The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection

by Eva García Sáenz

  "Don't try and console me as if I was a child. This land is rocky and frozen, it will be difficult to get any crops out of it," she said, wincing.

  "The Indians did it. The land is plowed and the corn grows without a problem."

  "Not until Spring. Where will we find food until then?"

  "And don't the English know how to hunt deer, geese and rabbits?" I shouted, losing my patience.

  "So you're not English then?"

  I clenched my teeth. I'd never slipped up like that before, but that woman, that woman... What did it matter?

  "The passengers are weak," Manon continued, changing the subject. "The Puritans only know city trades. You're leaving us in a damn cemetery."

  "No, Manon. You're strong, you'll help the colony in the way you know best, you're a practical woman and they need you here."

  "I'm not talking about me, God damn it! I'm not afraid of my death, I know my strengths. I'm saying that you're one of the only useful men in the colony and you're going to abandon us."

  "I'm not going to abandon you, I'm doing this for the colony. If I was doing it for myself, I would go with the natives and forget about everyone else."

  "Everyone? You ungrateful bastard."

  She was right, that's what I was. An ungrateful bastard. I changed tactics and spoke with a softer tone.

  "I'm going with the natives, this colony needs to return the debt it has taken on, and growing corn won't be enough. The London Traders want to see shipments of beaver skins, and to do that I have to gain the trust of the natives. They won't trade with us if we're hostile towards them. You wanted me to keep busy, well, I've found my occupation and I haven't even thought about the bottles which, by the way, you threw into the sea without my permission."

  Manon kept gazing at the frozen coast. Everything was foggy and white around us. It started to snow again and fell on her everlasting black, woolen Puritan cape.

  "Go then."

  Hang in there, Manon, I thought, jumping into the boat and rowing away. Stay alive this winter and I'll come back for you.

  21

  Beware of the fury

  IAGO

  We boarded our flight early in the morning, whilst a sleeping and calm Paris bid us farewell.

  "Do you still write five hundred words a day?" I asked her, seeing that she was taking a small notebook and a gold Parker pen from her purse.

  "You know my routines," she commented, without looking at me, scribbling on the white paper as a smile crossed her face.

  Yes, I knew them and remembered them. Manon used to write every night, after we'd put Peregrine to bed. We cleared the bowls from the table we had eaten on and she wrote by the flickering light of a candle, whose wax dripped down to form a new candle that would light another hundred nights of writing.

  "This is nothing like the first storm after we left the port of Southampton, is it?" murmured Marion, once it was over, leaning against the window of the plane that was taking me back to Cantabria. "Now everything's much more aseptic."

  "Don't you believe it, the weather in Santander has been rather bipolar over the last few days. The sky's become schizophrenic," I commented, worried, looking at some dark clouds that changed every few seconds.

  It was one of those mornings when umbrellas and raincoats did nothing, because an aggressive wind drove the rain at will, soaking everything and everyone with its fury.

  "There's no need to excuse yourself, unless you're one of those weather gods and you sent this gale for some specific reason," replied Marion, smiling, walking down the aisle of the plane that had recently landed at Santander airport and strolling out, as if that hellish water didn't bother her in the least.

  A few minutes later, I took of advantage of the fact that Marion was waiting for her luggage at the baggage collection, to make a quick call to my father.

  "Hector, prepare yourself," I said. "I'm going to introduce you to someone, but follow my lead. I want to see her reaction."

  My father agreed and I went back to where a very resolved Marion was grabbing her Loewe luggage, with the ease of someone who has spent several millennia carrying their belongings around with them.

  Half an hour later I parked the Jeep a few blocks away from the Paseo Pereda and we headed to my office, number 33. The trees that lined the paseo lashed at each other with their branches. The rain had cleaned the streets like a sprinkler and there were few people brave enough to go outside on that devilish day. But Marion and I barely flinched. As we calmly walked past the nineteenth century doorways, I was thinking about the next steps to take and she, I imagine, was lost in her own thoughts. I invited her up as I turned the key in the door.

  "Marion, we're going to my laboratory, on the fourth floor. That's where we're going to do the research, but there's someone I want you to meet."

  "Someone? There's someone else involved in this research?" she asked, stopping a few stairs further up, frowning. "You didn't tell me anything about that, and nobody else should know that I'm here. I don't know if you're aware of what I'm putting on the line here."

  "It's not what you think. You'll understand in just a minute," I answered, nodding for her to go up.

  My father was waiting for us on the fourth floor, with his back to us, looking out the window, wearing a fitted, stylish alpaca suit that took a few years off him. He'd grown one of those beards that was so fashionable lately. He looked like a hipster, and also slightly younger. Women had started giving him looks again when we were having coffee on the terraces of the Puertochico.

  He turned around as we entered and was silhouetted against the light from the window.

  "This is my father, Lür" I told Marion, not failing to notice the look on her face as I said it. "He's obviously a longevo, like us."

  "Lür..." she repeated, almost reverently.

  I heard her swallow and she slowly walked over to him, moving between the benches of my laboratory.

