“So why is he bothering with these requests?”
Jake gestured for Ariel to have a seat in his office as he got up to close his door. He lowered his voice just a little. “Seriously? At first I thought that he just liked fooling around himself with the software, you know. But after a while I realized that he was spending far too much money on our services for that and, frankly, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that thinks play time is all that important.”
Ariel had to agree. “So do you think that the man is a little crazy? I mean, he must have convinced himself that he does need to make changes that fast.”
Jake nodded. “I figured he was maybe, kind of, you know, harmless delusional. One of those weird really smart guys that isn’t totally in touch. So I looked more closely at his trading history. We’ve got all sorts of records from him and his company, so that we can run tests using real life data from the past. I thought I’d look at it and establish that this stuff he was asking us for was basically frivolous, in case, you know, sometime down the road we couldn’t meet his demands. Then I’d have some ammunition to point out to my bosses that this man was asking for a degree of speed and flexibility that just weren’t warranted. I saw it as a kind of CYA thing.”
“I’d be careful,” Ariel warned. “I don’t think Eoin would like the idea of you being able to prove that one of his big clients was asking for things he didn’t need.”
“I know. I didn’t exactly bring Eoin into this little experiment. Ariel, look, if you want me to stop talking now, I will and I don’t blame you. I don’t want to put you on the spot with Eoin and I don’t want to put you in a compromising position just to protect me.”
“It’s okay,” Ariel assured him. “There isn’t an employee in the world that doesn’t occasionally do a little probing on their own. I’ve got no problem with where you’re going.”
“That’s just it,” Jake said. “I’m not going there. I thought I was, but the truth is weirder. Baldur isn’t asking for tools he doesn’t need. Anyone else would be.”
Jake took a deep breath, like he was trying to decide if he should go on.
“Don’t you smoke?” Ariel asked.
“Yeah. Want to join me outside while I have a cigarette?”
Ariel nodded. This no longer seemed like the sort of conversation to hold in the office, and she was starting to have a funny feeling about how this tied in with the close-up visions she had experienced when she touched Baldur’s hand. A cigarette would probably help Jake and fresh air would definitely help her.
Once they were outside, Jake resumed.
“I ran tests using what Baldur tried to do with his current tools against what he would have been able to do if he had the tools he wanted. And then I looked at the same kind of information using Cillian’s investment history and I looked at it against the decisions made by two other big clients from the London office that I managed to get data on. Here’s the thing. If I improved the speed at which Cillian and the other two could have made their parameter changes, it wouldn’t have benefitted any of them. They’d win on a few new trades and lose a few that they originally won—just what you’d expect. You just don’t get new information that fast. Only it looks like Baldur does. He’d have actually done substantially better if he had the tools he wanted.”
“Really?” Ariel asked. “Is he getting some sort of insider information?”
“Not that quickly, he isn’t. And not on every stock traded. His parameters deal with trends. It’s more like he has a minute-to-minute sense of what whole segments of the market are going to do. He still needs us, our machines and our software, to make the millisecond trades, but the faster he can direct that software, even on a second-by-second basis, the better he does. We give him a few more seconds of speed and he starts to beat out everyone else past any statistical probability.”
Ariel’s funny feeling about Baldur Hákonarson was growing. “Jake, do you believe that somebody can, I don’t know, sense the future?”
“You mean like be some kind of psychic? No, I don’t. What I mean is that I didn’t used to believe in that kind of thing, at all. But facts are facts. I just don’t know how else to explain what this man can do.”
Ariel tried to make light of it. “In this case it has to be some kind of speedy crystal ball, doesn’t it, because I don’t think any psychic claims to predict things that fast?” She tried to redirect the conversation. “Is it a good thing? I mean should we be giving Baldur tools to beat out everyone else, even our other customers?”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe not, but I don’t see that it’s Ullow’s job to penalize Baldur for being exceptionally good at what he does. And just because I don’t know how he manages it doesn’t make it unethical.” Jake looked a little uncomfortable. “I haven’t come up with a good reason yet to share this information with anyone. Well, except with you today, but could this conversation stay between us, at least until I figure out more about what it is I’ve figured out?” Jake gave Ariel the same friendly brush back on the arm. “Please,” he said.
“Of course.” Ariel nodded. “Thanks Jake. I can do my job better if I know more, even if I don’t understand it either. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to go anywhere. If you ever figure out how he manages this trick, I’d love an update.”
As she headed back inside, she knew two things. The first was that Jake had little role to play in whatever scenario Baldur was involved in down the road. At least, Jake’s touch set off nothing that sent up alarms. Secondly, next week there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that Jake’s wife would surprise him by bringing home a new puppy. A little chow chow, and a really cute one too.
******
Siarnaq watched in amazement as the three parallel dog sleds moved in careful unison over the ice. As he squinted at their oversized, unfamiliar cargo he thought that he had never seen anything quite like it. The drivers struggled to keep the sleds moving at the same pace as they hurried something unknown through the darkness to their destination.
