The Matrix Read Free Page A

hardly need me to prove it to them. I intend to show them something different, that these occult activities involve nothing more than sad or inadequate people whose lives need a little drama.’
    ‘I’ve no time for psychology either.’
    ‘You won’t get any. My investigations will be purely sociological. Hard facts about social class, education, actual and relative deprivation . . .’
    Fergusson stood. He was a tall man, bearded, forbidding. I could see I had not reassured him.
    ‘You miss the point, Dr Macleod. I don’t give a damn how hard-headed you are, how empirical your research will be. Your work here could give this department a bad name. Since I seem to have no choice in the matter, I’m forced to accommodate you. But I want some assurances. There are to be no public lectures on your findings. No lectures within the university without my express permission. No interviews with the press, local or national. In fact, no contact with any member of the press. I want you to keep a very low profile. Do you understand? I want to see as little of you round here as possible.’
    I agreed to his demands and turned to go.
    ‘Dr Macleod,’ he called out, catching me at the door. I looked back. ‘I understand you have had a personal tragedy.’
    I nodded.
    ‘May I take it that this . . . loss will not interfere with your work?’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘Of course you do. I want you to understand that, if you can’t handle this job, you’ll have no sympathy from me. They have doctors at the health centre to deal with personal problems. Our relationship is to remain strictly professional, purely academic.’ He paused. ‘And don’t let me hear that you’ve been trawling the mediums in search of fond messages from your late beloved. I won’t have that, I won’t stand for it.’
    I wanted very much to hit him, but I did not. Instead I closed the door, quite hard, and went out, down the stairs, into the cold street. Winter had begun, but I barely noticed it. I walked without a coat or a hat, not knowing where I was going or why. I was not angry with Professor Fergusson, what I felt was something beyond anger, much gentler, much more dangerous. In the end I came to myself and found a bus to take me back to town. I counted the stairs to my flat: there were one-hundred-and-sixty-eight. Hard stone steps worn away in places by generations of feet, from landing to weary landing.
    I spent the next few days tidying my books and papers, or going for walks in order to explore the city – the Old Town first, then the straighter streets of the New Town with its elegant Georgian doorways and wrought-iron railings. I felt separate from everything, remote, dislocated, more like a tourist than a new resident. Nothing beautiful moved me, there was nothing harmonious in the long vistas or the tall sandstone façades.
    I started work the following week, reading from early morning on into the evening at the National Library on George IV Bridge. So began a tedious drift into winter, each day marked out by a succession of books and pamphlets of mind-numbing banality. I wanted to familiarize myself with a broad range of New Age and occult beliefs, in order to narrow down my field of enquiry. I read until my eyes ached about the Great Pyramid, UFOs, ley lines, reincarnation, astrology, ancient mysteries of every kind, the Gnostic gospels, enneagrams, tarot, Tantric yoga, crystal healing – a maze of theories that seemed to cover every imaginable human obsession, every hope and fear.
    I skimmed the surface of it all like a skater who fears thin ice and a plunge into deep, ice-cold waters. Most of the books I read were trite, poorly executed, badly written, and repetitive. I had to remind myself daily that I was not there to sit in judgement, but to understand.
    By the end of December I persuaded myself that I had read as much as I needed. I knew my way, stumblingly but accurately enough, across this unfamiliar terrain: