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?"