The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  Tom saw an opening and moved in, only to feel the sharp thud on his chest of another touch.

  “Shoot, Lou, if you keep doing this we’ll have to promote you to tournaments,” he said, only half joking. Lou stiffened, his shoulders hunching. “Does that bother you?”

  “I… do not think I should fence in a tournament,” Lou said.

  “It’s up to you.” Tom saluted again. He wondered why Lou phrased it that way. It was one thing to have no desire for competition but another to think he “shouldn’t” do it. If Lou had been normal—Tom hated himself for even thinking the word, but there it was—he’d have been in tournaments for the past three years. Starting too early, as most people did, rather than keeping to this private practice venue for so long. Tom pulled his mind back to the bout, barely parried a thrust, and tried to make his own attacks more random.

  Finally, his breath failed and he had to stop, gasping. “I need a break, Lou. C’mon over here and let’s review—” Lou followed him obediently and sat on the stone ledge bordering the patio while Tom took one of the chairs. Lou was sweating, he noticed, but not breathing particularly hard.

  TOM FINALLY STOPS, GASPING, AND DECLARES HIMSELF TOO tired to go on. He leads me off to one side while two others step onto the ring. He is breathing very hard; his words come spaced apart, which makes it easier to understand them. I am glad he thinks I am doing so well.

  “But here—you’re not out of breath yet. Go fight someone else, give me a chance to catch mine, and we’ll talk later.”

  I look over at Marjory sitting beside Lucia. I saw her watching me while Tom and I fought. Now she is looking down and the heat has brought more pink into her face. My stomach clenches, but I get up and walk over to her.

  “Hi, Marjory,” I say. My heart is pounding.

  She looks up. She is smiling, a complete smile. “Hi, Lou,” she says. “How are you tonight?”

  “Fine,” I say. “Will you… do you want to… will you fence with me?”

  “Of course.” She reaches down to pick up her mask and puts it on. I cannot see her face as well now, and she will not be able to see mine when I’m masked; I slide it back over my head. I can look without being seen; my heart steadies.

  We begin with a recapitulation of some sequences from Saviolo’s fencing manual. Step by step, forward and sideways, circling and feeling each other out. It is both ritual and conversation, as I balance parry against her thrust and thrust against her parry. Do I know this? Does she know that? Her movements are softer, more tentative, than Tom’s. Circle, step, question, answer, a dialogue in steel to music I can hear in my head.

  I make a touch when she does not move as I expect. I did not want to hit her. “Sorry,” I say. My music falters; my rhythm stumbles. I step back, breaking contact, blade tip grounded.

  “No—a good one,” Marjory says. “I know better than to let down my guard…”

  “You’re not hurt?” It felt like a hard touch, jarring the palm of my hand.

  “No… let’s go on.”

  I see the flash of teeth inside her mask: a smile. I salute; she answers; we move back into the dance. I try to be careful, and through the touch of steel on steel I can feel that she is firmer, more concentrated, moving faster. I do not speed up; she makes a touch on my shoulder. From that point, I try to fence at her pace, making the encounter last as long as it can.

  Too soon I hear her breathing roughen and she is ready to stop for a rest. We thank each other, clasping arms; I feel giddy.

  “That was fun,” she says. “But I’ve got to quit making excuses for not working out. If I’d been doing my weights, my arm wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I do weights three times a week,” I say. Then I realize she might think I am telling her what to do or boasting, but all I meant was that I do weights so my arms don’t hurt.

  “I should,” she says. Her voice sounds happy and relaxed. I relax too. She is not unhappy that I said I do weights. “I used to. But I’m on a new project and it’s eating my time.”

  I picture the project as something alive gnawing at a clock. This must be the research Emmy mentioned.

  “Yes. What project is that?” I can hardly breathe as I wait for the answer.

  “Well, my field is neuromuscular signal systems,” Marjory said. “We’re working on possible therapies for some of the genetic neuromuscular diseases that haven’t yielded to gene therapy.” She looks at me, and I nod.

  “Like muscular dystrophy?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s one,” Marjory says “It’s how I got involved in fencing, actually.”

  I feel my forehead wrinkling: confusion. How would fencing and muscular dystrophy be connected? People with MD don’t fence. “Fencing… ?”

