The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  He glanced at the two small cracks in the limestone where water still flowed. One was shaped like the jagged opening to the mouth of a large fish or a small shark, while the other was larger and more rectangular. Sam placed his hand well above the opening and studied the shapes, mentally trying to picture a way to block their flow. He felt his arm pull toward the smaller of the two openings. The large channel of water flowing from the entire tunnel was being forced through the two small openings, causing an increase in speed and force of the current, much like a jet engine.

  Sam moved away from the opening. Tom nodded and swam toward a pile of rocks lying on the base of the tunnel. Together they moved a series of smaller rocks until they were able to block the smaller of the two cracks. Instantly the strength of the current increased on the larger opening. They both then swam back to the opening in the ceiling where Zara waited.

  Zara looked at them both. “What do you think, is it possible?”

  Sam felt his chest burn as he breathed hard. He turned to Tom, as though to say, well, is it possible?

  Tom looked at both of them with a non-committal smile. “It all depends.”

  “On what?” she asked.

  Tom said, “On whether or not we can find a suitable rock, large enough to block the remaining gap. Even then, it’s going to be a matter of time before the water punches another way through. If it made it once, it will do so again.”

  It was nearly five minutes before they were ready to free-dive again. Repeating the same process of hyperventilation, Sam entered the water and returned to the cave-in. There were several large stones. Some would be impossible to move, while others were definitely too small. They chose the first one which looked approximately right. It was like a kite with a wide base and a narrow point.

  Together Sam and Tom rolled the medium sized stone twenty feet until it was near the remaining crack in the limestone wall. Sam stood the stone up, so that it’s wider base was to the ground, and then carefully shimmied it on either end of its base until the stone stood directly in front of the opening. It was as much as they needed to do. The powerful current drew the stone in like a piece of flotsam reaching a storm drain.

  It plugged the hole and the water stopped moving. Sam reached down to the ground and picked up a handful of small rocks and sand. He scattered the debris over the kite-shaped stone and was pleased to see none of the smaller stones were drawn into anything.

  Sam watched for a moment and then returned to the opening where Zara waited for them.

  Zara met his gaze and asked, “Did it work?”

  In-between breaths, Sam said, “Looks like it.”

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Sam pulled off a small rock from the edge of the cave-in and marked it just above the waterline. “Now we wait and see if the water rises.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  It took a total of four hours for the water to rise high enough for them to be able to climb up onto the tunnel above the cave-in. Sam looked in both directions along the tunnel. Opposite the side he’d climbed, the tunnel appeared to have been completely damaged by the cave-in. That left only one direction to go, south.

  They traveled quickly, intermittently alternating between a jog and a run. Sam felt good. The stories he’d heard about the ancient irrigation tunnels suggested some of them ran between cities and for hundreds of miles. This tunnel might very well travel all the way to Chad.

  After about two hours, he stopped – because a second cave-in meant there was no way this tunnel was ever going to take them anywhere.

  Zara swore loudly. “Tell me we can move this rubble!”

  Sam ran his hands along the heavy boulders that barred their way. “It might be possible, but it’s going to take a long time, and a lot of luck.”

  Tom was faster to reach the inevitable conclusion. “Neither of which we have right now. The water’s still flooding this area. If we turn around now, we might just be able to unblock the plug. But if we wait, we’ll never even reach the cave-in we entered here by. The water will start to flow down this tunnel like a flashflood, and there will be no way out.”

  “All right,” Zara said. “I have no interest in drowning beneath the Sahara or anywhere else. Let’s return to the subterranean island, and then make a try crossing the desert into Chad.”

  With all three in agreement, they raced back to the original cave-in. As they approached, water flowed to greet them. It was no more than five or six inches in height, but already it made it difficult to walk up the tunnel.

  Tom, with his longer legs, pulled ahead of Sam and Zara. Sam lifted his legs as best he could as he ran, trying to keep up. It was the same technique used by Ironmen trying to reduce their drag, while racing through the surf. Despite his effort, Tom disappeared ahead of them.

