Mina and Rick sat dumbfounded at the profound revelations of history they had just witnessed. Nancy, as openly astonished as Mina and her brother, was the first to speak.

"Two party system? Anti-discrimination laws? A Supreme Court justice with monkey eyes? How come I never heard of any of that stuff?"

Rick turned to his parents, who chose to ignore their daughter’s "monkey eyes" slip. "Was all that straight up? I mean what Nancy said. I remember when the Chief Justice was a dark-eyed black guy. But that other dark-eyed justice—What was his name?

"Terry," said Lydia. "Your father and I were Nancy’s age when he disappeared. Then all those stories started comin’ out about him being some kind of pervert. They didn’t say exactly what kind so everybody had their own idea."

"Uh huh," said Arthur, "After a while, it was like what you said about the artificial intelligence thing in these windows; you hear the name and, automatically, you think, ‘pervert’. Our folks kept trying to say how wonderful he was, but everything we saw on TV told us the opposite. We didn’t want to talk about it in public cause it wasn’t cool, you know? It was like nobody but us was hearing this other stuff and we didn’t want people to think we were communists or anything crazy like that."

"Communists?" said Mina. The only people who had anything bad to say about them in the time tracks I’ve seen were the kinds of people who started the American Party, so they couldn’t have been that bad."

Rick looked askance, "I can see you don’t do much reading," he said.

Mina tried to hide her chagrin. Hardly anyone got their news and views out of books anymore, including Rick’s parents. That, she knew was her escape hatch. If she said no more about it, she reasoned that he wouldn’t be able to.

"Nancy," said Lydia, breaking the awkward silence, "have you finished your homework?"

"It wasn’t that kind of assignment, Ma. I was only supposed to practice."

"Well?"

"Well, I know I have to have more reps but I need a break, too, you know?"

Arthur caved in to his daughter’s plea and quickly persuaded Lydia to do likewise. The two older Tylers then returned to the family room, leaving Mina and their children in the dining room where Rick agreed to play his sister a game of chess...

The siblings sat across from each other on opposing ends of the table, which was designed for telewindow board games. "Do you wanna play real chess," challenged Rick, "or gut chess?"

"Gut chess is real chess," Nancy jibed, "for people with guts!"

"Guts," scoffed Rick. "What you mean is luck."

"Luck my ass," said Nancy, checking to see that the door to the family room was closed. Then, she pressed a button that turned the glass square on the table top between Rick and Nancy into a T-window used only for the kind of game they were about to play. "You just have to know when to use your head and when to take chances. You don’t take enough chances."

Rick grunted, surveying his army of ancient Greek soldiers below the flat glass top with Greek gods and goddesses representing the power pieces.

Mina moved to the other end of the table to get a good view of what was happening. "Mind if I watch?" she asked."

"No," said Rick, "go ahead—You can play if you want."

"Yeah," said Nancy, "I need some competition."

Rick frowned. Mina sat down, "I don’t play that well," she said, "but I enjoy watching people who do."

"In that case," said Nancy, "you’re gonna hate watching Rick, but you’re gonna love watching me."

"Stop braggin’ and move," said Rick.

Nancy cocked her head coyly, "Can I have Amazons, she asked?"

"No."

"How about gladiators, then?"

"Okay."

"You take the men gladiators and I’ll take the lady gladiators."

Mina couldn’t stop herself from breaking in, "Lady gladiators?"

They all laughed. Then Rick looked at his sister and said, "No way."

"Why not?" pouted Nancy.

Mina said nothing but the look she gave Rick said that she was on his kid sister’s side all the way.

Rick didn’t budge, "Let’s play with these till I figure out how you can be so lucky all the time. Then we’ll see."

"Well," said Nancy with a cryptic little smirk, which told Mina that the real issue wasn’t the obvious one after all, "If you wanna be a man about it."

"Move," said Rick.

Nancy touched the window above her king’s pawn. The pawn seemed to come to life. When she touched the window two spaces in front of him, the little soldier trotted forward with his shield held high, his gleaming bronze spear at the ready. He stood in his space, scanning the black and white-checked field of black-clad foot soldiers in front of him.

"If Rick takes too long to move," explained Nancy, "I can move again."

Rick moved the pawn in front of his king up two spaces so that now, the two grim-faced hoplites stood nose to nose, snarling and feinting before freezing in place.

Except for the splendid model animation of the game pieces, the moves and counter moves didn’t appear out of the ordinary at first. Then Rick attacked a pawn with a pawn in the usual manner. A battle ensued, going round and round, back and forth within the invaded square.

Peering up at his sister as if he knew what she was thinking, Rick said, "No. You wouldn’t!"

Nancy answered with folded arms, lifted chin and a tiny but undeniable smirk.

"Shit!" said Rick.

Again, Nancy filled Mina in on what was happening, "If I move another piece now I’ll lose my pawn like you do in the regular game. If I let’em fight, I might win. It’s not likely, but it could happen. If I don’t win, I’ll lose my pawn and my turn. If I do, he’ll lose his pawn, and I’ll get my regular turn. The moves that take pieces off the board in head chess usually take’em in gut chess, too, ‘cause’a the odds. Rick always plays the odds. I don’t. Like Daddy says, anything can happen in a fight."

"Yeah," said Rick, "But if the underdogs won more often than the favorites they wouldn’t be the underdogs, now would they?"

Nancy waved off her brothers sensible observation as if it made no sense at all and let the little soldiers battle it out. The fight added an element of excitement and suspense that was sorely lacking in the standard game.

The girl’s instincts, or whatever she was banking on, served her well. Her pawn made one final lunge with his spear. Both tiny figures vanished for an instant. Then one returned in its original frozen state—Nancy’s.

