George’s visit was hardly going as he had intended, or hoped. He understood he had shown up unannounced and uninvited, but he had expected Pia to be more welcoming. Although she had allowed him to stay in the apartment, for much of the previous evening she had acted as if he weren’t there. Her nap had turned into a three-hour epic. It had gone on for so long that George started to wonder if she was done for the night. Since he’d come without much forethought, he’d brought nothing to read. Pia didn’t have a TV, or even a radio, so he listened to music on his iPod and flipped through some of the immunology textbooks piled on her dining-room table, hardly recommended pleasure reading.
Pia finally had surfaced in her bathrobe at eight, just after the sun had set, like some sort of vampire, or so George had thought, irritably. She clearly wasn’t in the best of moods or primed for conversation. This apparent depressive behavior caused George’s concern for her that had started in Los Angeles to ratchet upward. So far her actions there in Boulder weren’t doing much to alleviate his worries.
George couldn’t help but wonder about the simple necessities of life that Pia was obviously neglecting: there was the almost-empty fridge and a lack of personal possessions in her apartment. Pia always acted as if she were just passing through, but there was less of Pia’s stuff here in Boulder than an overnight traveler would bring to a hotel room. And then there was the situation with Zachary Berman, who his intuition was telling him was not as copacetic as Pia seemed to want him to believe. The last thing George wanted to do was fuss over Pia or nag her, because he knew she’d push back big time, but he wanted to show that he was thinking about her well-being without irritating her. The question was how to do it.
Pia had suddenly appeared from her nap and had gone into the kitchen. George had followed her, leaning on the countertop as she got out some green tea from a cupboard and put on the kettle to boil. As the water heated, she looked over at George. To George she appeared both sleepy and defiant at the same time.
“So, George. I sense from your silence and expression that you’re building up to one of your speeches.”
George had blushed. He truly had come to believe she could read his mind. “Well . . .” he began uncertainly. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that you haven’t really established any roots here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just look around this apartment!” George had said, sweeping his hand around the room. “The place is like a hotel room. Maybe that’s being too generous. Even hotel rooms have more pictures. Come on, Pia. I’m worried about you. It’s been two years since all that trauma you suffered, and you’re out here incommunicado, keeping yourself pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. That ain’t healthy.”
“I’ve never been a great fan of the rest of the world.”
“Okay, cut off from me, then.”
“George, I’m fine.” Pia had poured hot water into a cup with the green tea but failed to find a second cup. If it bothered her, she didn’t show it.
“I understand you’re okay at Nano,” George had continued, “and you’re really happy with your work, but what’s with this Berman guy?”
“What do you mean ‘with’ this Berman guy? I’m not ‘with’ this Berman guy. He’s my boss’s boss. And, yes, I’m okay at Nano. The work is great. You don’t need to think about me like I can’t take care of myself, really! It’s demeaning, if you want to know the truth.”
“I don’t mean for it to be demeaning. I think of it more as caring.”
Pia had ended the conversation by merely saying: “Let’s talk about something else.”
Later Pia had resisted George’s offer to take her out to dinner for her birthday, saying she didn’t want to get dressed, but agreed to drive to the grocery store to buy some food for dinner. Still in her bathrobe, she had stayed in the car while George had run in for the fixings for a simple pasta and salad. Back at the apartment, he did the preparation while she busied herself doing a load of laundry in the basement. The dinner had been pleasant enough, but Pia had kept the conversation away from herself, asking George about Los Angeles and what he was doing in his residency. Pia had turned in for the night after finding a sheet and a blanket for George. George had hoped for some sign of intimacy but there hadn’t been any, and as he lay on Pia’s couch before falling asleep, he had wondered whether he’d ever be able to reach her.
When George heard the shower go off, he debated what to do. Since he couldn’t decide, he did nothing. He just pretended to be asleep, curious as to what she would do. In his imagination he could see her come out and look at him longingly before coming over to wake him gently. She might even lie down with him for a moment or two, celebrating the fact that in the past they had made love on maybe a half dozen occasions.
George heard the door to the bedroom open quietly. A moment later it closed just as quietly. For a few minutes there was an uneasy silence as George, in his mind’s eye, could see her approaching the couch. At any moment, he was expecting to feel her touch and he reflexively tensed. But the touch never happened. The next thing he heard was the apartment door opening and then closing.
With a certain amount of pained disbelief, George sat up and looked over at the closed apartment door. She was gone. Leaping up, George flew to the window, glancing out just in time to see Pia climb into the VW. Unfortunately George was naked, so the idea of waving her down had little appeal. A second later his options evaporated, as Pia motored out of the parking lot and sped off into the early morning.
Letting the venetian blinds fall back into place, George turned and scanned the room. He was stranded. “Jesus Christ!” he murmured dejectedly. The day stretched out in front of him, completely empty.
9.
NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO
MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2013, 6:30 A.M.
