She seemed puzzled for a moment. Whether puzzled by the demand or puzzled that it should be made, Rico couldn't tell. She said, "Ansell doesn't respond well to coercion. He's out of his element here, so you've probably found him-easy to deal with. In the corporate environment, where he's at home, he's highly independent of mind and intensely aware of his own personal purview. He believes he should be allowed to pursue his work utterly without supervision or constraint. He views even the slightest intervention by management as a complete usurpation of his rights as a scientist. That same egocentric perspective dominates his personal life as well. A threat against his wife would be no less a threat against him as a man. It wouldn't matter if he cared whether his wife lived or died. What would matter is his power to control what happened."