"That'd go fine." Sandra leaned back. "Confidentially, Doc, I was having trouble swallowing ... well, just about everything here."
He nodded. "You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess," he assured her. "It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful young lady to this 64-square madhouse?"
Sandra briefly told him her story and her predicament. By the time they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed the other.
"You have one great advantage," he told her. "You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers." He swallowed half his demitasse and smacked his lips. "As for the Machine—you do know, I suppose, that it is not a humanoid metal robot, walking about clanking and squeaking like a late medieval knight in armor?"
"Yes, Doc, but...." Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question.
"Wait." He lifted a finger. "I think I know what you're going to ask. You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. Right?"
Sandra grinned and nodded. Doc's ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as the bubbly, mildly astringent mixture she was sipping.
He removed his pince-nez, massaged the bridge of his nose and replaced them.
"If you had," he said, "a billion computers all as fast as the Machine, it would take them all the time there ever will be in the universe just to play through all the possible games of chess, not to mention the time needed to classify those games into branching families of wins for White, wins for Black and draws, and the additional time required to trace out chains of key-moves leading always to wins. So the Machine can't play chess like God. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on."