d4

by Sherrie Cronin

  “Some days I don’t like Mars either,” she confessed with a laugh, “and then they went and made me the mayor.”

  “I thought you were the chancellor?” John said.

  “That was Mikkel’s idea. He thought that Mayor of Mars would sound pretty stupid here and we should use a title with more dignity in our communications with Earth. He decided that chancellor had a certain academic ring to it. The funny thing is that even though the Martians call me Mayor, in fact I’m more of just a city manager. Turns out that I’m good at running things. Throw in the little extra foresight I have with my organizational skills and I do my job well. However, it’s just a job there, John. I’m no more important than anyone else.”

  “Well, Earth is sure making a big deal about you,” he smiled. His face went somber. “Do you like it there sometimes?”

  Ariel hesitated. This was a complicated question to answer. Everyone in her family knew of her precognitive abilities, although they kept the facts to themselves. However, at Cillian’s insistence years ago, very few knew of her real reasons for going to Mars. John was not one of them. It needed to stay that way.

  “Your father, Far, he loves it there and it’s home to Bridget and we’ve made a nice life,” she answered. “I’m glad that you are happy here, John, I really am. We’re proud of you.” She let herself give him a quick hug to end the conversation, and was relieved when all she premembered was images of him playing happily with Trinity as she grew.

  ******

  Ariel had been on Earth for four months before she was able to get a sufficiently long break from her scheduled activities to make one very important trip to Donegal. The western coast of Ireland had formed its own nation over a decade earlier, and in 2047 English was rarely spoken in the new country. Relations with neighbors were a bit strained and security was tricky. This was one visit, however, that Ariel absolutely insisted on. It was finally arranged for late May.

  Nell and Hulda were spreading a picnic lunch out on their beautiful deck overlooking the ocean when she arrived by car, her security detail in a separate vehicle that remained tastefully distant. Word must have reached her friends that Ariel could not get enough time outdoors looking at the sky or the sea, and late spring along the coast was beautiful.

  “You didn’t? Sushi and dolmades,” Ariel clapped her hands with delight when she saw the food that Nell was setting out.

  “Old memories. The best kind,” Nell responded. She was in her early seventies now, and Ariel could see the toll of the years in her friend’s aging face. She wondered if a lifetime of morphing her appearance had contributed to the many wrinkles. Hulda, only a few years younger, seemed to be weathering the passage of time so much better. At least they both seemed every bit as much in love with each other as they had been more than thirty years ago.

  “So are you going back to Mars?” Hulda asked politely once they had settled into the meal. Not when, Ariel noticed. But if. And if had never occurred to her.

  “I have a husband and daughter back there,” she said a little defensively. “And an elected office. And people counting on me.” Ariel gave the blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds a wistful look. “I don’t think not returning is an option.”

  “Have you talked to Cillian about it?” Nell asked.

  “No, I haven’t spoken directly with Cillian in years. Brendan handles all of his communication, at least with me, and it never occurred to me to have Brendan ask him that kind of question. You know that I’m headed over there tomorrow morning. Have you discussed this with Cillian already?”

  Nell shook her head. “No, it’s your question to ask. Hulda and I were just talking about how you’ve made a huge difference there over the past decades and we wondered if there was a chance that they didn’t need you up there any more. I mean in the psychic sense.”

  Ariel allowed herself to try on the idea. Her first thought was of Mikkel and Bridget. A sharp pang reminded her that she’d miss them horribly, and that they might never understand such a decision on her part. But they would be okay without her.

  She thought of the eight-month journey back in the tin can and the recycled air for the rest of her life with never an ocean to swim in or clouds to watch. No more blue sky. Ever.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I would stay here if I could. I mean I’m their highest elected official. What kind of human would I be if I chose to give up everything I’ve built for the last twenty-five years just so I could watch clouds?”

  Hulda and Nell said nothing to that, and Ariel knew that she was going to at least ask Cillian the question.

  She spent the evening with her two friends and headed over to Cillian’s estate the next morning, her security entourage behind her. Brendan had warned her earlier that the years had changed the elderly prophet and probably himself as well.

  “We haven’t had a visitor here in months,” he said as he opened the door. Brendan’s butterscotch mane was now more white than bronze and the entryway looked like it might not have been cleaned in years. She spoke into the small mic she wore on her collar.

  “All’s well. I’m going in and, once again, I’ll be shutting this off. No need to follow.” She knew that her security detail hated that, but she would have some small measure of privacy while she was here.

  Brendan took her through the clutter, straight to the old man in a wheelchair seated by a window. A breeze was blowing through the opening, and the sunlight shown through the upper glass.

  “I can still feel the sun on my face,” he said hoarsely. “And the wind.”

  “It’s Ariel,” Brendan answered “She’s come to see you from Mars.”

  “I know that,” Cillian said. “You should touch me, Ariel. It won’t hurt either of us now.”

  She obliged and put her hands over his papery, freckly skin. She stroked his arms softly and let her mind relax into the visions that they shared. She had forgotten the sensation of seeing so far ahead, and she felt disoriented for a few seconds before she could begin to make sense out of the images and the knowledge that came to her.