It was large and shiny and it straddled all three of the big sleds, hanging a dozen feet or so off of both edges. Certainly it was made by humans, and it was doubtful that the people involved were Inuit. So much metal, so much craftsmanship—this thing had to have been made using many massive machines of the others.
The deep of winter was the time for such travel. In the nearly continual night, the well frozen ice provided an easy path in a world with not a single road connecting one town or village with another. Along the Western coast of Greenland, from the relatively warm and fertile town of Narsaq on the southern tip all the way up the west coast to remote northern Qaanaaq, the Inuit and their dogs enjoyed the freedom provided by their seasonal frozen highways.
However, this group and their mysterious cargo had chosen the middle of a moonless night for their oddly synchronized journey. The better to avoid attention, Siarnaq supposed. He appeared to be the only traveler close enough to watch the mysterious group make their way. Surely others would ask questions too, if they saw such a sight.
He shook his head as the trio of sleds moved on off into the distance. To a man very concerned with keeping life as free from outside influence as possible, this giant metal contraption being slid along in the night could not possibly be a good thing.
Siarnaq knew people who knew people, and they were well scattered throughout Greenland. More than one of them was going to have information about something so bizarre. He intended to find out where such a thing had come from, and to see to it that it was returned to its place of origin.
6. Winter Light
Ariel spent a couple of days digesting the conversation she had with Jake. He was a smart guy with no apparent office agenda, and if he decided that Baldur had some kind of ability to see the short-term future, then Baldur probably did. It went a long way towards explaining the odd interchange she had with Baldur as well.
Ariel contrasted it against what she could do. She had never had reason to pay particular atten
tion to the time frame before, but now that she thought about it, she did have a strong tendency to precall events that were going to happen over the next several weeks. Occurrences that were only hours away, or were over a year away, did not get precalled. She’d certainly never had a premory of something only minutes into the future, or of something happening decades from now. This had never struck her as odd before, probably because the whole thing was so odd to begin with. In fact, now that she thought about it she realized that she saw her premories through a rather arbitrary window.
So what if Baldur was like her, but saw ahead through a different gap? Maybe he could predict events seconds to minutes ahead, but no further. That would explain his love of making quick stock trades, and the horribly close-up images that she hadn’t been able to decipher when she touched him. Could she have been seeing her own immediate future?
Ariel considered what she normally precalled. She never saw the future through another’s eyes, but always through her own. Although many of her premories centered around other people, they were always of Ariel’s own sights and sounds, or of what she would see and hear if she was present.
So had Baldur experienced her frequency? Had her visions of what might come to pass in the weeks ahead enticed him with their distant possibilities? He could even have had premories through her eyes. Or maybe he was predisposed to see a different type of information.
She was probably going to have to touch him again to get answers, and that possibility bothered Ariel in so many ways. She decided that she would try to learn more about this danger to humanity thing by finding methods to understand her other two clients instead.
Nell was happy to let Ullow buy her lunch. “Shouldn’t you really be taking out Cillian, dear?” she chided. “I don’t dish on my friends, so you’re not going to learn a lot from me, and I can eat a surprisingly expensive meal.”
Fair enough, Ariel thought. “How about just a little general background on the McGrane family? I’m trying to understand my clients better. Nothing I couldn’t learn elsewhere, but you save me some time. In exchange for the best Mediterranean food in town.”
“Oh well now, someone has been doing her homework again,” Nell laughed. “Or is my love of dolmades that legendary?”
Ariel demurred with a laugh. Of course she had gotten some intel, and she would continue to do so. She made a mental note to call the restaurant ahead of time to make sure that the stuffed grape leaves that Nell loved were on the menu that day and were freshly made. She was betting that no one, especially an expressive woman like Nell, could refrain from interjecting just a morsel or two of personal knowledge into any tale that she told while she was happily eating her favorite food.
Baldur’s personal assistant was named Hulda, and Ariel struggled to put a face with the name. They had not interacted much during Ariel’s visit but she vaguely recalled a pleasant older blonde woman, probably in her mid-forties, who was quiet and efficient. Maybe even a little meek. Her hair was worn simple and long, more like that of teenaged girl.
“I was hoping to learn more about d4,” Ariel explained, “especially the members I was not able to meet.” She was lucky that Hulda spoke English well enough to converse over the phone.
Hulda explained that even the names and contact information for d4’s board of directors were confidential. Surely Ariel understood that they preferred not to be communicated with directly except by their own invitation.
“Maybe if I need to come to Iceland for other business, I could come by your office and take some of Baldur’s staff out for lunch?” she asked hopefully, changing tactic.
“Baldur outsources all of the bookkeeping. You people are his IT department. Most days I am the only staff here. I eat my lunch at my desk,” she replied. Then, almost as an afterthought, “But thank you for your invitation.”
“Maybe I could come over on a day when the board or the accountants or any of them are already there for a meeting or something.” Ariel was not going to give up so easily.
“We don’t have company meetings, miss. Baldur’s contractors come in individually when he needs them.” She hesitated. “Baldur does have a man that handles various legal matters for him and fills in for him when he travels. Perhaps if you are in town, you’d like to take Ulfur to lunch?”
