The Affinities

  By this time Mama Laura had come downstairs with a bowl of warm water and towels. She put the bowl on the coffee table and bent down to swab Trevor’s forehead. “Any other night,” she said, “I would recommend you get the folks at the Creekside Clinic to put in a couple of stitches in this cut. You gashed yourself pretty good. It might heal to a scar. But a cotton bandage will keep body and soul together for now. As for those motels on the highway, they’re chock full of bedbugs. You can stay here tonight, Mr. Holst.”

  “That’s very generous, Mrs. Fisk—”

  “You’ll have to sleep in the bed in the attic, I’m afraid, even though you’re too long for it by half. Is that all right?”

  “Very much all right. Thank you. Please call me Trevor.”

  “Everyone calls me Mama Laura.”

  “Thank you, Mama Laura.”

  She smiled. “You’re very welcome. You say you’re traveling with Adam?”

  “From New York back to Toronto by way of Schuyler.”

  “Then shame on Adam for leaving you at the Holiday Inn. His friends are always welcome here.”

  Trev shot me an amused look. Yeah, shame on you. “It was my choice. I didn’t want to intrude on a family gathering.”

  “Thoughtful of you, but I think it stopped being just a family gathering when the lights went out.”

  * * *

  Making up the bed in the attic, Mama Laura came across an ancient portable radio to supplement the one in the living room. Geddy installed fresh batteries and took it upstairs when he and Rachel retired.

  Which left me and Trev and Jenny free to talk. Trev told Jenny he’d be driving when we left Schuyler and that he would make sure she was safe. Jenny gave the bandage on his head a careful look. Clearly, the plan had already gone awry. But she nodded her agreement and went upstairs without further questions.

  Which made it possible for me to say: “Trevor, what the fuck?”

  He kept his voice to a low rumble. “We lost the security detail. Both cars. I was riding in the lead vehicle, we were doing a drive-around to get the lay of the town. This was maybe an hour before the lights went out. The fucking Het guys ambushed us, forced both our vehicles off the road. My car went into a ditch, the other vehicle hit a concrete planter. Tracy Guitierrez was driving—she’s in the local hospital with most of the rest of my guys, not critical but definitely out of business for the time being. Lost a lot of skin on the right side of her face. Those of us who could walk quit the scene as soon as we called for help. I didn’t want to have to waste time telling stories to the cops while the Hets do whatever they feel like. And then the blackout. I had to walk here.”

  I processed this. It was the news about Tracy that really made me angry. She was a fairly new Tau, still full of that oh-my-God-I’m-home-at-last giddiness. I wanted to hurt somebody on her behalf. And it didn’t take Tau telepathy to feel a similar sentiment radiating from Trev like heat from a woodstove.

  But we had to be smart about this, too.

  “Raises the question,” I said, “of why they would do that.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that on the walk here. Obviously they know something is up. Probably they know it involves Jenny. My guess is, the Hets got wind of our plan. And they mean to do something about it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I wish I knew. Have you been able to get in touch with Damian or Amanda?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. Which means we’re on our own right now. On the other hand, so are the Hets. And Hets are lousy at acting without orders, so maybe that buys us some time.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “Tonight, post a watch. The two of us, I guess. One of us should be awake and vigilant at all times. And in the morning, we take your car and get Jenny Fisk out of town ASAP. How’s that sound?”

  “Reasonable, I guess.”

  “So who gets the first watch of the night?”

  “I’ll take it. You look like you could use some rest.”

  He didn’t object. “Show me the way to the attic room,” he said. He checked his watch. “And wake me at three. Sooner, if you see anything suspicious.”

  He was at least a foot longer than the fold-out Mama Laura had set up for him, but he made himself comfortable. Back downstairs, I blew out the candles and put a chair by the big front window where I could watch the street. Then I poured myself a cup of cold coffee from the pot that was left after dinner and stared into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 18

  I had been on watch for about an hour, half dozing by the window, when there was a scream from the second-floor hallway, followed by violent shouting.

