What on earth are you doing, Urko? I castigated myself. This isn’t a game you want to be playing. No, it wasn’t, at least not consciously. Because what were the possible outcomes? Rejection was the most humiliating and the most likely, although the most manageable one, too, given centuries of practice.
On the other hand, converting that emerging chemistry between us into a mere affair, a fling, apart from damaging our standing at the museum, would likely end in disaster. It could make our recently established work routine awkward—a routine that was fast becoming the best aspect of my days. My time with Adriana was something to look forward to, even to the point of yearning for the workweek to begin again so I could be with her.
Are you listening to yourself?
It was undoubtedly the fault of the cave and the primal feelings it was arousing in me. And the premonition that Adriana just might come closer to understanding what I had experienced in the cave. I turned toward her and would have clasped her to me and traced the scar on her forehead with my tongue if I’d been certain she wouldn’t reject me. My pulse raced.
Give me one reason, a single argument, for my not making love to you right here, on this rock-bed.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
Adriana set off again in silence, and I allowed myself to be guided by her until she stopped a few yards farther on.
“There it is: my personal headache,” she said, pointing to the drawings of rectangles.
“The tectiforms. What’s your issue with them?”
In front of us were drawn ten red rectangles, internally divided and with crossed diagonal lines filling each compartment. Next to them, four meandering rows of dots rose up to the ceiling, too abstract for a modern mind.
“I’ve been speculating about this since I was a little girl. I’ve evaluated all the theories, from those that affirm they’re flags or maintain they are the beginnings of mathematics, to those that suggest they represent the images the shamans saw when they took hallucinogens. None of them stands up. I even considered writing my doctoral thesis on this panel.”
“And why didn’t you?”
It would be so simple to reveal it to you, Adriana. You would find it so logical . . .
“Because I knew that even if I spent four years of my life elaborating a theory, I could never be certain that it was correct.”
Guilt weighed down my shoulders, but common sense took over and I said nothing. This time, almost without realizing it, I was the one who set off again, crossing the gallery toward the end of the cave. There, almost lost, almost hidden, still struggling not to be erased from the porous surface of the cave, was the yellow figure of a mammoth.
One night Lür began another of his stories, with the usual words: “Listen carefully, because what I’m going to tell you is true . . . They say there was a cold period in this land when huge beasts grazed in large numbers without being troubled by the presence of hunters. Imagine a boar the size of a large boulder. Imagine that its tusks have thickened like the trunk of an old chestnut tree. One day those beasts fled toward the Great Crest, because they needed snow and ice just as we need fire and meat. Few remained, and those few were hunted until they were no longer to be seen, and they ceased to haunt the nightmares of our First Fathers. And they would have been forgotten but for the fact that one of them remained here, forever, to remind us that they existed once and that they may return.”
“Why have we come here?” Adriana wanted to know.
“I don’t know. I like to look at it.”
She looked at me searchingly, then back at the painting.
And it’s with a bitter aftertaste, believe me. If you only knew how this simple drawing marked my destiny, and my father’s . . . If you only knew the consequences I still have to put up with for having spent my childhood listening to legends about this beast . . .
And yet despite this, the image was hypnotic. I always returned to it. Perhaps it was true that in painting it, some magic united my father and his lineage to those strokes. Who knew what would happen if twenty-first-century science cloned those mammoths, as more than one laboratory was threatening to do? Something bad for my family, no doubt.
When I tired of looking at the mammoth, we headed back in silence to the Interpretive Center. It was time to get to work. What would the staff of the museum have thought if they’d seen us that morning? I smiled as I pictured them in BACus speculating about the two of us.
But it wasn’t that simple. I still had much to learn about Adriana. Although, to be honest, despite my lack of interest in the women of the end of the twentieth century, a burning curiosity to know more and more about this young woman was beginning to grow. I wondered if she lived by herself or with someone else in that soulless apartment. I was eager to find out who was the character I’d seen her with that evening, going up to her apartment. An occasional fling, or a steady boyfriend? Someone who loved her, or someone who was giving her a hard time?
And was she the adolescent on horseback in the framed photo on her bedside table?
And did she really not remember that we stumbled up the three flights of stairs to her floor like uninhibited children, laughing for no good reason, covering each other’s mouths so we wouldn’t wake the neighbors until, exhausted, we arrived at her door, breathing heavily, our smiling faces mere inches apart? And that I had to carry her into the apartment because she was too unsteady on her feet? And that I left her on top of her bed, staying until she closed her eyes with that smile which later gatecrashed the torrid dream I had at home that interminable night?
But there was something else that wouldn’t stop buzzing around in my head, and I had no idea why. Adriana had a chessboard in her bedroom with a recently begun game on it. Only a few moves had been played, but the position of the pieces was driving me mad because, no matter how much I experimented with various combinations, there was no way I was able to reproduce what I had seen: the pawns and the black queen threatening the white king. It wasn’t a conventional game; no opening move could lead to that unprecedented position.
