a Go board,” the year-captain says. He takes her hand and gently presses it flat against the board, drawing it from side to side and then up and down, so she can get some idea of the area of the board and also of its feel. “ It has nineteen horizontal lines, nineteen v ertical lines. The stones are played on the intersections of these lines, not on the squares that the lines form.” He shows her the pattern of intersecting lines by moving the tips of her fingers along them. They have been printed with a thick ink, and ev i dently she is able to discern their slight elevation above the flatness of the board, for when he releases her hand she slowly draws her fingertips along the lines herself, seemingly wit h out difficulty.
    “ These nine dots are called stars,” he tells her. “ Th ey serve as orie n tation points.” He touches her fingertips to each of the nine stars in turn. They too are raised above the board by nothing more than a faint thic k ness of green ink, but it seems quite clear that she is able to feel them as easily as thoug h they stood out in high relief. All of her senses must be extraordinarily sharp, by way of compensation for the one that is mis s ing. “ We give the lines in this direction numbers, from one to nineteen, and we give the lines going in the other direction let ters, from A to T, leaving out I. Thus we have coordinates that allow us to identify pos i tions on the board. This is B10, this is D18, this is J4, do you follow?” He puts the tip of one of her fingers on each of the locations he names. She responds with a smile and a nod. Even so, the year-captain feels despair. How can she ever commit the board to memory? It ’ s an impo s sible job. But Noelle looks untroubled as she runs her hand along the edges of the board, murmuring, “ A, B, C, D.…”
    The other games have hal ted. Everyone in the lounge is watching them. He guides her hand toward the two trays of stones, the black ones of polished slate and the white ones fashioned of clam shell, and shows her the traditional way of picking up a stone between two fingers and c l apping it down against the board. The skin of her hand is cool and very smooth. The hand itself is slender and narrow, almost fra g ile-looking, but utterly unwavering. “ The stronger player uses the white stones,” he says. “ Black always moves first. The play ers take turns placing stones, one at a time, on any unoccupied intersection. Once a stone is placed it is never moved unless it is captured, in which case it is removed at once from the board.”
    “ And the purpose of the game?” she asks.
    “ To control the larg est possible area with the smallest possible nu m ber of stones. You build walls. You try to surround your opponent ’ s pieces even while he ’ s trying to surround yours. The score is reckoned by counting the number of vacant intersections within your walls, plu s the number of prisoners you have taken.” She is staring steadily in his direction, fixedly, an intense and almost exaggerated show of attention, all the more poignant for its pointlessness. Methodically the year-captain explains the actual technique of p lay to her: the placing of stones, the seizure of territory, the capture of opposing stones. He illustrates by se t ting up simulated situations on the board, calling out the location of each stone as he places it. “ Black holds P12, Q12, R12, S12, T12 — got it ?” A nod. “ And also P11, P10, P9, Q8, R8, S8, T8. All right?” Another nod. “ White holds —” Somehow she is able to visualize the positions; she repeats the patterns after him, and asks questions that show she sees the board clearly in her mind.
    He wonders wh y he is so surprised. He has heard of blind chess players, good ones: they must be able to memorize the board and update their inner view of it with every move. Noelle must have the same kind of hypertrophied memory. But playing Go is not