by Marko Kloos
“Odin’s Wolves,” Dahl said next to her in a tired voice. “Gods and predators. At what point in all our histories has anything good happened whenever some fool put those on a single banner to march under?”
CHAPTER 18
SOLVEIG
Halfway through the first morning meeting with Hanzo, Solveig decided that her four years of Acheroni language and culture instruction had been mostly a waste of her time.
The Hanzo building made Ragnar Tower look like a drab spaceport warehouse. Hanzo owned an entire block of Coriolis City’s most expensive commercial ward, and almost all of that block was taken up by the corporate headquarters, a beautiful structure made of glass and composite latticework that stood a mere three stories tall. It was as delicate as a bird nest and as light and airy as a clearing in a forest. It was also a display of wealth and status, a ludicrously underutilized space in a city where every square meter was precious. All over Coriolis City, Solveig had noticed the predominance of supertall, slender towers that reached into the sky underneath the dome like needles, obviously designed to minimize their footprint on the ground. Hanzo’s headquarters showed everyone that the company did not have to concern itself with that sort of sensible efficiency. From what Solveig had learned about Acheron, using space in a wasteful manner was considered uncouth and offensive, but it seemed that she hadn’t even begun to understand the dynamics of this culture despite her extended schooling on the subject.
“We do not share the view that the contract between our companies extends to pricing privileges beyond the annual Alon quantities we originally agreed to supply,” she said to her counterpart across the table in Gretian.
The Hanzo executive listened to the translation on his earbud and nodded thoughtfully, as if he had heard the statement for the first time just now even though she had told him the same thing in five different ways over the last half hour. Acheroni seemed to have a deep aversion to definitive statements. Solveig had started the negotiations in Acheroni, without the use of translator buds. But she had quickly realized that her limited mastery of the language was a welcome loophole for the Hanzo people to willfully misinterpret her statements in small but important ways, so she had switched to Gretian, irritated that her hosts would try to turn her attempt at courtesy into a negotiation advantage.
“It seems unwise to agree to something that would see us penalized for purchasing more of your production,” the Hanzo executive said.
After the initial greeting and introduction by the company president, Hanzo had cycled four different executives through the seat at the head of the table. This one—his predecessor had introduced him as Arata—was a handsome man who looked to be in his sixties, and whose full head of graying hair reminded Solveig of her father’s.
“I wouldn’t consider it a penalty,” Solveig replied. Next to her, Gisbert pretended to listen intently, but he had given up trying to add anything to the conversation a while ago. “Your rate for the out-of-contract quantities you’re requesting is better than what we charge anyone else. You still get a favored discount. A very favored discount.”
“Just not as favored as before,” Arata said with a little smile.
“Exactly as favored as before,” she said. “For the same order volume. Which we agreed upon when our production capacity was much lower.”
“And your willing buyers were much fewer in number,” Arata said, still with that little smile on his face. “Hanzo has been a loyal business partner since before the late . . . unpleasantness. Unlike most of the companies that are now bidding for your increased capacity.”
Solveig inclined her head in acknowledgment with an inward sigh.
“We are grateful for your continued partnership. And for the loyalty you have shown Ragnar over the years. Especially through the unpleasantness. You are and always have been our biggest and best customer.”
Arata nodded.
“But,” Solveig continued. “Four years ago, when we resumed operations, you were also our only customer. And you got to set the market rate for Alon. Because you were the market for us. Now that you are no longer our only buyer, the market rate has gone up. And you have been able to buy at the favored rate while everyone else has driven up the value of the commodity.”
Arata turned his palms up. “We abided by the terms of the contract, no more and no less. And we would love to continue our mutually beneficial relationship on similar good terms in the future.”
Solveig looked at the compad on the table in front of her, where the main data points of the old agreement were listed in neat bullet format.
“That is also Ragnar Corporation’s wish. To maintain the excellent relationship between our companies.”
She looked up at Arata again, whose expression had changed subtly. She could tell he knew she was about to make her main pitch, but that he didn’t know what to expect, how to translate her polite deflections into a prediction.
“But we cannot afford to continue to sell a considerable percentage of our most valuable product’s annual yield at what are now far-below-market prices. Not if we want to remain in business. Especially not considering the rate we have to pay for Hanzo graphene composites.”
“Ah.” Arata folded his hands on the table in front of him. His little smile had returned to his face. “Now we come to the heart of the matter. In the typically direct Gretian fashion.”
If we go about this in the Acheroni fashion, I’ll be here for three more weeks, Solveig thought. She wouldn’t mind the extended time away from home, but the thought of sitting here for days on end and bouncing inoffensive and evasive statements off each other with the Hanzo people had no appeal to her.
A message popped up silently on the comtab in front of her. It was color coded with the data link from her secondary personal comtab, the one whose node number she replaced every few weeks. Only a few people had the address for that node.
Hey, shorty, it read. Having stationary downtime for the next two weeks. Can we meet in the Syne?
Aden.
