Later, when Ariel was fooling around with her email, Eoin came by, and he seemed more relaxed.
“That was too short of a greeting. I don’t interrupt so well. Here. You should read through these briefs I made for myself when I began this job,” he told her as he laid four files on her desk. “They contain my own personal and, by the way, very confidential take on our three clients, and I’m trusting you when I give these to you. Trust from me is important. Here’s another folder on all of our other best prospects in Dublin.”
Ariel peaked inside of one folder and saw pages of notes hand-written in an extremely neat and tiny script.
“You don’t need to know every detail of what these guys are doing,” Eoin continued. “I’ll be the first to admit that they’re a prickly lot, and I think that each one of them likes to handle their business out this office because we’re a bit more inclined to let them be that way. So just skim over things and get the big picture. Remember that your main job with them is to personally assure each one that they are our number one priority. Let them know that you hang out with and talk to the people writing their code and that it is going splendidly. Tell them this a lot. Note any changes or additions to what they want and pass those straight on to me. I’ll take it from there.”
The man had dark brown hair, but his face was fair and heavily freckled in the way of many Irish. Ariel guessed that he was in his early forties, but considered that his freckles and upturned nose could make him look younger than he was. He squinted back at her as he started to leave her cube, studying her reddish hair, her own light freckles and her blue eyes as if he had just noticed them. “You part Irish? Better yet, you like Guinness? Around here, either one helps and both would be great.”
Ariel laughed. “I’m a quarter Irish. Grandpa Conroy, my mom’s dad, was second generation from County Offaly. Took his Irish ancestry quite seriously and I got more than my share of his genes. Yes, I love Guinness, but I think I got that from my dad’s side, to be honest. Dutch and Scottish mostly, but they were the beer drinkers.”
“Well, we won’t hold your dad against you,” Eoin said. “Buy a round any time you can and pass out those assurances like I told you. I’m guessing this assignment will be nothing but easy for you, and it ought to free me up to get some real work done.”
Ariel hesitated. She didn’t get the feeling that her new boss welcomed much in the way of questions.
“It is okay if I get to know more about the coding, right? You know, find out exactly what the programmers are working on and how it is really going?” she asked.
Eoin shrugged. “If you like. Trust me—it’s boring stuff. I’m happy to be passing along whatever updates you need. But, suit yourself.” He turned to leave her cube, and as he walked away he added “You’re not going to be one of those women who goes around digging into every little thing, are you?”
Ariel stared at him as he walked away. No, I guess I won’t be, she thought as she picked up the top folder that he had left on her desk and began to leaf through it. It was a little discouraging that this new assignment looked to be more fluff than she expected.
The first profile was of Cillian McGrane, heir to a pharmaceutical manufacturing conglomerate in Ireland and a man who invested his own considerable wealth as a personal hobby. Across the top of the first page Eoin had handwritten in red marker: “For internal use only means DO NOT quote me or copy this.” Ariel had to smile.
Eoin went on to describe Cillian as a man with a lot of inherited wealth and not a great deal of maturity. Along with a strong attachment to social drinking and pretty women, he had what amounted to a gambling problem. Ariel looked at the photograph. Cillian carried himself like the kind of charmer who knew he looked good. She checked his age. Forty-three.
Eoin’s notes went on to say that over the years Cillian’s interest in race horses had diminished and he had turned to the stock market for a larger share of his thrills. Eoin referred to Cillian as a man who was addicted to short-term trading and one who loved to win. Unfortunately the markets of the previous decade had not been kind to him, and a couple of years ago he turned specifically to high frequency trading techniques to ensure that his wins began to exceed his losses. Ullow’s job was to see that remained the case.
Ariel thought that she knew the type. He wanted to think that there was risk in what he was doing, and that he was managing to defy the odds by winning. Never tell him that this software made wins a sure thing for anyone who used it, or this man would no longer want to play the game.
The second client, Baldur Hákonarson, was a professional Icelandic investor from Reykjavik whose firm handled the business of many of the wealthiest inhabitants of that small island nation and had quite a few international clients as well. Ariel had a vague memory of Iceland actually declaring bankruptcy during the worldwide financial meltdown of 2008. How had a whole country managed to go bankrupt? She made a mental note to learn more. Hadn’t the richest in Iceland lost everything then? Judging from the size of the portfolio this man handled, apparently not.
Baldur was described as a very private man, highly professional and well respected in the financial community in spite of his relative youth. His company carried the enigmatic name d4. His professional photograph showed a fairly handsome pale blond man with thinning hair and a slender build, in a beautifully tailored suit. Eoin’s information said that Baldur was turning thirty-one this month, but Ariel decided that his thin light hair and slight build made one think of someone older. She guessed that he used that bit of illusion to his advantage.
According to Eoin, Baldur had impeccable training and credentials in the financial world, and he had run this small firm for two years now, picking up the pieces for many investors after the banking crisis subsided in 2009. His reputation had originated from his consistently better than average luck with his investments, even before he entered the world of HFT, or high frequency trading. Ullow was tasked with seeing that his record only improved and the wealth of his clients continued to grow.
