Death Match - Diane Duane [77]
“Oh, no,” Catie said softly. They’ll never be ready in time.
Worse. The server will never be debugged in time!
The game is going to have to go ahead…and the people who wanted to ruin the Banana Slugs’ chances to win are going to do just that—
She came back to herself to hear the sportscaster saying, “—this is the third major software failure in two months to assail the new installation at Anfield, which has been dogged from inception to installation by cost overruns and then by hardware glitches, as well as by problems with the new MaximumVolume software and operating system which was developed for Manchester. The first two failures of the system, late in the ‘scheduled’ season, caused one forfeit and one loss due to the failure of center forward Alan Bellingham’s custom player suite during the third half of United’s crucial preplay-off game with Tokyo Juuban and Ottawa. Manchester United shareholders have once again called for an independent inquiry into the team’s dealings with sports-simming software giant Camond, the president of the shareholders’ association once again asserting that—”
Catie sat there in unbelieving dismay, her dinner forgotten. “Space…”
“I was only following orders.”
“Yeah, right. Is George Brickner available?”
“Trying his space for you now.”
There was a brief pause. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Catie.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Just a minute.”
It was more like a couple of minutes. She waited. When he walked into her space, George took one look at the shocked expression on her face, and paused, and then he just nodded. “You heard.”
“Yeah.”
He sat down in the chair which had been left there for James Winters. She plopped down in the Comfy Chair, but for once it brought her little comfort. “You talked to James Winters….”
“Among various other people,” George said, rubbing his face, “yes.” He looked very tired.
Catie knew how he felt, all of a sudden. “George, why did you do it?”
“Agree to change the schedule, you mean? Because the ISF asked us to. And we didn’t have a good reason to say no.”
“But you did! If you—”
“Catie,” George said, “if we refused to allow the change in schedule—and it was a perfectly reasonable request on the ISF’s part—you know what would happen. People would have started asking questions. Why were we so reluctant? What was going on? And soon enough, someone would have found out. Or else one of the people involved with what was done to the ISF spat-volume server would have started to suspect something…and they would all have folded their little operation up and gone into hiding. After all this trouble, nothing would be solved.”
It was her own argument, twisted into a horrible shape that she had never imagined, and it stunned Catie into silence. George was quiet for a few moments, too.
“You think I don’t know what you’re thinking?” George said. “Believe me, I feel the same way. It would have been great to get in there and have a chance at winning this tournament, to do a thing that would make spat-ball history. Even a chance of making it to the semifinals—that would have been something to tell our grandchildren about. But if we don’t stop what’s happening to spat, stop it right now, there’ll be no sport to tell our grandchildren about…. Not one worth playing, anyway.” He swallowed. “Sports is about making sacrifices, sometimes. This is one of those times. The team agrees with me.”
“Do they know…?”
He looked at her. “They know enough,” George said. “The Net Force people have been in to check their machines. They’ve been sabotaged, Catie. We can’t touch that, either. We can’t change anything. If we do, the people behind the sabotage will know, and they’ll go to ground somewhere. And who knows, maybe we’ll win…but the sport will lose. And all the people like us who play it for joy, they’ll lose, too.”
Catie looked at George