Solveig suppressed a smile. She looked at the words for a moment and quickly flicked them off the screen before Gisbert could see the message. A glance to the right told her that she was too cautious in this case. He looked like he was about five seconds away from drifting off into a midday nap.
“Forgive the interruption, but I must retire briefly to attend to myself,” she said in Acheroni, using the standard phrase she had learned for excusing a visit to the sanitary facilities.
“Of course,” her counterpart answered in the same language. He had seen her glance at her comtab, and she knew that he suspected she needed a break to confer with her seniors.
If he wants to think that, so much the better, she thought. Let him think they just yanked on my leash.
Arata waved a hand and nodded toward the door, and Kee appeared in the room.
“If you would follow me,” Kee said to Solveig with a polite nod. “I will show you the way.”
Solveig got up and returned the nod. Kee walked off, and she followed, leaving her corporate compad with the contract details on the table. Another assistant walked in and commenced serving beverages.
“He does not know what to make of you,” Kee said to her as they were walking down the skyway in front of the conference room.
“Who, Arata?”
Kee nodded. “He is not used to negotiating with someone as young as you. It throws him off. He does not want to be disrespectful, and yet he does not want to concede or defer too much. You are messing with his . . . what is the word? Calibration.”
“His social calibration,” Solveig said with a smile. “I get it.”
She glanced at Kee, who was wearing a little smile of his own.
“Are you sure you want to be telling me that I make your bosses confused? You should be trying to get information out of me. Not feed it my way.”
“It amuses me a bit,” Kee said. “Even if my parents were directors here, I would not be sitting at a negotiating tabl
e yet. One must pay their dues in the lower ranks first. Nobody your age has power here. Not the kind of power to say yes or no to someone like Director Arata. They will hear what you say because of your family name. But they will not believe that the decision was yours.”
“As long as they sign whatever we agree on,” Solveig said.
If there’s anything I know how to handle, it’s people who assume I have no agency of my own, she thought.
The sanitary suite was more spacious than her living quarters at the university had been, and far more expensively appointed. Solveig did a quick scan of the room with the security sensors of her corporate comtab, which was equipped with the most advanced spy detection algorithms available on the market. When she was satisfied that there were no obvious data sniffers in the room, she took out her personal comtab and opened the message from Aden to reply. Even though the corporate anti-snooping hardware hadn’t detected anything overt, she did not allow herself the delusion of thinking her comms to be fully private. They were in Hanzo’s corporate headquarters, after all, and she was sure that just like Ragnar, they kept tabs on every data stream in their building. She’d have to change the hardware and the node address of her anonymous device again, and Hanzo would still be able to get through the encryption in a few hours or days. But she wasn’t concerned with Hanzo’s ability to read her private mail eventually. Personal comms were of little interest to their business, her burner tab would be long gone by then, and she knew that Hanzo would never tip their hand to Ragnar’s corporate security anyway.
She read Aden’s message again.
Hey, shorty. Having stationary downtime for the next two weeks. Can we meet in the Syne?
Maybe, but it’s hard to get away right now. I’m on Acheron for the company. Corporate escort everywhere, she replied.
She sent the response into the Mnemosyne and walked over to the window of the sanitary suite. It was a piece of Alon that had been coated with a one-way optical layer. Outside, the street was bustling with surface traffic, pedestrians and transit pods streaming by in dense flows. She watched the scene while she turned the comtab in her hands slowly. Aden’s reply came a few moments later.
You’re on ACHERON? I’m in Coriolis City right now. We’re spending two whole weeks here. Our ride is getting overhauled in the shipyard. Can we meet? In person this time?
Solveig did a double take, and the shock of the surprise felt like someone had electrified her brain stem. They were on the same planet, at the same time. Her habitual paranoia about her father’s control and surveillance schemes made her want to erase the comtab and throw it out on the spot. This was too fortunate a coincidence. Six months ago, she would have killed the Mnemosyne conversation, wiped the node address, and flushed the comtab down the sanitary commode. But Aden had used the right one-time code she had given him after their last meeting in the Mnemosyne a month ago. Her sudden excitement at the unexpected possibility of a face-to-face meeting won out over her suspicions.
Who knows when we’ll be on the same planet again? she thought. I told him I don’t want to wait another seventeen years.
Negotiating a new contract, she wrote back. I’ll be here for a little while. But they packed my schedule. And I have one of Papa’s little birds following me around. Let me see what I can do.
That would be fantastic, Aden replied. But don’t take any chances. There’s always the Syne later.
Solveig flicked the message string off her comtab screen and tucked the device back into her pocket. Outside of an Acheroni intelligence agency office, this was probably the least private place on the planet for her. Hashing out the details of a meeting with Aden here in this building would be a dumb thing to do. Right now she still had plausible deniability on her side.
