Chasing the Dime

17

At exactly noon on Sunday the phone woke up Pierce. A man said, "Is it too early to speak to Lilly?"

Pierce said, "No, actually it's too late."

He hung up and looked at his watch. He thought about the dream he'd had and set to work interpreting it, but then groaned as the first memory of the rest of the night poked into his thoughts. The call he'd made to Nicole in the middle of the night. He climbed out of the sleeping bag and off the bed to take a long, hot shower while he thought about whether to call her again to apologize. But even the stinging hot water couldn't wash away the embarrassment he felt. He decided it would be best not to call her or try to explain himself. He'd try to forget what he had done.

By the time he was dressed his stomach was loudly demanding food but there was nothing in the kitchen, he had no money and his ATM card was tapped out until Monday.

He knew he could go to a restaurant or a grocery store and use a credit card but that would take too long. He had come out of the embarrassment of the Nicole call and the baptism of the shower with a desire to put the Lilly Quinlan episode behind him and let the police handle it. He had to get back to work. And he knew that any delay in getting to Amedeo might undermine his resolve.

By one o'clock he was entering the offices. He nodded to the security man behind the front dais but did not address him by name. He was one of Clyde Vernon's new hires and had always acted coolly toward Pierce, who was happy to return the favor.

Pierce kept a coffee mug full of spare change on his desk. Before beginning any work, he dropped his backpack on the desk, grabbed the mug and took the stairs down to the second floor, where snack and soda machines were located in the lunchroom. He almost emptied the mug buying two Cokes, two bags of chips and a package of Oreos. He then checked the lunchroom refrigerator to see if anybody had left anything edible behind but there was nothing to steal. As a rule the janitorial crew emptied the refrigerator out every Friday night.

One bag of chips was empty by the time he got back to the office. Pierce tore into the other and popped one of the Cokes open after sliding behind the desk. He removed the new batch of patent applications from the safe below his desk. Jacob Kaz was an excellent patent attorney but he always needed the scientists to back-read the introductions and summaries of the legal applications. Pierce always had the final signoff on the patents.

So far, the patents Pierce and Amedeo Technologies had applied for and received over the past six years revolved around protecting proprietary designs of complex biological architectures. The key to the future of nanotechnology was creating the nanostructures that would hold and carry it. This was where Pierce had long ago chosen for Amedeo Tech to make its stand in the arena of molecular computing.

In the lab Pierce and the other members of his team designed and built a wide variety of daisy chains of molecular switches that were delicately strung together to create logic gates, the basic threshold of computing. Most of the patents Pierce and Amedeo held were in this area or the adjunct area of moleculary RAM. A small number of other patents centered on the development of bridging molecules, the latticework of sturdy carbon tubes that would one day connect the hundreds of thousands of nanoswitches that together would make a computer as small as a dime and as powerful as a digital Mack truck.

Before beginning his review of the new group of patents, Pierce leaned back in his chair and looked up at the wall behind his computer monitor. Hanging on the wall was a caricature drawing of Pierce holding up a microscope, his ponytail flying and his eyes wide as if he has just made a fantastic discovery. The caption above it said "Henry Hears a Who!"

Nicole had given it to him. She'd had an artist on the pier draw it after Pierce had told her the story of his favorite childhood memory, his father reading and telling stories to him and his sister. Before his parents split. Before his father moved to Portland and started a whole new family. Before things started to go wrong for Isabelle.

His favorite book at the time had been Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! It was the story of an elephant who discovers a whole world existing on a speck of dust. A nanoworld long before there was any thought of nanoworlds. Pierce still knew many of the lines from the book by heart. And he thought of them often in the course of his work.

In the story Horton is outcast by a jungle society that doesn't believe his discovery. He is most persecuted by the monkeys -known as the Wickersham gang -but ultimately saves the tiny world on the speck of dust from the monkeys and proves its existence to the rest of society.

Pierce opened the Oreos and ate two of the cookies whole, hoping the sugar charge would help him focus.

He began reviewing the applications with excitement and anticipation. This batch would move Amedeo into a new arena and the science to a new level. Pierce knew it would flatout rock the world of nanotechnology. And he smiled as he thought about the reaction his competitors would have when their intelligence officers copied the nonproprietary pages of the applications for them or when they read about the Proteus formula in the science journals.

The application package was for protecting a formula for cellular energy conversion. In the layman's terms used in the summary of the first application in the package, Amedeo was seeking patent protection for a "power supply system" that would energize the biological robots that would one day patrol the bloodstreams of human beings and destroy pathogens threatening their hosts.

They called the formula Proteus in a nod to the movie Fantastic Voyage. In the 1966 film a medical team is placed in a submarine called the Proteus, then miniaturized with a shrink ray and injected into a man's body to search for and destroy an inoperable blood clot in the brain.

The film was science fiction and it was likely that shrink rays would always remain the purview of the imagination. But the idea of attacking pathogens in the body with biological or cellular robots not too distant in imagination from the Proteus was on the far horizon of scientific fact.

Since the inception of nanotechnology the potential medical applications had always been the sexiest side of the science. More intriguing than a quantum leap in computing power was the potential for curing cancer, AIDS, any and all diseases. The possibility of patrolling devices in the body that could encounter, identify and eliminate pathogens through chemical reaction was the Holy Grail of the science.

The bottleneck, however -the thing that kept this side of the science theoretical while rafts of researchers pursued molecular RAM and integrated circuits -was the question of a power supply. How to move these molecular submarines through the blood with a power source that was natural and compatible with the body's immune system.

Pierce, along with Larraby, his immunology researcher, had discovered a rudimentary yet highly reliable formula. Using the host's own cells -in this case, Pierce's were harvested and then replicated for research in an incubator -the two researchers developed a combination of proteins that would bind with the cell and draw an electrical stimulus from it. That meant power to drive the nanodevice could come from within and therefore be compatible with the body's immune system.