  I grabbed a flashlight and ran upstairs. But when I made it to the landing all I saw was my father lying on the floor in a pair of white pajama bottoms, and Mama Laura bending over him, and Trevor at the far end of the hallway looking startled and contrite.

  Apparently my father had gotten out of bed and headed for the bathroom, carrying one of Mama Laura’s yahrzeit candles on a saucer. He found the bathroom door locked. He knocked and rattled the knob, and when the door opened he dropped the candle and screamed. He screamed because he had been asleep when Trev arrived, and Mama Laura had neglected to warn him that if he needed to take a leak during the night he might encounter a muscular two-hundred-and-forty-pound stranger with extensive facial tattoos. He dropped his candle (it rolled to the verge of the stairs, flame extinguished) and managed to back away three steps before he tripped over a knitted rug and fell to the floor. Mama Laura, running from the bedroom, found Trev standing over her husband and repeating the words, “Dude, are you all right?”

  It was possibly the first time in his life my father had been called “dude.” He wasn’t taking it well. Now that he was no longer frightened, his belligerence came roaring onto center stage. “Who the fuck invited you?”

  “I did,” I said. I scooped up the fallen candle. “This is Trevor. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “You have some pretty fucking peculiar friends!”

  “He needed a place to stay for the night.”

  “Well, welcome to the Fisk Hotel!”

  “Don’t be ungracious,” Mama Laura said, helping him to his feet. Because he was dressed in pajamas it was easy to see how much weight he had lost. His knees poked at the white cotton fabric like knotted cords. He had no belly, just a declivity under the barrel of his ribs. “And don’t swear, if you can help it. Come back to bed, Charles.”

  “I still need to take a piss, goddammit!”

  Even by candlelight I could see Mama Laura blush. “Go on, then.”

  He grunted and headed for the bathroom, skirting around Trev as if he were radioactive. Then he paused and looked back at me.

  “Figures this is one of yours,” he said.

  * * *

  Mama Laura apologized for the excitement. I went downstairs with Trev behind me.

  “Other than that,” he said, “anything happening?”

  I smiled. “All quiet on the western front.”

  “Okay. You want me to take my shift now? I mean, I’m fully awake.”

  “So am I. You should get another couple of hours if you can.”

  Alone again, I settled back into my chair. Outside, the street was empty and stayed empty. Silence inside and out, until I heard more footsteps on the stairway. This time it was Geddy’s friend Rebecca, barefoot in a cotton nightie. Her skinny frame and halo of dark hair gave her the look of a Q-tip dipped in black paint. “Couldn’t sleep,” she explained when she saw me. “What with the noise and all.”

  I asked without thinking, “And Geddy slept through it?”

  “I guess so. We’re in separate rooms, remember?”

  Of course they were: Mama Laura’s Protestantism wouldn’t countenance an unmarried couple cohabiting under her roof. Rebecca headed for the kitchen, and I heard the refrigerator door open and close. She came back into the living room with a glass of milk in her hand. “I put the rest o
f the carton in the freezer, where it’s still a little cold. But if this blackout goes on much longer you’ll have to start throwing away perishables. Mind if I sit?”

  I did mind, because as long as she was in the room my attention would be divided between her and the street. But I couldn’t say that. I shrugged, and she sank into the big easy chair that used to be reserved for my father. “I guess you couldn’t sleep either.”

  “I’m a light sleeper at the best of times.”

  “Uh-huh.” She sipped her milk.

  Outside, a car drove past. It didn’t stop. I watched until its taillights vanished around the nearest corner. “I apologize about the candles.”

  “I’m not religious, and I’m not sentimental about yahrzeit candles. Though I still light one on Yom HaShoah, like everyone else in my family.”

  “Big family?”

  “It seems like it, when we get together for the holidays.”

  “Have you introduced Geddy to them?”

