"Let's play again. No switching chairs, I like silver."
"Very well."
This time they were silent. Valentine lost a knight, and when the bishops came forward again, his pawns occupied them until his queen had space. She took a castle, a pawn, and a bishop before falling. Then his castles came forward. The Big Man let out a small noise, wrinkled his brows, moved a knight back. Valentine sent a bishop forward, took a pawn, lost his bishop, and brought out his last knight.
Valentine checked.
The Big Man moved his king, a smile on his face.
"Checkmate," Valentine said.
The Big Man offered his hand. "My compliments. I saw it two moves ago, but went through the motions. You deserved the gratification."
Valentine arranged the pieces the way they'd been when he first approached the table. "Sir, in your quest for a stalemate ... suppose you could have gotten that pawn to the white side and converted it."
"Unlikely."
"Suppose the unlikely happened."
"Reliance on the improbable is a bad strategy."
"Even so," Valentine said.
Ahn-Kha's ears pointed forward, listening.
"The whole balance would change. I could get the draw. Depending on the white bishop, I might be able to squeeze a victory."
"If you got enough arms to the Golden Ones, in the ghetto, on the base, that lonely pawn could become a terrible weapon."
"No. I won't put my house's future in jeopardy."
Ahn-Kha's ears drooped as he stood. "Thank you for the sandwiches. I am glad we have put the past behind."
The Big Man nodded. "Good luck with your own future."
"What there is of it," Valentine said. "Thank you for your time."
"Thank you for the game. I haven't been beaten in years."
Valentine and Ahn-Kha went to the door. As they opened it, the Big Man spoke again. "David, a bit of advice: Practice the tried and true. You'll win more often. The intuitive player can be brilliant. Once in a while even beat the best. But most of the time, you'll lose."
The Cat nodded. The Big Man returned to his board. Valentine left a crack in the door and looked back through it. The Big Man wrinkled his brow in thought, then pushed his golden pawn forward.
"So much for explosives," Valentine said when they were in the street again.
Ahn-Kha looked at the sky. "There's one other place we could try. It's only a few blocks away."
"A different trading house?"
"None of the others deal in anything but hunting rifles."
"Then what?"
"The General's building where Khay-Hefle now rules. It lies behind the walls that imprison my people."
From what might have been a corner office within the skeleton of a high-rise, Valentine looked across central Omaha at the ghetto of the Golden Ones.
Flat on his stomach, he leisurely surveyed the quarter of the city's ruins allocated to them. Behind the old library, now the residence of their usurping chief and his Twisted Cross shield, were the twin buildings Valentine knew to be home to the dank farms of heartroot of which Ahn-Kha rhapsodized and home to Omaha's captive Golden Ones. Ahn-Kha said the lower floors and stairways of the buildings were sound, though the walls and windows had been blasted out by the overpressure of nuclear explosions. Many Golden Ones lived on the structurally intact floors in a warren of partitions and rebuilt rooms, complete with a gravity plumbing system that Ahn-Kha claimed to be the wonder of Omaha.