d4

by Sherrie Cronin

  “Ariel, I know that you’re not one to ask for help,” her brother said. “But if things get weird, I mean more weird, don’t wait too long to reach out to me or somebody else, okay?”

  “Yeah, I promise I won’t.”

  ******

  By the next night when Ariel called Siarnaq, she was calmer but more determined. Once Siarnaq learned of Baldur’s horrible fixation with her, surely he would back off of his idiotic plan to align with the man in order to stop Mikkel from hastening the modernization of Greenland. However, Ariel didn’t get a chance to confide in Siarnaq. He started talking first.

  “I’m so glad you called, beautiful sunset lady with sky blue eyes.” His good humor and joy at hearing from her were clear. “I’ve been wanting to call you too, and share my wonderful news. The man we discussed, your client from Iceland. We talked. He is not a bad man at all, and he’s going to look into all the information I gave him about what Mikkel is doing. He has assured me that putting a stop to Mikkel will solve his problems as well as mine.”

  “Oh no,” Ariel said.

  “Aren’t you happy for me? You of all people, you have seen some of the lives that will come to be because of my alliance with this man. Do you not wish these distant descendants the joys that you and I have shared?” When Ariel said nothing, Siarnaq said, “Or perhaps you value them less because they are not going to be people like you.”

  “That’s ridiculous Siarnaq.” Ariel was instantly annoyed at the accusation. “You should understand me better than that. Listen. I want you to succeed and I want people, any and all kinds of people, to live on. But it is far more complicated. Baldur is using you to accomplish some very nasty short-term plans. You don’t want to be helping him.”

  “I doubt that is true,” Siarnaq replied. “Or you would have seen scenarios in which he causes such harm. Have you?”

  “No but I don’t see everything. I can’t touch him like a normal person and get information. He’s got some variation of what you and I have.” Ariel wasn’t sure how far she wanted to go with this line of thought.

  “I know this already!” Siarnaq’s voice was filled with excitement again. “We discovered it when we met. It is one of the very reasons that I trust him. I do not think that those who can see ahead do harm to others lightly. They know the consequences.”

  “Did you two spend much time in contact?” Ariel asked.

  “We could barely touch. It was a little painful when we did. I think it is because what he and I are is so incongruent that it can’t be melded like it can between me and you. But we both felt each other’s power,” Siarnaq said.

  Well, he and I can meld,” Ariel said. “He was fairly aggressive about trying it with me, and he made it clear that he intended to gain my cooperation.”

  “So cooperate with him,” Siarnaq said in exasperation. “This man is on our side.”

  “This man is on no one’s side but his own,” Ariel answered with equal frustration. “He just wants to stop Mikkel from making money so he can make more, god only knows why. He’s totally selfish and I can’t believe that you are so naïve that you can’t see that.”

  “You suspect that anyone who didn’t grow up in your sophisticated society is naive, don’t you?” Siarnaq shot back. “This man is my ally. If you’re my friend, you will help him.”

  “Then I guess I’m not your friend,” Ariel said, “because I sure as hell don’t intend to help him.” Her goodbye was as cold as Greenland had been when she and Siarnaq first met.

  14. Summer Begins

  Over the next week a disgruntled Ariel spent a fair amount of time rereading the documents that Toby had given her while she tried to figure out the best way to send information back. She’d just walked away from a man with whom she had a special—no, make that a truly a unique relationship—and she’d done it based not only on how personally distasteful she found Baldur, but also because of Toby’s assurances that Baldur was hell-bent on taking over the world’s economy.

  She had heard nothing from Siarnaq since she had bade him a cold goodbye a week ago, and she missed his ongoing funny, warm communications with her. One of her favorite musicians, Lana Del Ray, released a new album on the first day of summer. Ariel played its best single, “Summertime Sadness” over and over as she tried to learn more about the situation that had caused her rift with Siarnaq. In spite of her irritation with him, she had to admit that she was worried about him. She was pretty sure that any kind of collaboration with Baldur only ended well for Baldur.

  After several nights of study, on a whim she went back to her search engine and typed in d4. Pages one, two and three took her to electronic products, restaurants and video games that used the letter and number combination, and there were two bland links connected to the Icelandic investment company as well. On a whim she typed in the calculus notation d4/dt. There was more of what she’d already seen, but on the bottom of page two she discovered a word for the mathematical expression. She clicked on it, and as she made her way through the article that popped up, she was pretty certain that she’d found meaning behind the name,

  One’s location can be described by the letter x. How fast one moves is the first derivative of x, written dx/dt in math. Ariel knew this; it basically described how fast your car was going.

  The second derivative, d2x/dt2, was what most people called acceleration. It was how fast one’s car speeded up or came to a stop. Common knowledge. Ariel was surprised to learn that the third derivative, a change in acceleration, was called jerk, and if a person went too quickly from speeding up real fast to not speeding up that much at all, that quick change in acceleration tended to make a person puke. So jerk was important in designing vehicles.

