Fourth Horseman (17 page)

‘But you’re ready to test it, aren’t you?’

‘Nearly,’ said Dad.

I remembered what he had said to Mum about having the final decision on whether to hand over the results.

‘Will you take the money?’ I said. ‘If it works, I mean? Will you hand it over?’

The question stopped Dad in his tracks. I like to believe that just then, with all that was happening, he was ready to turn it down. I wanted to say something; to tell him that I believed in him, and that he was right, but I didn’t get the chance. We all heard it at the same time and froze in alarm.

There was someone outside the house.

W
E COULD HEAR A
man’s voice, deep and strong, speaking in the darkness.

‘What the hell …?’ I said to Dad, but he stood glued to the spot like the rest of us, straining to hear. The voice went on, repeating something in a rhythmic, almost musical way. The walls of the house were too thick for us to hear what the words were.

Finally Dad moved and went towards the window.

‘It’s on the other side of the house, Dad,’ said Alex. He and Javed raced out into the hall but Dad called them back.

‘I’ll go. You lot stay here.’

He went to the door and opened it. Instantly we could hear the voice perfectly.

‘A measure of wheat for a penny. Three measures of barley for a penny.’

We ignored Dad’s orders and crowded behind him in the hallway. All four of us stood and stared out.

‘Mind you don’t damage the oil and the wine.’ They were standing at the edge of the orchard facing the house. The white horse, the red, and now a third one: huge and fat, and pure jet-black. It appeared to have no reins at all. Its head was down and it was tearing voraciously at the orchard grass. Its rider was fat as well, and in his hand he held an old-fashioned set of scales with two brass dishes hanging from a wooden cross bar.

‘A measure of wheat for a penny …’

The voice was rich and coloured with self-satisfaction.

‘Three measures of barley for a penny …’

Dad was under the spell already, I could tell by the look on his face. A January wind blew leaves into the hall.

‘Mind you don’t damage the oil and the wine.’

Alex and Javed, still in their hakamas, stepped past Dad and into the yard. A little less confidently, I followed.

‘A measure of wheat for a penny.’

I wondered how it was that we could see them so clearly. It was pitch-dark in the orchard and the light from the house windows was nowhere near strong enough to show them in such clarity. Around them the trees were barely visible. It was as though they carried their own light within them.

‘Three measures of barley …’

‘What do they want?’ Alex whispered to me, and at the same time Dad drifted up behind us, his steps slow and silent on the flagged yard.

‘… for a penny.’

I caught Dad’s arms as he passed, feeling exhausted suddenly; feeling like a minder whose patient had recovered and has suddenly relapsed. ‘No, Dad,’ I said. ‘Not again.’

Javed and Alex turned to look at him. He had relaxed in my grasp, and was swaying lightly from foot to foot, as though he was hearing some glorious, ethereal music.

‘Dad?’ said Alex.

Dad sighed wistfully, and when we turned back the horsemen were gone. Javed made to move towards the orchard but I was shaking with fear. ‘Leave it, Javed!’

‘Who are they?’ said Alex.

Dad was trembling, still staring at the empty orchard, like someone in the grip of a terrible conflict. I held on to his arm, but he wasn’t going anywhere now.

‘What was that?’ said Alex. ‘Who were they?’

‘You see?’ I said to him, my fear transforming into irrational fury. ‘You didn’t believe me!’

‘I never said I didn’t believe you!’ he said.

‘You did.’

‘When?’

‘You implied it anyway!’

‘Girls, boys,’ said Dad. His voice was dreamy and calm. He had stopped shaking. He was acting again. ‘Stop squabbling.’

He turned and went into the house. Alex called after him, but he got no answer. The door slammed hard.

‘You see?’ I said. ‘You see the way he is?’

We went in after him, but he was already coming back out through the hallway, his car keys in his hand.

‘Where are you going?’ said Alex.

‘Got a few things to do in the lab,’ said Dad cheerfully. ‘Didn’t I just promise you a dojo?’

‘Wait, Dad,’ I said. ‘We have to talk about this.’

‘Talk about what?’ And he was gone, into the car and away into the night.

The boys and I wandered into the kitchen.

‘What’s going on?’ said Javed.

I felt exhausted; shattered and defeated. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘What was all that stuff about wheat and barley?’ said Alex.

‘He’s like a market trader,’ said Javed.

‘Was he trying to sell us something?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Javed. ‘It was a message, though.’

‘That’s what I think,’ I said. ‘But what’s he trying to tell us?’

The sound of the front doorbell made all three of us jump out of our skins. For several long moments we all stood rooted to the spot, then Javed took a deep breath and went to open it. It was Attiya.

‘Are you all right?’ she said to him. ‘You look as if you’ve had a fright.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Javed.

She looked along the hallway at Alex and me. ‘You all look as if you were expecting trouble. Been watching a scary film?’

‘Something like that,’ said Alex.

While Javed changed out of his hakama, Alex and I sat in the kitchen with Attiya. She could tell that we were completely distracted, and I was tempted to blurt it all out. I don’t know why I didn’t; why neither of us did. Attiya was someone you could talk to about anything. But the horsemen and the effect they’d had on Dad was like a kind of guilty secret that all three of us now shared. And after they were gone, I felt certain that Javed wouldn’t tell his mother anything either.

I turned on the TV, but we couldn’t watch it. I went upstairs and Alex followed me to my room, still in his hakama, and sat on the floor.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t blame you. I can hardly believe it myself.’

‘Whatever it is, it’s as scary as hell,’ he said. ‘I mean, I wasn’t scared that they were going to do anything. It was just …’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘They’re not holograms.’

‘No. They’re not holograms.’