  She sipped her milk and wiped her lip with her wrist. “My Gentile boyfriend? Of course I have. They love him. There’s no problem, except with a couple of Orthodox cousins whose opinions no one takes seriously. An awkward moment now and then, no big deal.”

  “As awkward as all this?”

  “Well, maybe not quite. But Geddy told me what to expect, especially concerning his dad. So no shocks there. And I know how it is with families.”

  I nodded and looked back at the window.

  “Conventional families, I mean,” she said. “Your friend Trevor is cute, by the way. I like the way you are with him. There’s obviously some real love there.”

  Her gaydar had surely blipped when Trevor came within range, and I wondered if she was making an unwarranted assumption about my relationship with him. But if so, so what. “Real love” was a fair call.

  “Being in an Affinity must be like that. That’s what I think. I mean all these wonderful, complex relationships just spilling out of the air practically—a million possibilities, a million flavors of potential happiness. You were an early adopter, right? It must have been great back then.”

  “It’s great now. Anyway, I thought you disapproved.”

  “No, I totally get it! I mean I do disapprove, in a way, but I don’t disapprove of what an Affinity gives you.”

  “So what do you disapprove of?”

  “The fact that it’s in an Affinity. The fact that there’s a wall around it. All due credit to Meir Klein—he knew utopia isn’t one-size-fits-all. You could put a hundred people together and they could live better, fuller, freer, happier, more collaborative lives—but only the right hundred people, not a hundred random people off the street. So once you know what to measure and how to crunch the numbers, voilà: the twenty-two Affinities. Twenty-two gardens, with twenty-two walls around them. No disputing it’s nice inside, for anyone who can get inside. But think about what that means for all the people not included. Suddenly you’ve segregated them from the best cooperators. Which puts outsiders in a walled garden too, but it’s not really a garden, ’cause all the competent gardeners buggered off and the trees don’t bear much fruit. And a walled garden that isn’t a garden looks like something different. It looks like a prison.”

  “Colorful metaphor, but—”

  “And that’s not the only problem. You’ve created twenty-two groups—twenty-three, if you count those of us left out—with competing interests. The Affinities are all about cooperation within the group, not between groups. So, hey, look, a new world order, twenty-three brand new para-ethnicities and meta-nations, and what prevents them from going to war with each other? Nothing. Apparently.”

  “We’ve done good in the world, Rebecca. TauBourse, for instance. It benefited a lot of people who weren’t Taus, directly and indirectly. As for war, we had people in high places in India and even a few in Pakistan, trying to prevent all the trouble.”

  “And how’s that going?”

  I shrugged and looked back at the window. A pair of headlights appeared at the end of the street, approaching. The vehicle behind them was big, but it was too dark to make out more than a boxy shape. It drove past without slowing or stopping. Then the street was empty again.

  “I don’t think you’re down here because you can’t sleep,” Rebecca said. “I think you’re down here standing guard.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “In addition to the way you can’t keep your eyes off an empty street?”

  “What would I be standing guard against?”

  “Het, I’m guessing.”

  “And why would you think that?”

  “Because your sister-in-law talks to Geddy, and Geddy talks to me. I know what Jenny’s situation is. I know how Aaron treated her, and I know what she means to do about it. I also know you’re helping her—Tau is helping her—and I know why. You think her video will discredit Aaron and maybe force him to step down before the vote on Griggs-Haskell. Win-win, right? Except for Het.”

  I looked at her with fresh respect and a degree of wariness. Maybe Geddy had trusted her enough to confide in her. But I wasn’t Geddy, and I wasn’t sure I trusted Geddy’s judgment.

  “Assuming any of this is true,” I said, “what’s your interest?”

  “Personally, you mean? Or from the point of view of New Socionome?”

  “Either.”

  “New Socionome isn’t an Affinity. There’s no us and them. No single point of view. No consensus. It has no interests to advance, except to facilitate non-zero-sum collaboration. So the only opinion I can offer is my own. I think the Affinities are doomed whether Griggs-Haskell passes or not. Because they have a toxic dynamic. The sooner they fail, the better. I think Jenny needs to get away from Aaron, and I think she’s brave to want to out him as an abuser. Short-term, I approve of what you’re doing to help her. Even though it’s messy. I assume you’ve thought about what it’s going to do to this family?”

