Zara said, “The unique and substantial events described by the individual quatrains appeared to be in a jumbled mess of non-chronological order. Jumping forwards and backwards through history, the quatrains described a combination of some events that had already been and many which were still to come. He intentionally obscured the quatrains through the use of symbolism and metaphor, as well as by making changes to proper names by swapping, adding or removing letters. The obscuration is claimed to have been done to avoid his being tried as a magician.”
Sam asked, “So what made The Prophecies a success?”
Zara said, “You see, the writings of Nostradamus were enjoyed by many people of all levels of society in Sixteenth Century Europe. The more noble his public admirers the more people wanted to read his predictions. His most notable admirers were the Royal Family of France. He was invited to the Paris court of Henry II and his wife, Catharine de Medici. The Medicis were known for their pan-European political ambitions, and the queen hoped that Nostradamus could give her guidance regarding her seven children. Ostensibly, Nostradamus also arrived in Paris in August of 1556 to explain Quatrain 35 of Century One, assumed to refer to King Henry II.”
Zara carefully flicked through the first few pages of Century One, before handing the book to him. “This is quatrain 35 of Century One. Probably the most notable and influential of all of Nostradamus’s predictions.”
Sam carefully read the quatrain out loud.
*
The young lion will overcome the older one
On the field of combat in single battle
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.
*
Sam shrugged. “So what did it mean?”
“Nostradamus told the king that he should avoid any ceremonial jousting during his 41st year, which the regent's own astrologer had also asserted. Nostradamus spent the next few years ensconced in the luxury of the royal court, but received word that Catholic authorities were again becoming suspicious of his soothsaying and were about to investigate him. He returned to his hometown of Salon and his wife and children. Finishing volumes VIII through X, he also began work on two additional volumes of Centuries, which were unfinished at the time of his death. On June 28, 1559, in his 41st year, Henry II was injured in a jousting tournament celebrating two marriages in his family. With thousands watching, his opponent's lance pierced the King's golden visor, entered his head behind the eye, both blinding him and penetrating deep into his brain. He held onto life for ten agonizing days.”
Sam said, “Tough break.”
“Already a celebrated persona in France, Nostradamus became a figure inspiring both awe and fright among the populace. His other prophecies regarding France's royal line were consulted and most seem to predict only death and tragedy. Henry's surviving widow, now Queen Regent Catharine de Medici, visited him in Salon during her royal tour of 1564, and he again told her, as he had when he drew up their astrology charts, that all four of her sons would become kings. Yet all the children came to equally dismal ends: one son became king of Poland, but was murdered by a priest; another died before carrying out a plot to kill another brother; two died young as well; the three daughters also met tragic fates. The family's House of Valois died out with the burial of Queen Margot.”
“And what became of Nostradamus?”
“He died in 1566. He had long suffered from gout and naturally predicted his own end, although sources say he was off by a year. Many translations of his Centuries and treatises on their significance appeared in the generations following his death, and remain popular to the present day. Interpreters claim Nostradamus predicted Adolf Hitler's rise to power as well as the explosion of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger in 1986. Biographies of the seer have also appeared periodically. For two centuries the Vatican issued the Index, or a list of forbidden books, and Centuries was always on it.”
“So that was the end of Nostradamus?”
She nodded. “In the centuries since his death, people have credited him with accurately predicting other pivotal events in history, from the French Revolution to the rise of Adolf Hitler to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to Nostradamus, the world is slated to end in the year 3797. The question is, will the human race still be part of it?”
“And there’s been nothing more since Nostradamus died?”
Zara smiled. “Until now. When nearly four hundred years later, I dug up his book, and was told I alone can prevent the extinction of the human race.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Sam waited in silence. Smiled and said, “All right.”
Zara asked, “All right, what?”
“How do you think he worked it out?”
“Worked what out?”
“Everything he got right so far,” Sam said. “Originally I assumed he made predictions up, kept them vague, then manipulate the result later, so that it would be reported that he’d predicted the event. Like a psychic, fortune teller, or a spiritual healer.”
“But then?”
“Some of his quatrains were too close to the truth. Even to be manipulated by retrospective analysis. I’ve started to wonder if some of his most useful predictions, as far as career advancements, were too coincidental to occur naturally. So what happened? Did he plan and execute some of the events he described in his quatrains? Was he like a modern day magician using clever tricks, such as sleight of hand, distraction, and setting up fake scenarios to improve the veracity of his storytelling?”
“You think he faked killing King Henry II?”
Sam shook his head. “Maybe he was having an affair with his wife?”
