“So how’d he get assigned to a tranche?”
“InterAlia tested him, right? So it’s possible they might have slipped in a ringer. Somebody who could report back to them about Tau politics.”
“You think that’s what this was?”
“I went to see the guy this morning, give him the bad news. He was already gone. His apartment had been cleared out overnight. So yeah, he knew. It wasn’t anybody’s innocent mistake. Somebody sent him to infiltrate us.”
“InterAlia?”
“Possibly. In which case it would have to have been set up before InterAlia went bankrupt. So of course the guy buggered off—he was already redundant.”
Amanda looked thoughtful, the icy light glinting in her eyes. “So if he wasn’t actually a Tau … did Lisa say whether he qualified as anything else?”
“He was pushing several categories. Almost a none-of-the-above result. But he would have qualified as a Het, if only just.”
I thought about all the half-true stereotypes, fodder for countless stand-up comics and video sitcoms. Wealthy, pot-smoking Taus. Indolent, cheerful Zens. Sex-crazed, bisexual Delts. And stern, efficient Hets, with their complex pecking orders and finely graded hierarchies. Their creased trousers and their businesslike expressions.
All of which was bullshit, but bullshit with a kernel of statistical truth. Most of the stereotypes had emerged from journalistic overstatement of the earliest sociological studies of the Affinities. As a Tau I was in fact a few percentage points more likely to be a regular cannabis user than someone from the general population, and our comparative business acumen was a matter of public record. And it was probably also true that Hets were quantifiably more likely to be overcontrolling, know-it-all dicks.
Which, in the world as we had known it, hardly mattered. All the Affinities shared the same goaclass="underline" to bring together people selected for their mutual compatibility. Hets weren’t all hopeless assholes, or they wouldn’t have been able to leverage their own not-inconsiderable worldly success. (Tau and Het were the top-earning Affinities.) And Het wasn’t a problem for Tau, as long as the Affinities weren’t competing against one another. But that was in the old days, when InterAlia called the shots and made the rules. New rules now.
“It’s the Wild West,” Amanda said. “We need to be a lot more careful. Watch our backs.”
She had talked about this at length with Damian. The general scenario was pretty simple, she said. With the availability of cheap, portable testing, the population of the Affinities was about to explode. And not just in North America and Europe, but in places that had been legally closed to Affinity testing, like Russia and China. And without InterAlia to enforce the rules, non-aligned people were likely to sense their disadvantage and agitate for greater oversight. Whether the Affinities survived would depend on whether we could influence the inevitable legislation. “Because if we don’t,” she said, “we’ll be driven underground, like terrorist cells or something. And given the huge number of people involved? We could be looking at something like civil war.”
“Bullshit,” Trevor said. “Civil war?”
“Of one kind or another. I mean, look at what Tau does for us. TauBourse is like Social Security, and we have a Tau medical network that takes care of us whether we’re insured or not. Now Damian says we need a permanent security force and a fair way of making Affinity rules, so no tranche or sodality feels cheated or left out. That’s an army and a parliament, basically. Those are government functions. And governments tend to be jealous of their power.”
“Sure,” Trevor said, “but even if they pass laws against us, I can’t see Taus taking up arms.”
“Maybe not Tau. Other Affinities might, and that could make life difficult for all of us.”
She didn’t say which other Affinities she had in mind. But the Hets, or some faction among them, had already taken up arms. One Het soldier was dead, his body entrusted to the tidal currents of Georgia Strait, and we had discovered what may have been a Het spy in our midst. If there was a war coming, the first shots had already been fired.
* * *
But there was more than that on Amanda’s mind. She needed to tell us something, and it was something we didn’t want to hear, and both Trevor and I had figured that out. Her attention kept drifting to the ice-covered window, as if she saw something unsettling there.
“It’s all going to change,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been talking about with Damian.”
Back when he was young my stepbrother Geddy used to get what he called “the Sunday night feeling.” Neither of us had much liked school. Friday afternoon was great, the whole inchoate weekend in front of you, and Saturday was also fine, twenty-four hours of distilled freedom. Even Sunday morning was okay, as long as Mama Laura didn’t insist on church, and Sunday afternoon flowed as sweetly as an autumn creek. But by sunset you could feel the ominous weight of the week ahead. The homework you hadn’t finished, the book report you hadn’t written.
I had spent seven years in the Tau Affinity, and it had been the longest, happiest weekend of my life. But suddenly I had the Sunday night feeling.
“We’re like the Lost Boys,” she said. “You know? Peter Pan. But it’s time to grow up.”
Even worse.
“We have to take responsibility for ourselves. Lay down a foundation and build some walls. Damian’s already doing that. And he’s not the only one. He’s been conspicuously successful, but there’s somebody like Damian in almost every tranche. Dozens of them in the Canadian sodality and hundreds in the US, just waiting to be organized. Damian’s calling a meet-up in February, in California, to start discussions. He expects to devote the next few years to creating a Tau political structure.”
“Great,” Trevor said, not quite ironically. “What about us?”
“He still needs us,” Amanda said. “Maybe more than ever.” She turned to face Trevor. “We’re going to need people to organize and run a Tau police force. Damian wants you to be one of them.”
Trev didn’t say anything. He was startled, clearly. Flattered, but also freaked out by the idea. Amanda didn’t wait for an answer. She turned to me.
“You have different skills. Good memory, you can follow instructions, you can improvise if you have to, and you know how to interface with people who aren’t Tau.”
That seemed dubious. I thought of Rachel Ragland. My interface with Rachel had not been a raging success. “Which makes me what?”
“A diplomat,” Amanda said.
“You must be joking.”
“Actually I’m not. But you need to talk to Damian. He can explain it better than I can.”
I said, “And how about you? Does he have plans for you yet?”
She looked at the window again. “I’m going to California with him.”
* * *
Which was how I found myself, long after the end of the party, sitting at the kitchen table telling my troubles to Lisa.
The rest of the tranche had gone home. Those who lived in the house had retired to their rooms. Loretta was upstairs, asleep. But Lisa had always been a night owl. I think she liked the quiet of the hours before dawn, the house restored to order, the dishes washed. She looked tired but content. I told her about what Amanda had said, and about the choice Amanda had made, and Lisa nodded. “Things change,” she said. “I know, that’s terribly trite. A static existence is impossible, and who would want such a thing? But change comes at a price, doesn’t it? And we all pay in full, sooner or later.”
She was probably thinking of Loretta, whose health had been fragile lately. I had come to Lisa for sympathy, but that began to seem like a dickish move on my part. I said, “I’m sorry if I—”