Discovered (21 page)

“But you were just
a boy,” Layla said sympathetically.

Jay smiled warmly,
the idea that she might actually believe him filling him with hope.
“Understand, Layla, children were not as molly-coddled as they are today, and fifteen
was no longer considered a child. Many children were sent to work at the age of
four and five in those days. This was long before Child Labor Laws.”

“Of course,” she
said.

 “At any rate, we
worked very hard on that voyage and earned what little scraps of food that were
awarded to us. We spent our nights in a small corner of the ship; the four of
us huddled together, dreaming of this far away tropical land we were heading
for. But nothing in our childish musings could have prepared us for the beauty
of the Caribbean. It really and truly was a paradise—the warm balmy weather
tempered with a soothing breeze, water the most unusual shade of blue, the lush
plants and exotic flowers. As we approached land, all four of us stood on the deck
of the ship in awe and wonder. At that particular moment, I didn’t care if I
never saw Spain again.”

“I imagined that
heaven must look like the Caribbean,” Issy piped in. “Certainly, no other place
on earth and beyond could be so beautiful.”

“We worked hard
that first year, tilling the land, harvesting sugar-cane, helping to build
homes and establishments for other settlers,” Jay continued. “We lived
outdoors, kept to ourselves as much as possible, sleeping under the stars.”

“Bug bites became a
common way of life for us,” Ben added in. “The only negative I can report in
those first twelve months. The best memories are the many hours we spent rambling
through the mountains, eating citrus fruits and picking coffee beans that grew
wild in the fertile mountain valleys.”

Jay nodded, a trace
of a happy memory gleaming in his eyes. “Nunez was a good man. He treated us
well and fed us well. After just a little over a year of working for him, he
gifted me with a small patch of land in the far corner of his estate. I can’t
begin to express how good it felt to finally have our own home. We built a
small but comfortable house. We planted tobacco and sugarcane, and treated the
Taino that helped on our farm with all the respect and dignity that Lucia would
have expected of us.”

“I had my own
flower garden,” Issy said in a wistful voice. “Blooms of orchids, jasmine and
hibiscus grew in abundance.”

“Those were happy
times,” Jay said, smiling at his friends, one at a time. “But we were still
young, still restless, desperate to explore the other regions of this paradise
on earth. We were not like the other settlers who were not eager to explore the
wild areas. We were young and foolish, I suppose. We spent many days walking
the wilderness, learning the hunting habits of the Taino. It was on one of
these many expeditions that we uncovered a small, isolated river. Bending down
to splash water on his face, Yusuf let out a loud gasp. The river was
absolutely glistening with gold nuggets. We returned to that same spot three
days later and filled as many bags as we could with pure gold, enough to ensure
us a very comfortable life at that time.  And because of the kindness we had
shown the Taino, they rewarded us by telling us about the many rivers in that
region where we could find even more gold. We managed to acquire a fortune.

“As time passed,
rumors began to reach us, whispers of a magical liquid, a mysterious body of water
that could grant one who drank from it unusually long life—”

“The fountain of
youth?” Layla broke in.

Jay nodded. “It was
told to us that the King and Queen themselves had petitioned Juan Ponce de Leon
to search the area for this fabled fountain. But whether that was true or not
is still debated to this day.  We questioned some of the older men of the
Taino, and it seemed that they were also aware of the myths. They explained the
general region that the fabled fountain was supposed to be in. So that September,
we set out in a small boat to look for it. To say that we were clueless would
be an understatement. As you know, in late summer that area is prone to heavy
storms and hurricanes. We were not two days out at sea when the storm clouds
began to thicken. Within another three days, we were desperately trying to keep
the boat upright. Around our ninth day at sea is when a giant wave crashed into
us. Whether I slammed into the side of the boat or not, I’m not sure, but the
resulting injuries were at least three busted ribs and a left arm that had
become dislocated from the shoulder. But by some miracle, I ended up floating
to the shore, convinced that the others had been swept away by the sea.”

“Just before the
wave hit, thanks to a bright flash of lightning, I thought I saw the faint
outline of land through the dense rain,” Ben butted in, “but didn’t have time
to convey that to anyone before all hell broke loose. In actual fact, we were
probably less than a half-mile from the shoreline.”