  “Oh. Wow. Things have changed, haven’t they?” she remarked.

  “Yes. Better in so many ways, and you and your family are part of that. But it’s not better in all ways, is it?”

  He was right. She understood now the need for secrecy that Cillian had become increasingly adamant about during the past decade. New probabilities had arisen and grown from tiny outliers to significantly plausible outcomes. Knowledge of an impending disaster, even a solid rumor of such a disaster, easily spawned a wealth of unpleasant alternatives. Here, she saw fanatic political parties whipping fear into a frenzy of awful behavior. There, she saw a cautious medical establishment exacerbating the problem as it became frozen with its own dread of what might come. Cillian was right. All the best paths lay along the swath of a largely unsuspecting population. His growing insistence on secrecy was well founded.

  “See. You thought I was going nuts, didn’t you?” he said.

  Ariel chuckled. “It sounded at times like you might have gone over the deep end.”

  “Well, I haven’t. You and Baldur and Siarnaq managed to all leave me with way more clairvoyance than I started with, and frankly way more that I ever wanted. I still can’t see a damn thing here, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of every fooking thing that’s likely to happen tomorrow and just how likely it is.”

  “It must be hard.” She barely whispered it, more to herself than to him.

  “The seeing is okay. It’s the doing the right thing once you know. That’s what is hard,” he answered. When she didn’t say anything, he went on.

  “Did Brendan ever tell you that I finally found Lara and my kids?”

  “No! That’s great. When? Where were they?”

  “I found them back in the late twenties. They were exactly were they needed to be,” he said. “Wasn’t a good chance at all that I could make their lives one iota better at that point. Great chance that I could manage to cause a g
ood bit of havoc for them. So I let them go. I tell you, it’s not the knowledge that kills you, Ariel, it’s having to do right by it.”

  “True.” Ariel thought that she might be the only other person alive to understand so well. “I need to go back to Mars, don’t I?”

  “You saw that, I hope. Your biggest contributions, as a psychic, at least, are yet to come. It does make your path forward a little clearer, at any rate. No soul-wrenching decisions to make here and now, huh?”

  “It does make it easier. And I’ll go of course.”

  Cillian reached out, feeling the air, seeking her hand once again. He talked as he found it.

  “If it matters, and I know that it does to you, things are looking better now than they ever did. It’s probably going to all be worth it. In the end.”

  Something occurred to Ariel.

  “I know that you don’t like to talk to me electronically, but could you possibly send me updates somehow, Cillian? Just let me know every once in a while that we’re still on a good path? It would help me so much.”

  He shook his head. “Too many people see and hear all of your communications. Even if I try to talk to you in some kind of code, it’s just not a good idea Ariel. Somebody will figure out what we are doing. Besides, it’s not even a good idea for you to know these things. You have to move on, and not worry about the day-to-day or year-to-year fluctuations in the probabilities. You need to go back to doing what you were doing, and you need to accept that I won’t be able to ever update you again. It’s best that way. Please believe me.”

  She sighed. Something in her balked at this last edict, and she simply wasn’t willing to accept it, at least not completely.

  “No. You need to give me a glimmer here. Just a morsel, Cillian. I have an idea I think that you can live with. My mom is eighty-six. She’s not doing so hot, hasn’t been since my dad died. Before she goes, would you give her an update?”

  “Your mother?” He seemed surprised. “I only talk in person, Ariel, and I don’t travel. You know that. I would do this for you, and for your mother, because I know that she’s given up a lot too. But your mom can hardly come here on her deathbed.”

  “Actually, she can,” Ariel replied. “She’s a telepath, remember? That means that she can read your thoughts, and you can show her your most likely vision of the far future right before she dies. What’s the harm in doing that? I don’t get to see it, but she will, and that will be enough for me. ”

  “Okay,” the old man said cautiously. “There is some chance that I die before her, you know.”

  “Not much of one. You and I both have seen no likely time for you to die in the next several years. I’ll take my chances with those probabilities,” Ariel said.

  Cillian thought about it some more. “You told me that telepaths can’t find random people they don’t know. I don’t want her to get to know me now, and start reading my mind. I don’t even want her to know about the possibility of this exchange until it happens. So how is she ever going to be able to find me, a random person, especially at a time like that?”

  Ariel already had the answer.

  “As it turns out, my younger sister has some talents that would be useful. I won’t tell Teddie why. I’ll just alert her that when the end is near, I need her to take mom on a little trip. If she can manage it, when the time comes, and she might not be able to, but if she can I’ll ask her to bring mom’s consciousness to your house.”

  “She can do that?” Cillian asked.

  “She can. She’s done that kind of thing before. Don’t worry. I’ll let you know that the time is very close. All you have to do is bring on your best vision of the far future and hold it in your head for a while to give the two of them some time to pull this off. I know that this is a long shot, maybe a really long shot, but that is all I need. Will you give me that glimmer?”

  Cillian was quiet for a minute. “Right now, I see maybe a ten percent chance that I have to deliver on this promise. Frankly, I’m surprised that it’s that high,” he said. He shrugged. “You’ve earned this Ariel. If Brendan ever gets a message from you that the time is at hand, he and I will both know what it means. I promise that I will do everything I can to give your mom the best possible look at our most probable future.”