  "Father, this is Marion Adamson. Although in 1620 she was known as Manon Adams. She was my wife in New England. I know that I never told you about the personal details of my life in the New World. I know you think that I dedicated all my time to the company, and I did, but there was more. Marion and I shared a decade together in the Plymouth colony. We had a son who we named Peregrine, who died during one of the many epidemics that we had to endure during those first winters. I thought that she had died as well, and she thought that I had died, without ever suspecting what either of us really were."

  My father's eyes grew large and he looked at me without saying a word. I stared at him, begged him to stay calm, and he didn't ask any questions.

  "Marion now works for the Kronon Corporation. Like us, she likes to stay up to date with the progress made in the field of anti-aging. A year ago, when I got in touch with her staff, she recognized me and we have just met up again. I've told her about the situation surrounding Adrian's kidnapping and she's going to help me find a way to revert the telomerase inhibitor."

  My father waited for me to finish my impromptu speech, and then held his hand out.

  "I must say that I wasn't expecting to meet someone like you today, Marion," my father simply said, with an air of indifference.

  I shot him a glance, not understanding.

  "May I ask how old you are?" Marion whispered, not noticing his cold reaction.

  "Twenty-eight thousand years old," he replied.

  To my bewilderment, Marion gave a small bow.

  "You are very ancient, Lür. I feel rather overwhelmed in the presence of someone of your age."

  "You're making me feel like a mommy," said my father, rather uncomfortably.

  "I apologize. I imagine that you have many questions to ask me."

  "That's right. You said Adamson, right? What other names have you had?"

  "Maia was my first name, and then Maire, Mairead, May, Mae, Mirit, Miren, Muireann, Maeve, Mara, Maebh…"

  Maebh? You were the warrior queen of Connacht? I wanted to ask her, although I knew it
wasn't the right time.

  "The fortuneteller, the prophet, the chosen one, the madam..." my father recited. "It's a good name for a longeva, but I was asking about the surnames you've used.

  "McAdams, Adansen, Adansohn, Adanova, Benadam, Adanez, Adanes…"

  "Right," was all my father said.

  I really didn't understand the interrogation he was putting her through. That wasn't my father's way of doing things.

  "Father, Marion has other hobbies, other than spying on me and spying on biotechnology companies," I stepped in, winking at Marion. "She's been a travel writer for centuries. In fact, during our meeting in Paris, she told me that she wrote 'The Grand Tour' under the pseudonym of Thomas Nugent in 1770. I'm sure you remember it, father. The chapter 'Ruins of Pompeii' made it a fashionable site for thousands of English students to visi. I think it was the first time I heard the word 'tourist'. So I imagine that we owe that to you."

  Contrary to what I was expecting, my father tensed up even more upon hearing the word Pompeii.

  "Lür has been obsessed with that city for a couple of thousand years," I explained to Marion. "Always returning back to the excavation sites of the ruins, time and time again ever since they uncovered it in the 18th century."

  "Pompeii, what happened there was a real shame, don't you think, Lür?" said Marion, walking to the window and looking out over the bay of Santander, as if she was expecting to see smoke billowing from our coast.

  "Nature's worst, and maybe the worst of the human soul. Yes, it must have been apocalyptic," my father replied, holding her gaze as she turned around.

  Marion raised the collar of her impeccable Burberry raincoat and walked toward the door.

  "I hope you don't mind, but I need to eat something and I'm a person who really enjoys her solitude. Iago, I'll call you in a couple of hours and we'll get to work, if you want," her voice was sweet again and her face warm, but behind that façade was a woman who had already made up her mind.

  "It's raining too hard, Marion. At least wait until it's calmed down a bit."

  "The rain doesn't bother me, on the contrary, I find it very relaxing and the rain in Santander is a delicious sensation for the senses. Gentlemen," she nodded her head, "I'll let you get on with it."

  We watched Marion walk out of the laboratory.

  As soon as Marion and her timeless elegance had left, and walked down the stairs, to be swallowed up by the orgy of rain and wind that was waiting for her in the street, I turned to face my father.

  "What the hell was that?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What do I mean? What just happened here, because I still don't understand your reaction? Haven't we been looking for people like us for thousands of years? Haven't we been the ones behind every search for immortals, elixirs, fountains of eternal youth...? And now I introduce you to someone who, without a shadow of a doubt, is older than four hundred years old, and you're suspicious?"

  My father stood in front of me, looking into my eyes, and held onto my arms, like when I was a boy and he wanted to make sure that I would listen to what he was telling me.

  "Urko, I'm just going to ask you this once. Can you swear, without a shadow of a doubt, that that woman is the same woman you knew in 1620, the same one? Isn't there the slightest possibility that she's an impostor, a fake?"

  I weighed up the question, I'd been asking myself the same thing since I had sat on the soft chaise longe at the Procope.

  "How, father? How could anyone know what I went through in the Plymouth colony? How could I find a double that knew all of our intimate details, the name of our son which I couldn't even remember, what we went through together on that isolated farm? We barely left a trace, we barely knew the hundred Pilgrim fathers we traveled with on the Mayflower, I didn't even tell you about her. How could someone learn the ancient dialects, the details that the history books always leave out?" I asked myself, running my hand through my hair.

