Death Match nfe-18 Read online

  They looked down the parkway. The leaves of the trees were starting to stir a little now. “How are the principals doing?” Heming said.

  Darjan paused a good while before replying. “They’re twitching. What do you expect? Even in years when things go according to plan, they twitch. There are always factors they can’t control in the other sports they run. Weather, civil unrest, player injuries…But this is worse, in a way, because it could have been controlled further down the line, if anyone had thought it was necessary. No one did. Now…” Darjan trailed off. “Now it’s too late, and matters can’t just be allowed to take their course. Now people have to start getting involved to stop it. And the upper-ups hate having to do anything that looks like involvement. It’s too easy to leave a trace, a trail….”

  The sky was darkening, going not so much gray as a weird kind of bruise-green, and slowly the wind continued to rise. “Well,” Heming said, “after tomorrow, when we lay down the law…and also the reward for doing what he’s told…you should be able to tell them to stop worrying. Between that, and what Chicago should do to them in a few days, a lot of people should be pretty relieved.”

  “So the arrangements are in place for the tournament ‘cubic,’ then….”

  Darjan stretched. “They’re just there for experiment’s sake at the moment. The intervention is expected to be minimal at best. We may not even need them. Shouldn’t, if Chicago delivers. If we do need to use them…” He shrugged. “We’ll use them judiciously enough that no one will suspect anything. It’s a test, as I said. For possible use elsewhere.”

  They were both silent for the moment as the bar waiter came around by their table, making his rounds through the lounge space. “Anything, gentlemen?”

  They shook their heads. The waiter went off to one of the few other tables that was presently occupied. It was one of the reasons the two of them were here — this place tended to be quiet in the afternoons. When he was well out of range, Darjan said, “The game is two o’clock Sunday. Without overtime and with the usual breaks between the halves, it’ll be over around four-thirty. I’ll be expecting to hear from you at five. And so will they.”

  Heming nodded. He reached down and picked up his glass again, jingling the ice cubes in it a little. “Chicago,” he said.

  Darjan nodded once and held up his glass as well, but didn’t clink it with Heming’s. Heming gave him a look, waiting. Finally he drank.

  A wild electric flicker came from down the parkway in the direction of the art museum, followed by a long rumble of thunder that rolled up the parkway on a sudden, gusty bluster of wind; and behind it, pelting down diagonally, came the rain.

  Heming shivered, and finished his drink.

  The next morning Catie got up much earlier than she strictly had to on a Saturday. Partly it was to get some chores done, for over the last few days, she had somewhat slighted her attention to the chores roster that her mother had left written on the slick white LivePad faired into the refrigerator door. Specifically, the word lawn, which had been there by itself on the LivePad on Tuesday, had additionally been circled sometime on Wednesday, and on Thursday had had many flashing arrows in various colors drawn pointing to it. Then, some time last night, it had developed an alarming number of exclamation points which alternately flashed red and blue like some kind of warning from the local emergency services. Her mom might nag, Catie thought as she got the lawn mower out of the garage around nine, but at least she did it in a way that made you laugh rather than want to leave home.

  The mower was a John Deere “Hunter,” powered by photovoltaic panels on the top, and normally mowing the lawn was just a matter of taking it out of the garage, putting the meter-square box-on-wheels out on the grass, and turning it loose. The border sensors and the onboard motor normally did the rest — though there was one spot near the corner of the front lawn where you had to watch the thing, especially if the lawn was fairly overgrown, as it was today. For some reason, under such conditions, the mower tended to roll out onto the sidewalk or the driveway, get itself confused, and then either run out into the street looking for more lawn, or make its way over to the next-door neighbor’s lawn and start mowing that. However, at eight in the morning, with the sun still low behind the trees, there wasn’t enough light yet to power the photovoltaics, so Catie had to fit the battery pack module to the mower body before she set it out on the lawn and hit the Go button on the remote.

  The mower trundled off, its cutter buzzing, and Catie sat down on the front steps to keep an eye on it, at least until it was away from the spot where it liked to stage the Great Escape. She rubbed her eyes. Even after her shower, they felt a little grainy. She had spent a good while last night looking over various articles and vids about South Florida Spat in the sports press, and some excerpts from virtcasts which she had earlier instructed her workspace to find and save for her. Interest in the team was certainly building fast. One story suggested that the team, which hadn’t been able to secure any corporate sponsorship at all a year or two ago, was now being wooed by some of the biggest sportswear companies, and offered very lucrative support packages if only South Florida would include their logos on its virtual spat uniform…excluding all the other companies, of course. What seemed to be surprising the sports commentators, though, as much as the big companies themselves, was that South Florida had so far turned down all these offers. No one seemed to know what to make of this.

  The mower came up to the low box hedge on the left side of the front lawn, turned left and left again, and began to mow a stripe parallel to the one it had just done, closest to the sidewalk. Catie watched it carefully. It’s almost as if they can’t understand any team that doesn’t behave exactly the way all the professional ones do, she thought. Like they find it impossible to believe that an amateur team wouldn’t automatically want to be professional, the first chance it got.