  Ariel said nothing, but gave him a kiss on the top of his head.

  As her lips touched him, Cillian realized with a laugh that odds were good that Lola Zeitman would recover from her current health slump and go on to live to be one-hundred and four years old. Great. And thanks to the promise he had just made to his dear Martian friend, the probability of him living long enough to deliver on his promise had risen dramatically. Amazing how having a goal can work to increase one’s life expectancy.

  ******

  Ariel’s last private outing before she went into quarantine and left Earth would be to enjoy finally attending the annual Penthes celebration with her family in late July. The employee-owned pharmaceutical company in Chicago had affected Cillian’s life and that of her friend Toby, not to mention her brother’s. Now it looked like Penthes would supply the antidote to the senility that was quickly taking over her grieving mother’s mind. Ariel was particularly grateful for this last contribution, for all of the obvious reasons and for private reasons of her own.

  Unfortunately her almost eight months on Earth had served to solidify her status as a celebrity. In spite of her efforts to lay low, the media continued being increasingly inventive to keep her experiences interesting to a jaded public.

  She supposed it was inevitable that someone would dig out the footage of her brother leading a conga line of dancers out of a prominent hotel two years ago when he had been the honoree at the Penthes event. His spontaneous demonstration of the importance of joy had struck a chord with the summer mood of the city, and a few hundred people had turned into a several thousand before the media had dubbed it “the dance of joy” and plastered the footage everywhere.

  It was extremely old news now, except for the fact that the Lady from Mars was going to be in Chicago at the very same event. Soon DJs were extolling the public to show the red planet how to party by making this the best dance of joy ever on any planet. Of course there had only been two such dances previously—the first one, and a half-hearted attempt to recreate it last year that had only attracted a couple of hundred participants. That didn’t stop the hype. The clarion call was heard, and Ariel didn’t know whether to be horrified or amused when she saw a special report on how to choose one’s costume for the event. One recommendation? Add a red wig, as a nod to Ariel and her people.

  Teddie and Lola’s part in starting the conga line seemed to have been forgotten, which was fine with both ladies. They were content to let the problem belong to Zane.

  “Are you going to ignore this nonsense, or do you plan to get out there and lead a dance?” Ariel finally asked her brother once they were both in Chicago. “You know that after all of this media nonsense it probably happens either way, but it’s a bigger deal if you lend credibility by starting it.”

  Zane shrugged. “Afi is all for my doing it. He says that seldom does anything bad come from dancing.” She could tell that her brother was weighing his options. Finally he held out his arm, to make a request that he had avoided throughout her visit. “What do you think? I know you hate being asked, but this is a one time deal, okay? Dance?”

  Ariel put her arm against his and hoped for nothing unwanted. She got her wish. This time there was a simple answer and a single vision. “Dance,” she answered. “Definitely dance.”

  ******

  One could say that Ariel had come back to Earth in a tin can, but to call the elaborate vehicle that was taking her back to Mars a tin can was hardly fair. Fifteen others would accompany her, all new settlers being sent on schedule. They brought added skills and youth, and endless screening had ensured that all of them would be at least decent traveling companions. The months would pass so much more quickly with their company.

&nbs
p; The vessel itself was packed with building materials to be reused, and goods needed and, in some cases, merely wanted by the settlers. Luxuries were creeping in. It all took space, and because of that, Ariel would have rooms to pass between. It would be a far easier journey. Once they landed, the living space on Mars would grow larger and be better.

  She’d insisted to her young traveling companions that she was just another traveler, one who would do her chores and try as hard as the others to get along. They’d look relieved and offered her no special treatment, save one courtesy.

  “You take the com as we leave,” a young woman said as she handed Ariel the communications apparatus.

  When Ariel hesitated, the woman added. “Mars is a democracy, right?”

  “A modified one. You know that certified experts on a subject get additional votes in their area of expertise?”

  “Yeah, I’ve done my studies and I like the system. But we don’t have any certified experts on board this ship, and the vote is fifteen to one.” The woman handed Ariel the mic. “You take the com.”

  So Ariel did.

  The radio cackled: “Aries number 46. You are cleared for take-off. Proceed when you are ready.”

  “Copy that. We are ready and initiating take-off procedure. Thanks for the great hospitality, Earth. It was fun. Now it’s time for me to take my fifteen new friends here and head for home.”

  32. March 2064

  Lola recognized that today she was at the end of her life. She'd been approaching it now for months, accepting comfort but refusing any further life-prolonging intervention. The family had spent as much time with her as they were able, but, as so often happens when dying is a very slow process, the living had had to keep on living. She understood.

  Her daughter Teddie was holding her hand and Lola was enjoying a warm sense of contentment. She felt like she’d just touched Alex and Zane, her husband and son, and the connections had given her strength. Then Teddie, always so fearful of letting her mother into her mind, had chosen this day to share a wonderful closeness with her. She was so lucky to have people that loved her this much, and to have their love to help her through this, life’s most difficult rite of passage of all.