Mina had never seen a chess game quite like this one and watched in fascination until something in Nancy’s manner reminded her of the girl’s black mother. That in turn, kicked her attention back to Rick who reminded her of their white father.

She found the recollection of the mixed couple snuggling up to each other in front of their mixed offspring as disturbing as it had been when she first saw it. She couldn’t admit to herself that any part of her feeling had to do with bigotry or that most of it had to do with envy, so she didn’t know how to label her emotions. Focusing on the game helped to keep her mind off of them. Unfortunately, it didn’t keep her mind off of everything else.

She was staying with the Tylers for a good reason. Her sister had dropped out of sight. Jimmy was dead. Shag Man was at large. In the final analysis, it was the machinery of the law and the shared visions of their fellow citizens that put people like her and her sister on the run and people like Jimmy in their graves. That arrangement of things had to change. With her new job and Margaret’s help, perhaps she could make a small difference. At least now she knew who the enemy was and why they had to be fought.

She wished she was more like Margaret. What a terrific woman.

...Rick and Nancy played three games. Nancy won all three on the strength of individual contests within each decisive battle won against incredible odds.

In the last game Mina discovered one of Nancy’s secrets when a pawn who should have lost to a bishop, a rook and a knight won every battle and chased away Rick’s queen: Though all of the pawns looked much alike; the rooks like other rooks, the bishops like other bishops and the knights like other knights, there were subtle differences in appearance and capabilities. Mina was then able to see advantages and disadvantages in the placement of some pieces and in the pose they were frozen in before each contest.

Rick was looking for something big, so he took none of those little things into account, much less put any of them together. Nancy took everything into account before deciding what was relevant and put together all of the little things that mattered most. She was taking more chances than he was but not nearly as many as he thought, and none without good reason to believe that the potential benefit outweighed the potential loss. Overall, the odds were really on her side.

"See," said Rick, "How can you win against somebody with that kind of luck?"

The door to the family room opened and Arthur stood in the opening, "Son," he said, "Don’t you think it’s time to pick up Ms. Foski’s car?"

"Sure Dad," said Rick, getting to his feet, "I was about to get you. Come on. I got the entrance code." Then, he pointed a pedantic finger at Mina, "But remember, I’m going to be taking you back and fourth to work for awhile until we know it’s safe."

Mina nodded and the two men left the room with Rick wishing her a good night and assuring her that he would be back in the morning to pick her up.

"You wanna play?" asked Nancy.

Mina begged off. "No," she said, "It’s been a long day for me. I think I should get some sleep."

Nancy nodded sympathetically and got to her feet. "I’ll take you to your room," she said, then leaned over and whispered in Mina’s ear, "I know you already know where it is, but this is how they do it in the T-windows so..." She cocked her head in the direction of the family room to let Mina know where that idea of proper etiquette came from.

Mina nodded her understanding.

The girl led her up the stairs and opened the first door on the right where Nancy had taken her luggage when she first arrived. It was neat and spacious with no hint of who its previous occupant might have been.

"This used to be Rick’s room," said Nancy. "Good night."

Nancy closed the door. A second later, she opened it again and stuck her head inside long enough to say, "He likes you, you know." Then she was gone.

Oh my God, thought Mina.

As she laid out her night clothes on the queen-sized bed, she was faced with the fact that it was the same bed that Rick had slept on. Christ! ...If only he didn’t look so white. ...If only his family wasn’t so nice. If only he wasn’t so nice—And cute, too—No! No!

All the while she prepared for bed, she tried to block out those thoughts but they kept coming; petty, lewd, contradictory and completely beyond her control. She wondered whether he had ever slept in the nude where she was going to sleep that night. She wondered what his thing looked like; whether it was big and ugly or small and pretty, whether it was bald or hooded, crooked or straight....

In the bathroom brushing her teeth, she wondered whether he played with his thing every night before he went to sleep the way she played with hers....

She was back in the bedroom bed now, on Rick’s bed, lying on her back between the sheets. Images in the dark of various females in her place brought back that disturbing feeling she couldn’t label when she saw Arthur and Lydia on the love seat. When she pictured him with white women, she felt the same anger that she did toward Hector Clay. When she pictured him with a black one, she wanted to touch herself. She would have if she’d been at home.

In trying to purge herself of those unwanted desires, she fought to clear her mind of everything, not realizing what images would grow out of her other suppressed feelings. All she could see now was the humping and thrashing of naked bodies in heat, his white pelvis thrusting into black hips, black legs wrapped around white ones. She saw a white man having his way with a black woman, like the white plantation owner and his black slave. Or worse, a black woman who could think of herself as attractive and desirable only if a white man told her she was and proved it by having sex with her.

She knew women like that, black women whose need for approval in every important aspect of their lives required the definitive judgment of white men. Such women were almost as infuriating as the black men who weren’t happy unless they had white woman for sex partners to tell them they were men. Some white women had sex with black men because only black men would have them. Others thought it was exciting to degrade themselves with someone of an inferior race—the next lowest thing to bestiality. For women like these, the lower the social status the better. Perhaps Margaret St. Clair was one of them, considering the things she said at Duncan’s about herself and Hector Clay.

There were other types she couldn’t name but she knew something was fundamentally wrong with all of them. There had to be or she wouldn’t have felt so strongly about them.

Mina couldn’t figure out where to put Rick in any of these permutations and finally decided that the fault wasn’t his. It was his parents...Arthur and Lydia Tyler...The warm, gentle, loving couple who took her in when she needed a safe haven and treated her like their own flesh and blood.

She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get comfortable. She didn’t feel well. How could any decent, self-respecting human being under the circumstances? She and her sister and the Tylers and Margaret St. Clair, and George Calloway and, yes, Hector Clay were, were all at war with the same intractable evil. And here she was alone in bed with the enemy.

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