the operative in the field

Steeply's field presence is all tells and cover. "Possessed of a certain thuggish allure but hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like," she perches over a notebook in a rooster-comb ski cap, an outsized figure whose weight bows the bleacher and tips deLint toward her — the disguise conspicuous, the body it covers straining against it. And the note-taking is mutual and asymmetric: she works her notebook while deLint fills in "performance charts Schtitt won't ever let anyone look at." Two people recording the same match, one set of records a cover for intelligence, the other a genuine secret the institution guards.