“Issy had fallen
over some time before and was knocked unconscious,” Joey added. “When the boat
was torn to shreds by the force of the wave, she was luckier than the rest of
us. She floated peacefully, allowing the water to take her where it would. Ben
and I clung to each other, managing to break surface, and noticed her a few
feet in front of us. We swam to her just as she was starting to stir. Together,
we managed to make our way to the shoreline, having no clue what had become of Jay.”

“We found him unconscious
on the beach,” Issy stated. “While Joey and Ben flopped down next to him,
exhausted, I was able to search around, looking for something, anything that
might revive him. Low and behold, I stumbled upon a small pond at the foot of a
hill, a fresh water pond no more than six feet wide. When Joey and Ben had
recovered their strength, they carried Jay over to the area that I pointed out.
We scooped some water up in our hands and tried to get him to drink. When we
managed to get some water into him, we noticed immediately that the color
returned to his face. He opened his eyes and, wincing from pain, sat up. He was
able to tell us what his injuries were right away.”

“My father had
taught me a little bit about medicine,” Jay said. “I was able to recognize the
broken ribs and the dislocated arm. But the strange thing was, as I was feeling
around my body, identifying my various injuries, I could also feel them healing
far too rapidly.”

“As soon as Jay
explained what was happening inside him, I suspected immediately that we had
found the very thing we’d come in search of,” Joey added. “There was no other
explanation for what was happening to Jay.”

Ben nodded. “We
quickly drank down handfuls of the water, and the reaction was instantaneous. A
surge of energy coursed through me as though it was revitalizing every cell in
my body.”

“It was like I
could almost feel my cells bristling with life,” Issy added in. “A strange jolt
of adrenaline may be a better way to explain it.”

“As soon as I was
sure that my body had completely healed, I knew beyond any doubt what we had
discovered,” Jay said. “As the days wore on, I felt healthier than I ever had
in my life.”

“But we had one big
problem,” Joey butted in. “We had no way to get off the island.”

“And no one had
claimed this fountain before?” Layla asked. “Wouldn’t the natives have known
what it was?”

“That’s just it,
there were no natives,” Jay explained. “The Caribbean has hundreds upon
hundreds of these little parcels of land.  In fact, we could see quite a few
other uninhabited islands from the top of a hill.”

“We spent two
months in complete seclusion,” Ben added. “Only by dumb luck, again, did we
finally manage to get off the island. We could swim to some of the other
islands that were close by. One day on a completely different island, we
noticed a Spanish ship sailing not too far off the shore, one of the slave
ships returning to San Juan and Española. We were able to get their attention
and were taken back to San Juan.”

“But Joey, who was
always quick with technical issues, mapped the coordinates as we traveled
home,” Jay said. “We remained in our home for two months, making arrangements
to return to the small island and drain the pond. We bought a much larger boat,
and on Christmas morning, we set out again, this time in much calmer waters.
With Joey’s expert map, we were able to reach the tiny island within eight days.
With nothing more than shovels, we filled seven large barrels with the liquid.
Our initial idea was to sell the water for a fortune, but as time went on, we
came to realize that what we had would not last very long that way, and
besides, we would be forced to hand it over to the crown. We quickly decided to
keep our discovery a secret. We arrived back in San Juan on January 14th, 1514.”

 “That
is…unbelievable,” Layla mumbled. “I…I have no words.” She closed her eyes tight
and shook her head.

Jay ran a finger
down her cheek again, smiling appreciatively that she wasn’t running out the
door screaming. “This is the truth, Layla,” he said.

“I…I know,” she
said in a hushed voice. “I believe you. As much as I want to hear one of you
laugh and claim that the story was all an elaborate joke, I know what I saw in
that field only three hours ago, and there really is no better explanation. 
Defying all sanity, I actually believe what you’re telling me.”

“Thank you for
that,” Jay said sincerely.

“So that’s how you
knew you wouldn’t die if you were shot,” Layla surmised.

Jay shook his head.
“We didn’t know for sure,” he said. “We took a very big chance out there, but
that confrontation was not going to end without violence anyway.”

“You didn’t know?”
Layla gasped. “What were you thinking? You could have—”

Jay held up his
hands to quiet her. “We had to do something,” he said. “I couldn’t run the risk
of you being hurt in any way.”

