Queen’s Gambit Accepted: that shook me a little, but I ploughed on, trying to remember the orthodox attack. I soon found that Black wasn’t doing anything orthodox at all, aside from developing major pieces brilliantly. After move eight, I leaned back, cogitating.

“I think I’ve done something rather stupid,” I said. “As far as I can see, I’ve laid myself open to massacre somewhere.”

Señora Posador nodded without smiling. “I regret that you have. This combination of mine was played against our champion Pablo Garcia in the Caribbean tournament last month — it so happened that I was discussing it with him yesterday, and I thought I might try it out.”

“Well, but Garcia is a grand master,” I said. “I suppose this was one of the games he lost.”

“Not at all,” said Señora Posador indifferently. “He won in twenty-seven moves.”

I looked at the board. I was faced with a choice between losing my Queen or putting her back on the home square; either way I got a move behind and lost material in a few moves’ time.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m no grand master.”

“If you will permit, then…” She leaned over and delicately tipped pieces back to restore the position at move four. “I recommend this — you see why, of course. Then as previously; now so, so, so. Then take the pawn, and the situation is altogether different, no?”

“Is that what Garcia did?” I suggested, studying the new setup.

“Oh, no. That is what he decided afterward he should have done. It leads to a resignation by Black in fifteen moves or so. Garcia is a lazy man, he says. He only plays long games when it is unavoidable.”

“Well, the one that was acted out at the president’s garden party in his honor was long enough,” I said. “About ninety moves, I think.”

“His opponent refused the offer of a draw; he was stubborn. Which would you prefer, señor — to continue or start afresh?”

“Let me try again,” I said. “I haven’t played for months, and I never played well. But I ought to do better than that.”

We started over; this time I managed to hang on, and the game went to about forty-five moves before I found my queen neatly trapped and resigned to avoid systematic slaughter.

“Better,” said Señora Posador with clinical approval. “If you would permit me to give you some advice, Señor Hakluyt…”

“Of course.”

“It is a matter of combination. Each move must be seen in relation to the whole. And this applies also in real life. I suggest you consider this point. Good morning, señor.”

And with that final cryptic remark she rose, smiling, and was gone.

I told a waiter to take the chessmen away and bring me a copy of this morning’s Liberdad; having seen Tiempo, I wanted to know how the day’s news looked through government eyes.

As usual, here were substantially the same items in a completely different order of precedence. Almost half the front page was given over to an attack on Sigueiras’s slum, with editorial comment to the effect that now his rearguard action to preserve his notorious public nuisance had failed, the citizens of Ciudad de Vados should take vigorous action to hasten the process of clearing it away.

There was a change of attitude detectable here: almost, I thought, I could discern a note of hysteria. Up till now Liberdad had soothingly been at pains to explain that the matter was in hand and the paternal government would soon put things to rights. Today there was distinct impatience and more than one hint that the government wasn’t doing as well as it should. A heavy black box beside some pictures of the ragged slum-dwellers contained an accusation of the kind I thought was Tiempo’s prerogative here — Castaldo, deputy to Diaz in the Ministry of the Interior and one of the many officials I’d seen talking with Diaz at Presidential House, was supposed to have tried to shield Sigueiras from the long overdue clearance of his human pigsties. What he’d done, it seemed, was chiefly to nominate the substitute lawyer who took over Sigueiras’s case from Brown. Having seen this substitute in action, I couldn’t find that a particularly heinous offense — Sigueiras would probably have got on better with no lawyer at all. However, there it was; presumably, since Liberdad was the official organ, Señor Castaldo was being readied for dismissal.

Well, if Liberdad was going to start throwing mud like this, what kind of fireworks would Tiempo have to produce? Most likely they’d reopen their broadsides against Dr. Ruiz, and I wasn’t looking forward to the probable consequences. It struck me as curious that I hadn’t heard anything for some time of the attempt to disqualify Judge Romero after his behavior in the Guerrero case. Maybe, because of public sympathy with Guerrero after his murder and public antipathy to Fats Brown after his disappearance, Dominguez had judged it unwise to press the matter too hard. Still, I wasn’t complaining; Romero had issued me with that injunction against Tiempo, and so long as that remained in force, Romero, for my money, could sit on the judicial bench here or anywhere. I folded the paper and sat thinking for a while. Or more exactly, not thinking so much as feeling. Feeling the city in terms of people. Trying to fit it into the country as a whole, as Maria Posador had suggested.

I couldn’t. The trouble was this: Ciudad de Vados didn’t fit into the country. It wouldn’t fit, perhaps, into any country in the world. Had it been just its buildings, you could, of course, have fitted those in; the difficulty stemmed from the people, the particular people, the particular types, classes, beliefs, prejudices under which they labored. I had a moment of insight, trying to see the city through the eyes of a villager whose water supply had been taken for it: I, as it were, remembered with the peasant’s memory how other people from across the sea had come with strange and wonderful things — horses, guns, metal armor — and how the world had turned topsy-turvy.

Maybe the Conquistadores were here again. Maybe I was — without wishing it — one of them.

I got up, sighing, and went down to the traffic department.

I now had a considerable mass of data processed; not unnaturally, Angers was eager to know what the results would be. It cost me something of an effort to reorientate my thinking in the correct direction.

“The heart of the problem,” I said when I’d succeeded, “is definitely the market area. There’s nowhere else in Ciudad de Vados, except in the middle of the Plaza del Oeste, where a market could organically grow up — and there’s legislation covering the plazas, so that’s all right. If you can get your costing department to run a rough estimate on what I give them, we can find out by tomorrow morning how much of my four million my draft scheme will eat up. Then there’ll be a matter of a few more days to iron out snags. Not long, I think.

“Then once your market is disposed of, your squatters’ livelihood is largely gone; they’ll have to beg or peddle their stuff. In a few months, especially if the government gives ’em a shove, the trickle back to the villages will become a torrent; pretty soon the number of squatters will drop to a handful, and inside a year the climate of opinion should permit evicting those who remain. As I get it, this is the Vados technique.”

“Well, don’t take my verdict,” Angers answered. “It’s up to Vados and Diaz to fight it out. But it sounds fair enough. A year, you say? A long year it will be. Still… And how about that eyesore of Sigueiras’s?”

“As I’ve said before, that’s far less important than it looks. The way things are moving already, Sigueiras can be legislated out of his slum without any opposition except from his tenants. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taking so long.”

“Maybe the reason is — you’ve seen Liberdad this morning?”