This Is the Way the World Ends

ENTR’ACTE Salon-de-Provence, France, 1554

‘…cautiously picking his way through the invalidated past.’

Nostradamus’s gloved fingers removed the hot glass painting of Olaf Sverre crossing the swamp. The projected flame bounced off the wall and washed the study in white-gold light.

Jacob Mirabeau’s face was indecipherable, a stone etched with hieroglyphics. But then a yawn of astonishing dimensions appeared.

‘You are bored,’ groaned the prophet. Nocturnal winds troubled the curtains.

‘No, Monsieur – tired,’ said the boy. ‘I would be asleep by now were this show of yours not so terrifying. I fear to dream. Nightmares would stalk me, worse than when the plague came.’

‘Terrifying, did you say?’ Nostradamus clapped his hands. ‘Nightmares? Splendid!’ The night air swelled with flower scent and cricket music. ‘Everybody loves a good fright.’

‘Will George get his sterility back?’

‘His fertility. When the medical officer checked him out, his seminiferous tubules had definitely begun spermatid production.’

‘I remember – spermatids are baby sperm. That’s what the Hatter said.’

‘Very good, Master Jacob.’

‘What are sperm?’

‘People won’t know about them until Leeuwenhoek’s microscope studies in 1677. If you’ve been following the plot, you understand that George needs to steer his spermatids into his epididymis, so that they can achieve motility and enter his vas deferens.’

‘I liked the battle.’

‘I assumed you would.’

‘Captain Sverre reminds me a bit of you.’

‘Yes. I can see that. He’s rather noble, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Cries came, jagged shapes of pain cutting through the floor from below. The boy shuddered, hugged himself, began breathing in frog gulps.

Nostradamus stretched out his hand, and Jacob’s shoulder rose to meet it. The boy grew calm under the prophet’s gnarled touch.

‘Why does God make it so painful?’ Jacob asked. ‘Why does He punish all women for the sin of Eve?’

‘God is not the problem. The babies are the problem – their big heads. Ah, but they must be that big to hold our brains. Look here – the next painting. It will take your mind off your mother.’

The wall exploded in silver glaciers advancing between snow-cloaked mountains.

‘To appreciate the rest of the tale, Jacob, you must know something of its setting. Antarctica comprises—’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you – what is this Antarctica everybody keeps talking about?’

‘A continent. The English explorer James Cook will discover the first evidence of it in 1772. Might I assume you’ve run out of interruptions?’

‘Sorry, Monsieur.’

‘The continent of Antarctica comprises…’