Ajayi pointed at one of the wooden chess pieces - a black queen - and said, "Well, I think you're too hard on them. That's not the way to get results. By the way, I think that's checkmate."

"You don't know -" Quiss began, then gave a start as the last part of what his adversary had said sank in. He frowned deeply and peered at the narrow line of black and white spaces hanging in the air in front of him. "What?" he said.

"Checkmate," Ajayi said, her old voice slightly cracked and uneven. "I think."

"Where?" Quiss said indignantly, sitting back with a smile somewhere between annoyance and relief. "That's only check; I can get out of it. There." He leaned forward quickly and took hold of a white bishop, placing it one black square further forward, in front of his king. Ajayi smiled and shook her head; she put her hand just to one side of the glittering, projected line of squares and seemed to fumble with something invisible in the air. A black knight appeared, as though out of profound shadow, on the surface of the ultimately narrow board. Quiss took in his breath to say something, then held it.

"Sorry," Ajayi said, "that's mate." She said it quietly, but then wished she hadn't spoken at all. She frowned to herself, but Quiss was too absorbed glaring at the board - looking desperately up and down its length for useful pieces that were not there - to notice what she'd said.

Ajayi sat back in her little stool and stretched. She put her arms out from her sides and back, arching her spine and wondering vaguely as she did so why it had been thought necessary or relevant to give them such old bodies.