Eoin had noted that Baldur’s sole concerns were that the techniques Ullow offered to him were legal and were reliable. Anything else was superfluous. In other words, Ariel thought, this man not only wouldn’t mind a sure thing, he would prefer one. Ariel also inferred that he had no qualms about ethics.
Finally, there was Mikkel Nygaard. A Greenlander. People really lived in Greenland? A few quick keystrokes let Ariel discover that apparently about sixty-thousand people did. Fishing and a little tourism were the main industries, but a fair amount of the population still lived in Greenland’s far north, hunting and living off the land. Ariel thought that perhaps she ought to learn more.
Mikkel was described as largely Danish with some Inuit ancestry, and Eoin had made a note that intermarriage between the two groups was common in Greenland. Mikkel’s tiny firm was headquartered in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital of sixteen-thousand people. At only twenty-eight he was the youngest of the three men and the newest to the financial scene. His company was less than two years old, and he had no previous history in the world of investing.
Like Baldur, he managed other people’s money and a lot of it. Unlike Baldur, he handled only a single sizable account, which Eoin noted that Mikkel was hell-bent on growing by any means available. What was this man investing? Maybe a pension fund? Hell, he could be handling the retirement savings of his entire nation. Besides fishing and escorting around a few tourists, what went on in Greenland?
Mikkel was also described as very private, and no further information about his investment group was provided other than the fact that he had turned to Ullow in order to grow his portfolio quickly. Eoin went so far as to refer to him as a man who didn’t like to be asked questions. Any questions.
Ariel studied Mikkel’s picture. He was an attractive young man as well, but one whose dress and grooming made him look more like he belonged on a rock climbing expedition than in a boardroom. His light brown hair was longish and his jeans and flannel shirt
would have made him out of place in any part of the financial world. He looked more like he was posing in an ad for high-end camping equipment.
Ariel wondered which one of these three men, if any, would be the one who would steer her in a direction that could have the far-reaching consequences she had seen for herself and the human race while touching her transfer folder. Ever since that quick and somewhat confusing premory about Clyde Johnson’s marriage proposal, she had tried over and over again to see more of this future. She’d had no success. Her vision had gone firmly back to the mundane events of the next few weeks. Now that she had names and photographs of her clients, though, maybe she could do better.
She sat at her desk and concentrated, trying to see something from the future of each one of these men in her head. What came to her were glimpses of her first meetings with each, and those glimpses gave no clue to what lay beyond. Except that there was about an eighty-percent chance that she’d be wearing blue all three times. Great.
She tried again, this time touching each of the three folders in turn, knowing how just the right touch could set off the premories. But now the distant edges of her visions only flickered with too many tiny snippets, like a television showroom at the other end of the mall with each set turned to a different channel. Her brain either couldn’t or wouldn’t bring a single premory into focus in her consciousness.
Very well. Let’s let this all progress a little further and see what happens, she thought. Guess I’ll go shopping for some more blue blouses. I know, I know, they look good with my eyes.
******
Siarnaq held the blue of the sky deep within his memory, and he brought it out in the heart of winter to cheer his soul. There was much about this frozen time of year to bring him joy, this time when the ice was solid and his dogs and sled could take him and his small machines and tools easily from village to village in the weeks during which the dark never ended. The People, the Kalaallit, became more friendly in the winter, letting their inner warmth more than fill the void left by the missing sun.
Yet, Siarnaq was one of those few who felt sad as the days wore on without even the faintest glimmer of twilight, and holding on to the memory of the summer solstice was how he coped. Maybe it was that same dab of Danish ancestry that had given him his unusual height and made his being named for the giant of Inuit legend all the more apt. Or maybe the sorrow came from knowing the things that only he knew.
As a young man who could repair engines and fix the little electronic things of the modern world, he was welcomed everywhere; for the little conveniences of the others had made their way into the furthest corners of his beloved Kalaallit Nunaat, now so commonly called Greenland. Siarnaq knew that one who could move about skillfully on the ice and yet who understood radios and batteries and diesel generators could write his own ticket as the people became increasingly dependent on these luxuries. Yet dependence was not what Siarnaq wished.
His sense of gloom at the height of winter was mild compared to the sorrow caused by the other curse he lived with. Many of the People had a sense of the future, it was true. Would the ice come early, would the fishing be good? Half of the population seemed to lay claim to predicting these important events by one means or another. Some even foresaw more unusual events: deaths, disease, unexpected visits from elsewhere. Take your pick.
Only Siarnaq seemed to be cursed with seeing the far future, that of generations past the end of his own life. He had no idea what the fishing would be like tomorrow, or if he would ever marry and if so, whom. These were questions he would have appreciated answers to, but that information would not come to him.