  At length. I told her so. “But I believe it’s worth it.”

  “For Jenny, you mean. And to do the right thing.”

  “For Tau,” I said. “And to do the right thing.”

  * * *

  Rebecca asked me one more question before she carried a yahrzeit candle back upstairs with her: “Do you really think there might be Het people out there who want to hurt us?”

  I wondered whether it was wise to answer her question. I didn’t want to confirm her suspicions or reveal more than she already knew. “Look at it from Het’s point of view,” I said. “They’ve kept a close eye on Aaron and they probably know at least a little about his troubled marriage. If they don’t know about the video, they may at least suspect Jenny of being a loose cannon. They also know the most direct connection between Jenny and Tau is through me. So any occasion that brings me into contact with Jenny is going to interest them.”

  “Interest isn’t the same as a threat.”

  “Suppose they figured out what Jenny intends to do. How do they respond? They can’t take control of the video—it’s already been copied to remote servers, and they would have to assume Tau already has access to it. The only real leverage they can exercise is over Jenny herself, by making the price of releasing the video too high to bear.”

  “How would they do that?”

  “The usual tools are threats and intimidation.”

  “What kind of threats and intimidation?”

  “No way to predict. Plus there’s the communication shutdown. Hets are strongly hierarchical, which means the people they sent to Schuyler might be unwilling to act without authorization. Or maybe they have contingency orders—there’s no way of knowing.”

  “You have any evidence they actually have hostile intentions?”

  Solid evidence: a bunch of Tau security guys in the local hospital. But that was news Rebecca didn’t need to hear. “Better to assume the worst.”

  “So your plan is to sit by the window and worry?”

  “Until we can get Jenny out of town.”
/>
  “I see. Okay.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  She gave me another of her conflicted smiles, one part sincere, one part cynical. “I’m not sure I do. But I guess I understand.”

  * * *

  Trevor came down to relieve me in the chill hours of the morning, looming out of the darkness like a candlelit Goliath. “Hey, Trev,” I said. “Quiet so far.”

  “Hope it stays that way,” he said, small-voiced and careful not to wake anyone, settling into the chair I had just left.

  So I went to bed and got a useful few hours of sleep. When I opened my eyes it was morning, the house beginning to warm up in a bath of late-May sunlight. Downstairs, Mama Laura fixed breakfast for those of us who were awake (Rebecca was still sleeping). The electric stove wasn’t working, but she had fired up the gas grill in the backyard and used it to scramble eggs in an iron pan, standing in the dewy grass in her bedroom slippers with a goosedown jacket over her nightdress. She delivered the eggs to the table with a satisfied flourish: triumph over adversity. Plus coffee, boiled in a pan over the grill.

  Trev ate heartily even as my father sat in sulky silence, glaring at the gigantic Maori who had somehow invaded his home. Geddy had been keeping an ear on the radio in the living room, and he brought us up to date on the latest news: phone and data services had been partially restored to parts of the west coast but were operating sporadically and unreliably. New York City and Washington, DC, also had intermittent telecom coverage, but the rest of the country, and most of Europe, and all of the Indian subcontinent, were still down. A few unconfirmed reports hinted that Mumbai was burning. All this information was being relayed through private broadcasters running on self-generated power, whispers passed from one ear to the next.

  As soon as possible, I took Trevor and Jenny aside—once again, Jenny’s tobacco habit gave us an excuse to segregate ourselves in the backyard. I said we should leave for Buffalo as soon as possible. Trev was clearly uneasy about undertaking the trip without an escort, but he didn’t want to alarm Jenny by raising the possibility of a Het attack. Jenny herself was fine with leaving this afternoon. “I’ll pack,” she said, “and we can leave as soon as Geddy gets back.”