Convergence
Chapter Five: Perception

A/N- Three(!) new chapters, because for some reason I just like uploading them in batches. Not sure why. Once again, thanks so much for the reviews! (And especially thanks for not killing me on poor Ben's behalf.) I haven't forgotten Vault of the Oracle, incidentally, I just want to get this one finished first.
Still don't own NT, blah blah blah...

Ben hadn't really known what to expect when he'd brought Riley aboard. Certainly the tech seemed friendly enough, but still, they'd barely met. Yes, there had been some desperation involved. Yes, perhaps he should've thought about it a little longer, but it was too late now. Maybe he'd end up regretting it, maybe not. He'd never get anywhere without a few risks.

The day Ben really knew everything would be fine came in the middle of July, when he reached the door in response to frantic knocking and learned they'd gotten past bothering with 'hello'.

"Hey, Riley."

"About time. Are you sure you don't want me to fix your doorbell?"

He took a moment for his brain to fully wrap around this unexpected greeting, then stood aside to let the young man in. "I'd love it. But I keep telling you, my landlord says no modifications to the property. Fixing the doorbell counts as a modification."

"I'll give him a modification. Let me at some tar and feathers... and jumper cables..." Riley threw his backpack at the couch and flopped down right after it. "It's ninety-seven degrees out there. And I've been beating on your door, which is pretty solid and makes boring conversation, for half an hour."

"Why didn't you just call?" Ben knew that when he was focused, actually hearing someone knock on the door was right out, so he was mostly inclined to believe the timeframe. It didn't explain why the tech hadn't used the same tactic that had gotten him into the house since the doorbell went out two weeks ago.

Riley held up his phone as if he'd been waiting for the question. "No battery."

That'll do it. "Sorry about that. I was kind of preoccupied."

"You? Preoccupied? Come on Ben, be serious," he smirked, "preoccupied doesn't begin to cover you when you're working."

Also true. "Yeah, yeah. Well, take a couple of minutes to cool off while I go get my notes, I've got some ideas to bounce off you." Ben was used to working alone; he was just learning how helpful it could be to talk his theories out with someone else. The fact that Riley was far from a history scholar and had more questions than answers was an added bonus.

"Sure. I'm rubber, you're glue."

Ben snorted and returned to his room, gathering up his latest batch of research. When he returned, his companion was sprawled out reading a newspaper. "Anything interesting?"

"Hm, let's see... no. This isn't even news, look at this. Fishing boat sinks in the Potomac." Riley waved the newspaper in exasperation. "Not only does it tell how many fish they caught, it's even kind enough to tell us the name of the boat was the Erika—and what kind of name is that, by the way?" He shook his head. "I'm no expert on girls, but wouldn't most of them slap anyone who named a boat after them?"

Ben laughed. "I don't know that it's a good idea, but it's pretty common practice for small vessels. Even commercial ships occasionally use femal..." He trailed off, eyes lapsing into distant half-focus as he stared past his young companion. All his other ideas were forgotten. "Female names..." It couldn't be. It really couldn't be.

For a moment, Riley just looked back at him blankly, and then he could see comprehension slowly beginning to dawn. "There's no way it's that easy."

"It may just be that easy..."

"You've got to be kidding." The tech pulled out his laptop and started typing furiously. "After all the time you've been...?"

"This could be it! It's a better lead than anything else we've got."

"This is true."

Their eyes locked. It was all Ben could do not to leap out of his seat and rush out to the car immediately, but he wasn't working alone anymore. If this turned out to be the answer, then they had to find it. But they had to find it together.

Riley grinned. "What are we waiting for?"

--

When Ben had said he had a financier, Riley's mind had come up with images of his parents' social circle in Denver. Probably a stuffy old guy in a suit, scowling behind a huge cluttered desk—not too different from Dr. Watson, actually. Alternately, he could just be an elitist snob. So when they found the last sighting of the Charlotte and learned that said financier was going to join the hunt in earnest, he'd immediately started preparing to deal with either type of person; mostly this involved trying to keep his mouth shut more often.

He had not been at all prepared for Ian Howe.

Ben had stopped bothering to lock his door when he was expecting company since the incident in July, which was helpful. Riley let himself in and pitched his backpack at the couch, as usual, then proceeded into the kitchen and paused. The table was covered in ocean charts—expected. Ben was hunched over the charts as if he'd never seen anything so fascinating in his life—also expected. The blond man seated across from him looking up and grinning was not so expected.

"Hello, you must be Riley." He was up and shaking the young man's hand before Ben had fully even looked up from his papers. "My name's Ian."

"Uh... hi?" Riley reclaimed his hand and backed off a step. He'd been ready to deal with a grouch; he had plenty of experience with that. But no. The guy was friendly. This development caught him entirely off guard, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from freezing up. As it was, he knew he looked like an idiot standing there stammering, but his usual response to being blindsided was to make fun of someone else. Probably not a good option here.

Ian cocked his head. "You all right?"

Regaining some fraction of his composure took supreme effort, but he forced a shrug. "Yeah, I just thought—I mean, I wasn't expecting, uh... I mean... it's just..." He coughed and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mostrichpeoplearejerks."

He could see Ben raise an eyebrow as Ian took a minute to process this, then laughed. "Can't argue with that."

That pretty much ended the conversation, and Riley dropped into a chair with a sigh of relief. Talk about getting off to a bad start. The fact that Ian hadn't seemed at all offended by his reaction didn't really make him feel any better. Given some time to adjust, things would be fine. Until then... he started his laptop and tried to just pretend the last five minutes hadn't happened. "Find anything interesting yet?"

