"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... ."
"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?"