It was possible but not likely that a Het team might follow us to Schuyler. I had good personal reasons to visit the town. Sure, there would be a sitting congressman in Schuyler at the same time. Yes, that congressman would soon be casting a potentially decisive vote on the Griggs-Haskell bill. And yes, I would be meeting that congressman face-to-face.

But none of that was surprising, given that the congressman was my brother.

*   *   *

On the road to Schuyler I took one call and made another.

The call I took was from Damian Levay, from the Laguna Beach property he shared with Amanda. I docked the phone to the dashboard port and tilted it toward me. Damian frowned out of the tiny screen, and beyond him I could just make out the suggestion of a balcony railing and the blue sweep of the Pacific in early-morning sunlight. I told him we were on our way to Schuyler. He said, “I just want to make sure you’re okay with this.”

“If Jenny’s okay with it, I’m okay with it.”

“That’s good. But things are never really simple, though, are they? When it comes to family.”

He said the word family with a faintly disparaging emphasis. Non-Tau family, he meant. Biological family. Family as tether.

“It’s not a one-way deal. She helps us, we help her.”

“If we succeed, you probably won’t be going back to Schuyler for any more family reunions.”

Meaning I would probably never speak to my brother or my father again, after this weekend. But it wasn’t as if we spoke much now. It wasn’t as if I stood to lose much in the way of happy familial intimacy. Tranche or family: I wasn’t the first Tau to face the choice.

And Damian knew that. There was something else on his mind. It wasn’t about my family, it was about me. Damian was a sodality leader now, and he had assigned me diplomatic duties because he believed I had a knack for dealing with non-Taus, a little extra dollop of empathy or something: supposedly, the trait showed up in my Affinity-test numbers. But that could cut two ways. A little sympathy for those outside the tribe was a useful thing, as long as it didn’t generate dangerous mixed loyalties.

But I understood what I was getting into, and I reassured him of that. Going back to Schuyler wasn’t “going home.” I had just one real home, the home I retreated to whenever possible, a house in Toronto (Lisa’s house, since Loretta’s death last year), where there was a room set aside for me, folks who genuinely loved me, no simmering rivalries, no hidden sexual violence … “I just hope what we do this weekend makes a difference.”

“It will,” Damian said. Then he looked away from the screen and looked back. “Somebody wants to say hi.”

Amanda.

The last few years hadn’t much changed her. The same hair, shiny as the wings of a perfect black bird; same flawless skin, the color of coffee with cream; same sharp, observant gaze. Time had left subtle marks, ghosts of expressions that had lingered long enough to set, a hardness of purpose where there had been a playful openness, resolve where there had been uncertainty. But the smile she gave me was eternal. “Hi, Adam,” she said.

We hadn’t talked much since her marriage to Damian. Not out of any awkwardness, just lack of opportunity. She had moved to California with Damian; I had stayed in Toronto. She was a sodality leader, I was just a functionary. She had made it clear, as had Damian, that although the marriage solemnized a real commitment, it didn’t mean she and I were finished. But we saw each other far less often than we once had. And to be honest, I was a little uncomfortable about sleeping with a married woman. Not because the relationship was immoral but because it was brutally asymmetrical.

So we said pleasant and inconsequential things to each other for a couple of minutes and finished the conversation with smiles that were genuine but seemed weirdly distanced from the present crisis. Then Damian got back on the line.

“One more thing. And this is for Trevor as much as it is for you. We’ve got information that there’s a Het security detail en route to Schuyler.”

I relayed this news to Trev, who gave me a look signifying something like: “Whoa—really? Why?”

“I can’t tell you anything more than that. It might be they want to keep an eye on Congressman Fisk prior to the vote. Or it could be more sinister. So keep your guard up, right?”

Right.

*   *   *

Getting closer to Schuyler, as farmland gave way to scrubby forest and outcrops of glacial debris, I called my father’s house.

A voice call, not a video call. Neither Mama Laura nor my father believed in paying good money for a little extra bandwidth. The last time I’d been there, the phone had been a landline with a clunky handset. My father carried a contemporary phone for business purposes, but he had never given me the number.

“Adam!” Mama Laura exclaimed. “So good to hear your voice! Where are you?”

“Just a few miles out of town, actually.”

“Wonderful! Your old room is all ready for you. You’re not the first to arrive—Aaron and Jenny aren’t here yet, but can you guess who is?”

“Geddy?” I hoped it was Geddy. I hadn’t seen Geddy for years, but he still called from time to time.

“Yes, Geddy! And he brought a friend!”

“Oh?”

“A girl friend.” I could hear the pause she put between the two words: she wasn’t sure whether the girl friend was in fact a girlfriend. “Her name is Rebecca. Rebecca Drabinsky. She’s from New York City, one of those places in New York you read about, I don’t know, Brooklyn? Queens? I forget.”

This was Mama Laura’s way of telling me two things. One, Geddy’s new friend was Jewish; and two, Mama Laura was okay with that. Which suggested to me that my father wasn’t okay with it, and that Mama Laura wanted to get her own opinion on record before any controversy erupted.

“I look forward to meeting her.”

“She’s quite a character! But I like her. Can you still find your way to the house or do you need directions?”

“I could find it in my sleep.”

“That’s good. I can’t wait to see you! And I can tell you Geddy’s very excited, too.”

And still not a word about my father. “What time do you want people arriving for dinner?”

“You’re welcome anytime. Say five o’clock if you want to freshen up first?”

“Five it is.”

I ended the call and Trevor drove a few more miles. We passed what I recognized as the quarry road, winding into a patch of wild scrubland where you could break your leg tripping over glacial till or stumbling into some ancient kettle hole buried in the duff. “Family,” Trevor said philosophically. “Remember what Robert Frost called it? The place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

“Doesn’t always work that way,” I said.

*   *   *

We approached the outskirts of Schuyler. There was the usual strip of highway-exit businesses—gas stations and fast-food franchises—and then a couple of motels, sparsely populated. We could have stopped there, but Trev wanted accommodations closer to town. That left two obvious choices, a Motel 6 just off the main drag or a Holiday Inn a little farther north. Trev started to pull into the Motel 6 but paused before making the turn. We could see most of the parking lot in front of us, cars fronting a two-story row of rooms with doors painted Pepto-Bismol pink. “Huh,” he said, and pulled back into traffic.

“What?”

“You see that? In the lot? Four black Chevy SUVs, identical models.”

“So?”

“Those are Het cars, bet you any money. And I’d rather not share accommodations with Het enforcers if I can help it.”

So he registered at the Holiday Inn. He talked to the concierge about arranging a rental car, and I took the vehicle we had come in. Alone on the drive to Mama Laura’s, I turned on the radio and tuned in a news site. The announcer was using solemn words like “international crisis” and “ultimatum,” but nobody had actually nuked anybody. Yet.