“Against all odds, I’ve managed to fulfill your requests.”
“That is good news.”
“You may stand now.” Singh circled the table and slid a rectangular tray toward Simon. The tray was bare except for two pea-sized pods the color of flesh and a black square-shaped strip of metal. “Try one. Goes in the ear. Your choice. Right or left.”
Simon placed one of the pods in his ear.
“Make sure it is on.”
Several months earlier Singh had built Simon a device capable of detecting the presence of a digital camera. The first time he used it, Simon had forgotten to turn it on, to near disastrous effect.
“My iPods turn on automatically,” he said.
“Do I look like Tim Cook?”
Simon plucked the pod from his ear and flicked a pale nub on one side. A green light appeared and he replaced it.
“Hello, hello,” said Singh.
“Hello, hello,” said a voice in Simon’s ear. It was a female voice with a seductive English accent.
“I think I’d rather have HAL,” said Simon.
“Over Helen Mirren?”
“That’s Helen Mirren?”
“A voice print compilation.”
“Never mind. I’ll take Helen Mirren.”
Singh walked to the far side of the room and spoke a few words in his native Punjabi.
As he spoke, the woman’s voice translated the words into English. “Smart man, Riske. I’d take her over HAL any day. Did you know that HAL is a play on IBM? The lettersH, A, Lare each one earlier in the alphabet than IBM. Kubrick was quite a clever fellow.” Singh then asked in English: “Get that?”
“I didn’t know you were a film buff.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Yes,” said Simon.
“This device is capable of simultaneously translating most Indo-Asian languages, including Thai, Isan, and Khmer, into English. A Bluetooth transmitter inside the pod sends the audio to software housed on a cellphone, or if the cellphone is unavailable, via a booster to the cloud, provided you are within five kilometers of a transmission tower.”
Simon picked up the square-shaped black slab. “The booster?”
“It can run for three hours on a full charge. Not enough, I know, but you wanted something concealable.”
“It’ll do.”Den of vipers. Even before meeting with Ben Sterling, Simon suspected he might be walking into a loaded environment. Dickie Blackmon’s business dealings didn’t inspire confidence in his partners, no matter where in the world they were. “And the other part of my order?”
Singh picked up a signet ring from the tray and flipped it to Simon. “The ring contains a miniature parabolic antenna capable of picking up voices up to fifty meters away. I programmed a frequency differentiation algorithm that allows you to select the voices you wish to listen to. There’s a small button on the underside of the ring. Each time you press it, it will cycle through the voice patterns the antenna is picking up.”
Simon slipped the ring on his third finger and aimed it at the ceiling. Immediately, he heard Arjit telling his sister Taylor Swift was awful and demanding that she shut the door to her room. “Works through walls?”
“Intermittently. This is an old house with wooden floors. You’ll have less luck with concrete. None with steel.”
“Nifty. Is there a way to program more languages?”
“The fewer we upload the better the result. Second-generation software. Bugs galore. Besides, the number of dialects in that part of the world makes precision impossible. No one speaks textbook Thai. Remember that if Miss Mirren misspeaks herself now and again.”
