"Geez," Catie said. "But how did they--? The certification procedures--I thought you had to--"

  "Check every line of code by human oversight? No machines? Yeah. It was close. There was not a single Net Force geek who slept last night, anywhere on the planet." Mark grinned. "There are a lot of spatball fans on the Force...."

  Catie considered all this. "So the bad guys, the people who had installed the false variables in the usual server..."

  "...Thought they were operating on the usual server, where gameplay was taking place," Jay Gridley said. "But they were actually operating on the dupe...into which we simply mirrored the genuine gameplay. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late for them. We had a complete set of tracer routines installed in the mirror. There were three different people handling the switching variables, one in Portland, one in Beijing, and one in Auckland. All representatives of the major illegal betting syndicates...all of them now helping us with our inquiries."

  "It was a variation of their own trick," Catie said softly. "You just turned it around and used it against them!"

  "'Own goal,'" Mark said. "They did it to themselves...with a vengeance." He grinned.

  "Ah, the conquering heroes," said another voice. James Winters had slipped in and found himself a glass of the virtual champagne. Now he strolled over to them.

  "Heroes, yes," George said, looking around at his team-mates. "Conquering?"

  "Eveything's relative," Winters said. "I think the epithet fits today. Meanwhile," he said to Jay Gridley, "everything at the software and hardware end is handled; the original server, the contaminated routines, and the duplicates are all locked down. We can start getting the prosecuting team pulled together tomorrow. How about the other operation?"

  "Handled," Jay said, and looked over at George. "This is the other piece of news you need to hear. A gentleman named Darjan, Armin Darjan, got himself a flat tire in the middle of I-95 just outside Miami Tuesday afternoon. Seems he'd just been to see one of the South Florida team members, but he didn't find her at home. The Miami police helped him get over to the hard shoulder, but while they were taking his particulars and helping him call a tow truck, one of them noticed something in his rental car that shouldn't have been there. They brought him into the local police station to talk to him about it, and when he realized what the penalty is in Florida for carrying that particular weapon, especially without a concealed-carry permit, he became fairly talkative."

  George smiled slightly. "He seems to have a lot of friends in the computer-service business," Gridley said. "Not to mention a lot of friends in financial circles, here and overseas. He talked to the police about all kinds of things, and when they got the gist of what was going on, they called us. We had a long talk with him, too, and took his prints and his passport from him, and called him a lawyer...and then we told him what he had to do over the next couple of days to make sure that the plea the lawyer was going to cut for him would stay in the same shape after this game as before. He was most cooperative."

  "Lucky he had that flat tire right then," Catie said, feeling fairly daring to just come out and say what she was thinking to the head of Net Force.

  "Heaven forbid I should complain," Gridley said, his face perfectly straight. "It might make someone in local law enforcement think we were ungrateful."

  There were smiles all around at that. "So, ladies and gentlemen," Gridley said to the South Florida team members gathered around, "thank you for your help. Some of you will be hearing from us in the very near future as we pursue this matter. Meanwhile, I'm sorry you didn't win."

  "We're not," somebody said, and popped another bottle of champagne. "It means we can party now!"

  This sentiment was met with much cheering. "Mean-while," Jay Gridley said, turning to Catie, and grabbing his son in a friendly way behind the neck as he did so, "please tell me if there's anything you feel you need removed from your workspace manager."

  "Uh, I'll think about it and let you know," Catie said. "The present configuration has a sort of strange amusement value."

  "Strange would be the word," Gridley said. "Come on, Mark. Good night, Catie, and thanks again."

  The Gridleys vanished.

  A little later Catie found her way back to George again. "One thing," she said, "before I turn in. You knew that I was helping Net Force from the very start, didn't you."

  "I suspected," George said. "Very strongly. I mean, you practically had it painted on your forehead."

  Catie blushed. She thought she had been fairly circumspect.

  "But I wasn't going to say anything out loud," George said. "I wasn't sure how carefully the 'eavesdroppers' might have been listening to me...and I didn't want to get anyone else in trouble."

  Catie nodded. "There's just one more thing," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "Even though the server was clean...you lost."

  George nodded, looking completely unconcerned. "They're a good team," he said. "They deserved to win. Anybody who could play us the way we were playing today, and win, is unquestionably championship material." He smiled, a rather more reflective look. "And South Florida's made a little history today. We've never gotten this far before. So, next year..."

  "Next year," Catie said. "By then you'll be a professional. My prediction."

  "Interesting," George said. "We'll see."

  "And famous."

  "I'm famous now," George said mildly. "For whatever that's worth." He looked around him. "But with people like this around me, to be famous with, it might be worth something. We'll see."

  "All right. But about that chess game--"

  "Give me a night off," George said. "If only to recover. Not to mention to consider my next move."

  "Okay," Catie said. She glanced over at Hal and made a let's-go-home gesture. He nodded.

  "Congratulations," Catie said softly.

  George nodded, somber. "Thanks."

  And Catie gathered up Hal and left.

  The next morning, very early, Catie slipped into her version of the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, with the pink of dawn just coming in through the high windows at the top of the dome, and looked around at the canvases and paperwork lying around the Comfy Chair, still badly in need of sorting. She looked particularly at the e-mails, but there were no new ones.

  So now that he's famous, she thought, is he still talking tome...?

  She turned around and looked at the chessboard, then glanced up at the text window above it, where a line of text was flashing. It read:

  18

  PxQ

  ch-

  And then, out of the air, a voice said: "Gotcha."

  Very slowly, Catie smiled.

 

 

  Tom Clancy, Death Match

 

 

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