  The fourth derivative also showed up occasionally, but in the physical world it was the first of the derivatives of time to be beyond the realm of human detection. Changes in jerk simply made no sense to anyone not working their way through an equation, and regular people had no reason to know or care that it existed. This fourth derivative, change in jerk, also had an official name. It was called snap, and it was the world of the instantaneous that existed one step past something a person could explain. It was change that happened under the radar. It was Baldur’s world.

  Ariel was glad that she had heard nothing from Baldur in the week since she gratefully accepted a ride from a patrol boat back to Dun Laoghaire Marina and headed home without even telling him goodbye. That had given her seven days in which to ponder whether her own mind was exaggerating the degree to which Baldur was a threat to her.

  He had drugged her, although even then he had assured her it was a mild sedative and she would not be harmed. He had also told her that his use of her language was awkward. Maybe he only ended up sounding like a creep because of bad social skills and poor word choice. Was that possible? She didn’t think so, but she kept playing the conversations over in her mind.

  Eoin had been out sick all week with a nasty flu virus that he had caught from his kids, and she’d taken the opportunity to lay low around the office. She had spent some time filling up her thumb drive with all the documentation she could get from Jake about his little study on Baldur’s trading techniques, and she looked it over carefully. Jake was definitely right. He pretty much had proof that this client had some kind of minute-to-minute insider information on entire market sectors.

  She spent way too much time that week trying to compose a document for Toby. It was all so weird to write out, so she finally gave up and opted for bullet points hitting the highlights of her own premories since childhood, her experiences with Siarnaq, Siarnaq’s quest to prolong humanity’s survival, his hatred for Mikkel, Siarnaq’s new allegiance with Baldur, and finally Baldur’s threats and/or offer of collaboration with her. Oh wait. At the last minute she went ahead and added in Nell’s information on Cillian’s alleged powers of distant prophesy, and her own weird premonitions of Nell as other people.

  Zane was right—it had probably been therapeutic to write i
t all down. It did read a little like the script for a bad comic book series, she decided, but she sent it all on to Toby anyway. He could believe her or not and do with the information as he saw fit. At least someone out there would know everything about the situation.

  Now that she thought about it, she felt a little weak and feverish herself. Surely she wasn’t coming down with whatever Eoin had. Given everything else that was going on, getting sick was the last thing that she needed.

  Ariel spent the weekend in bed. Her mom video-called Sunday afternoon to check on her, apologizing that she kept picking up general vibes of misery from her daughter and was getting worried. Ariel made a concerted effort to think about anyone but Baldur and Siarnaq while she assured her mother that it was just a virus, and that she’d seek out a doctor if she didn’t get better soon.

  Her mom played along, chatting about life back in Texas and how unbearably hot it was already and how her magazine article was going to get published next month and she was so excited. As the conversation wore down, her mother began to fidget.

  “I’m not sure how to say this, honey, so I’ll be blunt. I can’t tell what it is that you are trying so hard not to think about while you talk to me, but I can tell that is what you are doing. I know how capable you are and how independent you have always been and I’m not going to pry.”

  “Good,” Ariel said, but of course her mom hadn’t finished her sentence.

  “But please understand that we all do need help occasionally. If you get in over your head, I’ve got resources. Some of them live near you and would be more than glad to back you up a little.”

  Ariel hadn’t thought of that. There was the old guy from London with the canoe paddle and the Nigerian telepath that sort of showed up everywhere, and, actually, between Mom and Teddie there were quite a few other odd folks out there with skills that could be useful against any evil tyrant trying to take over the world. Ariel smiled to herself. The ladies in her family did have some connections.

  “You’re right, mom. I’m not really in a situation where I feel like I have to call for help, but I promise that if things go that far, I’ll yell if I need to. I hadn’t thought much about the kind of resources that you might be able to access. Thanks for offering.”

  By Monday morning her fever still hadn’t broken and she called in sick, and by Tuesday she reluctantly started looking for healthcare options in a foreign country. By Tuesday afternoon she was in a crowded waiting room of a clinic, warily eying two dozen other sick people who sat next to her sneezing and wiping their noses.

  “This is insane,” Ariel blurted out to the busy middle-aged Irish woman who turned out to be her new physician. “I can fling a hundred gigabytes of data around the globe, have text translated into over two hundred languages as I read it, and pull up satellite photos of your parking lot on my cell phone as I drive over here. Why the hell can’t somebody wipe out the common cold?”

  The woman smiled. “Because it’s a much more difficult thing to do than the stuff you are describing. You don’t fight anything. Your machines cooperate. Well, at least up until now they do.” When Ariel raised an eyebrow the doctor laughed. “Don’t mind me, I read way too much science fiction. Here, in reality, I do battle every day with an enemy that has the good sense to keep changing and has the foresight not to destroy the habitat that keeps it alive. I can’t say nearly as much for the human race that I try so hard to keep healthy,” she laughed.

  “Wait, we are talking about a virus here, right?” Ariel asked.

  “Oh we definitely are. If a virus doesn’t keep adapting to stay one step ahead of us, we can manage to eradicate it. We say the virus is mutating, kind of a pejorative term actually. The poor thing is just doing its very best to live as long as it can. That is the prime directive of life.”

  Ariel sniffed to hold back a sneeze. “Guess I never looked at it from the virus’s point of view.”

