Pawn takes Bishop

Alinta Thornton

Penny's question froze when she noticed the Prime Minister's feet do the dance. Where had she seen that before?
        "Yes?" John Howard was pointing her out of the press pack with a thin smile.
        "What's your view on the latest round of cut-backs to the Defence Force, Prime Minister?" she asked, flushing. She was unable to look away from his twinkling shoes.
        She barely heard his answer, as they stepped out the pattern -- one, two and three. The movements seemed to have a ritual, primitive quality.
        She was sure she'd seen someone else doing them. Of course! Last week, at the conference of Government Heads in Singapore. But what did it remind her of?
        Back in the office, Penny chose a tape from her file, muted the sound and played it double speed. Yep. There was the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, performing the same step -- one to the side and two small steps forward.
        What did it signify? She knew it was something important -- but she had no idea what. She snorted. Must be cracking up.
        But she played it again, and again.
        "Penny." Steve was in her office, waving paper in the air.
        "What?"
        "You seem a million miles away."
        "Yes, I was." She hesitated. Oh, what the hell. "Steve, let me show you something. What does this remind you of?" She stood up, and performed a clumpy version of the steps, one to the side, two forwards.
        Steve snorted. "What are you doing?"
        "Just bear with me. Watch again. It means something, I'm sure of it."
        He sighed. "Okay."
        She did it again.
        "One more time... Maybe it does remind me of something."
        Penny stepped out the pattern again.
        Steve said triumphantly, "I've got it. It's the horse, you know, the knight in chess. One sideways, two forwards."
        "That's it!"
        "I'm always right."
        "Yeah, sure."
        "What are you up to?" Steve was always trying to nose into her stories. But this wasn't going to be any kind of story, she was sure of that.
        "Check this out," she said. Steve pulled up a chair as she played him the tape.
        "What am I looking at?"
        "It's what you're looking for. Those steps I just did."
        "Oh come on. What would anyone at a press conference be dancing?"
        "Well yes. Exactly." She paused the tape on the New Zealand Prime Minister. "Look, there's Helen Clark doing it."
        "You're right! Must be an ASIO plot."
        She hit him firmly on the arm.
        "Ouch."
        "Shut up and look." She played another tape.
        "Oh Jesus, there's Tony Blair doing it."
        "I'm glad I'm not making this up."
        "Me too, I had you in a little padded white cell there for a minute."
        "Thanks a bunch." She hit him again.
        "Will you stop that?" he said, rubbing his arm. "If they're knights, what does that make us?"
        She chuckled wryly, knowing of course she would be a pawn. She ran to get the tape of today's press conference. "Look, there's the pack of journalists -- all doing a step with that pointy-toed thing."
        Sure enough, every journalist at some point during the conference took a dainty step forward, grotesquely formal. Even her.
        "You're right, they're all doing one step," he said. "Hah, that'd be right, we're all pawns. I knew it."
        They paused, suddenly realising how odd it was.
        "If the Prime Minister's a knight, who's the Queen?" Steve asked.
        "That's a tough one."
        "And who's the King? Bill Gates?"
        "Wait there -- back in a minute."
        She rushed back with another tape, and flung it into the video machine. "Here's Bill on a recent visit."
        They watched, entranced, as Bill stepped once sideways and twice forward. And as the journalists each stepped once forward.
        "He's not the king then."
        "Damn, there goes that lovely conspiracy theory," said Steve.
        "OK, maybe it's one of the media moguls."
        A quick review of file tapes from the newspaper library revealed that they were castles.
        "This is getting better all the time," said Steve. "What if it's some obscure little person, say a guy who takes tolls on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Or a taxi driver in Bengal. We'd never find them."
        "And we'd have to see 20 tapes of them to be sure. A Queen could move diagonally 10 times in a row before she happened to move straight ahead."
        "We'd just write her off as a bishop."
        "Or a pawn."
        They sat in silence, embarrassed at how seriously they had been treating this game.
        "I'll have to go write that Defence Force story now, Steve, or I won't even be a pawn," she said, standing up. Suddenly it was easier not to meet his eyes. "Thanks for your help."
        "Glad to be of service, my lady," he said, bowing with a flourish.
        She laughed.
        But then he began his trip out of her office with three diagonal pointy-toed steps, and she didn't feel like laughing any more.

