The Project Gutenberg EBook of Check and Checkmate, by Walter Miller

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Title: Check and Checkmate

Author: Walter Miller

Illustrator: TOM BEECHAM

Release Date: June 16, 2010 [EBook #32837]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHECK and CHECKMATE

By WALTER MILLER, Jr.

Illustrated by TOM BEECHAM

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction January 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _Victory hinges not always on the mightiest sword, but often
on lowly subterfuge. Here is a classic example, with the Western World
as stooge!_]

John Smith XVI, new President of the Western Federation of Autonomous
States, had made a number of campaign promises that nobody really
expected him to fulfill, for after all, the campaign and the election
were only ceremonies, and the President--who had no real name of his
own--had been trained for the executive post since birth. He had been
elected by a popular vote of 603,217,954 to 130, the dissenters casting
their negative by announcing that, for the sake of national unity, they
refused to participate in any civilized activities during the
President's term, whereupon they were admitted (voluntarily) to the camp
for conscientious objectors.

But now, two weeks after his inauguration, he seemed ready to make good
the first and perhaps most difficult promise of the lot: to confer by
televiewphone with Ivan Ivanovitch the Ninth, the Peoplesfriend and
Vicar of the Asian Proletarian League. The President apparently meant to
keep to himself the secret of his success in the difficult task of
arranging the interview in spite of the lack of any diplomatic contact
between the nations, in spite of the Hell Wall, and the interference
stations which made even radio communication impossible between the two
halves of the globe. Someone had su