  “Well, looking at it like a virus, we’re just big slow lumbering habitats that it has to keep alive in order to survive. Good thing, too. You get a stupid virus like Ebola or something, and it kills off its host before it can get to a new one. Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

  “So a really smart virus causes the fewest uncomfortable symptoms, so that its habitat will go out and about, launching it around everywhere.”

  The doctor laughed. “That’s it exactly. Yet it is has got to get you sneezing and coughing at least a little in order to get launched. The one you’ve got isn’t exactly a genius as far as viruses go. It made you sick enough to stay home from work. Luckily I’m going to prescribe some great symptom-relieving drugs and you’re going to be out running around spreading it everywhere by morning.” She gave a wink. “I’m a virus’s best friend.”

  “You’re mine too if you can make me feel better,” Ariel assured her.

  Ariel was back in the office by Wednesday, and a still sick-looking Eoin sought her out early in the day.

  “You’re back. Good. Baldur came down sick last week, too, but he did call to convey his disappointment that you’re outing ending so poorly. They never caught the bloke that sabotaged your ride, but the police are blaming it on some fringe Irish independence group that tries to scare off foreign money sources.” Eoin shook his head. “So many kinds of idiots out there.”

  Ariel nodded without comment.

  “He wants to try for another get-together. The man seems determined to get to know you better. But relax. He’s not only invited me along this time, he’s gone as far as to suggest that d4 would also like to include our other two Dublin-based clients and a few of their guests. Sort of the walrus hunt idea that you envisioned way back when.”

  “I wasn’t going to hunt walruses,” Ariel reminded him. “And isn’t that a little out of character for Baldur? Friendly and generous all at once?”

  Eoin considered. “Yeah, it is. Maybe he’s smitten with you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ariel said.

  “Offer another explanation?” Eoin suggested. “You can hardly say no under the circumstances. He’s looking to host a day at Iceland’s famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, which has got to be one of the most amazing things in that country. A Friday in two weeks. He’s reserved the exclusive lounge for us for the whole afternoon, and then dinner in their famous LAVA restaurant built into the side of a cliff. You can fly home the next morning or stay on and sightsee on your own for the rest of the weekend if you want. I’m thinking of having the missus come over the next day if she can get her mum to watch the kids.”

  Once Ariel sighed in resignation, he couldn’t resist adding, “Hey, do they wear clothes at that spa or not? I’m not sure. You never know with those Scandinavians.” Then seeing her pained expression, he laughed. “Don’t worry. I checked online. Swimsuits are not only required, they’ll even let you wear a burqini.” Eoin couldn’t resist giving Ariel a little wink. “I hear that some of those burqinis are kind of cute, you know, if you want to go that route.”

  Ariel glared at him as he continued to chuckle.

  “Wear what you fooking like, Zeitman, but clear your calendar for the trip. Your presence is required.”

  Ariel had a lot of options. The most obvious was to do her job, go on the trip to Iceland, have a good time, let Baldur get his answer about how much use she could be to him, and not worry about what that would lead to until she got there. It was a good sensible option because it didn’t involve overreacting and making a situation worse. At least, it was a good option for any woman who did not occasionally see her own future.

  Only a fool would take such a chance, however, when touching items at work that related to Baldur produced faint low-level premories that were all over the place. Somewhere out there was a future where Ariel and Baldur became lovers in Iceland. In some scenarios, he destroyed her in mere months, sometimes literally, more often only metaphorically. In other futures, they began to rule the world together like despots, their greed growing like a tumor. Alternatives existed in which she killed
him when she had the chance.

  Other futures spoke of Ariel locked away, kept barely alive and used by all of d4. In the worst of those, they used her not only for the way the touch of her skin could add to their wealth building, but they also used her any other way they saw fit while they were at it. Alternatives existed in which she killed herself before it could go on any longer.

  Some possibilities spoke of nothing so dire. There was some probability that Baldur would find her to be useless. In some scenarios he was kept from getting his answers as their game of cat and mouse continued to wear on past when Ariel could see. Some alternatives had her pacifying him for months, aiding him a little now and then to keep him at bay, but mostly stalling on their working relationship as she sought a safer alternative.

  It was clear to Ariel that this had many ways to go, and some of them were bad. Quite bad. As she had when faced with the possibility of her own mother drowning, she concentrated on taking various actions, struggling to visualize and weave her way through the filmy threads created when she focused on different choices.

  The good news was that action on her part did not seem to make the less desirable alternatives clearer and brighter. Doing something, and doing it now, banished some of the worst alternatives to a faintness that made them almost invisible.

  Excellent. For once this damn gift was going to be of some use. Good timing. So what action did the best job of bringing the most favorable outcomes to the forefront?

  Talking to Cillian. How odd. That one had been low on her list. Granted Nell had made her curious about how foresight worked for a true prophet who saw ahead a millennium or more, but Nell had also made it clear that Cillian didn’t particularly like to talk about it. Ariel understood.

  But Cillian also didn’t know what Ariel could do, or what Baldur could do, or what kind of danger the two of them could possibly produce together. She doubted that their little events affected the big things that he saw, but maybe not. The man should be told.