No Dominion

– Say what?

– Her plan. She’s, you know, doing her own thing completely separate from our gig. Mind you, man, there was a time, not too long ago, there was a time she would have been onto us from the start. But she’s gotten too narrow-minded, too focused on that whole racism thing. How’s that supposed to work? How’s that not like willfully blinding yourself to the big picture? She just doesn’t see the whole anymore. Anyway, what she thinks is, she thinks she’s letting you go to come down here to rock my boat.

– Letting me go? Lady got a stomach full of bullets.

– Uh-huh, I hear you.

– I pumped her full of anathema.

– Yeah.

– Terry, I bit her fucking eye out.

– Sure, sure, I know.

– She did not let me go.

– Well, you know, like I said, it’s complicated. And you shouldn’t feel bad about the way you handled yourself, but, yeah, she let you go.

– Bull.

– Let’s just agree on that one for now, man. The real point is that she’s so blinded by her narrow mindedness, she can’t see that letting you go is not gonna rock my boat, it’s gonna rock her whole world. ’Cause she just handed you the evidence Digga’ll use to take care of Papa. Now, did she know Papa’s man would be lame enough to shoot and nod off in her basement? No. But that’s just a bonus to the fact that you have witnessed the whole scene up there. Digga is all set up now to confront Predo about the anathema in a public forum. And once public pressure is on Predo to deal with this, with the reemergence of anathema on his watch, he can publicly reprimand Vandewater and strip her of some of her powers. Curb her independence and install some of his own people up in the Morningside Settlement. And that leaves the Society’s needs. Digga puts you on a train. Truth is, he wanted you up there a little longer to corroborate some of the details of what was going down. You wanting to roll so soon threw things a little, but we got it back on track. Predo cleared the rails. I held Tom off until you could confront The Count. The Count played his scene for you. And I sent Hurley along with Tom to make sure you both ended up back here in one piece. After that, it’s just a matter of The Count doing his thing and waiting for you to chime in with the truth. Or, you know, the truth as you know it to be. Which is kinda, when you get right down to it, all the truth ever is anyway.

He lifts his hands from the table and drops them back down.

– And that’s how things work sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes. Believe me, you don’t want to be trying to keep all those balls in the air too often. But sometimes the stars align. And sometimes, this picture we’re trying to put together, this image of the infected in the world, sometimes it takes a different kind of cooperation than most people want to know about. It’s not that people don’t believe in what they say they believe in, it’s just that sometimes you need to bend so you don’t break. The weather isn’t always what you want it to be, Joe. Sometimes, got to make it yourself. Got to make the rain to get the crops to grow. That’s just pragmatic.

I think about Tom, the true believer, his final legacy being that he was a spy.

– That it is.

I look around the room.

– And Lydia?

He shakes his head.

– No way, man. Lydia is pure. She, you just know she could never take this kind of scene. Moral absolutes, that’s her thing. It’s right or it’s wrong. No, Lydia played her part, but she didn’t know she was.

– Where is she now?

– She’s out rallying her people. They’re, you know, pretty neutral as far as intra-Clan issues go. We thought it’d be a good idea if they kind of helped get the word out. Make sure, I don’t know, that the message being heard is the right one. That kind of thing.

– And what’s the message?

He raises his shoulders, lets them drop.

– Well, you know, man, you were here. We’re not really trying to hide anything.

– What’s the message, Terry?

– The message is, Everything’s cool. There was some trouble, but now it’s all cool.

– What kind of trouble?

– Well, we thought it best to leave out all the Coalition stuff. That kind of thing’s just gonna stir up bad feelings. So, you know, attempted coup. Not pretty, but an internal matter. No hard feelings to anyone or anything. Something that happens in any revolutionary movement.

– Sure, sure, just the price of doing business.

– The price of politics, anyway.

I fit a cigarette to the corner of my mouth.

– Yeah, politics. Politically speaking, you came out of this in pretty good shape.

– Well, I don’t know if I’d say that. Narrowly averting a coup. Discovering a Coalition plot at the heart of our Clan. Losing one of our highest placed members. I don’t know that that adds up to a good day for the Society and all.

I light up.

– Yeah, taken that way, I guess maybe not. However.

I look for a place to drop the spent match, settle on the floor.

– Taken the other way, it worked out pretty well.

Terry bends and picks up the match.

– What way is that, Joe?

– The way where the truth is involved.

He walks to the sink and drops the match.

– Well, it’s a realpolitik world. The truth doesn’t always will out, you know.

He goes to the fridge.

– Tell me, Terry.

He opens the fridge, back to me, lips zipped.

– Was this the way you had it figured from the top? I mean, when I came wandering in here looking for a gig and you sent me looking for the anathema, was this the way you had it in mind?

He looks at me over his shoulder.

– You need some?

I flex my hands, the dry white skin over my knuckles cracks.

– I’m not thirsty right now.

He sighs.

– You’re a better man than I.

He comes back to the table, a pint of blood in his hand.

– Me, I need a drink.

He takes a penknife from his pocket and pokes a hole in the bag.

– I need it something fierce.

He takes a drink.

I blow smoke.

He points at it.

– That’s not a habit you should be getting into, smoking in here. It’s special circumstances tonight, but in general, not the way we do it.

I keep smoking.

He nods.

– Joe, it did get a little more complicated than I thought it might. I mean, you heard the story. I’m, you know,