down to the waterfront to board _Prinsendam_, I stopped at a number ofbookstores, speed reading all the of the chess sections until I foundwhat I wanted, two hours before sailing time. I bought the book. Isailed. I wrote "Unicorn Variation" in odd moments during what proveda fine cruise. My protagonist is named Martin—any similarity toGeorge (who is a chess expert) is not exactly unintentional. (I'llinclude a note on the game itself as an afterpiece to the tale.)Later that year the _Prisendam_ burned and sank. The story didn't. Isold it a sufficient number of times to pay for the cruise.

Thanks, George.

A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft,almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like astorm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between theflares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashesassembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind downthe arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unreadbooks or stillnesses between the notes of a song.

Gone again. Back again. Again.

Power, you said? Yes. It takes considerable force of identity tomanifest before or after one's time. Or both.

As it faded and gained it also advanced, moving through the warmafternoon, its tracks erased by the wind. That is, on those occasionswhen there were tracks.

A reason. There should always be a reason. Or reasons.

It knew why it was there—but not why it was _there_, in thatparticular locale.

It anticipated learning this shortly, as it approached thedesolation-bound line of the old street. However, it knew that thereason may also come before, or after. Yet again, the pull was thereand the force of its being was such that it had to be close tosomething.

The buildings were worn and decayed and some of them fallen andall of them drafty and dusty and empty. Weeds grew among the