To that end, he closeted himself away for hours in the nerve center of Nano with his senior scientist, Allan Stevens, and his small inner circle, the molecular manufacturing guys, listening in as the team revised the scientific protocols over and over again. The margins they were working with seemed minute: in the nano universe, an infinitesimal number of molecules, too few or too many, could lead on the one hand to underperformance and on the other hand to overwhelming stress on the body and, potentially, catastrophic failure. That much had become clear. It was a tightrope walk.
The bulk of his time Berman spent with Whitney Jones, being debriefed about the intelligence she had gleaned from the latest group of Chinese dignitaries and their competitive nationalistic mind-set, and combing over the Nano strategy for the upcoming weeks. From what Whitney and Berman could divine, the huge injection of financing to take the microbivores project to the next level, namely the move to mammal and then human safety studies, was still on track, and once that had taken place, the sharing of the advances in nanotechnology would begin in earnest. But the performance criteria remained as challenges that Nano had to meet. For that reason, Berman spent more time with the premier athletes still in training, and through interpreters he tried to get a fix on their psyches. Were they going to be ready to assume the responsibility that was being placed on them? Could he trust they would act as instructed? Some of the expendables obviously hadn’t, although ultimately they had contributed in unexpected but valuable ways.
Berman was consumed by his work. The preparations were meticulous in every detail, and Berman was on hand for each and every aspect of their development. He could leave nothing to chance. He undertook a monkish existence, rising even earlier, working even harder. For these few weeks, Berman needed his head to be as clear as it could be. He was a grown man; he could delay his inevitable gratification till the time he could truly appreciate it. So he made a pact with himself. No red meat; no alcohol; no cigars. And no Pia. She was simply too much of a distraction.
CHAPTER 30
Pia was too busy to be bored, but whenever she stopped work and tried to focus on the bigger picture, she felt restless. She was consumed with trying to get back to Zachary Berman’s house to create a set of circumstances by which to get the photograph of his eyes that she hoped would give her access to the rest of the Nano buildings, but Berman was either away or not available, thanks to more visiting Chinese.
She tried visiting his office early before the day began, as she’d done the first time, but he was never there, so she’d given up after three or four attempts. She had dared go to Berman’s office only twice during normal business hours, and each time his secretary, a woman who worked nine to five and dealt mostly with Berman’s correspondence, said he wasn’t available. Pia didn’t want to push her luck by appearing to be stalking the head of the company. There was as little sign of Whitney Jones as there was of Berman. Pia tried not to be paranoid, but she couldn’t quite dispel the idea she was being intentionally ignored.
Uncharacteristically, she then had tried hard to befriend the two assistants she had been assigned, Pamela Ellis and Jason Rodriguez, looking for some institutional gossip about Berman and Whitney. Pamela was impossible, Pia decided very quickly. She was a clone of Mariel Spallek, minus a few years. As clumsy as Pia’s attempts to engage the young woman in conversation may have been, there was no reason Pia could think of for Pamela to rebuff them so categorically. On a few occasions, Pia was sure she could feel Pamela’s eyes burning into the back of her head, and when she turned, she was sure Pamela had just looked down or away. The possibility that she was a spy installed in her office by Mariel Spallek struck Pia almost as soon as she met the woman, and Pia made sure their relationship was strictly cool and businesslike.
Jason Rodriguez was also slightly standoffish but, in comparison, much more friendly. He was, as he freely admitted, a science nerd. He was eager to learn about nanotechnology, so he was happy to pick Pia’s brain as often as he could. He was smart and understood the potential for the science and was as ambitious as he was oversized. Jason admitted to being six feet six, but Pia wondered if he wasn’t taller. For college, Jason told Pia he had a choice between sports and study — he couldn’t imagine devoting as much time as he wanted to each, and he chose science. He happily talked about his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Michigan, but about what he had worked on at Nano before being assigned to Pia, he wouldn’t say anything at all.
Pia had gone so far as to ask Jason if he wanted to go out for a drink one evening, but he declined, citing pressure of work. Jason had talked to Pia more than once about his girlfriend at Michigan, and in the past tense, so Pia was fairly sure he was neither taken nor gay. Her pride was slightly dented when he turned her down a second time, at which point Pia backed off, in case she was making herself too obvious. She knew there was an element of irrationality on her part, being accustomed too often to having to fend off unwanted advances from men.
Pia’s main concern continued to be, What the hell had gotten into Zach Berman? Pia asked herself the question day after day. She was aware of the irony of the situation. Prior to the mysterious jogger episode, she had been fighting him off for months, but now that she was trying to make herself available to him, he had vanished. Or at least he was not around to ask about another dinner date. Pia was so anxious to try out the next phase of her plan that she’d agree to almost anything to get herself back inside Berman’s home with him. But he wasn’t giving her the chance.
Meanwhile, Nano was moving quickly with preparations for mammalian safety experiments, beginning with mice using Pia’s microbivore design. But as her results with the roundworms got more and more encouraging, the pressure on Pia had let up. Mariel checked in on Pia less frequently, and was herself much less objectionable. Pia almost missed the haranguing. Wouldn’t Mariel want her to ramp up the preparations, to push the science as far as she could take it, so that they could at least start the prolonged FDA approval process? And what about the microbivores computer software guys with whom Pia had yet to meet up? Continually Pia had been told that they might be available the following week but it kept getting put off.
Then Pia was told by Mariel that Pamela Ellis was being reassigned within the building. Mariel gave Pia an experiment to run involving a commercial product, a DNA array for a pregnancy testing kit that was, as far as Pia was concerned, the equivalent of busywork.
On Sunday, Pia sat on her couch, nursing her ongoing unease and frustration. Something Paul Caldwell had said stuck in her mind. How much did she know about what Nano was doing with her ideas? Perhaps Pamela Ellis was somewhere in the locked-up confines of the secret Nano, performing experiments Pia should be doing in her lab, maybe using mice with the oligosaccharide-shielded microbivores. Or other experiments they did not want her to see or even know about.
Pia’s iPhone rattled on the tabletop in front of her and snapped her out of her daydream. The display identified the caller as Paul. Pia was pleased with the distraction.
“Hi, Paul, I was just thinking about you.”
“That’s nice, but listen, Pia!” His voice was low as if he didn’t want to be heard by anyone around him. “This is serious. I think we’ve got another one.”