We fell silent, listening to the TV in the room below us. We should have turned it off, but the ordinary sounds were comforting in the empty house. When the phone rang it made us both jump. Alex raced down to answer it, and a minute later he was back, breathless with excitement. ‘He’s found them!’

‘What?’

‘Javed. He looked them up on the Internet. Have we got a Bible?’

‘A Bible! What do we want with a Bible?’

Alex showed me the chapter and verse he’d written on the phone message pad. And as he did so I remembered the Bible I’d seen in Dad’s study after he’d talked about science bringing atheists close to God. I ran down to see if it was still there. It was, buried under a pile of letters and bills. Alex took ages finding the place but he wouldn’t let me do it. Eventually he found it, and read aloud:

‘Revelation, Chapter Six:

‘And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

‘And I saw, and behold a white horse and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering and to conquer.

‘And when he had opened the second seal I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

‘And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s our empire and rebellion. It practically says so!’

‘And when he had opened the third seal I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.’

‘Yes!’

‘And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

‘And when he had opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.’

Alex glanced through the next few lines but didn’t read on. ‘That’s all there is about the horsemen,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘That’s who they are then.’

‘Who are they?’ said Alex.

I had never read that part of the Bible, but I had heard of the horsemen. I thought everybody had. I was surprised that Alex didn’t know.

‘They’re the four horsemen of the apocalypse,’ I said. ‘And when they appear it’s supposed to mean the end of the world.’

A
LEX AND I SAT
up talking in my room until the early hours. We heard Dad come in about midnight, whistling to himself as he came upstairs. We expected him to pop his head round the door, but he didn’t; he just went straight to bed. We talked some more, trying to come up with a plan of action, but short of barricading Dad into his bedroom we couldn’t think of anything. The problem was that we didn’t really know what we were up against. We had seen the horsemen; we had looked right into their eyes; but we didn’t know what had brought them there or what we could do to stop them. Eventually, stressed and exhausted, we both dropped off to sleep, still in our clothes.

I woke with one idea in my mind. We couldn’t keep Dad here, but I could at least keep an eye on him. He was clearly going back to work on a serious basis, which meant that it was time for me to go back, too. I got dressed and went, bleary-eyed, down into the kitchen.

Dad had already finished with his breakfast.

‘Go back to bed, sweetheart,’ he said.

‘I’m coming in to work,’ I said.

‘No need,’ he said. ‘I can manage on my own from here on in.’

‘From here on in?’ I said. ‘How come? Have you finished?’

‘Not yet. But I don’t need an assistant any more.’

‘You can’t do that,’ I said. ‘You can’t give me the sack, just like that.’

‘You can have pay instead of notice,’ he said. ‘But I don’t need you at the lab. I’ll work better on my own.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Dad, but I think you’re in trouble. I’m going to tell Mum this time.’

‘Tell her what?’

‘About the horsemen we saw last night, that’s what!’

Dad laughed. ‘And do you think she’ll believe you? If I deny it?’

‘Yes, I do. If Alex and Javed and me all swear to it.’

‘To what? Visions in the night?’

I was shaking with rage when he left. Alex came down, fresh from the shower.

‘I am going to tell Mum,’ I told him. ‘I don’t care what he says. As soon as she phones I’m going to tell her.’

He made breakfast but neither of us had much of an appetite. While we were scraping the leftovers into the bin, Javed arrived on his bike. There were no preliminaries. It was a council of war from the word go.

He had been doing some more research on the Internet, and he knew a lot more than we did.

‘They’re definitely the horsemen of the apocalypse,’ he said. ‘But why were there only three?’

‘Only three so far,’ I said. ‘There’s obviously a pattern to it, isn’t there? First one, then two, now three.’

‘So we can expect the fourth one to be with them next time?’ said Javed.

‘Looks like it.’

‘Which means curtains,’ said Alex.

‘That’s what they say,’ said Javed. ‘That’s what people mean when they talk about the apocalypse, anyway. The end of the world. I found loads of stuff on the Net about the four horsemen but it’s not easy to work out what it means.’

‘Stuff like what?’ said Alex.

‘Most of it is kind of religious commentaries and I didn’t find them very helpful. The type of people who can’t get out of the Christian mindset at all. They mostly say things like the white horseman is Christ and the red one is Death and the black one is corruption or famine or something. But I think we were closer to the mark.’

‘It says he went forth conquering and to conquer,’ said Alex.

And when the red one comes along he takes peace from the world and they start killing each other. Which ties in with our theory of rebellion against the empire.’

‘So what about the black horse then?’ I said. ‘What does he represent? Business interests?’

‘That’s what I think, anyway,’ said Javed. ‘The big companies that trade in arms and oil and stuff. They’re behind a lot of what’s happening in the world.’

‘And his horse has no reins at all,’ said Alex. ‘He’s completely out of control. Nobody’s even trying to restrain him.’

‘Corporate control of the global economy,’ said Javed. ‘The money behind the western governments that controls their foreign policy.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, disliking the idea even as I said it. ‘Or maybe it’s more simple. Maybe it’s people being tempted to do things for money, even when they know it’s wrong.’

‘Your father,’ said Javed.

Alex was appalled. ‘He wouldn’t, would he? He always says he does it because he loves the science of it.’

‘He does,’ I said. ‘But maybe the money is an extra incentive.’

‘I don’t really need the dojo,’ said Alex miserably. ‘It was a joke really.’

‘But where does it leave us, anyway?’ said Javed. ‘What’s it telling us about your dad’s work? We already know the other stuff. The world is a mess, anyone can see that.’

‘The world’s in a mess but it’s not over until the fat lady sings,’ said Alex.

‘And who is the fat lady?’ I asked.

‘The fourth horseman,’ said Alex. ‘He’s the key to it all. We have to work out what he represents and try and find a way to stop him before he turns up.’