The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Can you?” he asks. I hear the doubt in his voice. Once I would have heard only something other than happiness and I would have been afraid he was angry with me. I am glad not to be like that anymore. I wonder why he has that doubt, since he knows the kind of work we can do and knows I live independently.

  “I can go to the Center,” I say.

  “Maybe that would be better,” he says. A noise starts at his end of the telephone; his voice speaks, but I think it is not for me. “Turn that down; I’m on the phone.” I hear another voice, an unhappy voice, but I can’t hear the words clearly. Then Mr. Aldrin’s voice, louder, in my ear: “Lou, if you have any trouble finding someone… if you want me to help, please let me know. I want the best for you; you know that.”

  I do not know that. I know that Mr. Aldrin has been our manager and he has always been pleasant and patient with us and he has provided things for us that make our work easier, but I do not know that he wants the best for us. How would he know what that is? Would he want me to marry Marjory? What does he know of any of us outside work?

  “Thank you,” I say, a safe conventional thing to say at almost any occasion. Dr. Fornum would be proud.

  “Right, then,” he says. I try not to let my mind tangle on those words that have no meaning in themselves at this time. It is a conventional thing to say; he is coming to the end of the conversation. “Call me if you need any help. Let me give you my home number…” He rattles off a number; my phone system captures it, though I will not forget. Numbers are easy and this one is especially so, being a series of primes, though he probably has never noticed it. “Good-bye, Lou,” he says at the end. “Try not to worry.”

  Trying is not doing. I say good-bye, hang up the phone, and return to my noodles, now slightly soggy. I do not mind soggy noodles; they are soft and soothing. Most people do not like peanut butter on noodles, but I do.

  I think about Mr. Crenshaw wanting us to take the treatment. I do not think he can make us do that. There are laws about us and medical research. I do not know exactly what the laws say, but I do not think they would let him make us do it. Mr. Aldrin should know more about this than I do; he is a manager. So he must think Mr. Crenshaw can do it or will try to do it.

  It is hard to go to sleep.

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, CAMERON TELLS ME THAT MR. ALDRIN called him, too. He called everyone. Mr. Crenshaw has not said anything to any of us yet. I have that uncomfortable sick feeling in my stomach, like before a test that I do not expect to pass. It is a relief to get on the computer and go to work.

  Nothing happens all day except that I finish the first half of the current project and the test runs all come out clean. After lunch, Cameron tells me that the local autism society has posted a meeting at the Center about the research paper. He is going. He thinks we should all go. I had not planned anything this Saturday other than cleaning my car, and I go to the Center almost every Saturday morning anyway.

  On Saturday morning, I walk over to the Center. It is a long walk, but it is not hot this early in the morning and it makes my legs feel good. Besides, there is a brick sidewalk on the way, with two colors of brick—tan and red—laid in interesting patterns. I like to see it.

  At the Center, I see not only people from my work group but also those who are dispersed elsewhere in the city. Some, mostly the older ones, are in adult day care or sheltered workshops with a lot of supervision and live in group homes. Stefan is a professor at the smaller university here; he does research in some area of biology. Mai is a professor at the larger university; her field is in some overlap of mathematics and biophysics. Neither of them comes to meetings often. I have noticed that the people who are most impaired come most often; the young people who are like Joe Lee almost never show up.

  I chat with some of the others I know and like, some from work and some from elsewhere, like Murray, who works for a big accounting firm. Murray wants to hear about my fencing; he studies aikido and also hasn’t told his psychiatrist about it. I know that Murray has heard about the new treatment, or for what reason would he be here today, but I think he does not want to talk about it. He doesn’t work with us; he may not know it is near human trials. Maybe he wants it and wishes it were. I do not want to ask him that, not today.

  The Center isn’t just for autistic people; we see a lot of people with various other disabilities, too, especially on weekends. I do not know what all of the disabilities are. I do not want to think about all the things that can be wrong with someone.