* * *

That evening, Penny went home with a bag full of file tapes from the Fairfax library. By 3 a.m. she had identified 15 knights, most of them leaders of their country, but a couple were CEOs of multinationals. A surprising number of writers were bishops.
        Who were the King and Queen? She ruled out Queen Elizabeth (bishop), Oprah Winfrey (pawn), Hillary Clinton (knight) and Madeleine Allbright (knight). Likewise Bill Clinton, who was a castle, Tony Blair (knight) and the CEO of Mitsubishi (a pawn, surprisingly).
        She switched off the video, and piled all the tapes back into her bag. She poured herself a glass of cabernet sauvignon and sipped the wine, its warmth spreading through her.
        This was getting ridiculous. It was far too late at night, and she was obviously going way too far with this.
        Then again. The tapes didn't lie. It was all there on the tapes.
        A sudden thought hit her. She put down the glass, and scrabbled through the bag to find a particular obituary tape, fumbling in her haste.
        She pressed play -- and watched in horrified fascination as Princess Diana did forward, sideways and crossways steps.
        The Queen. And she'd been taken. Penny stepped out into the coolness of her garden. That was better. Everything seemed more ordinary out here.
        "All right," she said aloud to no one in particular. "What if I wanted to be a bishop?" Half laughing at herself, imagining the self-deprecatory story she would tell her friends some time over a bowl of pasta, she danced the diagonal step she had seen the Pope perform on his arrival in Buenos Aires.
        The pain stopped her after just two steps. She took a deep breath. Two more steps, and her knee was burning. Experimentally, she took one step back, and the pain lessened.
        "All right, whoever you are," she said. "I'm going again." She set her jaw, and took four more steps until her leg was stabbed with pain. She wouldn't move. She'd stay put. She'd show... whoever it was. She fell to the ground, her legs unable to support her. Just keep still, keep still.
        "Come on, Players!" she yelled.
        "I'm not moving. You'll have to talk to me!"
        "Oh, all right then," boomed a cross voice that seemed to emanate from her fuschia bush. "What is it?"
        "What's your name?" Penny asked, dropping automatically into interrogation mode despite the pain.
        "Player One," the voice said.
        "I suppose there's a Player Two then?"
        "Naturally. But you don't want to meet him."
        "Yes I do. Of course I do."
        "Aren't I good enough for you? You humans are all the same. Unappreciative."
        "Oh Jesus." Here she was in agony, and the Player wanted to pout.
        "I wouldn't go bandying His name around, it isn't safe."
        "Enough with this. Who are you?" She doubted she would ever walk again.
        "Can't you guess?" The voice was now coming from various points in her garden hose.
        She drew her breath sharply. He didn't mean... He couldn't mean...
        "Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You humans really are slow. I even say it in the Old Testament -- you're my chosen people."
        "I thought that was the Jews?"
        "They needed some encouragement at the time," He said defensively.
        "So dare I ask, who is Player Two?" As Penny asked the question, she realised she already knew the answer. "Never mind," she mumbled.
        The voice, now coming from her outdoor table, said, "What do you think He'll do if a pawn starts going around pretending to be a bishop?"
        "I don't know. What?" She rubbed her knee.
        "He'll confiscate you, that's what. He's a cranky old bugger."
        He muttered something to Himself. Uncomplimentary, she felt certain.
        "So what if He does confiscate me?"
        "So. What?" The voice was louder than Penny could bear.
        "All right, all right, keep your knickers on," she said crossly. "The neighbours will hear you."
        "So He'll win, that's what," Player One said at a more reasonable decibel level. "And you wouldn't enjoy being confiscated, either," He added darkly.
        "And if Player Two does win, what then?"
        "He wins," Player One said again, as if that explained everything.
        Her eyes filled with inexplicable tears. "And then?" she whispered, not sure if she really wanted to know.
        "We start a new game, of course."

* * *

Penny took seven diagonal steps back.

And the Earth continued to be.

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