As a hyperactive, extraordinarily competitive man, Zachary Berman needed little sleep. Sometimes after four hours, but usually after five or six, he woke up and was out of bed. For him there was no lying around, not ever. After some fruit, he was on the exercise bike, watching Bloomberg financial news. Then it was into the office at Nano usually well before anyone else, except for Mariel. She was the institution’s primary workaholic. Sitting at his desk on this particular morning, he wasn’t in the best of moods. Besides his mother’s condition, there were several other bothersome items on his mind.
After leaving his mother’s assisted-living facility, Berman had driven directly back to Nano to meet with his senior scientist, Allan Stevens, and had been briefed on the fate of the second cyclist, subject number 5. Berman had been furious that the team had allowed the first subject to overexert himself on his ride outside the facility in such a way as to cause his death, but Stevens had defended his people, saying that his instructions had been very specific and it was the cyclist who had chosen to ignore them. When they repeated the run and proved they had an issue with the program, and not the riders, Berman asked that a detailed report on the incidents be on his desk within twenty-four hours. He wanted to know how these deaths differed from, or was similar to, any of the others the program had experienced.
“What are your thoughts on what happened on a cellular level?” Berman had asked Stevens before they split up.
“We’re not certain,” Stevens had admitted. “Light microscopic evidence shows congestive blockage in the spleen and the lungs in both men.”
“And the cause?”
“We’re assuming it’s immunologic again.”
“Are we taking advantage of what we have learned recently with the microbivores?”
“We have a new crop being delivered today, so the answer is most definitely. The new subjects will be infused with the new agents.”
“It’s ironic. We thought that the endurance program was going to help the microbivores program, not vice versa.”
“It is ironic,” Stevens had agreed.
After going through most of the snail mail that had accumulated during his trip to Beijing, Berman leaned back in his ergonomic executive chair and stared out at the mountain scenery with unseeing eyes. He was thinking of what to say to his recently arrived guests, thankfully none of whom had witnessed the setback. It was implicit in the arrangement that the subjects of the testing program were expendable, but clearly deaths meant that something had not gone according to plan. He decided it would be counterproductive to tell them. Berman knew the current dignitaries would be severely jet-lagged on their first day in the United States. Everyone knew that flying east was harder than flying west, and there was no need to get them perturbed on top of that. Instead Berman composed a text to Whitney, asking her to arrange a lunch for the visiting dignitaries in Nano’s executive dining room, which he would attend, along with a few senior staff. She should also inform them that for the evening they would be at their leisure. Berman wanted the evening kept free for a more interesting purpose.
Berman quickly typed out another text, this one to Mariel, that said simply: “Come see me!” Berman was confident Mariel would be somewhere in the bio labs, as she always was. Whitney Jones he didn’t expect would show her face for at least another hour.
Precisely three minutes later, Mariel arrived in his office. She was one of only three people with access through the iris scanner outside his suite. The other two were Berman himself and Whitney Jones.
“We lost another rider yesterday,” said Berman. “That’s two in the same day.”
“I know. It’s unfortunate.” Mariel sat in one of the two chairs facing Berman’s desk. She crossed her legs. She wore slacks as she always did, and a silk blouse under her immaculate and heavily starched white lab coat.
“The first rider disobeyed the protocol, although he should never have been allowed out by himself so soon after getting the treatment. Looking on the good side, we’ll have more data on tolerances, which will be very useful. What these incidents prove is that the system works as well as or better than we imagined. Perhaps it’s the body that needs to adapt, like high-altitude mountain climbing.”
“Do we know exactly what happened?”
“Stevens thinks it was an autoimmune reaction due to or on top of a hypermetabolic state. We’ll know more when the report is in later today. We’ve got the team concentrating on finding out.”
“I’ll be interested to hear the details.”
There was an awkward pause in the conversation. Mariel noticed that Berman was looking at his computer screen and not at her. She had no idea why she had been summoned, but she needed to get back to work. Mariel couldn’t imagine that he’d called her to his office about the second cyclist’s death, since she knew he’d already gone over it at length with Allan Stevens. After a beat she said: “Do you need me for something in particular?”
“Huh?” Berman said, as if he’d totally forgotten about Mariel’s presence.
“I was asking if there was something you wanted to talk to me about. Otherwise I need to get back to the lab.”
Berman ran a nervous hand through his hair and glanced back at his monitor screen for a moment before refocusing on Mariel.
“Actually, there are a couple of things I want you to do for me. First off, I want to know what else you know about this man visiting Pia. What is his name again?”
“George Wilson. I already told you what I know. He went to medical school with her. “
“Were they lovers? Are they now?”
Mariel felt that same tinge of schadenfreude she’d experienced the day before. Obviously for Zachary the continued presence of Pia’s guest was akin to sprinkling salt into an open sore. He deserved to squirm after dumping her once he’d gotten what he wanted from her. She knew Berman was the kind of man who wanted mostly what he couldn’t have. For him it was the chase and numbers that mattered, nothing personal.