“You’re disturbed. He would have been the one to end up dead if he engaged in some sort of royal affair.”
“Maybe he got under Henry’s skin?” Sam looked at her and smiled. “You know. Planted the seed of doubt. Told him that he would die from a jousting accident. Encouraged him to change his helmets until they became cumbersome, and eventually, provided him with his own seed of self-fulfilling doubt that inevitably got him killed?”
Zara laughed. “I doubt it.”
“So what do you think it really was?”
“He was a true Seer.”
“Really? As a scientist you can’t possibly expect me to believe this.”
She ignored his complaint. “The way he did it wasn’t magical. It was pure science. You see he could follow the outcome of each significant incident, which would lead to another and another, until the final outcome for an event would occur. Meaning at the end of several hundred years, he could predict the outcome of a certain event today.”
“The butterfly effect?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Compared to our ability to think in advance, Nostradamus was a chess master. He was incredibly intelligent in that way, or he simply had a natural gift for extrapolation. He could see out each line of events, all the way to the end. And each one led to the same disastrous event on earth.”
“The extinction of the human race?”
She nodded, but remained silent.
Sam asked, “How?”
Zara shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
“Okay, so why didn’t he just change things in his time to create the difference needed. Why go walking through the desert, seeking an elaborate plan that spanned centuries and utilized a complex prophecy?”
She took in a breath and sighed, like she knew what she was going to say was crazy. “Because the future’s already preordained. Destined by some higher divinity. It wasn’t that Nostradamus didn’t believe in the butterfly effect, he knew it didn’t work – he’d tried it multiple times without success. He could change small things, but the things which really mattered, simply fought back until the destiny of man returned to its original path. He looked, trust me he looked. But all the alternative lines led to the same catastrophic event which in turn led to the demise of humanity.
”
He said, “Fuck with the future and it fucks with you?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, nothing quite so vulgar or sinister. Simply that new events will occur and those will eventually lead to triggers that cause same outcome to be achieved.”
“Well that’s just great. So, now we know that the future’s been ordained, and there’s nothing we can do to affect it – what’s the point of living?”
“Exactly.”
“When is this catastrophe supposed to occur?”
“Now.”
“Now when?”
“This year, to be exact.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “So, if he knew we were all going to simply vanish… why go to the trouble of burying his stupid book?”
“Because out of the billions of lines of futures that he investigated, just one provided him with an unclear future.”
“He can’t see everything?”
“Everything except the outcome of one event. All he knew was that if that one event occurred, everything afterwards became foggy.”
“As in, the world ended?”
“No, as though a new line had been created with no known future. The only line in which the world didn't end!”
“It was a long shot, but he took it.”
Sam asked, “What was the image of the event that changed everything?”
Zara said, “Me.”
“You?”
“I found his book.”
Sam looked her in the eye, trying to gauge some sort of understanding. “And what does he expect you to do with this book?”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t know.”
“Because of the cinema fragments thing?”
“Probably. He didn’t say. As I explained before, Nostradamus doesn’t see all of the future. Only tiny scenes. Somehow he knows the scene in which I find the book changes the future. We’re at a turning point. A watershed moment, where life can go either way.”
“What’s inside the book?”
“The fifty-eight quatrains that are missing for Century VII.”
“Could you work out anything with those?”
“Not much. I’ll need a lot more time to work it out. At a glance, I doubt there will be much there that I can do to change the future.”
“Let me guess, it’s all a bunch of riddles and poorly written gibberish?”
She cringed. “Sort of.”
“Did he tell you anything useful at all?”
“He said I needed to find an equation he’s never seen, but knows exists.”
“What sort of equation?”
“I’ve nicknamed it the Nostradamus Equation, but he didn’t write it. In fact, he spent a lot of his life trying to find it, and he’s certain I already knew what it was and where to find it, when he wrote to me in his book.”
“But what does it do?”
“Nostradamus only ever saw parts of the future. Like you just said, like tiny scenes from a movie. He documented thousands of these visions over the course of his lifetime, but had no more idea than you or me when these events would occur.”
“And so the equation could be applied to his visions?”
“Yes. The equation could be aligned precisely with his Century predictions.”
Sam asked, “Find the equation and you can see precisely when these events are going to occur?”
She said, “Exactly.”
“But you can’t change them?”
“Nostradamus believes they’re almost impossible to change. But when he follows the strings of time, he sees one continue. And that one is me. After I find the book of Nostradamus and apply the equation to it.”
“Right. But you have no idea where the Nostradamus Equation is?”
“Not a clue,” she confirmed.
