Martineau studied her for a moment without commenting. “Think of your audience, Ellen,” he said evenly. “They are not academics. They don’t care about chimpanzees.”

Horton sensed his irritation; they had covered this ground already. But she couldn’t ward off the rising doubt.

Martineau began to walk toward the door to the boardroom. “They are waiting,” he said without looking back.

She nodded half-heartedly at his back and followed him.

Inside the spacious boardroom, the shades had been drawn across the bank of windows but the soft fluorescent lighting provided almost a daylight feel to the room. On the large white screen against the far wall, the introductory slide of her Power Point presentation awaited.

Horton kept her eyes to the floor until she reached the head of the table where Luc Martineau stood. He beamed at her without a hint of the coolness of moments earlier. She allowed herself a quick scan of the forty or so people collected around the long conference table. The men outnumbered the women by at least two to one. Male or female, they all wore suits. As she had never made a presentation to the board in her eighteen months at SeptoMed, she recognized only a few faces. One of them belonged to SeptoMed’s CEO, Harvey Abram. Sitting upright with bone-straight posture at the far end of the table, the bearded older man inspected her with disturbing intensity. He nodded to her once, but the gesture brought no reassurance. Out of reflex, Horton smoothed her jacket and skirt with another sweep of her sweaty palm. Then she reached for the remote control on the table.

Martineau cleared his throat loudly. “It’s a huge honor for me to introduce our next guest.” He clasped his hands in front of his chest. “Believe me, I dedicated six months of my life trying to convince Dr. Ellen Horton to join us at SeptoMed. It was the single most grueling project of my career.” A few of the suits laughed politely. “But as you’re about to see, without a doubt it is my greatest coup.” He smiled at Horton, which only heightened her anxiety. “Dr. Horton holds both an M.D. and a Ph.D. She came to us from Temple University, where she was the youngest tenured professor ever in the faculty of pharmacology. Since joining us, Ellen has perfected a groundbreaking new antibiotic: Oraloxin. A name that I promise will become dear to you all in the very near future.” He stepped away from the table and held out a hand magnanimously in her direction. “Without further ado, Dr. Ellen Horton.”

“Thank you, Dr. Martineau,” Horton said as the applause died down. She clicked a button. The room darkened. The screen filled with a large white circle covered in random splotches and streaks of purplish-blue consisting of innumerable discrete small dots, as if painted in the Impressionist style.