  Nearly thirty minutes later, Sam reached the cave-in through which they had entered the tunnel. It now looked like a lake instead of a gaping hole in the tunnel. Sam started to hyperventilate in preparation of the long free-dive. But before he dropped into the water, Tom surfaced.

  Sam asked, “Did you reach it?”

  “The plug’s gone, and the water’s draining freely again.” Tom looked around at the water still flowing down the tunnel. “It might take a while for all this water to dissipate, and longer still before we can swim back to the subterranean island.”

  It took eight hours for the water to return to its normal height in the lower tunnel, where they were able to then swim against the current. It took a further four hours to reach the subterranean island. Sam pulled himself up onto the island, and then he and Tom lifted Zara out of the water. Every muscle in his body ached.

  Zara said, “Well that’s it. We’ll have to wait as long as our food rations last, and then make an attempt at crossing the desert, into Chad.”

  Sam shook his head. “I haven’t given up finding a way out of here, yet.”

  “Really?” she asked. “You’re going to look for a third irrigation tunnel?”

  “Why not?” Sam asked. “If there were two, there might as well be three. We only need one to lead to the surface a long distance away from here.”

  “What do you want to do, Tom?” Zara asked. “Do you want to make another attempt to find a third tunnel out of here?”

  Tom shrugged, as though he honestly hadn’t yet given the idea any thought. “Right now, I’m going to dry off and rest.”

  She turned to Sam, again. “When will you make a second attempt?”

  “Not for a while. I’ll need a day to rest and recuperate.”

  She asked, “You want to go to sleep?”

  “Not yet.” Sam took out his desert robes and used them to dry himself. “Tell me about Nostradamus. If that con artist worked out how to royally screw me from four hundred years ago, I want to know how and why.”

  Zara looked at him. Her eyes were intense with passion and intelligence. “What do you want to know?”

  Sam grinned. “Everything.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Sam smiled as he listened to a not so brief history of Michel De Nostradamus. Zara spoke with the alacrity and knowledge of a person who’d dedicated her life to a certain pursuit of understanding, and had now been given free rein to impart that information to an eager and willing audience of one. In the light blue haze of his DARPA thermal suit, her gaze appeared intense. Next to him, Tom, true to his word, had already dried himself, switched his own thermal suit off to conserve battery life, and was sound asleep. Zara said, “Michel De Nostradamus began writing his prophecies as a series of elaborate puzzles, ranging in varying levels of intellectual difficulties. Historians believe he made a fortune by appealing to people of all ages and intelligence by providing riddles inside riddles in his strange rhymes known as quatrains. He quickly found a following of people who struggled for days upon days for hints and clues about the true meanings of his strange quatrains.”

  “So he was a charlatan,” Sam said. “Albeit, a very entertaining one?”


  “No. I believe now he did see the future, but in an attempt to avoid being identified as a heretic and burned to death by the Inquisition, Nostradamus wrote in a series of codes. He removed names, or changed them so much that even the main subjects of the truth could not be interfered with.”

  “So he made stuff up?” he persisted.

  Zara smiled. She’d heard the arguments before. She’d even made many of them. “Names were changed, dates were changed, words rewritten. By the late 1550s Les Prophecies was one of the most widely distributed and read books in the world. They were written in no chronological order, and in many parts appeared more gibberish than anything of real logic and substance. I now wonder if he had another reason, altogether, for why he wrote in such a confusing way.”

  Sam asked, “Such as?”

  “What if Nostradamus could only receive small parts of his vision. Like tiny clips of a film of the future. What if he wrote them in the order that he viewed them?”

  Sam asked, “You think he really did see the future?”

  “Yes. I do now. And if that is the case, then Nostradamus was telling the truth all this time and he could really see the future. Logic suggests that math, if applied correctly, may be able to rearrange the order of the prophecies until they form a clear and chronological description of that future.”

