Death Match - Diane Duane [51]
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