Death Match (2003)

by Tom - Net Force Explorers 18 Clancy

  "How's the artwork doing?" Mark said, with the air of someone who wanted to distract her from something. "Still fingerpainting?"

  Catie grinned a little, and flexed those fingers. "Hey, everybody in the plastic arts has to start somewhere," she said. "It's what you do with the medium, anyway, not what everybody else does with it. Besides, it never keeps me away from the image work long." She knew perfectly well that Mark knew this was her forte. There were few Net-based effects, in the strictly visual and graphical sense, that Catie couldn't pull off with time and care. No harm in him knowing, either. Who knew, he might mention it to his father, and his father might mention it to James Winters, the Net Force Explorers liaison, and after that anything might happen. Networking is everything, Catie thought. "And how about you?" she said then. "The French police give up on you finally?"

  Mark scowled, and blushed. He had gotten in some slight trouble recently when traveling with his dad, and those of the Net Force Explorers who knew the details were still teasing Mark about the episode, half out of envy that Mark had time to get in trouble while staying somewhere as interesting as Paris, and half out of the sheer amusement of watching him squirm--for Mark was hypercompetent on the Net and hated to come out on the wrong side of anything. "It wasn't a big deal," he said. "But enough about my scrapes. You're the one who's always getting yourself scraped up." He tilted his head back and pretended to be peering at Catie's elbows and knees.

  She laughed at him. Catie had long been used to this kind of comment from her friends, both those at school and even those who were also Net Force Explorers. She had been in soccer leagues of one kind or another almost since she was old enough to walk, partly because of her dad's interest in the sport, but partly because she liked it herself. Then, later on, as virtual life became more important to her, Catie began to discover its "flip side"--that reality had its own special and inimitable tang which even the utter freedom of virtuality couldn't match. There was no switching off the implant and having everything be unchanged or "all better" afterward. Life was life, irrevocable, and the cuts and bruises you carried home from a soccer game were honestly earned and genuine, yours to keep. Some of her friends thought she was weird to take the "real" sports so seriously, but Catie didn't mind.

  "To each his, her, or its own," her father would say, chucking aside some rude review of one of his exhibitions, and picking up the brush again. Catie found this a useful approach with the virtuality snobs, who usually had what passed for their minds made up and tended not to be very open to new data.

  "Nope, nothing new to exhibit," Catie said. "Except for a new interest. A slight one, anyway. Spatball."

  "Huh," said Mark, glancing around. The space was beginning to fill up fast now, a couple of hundred kids having come in over the space of just the last few minutes. "The last refuge of the space cadet, one of my cousins calls it."

  "It might indeed be that," Catie said. "I'm in the process of making up my mind. Meanwhile, Squirt, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

  "Yeah?"

  "My workspace management program is beginning to sass me."

  "Oh?"

  Mark looked completely innocent. It was an expression which struck Catie as coming entirely too easily to him. "It's getting positively sarcastic lately," she said. "This wouldn't be anything of your doing, would it? Some little bug you slipped in?"

  "There are no bugs," Mark said virtuously, "only features."

  "Yeah, well, this 'feature' has you written all over it."

  He acquired a very small smile. "Just a little heuresis, Cates. It only does what it sees you doing. So if it's getting sarcastic--"

  She took a swipe at him, and missed, mostly on purpose. At the same time, Catie had to grin a little. "So the computer's chips are turning into chips off the old block, huh. Cute. One of these days you're going to do something too cute to allow you to live any longer, Squirt."

  He gave her a look that suggested he didn't think this was all that likely. The problem was, Catie thought, that he was probably right. Assuming that he survived through his teens--for Mark's "scrapes" were many and varied, so that Catie thought it was probably miraculous that his parents hadn't simply killed him by now--the talent that got him into the scrapes would eventually take him far. For all his tender years, Mark was a native Net programmer of great skill, one of those people who seem to be born with a logic solid in their mouths and are better at programming languages than spoken ones. There was very little that Mark couldn't make a computer do, and the more complex the computer was, the more likely Mark was to deliver the results. But he would also find a way to enjoy himself in the meantime...and his enjoyment could occasionally also mean your annoyance, if you let him get away with it.

