“I’m glad you agree with me about Nano. It’s reassuring, to say the least. The problem for me is that I have the same sense here that I had back in medical school. I can’t help feeling what I feel, and I have an obligation to look into it if just to dispel it. I had a visitor here just this past weekend. His name is George Wilson . . .”

“Ah-ha!” Paul said with a mischievous smile. “I like this. A love interest?”

“Hardly,” Pia said with a wave of her hand. “At least not from my side.”

“Oh, no!” Paul complained. With an exaggerated gesture he let his face and shoulders fall. “You’re so gorgeous; you must have hundreds of boyfriends.”

“Sorry,” Pia said. She couldn’t help smile. “As I suggested yesterday, I’m not much of a social animal. Sorry to disappoint. George and I have been friends for the whole time we were in medical school, and he did help me with the Rothman investigation, breaking into a few places where we were not supposed to go. Anyway, that’s another issue.

“The point I wanted to make was that when he was here over the weekend, he asked me an interesting question that set me thinking. After I told him how enormously nanotechnology was going to affect the medical field and the huge amounts of money being spent in research and development, he asked who was overseeing it all, making sure that corners weren’t being cut on issues like safety. At first his question just irritated me because I was already irritated he’d shown up uninvited.”

“That’s a no-no,” Paul interjected.

“But later I realized he was right. There is no oversight of nanotechnology research. No one is checking what might be the health risks of some nano products or violations of ethical standards, like premature human experimentation.”

“Ah, so that is what you think might be going on?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know, but, yes, that is a worry. And here I am in the thick of it, so to speak. I want to be sure I’m not abetting something unethical or even possibly illegal. I need some evidence of what is going on at Nano. I can’t call the authorities like the FDA or a newspaper, because I don’t have anything to show them, and it is not at all unreasonable for a nanotechnology company to be secretive.