“How did you not
know?” she questioned. “Do you ever get sick?”

“Not really,” he
answered. “Joey ate a piece of rancid pork about twenty-five years ago to see
what would happen, and—”

“You did?” Layla
blurted out and turned to face Joey.

“We don’t get sick
like normal people do,” Joey replied. “We may feel the beginning of a cold or
something, but it never really fully materializes. I wanted to see what would
happen?”

“What happened?”
she asked.

“I threw it right
back up,” he said, smiling. “It was kind of gross, but after that…nothing; not
even the slightest bit nauseous. But we don’t take unnecessary risks normally.
Like most people, we try to remain far away from anything that would hurt us,
just in case. At the end of the day, we really have no clue what would kill us,
but we suspect most normal things would: fire, poison, possibly even drowning.
I’m pretty sure that our immune systems dispel whatever is not organic, things
like bullets, but when it comes to organic material, all bets are off.”

“Wow,” she
breathed.

“There’s more to
the story,” Jay stated.

“I’m sure there
is,” she said, stunned.

“Why don’t we take
a little break, give Layla sometime to absorb what we’ve told her already?”
Issy suggested. “I’ll go make some sandwiches, then we’ll be happy to fill you
in on the rest,” she added, jumping up and skipping into the kitchen.

When they finished
eating the sandwiches that Issy made, Layla placed her plate on the coffee
table and looked around the small group. “Okay, I want to hear the rest,” she
said eagerly.

“Where did we leave
off?” Joey questioned.

“January 14th, 1514,”
Layla reminded them.

“Wow, you really
were paying attention,” Ben chuckled.

“Uh, huh,” she
answered.

Jay sat on the
couch next to Layla and turned sideways so that they were facing each other. “So,
anyway, we ended up staying in Puerto Rico for another five years,” he stated.
“But as time went on, we suspected that the natives were growing suspicious of
us. Our fellow settlers didn’t seem to notice that we never changed from one
year to the next, but the natives were much more observant of the ways of
nature and generally more intuitive. Around the time that we started thinking
about moving on, we got wind of a new land just past Cuba, a land that Ponce de
Leon had named for the feast of flowers, an enormous region that seemed to go
on forever.”

“Pascua de
Florida,” Layla said, recalling the lesson from history class.

 Jay nodded. “We
set sail on April 12
^th
, 1519. We sailed for our little island,
reaching it within nine days. After refilling ten barrels with the healing
liquid, we set out again and reached Chequescha—what is now known as Biscayne
Bay, Miami—within three days.”

“You told me you
were from Miami,” Layla recalled.

Jay nodded and
shrugged.

“Go on,” she
demanded, giving him a snarky look.

“Once again, we
lived a life of solitude,” Jay continued. “We built a small home some thirty
miles inland and ate mainly berries and fish. When we crossed paths with the
Tequesta, which was often enough, they regarded us with suspicion. Some had
seen men that looked like Ben and me and had heard rumors of men and women
being kidnapped and forced onto large ships against their will. It seemed that
the Indian slave trade had been in full bloom before we landed in those parts.
Luckily for us, they were more open to interaction with Issy and Joey, which
turned out well because Issy had picked up enough of their language to
communicate that we meant them no harm. So by and large, they left us in peace.
We spent over fifty long years living in that area, and there were many times
when I wondered if a longer than normal life was worth it. It became
monotonous, boring to a certain degree. We even considered traveling back to
Spain at one point, but the political situation had changed there also, and by
all rights, I should have been dead. I would not have been able to return and
claim my inheritance.   Instead, at the end of 1567, we made our way north to
St. Augustine, having heard that there was a large settlement there. That
turned out to be a stupid move of sorts. Long gone were the people that left us
in peace in Puerto Rico. These new settlers immediately grew suspicious of Joey
and Issy, wondering why slaves were living freely with Ben and me. We had to
keep our distance, traveling only near the settlements when we needed supplies,
and even then, Joey and Issy had to remain at home. Then the French attacked in
1568; terrible battles raged all over the area. At that point, we were so used
to living on the fringes of normal society, we had no patriotism left for our
fellow countrymen; we had no desire to join in their territorial skirmishes. After
only two years in the region, we upped and headed north into what is now known
as Georgia. And the story remains basically the same for the next two hundred
years.”

