Pia went to the lab bench area she used as her personal space, since she did not have a separate office. She had had yet another idea. The Chinese runner had yelled out his name and suddenly it popped into her head. Pia used one of the lab’s phones to call the main operator and asked to be connected to Yao Hong-Xiau.
“Could you spell that?” the operator asked.
Pia could only guess at an Anglicized spelling of the name, but after she made a stab of it, the operator said there was no record of anyone with “Yao” or “Hong” in their name. Still connected with the operator and with a piece of paper and a pen in hand, Pia wrote out the name. She gave the operator several different possible spellings, certain only of the first couple of letters. When the operator still could find nothing, Pia persisted by asking if there was a number for any Chinese group or office. When she got another no, she switched tactics and asked to be connected with the Nano infirmary.
“Infirmary?” the operator questioned. “What’s an infirmary?”
Pia defined the term as she had with the guard downstairs, sensing irritably that it must be an East Coast term that hadn’t made its way across the Mississippi River.
“There’s no infirmary at Nano,” the operator declared with certainty.
“How about hospital or medical facility?” Pia suggested. She was feeling discouraged but kept trying.
“Sorry! There’s nothing like that. How about the nurse’s office? I have a number for that.”
Pia hung up the phone. It was frustrating. She tried to think of what else to do, but nothing immediately came to mind. Instead her eyes wandered over to the LCD display of the readouts coming from all the biocompatibility experiments she currently had running. One of the many figures on the screen was blinking, suggesting there had been a change in a parameter being monitored.
Pia walked over to the experiment in question. Almost immediately she could tell that the suggested change was mere artifact, indicating that a slight recalibration was called for. It took Pia only a few moments to accomplish the recalibration, and the blinking disappeared.
The heavy click of the door to the main corridor opening was the next thing to catch her attention. A moment later Mariel Spallek appeared in the open doorway, clutching a folder to her chest. Her face reflected her usual disdainful imperiousness.
“A sight for sore eyes,” Pia murmured to herself. Yet for the first time since she had been at Nano, she was glad to see her immediate boss.
CHAPTER 16
“Pia, I’m glad you are here,” Mariel began. She strode directly over to Pia, crowding her space with the help of her four inches of extra height.
“Mariel.”
Pia stood her ground, gazing up into Mariel’s arctic blue eyes.
“I got your paperwork from accounting,” Mariel said. “I’m pleased you are pushing ahead with this work. The more corroboration we can get of immune compatibility of the microbivores, the better off we will be. I’ve already green-lighted everything you have asked for.”
Pia found herself nodding as Mariel kept speaking and waited her turn.
“And Mr. Berman and I are pleased that you are attending to the flagella problem. That needs to be solved. Is there any way I can help in that regard?”
Finally Mariel stopped talking.
“You can get the microbivores programmers to give me some time.”
“Consider it done,” Mariel said agreeably. “I’ll be handing this paperwork to the purchasing department, and I’ll make sure it’s processed at once. But I do want you to sign the requisition form, which you haven’t done. Anything else?” Mariel handed Pia the form.
“So we’re really not going to talk about it?” said Pia, taking the paper.
“Talk about what?”
“Come on, Mariel, the runner, the hospital, the armed guards! I bring a man into an ER, and the next thing I know, you show up with the U.S. Cavalry and forcibly remove him, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. He needed a diagnosis and needed to be monitored, at least in the short term. He’d had an apparent cardiac arrest, a life-threatening condition if ever there was one. A mysterious life-threatening condition that you seemed extremely confident you could take care of here.”
Mariel looked at Pia. A patina of irritation penetrated her haughtiness.
“Furthermore,” Pia added, “I wasn’t even aware that Nano had the kind of medical facilities that could deal with that kind of thing. I called the operator to be connected to the infirmary to find out if the man is doing okay, but she said there is no infirmary.”
Mariel said nothing for a couple of seconds, the expression on her face not changing at all.
“The man wasn’t forcibly removed,” Mariel said finally.
“I’m sorry?” Pia said, rolling her eyes. Mariel was clearly avoiding the issue of who this man was, and Nano’s role in his treatment. Whether he was taken against his will was significant, of course, but the fact that Mariel had arrived there at all with her goon squad was a more pressing concern.
“You said we forcibly removed a man from the Boulder Memorial ER department, and I’m telling you that the man consented to have treatment at our facilities. If you believe you saw anything to the contrary, then you’re mistaken.”
“Okay, I’ll believe it if you say so. But tell me this: how is he doing in Nano’s medical facility? Wherever that may be.”
“I’m sure he is being well taken care of.”
“You’re sure, but you don’t know? You haven’t checked on him?”
“My expertise is in the bio labs, the same as you. This is where you need to concentrate your mind. We have important work to do here. The microbivore project is the most important one here. Everything else is designed to support it. I assure you the man is being well looked after, by a team of highly skilled staff.”
“But Nano is a research lab,” said Pia. “My understanding is that in the rest of this facility they are working on paint additives and the like. And we here in the bio labs are presently using worms. We’re not even using animals yet. Why does Nano need a staff of medics? And why are you involved with them?”
“Miss Grazdani. As I indicated to you at the hospital, it would be best if you forgot all about what you saw. Or what you thought you saw. Ultimately it is none of your business. It is time you got back to work.”
Although Mariel Spallek had no way to know, such admonitions were likely to have the opposite effect on Pia from the one intended. Pia felt strongly that it was for her to decide what was best for her to know, not a functionary like Mariel. In Pia’s mind there had been enough international tribunals to proclaim that individuals in organizations bore an ethical responsibility about what such organizations did, and, ultimately, ignorance was not a defense.
“What is the role of the Chinese government at Nano?” Pia demanded.
Mariel had redirected her attention to the forms she held in her hands, but at Pia’s question, she jerked her head upright and bore her eyes into Pia’s.
“I said to forget it. I mean it. Sign the damn requisition forms!”
Pia shrugged and turned to sign the paperwork for Mariel. Judging by the force of Mariel’s reaction, Pia was confident she’d touched a nerve, and, having done so, found that her curiosity was stimulated, not blunted.
CHAPTER 17