“Yet, Nostradamus was certain you had already found it?” Sam said. “Or at least knew where it could be located?”
“Yes. He wrote it as though it were fact.”
“You said before that your father had told you about this prophecy since you were a little girl. Did he tell you anything else? Anything that could be used to find the equation?”
“No.”
Sam asked, “Nothing at all.”
“No.” She then smiled and remained silent for a moment. “I was given this stupid medallion.”
Sam looked at it. His fingers tracing the delicate inscriptions. “Could this be a map?”
“That’s ridiculous. You think Nostradamus left my great, great, I don’t know how many grandfathers a map so that I could one day work out the equation needed to complete his book of the future?”
“No. You're right – it’s ridiculous. Then again, it’s no more ridiculous than the fact that four hundred years ago he wrote you a letter and signed it with the date you found it?”
“My father thought it was a map.”
Sam examined the brass medallion under his blue light. On one side were ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. He turned it over. On the obverse side was the image of an island. It made the shape of a figure eight on its side. In mathematics, the shape meant infinity.
“Have you been to this island?”
“No.”
Sam asked, “Why not?”
Zara breathed in and then sighed. “Because it doesn’t exist. At least not on any map I can get my hands on.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Sam handed the medallion back to Zara after staring at it for a number of minutes. If the island existed, he had people on board the Maria Helena who would find it. At least that was one lead. Not much, but better than nothing. And until recently, they had nothing.
Tom approached. He carried one of the bags made from gazelle hides that contained the rough diamonds used to purchase weapons by the United Sovereign of Kongo. The bag had been opened since Sam had left it with the other two on the island. He smiled. “You’re not going to believe what I just found.”
Sam grinned. “I think the people we’re working for are going to want those diamonds back?”
“Not the diamonds. We both know those are intrinsically worthless. What I have will change something.”
“What did you find?”
Tom removed a small piece of paper. Nothing fancy. Just a piece of scrap paper, with the hastily written scrawl of a person unaccustomed to handwriting. “A note. Addressed to Mikhail.”
At the mention of Mikhail, Zara eyes widened, but she remained silent.
Sam took the piece of paper. “It’s important?”
“Just read it,” Tom said.
Sam nodded and started reading.
*
Dear Mikhail,
It was never about diamonds. General Ngige has discovered the largest lithium stores in the world. It’s being mined by an army of prisoners. Our estimates suggest at least five thousand prisoners are currently being forced to work deep inside. We are happy with the weapons, but won’t fight until our brothers are freed from the lithium mine. They have set it up so they can drown all of them if there’s a rebellion. Instead of acting as an incendiary, it has had the opposite effect. The news has spread amongst our supporters, many of whom have loved ones inside the mine, and now they want to calm the rebellion until the prisoners are freed.
I wish there was another way. Our movement doesn’t have anything more to trade. Even so, we ask for your assistance. The mine is below Lake Tumba. Now that you understand what this is all about, I hope you can see the extreme ramifications. General Ngige is being well funded by someone in Europe. Lithium is about to be the most valuable element on earth – and that means the Democratic Republic of Congo is about to become the most valuable piece of land. If you do nothing, you must understand that the world will be drawn into an everlasting land battle that will make oil appear inconsequential.
We need to find a way to free them before we can rebel.
Do that and the USK will take care of everything. Isolate us now, and the entire world will share our pain.
*
Sa
m stopped reading the note. It was left unsigned.
“That’s where they’re getting their funding from!” Sam said, looking up. “And that’s why General Ngige is winning. He’s being backed financially by someone else. The money is going to weapons and men. The free people of the DRC could never compete.”
Tom said, “The question is who’s funding them?”
Sam shrugged. “Who indeed?”
Zara said, “It could be the Saudis. You can’t build an electric car without lithium batteries. They would certainly have the motive and the means to fund the rebellion.”
“Alternatively, it could be any number of countries currently looking at building their own electric cars,” Sam said. “While we’re looking that way, there’s no reason you shouldn’t discuss the possibility companies already building electric cars are involved,” Tom said.
Zara asked, “Such as?”
“Tesla’s the first to come to mind. But Mercedes, BMW, Lexus all have their own electric and hybrid versions. They all have investments into the billions of dollars in electric cars.”
“And all of those investments are worthless if they can’t find enough lithium to power them.”
“Did you know there’s only one lithium mine in North America?
“That’s a hell of a motive to sponsor a warlord.”
“Someone needs to know. This changes everything. If the intelligence analysts back at home were able to process this information, I think the U.S. Department of Defense would be interested in doing a lot more than selling the USK ten million dollars worth of military hardware.”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2 Page 73