Free The Matrix by Jonathan Aycliffe Page A

collapse. He’s destroyed people before this, and he’ll destroy you, if you let him.’
    ‘Is this all you’ve come for, Harriet? What about Iain? Hasn’t he got the courage to say all this to my face?’
    ‘Iain doesn’t know I’m here. He’d never have agreed to my coming, he doesn’t want me mixed up in this. But we’re both worried sick. Why don’t you come and stay with us for a few days, just to talk things over? Iain can introduce you to some of his friends who know about Mylne. They can . . .’
    ‘I think you’d better leave, Harriet.’ I took her elbow, started propelling her towards the door. ‘If this is all you have to say, you’ve been wasting your time.’
    There were tears in her eyes, but they were thrown away on me. I was like someone watching himself from a distance, quite uninvolved, quite untouched. Duncan had taught me how to master my emotions, how to stop them from interfering with my main enterprise, my quest for arcane knowledge.
    Harriet left, pleading with me to reconsider. I scarcely noticed. By the time I had shut the door and gone back to the book I had been reading, she had all but been forgotten.
    I dreamed of Catriona that night, a strange dream, without beginning or end. She stood in a long, dark street, weeping and calling my name. It was a foreign place, full of high buildings made of mud. Shuttered windows patched the walls on all sides. From time to time, a door opened and closed. The doorway was black. I could hear feet walking on stones nearby. I wanted to run to Catriona, to hold and kiss her and tell her all was well, but I could not move. That is all I remember.

EIGHT
    I very nearly betrayed myself to Mylne, through sheer carelessness, a few days after Harriet’s visit. He came, as he often did in those days, to see me at my flat. It had become his custom to call out of the blue, as though to surprise me or, as I now believe, spy on me. I would usually offer him a drink, grateful for the relief of his company after a day’s solitary reading. Quite often we would listen together to a piece of classical music, and sometimes he would stay and I would prepare a light meal. It was his means of getting to know me better, to observe me in my own environment – I had almost said, my natural habitat.
    That evening, we ate and drank and talked until quite late. The subject of our conversation was the islands, which he told me he had never visited. For a man of his urbanity, he seemed unduly interested in Lewis and the life we led there. My home seemed unbelievably remote to me now, like a place I had read about, yet never gone to.
    I had, as I have mentioned, hidden away any books or papers that might inadvertently reveal the true nature of my research, and I was accustomed to letting Duncan go where he wanted in the flat. As he was leaving, however, his eye fell on an envelope I had left lying on the hall table. He picked it up.
    ‘This is addressed to “Dr Andrew Macleod”,’ he said. ‘I thought you said you were still working on your thesis.’
    I felt a chill go through me. There was something in his tone that warned me the wrong answer would cause trouble, though I could not guess quite how. I realized for the first time that, much as I admired Duncan Mylne, I also feared him. If he knew that I had concealed the true nature of my original research from him, he might very well vent his anger on me.
    ‘I am,’ I said. ‘This happens all the time. I’ve had letters addressed to me as “professor” before now. Not everyone understands the system. They think that, if you’re studying for a doctorate, you’re already a doctor.’
    He laughed and put the envelope down.
    ‘I know the problem,’ he said. ‘The common herd has little enough understanding of anything outside their limited horizons. I’m often called a solicitor, once I was made a judge.’
    He went away, though I could not be sure how reassured he had been by my explanation. I went through