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.