  The mower came to the end of the strip it was mowing, and, sure enough, rolled out onto the sidewalk and started heading for the Kowalskis’ lawn next door. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Catie muttered, pointing the remote at it and hitting the right-arrow key for “turn.”

  The mower kept going.

  “Technology,” Catie said under her breath, disgusted, and went after the mower, hitting the Stop button on the remote as she did so. The mower ignored this, too, and she just managed to catch up with it and hit the master power button on the upper surface before it rolled up onto the Kowalskis’ grass. The mower’s motor buzzed down to silence, and Catie picked it up and took it back to her own lawn, trying to hold it a little away so she wouldn’t get grass clippings all over herself. “What’s the matter with you, you hunk of junk?” she said. “Is your code buggy somewhere, I wonder…?”

  Catie put the mower back on the lawn, next to the stripe that it had completed and at the end of which it had escaped, then hit the power switch again and turned it loose once more. Off it went, and this time she stood and watched it while it trundled down the length of the lawn, across the flagstones that led to the front door, and down to the hedge, where it turned. The mower then came back, crossed the flagstones again, came to the driveway, and this time sensed it correctly — turned, and headed for the hedge again.

  Catie sat back down on the steps and kept watching the mower. Her viewing last night of South Florida’s recent history and the professional reaction to it had left her with a feeling of pressure. The whole array of the “paid” part of the sport drawn up and looming over this single, strange, maverick, little splinter group, trying to force it into the shape that all the other parts of it had assumed — had perhaps been forced to assume? — over the past decade or so. She wondered how South Florida was going to react to this. For her own part, it seemed to Catie that there had to be a level on which there was still room for human beings to just do sports for the love of the sport itself. That was a concept that the commentators seemed to be having trouble with, though they claimed otherwise, and the professionals seemed to be trying to pre
tend that the money was somehow an accident that had happened to them — if a very nice one — and that anyone who tried to avoid that accident when it finally threatened to befall them was either crazy, or trying to make the professionals look bad, or trying to cheat their own team out of the recognition (Catie read this as code for “financial success”) that was somehow naturally their right by becoming good enough at what they did to compete with the pros. The whole business made Catie twitch, and she was getting more and more curious to see what George Brickner’s take on it was going to be.

  A few more turns up and down the lawn finally saw the mower finished with its work. Catie stopped the mower with the remote, which worked this time, and got up to head into the garage again, pausing to check the top of the battery pack. Its LED gauge was still well up in the green. She went into the garage, got the grass basket, hooked it to the back of the mower, and sent it on its way again, this time set for “reverse pattern” and “vacuum.”

  Catie had to empty the grass basket three times. My fault, she thought, lugging the basket to the “compost” garbage can the second time. I should have done this Tuesday, and not let the lawn get to the point where it looked like the Amazonian rain forest. Then she spent another fifteen minutes or so sweeping up the cuttings that had fallen in the driveway, and generally cleaning up after herself. As she was finishing, she turned and saw her brother standing in the open front door, barefoot, wearing black sweatpants and a Glo-Shirt apparently just out of the wash, for it had reverted to the default black background and the words YOUR MESSAGE HERE, which now marched their way around Hal’s upper body in white block letters. Hal was yawning. “I love work,” he said as Catie came up the steps. “I could watch you do it all day.”

  Catie didn’t say anything, since this sentiment too clearly matched her own assessment of her brother, and she didn’t want to pick a fight with him right now as much as she wanted her breakfast. “This diner or whatever it is we’re going to,” she said, “how’s the food?”

  Hal followed her into the kitchen. “If it’s the same as it was when I went there last, a few months ago, it’s just the usual deli stuff. They had pretty good ‘smoked meat’ sandwiches — they get the meat from some chain in Montreal.”

  “Okay.” Catie went to the freezer and pulled out a packaged pair of MicroCroissants, stuck them in the microwave, started zapping them, and then got herself down a mug and a teabag. It was just something light to hold her until closer to lunchtime. “Better get yourself into the shower, then. It’s pushing ten already, and if we’re going to get down there in time—”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” Hal said. “You’re as bad as Mom.” He headed out of the kitchen, down toward the bathroom.

  Catie smiled slightly, unclipped the stylus from beside the LivePad on the fridge, and neatly crossed out the word lawn on the chores list. The LivePad played a small triumphant trumpet voluntary and said in her mom’s voice, “Thank you, sweetie!” The word!!! dishwasher!!! underneath it, still untouched, then immediately developed many small red, yellow, and blue arrows pointing at it, and the word Hal!!! appeared nearby.

  Catie just smiled and went off to make her tea.

  An hour later they were at Delano’s in Georgetown, a very standard Formica-and-stainless-steel — type diner, and as they came in the front door, there he was, standing by the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign just inside the door — George Brickner. Catie was surprised to find that the man was not smaller than he seemed in virtuality, which was usually the case, but that he was taller. Five eleven easily, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, but not so much so that he looked overmuscled, he stood there in neodenims and one of the big floppy semitrans shirts that were popular for hot-weather wear at the moment, looking pleasant, accessible, and absolutely ordinary. Hal and Catie introduced themselves, and George shook their hands and said, “Look, I’m starving, I missed my breakfast, and I couldn’t eat what they were serving on the plane. It looked like a byproduct of a biowar attack. Would it seem incredibly rude to you if we just sat right down and ordered something?”

