Pia had gone so far as to ask Jason if he wanted to go out for a drink one evening, but he declined, citing pressure of work. Jason had talked to Pia more than once about his girlfriend at Michigan, and in the past tense, so Pia was fairly sure he was neither taken nor gay. Her pride was slightly dented when he turned her down a second time, at which point Pia backed off, in case she was making herself too obvious. She knew there was an element of irrationality on her part, being accustomed too often to having to fend off unwanted advances from men.

Pia’s main concern continued to be, What the hell had gotten into Zach Berman? Pia asked herself the question day after day. She was aware of the irony of the situation. Prior to the mysterious jogger episode, she had been fighting him off for months, but now that she was trying to make herself available to him, he had vanished. Or at least he was not around to ask about another dinner date. Pia was so anxious to try out the next phase of her plan that she’d agree to almost anything to get herself back inside Berman’s home with him. But he wasn’t giving her the chance.

Meanwhile, Nano was moving quickly with preparations for mammalian safety experiments, beginning with mice using Pia’s microbivore design. But as her results with the roundworms got more and more encouraging, the pressure on Pia had let up. Mariel checked in on Pia less frequently, and was herself much less objectionable. Pia almost missed the haranguing. Wouldn’t Mariel want her to ramp up the preparations, to push the science as far as she could take it, so that they could at least start the prolonged FDA approval process? And what about the microbivores computer software guys with whom Pia had yet to meet up? Continually Pia had been told that they might be available the following week but it kept getting put off.

Then Pia was told by Mariel that Pamela Ellis was being reassigned within the building. Mariel gave Pia an experiment to run involving a commercial product, a DNA array for a pregnancy testing kit that was, as far as Pia was concerned, the equivalent of busywork.

On Sunday, Pia sat on her couch, nursing her ongoing unease and frustration. Something Paul Caldwell had said stuck in her mind. How much did she know about what Nano was doing with her ideas? Perhaps Pamela Ellis was somewhere in the locked-up confines of the secret Nano, performing experiments Pia should be doing in her lab, maybe using mice with the oligosaccharide-shielded microbivores. Or other experiments they did not want her to see or even know about.

Pia’s iPhone rattled on the tabletop in front of her and snapped her out of her daydream. The display identified the caller as Paul. Pia was pleased with the distraction.