Then my stomach turned over.
It was Jairo’s way of playing, and that opened up a disturbing possibility. What level of intimacy did he share with her? How, when, and why had he taught her his Machiavellian way of playing? And was he playing this game with her, or was she merely applying his tactics to a game in which she was moving all the pieces?
20
ADRIANA
Friday, March 2, 2012
It was a Friday when everything changed.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Almost everyone in the MAC had decided that their working week was over and had retreated into their houses like snails into their shells after a day of rain. The pace of the past few days had been brutal. After an average of two meetings a day, I also couldn’t wait to head back to my apartment and forget about exhibitions and plans. We hadn’t managed to make much headway. I was too picky. Iago always seemed to have a definite idea in his head and wouldn’t approve anything until the proposals more or less reflected his original concept. We were both too stubborn.
Nevertheless, I suppressed my urge to return to Santander and instead headed for my car to retrieve various boxes of archaeology reference books. There was no room for them in my apartment, and I thought it would be a good idea to fill the shelves of the massive solid-walnut bookcase that occupied half my office. I carried in one of the boxes and emptied the contents on top of my desk, where they formed an artistic skyscraper taller than me. Then I opened the thick doors to the bookshelf as best I could and unfortunately tripped over the carpet as I was juggling the pile of books that came up to my ears.
The entire load of books landed inside the bookshelf with a loud thud of hard covers and paper, pushing against the inside wall, which opened with a sharp creak. I lost the top book in the pile, Cunl
iffe’s heavyweight The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe, my primary reference book and personal bible. Its front cover, with the bison dominating other, smaller animals on a wall of the Lascaux caves, had been my constant companion since my university days.
The book fell into a dark void that presumably lay on the other side of the gap that had opened up after the creak. I put my ear to the opening but didn’t hear the book landing on the ground. Intrigued, I pushed open the door, which was in fact formed by the back of the bookshelf, and saw that it gave onto a vertical tunnel that started here, behind the bookshelf in my office, and ended who knew where. I’d never before heard of houses belonging to indianos having secret passageways, so this was a real find.
I think if I hadn’t been used to going down the narrow chasms and passages of all the caves in Europe, I wouldn’t have risked descending by myself, but I saw that the circular tunnel had some small metal bars to serve as steps, so down I went.
Yes, I went down. Silly me!
I descended several feet, looking for my book, and then I heard them: several voices, all of them familiar. I shrank instinctively when I realized that I had to be in the basement of the museum, near the Restoration Laboratory.
The first voice I recognized was in fact Kyra’s, followed by the voices of two men.
“You’re not going to believe what I found out this morning,” she exclaimed, her voice full of emotion, which was a rare occurrence.
“Not here, Kyra, not here. Let’s find a more discreet place.”
Iago’s voice reached me clear as a bell, and it was obvious that he wasn’t in a good mood.
“Forget your paranoia,” Kyra replied. “No one can hear us.”
“We shouldn’t relax our ‘paranoid’ habits if we want to go on fooling the MAC staff.”
“Let’s put an end to this once and for all,” Héctor’s voice interjected. “Kyra, explain yourself quickly. Iago, listen, and then let’s go.”
“I hope what you have to tell us is interesting. Héctor and I were already on our way out for a weekend of fishing.”
“It is important, very important. So pay attention, hermanito.”
Hermanito? Little brother? What does she mean? I asked myself, frowning.
“Okay, fire away. We haven’t got all day,” Iago said, fuming.
“You already know that I’ve been trying to gain access to the Kronon Corporation for some weeks. I’ve been in touch with them under various guises, but all the material they’ve sent me is the same as I’d found to date in the scientific journals—nothing I didn’t already know.”
“And?”
“Well, I’ve just discovered a way of accessing them. The researcher who heads up their media department is Francisco Pilkington. I hadn’t made the connection up till now, because he appears on the Kronon website as F. Pilkington, but he used his full name in a media release put out this morning. Héctor, doesn’t that name ring a bell?”
“To be honest, Daughter, no it doesn’t. You’ll have to be more explicit.”
Daughter? How the devil can Kyra be Héctor’s daughter if there’s barely fifteen years difference in age between them? I thought.
“You and I taught that young man at the Complutense in the seventies. He’d be about sixty now. Don’t you remember him? I taught him inorganic chemistry. He was a tall, thin redhead who almost always sat in the front row. He had a Spanish mother and an English father, I think. He was a solid candidate who graduated with high honors.”
“Well, no, I don’t recall,” said the affable voice of my boss. “In any event, how do you plan to approach him? We can’t turn up almost forty years later and not expect him to be flabbergasted when he sees us.”
“Of course we can’t. Instead, Iago will fly to the headquarters of Kronon in San Francisco and pretend to be our son. I’m sure Pilkington remembers you, so we’ll take advantage of your physical similarity again. Once there, Iago will gain his confidence. I’ve found the perfect excuse for him to bring Iago up-to-date on the telomere business. Jairo has already taken care of the plane ticket, courtesy of TAF.”
