“Too many, and we can’t go on with that line of investigation. It’s still in its infancy. The fight against cancerous cells, on the other hand, most definitely is giving us results, and we think that we’ll shortly be able to commercialize home kits so that everyone can check their telomerase level to detect the presence of cancer. You see, tumor cells have active telomerase; that’s why they’re capable of dividing thousands of times, thereby provoking what we call metastasis. Our efforts are directed at blocking metastasis in cancer.”
“That was what I needed to know,” I said, standing up. I still had to pretend that I was in a hurry to catch my flight.
Pilkington got up as well and we said good-bye. Each of us headed off in his own direction, and as soon as he was out of sight, I caught another cab. Days earlier I had exchanged the quick turnaround Jairo had booked for me for a two-night reservation in The Inn Above Tide in Sausalito. I’d earned myself a few days’ vacation.
That night, after removing the damned contact lenses that had tortured me all day, I ordered a meal in my room. As soon as I’d finished the salad, I threw myself naked on the bed to read the Kronon material. I had a treasure in my hands. How long would Kyra and I have taken to reach this same point in our research? It was an impossible task for just the two of us on our own—much to my despair, and my relief.
I spent several hours studying the material, absorbing enormous amounts of new information. I opened my laptop and spent the rest of the night elaborating my own version of what was cooking at Kronon. Finally, overwhelmed by the humidity and the sultry weather, I climbed inside a giant bathtub that sat majestically in the middle of the room. You could see the life of the whole bay unfold from there. I continued to reread Pilkington’s report as I soaked in the tub until, exhausted but satisfied, I fell asleep at dawn as a powerful orange sun entered my suite through the curtains of the large picture window.
In my dream, Boudicca was holding a petri dish in Kyra’s laboratory. She was wearing the cape in which she had died and the gold fibula in the shape of a deer that Nagorno had made for her and her daughters as a gift. Her reddish-brown braids were dragging on the ground, although the cold marble floor in the lab was nothing like the grass of the Iceni kingdom. Then she stood up, and our eyes were at the same level. I saw a concern in hers that troubled me.
“Are you all right, Sister?” I asked her.
“No, and neither are any of you. Give me your hands. I must cut them off. Someone has to stop what you are about to do.”
I obeyed and felt a tremendous pain at the level of my wrists. I heard an inhuman cry that turned out to be coming from my own throat but which did nothing to soothe my torment. I fell in a heap on the floor of the lab, faint and numb from the pain.
22
ADRIANA
Friday, March 9, 2012
It was two o’clock in the morning when I asked for my last small bottle of water in the Moby Dick. A rock group from the nineties with a hard-to-pronounce name was playing, but I had agreed to go because my friend Clara had become nostalgic and felt like letting her hair down once she resolved to go out with me without her husband.
I had called her a few days earlier, right after I decided to catch a flight to Madrid to check out any possible trace of Héctor and Kyra at the Complutense. Iago had turned up on the Monday, calendar in hand, to change the dates of various meetings on the pretext that he was going to an anthropology conference at the Berkeley campus of the University of California for a few days. I searched for the conference on the Internet and confirmed that everything was as he’d told me. The dates matched, so it was possible he was telling the truth. But I couldn’t stop thinking that in reality he was going to San Francisco to check out the Kronon Corporation, just as I’d heard them discussing from the tunnel behind my bookshelf. At that point I knew that I didn’t want to go on working like this, being suspicious of everything the Holy Trinity did.
As soon as the tornado that was Iago rushed out the door, I made my way to Héctor’s office and asked him for a few days’ leave to go to Madrid, with the excuse that I still had some matters to sort out that hadn’t been resolved because of my hasty move. I booked a room in the Hotel Cuzco, but I refused to let my father know about my visit to the capital. I still didn’t feel ready to grapple with him and the appendix that his new family represented for me. I also wanted to have a break from the awkward topic of my mother’s suicide note. I had choked it down, but I hadn’t finished digesting all of it yet.
In other words, my trip to Madrid was a flight no matter how you looked at it.
Once I’d landed at Barajas Airport, I spent Thursday looking for information in the administrative office of the Complutense’s Biological Sciences Faculty. There was nothing conclusive, so, in a last-ditch effort, I called Mercedes Poveda, who had been my mentor throughout my university career, and organized to visit her in her little house in the mountains on Saturday morning. Mercedes was almost ninety, but her mind was still remarkably lucid. I thought she might be able to give me some clues regarding the two academics who had worked with her in the seventies. And, unsure whether my trip was going to be fruitful or just a waste of time, I arranged to meet Clara in the same pub near Avenida Castellana where she and I had drowned our work frustrations so many times on weekdays the year before.
Clara and I had been the youngest employees at the National Museum of Archaeology. She was two years older than me and had a lot more common sense, which was undoubtedly a great help to me during the year I spent as a slave under the yoke of Federico Santos. She was also the one who had introduced me to my ex-boyfriend, Rubén, in her top-floor apartment on the Gran Vía during a meal with all her husband’s colleagues from the labor law practice he managed. Clara was one of the few friends who had maintained her link with both of us after I had left Rubén, so she was an exception definitely worth keeping.
