"You did. But it sounded like it was an emergency that related to me in some way."

"That doesn't mean I know what it is. You could be tangential for all I know."

"True. Does she have emergencies often?"

"Not very."

"I was generally on call to answer high-level physics questions at weird hours," says Bridget. "Still am, actually."

Bella laughs. "Like what?"

"One of the recent ones was about disappearing things," she recalls. "As in, an object suddenly replaced by vacuum. I advised her not to do it, especially if there was an open container involved. I'm pretty sure the relativistic baseball question was recreational, but I might as well point out to you that it is a bad idea to accelerate any solid object to a significant fraction of c within the Earth's atmosphere."

"Noted," Bella says. "I think I'm out of questions. Temporarily. I guess I'll leave you to your own devices and expect a call or an email from Libby at some point?" She stands up.

"Okay," says Bridget. "Bye."

Bella Tegus off. [I am to expect some manner of contact from Libby, Chris's niece,] she informs Lazarus and Alice.

[That sounds ominous,] says Lazarus.

[She clearly already knows where I am. This way I will learn something about her, too.]

[Still ominous,] says Lazarus.

[Somewhat. I don't think Bridget knows that Libby-or-someone-related kidnapped you.]

[Good for Bridget, I guess.]

[If I ever urgently need to deplete Libby's resources or get Bridget helping me it's something I can try telling her, at least.]

[Is there any reason to think she'd care?]

[The fact that she doesn't know,] Bella points out. [Is some reason, although not a definitive one. She seems basically decent and strongly does not expect that Libby does nasty things to get people to cooperate with her.]

[Well, good.] He sighs. [I hate being suspicious. Why can't the world be full of nice people who don't do things like kidnap me?]

['Cause I haven't fixed it yet,] says Bella, predictably.

[...I'm not sure you can actually do anything about the existence of not-nice people as a whole,] he says. [And if you can I'm not sure you should.]

[Well, fair enough, but I can make a dent in 'em by arranging not-completely-screwed-up resources for people to bring up kids with,] Bella says. [And figure out how to identify and contain the not-nicenesses of the ones I cannot dent in this way.]

[Okay,] he concedes. [That's better, I guess.]

[I am rather smart,] Bella points out.