Until now, that is. Taken in by yet one more charlatan pretending magic, that charlatan, this time, being... himself. So perhaps, after all, it wasn't all twaddle and rot. Perhaps there really were psychics out there, content to stay out of the limelight, letting all those phonies flaunt their false gifts and laughing at their cheap hollow shows.

Or perhaps there weren't. Perhaps he wasn't one after all. It was all just a part of some deeper sickness. Only one way to find out, allowing the scientist in him to try the primitive sorcerer: come up with a model that fitted the data, then use that model to predict.

Which, in a way, he had already done. Without even trying. The data was the details of the vision itself, the model the statement "I am clairvoyant". If what he had foreseen came to pass, then that was that, case proven, a resounding QED.

There was just one problem, the obvious one, the one which had been there from the start: he needed more data. He wanted to be sure. He wanted, not only to predict, but to predict with such accuracy that he would be able to steer events and avoid what he had seen. Whatever it was, he was narrowing in on it, and if it really did show the future, it showed the near if not immediate future, crystallizing as that time approached. But it was still so sketchy, vague, elusive. Whenever he reached for it he always got hold of something, a handful of stray facts, spurious detail; the main body of it, however, continued to elude him.

[To read the rest of Chapter 3, and the remainder of the novel, see the purchase information below.]