April 20. Thursday Night.

Hi Journey.

I know Sis isn't lonely over there in foreign waters but I still like to check in on her from time to time, just to make sure.

“You creep! Why didn't you tell me Julian Maxwell was in San Francisco ?”

“Hey, you validated my reason for not telling you when you threw me to the Trino wolves at Carm's,” Casey shot back. “Or is your memory on the blink?”

“Hey back at you—you were always an easy target. I bet you know how to say no in what, a dozen different languages?”

“Seventeen, actually….”

“You sure can't say it at the right time, sister.”

She laughed. “Did I tell you I'm finally learning Egyptian?”

“I figured you'd be learning some local language.”

“I'm picking up a little Javanese; I guess you could call it local. The Egyptian's a bit tougher, since I don't have anybody to practice with.”

“Ancient or modern?”

“Some of both. I'm trying to learn a few dozen glyphs each week. But I'm really cramming in Egyptian Arabic so I can pick up daily news broadcasts from the web and then tote them about in my iPod.” She chuckled. “The other day I was translating English to French to Japanese and trying to listen with one ear to news out of Cairo about how a dig in Fayoum was progressing. I hope I didn't garble it too bad for this new group of Tokyo tourists.”

“I'm surprised you have time for guys at all.”

“Hey, where do you think I snagged the iPod?”

“Must've been Billy, unless the Emperor DHL'd it over to you.”

“Hah! I doubt Julian has enough money to pay for the iTunes, let alone the player. No, Billy gave it to me when I returned from the States. Had a dozen songs already loaded on it. It's so great to be able to learn and not be umbilicalled to a laptop. Of course, I loan it to Billy a lot when I'm off diving with this new group and he's hanging out in town.”

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