For his part, Henry Green was less than pleased to be hearing from Edmund Mathews at all, let alone when he was demanding a face-to-face meeting without notice. While Russell Lefevre wanted the full breadth and depth of research that Statistical Solutions offered, he gave the firm time to accomplish what was asked for. In contrast, Edmund Mathews would call up and want immediate answers to complicated questions. Green had had to drive his people hard, squeezing every last cent’s worth of work out of the company to comply. Edmund expected Henry to drop everything whenever he called.

Edmund and Russell arrived at the Statistical Solutions offices in Chelsea in short order and within a couple of minutes were sitting with Green in his office.

“Edmund, I gather you mentioned something on the phone about ‘new information,’” Green said hesitantly.

“That’s right,” said Russell, who wanted very much to avoid having Edmund yell at Henry Green, which had happened in the past. “There’s new material and we need your expert opinion to see if we need to be concerned about it.”

Edmund sighed at the understatement.

“What my colleague is trying to say, Henry, is that you may have been wrong in some of your forecasts by amounts that could put us out of business. So I’d be very grateful, Henry, if you could get those geniuses you told us about who could have gotten jobs at Google to come in here and prove to us that they are in fact smart enough to tie their own shoelaces after all.”

Edmund’s voice was rising in volume but the dam held, just. Henry Green pressed a number on his phone pad and picked up the receiver.

“Yes, Laura, would you have Tom and Isabel meet us in the conference room right away?” Green hung up the phone.

“Gentlemen, shall we?”

Everyone Russell and Edmund could see around the office was young. Henry Green at least affected the look of a businessman with his dress slacks and dark shirt, but his messy hair was at least two inches too long in back. The numbers geeks, dressed in black, looked like they had just come in from an all-night party. Statistical Solutions was gaining a reputation for all kinds of data collection and algorithm solving, and a lot of their employees did indeed go on and work for Silicon Valley giants that paid for their dry cleaning and accommodated their dogs at work. To keep them, Henry Green had to be equally tolerant and generous. As long as they gave him six months of hard work, Henry Green didn’t mind. Statistical Solutions was strongly in the black.

Anticipating that Russell wanted to speak, Edmund dove right in, addressing Isabel and Tom directly.

“What do you know about stem cell research in relation to the treatment of diabetes?”

“I know what stem cells are,” Isabel Lee said.

“Did you build it into your projections?”

“Build what in?”

“The fact that a professor up at Columbia is making strides toward creating human pancreases outside the body to be used as transplants. If he succeeds, he’ll be prolonging the life of diabetes patients.”