On the way back to the conference room, Solveig found that the rush of her short clandestine conversation with her brother gave her step a bit of bounce it hadn’t had earlier. Now she was eager to get on with the negotiations and move on with the day. Just like that, the morning had turned from irritating to exciting. It was a chore to work around her father’s control mechanisms all the time, but it gave her a dopamine rush whenever she got away with something without his knowledge, and it had taken her a long time to admit to herself that she actually enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game more often than not. And the higher the stakes, the more satisfaction she got out of playing. This wasn’t just stealing a liter of ice cream from the service-kitchen freezer right underneath the watchful eyes of the security network sensors and eating it under the bedcovers at night. In the eyes of her father, her secret contact with Aden would be a major betrayal. Falk Ragnar would suspect an insurrection, accuse them of plotting to take over everything behind his back, when all she wanted was to get to know her brother a little better after seventeen years of his absence from her life.
When she walked back into the conference room, all eyes were on her, and she realized that the proceedings had completely ground to a halt while they’d waited for her to return. She was the keystone of the meeting for both the Ragnar and Hanzo people in the room. The Ragnar people would not dare to speak for her because they knew what would happen if she complained to her father about any of them. And to the Hanzo people, she was Ragnar, and everyone else in the delegation was a water bearer at best.
If someone else had gone in my stead, they would have continued with Gisbert talking for the company, she thought. I’m the only one in the delegation who doesn’t have an acceptable substitute. Because of the name.
For the first time in her tenure at Ragnar Industries, Solveig considered that maybe her family name meant that her father’s power over her was limited as well.
What is he going to do if he finds out I’ve been talking to Aden? Is he going to disown me? Exile me?
She sat down and nodded to thank the people at the table for excusing the interruption. Then she looked at her corporate comtab again to focus on the matter at hand, the negotiation of the new contracts between Hanzo and Ragnar. But the thought had nestled in the back of her brain, and now it refused to dissipate.
I’m the only Ragnar left who can be here in his stead. Maybe he needs me more than I need any of this.
They broke for lunch and then returned to the negotiating table in the afternoon, but Solveig was pleased to see that the schedule had a five-hour gap between the conclusion of the day’s business and the planned formal dinner with their hosts tonight. In the early afternoon, the Ragnar delegation packed up their compads and their meeting notes to head back to their hotel. It was corporate policy for Ragnar to stay off-site and not in accommodations offered by the hosting company, in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety and safeguard the employees against electronic eavesdropping as much as possible.
The hotel was right in the middle of the busy entertainment district, a thirty-floor slice of a commercial tower that adjoined a shopping and recreational complex. Even from the soundproof windows of her suite on the twenty-fifth floor, Solveig found the bustle of the city almost overwhelming to the senses. It was the opposite of her running track through the tranquility of the Ragnar estate, a constant stream of movement among the regular geometric shapes of artificial structures. In a class on cognition back at the university, she had learned that the human brain wasn’t wired to look at right angles and straight lines all day, that doing so put the mind into a constant state of unrest and alert. Something about human evolution made people relax when among the non-Euclidean shapes and green color palette of nature, and stress them out when they went without that soothing factor for too long. This city, with the same number of residents as Sandvik back home but crammed into closer proximity in a much smaller space, brought the lecture back to Solveig’s mind, and she fully believed the conclusion now. She was already looking forward to her morning runs again. But this much concentrated life had its own sort of exciting energy as well.
A great place to visit for a week, she thought as she looked out onto the streets. But I don’t think
I could live here for good. I’d miss being able to sit under a tree and listen to nothing but the wind rustling the leaves.
Being in the most densely populated city in the system had its advantages. When she checked her hotel compad for service directories, there was an unending amount of choice. Everything she could ever need to buy or rent could be found within a few blocks from the hotel, even the sort of services that weren’t plentiful or easy to find in Sandvik. It seemed logical that a place where physical privacy was a luxury would offer so many ways to have virtual privacy, fuss-free ways to indulge in a desire anonymously.
There were hundreds of pleasure-companion services in Coriolis City. She went through the talent lists of a few of the most highly rated ones, filtered them by the ability to understand Gretian without a translator, and picked a face she liked out of the dozens of choices. For what she had in mind, she would need someone who wouldn’t need to rely on the AI of his translator software to understand her intent. She checked her schedule and booked the visit in the middle of her free time slot before dinner, with several hours comfortably buffering the time between the appointment and her evening obligation. When she was finished, she flicked up a screen from her comtab and called Cuthbert to her suite. He rang her door chime a minute later.
“Yes, Miss Ragnar?”
“I have made some plans for the afternoon, Cuthbert. I need a little relaxation after all the sitting and talking this morning. There will be someone here for me in thirty minutes. I will need you to do a security screening.”
“We usually use vetted services that have been approved by the security division beforehand, Miss Ragnar.”
“Cuthbert, I am not the High Chancellor of Gretia. Nobody is out to assassinate me. And this isn’t the kind of service we usually have vetted by corporate. It’s someone from a companion agency.”
Cuthbert showed only the mildest hint of surprise on his face, but he didn’t even blink at her revelation.