“Morning, Miss Grazdani,” said Marsha Langman, Rothman’s secretary, from behind her desk. One overdefined eyebrow was raised as she looked at the clock on the wall opposite. “You don’t want to make this a habit.”

Pia followed the woman’s line of vision and glanced at the clock. The second hand had just ticked past vertical: it was 7:49. Pia stopped and half turned toward Rothman’s ultraloyal retainer-cum-secretary for the inevitable reprimand.

“You know he likes everyone to be early,” Marsha said in an accusatory tone.

“I’m not late,” said Pia. Students were supposed to begin lectures and other activities at eight unless they had been on call the night before for specific rotations that required it.

“Ah, but you aren’t early either. Let’s not start the month off on the wrong foot. And I should warn you, you’ll be having some company in your office. There’s a man from maintenance in there trying to find a problem in the wiring. The security system is down.”

“How long’s that going to take?”

Marsha, a middle-aged African-American woman in a lab coat her position didn’t call for, made a face that said, How would I know?

Pia was exasperated. There was barely room for her in what was generously described as an office.

“Is the chief going to have time for me this morning?” Pia was one of the handful of people who didn’t reflexively kowtow to Rothman and wait for him to come to them. As Pia asked the question she turned to fully face Marsha. The research technicians were quiet. Pia wondered if they’d timed their coffee run for her predictably not-quite-early arrival and were eavesdropping for any possible gossip.

“You know how pressed for time he always is,” Marsha said. “He’s being pressured to finish his most current salmonella typhi experiment with Dr. Yamamoto. We have to e-mail the manuscript to The Lancet in the next day or so.”

Marsha always talked as if she were actively involved in the research. It was part of her strategy of erecting barriers and building sand traps for those wanting time with Rothman. She watched over him like a killer guard dog.

“He’s been in since six”—“in” being the biosafety level-3 lab, frequently referred to as BSL-3, where the work on the salmonella strains was being done. “I’ll see if I can get word to him that you want to speak to him.”

“Thank you,” Pia said, her eyes betraying irritation. “Getting word” to Rothman meant flipping a switch and talking to him by intercom. Hating to waste time and having finished the last project he had assigned to her, Pia needed to see Rothman to find out what she was going to be doing that month. And now there was some workman in her office to complicate things.

Pia was fortunate to have an office at all. Few of the other people in the lab had such a privilege. When Rothman’s chief technician was fired after getting into an argument with Rothman over some picayune detail of lab procedure, his successor, Arthur Spaulding, took an office nearer the biosafety level-3 area, and Pia took over Spaulding’s broom closet. Pia saw that her office door was ajar, and she bristled. There were sensitive files in there, even if only a handful of people on the planet would understand what they meant. As she entered she saw that her bench area that also served as her desk was occupied—an electrical blueprint was laid out on the flat surface and there were tools and wires strewn on top. In the corner of the tiny, windowless room was a stepladder with a human form standing on the top platform, head and shoulders hidden up inside the dropped ceiling. Three panels had been taken down and stacked against the wall.