The Proteus formula was simple and that was its beauty and value. Pierce imagined all forward nanoresearch in the field being based upon this one discovery. Experimentation and other discoveries and inventions leading to practical use formerly seen as two decades or longer out on the horizon might now be half again as close to reality.

The discovery, made just three months earlier while Pierce was in the midst of his difficulties with Nicole, was the single most exciting moment of his life.

"Our buildings, to you, would seem terribly small," Pierce whispered as he finished his review of the patents. "But to us, who aren't big, they are wonderfully tall."

The words of Dr. Seuss.

Pierce was pleased with the package. As usual, Kaz had done an excellent job of blending science-speak and layman's language in the top sheets of each patent. The meat of each application, however, contained the science and the diagrammed segments of the formula. These pages were written by Pierce and Larraby and had been reviewed by both researchers repeatedly.

The application package was good to go, in Pierce's opinion. He was excited. He knew floating such a patent application package into the nanoworld would bring a flood of publicity and a subsequent rise in investor interest. The plan was to show the discovery to Maurice Goddard first and lock down his investment, then submit the applications. If all went well, Goddard would realize he had a short lead and a short window of opportunity and would make a preemptive strike, signing up as the company's main funding source.

Pierce and Charlie Condon had carefully choreographed it. Goddard would be shown the discovery. He would be allowed to check it out for himself in the tunneling electron microscope. He would then have twenty-four hours to make his decision. Pierce wanted a minimum of $18 million over three years. Enough to charge forward faster and further than any competitor. And he was offering 10 percent of the company in exchange.

Pierce wrote a congratulatory note to Jacob Kaz on a yellow Post-it and attached it to the cover sheet of the Proteus application package. He then locked it back in the safe. He'd have it sent by secure transport to Kaz's office in Century City in the morning. No faxes, no e-mails. Pierce might even drive it over himself.

He leaned back, threw another Oreo into his mouth and checked his watch. It was two o'clock. An hour had gone by since he had been in the office but it had seemed like only ten minutes. It felt good to have the feeling again, the vibe. He decided to capitalize on it and move into the lab to do some real work. He grabbed the rest of the cookies and got up.

"Lights."

Pierce was in the hallway pulling the door closed on the darkened office when the phone rang. It was the distinctive double ring of his private line. Pierce pushed the door back open.

"Lights."

Few people had his direct office number but one of them was Nicole. Pierce quickly moved around the desk and looked down at the caller ID screen on the phone. It said private caller and he knew it wasn't Nicole, because her cell phone and the line from the house on Amalfi were uncloaked. Pierce hesitated but then remembered that Cody Zeller had the number. He picked up the phone.

"Mr. Pierce?"

It wasn't Cody Zeller.

"Yes?"

"It's Philip Glass. You called me yesterday?"

The private investigator. Pierce had forgotten.

"Oh. Yes, yes. Thanks for calling back."

"I didn't get the message until today. What can I do for you?"

"I want to talk to you about Lilly Quinlan. She's missing. Her mother hired you a few weeks ago. From Florida."

"Yes, but I am no longer employed on that one."

Pierce remained standing behind his desk. He put his hand on top of the computer monitor as he spoke.

"I understand that. But I was wondering if I could talk to you about it. I have Vivian Quinlan's permission. You can check with her if you want. You still have her number?"

It took a long while for Glass to respond, so long that Pierce thought he may have quietly hung up.

"Mr. Glass?"

"Yes, I'm here. I'm just thinking. Can you tell me what your interest is in all of this?"

"Well, I want to find her."

This was met with more silence and Pierce started to understand that he was dealing from a position of weakness. Something was going on with Glass, and Pierce was at a disadvantage for not knowing it. He decided to press his case. He wanted the meeting.

"I'm a friend of the family," he lied. "Vivian asked me to see what I could find out."

"Have you talked to the LAPD?"

Pierce hesitated. Instinctively he knew that Glass's cooperation might be riding on his answer. He thought about the events of the night before and wondered if they could already be known by Glass. Renner had said he knew Glass and he most likely planned to call him. It was Sunday afternoon. Maybe the police detective was waiting until Monday, since Glass seemed to be on the periphery of the case.

"No," he lied again. "My understanding from Vivian was that the LAPD wasn't interested in this."

"Who are you, Mr. Pierce?"

"What? I don't under -"

"Who do you work for?"

"No one. Myself, actually."

"You're a PI?"

"What's that?"

"Come on."

"I mean it. I don't under -oh, private investigator. No, I'm not a PI. Like I said, I'm a friend."

"What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a researcher. I'm a chemist. I don't see what this has to do with -"

"I can see you today. But not at my office. I'm not going in today."

"Okay, then where? When?"

"One hour from now. Do you know a place in Santa Monica called Cathode Ray's?"

"On Eighteenth, right? I'll be there. How will we know each other?"

"Do you have a hat or something distinctive to wear?"

Pierce leaned down and opened an unlocked desk drawer. He pulled out a baseball cap with blue stitched letters over the brim.

"I'll be wearing a gray baseball cap. It says MOLES in blue stitching above the brim."

"Moles? As in the small burrowing animal?"

Pierce almost laughed.

"As in molecules. The Fighting Moles was the name of our softball team. Back when we had one. My company sponsored it. It was a long time ago."

"I'll see you at Cathode Ray's. Please come alone. If I feel you are not alone or it looks like a setup, you won't see me."

"A setup? What are you -"

Glass hung up and Pierce was listening to dead space.

He put down the phone and put on the hat. He considered the strange questions the private detective had asked and thought about what he had said at the end of the conversation and how he had said it. Pierce realized it was almost as if he had been scared of something.