Okay, this was news. Even Eoin’s impressive intelligence on Baldur had not mentioned Ulfur.
“That would be perfect. How do I reach Ulfur?”
“I’ll connect you.”
Eoin was a fidgety man. Ariel had already noticed that he seldom let employees come into his office, and as Ariel stood in his doorway, she marveled at how spotless it was. There was one cup to hold his pencils and one to hold his pens, and not one writing implement was in the wrong place.
“You need something, Zeitman? Or you just feeling lonely today?” He stopped typing and looked up from his computer screen, pretending to be annoyed, but now that she knew him better she didn’t think he really was.
“We didn’t talk specifically about how much you are willing to let me spend,” she answered. “I mean, I know I can do lunches and stuff, but what if I think it’s a good idea to develop a relationship with some of the underlings at these companies.”
“Why? And like who?” Eoin asked.
“Well, Cillian has a financial advisor who doesn’t particularly like us,” Ariel began.
“Yeah, yeah. Doyle worked for Cillian’s father and now he lives in fear that Cillian is eventually going to find a way to squander the family fortune. He may be right. Doyle doesn’t like investing, but he does appreciate that Ullow is protecting the McGrane’s money better than the horses ever did. You’ll never win him over any more than that. Nothing to be gained there.”
Eoin stood up and started to fiddle with some papers on his bookshelf. It was a gesture of dismissing her, and Ariel knew it. “Who else do you want to wine and dine?” he asked finally when she didn’t leave.
“Ulfur, Baldur’s right-hand man.”
“Who the fuck is Ulfur?” Eoin pronounced it “fook”, the way the Irish did. It had the nice effect of making the word seem somehow less obscene. The Irish seemed to know it too, as the word was used far more frequently here than Ariel had ever heard it used anywhere else.
“According to Hulda, he’s both Baldur’s lawyer and the guy who handles things in Baldur’s absence. She declined my offer to come over to Reykjavik and take her out to lunch, but she was nice enough to suggest I take Ulfur instead.”
“You actually invited a secretary in another country out for a business lunch?” Eoin turned to face her as he stood, now giving her his full attention. He seemed genuinely surprised.
“Yeah.” It occurred to Ariel that the few women in her field routinely socialized with the other women in the office, continually blurring the lines between management, technical professionals and support staff. The men didn’t have such a behind-the-scenes egalitarianism working in their favor.
“Well done Zeitman. You learned something I didn’t know. There’s a guy named Ulfur. So now you want another ticket to Reykjavik? For lunch?”
“I was thinking of something a little bigger, actually. I thought that if I could find a similar back-up wizard in Mikkel’s group, then maybe I could put together some sort of appreciation event for the three financial experts that work directly behind the scenes in all three companies. Ulfur, Doyle and what’s his name. It might be more fun if it was a group, and might work better, you know, if it wasn’t just one-on-one. Would Ullow foot the bill for some sort of outing like that?”
“You want to take these guys walrus hunting for the weekend?” Eoin laughed. “Realistically, Ariel, all three of these clients don’t like to mix much, they’re all a bit secretive, so I’m not sure they’d be so keen to have their seconds mixing either. What’s more, you’re not the ideal candidate to host a little male bonding.” He sighed, and to his credit he looked like he was trying to handle this carefully. “I suppose, if you came up with
the right activity, something appealing and not too lengthy, then these guys might want to go and convince their own bosses, and you might build a little additional goodwill for Ullow that way. I’ll give you just a teeny bit of rope to run with this one.”
A lone programmer at Ullow handled Cillian’s requests, because they tended to be fewer than those of his counterparts. It didn’t surprise Ariel to learn that Cillian was unenthused about software that made him money silently while he slept. Granted, he was happy to have the profit, which was slowly making up for the small fortune he had pissed away investing in racehorses that simply couldn’t lose, but ultimately did.
While the gremlins in his computer quietly made back his wealth, Cillian liked to devote his business-related energy to manually experimenting with inputs to improve the outcome. Cillian wanted to drive, not travel on autopilot. His personal programmer’s main job was to give Cillian knobs he could turn without really hurting himself.
“It’s a stupid job, but it pays well,” Brendan confessed to Ariel. As the only other “ginger” in the office, the two of them had shared a bond since they first met. Brendan’s carrot top tended more towards wavy and bright reddish blond, a combination made all the more striking because it set above a rather long, narrow and serious face.
“I give him things to play with that will introduce some variation in outcome but can’t possibly allow the man to lose too much. I vary them enough that he feels like he is trying something new each time, and I give him plenty of places where he can use his hunches to try to do better. He plays for a while, sometimes he does way better than he was, and he goes off and rides one of his best horses to celebrate and then he goes to his favorite bar and buys everyone a drink. Other times, he does awful and quits in disgust. He goes for ride on one of his horses to clear his head and then goes and gets drunk, usually at his favorite bar. Either way his software goes back to silently making him money once he stops fooling with it.”
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