Code of Honor полностью

Chang opened his mouth as if to say more, but the expression faded to a closed-mouth grin. He sighed. “We will know more after the tests, then I will be certain. Until then, I remain confident.”

Bai relaxed his fists, getting control of his emotions. “Very well,” he said. “You must do what you must do. That said, it would be better if you did it sooner rather than later.”

“Of course, General,” Chang said. “But the software is only part of the operation. We still do not have a door into the system.”

Now it was Bai’s turn to smile. His jowly cheeks all but eclipsed his eyes. “That is true, but without Calliope, there would be no FIRESHIP. Put together the data so I can brief the chairman.”

“General—”

Bai held up an open hand, letting his major know the conversation was over. “As for the doorway into the Americans’ system, I can assure you, it is being handled.”

Lies were a terrible way to begin a new marriage.

Sophie Li rested a hand on top of her pregnant belly and studied the small plastic pyramid on the dinner table in front of her two teenage children. The base of the cursed thing gave off a faint blue glow. Peter would never have approved of letting this thing into their home. It would have been easy to rationalize away the lie, to call it something other than what it was. Her husband of eleven months had called from halfway around the world to ask if there was any news — and she’d said “no.”

It was a short lie, but it was still a lie.

Peter could be touchy about technology — a natural consequence of his post-Navy job at Dexter & Reed. He was the sort of person to have firewalls to protect his firewalls. To him, a personal data assistant was nothing more than a Trojan horse. Sophie gave a long sigh and resolved to tell him about this the next time he called.

“Your turn to say grace, Martha,” Sophie told her daughter, seeking refuge from her lie of omission in a prayer over the spaghetti.

Sophie was in good shape and normally stayed that way by running with friends from church three nights a week. The pregnancy was too far along now, and frankly, she was tired of listening to her friends gab at her instead of with her. If they weren’t warning her about the dangers of having a baby at her age, they chided her about “doing this” to her husband — as if he hadn’t been there when it happened. They’d all done the math. When your baby is sixteen, Peter will be seventy years old. When the baby is twenty… As if that hadn’t been the first thing she’d thought of when she’d missed her period. She’d been pregnant before and knew what it felt like.

But Admiral Peter Li had been ecstatic, embracing the idea of being an elderly father while he gently wiped away Sophie’s tears and fears.

And now she’d lied to him.

Sophie’s daughter, Martha, leaned across the dining room table to examine the six-by-six-inch gray plastic pyramid. “You think she’s listening to us right now?” Martha was fourteen, looked eighteen, and was just beginning to snap to why so many boys followed her everywhere she went. A highlighted script for a Thornton Wilder play lay open on the table beside her plate. Sophie couldn’t remember much about it, except that it was about a family eating dinner and the parts Martha had read to her seemed awfully sad.

Sophie’s son, James, thumbed through a book of directions for the pyramid. He was sixteen and looked it — all knees and elbows — skinny as a rail, just like his father had been. He’d ordered a small amp for his guitar, but the shipper had inadvertently sent the strange little device instead. He’d called to see about a return, but they told him there was no record of the shipment so he should keep it. His amp was on the way.

James pointed to an open page in the manual. “Okay, it says here that she only listens when you address her directly.”

Martha folded her arms, unconvinced. “How does she know we’re addressing her directly unless she’s already listening?”

James shrugged, still reading. “I guess she has to listen some, or she couldn’t answer our questions.”

The base of the gray pyramid pulsed its faint blue glow for a moment, as if it realized it was a topic of conversation.

“Hey, Cassandra,” James said. “Are you listening all the time?”

The base pulsed a brighter blue. “Only when you want me to,” a pleasant female voice said. “But I am always here to assist.”

Martha leaned forward, taking care to enunciate and raising the volume of her voice, as if the machine were hard of hearing.

“Cassandra…” She paused a fraction of a second too long and the machine spoke.

“How can I help you?”

“Cassandra,” Martha said again. “Who are you?”

“I am your assistant. Always here to help.”

“Okay,” Martha said. “But what are you to Hecuba or Hecuba to you?”