Death Match - Diane Duane [35]
Catie shook her head. She was unable to stop thinking about some of the side effects of having pet birds, at least one of which had repeatedly occurred to her when as a youngster she’d gotten stuck with cage-cleaning for a pair of parakeets that her brother had lost interest in. “I can see where it would happen. But, George, what about…”
“…the stuff parrots usually leave on the bottom of their cages, getting all over a space station?” George laughed. “It didn’t. They just housebroke the parrots.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, seriously. It’s apparently not that hard to do. It’s partly a matter of controlling when they eat and what they eat, and partly reinforcing good behavior. See, I know a lot about this because of the nickname, because everybody—everybody!—asks that question as soon as they can.”
Catie laughed. “Okay,” she said. “So now I’ve done at least one thing that was expected of me.”
“Thank heaven. Now we can get on with life.”
“Which means the next game,” Hal said.
George picked up the second half of his sandwich. “There is more to life,” said George mildly, “than the next game. Though you wouldn’t think that CNNSI believed it. Or any of the other news services that’ve been camped out around my apartment lately, or the Miami area in general…especially the sports news services. They seem to think it’s bizarre beyond belief that I do my own shopping. Like, now that we’re in the championships, suddenly a personal shopper should descend from the heavens and start taking care of me.” He laughed, but it had a slightly despairing sound to it. “I caught the guy from AB/CBS going through my garbage the other day. For what? Clues about my training diet? To see what junk mail I throw out? He wouldn’t tell me! I told him he wasn’t allowed to do that unless he’d actually carried the stuff out of the house himself. And he volunteered. He volunteered to carry my garbage! Do you believe that?”
“This is what everybody thinks they want a piece of,” said Hal, a little somberly. “Fame…”
“It’s overrated,” George said. “It means you can’t go to a convenience store and let someone see you buy a six-pack of beer. If you do, they either declare you a closet alcoholic, or else the next morning some guy from the beer company turns up on your doorstep asking you to appear in commercials.”
“Or both,” Mike said.
George looked wry. “Don’t laugh. I could be rich about six times over, just now, just out of what I’ve been offered for endorsements. But I don’t want to do that! We’re an amateur organization, for one thing. Spat for me is about getting together with my friends, having a good workout, playing together skillfully, and being social afterward…. But the problem’s a lot worse than that. If I ever get stinking rich, I want it to be from something I made, something I did. Not something they did to me, or for me, as an accidental outgrowth of a pastime, a game, yes, a game!—which by itself isn’t worth that kind of money. But they don’t understand that,” said George. “And frankly, neither do my family, or my friends, a lot of them…They think I’m crazy. And the trouble is, I’m beginning to understand why.”
He let out a long breath and had some more iced tea. Catie looked at the glass, and looked at the window, wondering whether George’s choice of beverage had anything to do with a possible fear of distant cameras, trained on him, just waiting to see him do something that someone somewhere might consider inappropriate.
“But enough of my troubles,