The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson Page A

is it something more sinister—a counter-fellowship, a church stripped of all divinity, a congregation with nothing to worship but itself?

    â€” Christianity Today , online article, “Fellowship Without Faith”

    In the debate over whether the Affinities are making people happy, we risk losing sight of the fact that the Affinities are making people money.

    â€”Barrons.com, “The Benefits of Membership”

 
    CHAPTER 6
    This happened seven years later, in southern British Columbia, on a two-lane road connecting a resort town called Perry’s Point to the Okanagan Highway. Three of us in a borrowed car, heading for Vancouver. Damian Levay was driving. Amanda sat up front, next to him. I sat in back, watching pine boughs whip past the rain-fogged windows.
    Wet blacktop, a winding road, steep grades. Amanda had twice asked Damian to slow down, but he had eased off the accelerator only marginally. He was carrying several gigs of contraband data in his shirt pocket, and he knew there were people who would have liked to relieve him of it. So we came around a curve in fading daylight at an unwise speed, and when the headlights picked out a yellow Toyota parked on the verge Damian swerved to avoid it. It was a fraction of a second later that he saw the woman and the child crossing in front of us.
    The rear of the car flailed as he braked, and although he avoided hitting either of them he risked sliding into a skid that would sweep them both down a steep embankment. So he stepped off the brake and twisted the wheel, which sent us hurtling into the forested slope to the left of the road. I caught a freeze-frame glimpse of the woman’s face, inches from the window as we passed: big eyes, pale skin, a cascade of dark, wet hair. Damian braked again and managed to bleed off a little momentum before the car sideswiped a lodgepole pine hard enough to pop the airbags.
    The next thing I was aware of was the smell of hot fabric and talcum powder. My face throbbed and my right shoulder felt as if I had tackled a concrete block. I opened my eyes and looked for Amanda.
    She was up front, startled but not hurt. She looked to her left and said, “Damian?”
    Damian was splayed over the steering wheel. He raised his head when she called his name. There was blood around his nose and mouth. “M’okay,” he said.
    Amanda leaned in and switched off the engine. Her door was jammed against the trunk of the tree we had hit. She looked back at me. “Adam, help me get him out.”
    I managed to climb out of the car into the drenching rain. I opened the driver’s door, hooked Damian’s left arm over my shoulder, and lifted him out. He found his feet but had to brace himself against the hood. He put his hand to his head and said, “Dizzy.”
    Amanda scooted out after him, and since the car seemed in no danger of bursting into flame—the only obvious damage was a trashed side panel—we helped Damian lie down across the backseat.
    â€œHe wasn’t driving,” Amanda said tersely.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œListen. We’ll have highway cops here pretty soon. If Damian gets caught up in any kind of litigation, it’ll make us vulnerable. So I’ll clean him up, and when the police or EMS get here I’ll say I was at the wheel. You back me up, okay?”
    Damian had the future of the entire Tau Affinity—maybe the future of all the Affinities—in his pocket (literally!), and he’d had a couple of drinks with Meir Klein, which could complicate matters if the cops assayed his blood alcohol. “Okay,” I said. “But I was driving, not you.”
    She thought about it a moment and nodded. Amanda had a couple of DUIs on her record from her pre-Tau days. I had a clean record, I hadn’t been drinking, and of the three of us my work was the least critical. “Fine,” she said. “And maybe you should go talk to that woman we almost