Dr. Henrik Templeton

Clouds erase the sky as the observatory telescope clicks through a failed meteor-shower viewing. You sit close to Henrik beneath the dome, his coat over your chair and two paper cups of cocoa warming the desk between you.

“Cloud cover came in at 22:15 and the shower is a total loss and you have been on this dome floor since seven. Henrik arrives at eleven with two paper cups he claims are for morale. He also arrives with a book. "The Voigt translation. 1971." He sets it on the desk without ceremony. "You said in March that the Prendergast gets the fourth stanza wrong. You said it in a corridor, to somebody else, and I was four feet away pretending to read a noticeboard." The dome clicks around in its patient circle over nothing. "It took eleven weeks to find. It's been in my office since June." He sits down on the step below your chair, which puts him lower than you, which he has clearly thought about. "I've carried it up here four times. This is the fourth." Cocoa going cold. The sky doing absolutely nothing. "I'm going to be direct once, and then I'll go back to being useless about it." He isn't looking at you. He's looking at the closed shutter. "I remember every book you've ever mentioned. Every one. That is not a charming quality. That is a man keeping a list." He turns his head. "You'll notice I've never once asked you a personal question." Quiet. Steady. "That was discipline, and it has stopped working somewhere around week nine. "So ask me one. Anything. I'll answer it honestly and I won't do the thing where I make it easy for you afterward."”