TAF?
“I hope it’s a good plan, because I don’t fancy making another pointless trip.” Iago’s voice sounded ever more impatient.
“We’ll get together this Sunday evening at my house and finalize all the arrangements,” said Héctor in a conciliatory tone of voice. “I’ll take care of Iago’s documents. We’ll have to retrieve all the information on the identities we had back then. When did you say we taught him?”
“Between 1976 and 1979.”
“Can we go now, Father?” asked Iago.
And what’s with the “Father” bit?
The voices faded away, and I waited for the door of the laboratory to close. One knows instinctively when one shouldn’t be in the wrong place listening to an inappropriate conversation. It was just such an occasion, and time for me to withdraw.
Although I intended to climb back up right away, I had to wait until my hands stopped trembling. Then I remembered the lost book, but the last thing I felt like doing was keeping up my Indiana Jones role to climb down to rescue it. After waiting a good while, I began my ascent, grabbing onto the bars as best I could, conscious of the sandy feel of the rust on my hands. When I finally crossed the threshold of the bookshelf, I stepped back into my office, blinded by the light, and sat down for a few minutes in front of my desk, trying to assimilate everything that had just happened.
There are some words that are like lashes from a whip: they surprise, they punish, and they open up a painful breach. Words that irreversibly alter the present. Impossible words. Words that don’t fit. Words that remain tattooed forever in your memory. These were everyday words but quite unthinkable in that particular context: father, daughter, brother. They clattered around inside my head, preventing me from thinking clearly.
Nothing was ever the same again in my world after those words. They came via the semidarkness of a tunnel and lodged themselves inside me, robbing me of hours of sleep during what remained of that winter.
I realized then that I was totally stunned and forced myself into action. I took out the little notebook I always carried in my bag and quickly jotted down all the facts I didn’t want to forget: Kronon Corporation, telomeres, Francisco Pilkington, the Complutense, 1976–1979, inorganic chemistry, and that mysterious acronym TAF.
I’d have to reorganize all that information. Give it some shape, some sense. Because it was like looking through a mirror to the other side, like taking the little red pill, like having your spinal cord pierced with a metal bar and entering the Matrix, the world of Oz, Pandora, and Middle Earth. It seemed that behind the MAC lay another world of research that had nothing to do with archaeology. Behind the façade of a charismatic triad, Héctor, Iago, and Jairo, and by extension Kyra, changed identities like they changed shirts, including their convoluted family relationships.
As far as Kronon Corporation was concerned, my first impulse was to turn on my computer and start looking for anything the Internet had to offer, but I thought better of it and decided to do the search from my laptop at home. I didn’t trust them anymore. The hypothesis that was gaining most favor in my head was that they were mixed up in some sort of industrial espionage, perhaps for some private company or the mysterious TAF, whatever that might be. Or maybe for Jairo del Castillo? Could it be that he was going after some shady pharmaceutical deal? Coming from him, that seemed plausible.
But what was most worrying was the last bit of the enigma, the bit I’d heard about the Complutense in the seventies. Kyra seemed to be slightly younger than me, under thirty. It was impossible for her to be talking literally when she said she’d taught classes during the decade before she’d been born. And Héctor, in turn, would have been five back then. That didn’t make sense either.
Maybe when all was said and done there was
a logical explanation for everything, but I no longer felt comfortable here. For the first time, the MAC ceased to be the welcoming building that had taken me in that first day, scarcely two months ago. Now it had secrets, like Iago, like Héctor. That business of “fooling all the MAC staff” was hard to swallow.
Things were totally unclear, except that my ideal job might no longer be so ideal if I found out that the museum was a cover for research the rest of us knew nothing about. Understanding the strange matters my bosses were involved in necessitated giving common sense a kick out the window. I locked my office and headed for the parking lot. I started my car with an abrupt flick of my wrist, for once totally ignoring the sea roaring below, oblivious to everything but the anger that was growing inside me like one of those giant, deadly waves that devastate everything and leave only debris in their wake.
I didn’t know it then, but I was beginning to sense that I was walking among giants.
PART 2
21
IAGO
Jupiter Day, the twentieth day of the month of Nion
Thursday, March 8, 2012
It’s four years to the day since we returned,” I wrote. “Four years with this identity, in which I feel so comfortable, in a house I enjoy, with work I adore. Despite the burden that Lyra represents, despite the cyclical conflict that Nagorno represents, I have been content. But I know there will be conflict, which will lead to another Diaspora. My siblings are time bombs, and they’ll both blow sky-high. And I don’t know if the family will endure. That’s not the only aspect of this identity that I hate: I hate undertaking research against my species. I hate lying to Lyra and pretending that we’re progressing. I hate the looks Nagorno gives me, because I know he suspects something. He doesn’t trust me. I feel I’m under observation.
The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 1) Page 16