  Some are friendly and speak to us, and some do not. Emmy comes right up to me today. She is nearly always there. She is shorter than I am, with straight dark hair and thick glasses. I do not know why she has not had eye surgery. It is not polite to ask. Emmy always seems angry. Her eyebrows bunch together, and she has tight little wads of muscle at the corners of her mouth, and her mouth turns down. “You have a girlfriend,” she says.

  “No,” I say.

  “Yes. Linda told me. She’s not one of us.”

  “No,” I say again. Marjory isn’t my girlfriend—yet—and I do not want to talk about her to Emmy. Linda should not have told Emmy anything, and certainly not that. I did not tell Linda Marjory was my girlfriend because she is not. It was not right.

  “Where you go to play with swords,” Emmy says. “There’s a girl—”

  “She is not a girl,” I say. “She is a woman, and she is not my girlfriend.” Yet, I think. I feel heat on my neck, thinking of Marjory and the look on her face last week.

  “Linda says she is. She’s a spy, Lou.”

  Emmy rarely uses people’s names; when she says my name it feels like a slap on the arm. “What do you mean, ‘spy’?”

  “She works at the university. Where they do that project, you know.” She glares at me, as if I were doing the project. She means the research group on developmental disabilities. When I was a child, my parents took me there for evaluation and for three years I went to the special class. Then my parents decided that the group was more interested in doing research papers to get grant money than in helping children, so they put me in another program, at the regional clinic. It is the policy of our local society to require researchers to disclose their identity; we do not allow them to attend our meetings.

  Emmy works at the university herself, as a custodian, and I suppose this is how she knows Marjory works there.

  “Lots of people work at the university,” I say. “Not all are in the research group.”

  “She is a spy, Lou,” Emmy says again. “She is only interested in your diagnosis, not in you as a person.”

  I feel a hollow opening inside me; I am sure that Marjory is not a researcher, but not that sure.

  “To her you are a freak,” Emmy says. “A subject.” She made subject sound obscene, if I understand obscene. Nasty. A mouse in a maze, a monkey in a cage. I think about the new treatment; the people who take it first will be subjects, just like the apes they tried it on first.

  “That’s not true,” I say. I can feel the prickling of sweat under my arms, on my neck, and the faint tremor that comes when I feel threatened. “But anyway, she is not my girlfriend.”

  “I’m glad you have that much sense,” Emmy says.

  I go on to the meeting because if I left the Center Emmy would talk to the others about Marjory and me. It is hard to listen to the speaker, who is talking about the research protocol and its implications. I hear and do not hear what he says; I notice when he says something I have not heard before, but I do not pay much attention. I can read the posted speech on the Center Web site later. I was not thinking about Marjory until Emmy said that about her, but now I cannot stop thinking about Marjory.

  Marjory likes me. I am sure she likes me. I am sure she likes me as myself, as Lou who fences with the group, as Lou she asked to come to the airport with her that Wednesday night. Lucia said Marjory liked me. Lucia does not lie.

  But there is liking and liking. I like ham, as a food. I do not care what the ham thinks when I
bite into it. I know that ham doesn’t think, so it does not bother me to bite into it. Some people will not eat meat because the animals it came from were once alive and maybe had feelings and thoughts, but this does not bother me once they are dead. Everything eaten was alive once, saving a few grams of minerals, and a tree might have thoughts and feelings if we knew how to access them.

  What if Marjory likes me as Emmy says—as a thing, a subject, the equivalent of my bite of ham? What if she likes me more than some other research subject because I am quiet and friendly?

  I do not feel quiet and friendly. I feel like hitting someone.

  The counselor at the meeting does not say anything we have not already read on-line. He cannot explain the method; he does not know where someone would go to apply to be in the study. He does not say that the company I work for has bought up the research. Maybe he does not know. I do not say anything. I am not sure Mr. Aldrin is right about that.

  After the meeting the others want to stay and talk about the new process, but I leave quickly. I want to go home and think about Marjory without Emmy around. I do not want to think about Marjory being a researcher; I want to think about her sitting beside me in the car. I want to think about her smell, and the lights in her hair, and even the way she fights with a rapier.