“I’m trying to wrap
my head around all that. That’s awful,” she said sympathetically.

“We got used to
it,” Ben replied. “It was easier for Issy and me. We had each other. We were
very much in love at the time and couldn’t care how we lived as long as we were
together.”

Jay nodded. “For
Joey and me, the fountain of youth started to seem like a curse, a long life of
nothing ever happening.”

“But that changed?”
Layla said hopefully. “After two hundred years, things got better for you?”

“Somewhat better
and somewhat worse,” Jay said quietly. “We were unfortunate enough to cross
into North Carolina just as the War of Independence began. By that point, we
had already changed our names, given that the area was Anglicized by the time
we arrived, and the British were not on friendly terms with the Spanish. From
that time on, I was known as Arthur Vallen. Sebastian Ortiz became Ben Orton,
Yusuf and Isabella were called Joseph and Isabel.”

“Were you involved
in the war?” Layla asked.

“No,” Jay admitted.
“After almost three hundred years on this earth, we saw things very differently
than most humans do. We saw the frailty of human life, the shortness of it.
When you see how quickly things can change: ideas, beliefs, popular concepts,
nothing takes on the same seriousness as it does for those who haven’t
witnessed such changes. What one is willing to die for today, may seem beyond
ridiculous a hundred years from now, though in my opinion, that was a war worth
fighting. Looking back, if I had known how that war would change the world, I
would have gladly taken up arms.”

“Really?” Layla
asked.

 Jay nodded. “When I
read the constitution for the first time, it was like nothing I’d ever seen or
heard before, as though the human race had taken a giant evolutionary step
forward.”

“For you, maybe,”
Joey said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, well,
unfortunately it took the general population quite a number of years to catch
up with the concepts,” Jay said apologetically. “The point is, in theory it was
beautiful.”

“How did you avoid
fighting in the war?” Layla questioned.

“The same way we
had done everything for years,” Jay said. “We stayed out of the way as much as
possible. When the war finally ended, we bought a large parcel of land just
south of Raleigh, only a little while before Raleigh was named the capital of
North Carolina. This helped to secure our place as four of the wealthiest
people in the new country.”

“Yes, and two of
the wealthiest people in the country had to pretend to be slaves for the
general public,” Joey butted in agitatedly.

“It was necessary
at the time, unfortunately,” Jay replied. “Not that we ever had many visitors
to our home. And on the small occasions that we did, we made sure to get rid of
them as quickly as possible.”

“That’s horrible,”
Layla said, disgust thick in her voice.

“Yes, it was,” Issy
agreed. “But for us it was just a ruse. For too many others it was a reality.
We did what we could, tried to get as many people to freedom as we could manage,
and hopefully made a difference in a lot of lives.”

Layla gave Issy a
bitter-sweet smile.

“It was a hard time
for too many people,” Jay piped in.

“How did you work
all that land?” Layla asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes.

“We didn’t, and we
wouldn’t have under any conditions that were unfair to any human,” Jay replied
bluntly. “We had so much money that no one ever questioned where we got it
from. You’d be surprised how much privacy money can buy.”

“You told me you
owned a tobacco farm,” she reminded him. “Or rather, that your ancestor did.”

“A hundred years
later,” he replied. “In fact, we didn’t stay in North Carolina full time. After
a couple of hundred years, we became pretty proficient in traveling around
somewhat unnoticed. At one point, we made it all the way to the Californian
coast.”

“Where we acquired
another large fortune in gold,” Ben said, winking over at Layla.

“No easy task, I
might add,” Issy piped in. “It was a dangerous journey—the wild animals being
the least of the dangers; the humans…much more treacherous.”

“At any rate, we managed
to avoid another bloody war by pure coincidence,” Jay added. “We arrived back
in North Carolina at the end of September, 1866. It was just shortly after
that, that we decided to stay put for the foreseeable future.”

“Wow, that’s
amazing,” Layla mumbled.  “All those years, all that history.”

“We’ve seen a lot
of changes, that’s for sure,” Ben said.

“What happened to
the little island?” Layla asked. “The one where you found the fountain of
youth.”