"A bit." Ben pushed a chart across the table. Of course, every map of ocean currents looked about the same to Riley, but the scribbled notes and large red Xs on this one made it clear what the points of interest were. "We know when the Charlotte vanished, and we've got a rough idea of where. Thing is, having a rough idea isn't that much help—depending on exactly where it lost control, it could've ended up several different places. We've mapped out some of the most likely routes."

"Uh huh." A quick study of the charts on the table showed that about half had undergone similar marking. "Looks needlessly complicated."

The other two shrugged and Ian gave him a quizzical look. "Would you do it differently?" His tone was light, but there was definitely a challenge in there. And he looked fairly put off by the idea that they'd been doing it the hard way.

Riley nodded and pointed to his computer. "Setting up a program with all that information wouldn't be too hard. Then you just plot the ship's intended path and pick a spot, and the program could tell you where it would've ended up if it went off course there. You wouldn't need a million maps to keep track of it and computers, unlike people, don't make mistakes."

He only realized how he'd emphasized unlike people when Ben shot him a searching look. It was the kind of look he usually reserved for history books and Riley didn't like it at all. Careful. You know how much this guy loves questions. You don't want questions.

Ian, too, was looking at him as if for the first time, but in his case that was forgivable. It was pretty close, after all. "Wouldn't be too hard? You can do it, then?" He sounded somewhere between skeptical and impressed. It was enough to make Riley think the other man hadn't taken him seriously at first...

Well, he did get that a lot.

"Sure, I can do it. It'll take some time though."

Both the others shrugged. "We've got time," Ben explained, "by the time we can get a diving expedition set up, it'll be winter. There's no way we're going diving that far north in winter."

"Sounds reasonable." He was only half paying attention. This was the first time since hacking Watson's database that his own talents had really come into play, and his brain had already clicked into tech mode. "Give me, uh, let's call it a week to be on the safe side, and I can have it done." He'd need the source data, of course... "Did you get those charts online?"

Ben gave him a look that clearly asked who did serious research online.

"Oookay, never mind, I'll find a site myself." He closed the laptop and looked up. "I'll go get started now."

"There's no rush, you can stay for awhile and—"

"Nahh." There was really no reason he couldn't work on the program right here, but something about Ian was still grating on him. Or maybe it was the whole situation. Right now he just needed to get out, reorient himself, and come back and try the whole 'meet the new guy' thing again later. On his terms this time, rather than being hit out of the blue with someone trying to be friendly. "I'll keep you posted." He bolted before anyone could argue.

That had not gone the way it was supposed to.

--

"I don't think he likes me," Ian commented, turning back to the ocean charts and putting them back in their folders.

"Quite the opposite, I think. He's been expecting not to like you since I told him you were coming to work with us. He looked like his expectations just got blown to bits." Ben shrugged. "Most rich people are jerks, huh?"

"You spent enough time looking for a financier, you ought to know it."

"Very true." He watched the doorway where Riley had disappeared and found himself frowning. His forte was problem solving, and it was all he could do not to apply that skill to what had just happened. Computers, unlike people, don't make mistakes. The vehemence in that statement had been jarring from someone who was usually quite easygoing, if a bit on the cynical side.

"Worried?"

"Not really. We'll see him again in a week, like he said. Riley throws himself into his work like no one I've ever met."

"Except you, I trust." There were equal parts of admiration and amusement in Ian's voice.

"No, not except me. I throw myself into my work because I'm determined. He acts more like he's trying to... I don't know, like it's an alternative to something he really doesn't want to do."

"Hm." Ian pushed a folder away and leaned back in his chair. "Well, he seems clever enough. Do you think he can really make that program he offered?"

"If he says he can do it, I believe he can do it." Voicing that surprised him. Though he'd met the young man working tech support, nothing they'd done so far had really involved computer skill beyond efficient use of Mapquest. And in fairness, Riley was a bit of a goof. And maybe that was why Ben believed him; when Riley said something he didn't mean, it was pretty obvious.

"Excellent." With that, his companion tossed a pack of cards on the table. "So in the meantime..."

Ben groaned. "You know I'm terrible at every card game known to man."

"Well, that's the general idea."

He rolled his eyes. Every time they got together this happened, as if there was some unspoken rule between them. He was pretty sure that nowhere in the informal contract they'd drawn up did it say I, Benjamin Franklin Gates, do hereby agree to play card games with Ian, in which I get brutally mauled, at the drop of a hat. So he shrugged. "What're we playing?"

--

The information he kept getting from his program was enough to convince Riley he'd done something very wrong. Never mind how often he'd checked things over. There was just no good reason a ship which had gone missing just a little north of New England should be ending up where his test projections kept landing it.

Two more attempts at troubleshooting convinced him that maybe he should do a little research on the topic. What he found was that actually, there was a good reason his computer wanted the Charlotte to end up in the Arctic. He went over the information a few times, committing it to memory; tech jargon was one thing, hydrothermic properties and semi-solid migrating land masses were outside of his area of expertise. And here I figured weathermen had easy jobs.

It was all very interesting, he supposed. But he was a little more worried about what it meant for their expedition. When he'd left Ben and Ian four days ago, they were talking about prepping for a dive. Along with the ocean charts, he'd found actual ocean floor surveys of several of the areas in question, in the process learning where the Charlotte wasn't. And that was underwater.

Oh no, a dive would be too easy. Their ship was stuck in a block of ice.

He reached back and took his phone off the front seat. "Hey Ben, it's Riley. Yeah, it's going great, I'm bringing it over now. This is gonna be easier to show you than to tell you."