“Not a chance!”
She went out into the hall and glanced up and down. “Mom get back from the mall yet?”
“If she did, I didn’t hear her.”
“I don’t think either of us would have heard much if she came in during the last few minutes of that,” Catie said, “whether she used the ‘outside-in’ circuit or not. That crowd was pretty worked up. Where’s Dad?”
“No idea.”
“Mmf. Probably in the studio.”
“Better leave him alone, then.”
“Absolutely.”
Catie made her way down to the kitchen. It was small for the house, but then, compared to the other houses in their little suburb of D.C., the whole house was small. This was something which Catie’s father had of late been complaining about more or less continually. He worked at home, and had been muttering about building another extension onto the house for the past year or so, since he had extended his studio two years ago and then found that what seemed like ample square footage on the plans had turned out too small. Catie turned on the cold water in the sink and let it run for a while, looking around her and wondering how they would all cope when the renovations finally started and left them with no back to the house for a couple of weeks (an image which her mother had been repeatedly invoking in an attempt to get the project put off for a few more months).
She got a tumbler down out of the cabinet and filled it, and drank thirstily. Even though Catie hadn’t actually been playing, the mind was still able to fool the body into feeling thirsty sometimes…and this was one of those times. Hal came in from the hall and got himself a glass, too, filled it. “He’s in the studio,” Hal said. “I can hear him scraping on the canvas.” Their father was a professional artist, and a quirky one — as talented with old-fashioned media, like paint, as he was with computer-“generated” art and Net-based installations, and sometimes showing what seemed an odd preference for the more archaic media simply on account of their age.
“Right,” Catie said. Her dad hadn’t been in there yet when she came home, which meant he was good for at least a few hours in there now. She would have time to get a little more of the cleaning-up done before her mom got back and before she had to “go out” herself.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, leaning back against the sink and looking out the window of the kitchen at the backyard again. The sun had now gone down behind the wall. “Brickner is the friend you’ve been telling me about? ‘The Parrot’?”
“No, Mike’s the friend — I met him on that research project for school last year, the geology thing — he was a research assistant at the Smithsonian for the summer. The Parrot is Mike’s friend; they know each other from college. I haven’t actually met George yet, but Mike says he’s going to get us together sometime in the next couple of weeks, if they have the time.”
“From the sound of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if that team doesn’t have much time for casual meetings in the next couple of weeks,” Catie said, eyeing her brother. “They’re going to have the media all over them, I bet. They’re pretty hot. They play like, I don’t know, like a bunch of astronauts.”
Hal laughed. “Yeah, they do…. Though I bet if the astronauts had known what kind of salary people would start making from this kind of thing, ten years ago, they all would have quit NASA and gone right into the majors.”
“The majors don’t seem to be the only way to go,” Catie said, “if your pet team is anything to go by.”
“No,” Hal said, “they’re kind of a special case.”
Catie laughed. “With a name like The Banana Slugs, I guess they’d have to be.”
Her brother gave her a look. “It’s just a nickname. Anyway, it’s not half as stupid as some of the team names these days.”
He had a point there. “Still,” Catie said, “they’re really good. Better than I thought they would be.”
“Why shouldn’t they be?” Hal said, getting himself another glass of water, and pausing to drink it right down. “It’s not like this is a game where you have to have a lot of money to be good at it, or have corporate sponsorship patches plastered all over you. Skill and speed and brains are everything. Doesn’t matter whether you’re big or small. If you’re quick and smart, and fairly well coordinated…that should be enough. But there’s more to it than just that.”
“A certain elegance of execution,” Catie said. “One that looks like telepathy sometimes.”
Her brother looked at her with some surprise.
“Didn’t think I could appreciate the higher aspects of the game?” Catie said mildly. “Well, that’s okay. It’s healthy for you to underestimate me.”
He poked her in the ribs…or started to. Abruptly Catie wasn’t there anymore, having neatly sidestepped him as soon as he moved. A moment later she was sitting at the kitchen table, giving him an amused look. Her own skill at soccer had not left her entirely without abilities useful for dealing with a rogue brother…. Not that Hal needed a lot of dealing with, thank heaven. Their relationship was amiable enough, generally. And the resemblance between them was strong. They could have been twins. They should have been twins, Catie sometimes thought, except that Hal was always late, and had apparently managed this stunt even as regarded his birth, turning up a year after a proper twin would have. Regardless of the delay, Hal had come out about the same height as Catie, about the same weight, blonde and blue-eyed like her; and their general build and carriage were like enough that sometimes people mistook them for one another from a distance, especially in the winter when they were bundled up. This could have been a pain, except that Catie was continually amused at being mistakenly hailed as “Hallie” by her brother’s would-be girlfriends…and it gave Catie endless ammunition to use on him later, while doing her best to make sure that he never had the chance to do the same to her. The situation was entirely satisfactory, as far as she was concerned.
“How am I supposed to discipline you if you won’t stand still?” Hal said, getting one more glass of water.
“You’re not,” Catie said. “Learn to live with your sorry fate and like it.”
Her brother made a face eloquent of his opinion of such a philosophy. “You should see yourself,” Catie said. “If only you could get stuck that way, Dad could frame you and hang you as a fake Picasso.”
“Yeah, right. So, do you want to come watch the post-game show?”
“Can’t,” Catie said. “Got a Net Force Explorers meeting tonight.”
Her brother looked at her incredulously. “You sure that’s more important?”
“Yeah. And isn’t the postgame show on right now, anyway?”
Hal rolled his eyes. “What planet have you been living on? We get twenty minutes of commercials first. But they’re interviewing Brickner. I thought you’d want to see that.”
That made Catie pause for a moment. Insight into another athlete’s head was always welcome, especially after a game like that. But after a second’s thought she shook her head. “Naah,” Catie said. “Look, save it for me, okay? Just read it over to my Net space when you’re done.”
“I can’t get into your space.”
She smiled sweetly. “Which just proves you’ve been trying to again. Without asking.”
Hal gave her a rather cheesy but completely unrepentant grin.
“One of these days,” Catie said, “you’re gonna do something on the up-and-up and then be shocked to find that it worked better than making convoluted plans and plots and sneaking around.” Then Catie grinned. “But when that happens I’ll probably expire of shock, so don’t rush, okay? Just ask the space to let you in…it’ll make an exception for once.”