16

IAGO

Saturn Day, the first day of the month of Nion

Saturday, February 18, 2012

T he morning unfolded calmly in front of the Cantabrian Sea, free of the revelry of the previous evening. My father and I idled pleasantly seated in the ostentatious armchairs on the porch of Jairo’s villa, listening sleepily to the sound of the waves dying in the small cove. Eventually, I heard the sound of Little Bastard’s engine and the voices of Kyra and my brother. I don’t know what language they were speaking; I couldn’t be bothered translating it.

Kyra gave a small smile when she saw me and Héctor still dressed in our period costumes. “The eighteenth century—what memories it brings back . . . I shouldn’t have missed the carnival.”

“Take it as a sign that you work too hard,” I said pointedly. She ignored my response.

My father got up to greet her. “How was England, Daughter?” he asked as he walked toward her, although there was no need for the question. Nothing she might have discovered in Manchester had added any warmth to her eyes.

“I don’t know if I’ve found what we were looking for yet. I still have to go over my notes and clarify a few things in my mind,” she replied, accepting my nonverbal invitation to sit down with us.

Meanwhile, Jairo had asked Patricio to serve us some light refreshments, so we all waited for him to go back inside before we returned to our conversation, and Kyra continued.

“As I told you a few weeks ago, we’re beginning to consider some new lines of investigation. The whole time we’ve been in Santander, we’ve focused solely on the antioxidants hypothesis. Given that we’re going to finish with that one soon, it’s time we thought about other theories. Iago has made a few trips, but so far he has nothing to show for them, so I thought it was time I lent him a hand and helped him in his search.”

“But I don’t understand why you feel the urgency to begin traveling as well,” I interjected.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Kyra’s response sliced into me like a dagger. Jairo muttered something unintelligible in turn as he leaned against one of the columns, staring out to sea and finishing his drink. Even so, I didn’t feel offended.

“I say this,” I continued, “because we still don’t have any conclusive results as far as the antioxidants are concerned. It would be better if you continued to focus your attention on the lab and left the traveling to me. I still think we’re on the right track.”

That wasn’t true, of course, but one way or another I had to keep my cool.

“Tell me, Brother, might there be some convincing reason for you not wanting to pursue the longevo gene?” asked Jairo without looking at me.

“Save your paranoia for more turbulent times, Jairo. I’m doing what I can. Do you, by any chance, see me taking a break? It’s just that I think we should wait until we have results on the antioxidants, just as we had planned. It’ll take a few more months, but those are the expected timelines with this sort of research. Why waste four years of work by leaving it half-done? We can’t keep muddling along. I’m just trying to be methodical.”

“And I’m waiting for you to apply all your neurons to it. You’re the brains in the family. If anyone can solve this puzzle in record time, it’s you,” Jairo retorted.

“You’re placing too much trust in my brain.”

“Oh, come on. You don’t have to be modest with us. If you were one hundred percent committed to the family, we’d be seeing more progress. I’m frustrated by the lack of results. I get up every day wanting my brother to give me some good news. I need you to dazzle us with one of your strokes of genius.”

“You have no idea of the enormous task we’re dealing with. I’d like you to understand that, I really would. It’s your crass ignorance that makes you talk like this. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow; it’s not simple. Come to terms with it.”

I turned to include Kyra as well. “You two have to stop behaving like impatient children. The first rule of a longevo is to learn to be accommodating. Everything has its moment—never sooner, never later. You should make the most of the time you’ve been given. I have no intention of allowing you two to ruin everything just because you’re in a hurry to change some diapers.”

My brother muttered something, not very convinced, and came over to the table to pour himself another whiskey. Then he returned to his column and stared fixedly at the morning mist.

“You’ve called the family together to bring us up-to-date on your trip. Go ahead, Daughter. We’re listening,” said Héctor, encouraging her.

“A month ago I contacted a researcher at the University of Manchester, a Dr. Sinclair. I pretended to be a journalist for a new genetics journal, so it was logical that she wouldn’t commit herself too far. In any event, I think I got enough to rule out her working hypothesis, which is as follows: her team, like so many others around the world, is undertaking studies of a substance called resveratrol. It may sound vaguely familiar to you. Resveratrol is found in some edible plants, such as peanut, blackberry, blueberry . . . and it’s particularly plentiful in red wine. In Manchester they’ve managed to use it to prolong the life of yeasts, worms, and even mice. They have yet to test its effect on humans, but right now it’s like the holy grail of research into anti-aging. There’s a mad race to commercialize it in capsule form and convert it into the new elixir of eternal youth.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Héctor muttered to me under his breath, and we glanced at each other, unable to hide our smiles.

“Should I be investing in vineyards?” Jairo asked.

“Well, maybe,” said Kyra. “Dr. Sinclair is working with the grenache and monastrell grapes. But to come back to what we were talking about, I don’t see any way that our bodies would have had access to that substance.”

Jairo swiveled round toward me and raised his glass of whiskey. “Except in Iago’s case, of course. He’s imbibed enough for the four of us. Does that mean that he’ll live millennia longer than the rest of us?”

“It means you’ll live less time if you keep going down that path, Scythian,” I said and turned toward Kyra. “Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?”

“Yes, there is another line I want to investigate: telomeres. But at this stage I don’t know how to acquire more information about them.”

“Go on. We’re all ears,” said Jairo encouragingly.

“We’re talking about the Kronon Corporation, a biotechnology company in San Francisco. They’re very cryptic when it comes to the nature of their research, and at this stage I’m only aware of what’s on the company website and in a couple of corroborative studies. But there’s no question the media is making a big fuss about it, with headlines like ‘Immortality Enzyme Discovered.’&#8202”

“Too clever,” said Héctor. “Whatever it is that makes us into Ancients won’t be splashed across the front pages of the newspapers.”

