The Affinities (12 page)

*   *   *

At the table Klein became more obviously human. The food was impeccably presented, delivered by poised and professional servants, but Klein ate like someone who lived alone. His chief utensils were fork and fingers, and by the end of the salad course there was an oil-drenched endive clinging to his shirt collar. As he ate he reminisced about his youth, hanging out on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, “back when a secular Jew in Israel was a relatively uncomplicated thing to be.” He elicited a few stories from Damian in return. I had rarely heard Damian talk about his pre-Tau life, but he offered some tales from his days at the University of Toronto. What was really going on, of course, was that the two men were sizing each other up.

Amanda was brave enough to ask Klein whether he had ever applied his own test to himself—did he have an Affinity of his own?

He smiled at the question. “No.”

“You were never curious?”

“Often curious, but I was afraid the knowledge would create a bias. I wanted to remain objective. And at some point it began to seem like a potential conflict of interest, to whatever extent I was capable of influencing InterAlia's policies. Now, of course, it's far too late.”

“Too late to test yourself? Why? There's no age limit, is there?”

“Because I have cancer,” Klein said flatly. “And it's not the kind that can be cured. Multiple metastases. If I were to join a tranche, Miss Mehta, I would only make a hospice of it. And I don't want to do that.”

We sat out an awkward silence. Amanda said, “I'm sorry—”

“Please don't insult me by apologizing.”

“And … I can only speak for my own Affinity, but any Tau tranche would welcome you, any time and under any circumstances. We aren't squeamish about helping each other. Even under extreme circumstances. In fact we're pretty good at it.”

“Of course I know that,” Klein said softly. “Thank you, but it's not what I want.”

A servant took away our plates and came back with four cut-glass bowls, each containing a perfectly formed globe of lemon sorbet with a finger cookie standing in it like the mast of a sailing ship. We stared at them.

Damian tried to steer the conversation back to business. “You must know that if you release the Affinity protocols, there are going to be unpredictable consequences.”

“On the contrary, the consequences are far from unpredictable.
I have predicted them.
But we can talk about it in the morning. I'm tired. You brought what you need for an overnight visit? Then please spend the rest of the evening any way you like. Whatever you need, ask the staff. When you're ready, they'll show you your rooms.”

*   *   *

That night one of Klein's assistants escorted us to our bedrooms, three rooms side by side along a spacious corridor. But we only needed two.

I slept alone. Amanda, as had been her custom lately, slept with Damian.

*   *   *

In the morning the three of us rendezvoused in Klein's large kitchen. He had left instructions for the staff to fix us anything we wanted for breakfast, or we could raid the refrigerator and do our own cooking if we preferred. So we improvised eggs and toast and coffee, after which Damian went for a walk down by the lake. From the big window of the main room Amanda and I caught glimpses of him by the boathouse along the dock, watching the sky in case it started to rain.

Amanda sat where the window framed her. One of the servants told us Klein would be available in an hour or so, and was there anything she could do for us in the meantime?

I asked her to bring me paper and a pencil. “Plain paper, not lined.”

“Making notes?” Amanda asked.

“Sketching.”

The assistant came back with paper and a selection of sharpened pencils and a clipboard.

“Sketching what?”

“You, if it's okay.”

She smiled. “It's been a while since you did that.”

I mumbled something about the light, which really was striking: the clinical fluorescence of the house lights versus the brooding gray clouds behind the window. But yes, it had been a while. The pleasure in this case was in capturing the contrast between Amanda and the turmoil of cloud that framed her, doing it without color, just gray tones. I think she liked the attention, but her eyes kept straying to the window. To Damian where he stood on the dock, waiting and thinking.

The fact was, we both loved Damian. But only Amanda was fucking him.

“Will you show it to me when you're done?”

I said I would. But not
until
it was done. Grammy Fisk had always laughed at how jealously I guarded my work: the wary look, the cupped hand blocking the paper as she passed. She didn't understand that I couldn't share a drawing until I had finished it. Until then, it was mine and
only
mine.

*   *   *

Meir Klein joined Damian down at the dock. We saw them talking as they followed the path back to the house, Damian lagging to accommodate Klein's careful, plodding steps. They came in through a nearby door, and Damian steered Klein into the room where we sat—I think he wanted to make sure Amanda and I heard at least some of what he said.

Puzzlingly, it sounded like a lecture on entomology. Klein was talking about “eusociality,” the ability of some insect species to act cooperatively. Hive insects like bees and ants were the classic example. By comparison, human beings seem like pretty feeble cooperators: we compete with each other, occasionally kill each other when scant resources are at stake. But that's only part of the story. In fact we collaborate even more effectively than insects (who conduct their own wars and mortal combats), and our genius for collaboration has made us uniquely successful as a species. Insect hierarchies are rigid and formal; human hierarchies are fluid and an individual can participate in more than one. The more flexible and layered these multiplex hierarchies, the more successful a human culture tends to be. Cooperation everywhere, built so deeply into our nature that it's almost invisible: all we see are the deplorable exceptions, crime and corruption and oppression.

Literacy, the printing press, high-speed travel, and instantaneous communication: all these technologies had expanded and enhanced the human genius for cooperation, Klein said. “And now we confront a technology that
directly
addresses human eusociality.”

The Affinities, I assumed he meant. But he meant much more than that.

“The Affinities were the first application to emerge from the science of social teleodynamics. But recent modeling suggests that the Affinities are only one of many possible forms of enhanced human collaboration—that there exists an entire untapped phase space of potential social networks.”

Klein paused for breath, and Damian took the opportunity to ask, “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not intrinsically, but there are two potential problems. One fundamental, one practical.

