'Boy genius,' father seek peace after painful rebellion.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Adragon De Mello, the once-famous child prodigy who earned a college degree at 11, looked through the thick glass at his father incarcerated at the Santa Cruz County Jail.

This was not the man he remembered, not the man he had feared. Agustin De Mello's hair had grown long and wild. He stopped shaving. He slouched. He was 71 years old and dying of cancer.

Adragon, now 24, could barely picture him as the intimidating father who, more than a decade ago, pushed Adragon into the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest college graduate, who boasted that Adragon would win a Nobel Prize by age 16. He was not the same man who was held by police at gunpoint while the boy was wrenched away during a custody battle.

Now, his father looked like little more than a frail, old man.

During the past four months, Agustin De Mello's failing health and legal problems have thrust the two together again, giving them a chance to confront complex questions:

Can this exceptional son come to terms with his eccentric father and in the process with himself? And can a father who boasted that his son had the greatest mind since da Vinci reconcile expectations with reality?

Since police hauled Agustin De Mello to jail after a confrontation at his beachside home, Adragon has rearranged his life for his father, setting up hospice care, taking him to movies on Fridays and breakfast on Saturdays.