  It is easier to think about Marjory while I am cleaning out my car. I untie the sheepskin seat pad and shake it out. No matter how careful I am, there are always things caught in it, dust and threads and—today— a paper clip. I do not know where that came from. I lay it on the front of the car and sweep the seats with a little brush, then vacuum the floor. The noise of the vacuum hurts my ears, but it is quicker than sweeping and less dust gets up my nose. I clean the inside of the windshield, being careful to go all the way into the corners, then clean the mirrors. Stores sell special cleaners for cars, but they all smell very bad and make me feel sick, so I just use a damp rag.

  I put the sheepskin back on the seat and tie it snugly in place. Now my car is all clean for Sunday morning. Even though I take the bus to church, I like to think of my car sitting clean in its Sunday clothes on Sunday.

  I TAKE MY SHOWER QUICKLY, NOT THINKING ABOUT MARJORY, and then I go to bed and think of her. She is moving, in my thoughts, always moving and yet always still. Her face expresses itself more clearly to me than most faces. The expressions stay long enough that I can interpret them. When I fall asleep, she is smiling.

  Chapter Four

  FROM THE STREET TOM WATCHED MARJORY SHAW AND Don Poiteau walk across the yard. Lucia thought Marjory was becoming attached to Lou Arrendale, but here she was walking with Don. Granted, Don had grabbed her gear bag from her, but—if she didn’t like him, wouldn’t she take it back?

  He sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. He loved the sport of fencing, loved having people over, but the constant burden of the interpersonal intrigues of the group exhausted him more as he got older. He wanted his and Lucia’s home to be a place where people grew into their potential, physical and social, but sometimes it seemed he was stuck with a yardful of permanent adolescents. Sooner or later, they all came to him with their complaints, their grudges, their hurt feelings.

  Or they dumped on Lucia. Mostly the women did that. They sat down beside her, pretending an interest in her needlework or her pictures, and poured out their troubles. He and Lucia spent hours talking about what was going on, who needed which kind of support, how best to help without taking on too much responsibility.

  As Don and Marjory came closer, Tom could see that she was annoyed. Don, as usual, was oblivious, talking fast, swinging her bag in his enthusiasm for what he was saying. Case in point, Tom thought. Before the night was out, he was sure he’d hear what Don had done to annoy Marjory and from Don he’d hear that Marjory wasn’t understanding enough.

  “He has to have his stuff in exactly the same place every time, can’t put it anywhere else,” Don was saying as he and Marjory came within earshot.

  “It’s tidy,” Marjory said. She sounded prissy, which meant she was more than just annoyed. “Do you object to tidy?”

  “I object to obsessive,” Don said. “You, my lady, exhibit a healthy flexibility in sometimes parking on this side of the street and sometimes on that and wearing different clothes. Lou wears the same clothes every week—clean, I’ll give him that, but the same—and this thing he has about where to store his gear…”

  “You put it in the wrong place and Tom made you move it, didn’t he?” Marjory said.

  “Because Lou would be upset,” Don said, sounding sulky. “It’s not fair—”

  Tom could tell Marjory wanted to yell at Don. So did he. But yelling at Don never seemed to do any good. Don’d had an earnest, hardworking girlfriend who put eight years of her life into parenting him, and he was still the same.

  “I like the place tidy, too,” Tom said, trying to keep the sting out of his voice. “It’s much easier for everyone when we know where to find each person’s gear. Besides, leaving things all over the place could be considered just as obsessive as insisting on having the same place.”

  “C’mon, Tom; forgetful and obsessive are opposites.” He didn’t even sound annoyed, just amused, as if Tom were an ignorant boy. Tom wondered if Don acted that way at work. If he did, it would explain his checkered employment history.

  “Don’t blame Lou for my rules,” Tom said. Don shrugged and went into the house to get his equipment.

  A few minutes of peace, before things started… Tom sat down beside Lucia, who had begun her stretches, and reached for his toes. It used to be easy. Marjory sat on Lucia’s other side and leaned forward, trying to touch her forehead to her knees.