The Moby Dick was a bar decorated with a maritime theme. Going down the stairs was like being teleported to the interior of an old sailing ship, with its inevitable rudder, shark’s jaw, pictures of knots, and other nautical decorations.
As soon as I entered the wooden bowels of the Moby Dick, I recognized the dark hair and smiling face of my friend, beer in hand, waiting for me among all the other people there. She still wore her hair much longer in front and almost shaved in the back, as if it grew on the diagonal like that due to some strange genetic condition. I felt myself relax because, for the first time in months, I was back to being a normal person who’d arranged to meet a friend for the sole purpose of having a good time.
“I think I’m glad your husband didn’t come too. He must still hate me for breaking up with Rubén,” I said by way of a greeting, shouting louder than usual so she could hear me.
Clara kissed me on both cheeks, and we settled ourselves on two stools at the bar.
“He got over it as soon as your ex started focusing on his work again and stopped losing all the cases he’d been assigned.”
“I’m delighted—for both of them.”
“Stop feeling guilty. I’m not going to be the one who tells you that you made a mistake when you left him.”
“Well, believe me, it’s a relief to be sitting next to the only person who hasn’t. In any event, let’s stop talking about all that. I’ve moved on.”
“And by the way, I see you haven’t lost your sex appeal,” she said, speaking with the voice of a brothel owner.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of the blue-eyed guy who hasn’t stopped looking at you since you came in. Don’t turn around. He’s coming over here.”
I did as I was told and ignored him. Clara and I spent the next two hours catching up with each other in very loud voices while the dreadful band punished our hearing. When I realized that Clara had been sneaking a look at her watch for some time, I decided to give the blue-eyed, dark-haired guy his opportunity. He’
d taken a seat behind my friend and was waiting for me to give him a look of permission to deploy his deadly form. He waited patiently while I said good-bye to Clara and her knowing smile but then wasted no time in occupying her vacant barstool.
“You come here often, don’t you?” he said, looking directly at me. “Your face looks familiar.”
“Yes, every Friday at about this time,” I lied.
“That’s what I thought,” he lied in return.
I inspected him under the irritating bar lights. A bit smug, not quite as tall as . . . Not quite as tall as who, Dana? I reprimanded myself. Well, in any event, he’ll do.
The look we exchanged asked, Are you the one who’s going to make my evening worthwhile?
An hour later we were panting on top of the blue carpet in my hotel room. When we were done, he took a shower while I slithered under the sheet.
“That was a novel experience,” he shouted through the shower curtain.
“You’re kidding,” I replied skeptically.
“I’m serious. I’ve never done it long-distance before,” he answered, with an irony that seemed to be his preferred style.
“I thought you enjoyed it,” I said defensively.
“Technically, it was good,” he said, coming back into the room, a brief towel covering the bare necessities.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, it was very good.”
“So, what’s the complaint?” My look pierced him like a bullet.
“That I was on my own the whole time. Where were you, girl?”
In a cave nearly three hundred miles away, looking at tectiforms, I thought of replying.
For once I didn’t brush my hair from my face but let out a sigh when I saw there was no way of fixing this.
“Let’s see, Elías—”
“Eloy,” he corrected me.
“Right. Eloy. Look, I think it would be better if you left now. I have to catch an early flight and . . .”
It was a lie, but any excuse was fine at that hour of the morning, and my brain was on autopilot.
“It’s five in the morning and so cold outside I don’t even want to think about it,” he said, sitting down next to me on the bed. “Let’s sleep for a couple of hours, and I promise I won’t be a pain when we wake up.”
I looked at him one last time. Maybe in different circumstances, maybe in another life, maybe . . . but no. Allowing a six-foot-one-inch mistake into my bed to sleep beside me left me cold.
“Look, I have only one rule: no sleeping over,” I told him without giving him the option to reply.
I actually have more than one rule: not to challenge my boss at the first opportunity; not to drink during dinners with work colleagues; not to make a fool of myself analyzing my coworkers’ handwriting; and above all, not to become infatuated with my immediate superior . . . In summary, all those rules I’ve been systematically breaking ever since I met your double.
“Okay, okay. I get it,” he said, pulling on his pants and turning his back on me in a final attempt at self-respect. “A woman with standards. Well, then, until next time.”
And he closed the door behind him before I could return his “until next time.”
23
IAGO
Father Sun Day, the twenty-third day of the month of Nion
Sunday, March 11, 2012
After almost an entire day in the air, forcibly squeezed into the tube with wings they called a plane, we were finally reaching our destination. The flying ship cut a straight line through the sky, leaving an endless white scar behind it. Tracks or shortcuts the angels would make the most of, I imagine.
