The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson Page B

hit.”
    So I walked back to the yellow Toyota. The woman was sitting inside, the door open. She watched as I approached, her skinny arms crossed and her lips pressed tight. The child was in back, a pair of solemn eyes under a drooping orange rain hat. The girl was dressed for the weather, but the mom, if she was the girl’s mom, wore a brown woolen sweater that looked like the hide of a sodden Airedale. I asked if everyone was all right.
    She eyed me coolly. “More or less,” she said. “Felt the breeze when you went past. But no damage done.”
    â€œThat’s great.”
    â€œI called CAA before you came around the bend. I think my transmission’s fucked up. That’s why we stopped. Been here twenty minutes. You got somebody hurt back there? I already dialed 911.”
    â€œNo, we’re okay.”
    â€œYou sure? You keep rubbing your shoulder.”
    â€œSprained it, maybe.” I looked down at her feet. “But you’re bleeding.”
    She followed my eyes. Then she hiked up one leg of her jeans, revealing a bloody gash along her calf. “Jesus, I didn’t even feel it. I mean when you went past it felt like the car maybe just brushed my leg, but I guess something caught it…”
    Probably the rear bumper. It had lost a lug where it met the wheel well, and the edge stuck out from the frame. “You need to put pressure on that,” I said.
    She rummaged in her purse for a pack of Kleenex. I watched her face while she dabbed at the blood. I wanted to judge her sincerity, though it was impossible to read the motives of a non-Tau the way I could read a Tau. Of course, the woman could have been a Tau herself … but my intuition said not.
    The injury to her leg wasn’t anywhere near serious, but it might be grounds for an insurance claim if she sensed an opportunity to exact a settlement. “Don’t worry,” she said, apparently reading me more acutely than I was reading her, “it wasn’t your fault. Though you guys took the curve at a pretty good clip.”
    â€œMy name’s Adam Fisk.”
    â€œI’m Rachel. Rachel Ragland. In the back, that’s Suze.”
    â€œHi, Suze.”
    Suze was maybe six or seven years old, as blond as her mother was dark. She ducked away from the window, shy but smiling.
    Rachel said, “Is your driver really okay?”
    I looked back to where Amanda was tending Damian. “Just a bump. But I was the one driving.”
    â€œNo you weren’t.”
    â€œYeah, actually, I was.”
    â€œUh-huh. So is that what I’m supposed to tell the cops—that you were the one driving?”
    â€œWell, yeah. Because I was .”
    Rachel rolled her eyes. “Okay then,” she said. “That’s what we’ll tell them.”
    *   *   *
    Damian’s nose had bled prodigiously—he looked like he was wearing a rust-colored goatee—but he was sitting up by the time I got back to the car. “The EMS guys will probably take me in for observation if they think I have a concussion—”
    â€œThey will, and you might.”
    â€œâ€”and I don’t want this stuck in some hospital locker.” He gave Amanda the thumb drive containing Meir Klein’s data, and she tucked it into her purse.
    Amanda turned to me. “So what’s the deal with the other vehicle?”
    I told her about Rachel Ragland.
    â€œYou think she’ll be a problem?”
    â€œDoesn’t look like it.”
    â€œYou think she has an Affinity?”
    Sometimes you can tell. Some people liked to advertise their affiliation, and InterAlia had licensed the rights to market lapel pins, tattoos, t-shirts. Rachel displayed none of those obvious signs, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t a Tau, either tested or potential, but beyond that I couldn’t say.
    â€œWorse luck for us,” Amanda said.
    â€œNot necessarily. She seems reasonable.