  “Lou should be here tonight,” Lucia said. She gave Marjory a sideways look.

  “I wondered if I’d bothered him,” Marjory said. “Asking him to come with me to the airport.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lucia said. “I’d have said he was very pleased indeed. Did anything happen?”

  “No. We picked up my friend; I dropped Lou back here. That was all. Don said something about his gear—”

  “Oh, Tom made him pick up lots of the gear, and Don was going to just shove it in the racks anyhow. Tom made him do it right. As many times as he’s seen it done, he ought to have the way of it by now, but Don… he just will not learn. Now that he’s not with Helen anymore, he’s really backsliding into the slapdash boy we had years back. I wish he’d grow up.”

  Tom listened without joining in. He knew the signs: any moment now Lucia would tackle Marjory about her feelings for Lou and for Don, and he wanted to be far away when that happened. He finished stretching and stood up just as Lou came around the corner of the house.

  AS HE CHECKED THE LIGHTS AND MADE A FINAL SWEEP OF THE area for possible hazards that might cause injury, Tom watched Lou stretching… methodical as always, thorough as always. Some people might think Lou was dull, but Tom found him endlessly fascinating. Thirty years before, he might well never have made it in the ordinary way; fifty years before, he would have spent his life in an institution. But improvements in early intervention, in teaching methods, and in computer-assisted sensory integration exercises had given him the ability to find good employment, live independently, deal with the real world on near-equal terms.

  A miracle of adaptation and also, to Tom, a little sad. Younger people than Lou, born with the same neurological deficit, could be completely cured with gene therapy in the first two years of life. Only those whose parents refused the treatment had to struggle, as Lou had done, with the strenuous therapies Lou had mastered. If Lou had been younger, he’d not have suffered. He might be normal, whatever that meant.

  Yet here he was, fencing. Tom thought of the jerky, uneven movements Lou had made when he first began—it had seemed, for the longest time, that Lou’s fencing could be only a parody of the real thing. At each stage of development, he’d had the same slow, difficult start and slow, difficult progression… from foil to épée, from épée t
o rapier, from single blade to foil and dagger, épée and dagger, rapier and dagger, and so on.

  He had mastered each by sheer effort, not by innate talent. Yet now that he had the physical skills, the mental skills that took other fencers decades seemed to come to him in only a few months.

  Tom caught Lou’s eye and beckoned him over. “Remember what I said—you need to be fencing with the top group now.”

  “Yes…” Lou nodded, then made a formal salute. His opening moves seemed stiff, but he quickly shifted into a style that took advantage of his more fractal movement. Tom circled, changed direction, feinted and probed and offered fake openings, and Lou matched him movement for movement, testing him as he was tested. Was there a pattern in Lou’s moves, other than a response to his own? He couldn’t tell. But again and again, Lou almost caught him out, anticipating his own moves… which must mean, Tom thought, that he himself had a pattern and Lou had spotted it.

  “Pattern analysis,” he said aloud, just as Lou’s blade slipped his and made a touch on his chest. “I should have thought of that.”

  “Sorry,” Lou said. He almost always said, “Sorry,” and then looked embarrassed.

  “Good touch,” Tom said. “I was trying to think how you were doing what you were doing, rather than concentrating on the match. But are you using pattern analysis?”

  “Yes,” Lou said. His tone was mild surprise, and Tom wondered if he was thinking, Doesn’t everyone?

  “I can’t do it in real time,” Tom said. “Not unless someone’s got a very simple pattern.”

  “Is it not fair?” Lou asked.

  “It’s very fair, if you can do it,” Tom said. “It’s also the sign of a good fencer—or chess player, for that matter. Do you play chess?”

  “No.”

  “Well… then let’s see if I can keep my mind on what I’m doing and get a touch back.” Tom nodded, and they began again, but it was hard to concentrate. He wanted to think about Lou—about when that awkward jerkiness had become effective, when he’d first seen real promise, when Lou had begun reading the patterns of the slower fencers. What did it say about the way he thought? What did it say about him as a person?