“Oh, I bought that
some years back,” Joey piped in, beaming. “I had the most amazing beachfront
house built on it, twelve thousand square feet to be exact. I’d be glad to take
you there any time you want.”

“Thank you,” Layla
said, smiling back. “I just might take you up on that offer.” She turned back
to Jay. “What happened next? Where did Vallen Pharmaceutical Enterprises come
from?”

“In the late eighteen
hundreds, Issy decided that she wanted to be a doctor,” he replied. “But she
had two strikes against her; one was her gender and the other her race. Sebastian,
being the love-sick fool that he is, decided to take one for the team and
enrolled in medical school. It was just shortly after we had our home wired for
electric lights. I will never forget how enthusiastic they both were when he’d
come home from school and lay his books and notes all over the kitchen table.
He and Issy would pour over those books for hours. Joey and I would vaguely
listen in at first, hearing him drone on in the background, explaining his
latest lesson to her in detail. As time went on, we found ourselves looking
over his shoulder, listening intently to the latest session. Before long, all
three of us would sit at the table while Ben stood before us, explaining and
re-explaining the details of his latest class, patiently answering our questions. 
The following year, I enrolled in medical school also. When Ben was finally a
qualified surgeon, he would take Issy along when we went to perform surgeries,
and when he had someone unconscious, and no one else was around, he would allow
Issy to perform the surgery with his guidance.”

“She was a
natural,” Ben said proudly. “She had a natural talent for healing, so much more
than I did. I can’t tell you the number of people who thanked me for fixing
them when all along it was Issy that had done all the work.”

“It’s terrible that
you never got to get a degree officially, though,” Layla piped in.

“Oh, I did,” Issy
contradicted. “I graduated Cornell Medical School in 1977, completely aced it.
Even my professors admitted that I knew more about medicine than they did. Of
course, they didn’t know that I’d been secretly practicing on and off for
almost a hundred years.”

Layla laughed at
Issy’s smug smirk.

“Anyway,” Jay broke
in, bringing them back to his story. “As time went on, we naturally became
interested in the other sciences when we’d learned all there was to know at the
time about biology. We started studying chemistry, and then on to biological
chemistry. It seemed that the next step was to open a pharmaceutical company,”
he added. “In 1936, we moved up north to New York. The company was small at
first, just a little building in Harlem, but as time went on, and we were
surprisingly good at what we did, we knew we needed to expand. We moved the
company to Connecticut in 1958.”

“And you’ve been
there ever since,” Layla concluded.

“Yes,” he replied. He
fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment, dreading the bomb he was about to lay on
her. “By 1972, we realized that our supply of liquid would not last forever. It
was then that we started experiments on how to replicate the water.”

“That’s what you’ve
been working on,” she said, the penny dropping.

Jay nodded. “That’s
what we do in the basement of the complex,” he admitted.

“How much do you
have left?” she questioned.

Jay looked around
at the others and sighed. “About enough for another twenty years, maybe.”

Layla gasped. “What
happens after that?” she asked.

“If we don’t find a
way to replicate it? We grow old, finally, I guess.”

“How fast?” she
questioned.

“Ah, see, now
there’s the rub. We have no clue,” he said matter-of-factly. “We don’t know if
we’ll just continue to age from there on out at a normal pace, or if we’ll age
over five hundred years instantaneously.”

“Oh, wow,” Layla
muttered. “That’s not good.”

“There’s more, Layla,”
Jay said with a regretful look. He took a deep breath before continuing.
“Besides that, we really do make medicines and have had quite a few
breakthroughs over the years. In the latter part of the seventies, we were
contacted by a government official, someone affiliated with the Center for
Disease Control. He explained to us that there was a new disease on the rise,
an immune deficiency disorder, and asked for our help in finding a cure. We
agreed. But the more we studied this strain the more baffled we became and kept
hitting a brick wall. We got wind of two young, brilliant pharmaceutical scientists
and decided to court them. We offered them all sorts of incentives to join our
company, thinking that a couple of fresh pairs of eyes, some new ideas, may be
beneficial.  They joined our company in 1978.”  He paused and looked into her
eyes nervously. “One was named James Morganson…and the other…William Sparks.”