"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?

  "Environment integrity has been a problem of sorts ever since this branch of sports got started," Winters said. "All the umpires, referees, and invigilators for the various sports routinely undergo random testing. Lie-detector tests, drug testing, all the usual routines. It's not a perfect solution by any means, from the civil rights point of view as well as many others, but it's worked well enough, by and large. However, it's never safe to assume that a system like this is working well enough so that it doesn't need periodic reassessment. When something has become status quo...that's the time that people start looking for ways to subvert it without the subversion showing. And we have some evidence that that might be happening now."

  He leaned back in his chair. "I don't want to get into too much detail right this moment," Winters said. "Among other reasons, I don't want to take a chance of prejudicing your own ideas, or pushing your judgment in one direction or another. But the indications of interference with spatball have been mounting up over recent months...and now South Florida is going to cause some of the forces involved in that interference to start showing their hands. We've been waiting for this for a while."

  "I want to get something clear here. You mean," Catie said, "that these 'forces' are involved in actively fixing games."

  Winters nodded. "There are always people who gamble," he said. "And the other side of that coin is that there are always people who want to control the gambling, or try to, to make a profit from it. In some cases, like casino gambling, the control is fairly benign. You go in to play mathematical games of chance, with easily predictable odds. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and the house rakes off its ten percent as part of the normal state of affairs. But when gambling starts to try to affect less mathematically predictable games, and affect them a lot more robustly--games with a lot of variables..."

  "Like sports," Catie said.

  "Like sports--then matters can get out of hand. Now, people will always bet. It just seems to be part of human nature, something that can't be wiped out...which is why most governments around the world have legitimized at least certain kinds of sports gambling. From the government's point of view, if you can't stamp something out, tax it and attempt to regulate it. But there are always elements that chafe at that control, and who feel that what the government is taxing, they should have a piece of, too. They lay their own bets--sometimes through big syndicates, as a means of spreading the profit around so that it's not too obvious--and then they influence the sports they're betting on in any way they dare, to get as close as they can to the results they want."

  "I suppose," Catie said, "that it would annoy these syndicates if there were sports they couldn't influence...."

  "That's part of what's going on in this particular case, we think," Winters said. "They see it as lost revenue. But also, when they get used to running a racket or a betting pattern in a specific way, and something comes in to upset that pattern, that can annoy the syndicates, too...and occasionally they get annoyed enough to stand up on their hind legs and try to do something about it."

  Winters got up and began to pace. "At the moment, there are at least two syndicates that we suspect have been interfering, or trying to interfere, with spatball over the last couple of years. They've kept their interventions small-scale, until now. Co-opting a few players, trying to get them to throw games, or to get their teammates to help them do it...that kind of thing. It wasn't that successful, as far as we can tell. But even when this didn't work, the syndicates were making enough money from betting on spatball that it wasn't worth making a big stink when things went wrong."

  "But then South Florida came along," Catie said, "and changed the pattern."

  "That's right. Now, by and large, the syndicates aren't going to go broke just because of South Florida. They don't bet on just one team to win. They use the normal bookmakers' 'spread' to cover their losses. But South Florida is disturbing the syndicates' old established pattern. The syndicates we're watching--well, these particular gamblers are very conservative. They hate to have to develop new plans when the old ones have been working just fine. For the sake of getting rid of this new factor in the odds, we think one or the other of the main betting syndicates is moving to try something--we think they may actually try to tamper with the virtual environment itself."

  He sat down again, hunched forward a little, his hands folded. "Normally they'd shy away from this," Winters said, "for fear of detection. But if they do this now, and manage to pull it off successfully, then they'll try it again, in other sports...and the effects down the road could be very bad. Everything from the various 'fantasy leagues' that play casually around the world to the 'real' leagues that play under virtual conditions could be affected, if we don't get a handle on this and stop it now. We want to catch the perpetrators with their hands in the cookie jar, conclusively. And the rest of the intervention must be complete, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that we are completely on top of this problem before it really gets going."

  Catie sat there quietly thinking for a moment. "So," she said, "it would be good if Net Force actually was completely on top of it."

  Winters gave Catie a long, level look, and she abruptly broke out in a sweat, wondering if she had gone a little too far. Then the Net Force Explorers liaison cracked a small and appropriately wintry smile, no more than a couple of millimeters' worth and only on one side of his mouth, but enough to relieve Catie of the impression that she was in trouble.

  "It takes time to put an operation together," Winters said, "and there are times you concentrate on one aspect of it to the detriment of others. We're trying to remedy that problem right now."

  "That's why Mark was asking about meeting George Brickner, wasn't it."

  Winters sighed. "Whatever else we might seek to accuse Mark Gridley of in the real world," he said, "subtlety wouldn't be on the list. Well, never mind, he makes up for it elsewhere. Catie, one of our concerns is whether this attempt to fix the ISF play-offs might extend into the personnel of the teams themselves. 'Big sports' are already vulnerable for any number of reasons, and we're looking into all the professional teams involved in the spatball play-offs as a matter of course. Rio, in particular, and Chicago, have some potentially unsavory connections, which have been sliding around just under the surface. But a nonprofessional team like the Banana Slugs is vulnerable in all kinds of other ways. South Florida, as you know, is composed of fairly ordinary people with fairly ordinary jobs--the most exciting employment any of them holds down is probably the K-9 work that the center forward does for the U.S. Customs office at the Port of Miami--and in such a situation, the prospect of a big payoff for doing something that you would almost certainly never get caught at would tempt most anybody." He sighed. "Heck, it would even tempt me at the pay my grade pulls, except that I'm widely known to be incorruptible, and besides, I'm sure there's someone taking a look at my bank account now and then."

  "I'm not sure I'd believe that any of the people on that team would be involved in throwing games," Catie said. "But I've only known them for a couple of days...." Then she glanced up. "One thing you should know, though. When we were having lunch, George Brickner heard me say that I was in the Net Force Explorers. I wouldn't say the conversation changed tack after that...but I caught a couple of odd looks from him."

  "Odd, how?"

  "It's hard to say," Catie said. Indeed, she was still trying to analyze them to her own satisfaction.

  "Did he look suspicious of you in some way?"

  Catie thought about that. "No," she said. "Whatever was on his mind, I don't think it was that. I'm still not sure what he wants, but he's definitely more attracted than repelled."

  "Hmm..." Winters brooded for a moment. "Well," he said, "let's get to why I came to see you. Obviously, I'd like your help in this operation, if your parents will sanction you assisting Net Force as we investigate. I have to add that normally I'm chary of allowing Net Force Explorers to become involved in open cases in any official way. But your access to George Brickner, in a way that would stand up to any outside scrutiny, is a gift in this situation, a gift I'm afraid that I am hoping to utilize. That aside, however, I would judge the threat to be minimal in this case at this point...and, besides, we already have another Net Force Explorer involved."

  Catie grinned. Winters, seeing the grin, rolled his eyes.

  "Yes, well," he said. "Normally we do our best to resist the urge to use Mark as a stalking horse. It's all too easy to get in the habit of relying on a talent so close to home, and it would be exploitative. Mark has a right to a normal childhood, one that doesn't involve being the tool, willing or otherwise, of a law enforcement agency." He raised his eyebrows, a resigned look. "But since Mark seems to routinely and consciously sabotage all attempts by his parents to provide him with a normal childhood, we're all aware that mostly this is a losing battle. And anyway, there are occasions when it becomes briefly appropriate to 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.

  Chapter 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."