“Forgot you needed shoes,” I said. She sniffed. “Give me some money. I’ll fetch them.” “You wont run off?” “Dressed like this? Ha!” ... gave her a twenty and she asked for two. About nine o’clock we closed up as traffic got down to almost zero. She plunked herself in my Corvette, said, “Nice car” and did the seat belt. “You hungry?” I asked her. “Yep. Ain’t et today hardly.” “You speak English now and then?” She didn’t answer. I drove to a decent place, and she said she didn’t want to go in. The next echo would be slighter longer than 5.8 years after the pulse... Earth years..." Any guesses why 2048?" asked Kikapua."Oh yes," said Hiapo. "Kalea's baseline model expresses bubble slippage as a shear flow on an eleven-dimensional spatial manifold. The theory predicts a factor of two doubling for each orthogonal coordinate available to the bubble... The math is complex, and still very incomplete..." Practical implications?" After three years, we're still at the beginning of our study,. It was a moment’s work to align the requested new plates to match the target data I had sent to the Sicaria. The little Mexican darling’s weapon of choice is a pound of military-grade high explosive and a sophisticated detonator. She was slow, but very unlikely to miss. Anyone else in the car was just luck; good or bad luck depending on your viewpoint.While Judge Stern was the firm’s legitimate expert on lawyer responsibility and ethical standards, Frank Church was our self-proclaimed authority. Such arguments are colorful but they seldom change anything.Chadwick fouled off two more somewhat-less-prodigious clouts before the count reached 3-2. Now I was fuming, because two of those pitches called "ball" could have just as easily been strikes.Fucking umpires! (But the one who had called the loud foul had gotten it right -- trust me.)Anyway, I practically closed my eyes on the next pitch. With nobody out, the two base runners were holding pretty close, waiting for Chadwick to move them.