Death Match

always announcements. They were about the only thing that could be counted on to happen at every meeting. Neil wisely ignored the noise from the floor and started to read from a transparent window that popped into existence in the air in front of him. Catie could see the text content, in glowing letters, scrolling down through it. Near where Mark was sitting in what appeared to be an Eames chair of venerable lineage, Catie now made herself a copy of her workspace chair, itself a copy of the very beat-up Tattersall-checked “comfy chair” in the corner of her bedroom, and curled up in it to watch the proceedings unfold.

They did so with many halts, pauses, and interruptions — some genial, some adolescently crass, and some simply constituting demands for more information about one topic or another. Neil slogged his way through them, methodically enough, but with good humor, like someone used to interruptions from some other group, possibly a large family. This was the way things normally went at the regional meetings Catie had attended — a progression of events always verging cheerfully on chaos, but never quite tipping over the edge. After the announcements members might take the floor to talk about a Net seminar they were organizing, or something that had come up in a gaming or simming group, or some other issue that they thought would be of interest to the gathered Net Force Explorers as a whole. People popped in and out all during the meeting to suit their own schedules, though there was a long-agreed consensus that they should keep quiet as they did it. No appearing suddenly in bursts of virtual flame or other distracting manifestations. This rule was occasionally broken, but since breaking it infallibly caused the person who’d created the distraction to be chucked into the virtual “pool” and hence out of the meeting, with no chance of return, people tended not to do it more than once. However, even with all the noise, joking, and chaos, there was always an undercurrent of seriousness at these get-togethers. Everyone at them, or nearly everyone, intended to try to get into Net Force eventually, and the intensity of their intention as a group tended to shake out those who weren’t serious in pretty short order.

About half an hour went by in this way, and gradually Catie began to realize that nothing being discussed was particularly interesting to her. But there were other matters to think about. Toward the end of another Net Force Explorer’s brief presentation about a new virtual “chip-constant” diagnosis routine for house pets, and an upcoming Explorers charity fund-raiser to cover chipping costs for pet owners who found it hard to afford, that particular Explorer — a blond girl of maybe sixteen — finished up with: “And for all of you who made it here late after celebrating this evening’s victory by South Florida Spat—”

“Yayy!” went a surprising number of voices from the floor, and in the middle of the crowd a small raucous chorus of voices began singing, “What’s that slithering sound you hear?/We are the Slugs, and revenge is near—!” In response, “Fly High Seattle!” yelled one lone voice from the back, and was answered with a fair amount of teasing laughter from all over the room.

Catie raised her eyebrows at that, glancing around the floor. Her gaze suddenly rested on Mark and paused. He had gotten up out of his Eames chair to go have a word with slim, dark, little Charlie Davis, but now Mark was standing near Charlie and looking around the crowd with an unusually thoughtful expression. Seeing that look made Catie start to feel thoughtful herself. You didn’t normally see such expressions on Mark Gridley without good reason. He’s up to something, she thought, knowing that particular focused look too well from her own brother. Just what is he up to?

Neil Linkoping had gotten up behind the bench again and was once more pounding on it. “Anybody else?” he said. “Going once…”

There were already people standing up, already having vanished the chairs they had created for themselves or had arrived in. Catie got up and stretched herself, looking around her. I might have saved myself the trouble, she thought. It was the usual thing, though. As summer came on, a lot of the Explorers got more interested in topics that had to do with vacations, or (while the weather cooperated) the Real World. “Going twice?” Neil said.

“…You going to any more spat games?”

Catie looked around and down. Mark Gridley was standing next to her again.

“Going three times…”

Catie did her best to keep her curiosity, now raging, out of her face. “Probably,” she said. “It has its points. I’m starting to wonder if it’s something I want to play myself. Anyway, my brother wants me to meet a friend of a friend of his who’s a professional spat player. I’ll probably wind up going to the game before we actually meet.”

“Really?” Mark said. “Sounds pretty space. Who is it?”

“Uh, his name is Brickner. George Brickner.”

“Sold for a dollar,” Neil Linkoping was saying to the meeting at large. “That’s it. Meeting’s archived. Next meeting is July thirteenth. Night, everybody…”

All around them everybody was getting up, but for the moment Catie was ignoring them. Mark was looking thoughtful. “South Florida?”

“That’s right. They call him ‘The Parrot.’ Don’t ask me why.”

“Really,” Mark said. His expression was momentarily distant.

“Yeah,” Catie said, watching him curiously.

“Well, maybe I’ll run into you during the tournament sometime,” Mark said.

That surprised her, too. Catie wouldn’t normally have thought that Mark had anything even slightly jockish about him. “Maybe,” she said.

“Do me a favor, though?”

“Sure, what?”

“If you do ever meet Brickner, drop me a virtmail and tell me what he’s like.”

Catie was surprised again. Then she grinned. “Mark, don’t tell me you’re a secret fan of this guy’s….”

Mark’s eyes widened slightly. An embarrassed look? Or something less spontaneous? “Okay,” Mark said then, “I won’t tell you.” And he grinned, turned away, and got very obviously interested in something that tall, slim Megan O’Malley, on the other side of him, was saying to a third Net Force Explorer, a short redheaded guy that Catie didn’t recognize.

For her own part, Catie moved away a little, too, thinking. He didn’t actually answer my question….

And that decided her. She was going to go out of her way, now, to make sure that this meeting with her brother’s friend’s friend would happen…and as soon as possible.

Catie waved good night at Maj Green, halfway across the room and talking fast to a handsome dark-haired young guy. Got to virtmail her about that simming conference. She’s been getting into that kind of thing…. Then she re-created the doorway back into her own workspace. She stepped through it and came out in the gallery over the LOC’s main reading room. There, musing, Catie paused for a moment, then turned and faced the door again. “Hal’s place,” she said.

The iridescent blue “hold’ pattern swirled in the doorway, but, rather to her surprise, didn’t immediately dissolve. “Casual visitors are being discouraged,” said Catie’s workspace management program.

“Since when am I a ‘casual visitor’?” Catie said. “Tell him it’s me.”

“No! No! Nooooo!” came her brother’s voice, followed by a terrible but (to her ears) rather artificial scream.

“I give it a six,” Catie said after a moment. “Hal, I’m serious, I need to talk to you for a minute.”

There was a groan on the other side of the virtual interface. Then the “hold” pattern dissolved, and Catie stepped through the doorway, glanced around her — and stood still in surprise.

Normally Hal’s workspace looked like a parts warehouse, full of rack storage shelves which in turn were full of “cardboard boxes,” all symbolic containers for his many files. Catie had spent many hours teasing him about minimalist retrotech, and what kind of person would take a workspace which could look like anything possible that human imagination could devise, and turn it into something like the warehouse end of a catalog store. Now, though, Catie got the feeling that she was going to be able to raise the teasing to a whole new level. A circle of high, gloomy walls built of blocks of splotched gray stone rose up all around her, and all kinds of bizarre electrical apparatus were lined up against them, buzzing and sparking: strange rotating wheels spitting blue-fire electrical discharge, Tesla coils up and down which writhing arcs of electricity slid and sizzled. As imagery went, it was a superlative job. Hal had plainly gone to some trouble to get the proportions right. Even the sound effects were right on. Catie could hear peasants shouting outside, and if she stuck her head out one of the high Gothic-arched windows, she was sure she would see that they had torches and pitchforks. This is