SYSTEM RESET

An Interview with the Man

The study was empty. Two desks, one on either side of the room, faced out towards the darkened windows through which the first fingers of dawn were tracing a pearly glow. One desk, he knew, belonged to James Sinclair. The other must belong to Caroline Hannay. The walls were lined with packed bookshelves and there were two more freestanding double sided bookcases behind the desks, forming a kind of cordon between the working areas of the study and the small sofa and two winged chairs on either side of the fireplace. Mike quietly opened the drawers in Sinclair's desk but there was nothing in them but notepaper and a chaotic jumble of envelopes, scraps of paper, rubber bands, pens, paper clips and assorted office detritus which James obviously swept out of sight and out of mind. It mirrored the clerical chaos around the computer on the desk itself.

Caroline's desk was much tidier, but no more revealing. He began to look more systematically along the bookshelves, pulling out books occasionally to inspect them. James Sinclair had extraordinarily eclectic interests. There were books on history, archaeology, literature, physics, astronomy, astrology, genetics, anthropology, everything really. All of them well thumbed, annotated with curt marginalia and very obviously read and reread. He flicked quickly through Sinclair's collection of published novels, checking out the synopses on the back covers. Mostly they were about universities, or at least they started in universities. But Sinclair seemed to have a profound interest in metaphysics and cosmology so that his stories always moved from mundane openings to sophisticated and complex intellectual arguments about the meaning of life, the universe and all that, spiced up with large dollops of very explicit sex. Not surprising, Mike thought, given the sexual circus he was living with.

Mike Throckmorton's mind was too mechanical and pedestrian to take in this breadth of learning. His childhood had been rigidly regimented by Luther and his subsequent education had been narrow and focussed, first on biological sciences as an undergraduate, and then postgraduate research in genetics. He was a competent researcher, but no great scholar and he knew from the outset that his talents had long ago peaked and would not now get him very far in academic science. Once his doctorate was finished he had gone to California and screwed around on the beaches for a couple of years before shaping up and joining the CIS. James Sinclair's mind evidently lived in another universe altogether.

"Good morning Mike. Is this what you're looking for?"

Mike's heart stopped. The unfamiliar voice had come from nowhere. He looked round the room. An arm extended from one of the wing chairs in front of the fire. In its hand was large book with a cover picture of a college building and the title; Scholars and Gentlemen. The occupant of the chair stood up and faced Mike. It was not James Sinclair. It was a tall man in his mid thirties with a gangling body and a long and slightly lugubrious face faintly reminiscent of the young Alan Alda. He was dressed in expensive beige chinos, a black roll neck sweater and a grey herringbone pattern tweed jacket. Mike knew at once who he was. He took the extended hand and absorbed the inevitable static shock.

"Is it always like this?" he asked.

"You get used to it. It tells us who we are and after a while it remembers us. Then you don't notice it. I understand that you wanted to see me." Drew Quatermain spoke quietly, soft and low. Mostly upper class Brit, but with just a hint of Baltimore English. Mike stumbled over his words.

"Mr Quatermain, I er .. never ... er ... expected ... I'm ..."

"You're looking for this," Quatermain continued, he held out the book, "take it. Read it. Then make your choice. You cannot serve two masters. And you belong with us. Not with them. But you must choose. Take the book and sit down, please." He gestured towards the other wing chair.

Mike obeyed. As the book changed hands it opened slightly. A dribble of fine sand trickled from between the pages.

"We have questions for each other, I think," Quatermain raised his eyebrows quizzically and looked at Mike, "you go first."