Death Match - Diane Duane [25]
“They’ll want me to animate it, of course,” her father said, and raised his eyebrows in an expression that said, clearly enough, The idiots! “Probably they’ll want it to ripple like water. If they had the brains God gave bluepoint oysters, they’d notice that if you just sit still and look at it for more than five seconds, your brain’ll begin producing that effect itself.” He gave Catie a wry sidelong look. “But getting even the art director to sit still that long, these days, is a challenge. Not to mention the virtual audience, who are going to have to view the work nearly completely covered with flashing crawling text, in a window that they may keep sized down to the size of a postage stamp in the virtual ‘field of view,’ half the time…so the art director is going to insist that there be something about it that moves, to remind the viewers that it’s there.” Her dad turned to look at the canvas again. “If I’m unlucky, the thing is going to wind up looking like an ad for toilet bowl cleaner by the time they’re through. If I’m lucky…” He sighed, and shrugged.
Catie stepped closer to look at the way her father had layered the paint over the flash of color that was meant to represent a swimmer. The palette knife had been involved, which was probably the scraping Hal had heard last night. “You’ll get some ‘print’ sales, though….”
“Oh, yeah,” her dad said, taking a long drink of the Duvel, and smiling slightly. “The collectors will notice it when it airs. And anyway, there are always people who suddenly notice a nice graphic for the first time and want a copy for their workspace. We’ll do okay from that.”
Catie looked at the work for a moment. There was more speed inherent in it than just that of swimmers and divers. “You were in a hurry on this one….” she said.
Her father started to push his hair back again, and stopped himself, laughed, and had another drink of beer. “Yes. It’s not due yet, but I want to get the stuff in before deadline…so I can get well ahead on the next commission, and have plenty of time to sort everything out and clean up in here before the builders arrive.” His expression showed that he was already dreading the incursion.
Catie shook her head. “You should do what Mom suggested, and reschedule the builders for later. Then we could all go away somewhere for a week, while the place is all torn up. Up to the Jersey Shore, maybe…or over to Assateague…”
Her father looked thoughtful. Then he shook his head. “Nope. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I can get back to work.”
Catie smiled slightly. It was easy to forget sometimes how much her father loved what he did, when most of her classmates could talk about nothing but how their folks disliked their jobs and couldn’t wait to get away on vacation. If she was lucky, some day she would be in the same position, when she got a job at Net Force. She refused to think of it in terms of if.
And that reminded her. “Oh,” Catie said, “I was going to tell you last night, but you were busy. Hal’s friend the spatball player from South Florida Spat is going to be in town tomorrow…we’re going into Georgetown to see him at lunch.”
“Hey, that’s great for you. You need a ride?”
She shook her head. “We’ll go public…between the Metro and the tram, it’s not a problem.”
“This is their big star, huh?”
“So I hear. A lot of people are interested in South Florida all of a sudden…I assume that’s why he’s coming up here in the first place.”
He nodded, having another drink of his beer and looking at the painting. “…Why do you think they’re so popular just now?”
Catie looked at her father quizzically. “You getting interested in sports all of a sudden?” she said. It was an unusual concept, for though he might render sports themes in the course of his