Apparently oblivious to the others, Stoll said, "There are touches on this scroll which remind me of the game in Hausen's office." He leaned forward and touched the screen. "The shading under the curl at the bottom of the scroll is blue, not black. Someone with a background in publishing might have done that out of habit. During color separations, deep blue shadows reproduce richer than blacks. And the molded colors of the vellum, giving it a solid look here"-- he touched the still-scrolled section at the top-- "is similar to the texture of the deer skin in the forests of the other game."

Nancy sat back. "You're reaching."

Stoll shook his head. "Of all people, you should know the kinds of flourishes designers put in their games. You probably remember the early days of video games," Stoll said. "The days when you could tell an Activision game from an Imagic game from an Atari game because of the designers's touches. Hell, you could even tell a David Crane game from the rest of the games at Activision. Creators left their fingerprints all over the screen."

Nancy said, "I know those early days better than you think, Matt. And I'm telling you Demain isn't like that. When I program games for Dominique we leave our personal vision at the door. Our job is to pack as many colors and realistic graphics into a game as possible."

Hood said, "That doesn't mean Demain wasn't behind the game. Dominique would hardly produce hate games which looked like his regular games."

Nancy said, "But I've seen the portfolios of the people who work up there," she said. "I've been sitting here thinking about their graphics. None of them work like this."

"What about outside designers?" Hood said.

"At some point, they'd still have to come through the system," she said. "Tested, tweaked, downloaded-- there are dozens of steps."

"What if the entire process were done outside?" Hood asked.

Stoll snapped his fingers. "That kid Reiner, Hausen's assistant. He said he designed stereogram programs. He knows computers."

"Right," said Hood. "Nancy, if someone did design a game on the outside, what's the fewest number of people who would see the diskettes at Demain?"

She said, "First of all, something that dangerous would not come in on diskettes."

"Why not?" Hood asked.

"It would be a smoking gun," she said. "A time-encoded program on a diskette would be proof in court that Dominique was trafficking in hate games."

"Assuming they didn't erase it once it was uploaded," Stoll said.

"They'd keep it until they were sure everything went off as planned," Nancy said. "That's how they work here. Anyway, an outside program like that would have to be modemed to a diskless workstation."

"We've got those, Boss," Stoll said. "They're used for highly sensitive data which you don't want copied from the file server-- the networked computer-- onto a local diskette."