  Catie gave him a look. "If the management system starts interfering with my space's functioning," she said, "I'm going to debug the software with an ax...and then hunt you down and take the lost time out of your hide. Meantime, what's on the agenda tonight? I didn't have time to look at it before I came in."

  "Something about a virtual field trip to the new Cray-Nixdorf-Siemens 'server farm' complex in Dusseldorf," Mark said. "They're going to run a lottery to allow some of us in there to have a look at the firmware. Like the new Thunderbolt warm-superconductor storage system." He had a slightly hungry gleam in his eye.

  Catie nodded. "Sounds like it's right up your alley. Why should you need to enter a lottery, though? Can't your dad get you in?"

  "Not really," Mark said, sounding disappointed. "The offer has all the usual 'not for industry associates and their families' disclaimer all over it. Besides, I've been busy...."

  He trailed off a little too soon. Catie was about to ask him what was really going on when she was interrupted by a banging noise coming from the center of the room. All around her, people were making themselves chairs or lounges to sit on, and in the middle of things there had appeared, off to one side, what appeared to be an Olympic-sized swimming pool. A moment later there also appeared, under the Net Force logo, something that could have been mistaken for the great mahogany half-hexagonal bench in the court chamber of the Supreme Court...except that the center position was occupied solely by a young slim redheaded guy in process blue slikshorts and a LightCrawl T-shirt that presently had the message I'M IN CHARGE HERE, HONEST inching its way around his chest cavity in flashing red block capitals.

  "Can everyone hold it down?" he was yelling. "We have to get started...."

  Catie glanced up. "Who's that?"

  "Chair for the meeting, I guess," Mark said.

  "I knew that. I meant, 'Do you know him?'"

  "Uh, no. Hey, Gwyn..."

  "Hey," said one of the other kids presently beginning to drift over to where Mark was standing. Catie looked them over thoughtfully, for people that Mark didn't mind hanging around him tended to be worth knowing. Either he found them intelligent, or they were sufficiently capable of getting far enough past his extreme impulsiveness and mischievousness to notice that he was intelligent. Either of these were characteristics that Catie thought were likely to be useful at some point. What was also moderately interesting was that the kids gathering around Mark all looked significantly older than he...more Catie's age, in the seventeen-or eighteen-year-old area. Plainly they weren't concerned about the age difference when the younger kid was as smart as Mark. Or has his connections, Catie thought. Networking is everything....

  "Okay," said the kid who had been banging on the mahogany bench, "we have some announcements first--"

  "Who are you?" came the predictable yell from the floor, a ragged, amused chorus of about thirty voices. It always seemed to happen, no matter how many times they all met, to the point where it was now approaching tradition: a speaker would be shocked out of composure by the sight of all those faces and forget to introduce himself.

  "Oh. Sorry. I'm Neil Linkoping. As I was saying--"

  "Hi, Neil," came the cheerfully mocking reply from the floor, about a hundred of them t
his time. Neil grinned and said, "Hi, crowd. Now, as I was saying...we have some announcements first...."

  Groans and shouts of "Not again!" ensued. These were traditional, too, because there were 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 hysterical, she thought, but I wonder what brought this on....

  "Hal?" she said.

  "What is it, Cates? I'm busy." Her brother appeared from behind a cabinet, carrying an Erlenmeyer flask and a few glass-stoppered bottles over to a workbench that, to judge by the stains on it, had seen better days. Hal was wrapped in a high-collared white lab coat, and except for the bottles, he looked entirely like someone who might start stitching pieces of people together without warning, without much attention being paid to the principle of informed consent.

  "This a private project," Catie said, coming down the curved stone stairs around the outside of the tower, "or something for school?"

  "Both," he said, putting the flasks down. "You interrupting me just for spiteful personal pleasure, or as a public service?"

  "Both," Catie said, giving him a look. "I didn't think you'd be done with the postgame show already...."

  "It was shorter than they expected," Hal said, taking the stopper out of one of the bottles and sniffing it. "Which was just as well, since while I was watching I solved a problem that's been bugging me for a while, and now I can get on with this." He put the stopper back into the bottle and paused to make a note on a pad on the table.