“I don't really mind your going as far as the dam by yourself if it's all right with your mother, you pack a lunch, and you remember not to be late for dinner.”
“Of course it's all right with Mom. I talked with her after breakfast, before she left for the office, and she said it sounded like a good idea to her. I wouldn't have asked you if she hadn't.”
“Oh?” Her father cocked his head at her from the com screen a moment later, after the inevitable transmission delay. She could see the bulkead of his office aboard the space station Hephaestus behind him in the display, and his expression was just the tiniest bit skeptical “I seem to remember a few occasions when you neglected to make sure of that minor fact.”
She concentrated on looking simultaneously as innocent as the new fallen snow and moderately martyred. He continued to gaze at her for several moments, then snorted.
“All right, Honor. Go! Have fun. And be careful!”
“Yes, Sir,” she said obediently and waited for the display to clear. Then she shook her head. “And yada yada yada,” she added under her breath, rolling her eyes. “I'm not exactly an infant anymore, Dad.”
Fortunately, the link had already been closed. And even more fortunately, from Honor's perspective, her father hadn't specifically asked her if she'd asked her mother for permission. She could say with scrupulous honesty, as she just had, that she had discussed the possibility of the expedition with her mother over breakfast, and that her mother had expressed no opposition to the notion. Indeed, her female parental unit had been cheerfully in favor of it. Of course, Honor hadn't quite gotten around to informing her mother that she was thinking about making that trip today, but that didn't change the fact that Mom had clearly been agreeable to the notion in a general sort of way. And it wasn't her fault her mother was going to be tied up with patients straight through to lunch. Or that there were strict rules about not breaking into consult time or interfering with examinations, except in cases of emergency. And since no one could argue that this came under the heading “emergency,” it was obvious she couldn't possibly justify screening her mother directly over something this minor.
Honor was aware that a true stickler might argue that she'd been guilty of misleading both of her parents to at least a tiny extent, but she had cleared it, and with just a little more luck, Dad would forget to ask Mom if she had authorized the trip for today.
Yeah, sure! And when was the last time you had that much luck? she asked herself sardonically. Actually, the odds were pretty good she'd find herself grounded for at least a week, but that would be a fair exchange. If her timing was right, the huge banks of purple mountain tulip above the dam should have come into full blossom during the last three or four days.
Honor hadn't mentioned their existence to either of her parents, because they just happened to be her mother's favorite from among all the flowers and blossoming trees of Sphinx . . . and tomorrow just happened to be her mother's birthday. She had a carefully worked out plan that began with the double-chocolate cake (her mother's favorite flavor) and culminated with the original copy of the sixth-century Diaspora poet Dzau Syung-kai's collected works which her Uncle Jacques had found on Beowulf, and enough of those mountain tulips for the enormous centerpiece she was constructing for the dining room table would be the crowning touch.
She couldn't very well explain all of that if she wanted her birthday present to be a surprise, and even if she could have she was pretty sure her mother would never have let her go that far into the bush without “adult supervision.” Neither of her parents believed in keeping their daughter wrapped up in cotton, and they seldom objected to her spending a day rambling around in the woods as long as she didn't stray too far from the house. Her father insisted that she take along a pistol when she did (a paternal decree to a then eleven-year-old daughter which Honor suspected her mother, who'd grown up on über-civilized Beowulf, had taken some getting used to), but she'd been rigorously drilled in gun safety since her tenth birthday. Their definition of “too far from the