No, he only knew that the Inuit population that kept the old ways was most likely to continue to decline and to become more modern with every generation. Any sensible person could have guessed that, of course. Siarnaq’s curse was that he could see it happening in his head and that he alone, of all the seers of the Kalaallit, knew why that trend would be so disastrous. One day, generations from now, The People, his people, would play a very important role as humanity faced extinction. Siarnaq saw it and knew it with the same certainty that he knew where the nose was on his face.
The children needed to stay in the villages. The adults had to resist becoming too dependent on modern conveniences. Siarnaq believed that his visions had been given to him for a reason and that he must be part of making this future happen. His people could ill afford to eschew all machines, as they fought to retain their way of life in a modern world that would not leave them alone. So Siarnaq decided that his role must be to learn to know the machine and to help his people achieve a balance in its use.
He had left his village, studied the ways of the outsiders, and had become adept at repairing their things. Now he traveled throughout his homeland, using that knowledge even as he taught his people the importance of not needing these conveniences. For surely, he reasoned, he could reach them better as an ally than as a naysayer.
“Use this to improve but never to replace the old ways,” he told them, chiefs and children, one and all. Siarnaq figured that his message of self-sufficiency was best delivered by the very person who brought or fixed the modern device to begin with.
It was true that another who knew the things that Siarnaq knew might simply give up, engulfed by the hopelessness of it all. However, Siarnaq intended to ensure that his people would fulfill their destiny when the time came—their sad destiny, for their lot in the end would only be to prolong the final elimination of humanity but for a few more dozen generations. Yet if that was all the Kalaallit could provide, then it was better than nothing. Those generations would have their lives.
******
Baldur Hákonarson was the first of the clients to make time to meet Ariel, his new personal support engineer from Ullow. At least Ariel assumed that he had made time, because his executive assistant had sent Eoin a calendar invite for Ariel to present an update to his board of directors a week after she started. Eoin accepted and cc’d Ariel. So that was how this was going to work.
The company bought her a ticket to Reykjavik, and Eoin showed her where to find the last presentation that had been given, and suggested she start editing it immediately. He needed time to review and approve it before she left. Ariel poked around the specs in the contract and made a few cursory visits to the tech people before she began to carefully craft her message of progress. It was lucky that delivering technical content in an understandable format was something she did well.
A week later she arrived in Reykjavik at 10 a.m. to a night sky adorned with a faint glimmer of dull grey light in the south. She was met by a limo driver, and by 11 a.m. she was setting up her presentation in front of three very well dressed older businessmen and one older woman in a suit that showed her to be of equal stature. The small boardroom was on the top floor of an extremely modern office building, and a beautiful, slow, low-angle sunrise was now erupting through the glass windows off to the south.
Her audience had little to say to her, other than to assure her that they all understood English well enough and she could feel free to present in it. Good thing, Ariel, thought, as her Icelandic was limited to halló, the rather easy-to-remember word for hello.
As the four of them chatted in Icelandic among themselves, they cast appraising looks her way, and she realized how young and inexpensively dressed she must appear to them. A minute or two after she was supposed to start, a tall man with thin hair so blonde it was almost white entered the room.
“Baldur,” he offered, turning eyes on her that were even bluer than her own, and she realized that he was the only person who had introduced himself to her. His greeting reminded her of the Icelandic custom of using first names only, even in the most formal situations. “Do not ever call him Mr. Hákonarson,” Eoin had emphasized to her before she left.
“I’m so happy to be here and I’m looking forward to adding to the growth of your company, Baldur,” she offered with all the confidence she could muster. His face told her that
he was surprised by her implication that she could possibly make any difference whatsoever.
“So you’ve enjoyed your, what, three days so far in this new assignment?” he asked.
“Yes, well, I’m getting up to speed quickly,” she answered, a bit irritated at how he had gone straight to her inexperience. “It’s quite like the projects I’ve been working on over in London for a while now,” she added, stretching the truth a bit more.
“I see. Well, we at d4 are a bit more of a demanding group here, I suspect,” he said, giving his board members a knowing smile. They nodded and chuckled in agreement, leaving Ariel with the uncomfortable feeling of being on the other side of a joke she did not understand.
Ariel took a breath to regain her composure, then moved back to the front of the room and began speaking as she flipped through her slides. Her presentation went fine, but she had the distinct impression that nobody was really listening. It was all a formality, something that Baldur could put into a report for his investors. She was guessing that the meaningful crux of what Ullow provided Baldur and his people happened somewhere back between Eoin, the hardware experts and the programmers. That annoyed her. She was no one’s ornament. Maybe for the next meeting she could get their attention by learning a few words of Icelandic.
“Thank you,” Baldur said in a bored voice when she finished. “We appreciate your making the trip over to speak with us. I’ll be sending the video along to the other six guiding members of d4. They live outside of Iceland and could not join us.” The board members were gathering up their coats and hats and it looked like they’d concluded their business. Baldur reached for his briefcase, then he stopped and reached out to shake her hand. She pulled it back without thinking.
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