“I think they’re looking for publicity, too, and they’re certainly getting it in the US, because they’ve patented their discoveries and they’ve listed themselves on the stock exchange. It looks like a publicity stunt, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check it out further.”

Jairo sat down in an armchair facing us. “Okay, will someone explain this telomere business to me?”

What’s happened to the Greek your mother taught you? I wondered. Telos , end. Meros , part or fraction. But I didn’t say anything. Jairo didn’t allow anyone to mention his mother. It would have been suicidal to do so.

“Well,” said Kyra, “the extremities of every chromosome have a region known as the telomere that—”

“Are you capable of speaking in some language I know?” Jairo interrupted her impatiently.

“You really are dumb when it comes to the sciences,” said Kyra, ignoring the rude gesture Jairo was making at her.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear the word ‘dumb,’ pilgrim.”

Kyra tensed like a coiled spring. The way Jairo had pronounced “pilgrim” turned it into an insult. Kyra, as Lyra, had wandered all the roads of Europe during the Middle Ages. She alone knew what she and her diminutive female body had had to go through. “She left a pilgrim and came back a whore,” went a German saying of the period, as Nagorno had made a point of reminding her over the centuries every time they had an argument.

Héctor intervened to calm them down, and after an eternally long moment of tension, Kyra refocused.

“Let’s say it’s similar to the plastic tube they put around the ends of your shoelaces,” I said, giving her a hand. “Each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter, until they reach a critical length and the process can go no further. That’s what’s known as the Hayflick limit: it takes fifty cellular divisions. Then the cell can divide no more—it begins to age because the chromosome is vulnerable without the protection of the telomere.”

“But Kyra,” said Jairo, “that was examined in the sixties. It was one of the first theories we rejected. Why are you going back to it now?”

“We ought to check it out again, if only because of all the fuss they’re making,” she replied, with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Fine, then keep investigating,” urged Jairo, settling himself down on the sofa.

“That’s precisely what we’re doing during this leisure time that you are most definitely enjoying,” I pointed out.

“Even so, I think you’re concentrating too much on our exhibitions,” my brother snapped back. “You can play at museums, if that’s what turns you on, but don’t forget the motives behind our little piece of theatre. I have the feeling you too easily forget what our priority is.”

“If you controlled your genital frenzies better and had shown some respect for our previous prehistory curator, I wouldn’t have had the extra workload I had last year, so don’t pressure me now. If what you’re after is to have little Nagornos running around your feet by yesterday, I suggest you do the following: enroll in biology in any private university that will put up with your eccentricities, specialize in genetics, and attend all the conferences in regenerative medicine offered throughout the world.”

Jairo leapt up, clenching his fists until the knuckles were white.

“Too much effort, Nagorno; too much discipline for you?” I persisted. “Will you deign to live with the efímeros , the ‘short-lived,’ you despise so much for however many years your studies take?”

I got up too and stood in front of him, stretching myself to my full height to emphasize the difference between us. That gesture had always irritated him; he’d never grown taller than five foot seven. He held my gaze for a moment and then turned toward the beach. He didn’t reply.

“That’s what I thought,” I said to his back. “I think it’s better if you leave us plebs to do the hard work and you limit yourself to providing the money necessary to keep everything on track.”

“Okay, you lovebirds,” Kyra interjected. “Give your testosterone a break for a while and let’s concentrate on our investigations.”

“What I’m worried about,” said Jairo finally, sitting down again but without taking his eyes off me, “is that you’ll spend years groping around in the dark, and the moment will come when we have to change our location and identities. Then we’ll have to find another cover for our laboratory somewhere else. On top of that the contacts you’ve made in the scientific community will become useless. Worse, they’ll be counterproductive. You’ll have to avoid them and hope they don’t come across you in your next incarnation. So you have to get a move on. We’ve already been four years in Santander. How much time do we have left before people start to mutter about the fact that none of us is getting any older? Six more years? Okay, I’ve said my piece. Get cracking and work those brains overtime.”

Then he got up and buttoned his jacket.

“Father, we’ve got a tee time at Pedreña for eleven o’clock. Shall we go?”

“I’d forgotten, Son,” said Héctor guiltily. “Iago and I were going hunting this morning, because several wild boars have been sighted in the Saja region, and the hunting season is almost over.”

“Forget it, then,” he replied as he headed for his convertible. “Kyra, get in. I’ll leave you at your place before I go on to the golf course.”

“Jairo, Son, wait,” Héctor pleaded to no avail.

Jairo didn’t even bother to say good-bye, and Kyra followed him, with a weary expression on her face.

“I should have gone,” moaned my father.

“Yes, you should, no question. Now is not the time to incite conflicts among the four of us that might encourage Kyra and Jairo to start checking behind our backs.”

He sighed. “So I suppose I have to go and play that damned round of golf with Jairo. I’ll go get changed and pick up my golf bag.”

I smiled at the thought of how boring he found the prospect. My father hated golf more than just about anything else in this life. He found it too slow and couldn’t abide the time wasted standing around doing nothing. Rather odd for a man who had had more time at his disposal than any other Homo sapiens .

He departed with a whispered good-bye, and I was left on my own to stroll along the cove with my memories in a two-hundred-year-old suit whose stiff seams were beginning to oppress me. I squatted and scraped up a fistful of sand from the beach.

The wind was blowing annoyingly into my face. Nagorno always chose to live in windy locations, no doubt because they reminded him of the steppes where he’d been born and raised. I was the only one bothered by eternally windy places. I had spent decades with that irritating sound punishing my ears day and night without being able to escape from it. I noticed that once again, my bad mood was deepening, and I did nothing to avoid it.

I closed my eyes and listened to what the breeze had to bring me.