  "How the hell could someone have a melody on their phone that I haven't heard for the last thousand years?" I shouted. "How!?"

  Lür didn't lose his cool, he shoved his hands into his pockets and studied my face.

  "Did you tell Lyra, did you ever mention her to Nagorno?"

  "No, not that I remember. I don't know, they're minute details, maybe when I was drunk... I don't know, I can't be a hundred percent sure, but I'm ninety-eight percent sure that I didn't. I don't think that I ever shared that identity with any of you."

  "Well I don't know either, son. There's always a way, someone who has been following our tracks for a long time, a professional trickster. Someone who hired her to make you fall into some kind of trap."

  "But are you listening to yourself? You sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist. Father, you've always been the most sensible out of the two of us."

  "Think, son. You're being blinded by the events. I know that you have the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, but there's nothing normal about what's happening here. In just a few days, two longevos have come back into your life, two people we thought were dead. What if there's a link here? What if Marion isn't a longeva, and she's just bait to get hold of information about the research into the longevo gene?"

  "I brought her here to see her reaction, although I wasn't expecting it to be your reaction that threw me off. I thought that you'd be excited, father. We're not alone, there are more longevos in the world."

  "Or, as I've already said, she's a fraud."

  "She's not! I've not been speaking to an actress. Read my lips: I've been speaking to my wife."

  "Your wife? Your wife is Adriana Alameda. Have you forgotten about her already? Or are you assuming that she's already dead?"

  I grabbed the lapels of his alpaca jacket. I was more angry than I realized.

  "How dare you, father? How dare you doubt me?"

  He held my gaze, but there was something dark in his eyes that bothered me.

  "We're not talking about Dana, we're not talking about Marion, we're talking about something else."

  I let go of him, frustrated, and turned my back on him. I leaned my forehead against the cool window. I could feel the raindrops bouncing off the glass on the other side.

  On the other side.

  My father and I were not in the same room, something very dark and very ancient was separating us.

  "What the hell is it that you're not telling me, father?" I whispered, with my head still stuck to the window. "Have you found something out over the last year? Did you lie to me, did you really go in search of Nagorno? Is there some kind of conspiracy, something bigger that I still don't know about, something that I have only seen a small part of?"

  "Who's the conspiracy theorist now?" he repeated, turning up the corner of his mouth. "No son, nothing like that has happened, not that I know of, anyway. But this re-encounter with your former wife is anything but casual and calming, so keep your eyes open and don't get carried away with nostalgia. Watch your back. And I know that you haven't asked me for any advice, but I'm going to give you some anyway, even though you may think that I'm being out of order: beware of the fury of a woman scorned. It can be the most destructive of all weapons."

  You don't know what we went through, what Marion did for me.

  "You're not telling me the whole truth, I know you're not, and it's got something to do with Marion," I insisted.

  "Do you trust her? Don't you find it rather suspicious that she's turned up right now? Doesn't it bother you that she's been spying on you for the last year? Do you really think that she's trustworthy?"

  "She has a noble soul, I can assure you of that. I know her well."

  "People change, circumstances change, you know that all too well."

  "She's noble," I repeated stubbornly, grinding my teeth.

  "Don't be so näive, nobody is good or bad. People have goals, everyone does, and based on whether or not they want to be our allies, they are either friends or enemies, that's it."

  "No... Lür. T
hat's not it, there's something else. And seeing as that something else could put Adriana in danger, if I find out that you're hiding information that puts her life or safety at risk..."

  "Maybe you should be the one putting a bit more thought into Adriana's safety."

  "Don't for a minute think that I'm not considering each and every one of the billion possibilities that could explain this," I exploded. "Don't doubt that for one minute."

  "Well, let me know when you've finished your analysis and you can share your conclusions with me. And... Iago. Don't forget the most important thing here. I don't want ever want you to think that I'm not trying to help Adriana and you. If this was a war and I had to take sides, you and me would be on the same one, ok?"

  "No, father. I'll never forget what's important."

  "Good. Well, I'm going to leave you now and keep looking for islands, and then I have a meeting with the staff to explain my return, Adriana's sudden absence and your future resignation as director of the museum.

  22

  Mother

  LÜR

  Sungir, current Russia 23,000 B.C.

  What kind of strange creature are you? Lür thought when he set yes on her.

  Mother had very unique features. She was tall, there was no doubt about it, but at the same time she was almost delicate. Her face was long, almost too long. Copper skin, a flat nose, somewhat slanted, dark eyes, which vaguely resembled some far-eastern clans that Lür had come across and had not seen again since the cataclysm. Thick, dark hair, braided on either side of her head and ending below her waist. Mother wore a tunic stitched with bright white cowrie shells; he had never seen so many in one place. How many years must it have taken to gather so many of those precious shells?

  Lür stopped, giving a slight bow at the entrance to the long hut. He had to agree with his friend: Mother had an almost divine aura. Maybe it was because she seemed somewhat removed from everything that was happening around her, as if she wasn't fully there, but rather in the presence of the Old Fathers.