amavis vs sophie vs sophos

I wonder if someone can help me clear up some confusion.  We're running
sophie via amavisd-new.  For testing, I'm set up such that I telnet
to port 10024 (amavisd) and fake a mail message.  Amavis then hands
the message off to sophie, sophie hands a response back to amavis,
and amavis then gives it to port 10025 (postfix).

I think this is all the "normal" setup, except I'm intervening by hand
before amavis.

My concern is this.  Something having to do with sophos expired
recently.  When a message is sent, Sophie's debug messages show this:

  WARNING          : Error: The main body of virus data is out of date.
  NOTICE           : Response is '-1:Error: The main body of virus data is
                     out of date.' /DEBUG,14413/
  NOTICE           : Response '-1:Error: The main body of virus data is
                     out of date.' sent /DEBUG,14413/

and the amavisd debug messages show:

  Apr  8 16:28:39 csespare3.ucsd.edu /usr/sbin/amavisd[14396]: (14396-01)
  ask_av (Sophie) result: -1:Error: The main body of virus data is out of
  date.
  Apr  8 16:28:39 csespare3.ucsd.edu /usr/sbin/amavisd[14396]: (14396-01)
  ask_av (Sophie) FAILED - unexpected result: -1:Error: The main body of
  virus data is out of date.

The worst part about this is that the mail never gets sent out of
amavis.  The debug messages show it to be "preserving evidence
in /blah/blah", but the mail is essentially dropped.  Seems unsafe.

My question is, is that really the case?  The failure mode for this
setup when sophos expires (as it does every three months I understand)
is for mail to disappear?  I keep thinking I must be missing a config
option or flag somewhere.

Sophie does have a section of code in sopie_scanfile() that deals
with all the various error return values.  I notice a few have
an "ifdef ONLY_FATAL_ERRORS" that forces a sophie return code of
"1" instead of "-1"  But the "SOPHI_SAVI_ERROR_OLD_VIRUS_DATA"
error is not part of this, and I'm trying to avoid code-modification
(especially since other people have it working without modification)

Thanks for any input, or correction of misperceptions I may have.

		-glenn