temporarily set our scruples aside.”
Catie got up and started to pace a little herself.
“Anyway,” Winters said, “will you think about it?”
“I have been thinking about it,” she said. “For my own part, the answer’s yes. And for George’s part…I have this idea that he may be asking for help, somehow. Maybe he suspects what’s going on. Either way, it sounds like you’d be in a position to help him out.”
“…Yes,” said Winters, and he was looking at her thoughtfully. “And so would you. You and he seem to have struck it off pretty positively…and he seems willing to talk to you about what’s going on.”
“Not just willing,” said Catie, “but positively eager.” That was, in fact, something that had made her wonder a little.
Winters sat quiet for a few moments at that. “All right,” he said. “Catie, as the play-offs progress, would you be willing to be a good listener for a while?”
“To find out whether anything illegal is going on inside the club?”
“That would be part of it.”
Catie held still for a moment, thinking. She wasn’t wild about the idea of being some kind of informer. Yet she thought back to what George himself had been saying about the difficulties of spatball in general, and South Florida in particular.
“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable about this,” Winter said. “If you feel you can’t in good conscience be involved in an operation of this kind, even tangentially, I’ll understand. Yet at the same time it’s a unique opportunity to make sure that the forces we suspect are moving in on spatball don’t get a chance to consolidate a choke-hold on the sport at large. The money coming into spat means that all the levels of play, especially the more amateur ones, can funnel their share of the funds into the community projects they love…and keep their sport clean and alive in its present form. But a loss to the organized crime people moving in on them now will suggest that the rest of the sport is weak as well, and can be covertly suborned by illegal payments and shady influence….”
Catie stood silent for a few moments. “Mr. Winters,” she said. “George is a friend. I’m not going to lead him on. But what he tells me freely—”
“That’s all we’d want to hear about,” Winters said. “I wouldn’t think of asking you to betray any confidences. But any indication that George was uneasy about what was going on inside his team would definitely help us work out how best to keep the damage that we suspect is about to happen, from happening at all….”
He stood up, too. “Obviously you’re going to need to talk to your parents about this, and so am I. But there wasn’t any point in talking to them until I’d spoken to you first. This isn’t likely to be a dangerous business, which is one of the reasons I’m willing to involve you. At the same time, you’re going to need to keep your eyes open. We are going to be sniffing around people who are intent on making sure no one finds out what they’re doing…and when they begin to suspect that that’s happening anyway, things are likely to get uncomfortable. That’s the point at which you’re going to excuse yourself and let the Net Force operatives handle things.”
She nodded. “That’s fine with me. I’m a quiet type at heart.”
He didn’t quite snort. “Then what you’re doing asking Mark Gridley to do maintenance work on your computer is beyond me,” he said. “But we’ll leave that aside for the moment. Anyway, when I find out where Mark is, I’ll ask him to come talk to you about the ‘sealed’ game servers, so that you know what kind of things to listen for when you talk to George Brickner. Meanwhile, please talk to your folks soon, Catie. And let me know when you have. I’ll be in touch with them shortly thereafter to answer any questions.”
“I will, Mr. Winters.”
He gave her a wave, then headed back through the door into his office, which sealed behind him.
Catie stood there gazing down at the chessboard and trying to decide what to do next.
5
Eventually she got offline and went looking for her dad. His studio door was open a crack, which meant it was all right for him to be disturbed—“as if I’m not disturbed most of the time” was his usual line, “at least, to judge by what your mother says.” Catie pushed the door open a little and found her father standing in the middle of the studio, the CNNSI artwork on its easel pushed off to one side for the moment, while he stood under the spotlight with the digitizing camera on its tripod, apparently changing a lens.
“You busy, Dad?” Catie said.
“Just thinking bad thoughts about Zeiss,” he said. “Come on in.”
“What’s the matter?” She came over and looked curiously at the lenses her father had laid out on the small table nearby, big, black-cased, knurl-edged things.
“Aah, the new lens is still showing chromatic aberration around the edges,” he said.
“The one they just sent you as a replacement?”
“Yeah,” her father said. He looked with distaste at the lens he was holding in his hand. “There are two possibilities, and neither of them is great. Either the replacement suffers from the same problem as the original wide angle — which is just possible — or there’s something wrong with the camera. Naturally that’s what Zeiss is going to claim when I send this lens back to them. And the second camera’s in the shop, so I can’t test the lens to see if it fails in the same way.” He frowned. “And I need the wide-angle for this — the other lenses can’t get the whole painting in one shot. And I refuse to waste time trying to shoot this picture in pieces. It never matches up perfectly, no matter how hard you try….”
“If you’d done this in virtual space, in Pinxit or one of the other rendering programs,” Catie said, knowing perfectly well what the response was going to be, “you wouldn’t have this problem.”
“I hate Pinxit,” her father said, with some relish. “Its user interface is a complete waste of time. And if I’d never married your mother, I wouldn’t have you standing here making fun of me while I’m going insane in the name of art, either. So let’s not play the If game.” He gave her a rather dry look, but it was still affectionate. “Meanwhile, did you come in here just to make fun of my creative genius being stymied, or was there something else?”
“Uh, yeah.” As briefly as she could without leaving out anything important, Catie described to her father the visit she had just had from James Winters.
While she was talking, her father plopped himself down on the paint-spattered couch and sat there turning the offending camera lens over and over in his hands. When Catie finished, he looked up at her for a few moments and didn’t say anything.
Catie stood there and tried to conceal the fact that she was twitching slightly.
“And?” her dad said.
“And what?”
“What do you think you should do?”
“I want to help,” Catie said.
Her father started turning the lens over in his hands again. “Your mother’s attitude,” he said. It was something of a joke in the family that Catie seemed to take a whole lot more after her mother than her father. “You think you can make a difference?”
“I think I might be able to,” Catie said. “It’s worth a try.”
Catie’s dad raised his eyebrows and gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. “Is this opinion entirely motivated by the desire for justice and fair play,” he said, “or does it have something to do with George?”
Catie flushed. “Naturally it has
“What,” her father said, “that he’s a little old for you?”
Now she laughed at him. “Of
“Huh…?” Her father looked surprised. “Why? When he’s suddenly becoming a national celebrity, and he could be rich if he wanted to?…And probably will be, no matter what his intentions are,” her father added. “They have a way of getting to you, the sponsors, the big money…if they want you. Time is on their side.”
Catie filed that thought away for consideration later. “It’s more like that he’s a little lonely,” she said. “He has