“The fundamental problem is that cooperation is a blade with two edges. Sometimes we collaborate in order to give our own group an advantage over others. Think of it as predatory collaboration. Predatory collaboration can also be technologically enhanced, which means short-term gain for some but a net loss of collaborative efficiency. It can also lead to a kind of arms race, in which predatory collaboration becomes a requisite for any group's survival. In that case, the results can be bloody.

“The practical problem is that we're opening the door to a cascade, a torrent, a tsunami of cultural and economic and political change. No one is prepared for this! Existing institutions could fail massively. Wholly novel loyalties and systems of loyalty may arise. And without constraints, we could be looking at a state of perpetual war between competing sodalities.”

Tranche warfare,
I thought, but the joke didn't seem funny.

“Worse,” Klein said, “this comes at a critical juncture in human history. You know the problems we face, from climate change to economic inequality to world hunger. Problems that are easy to name but almost impossible to address, because they require a kind of global collaborative response our species hasn't yet mastered. InterAlia sold the Affinities as a commercial product, a way of making friends, like a dating service or a social club. But they were always more than that. Designedly so. Because they concentrate human collaborative potential, they are a potential avenue to the kind of work that might redeem this battered planet. But they can only become that if they remain structurally sound, within the framework I created for InterAlia.”

“If you publish your research,” Damian said, “aren't you tearing down that framework?”

“On the contrary, I hope to preserve it.” Klein had begun to pace, as if some kind of crackling energy had percolated through his frail body. “The crisis is
already
inevitable. The corporate model of the Affinities is failing. I was the first to do this work, but other social dynamicists are following a similar path. Much more would already have been published if not for InterAlia's attempts to suppress it. So, listen: my plan is this. I mean to release my own key research within the next six months. From what I've seen in journals and on the Internet, much of the knowledge will by that time already be an open secret. InterAlia believes it can contain the leaks that have already occurred, but InterAlia is mistaken. Either way, I want you to have the best available data in advance of its release. By
you,
of course I mean the Tau Affinity.”

Damian blinked. I suspected he was having a hard time processing all this. I knew I was. “Why Tau?”

“Without InterAlia each Affinity must become self-governing, and some particular Affinity will have to assume the role of
primus inter pares
—first among equals.”

“You think Tau can do that?”

“Already you've done more for yourselves than any other Affinity. You've generated sturdy, complex systems of mutual support. You've created institutions like TauBourse. Your members have made statistically unprecedented gains in productivity and net wealth, and these benefits have been distributed more or less equitably across the membership. Tau is a template for what the Affinities can become—what they
must
become, if they're to survive the approaching crisis.”

It was Amanda who spoke up: “But what exactly are we supposed to
do
?”

“Master your own Affinity, and you become a model for the others. I can help you do that. Beyond that, you'll have to make your own choices about how to proceed.”

*   *   *

I went on sketching as Klein talked, almost as a nervous reflex. Amanda was no longer posing, and that made her a more interesting subject.

The first crude outline had emphasized the contrast of her thoughtful eyes and her veiled smile, like a dappling of cloud and sun. There was a playfulness in her that was both deeply attractive and deeply Tau: the playfulness that comes of liberation from convention and misunderstanding. We had never been exclusive lovers, and although we inevitably cycled back to each other we had spent plenty of time in other beds. It was one of the small miracles Tau made possible. Our tranche wasn't utopia, there had been episodes of jealousy among members, and I wasn't a complete stranger to that emotion myself—but as Taus we knew how to comfort and distract one another when we needed comfort and distraction. I was only trivially (and, I told myself,
temporarily
) disappointed that Amanda and Damian had become lovers.

And I wasn't surprised. My relationship with Amanda was all art and
eros
, but Damian engaged an aspect of herself she seldom showed me: her deep political commitment to Tau. For Amanda, Tau wasn't only an identity, it was a cause. She had fled her birth family with all its dour immigrant aspirations to respectability, but her sense of duty was only repressed, not really rejected. She had reassigned it to her Affinity.

And Damian shared that intensity of purpose. She was drawn to him as if to a flame, and it was undeniable that he burned pretty brightly. He was one of the circle of motivated and scary-smart Taus who had turned Tau into a financial powerhouse, lifted Taus out of poverty, and bootstrapped Tau businesses across the continent. He was a sodality rep now, which meant he associated with like-minded Taus from every part of the world. He didn't have a rank or title—we weren't like Hets, who loved formal hierarchies—but he had become one of the handful of North American Taus who could speak on behalf of us all. When Damian began to devote himself to working full-time for Tau he had recruited assistants from his own and local tranches, and Amanda had leapt at the opportunity to work alongside him. And so had I, though my motives may not have been quite so pure.

So my sketch of Amanda against the window became a sketch of Amanda paying rapt attention to Damian and Meir Klein. I had to take some of the light out of her face and deepen the shadows, which made it a better drawing but a less satisfying one. She looked past the border of the page uneasily, almost as if the clouds had moved indoors. Suddenly I wanted the earlier version back, but there was no retrieving it. When I blurred the lines to soften them it was as if she began to disappear.

*   *   *

In the end Klein gave us a memory key containing a few megabytes of data, which Damian accepted with due gravity.

Then Klein took a call from his lawyers. Apparently InterAlia had accused him of a breach of confidentiality regarding some remarks he had made at a conference in Shanghai last year. Klein's legal team was coming up to the house for a conference, so we were promptly and formally dismissed. He would be in touch again soon, he said.

He said good-bye to us at the driveway. He shook my hand and Amanda's and beamed at us benevolently, but I was startled by how small he suddenly seemed, surrounded by servants but without real family or friends.