  “No problem at all,” Hal said. “But where’s Mike?”

  “Late, probably,” George said. “He’s been late for everything ever since I’ve known him. He’ll probably be late for his own funeral, if I know Mike. Let’s just sit down. It’s crazy to stand here hoping he’ll turn up in the next few minutes. We’ll be chewing our own elbows off by the time he gets here, if we wait for him.”

  The waitress came along and brought them to a booth by a window, nearly walking into things a couple of times as she tried to both go forward and at the same time talk to George while he followed her. Catie saw the heads of people seated on either side turn as the three of them passed, their eyes resting first on Brickner and then on her and Hal with an expression that seemed to read, “The first guy, we recognize. Are these two somebody important, too?” It was an odd sensation, and after the first twinge of amusement and excitement, she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  The three of them sat down with their menus and exchanged a few words while they looked them over. Hal did most of the talking at this point, and Catie was glad to let him do so. Until she got a feeling for what Brickner was interested in talking about and could participate in the conversation intelligently, she didn’t want to sound like she was just along to see what he looked like…and that would be the immediate assumption, certainly of her brother, if not of George himself. For the moment, while they looked at the menus, Hal and George seemed content to tell each other stories about Mike being late for things; and after a few minutes of this, the waitress came around to take their orders. Catie asked for one of the smoked-meat sandwiches and a Coke. Hal ordered iced tea and eggs Benedict, and once again Catie wondered what on earth the dish had to do with his chemistry class.

  “And for you, Mr. Brickner?” said the waitress, and positively fluttered her eyelashes at him.

  Catie had a hard time keeping herself from simply laughing out loud.

  “A BLT, please,” George said, “and an iced tea.”

  “Right,” the waitress said. “Thanks. Oh, and we’re all big fans of yours here….”

  “Thanks, miss, uh”—he peered at her nametag—“thanks, Wendy. It’s always good to know people are rooting for the team.”

  The waitress smiled and hurried off. “Looks like the service’s gonna be good,” Hal said, sounding dry, as she went away.

  George waggled his eyebrows in a resigned way. “It’s good everywhere,” he said. “I just wish I knew when it was really because of the team, instead of that dratted feature in People.”

  This had been somewhat on Catie’s mind as well, for now, sitting across from the man, she was coming to the conclusion that the People virtzine feature might actually have had a point about George’s looks. He really was a fabulous-looking guy, close up. Yet it wasn’t something that sprang out at you when you saw him play. What was it about putting this man into a uniform, Catie thought, that so completely changed him? In street clothes he could pass for a model. But it was strange how that quality of sheer male beauty somehow didn’t come through while watching him playing spat. It was as if the energy spent on being handsome — if one could actually be considered to “spend” personal energy on such a thing — was completely channeled into the game while George was playing, leaving him merely good-looking in a cool and uninvolved kind of way. Once he was out of the cubic, that energy seemed to be released for other purposes. Catie could now understand the annoyance of some of George’s fans that he was eligible but seemingly uninterested in dating right now. For her own part, she simply amused herself with enjoying George’s handsomeness as if he were some kind of walking art installation, and tried as hard as she could to remind herself that she didn’t intend to get seriously involved with men at all until after she graduated from college. Unfortunately it was at times like this that the resolve seemed dumbest.

  Catie blinked and came back to t
he moment as their drinks arrived. Whoa, she thought, not like you to phase out just because of a pretty face, kid. Sharpen up!

  “Wasn’t there going to be someone else here with you?” Hal was saying.

  “Oh, yeah, my team cocaptain, Rick Menendez. But he’s off seeing his sister in Rockville. She had a baby last week, her first, and it’s his first chance to see his nephew in the flesh, instead of in a virtmail. Hilarious…the grimmest guy you ever saw, most of the time. He’s gone all gooey.” George grinned, and the flash of it made Catie smile, too, just at the sight of it. “But the whole team is up here at the moment…those who’re going to be playing tomorrow, anyway. We’re short a couple of bodies. Two nights ago we lost one of our second-string players to an invigilation call-up, would you believe? And another one has a dual qualification as an umpire, and has to go umpire a Western Division game at the same time we’ll be playing Chicago and Moscow Spartak tomorrow — there’s a shortage of officials right now.” He shrugged. “Bad luck, I guess, but we’ll cope.”

  “I don’t think you must be very happy about having to travel the day before a game,” Catie said. “Especially one this important for the team.”

  “Yes, well,” George said, making a slightly sour face, “this is also the time at which we’re running ‘hottest’ in terms of publicity…and therefore this is the time to go strike the sponsorship deal we’ve been waiting for. We have to go up to AirDyne’s corporate headquarters in Bethesda this afternoon and do a big press conference performance…. It’ll be all over the evening news. This kind of thing makes the ISF happy, even if it isn’t our favorite thing. It’ll push the ‘gate’ up for the game tomorrow. But we’re going to be up late practicing tonight….”