The immediate consequence of my latest amnesia crisis had been the presence of Nagorno, who dozed for the major portion of the trip, when he wasn’t harvesting the phone numbers of the multicultural team of air hostesses with the dedication of a vineyard owner—phone numbers, he confided to me, that were the codes for accessing paradise. I took advantage of this time to leaf through a small guide to everyday Spanish conversation that my father had made me buy.
“I have a perfect command of Spanish,” I had complained over the phone.
“But not present-day idioms and polite turns of phrase. I have no idea which century your brain is parked in right now. Read through the guide and pay attention to the way people around you are interacting. And learn from your brother during your trip together. You have to be in the present by the time you reach Santander.”
Finally, just as we were about to descend, I recognized the familiar light diffused by the clouds, the broken line of the sea punishing the rocks, and the sawlike profile of the mountains of my childhood.
We were ushered into a bright hall that reminded me of an unfinished cathedral. That’s where we were standing waiting for our luggage when, in the distance, I saw a face that seemed familiar to me.
“Do you know that beauty?” I asked Nagorno, pointing to the girl who, busy with her own suitcase, hadn’t noticed us.
“You’re talking about the one with the scar from a horse’s kick on her forehead?”
I nodded.
“That’s Adriana Alameda. She works at the museum. Keep your hands off her. She’s my next conquest.”
“Of course,” I answered quickly. “I’m not that type of brother.”
“I know. I just wanted to forewarn you.”
I caught a glimpse of her walking away as I continued down the corridor with Nagorno, searching for a familiar face among all the people waiting at the exit.
“Would I recognize you if I weren’t traveling with my brother?” I had asked my father over the phone.
“Of course. It will be like looking at yourself in a mirror twenty millennia from now.”
And that’s exactly how it was. Héctor didn’t have to signal to me; he looked exactly the same, except for a beard.
My father gave us each a restrained hug, with a relieved expression on his face. Nagorno said good-bye, informing us that he was leaving in his own car, although I suspected he was heading off to try and bump into the aforementioned Adriana. In the meantime, my father and I spent some time catching up. And then I saw the young woman again, coming toward us. Clearly, Nagorno hadn’t been able to detain her for long.
When she reached us, she greeted each of us with the customary kiss on both cheeks. Her kisses were glorious.
“You’ve grown a goatee? You look . . . different,” she said with surprise in her voice.
“Adriana, you must forgive us,” Héctor intervened, discreetly tugging at my sleeve, “but Iago is exhausted after his twenty-four-hour flight, and I’m afraid the jet lag has affected him more than usual. If you’ll excuse us, I’m going to take him home so that he can rest a bit.”
But I extricated myself from my father. The young woman brought back memories from the very recent past, but I wasn’t able to think of a common topic of conversation. I resorted to what I had read in my guide to everyday conversation: “And how is your mother?”
Her expression was indescribable. Then she replied, “She’s as dead as usual, thank you.”
I bit my lower lip and hastened to apologize. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recall. I had no intention of offending you. Please believe me.”
But her expression suggested that she had already moved on. Now she was focused on scrutinizing me. Just then a middle-aged man with a bushy mustache appeared, and Héctor turned around to greet him. “What brings you to the airport, my dear Director?”
It was obvious that he was preventing the director in question from starting up a conversation with me, but he couldn’t do the same with Adriana, who, quick as a flash, took advantage of the moment to come right up to me and, lowering her voice, whisper, “Iago, something’s not right with you. Can you tell me what it is?”
“I’m a bit confused, actually. I’ll get over it
as soon as I’ve had a sleep.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
“Positive.”
She stepped back to have a good look at me, her arms crossed in front of her. “Tell me, did the Neanderthals have a language?”
I tried to recall what I had read in the airline magazine, but there wasn’t much about Neanderthals. “Well, we don’t know, do we?” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
She smiled faintly and gave me a look of victory. “Right.”
By that stage Héctor had managed to get rid of whoever it was. Then he dispatched Adriana with a few pleasantries and loaded me into his car.
“What’s the matter with Adriana?” I wanted to know.
Héctor looked at me, surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“Something’s going on with her. Do you know if we’ve shared a bed?”
“Not that I’m aware of, though it might happen in the future. Look, Adriana arrived from Madrid a couple of months ago. We hired her because she has an impressive résumé for someone her age, but in particular because she has a network of contacts at local and European digs that are of interest to us. You spend a lot of time working closely together. That said, you usually try to avoid affairs with work colleagues, although you’re no saint in that regard, either. If someone interests you, you act accordingly, period.”
“What’s her story? Is she married? Does she have a man?” I asked as I looked out of the window with the eagerness of a person risen from the dead. Savoring that countryside with its hills, pine forests, and low clouds was speeding up my recovery.
“Boyfriend. You say boyfriend, or partner, or companion,” he explained to me. “Not that I’m aware of, no. She has friends, like Salva from the Classical and Late Antiquity Department, and Elisa, who recommended her to us. But I think you’re the person she’s closest to at the museum.”