The Golden Globe

He had been out at the Amish settlements location scouting for a story arc that would have involved an Amish boy and girl. The plan fell through quickly when it became clear the Plain People did not like to be photographed, to have a "graven image" made of them—who knew?—but while there Sparky had made an interesting discovery. Nobody knew who he was. This was a revelation to him. Of course, nobody had a show that everybody watched, but these were surely the only sane people on Luna who had never heard of him.

He began showing up for baseball games, informal gatherings where sides were chosen up on the spot. At first, he was picked last, and he loved it! At any park in King City he would be the first pick every time, regardless of talent or lack of it. Worse, as a practical matter, it was impossible for him to play. Do you really want three hundred photographers clogging the first-base line? Jostling for a shot in the shower room? Clamoring for interviews in the dugout? Even in the pathetic league they formed for studio children Sparky saw little point in playing. Those kids knew who signed their parents' paychecks, and would not work very hard to strike him out or catch his rare fly balls. Sparky got no charge from that sort of competition.

But the Amish gave him something he hadn't had since he was eight: a chance to be just another kid. They knew he was famous, and rich, and it made no difference to them. All that was an "English" matter, not part of their world. If he wanted to play with them, he'd better be good.

He never got past mediocre, and that was okay. The first time he'd been chosen second to last was one of his best days. He'd earned that measly promotion. When you're rich and famous, and don't have the ego of John Valentine, you never know what you've earned. Whatever Sparky did worthy of praise was always the result of a team of people employed to make him look good. He never forgot that, no matter how many awards came his way.

Sometimes he wished he had inherited his father's massive self-assurance, but most of the time he was happier to be the way he was, a moderately insecure fellow with a touch of the impostor complex, that maddening feeling that people secretly know you aren't as good as you're cracked up to be, that they know you know it, and that they know you know they know it.

Here he knew exactly how good he was.

The batter suddenly backed out of the box, and the pitcher relaxed. Seemed the batter didn't like something there in the dirt, because he was raking the ground with his cleats. He dug himself a little hole, fa

God, Sparky loved baseball. How could a game that moved so slowly produce such tension? It might be another two, three minutes before the next pitch, and the suspense was getting unbearable.

So was his hunger. There was no more candy in his pocket. And three long i

The Plain People wouldn't call it anything so vain as a feast, but that's what it was. Sparky would walk past tons of the sort of delicacies they'd had at the recent wrap party to get to one plateful of Amish food.

There would be sweating glass pitchers full of tart pink lemonade, with lemons and cherries still floating in it. Sweet cider. Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Something made with beans and ham hocks. Roast beef sliced thin. Ears of fresh golden corn. Cupcakes and rows and rows of pies: cherry, lemon, mince, pumpkin. Shoofly pie, a treat made in heaven but served only by the Amish.

And Sparky's favorite, the muffins. Blueberry muffins and corn muffins, that you could twist apart in your fist and see the steam rising from the golden centers and slather with butter scraped from a wooden churn.

Life didn't get any better.

If you play baseball long enough, you develop a computer in your head. Each play adds to the programming, until you reach the point where you hardly have to think about it at all. Your eyes see, and your arms and legs react.

The crack of the bat activated Sparky's computer. It was a bloop single into the hole, coming right at Sparky. The first and second basemen started toward it, saw it was impossible, headed back to their bags as Sparky charged the ball. No hope of catching it; play it on the bounce. He saw the catcher standing on the third-base line, the pitcher heading toward the plate to back him up, the shortstop moving toward the mound to cut off the throw. His eye went back to the ball—Jesus! He was too close in. The ball hit the ground and bounced as he moved his glove down. It hit the heel of his glove, hit him in the chest, and bounced... and there it was, hanging in the air right in front of him, as if time was suspended. He bare-handed it and in one motion pegged it toward the shortstop. He saw the third-base coach waving the ru

It was a good call, but something had happened to Sparky's arm. The shortstop started to jump for it, might have caught it, but then ducked and let it go over his head... and it reached the catcher right on the numbers. The ru

Sparky jogged toward the dugout, arms loose, eyes on the ground, showing both coolness and humility. There was no way he'd ever tell anyone he'd been throwing to the shortstop. Everything had worked out all right, so who needed to know?

He accepted the high-fives and pats on the ass as only his due, then sat on the bench to wait his turn at bat. His feet were killing him.

For the first time he noticed that there was a strip of skin visible between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants.

Well, that accounted for it. His legs were longer, and so were his arms. Charging the ball, taking an inch or two more ground with each stride, he'd come up on it too fast. Then throwing, he'd made more distance than he ever had before. The long legs almost caused a disaster. The arm had compensated for it. Neat. But he was going to have to make some adjustments, watch himself more closely.

He looked up when the umpire called time-out. His father was striding across the infield. Sparky saw him look up, vaguely, as if only now aware that something was going on here, that he might be interrupting it. He smiled, and waved to the players, clutching a rolled-up newspad in his other hand.

John Valentine skipped lightly down the three steps into the dugout, smiling broadly at Sparky, who smiled back as well as he could. Valentine motioned for Jeff, the second baseman, to slide over a bit, then seated himself with his hip touching Sparky's.

"Baseball, eh?" he said. "Looks like fun. I had a hell of a time tracking you down out here."

"I don't tell anyone where I'm going," Sparky explained. Valentine seemed not to have heard him, held out the newspad, and pointed to the first installment of Hildy Johnson's series about Sparky.

"Have you seen this?"

Sparky studied it, trying to give himself a little time. Valentine thumbed the pager down in the corner, came to the part he was interested in, and pointed to a paragraph.

"Where does this bitch get off writing this stuff about me?" he said.

Sparky only then realized how furious his father was. He glanced up in the stands at Hildy, no more than thirty feet away, decided this wasn't the time to introduce them.

"It says this is an authorized article," Valentine plowed on. "You've been granting this woman interviews?"

"She's been around," Sparky allowed. "We've granted her access."

"If she has access," Valentine grated, "we need to control the access. There's no need to let her in on family secrets, and if she's going to make up lies like this, there's no need to have her around at all."