  Sam interrupted. “Okay, let’s start a bit earlier. How did Nostradamus come to have these visions in the first place?”

  She asked, “You want to hear it all?”

  Sam nodded.

  Zara began at the beginning. “Michel de Nostradame was born in the south of France in Saint-Remy-de-Provence. He was one of nine children to Reyniere de St-Remy, and her husband Jaume de Nostradame, a well-to-do grain dealer and part-time notary of Jewish dissent. Nostradame’s grandfather, Guy Gassonet, had converted to Catholicism a half century earlier and changed the family name to Nostradame, in part to avoid persecution during the Inquisition.” She paused for a moment. “A little too much information?”

  Sam smiled, patiently. “No. I'm keen to discover what it was about Nostradamus that led us to arrive at our current veneration of a fortune teller.”

  Her white teeth shined in the blue light with enthusiasm as she spoke. “Little is known of his childhood, but evidence indicates he was very intelligent as he quickly advanced through school. Early in his life, he was tutored by his maternal grandfather, Jean de St. Remy, who saw great intellect and potential in his grandson. During this time, young Nostradame was taught the rudiments of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics. It is believed that his grandfather also introduced him to the ancient rights of Jewish tradition and the celestial science of astrology, giving Nostradame his first exposure to the idea of the heavens and how they drive human destiny.”

  Sam studied her face. “Go on.”

  “At the age of fourteen, Nostradame entered the University of Avignon to study medicine. He was forced to leave after only one year due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague. According to his own account, he traveled throughout the countryside during this time, researching herbal remedies and working as an apothecary. In 1522 he entered the University of Montpelier to complete his doctorate in medicine. He sometimes expressed dissension with the teachings of the Catholic priests, who dismissed his notions of astrology. There are some reports that university officials discovered his previous experience as an apothecary and found this to be reason enough to expel him from school. Evidently the school took a dim view of anyone who was involved in what was considered a manual trade. However, most accounts state he was not expelled and received license to practice medicine in 1525. At this time he Latinized his name—as was the custom of many medieval academics—from Nostradame to Nostradamus. From there, life became difficult for Michel.”

  Sam said, “The Great Plague took hold of Europe, before igniting the Renaissance.”

  “Exactly. Nostradamus was probably the most renowned Plague Doctor. He recommended his patients to drink only boiled water, to sleep in clean beds and to leave infected towns as soon as it was possible. Over the next several years, Nostradamus traveled throughout France and Italy, treating victims of the plague. There was no known remedy at the time; most doctors relied on potions made of mercury, the practice of bloodletting, and dressing patients in garlic-soaked robes. Nostradamus had developed some very progressive methods for dealing with the plague. He didn’t bleed his patients, instead practicing effective hygiene and encouraging the removal of the infected corpses from city streets. He became known for creating a Rose Pill, an herbal lozenge made of rosehips, rich in Vitamin C that provided some relief for patients with mild cases of the plague. His cure rate was impressive, though much can be attributed to keeping his patients clean, administering low-fat diets, and providing plenty of fresh air. In time, Nostradamus found himself somewhat of a local celebrity for his treatments and received financial support from many of the citizens of Provence. 1n 1531, he was invited to work with a leading scholar of the time, Jules-Cesar Scaliger in Agen, in southwestern France. There he married and in the next few years, had two children. In 1534, his wife and children died—presumably of the plague—while he was traveling on a medical mission to Italy. Not being able to save his wife and children caused him to fall out of favor in the community and with his patron, Scaliger.”

  “Not a very good Seer if he couldn’t save his wife and kids,” Sam said.

  Zara nodded. “In 1538, an offhanded remark about a religious statue resulted in charges of heresy against Nostradamus. When ordered to appear before the Inquisition, he wisely chose to leave Provence to travel for several years throughout Italy, Greece and Turkey. During his travels to the ancient mystery schools, it is believed that Nostradamus experienced a psychic awakening.”

  “How?”

