Death Match

Installation of conditionals.”

Darjan was silent for a moment. “That might work,” he said. “As long as deinstallation procedures are included as well. Be a shame if someone went looking at their Net machines’ routines, after the fact, and found something out of the ordinary there.”

“Of course deinstalls will be put in at the same time,” Heming said. “There are ways to do such things that won’t alarm the usual antiviral and system-scan diagnostics. It’s all taken care of.”

“Then get on with it,” Darjan growled. “The first game is Thursday…and it had better go the way our principals want, if South Florida is involved…or they’re going to start taking your intervention, or lack of it, personally.”

This time Heming did gulp, whether he wanted to or not.

Monday afternoon Catie got in from school and went online again to clean up her virtmail, and to make another attempt to get in touch with Mark. It wasn’t like him to be incommunicado for so long, except for his actual school time. He seemed to practically live online, and Catie thought that the only reason he didn’t get in trouble over this was probably that his parents had to spend so much of their time online as well. She stood there in the Great Hall of her workspace and said, “Still nothing from him?”

“Nothing. Should we call the media and tell them the engagement’s off, boss?”

“Fff,” Catie said, a soft sound of annoyance, but it wasn’t serious — she had other things on her mind. I wonder if he’s had to go away suddenly with his dad or something. They do travel a lot—

She plopped down into her beat-up comfy chair and brooded for a few moments. Well, no point in worrying about this any more until I hear from him, she thought. If I—

“Incoming call,” said her workspace manager. “Requesting entry into the space, if you’re available.”

“Who is it?”

“James Winters.”

Catie’s mouth fell open, and she stood up hurriedly. Every member of the Net Force Explorers knew James Winters by sight. He was the group’s liaison to Net Force as a whole, and theoretically on call to anyone in the Explorers if they had some problem. That was the theory, anyway. Every Explorer also knew perfectly well that Winters had other work in Net Force which was far more important than his liaison work, and that it would be stupid to bother him with things that weren’t genuinely crucial. More than stupid: suicidal, at least to your employment prospects at Net Force, if you seriously intended ever to work there…for James Winters was unquestionably going to be one of the committee that decided whether you got hired, and if you had ever wasted his time on purpose, he would certainly remember.

When he came looking for you, however…all bets were off. “Let him right in,” Catie said.

A doorway formed in the air, dark at first, then revealing a rather standard-looking government office with afternoon sunlight coming into it through the stripe-shadows of Venetian blinds, and through the door stepped James Winters. About six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with a Marine brush cut and a thoughtful, chiseled face, Winters stood there in conservative street clothes — cream short-sleeved shirt, dark trousers — and looked up and around him with recognition and (Catie thought) some pleasure. “Afternoon, Catie,” he said.

“Good afternoon!” she said, trying not to sound too strangled as she said it.

He turned around to look at the frescoed ceilings of the Great Hall, and the carved marble pillars. “Nice job. Did you do this from scratch?”

“Uh, yes,” Catie said. “It’s taken a while…but I see a lot of the real building.”

“Yes, your mother works there, doesn’t she,” Winters said, continuing to look upward.

“That’s right. Can I offer you a seat?” Catie said.

“Thanks, yes.”

“Space?”

“One chair coming up,” said her workspace management program, and produced an executive-style swivel chair off to one side of the “giant” chessboard. Winters went to it and sat down, glancing at the game as he did so. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Not at all.”

“Good. Let me start out by saying that this has nothing to do with the Net Force Explorers, as such.”

“Oh,” Catie said. Boy, that sounded intelligent.

Winters smiled, a dry expression. “All right,” he said. “Catie, I see that you had a meeting with George Brickner the other day.”

Catie blinked at that. “Uh, yes. He was in town with his team before the Chicago game.” And Net Force is watching him. How interesting…

“Your brother set that up, I take it.”

“Yes, he’s buddies with one of George’s friends.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question or two about that lunch?”

“No,” Catie said carefully. “But I hope you’ll tell me why.”

Winters gave her a hard, thoughtful look. It wasn’t an unfriendly one. “Before we get into detail on that,” Winters said, “tell me if I’m up to speed on something. You’ve been working in imagery sciences, haven’t you? Fine arts mostly, but a fair amount of emphasis on techniques for manipulating virtual spaces.”

“That’s right,” Catie said. “Staying at patina-level isn’t much good if you’re going to get seriously involved in sampling and analyzing virtual content. You have to go down to structure-level as well. I may not be a code wizard as yet, but I can recognize from an image what’s been done to it to make it look the way it does, and what else has to be done to change that, or to restore it if there’s been a change.”

Winters nodded. One part of Catie’s brain was shrieking at her, Are you out of your mind, you’re only seventeen, how can you possibly be making claims like this so calmly to this man? while another, perfectly at ease, was saying in response, But they’re true. “False modesty,” her father was always telling her, “is potentially more fatal to your career than a bullet in the brain. If you know how to do something, say so. You don’t have to brag, but you do have to tell yourself the truth about what you know how to do; otherwise you can’t make those talents available to others…and if you can’t do that, what good are those talents to you or anybody else?”…Now, Catie thought, she would find out whether her dad was right.

“All right,” Winters said. “That particular aspect of your studies is fortuitous at the moment. Let me backtrack a little. You’ve started following spatball?”

“Yes,” Catie said. “My brother got me into it.”

“He’s been interested for a while?”

“I wouldn’t say a long while,” Catie said, caution overcoming her for the moment. “Some weeks, anyway.”

“Ah, I see…. So here’s what this is about,” Winters said. “Net Force has some concerns about the conduct of the upcoming spatball play-offs. Not just because of the presence of South Florida in them. But the Banana Slugs—” He stopped, and grinned. “I’m sorry. It makes me want to laugh every time I use the name. Have you ever seen a banana slug?”

“Just yesterday,” Catie said. “Several times. At close range.”

“I see you’re overcome with the excitement. Well, anyway…The team’s presence in the play-offs is serving to crystallize out various concerns we’ve had about the conduct of spatball, and some other virtual sports, for a while now. Concerns about the integrity of their gaming environments, for one thing.”

That made Catie stop very still for a moment, thinking of what George had said to her…and the larger implications of his words. When a sport was played entirely in the virtual realm, it became unusually vulnerable to being disrupted by people with a vested interest in one outcome or another. Normally, as in the case of spatball, there were special committees and organizations set up by the governing bodies of such sports, which assigned officials whose jobs were specifically to keep the virtual sports arenas “clean.” The officials made sure that servers remained untampered with, that scoring and monitoring software was working properly and was properly manned and operated during games, things of that sort.

But who watches the watchers? Catie thought. If your officials are crooked, how are the players, or anyone else, ever going to find out?