First Horseman, The Read Online Free

of him and picked up the papers.
    Davas was holding out a pen to him.
    ‘These are three-year charts?’
    ‘I’m not expecting to get my hands on another trove like this,’ said Davas. ‘I need all you can give me.’
    Jim knew he’d be back soon enough. ‘That’s a fake,’ he said, waving his pen at the mask, well aware that it wasn’t.
    Davas didn’t react.
    ‘What’s wrong with your computers?’ said Jim. ‘Have they gone blind?’
    ‘In a way.’ Davas looked unhappily at him. ‘That’s why I need you.’
    Jim turned to the first chart. It was the dollar yen. He squinted at it. ‘I don’t look at this stuff any more,’ he muttered. ‘I trade a few stocks for a bit of fun, but I keep away from the big stuff.’ He shook his head, as if his neck was stiff. ‘Most of the time, anyway.’ He stared hard at the chart. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘This is kind of indeterminate.’
    Davas was looking past his shoulder as if he didn’t want to put Jim off but, equally, was desperate to watch him study the charts. ‘Go on,’ he said.
    ‘Well, I’m not sure I can draw on this – it’s like a bit of a fork in the road.’ Jim circled a blank about two months into the future. Davas had left a large quantity of space, which represented the future for Jim to fill in with his pen. This was the skill that had made Jim unbelievably rich: his talent at inking a line that predicted the future of money markets.
    ‘Look at the others,’ said Davas.
    Jim leafed through them. ‘I’m losing my touch,’ he said. ‘This is just bullshit to me.’ He went to the gold chart. ‘OK, this is what I see.’ Starting where the gold chart ended, the price at yesterday’s close, he drew a line that zigzagged up over the next three years. But then he drew another that zigzagged down and levelled out. ‘That’s pretty crazy, but that’s what I see. In a few months’ time things could go either way.’
    Davas riffled in his case and pulled out a roll of transparencies. He flicked through them until he came to the one he wanted. ‘Gold,’ he said, grabbing Jim’s chart. He put an overlay over Jim’s drawing. Davas’s projection stopped where Jim’s line forked: Jim had predicted a potential split in the fortunes of gold.
    ‘We kind of agree, then,’ said Jim.
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘But gold at nine hundred dollars an ounce, that’s not the end of the world.’
    ‘It would be very inconvenient,’ said Davas, ‘to put it mildly.’
    ‘Sorry, Max, but that’s all I’ve got.’ He looked at the ring on his little finger. ‘Do I get to keep these?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Davas, ‘but I might have to use your God-given talent again to be certain you’ve earned them.’
    Jim wasn’t sure whether he was getting a good deal or not. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but only once, and not, like, a ten-year chart next time or every instrument on the whole bloody market either.’
    ‘I understand,’ said Davas. He folded up Jim’s projection. ‘Can you draw on the others for me?’
    Jim paged through the charts. ‘It’s the same story. It’s like there’s a cliff and either the chart goes off it or it doesn’t. It’s like a fifty-fifty moment in history is coming up. Either something bad happens or it doesn’t.’
    Davas grunted in agreement. ‘Well, that’s what I’m getting from my computers too, and it’s not good.’
    ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ said Jim.
    ‘I don’t know so much,’ said Davas.
    ‘It’ll work itself out. It always does.’
    Davas sat down on the camp seat. He looked drained. ‘Not necessarily Jim. There isn’t always a happy ending.’

7
    Dear Professor,

    Thank you for asking why I no longer wish to be on the course. As you know I’m a chemist. Genetics has always fascinated me, so I thought, after my master’s, that biochemistry was the next step. However, I cannot work with/on animals.

    She was staring at the screen, her brow furrowed like a piece of corrugated