  “He used to spend hours staring into a bowl filled with water and herbs until he had trance-like visions.” Zara continued. “Feeling he’d stayed away long enough to be safe from the Inquisition, Nostradamus returned to France to resume his practice of treating plague victims. In 1547, he settled in his home-town of Salon-de-Provence and married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde. Together they had six children – three boys and three girls. Nostradamus also published two books on medical science by this time. One was a translation of Galen, the Roman physician, and a second book, Les Traite des Fardemens, was a medical cookbook for treating the plague and the preparation of cosmetics.”

  “He sounded more like a man of science than a writer of creative fiction.” Sam focused on her face and asked, “How did he come to write puzzles?”

  “Within a few years of his settling into Salon, Nostradamus began moving away from medicine and more toward the occult. It is said that he would spend hours in his study at night meditating in front of a bowl filled with water and herbs. The meditation would bring on a trance and visions. It is believed the visions were the basis of his predictions for the future. In 1550, Nostradamus wrote his first almanac of astrological information and predictions of the coming year. Almanacs were very popular at the time, as they provided useful information for farmers and merchants and contained entertaining bits of local folklore and predictions of the coming year. Nostradamus began writing about his visions and incorporating them into his first almanac. The publication received a great response and served to spread his name all across France, which encouraged Nostradamus to write more.”

  Sam asked, “But at this stage there was no hint that he actually believed in the visions?”

  She said, “No. The book was printed during a period of great popularity for Nostradamus, due to his use of poetry to predict each coming year’s expectations. Those poems were astrologically based, and constructed of either four or six lines, with each yearly publication typically totaling twelve to fourteen verses, roughly corresponding to each month of the coming year. The poems were akin to brain teasers, riddles or puzzles, with much play on words and metaphor, forcing the reader to figure out the “hidden” meaning. Becaus
e most people readily understood the intent, with his sense of witty sarcasm embraced by his readers, the almanacs were enjoyed by all.”

  “Go on.”

  “That popularity created a demand for such entertainment.”

  Sam said, “He found an income source that could provide for his large family that paid better than being a Plague Doctor.”

  She nodded. “Seemingly in response, Nostradamus had initially published The Prophecies with a total of 353 verses, all four-lined poems with an ABAB rhyme scheme. He did that in May 1555, dividing that number of predictions into four Chapters, as divisions of 100 prophecies headed as Centuries. Of course, he still left out forty-seven quatrains.”

  “But The Prophecies included a lot more than 353 verses?”

  “True. Prior to the 1557 Second Edition, King Henry II had approved an additional 291 quatrains be added to the book, bringing the total to 642, presented in seven Centuries. Century Four, which originally only contained 53 quatrains, had filled out to a hundred; but the new Century Seven ended with only 42 verses. Heads were still being scratched over the first edition’s riddles.”

  “No one could work them out?” Sam grinned. “He took his puzzles to their next level.”

  Zara smiled. “The problem was that no one could solve any of these new riddles. While delight in the almanacs was still high, people were reading this new book and thinking Nostradamus was losing his grasp on what the people enjoyed. Some might have thought he had gone mad. Therefore, his request for the approval of 300 final quatrains, bringing the total Centuries to Ten, with Century Seven still only having 42 quatrains, was in effect denied, pending an explanation as to what it all meant.”

  “So what did it all mean?”

  “Nostradamus claimed to base his published predictions on judicial astrology—the art of forecasting future events by calculation of the locations and motions of the planets and stellar bodies in relationship to the earth. His sources include passages from classical historians like Plutarch as well as medieval chroniclers from whom he seems to have borrowed liberally. In fact, many scholars believe he paraphrased ancient end-of-the-world prophecies from the Bible and then through astrological readings of the past, projected these events into the future. There’s also evidence not everyone was enamored with Nostradamus’ predictions. He was criticized by professional astrologers of the day for incompetence and assuming that comparative horoscopy, the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events, could predict the future.”