“There was no mention of the character of their relationship according to the background check,” Mariel said. She would have liked to suggest otherwise, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t her nature to lie. “All I know is what I told you yesterday. They were classmates in medical school. He was involved to a degree in the kidnapping episode. Which I also mentioned yesterday.”
“He’s a second-year radiology resident at UCLA?”
“That’s what the background check revealed.”
“What’s he look like?”
Mariel shrugged. “Describing men is not one of my strong suits. He looks like what he is: a young doctor in training.”
“Would you say he’s good-looking?”
Mariel shrugged again. “I suppose in a stereotypical way. About six feet or thereabouts. Sandy blond hair. Reasonably athletic figure. He’s neither fat nor skinny.”
“Did you find him attractive?”
“He’s not my type, Zachary. It never crossed my mind one way or the other.”
Mariel’s tone and the use of Berman’s first name caught his attention. It reminded him of another of her characteristics that rubbed him the wrong way. Often he had the sense she was reprimanding him, even in intimate circumstances, hardly a turn-on. It had been one of the reasons he’d dumped her when he did. With her, everything was mechanical, even lovemaking.
“Well, I think I should meet the guy, find out if he’s here just because of Pia or because of Nano.”
“The background check didn’t come up with any ties to industry, other than his being a radiology resident.”
“Radiology, just like medicine in general, is going to benefit big-time from nanotechnology,” Berman said. “But I agree with you. The chances that he is an industrial spy are minimal. However, I want to meet him. I’d like you to get Pia to bring him to dinner tonight at my house. Make sure she understands it is a command performance. She had refused an invite on her own, but I think she will come accompanied.”
Mariel swallowed hard. She was shocked. A minute earlier she was enjoying Berman’s undoubtedly jealous response to Pia’s guest, and now he was inviting the man and Pia to his home, a place where Mariel had never been invited.
“Tell her that she and her houseguest should arrive at eight,” Berman continued. “But make sure she realizes it is a social event. Tell her it has to be tonight, because the rest of the week I’m going to be busy charming the socks off our important Chinese visitors.”
Mariel got to her feet, clutching her clipboard against her chest. She looked Berman right in the eye but didn’t say anything. She knew Berman was taking advantage of her and deliberately humiliating her. Here she was, one of the principal people of Nano and key to its biomedical R&D program, and he was treating her like a gofer, asking her to arrange some weird, sick rendezvous. From sore experience she knew what Berman really wanted.
Without another word Mariel headed for the exit. Before she got there, Berman called out to her, and she stopped without turning around.
“So you’ll pitch it like I described, okay? A social event among friends. And it has to be tonight.”
Mariel hesitated, thought about turning around and telling Berman to do his own personal errands, but she didn’t. Despite his behavior toward her, she was still enamored of the man. Instead she shifted her resentment and spite to Pia, the bitch.
10.
ZACHARY BERMAN’S HOME, BOULDER, COLORADO
MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2013, 8:20 P.M.
George whistled and shook his head in disbelief as he and Pia sat in her car in the cobblestoned turnaround of Berman’s imposing post-and-beam timber home.
“What a house! It looks more like a hotel than a private home. This nanotechnology stuff must really pay off.”
All that day while Pia was off at work, George busied himself on the Net, reading about nanotechnology in general and microbivores in partic
ular. He’d become something of an armchair expert. He’d even made it a point to read the article by Robert Freitas that Pia had suggested he’d find interesting.
“It’s such a waste since his family isn’t even here,” Pia said. She was as impressed as George, especially with all the rough-hewn masonry and soaring gables. Set at the top of a wide stone staircase, it dominated the environs like a medieval castle.
“Were you surprised at the invitation?” George asked. He had been nonplussed to have been specifically included. He had no sense of what role Berman played in Pia’s life, and no idea what to expect. The one thing he knew for certain, if push came to shove, there was no way he could compete on a level playing field with a man with his resources.
“I was more than surprised. I was shocked,” Pia admitted. It was the last thing she’d expected, especially since she’d ignored Berman’s increasingly insistent texts the day before. All day she had worried that Berman would suddenly appear in her lab and there’d be a confrontation. But it hadn’t happened. In fact Pia hadn’t seen him all day. When she’d asked, she was told that he was involved with a luncheon for a newly arrived contingent of Chinese guests.
“I tried to beg off at first,” Pia continued, “but Mariel was adamant about the invitation, and she was an absolute bear all day, like she’s never been with me. It was as if I had screwed up some experiment, which I haven’t. She reminded me at least ten times not to forget about tonight. She was very curious about you as well. ‘Is your friend enjoying his stay?’ ‘Does he like your apartment?’ ‘Don’t forget that Mr. Berman wants to meet him. . . .’”
“And you don’t know why he wants me to be here? I feel a little nervous.”
“No, George, I have no idea why he wants us here. But I tell you, I’m glad you are with me. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t come within a mile of this place.”