When she got back to the lab, Pia stopped in her tracks. She saw that Zachary Berman was there, talking with Mariel. Unfortunately he looked up and saw her, which meant that Pia couldn’t act on her first instinct, which was to turn tail and disappear. The idea of having to put up with Berman and Mariel at the same time was more than she wished to bear.

“Ah, Pia, there you are. How are you feeling? Mariel tells me you’re under the weather.”

“I’m fighting something off, maybe a cold or flu, but I’m here. And you? She told me you were feeling ill yourself.” Pia girded herself. She had no idea what to expect, although Berman’s voice seemed calm and not accusatory. She couldn’t help but worry that he might somehow suspect she’d slipped him a Mickey Finn.

Berman smiled. He’d progressively recovered from that morning, when Mariel Spallek caught him with his head down on his desk in the office taking a catnap after a string of calls to China.

“I’m doing quite well, but thank you for asking.” Berman turned and with raised eyebrows looked at Mariel. Mariel took the hint, although she was clearly displeased, and she walked away. She busied herself at the far end of the room, well out of earshot.

“You got home safely?” Berman asked, keeping his voice low.

“I did. I made it a point to drive below the speed limit the whole way.”

“Good choice. At the time I’m not sure I would have had the good sense to do likewise. Luckily I didn’t have to go anyplace for several hours, and then I was driven.”

“I hope your call, or calls, went well.”

Berman looked at Pia questioningly.

Pia averted her gaze. “Miss Jones told me you had a call to make.”

“Right!” Berman said. His eyes roamed about the lab. “So how’s it going here?”

“It is going well. We’ve increased the number of biocompatibility experiments by a factor of ten, which will surely give us highly significant results, especially if they all continue to show no immunological reaction at all. Mariel has gotten me more lab space and some tech help. We’re getting it done.”

“That’s music to my ears. From my perspective, the microbivores project is the most important one under way here at Nano.”

“What other projects is Nano currently involved with?” Pia asked. She suddenly decided to throw caution to the wind and go for broke.

Berman smiled at her the way a father might smile at a young girl asking too many questions. “I’m sorry, but for security reasons, I can’t tell you that. I hope you understand.”

“Mariel said essentially the same thing. But isn’t there a chance that there could be overlap of my work with others? We could all mutually benefit if each of us knew what the other was doing.”