'I'm sorry, I couldn't possibly comment.'

'…Shit, doesh zhat mean you're attending?'

'Michael, you ought really to be concerning yourself with your own assignment.'

'Ha!  I'm trying to take my mind off it!'

'Anyway, I have to go; there's a car waiting for me.  Have a safe and productive trip.'

'Yeah yeah yeah.  All zhat shtuff.'

I was on sabbatical.  One of the privileges that comes with my rank is that I'm allowed one year in every seven, on full pay, to do just as I please.  This has been a Business institution for those at my level and above for about two and a half centuries and seems to be working well.  We'll probably keep it.  Certainly I had no complaints, even though I had not taken what most people would regard as full advantage of such a serious perk.

Nominally and for tax purposes I was based in the States.  I spent about a third of the year travelling, generally in the developed world.  I was still enjoying this largely airborne lifestyle, but when I did want to feel the earth under my feet I could always retreat to the modest but comfortable cabin I owned in the Santa Cruz mountains just outside the town of Woodside, Ca, within easy reach of Stanford, Palo Alto and the rest of Silicon Valley (that's 'modest' and 'cabin' in the Californian Opulent sense, with a pool, hot tub, five bedrooms and a four-car garage).  If home is the place that best displays your character, then this was my home.  From the stuff on the shelves you could have told that I liked German composers, Realist art, French films and biographies of scientists.  Also that I was addicted to technical journals.

My European base was Suzrin House, the company's monolithic warren of offices and apartments overlooking the Thames at Whitehall, which I preferred to our Swiss base at Château d'Oex.  I suppose Suzrin House was my second home, though in terms of architectural cosiness that's a bit like regarding the Kremlin or the Pentagon as a pied-à-terre. Never mind.  My job, wherever I might be, was to keep abreast of current and incipient technological developments, with the brief of recommending which of those technologies the Business ought to invest in.