  “Yes. I was on my way to a departmental meeting, years ago, and cut through a courtyard just as Tom was giving a fencing demo. I had been thinking of good muscle function from a physician’s perspective, not from a user’s perspective… I remember I was standing there, watching people fence and thinking of the biochemical behavior of muscle cells, when Tom suddenly asked me if I’d like to try it. I think he mistook the look on my face for interest in fencing when it was the leg muscles I’d been watching.”

  “I thought you fenced in college,” Lou said.

  “That was college,” Marjory said. “I was a grad student at the time.”

  “Oh… and you’ve always worked on muscles?”

  “In one sense or another. With the success of some gene therapies for pure muscle diseases I’ve shifted more toward neuromuscular… or my employers have, I should say. I’m hardly a project director.” She looks at my face a long time; I have to look away because the feeling is too intense. “I hope you didn’t mind my asking you to ride with me to the airport, Lou. I felt safer with you along.”

  I feel myself getting hot. “It’s not… I didn’t… I wanted—” A gulp and a swallow. “I am not upset,” I say when I get my voice under control. “I was glad to go with you.”

  “That’s good,” Marjory says.

  She says nothing more; I sit beside her feeling my body relax. If it were possible, I would just sit here all night. As my heart slows, I look around at the others. Max and Tom and Susan are fencing two-on-one. Don is slouched in a chair across the patio; he is staring at me but looks away when I look at him.

  TOM WAVED GOOD-BYE TO MAX, SUSAN, AND MARJORY, WHO all walked out together. When he turned around, Lou was still there. Lucia had gone inside, trailed as usual by those who wanted to talk.

  “There’s research,” Lou said. “New. A treatment, maybe.”

  Tom listened more to the jerkiness of Lou’s voice, the strain obvious in the pitch and tonality, than to the actual words. Lou was frightened; he sounded like this only when he was anxious.

  “Is it still experimental, or is it available?”

  “Experimental. But they, the office, they want—my boss said… they want me to… to take it.”

  “An experimental treatment? That’s odd. Usually those aren’t open to commercial health plans.”

  “It’s—they—it is something developed at the Cambridge center.” Lou said, his voice even more jerky and mechanical. “They own it now. My boss says his boss wants us to take it. He does not agree, but he cannot stop them.”

  Tom felt a sudden desire to slam his fist into someone’s head. Lou was scared; someone was bullying him. He’s not my child, Tom reminded himself. He had no rights in this situation, but as Lou’s friend, he did have responsibilities.

  “Do you know how it’s supposed to work?” he asked.

  “Not yet.” Lou shook his head. “It just came out on the Web this past week; the local autism society had a meeting about it, but they didn’t know… They think it’s still years from human use. Mr. Aldrin—my supervisor—said it could be tested now, and Mr. Crenshaw wants us to take it.”

  “They can’t make you use experimental stuff, Lou; it’s against the law to force you—”

  “But they cou
ld take my job—”

  “Are they threatening to fire you if you don’t? They can’t do that.” He didn’t think they could. They couldn’t at the university, but the private sector was different. That different? “You need a lawyer,” he said. He tried to think of lawyers he knew. Gail might be the right lawyer for this, Tom thought. Gail had done human rights work for a long time and, more than that, had made it pay. He would think about who might help, rather than his own increasing desire to smash someone’s head in.

  “No… yes… I do not know. I am worried. Mr. Aldrin said we should get help, a lawyer—”

  “That’s exactly right,” Tom said. He wondered if giving Lou something else to think about would be a help or not. “Look, you know I mentioned tournaments to you—”

  “I am not good enough,” Lou said quickly.

  “Actually, you are. And I’m wondering if maybe fighting in a tournament would help you with this other problem—” Tom scrambled through his own thoughts, trying to clarify why he thought it might be a good idea. “If you end up needing to go to court against your employer, that’s kind of like a fencing match. The confidence you get from fencing could help.”

  Lou just looked at him, almost expressionless. “I do not understand why it would help.”

  “Well… maybe it wouldn’t. I just thought having some other experience, with more people than us, might.”

  “When is a tournament?”

  “The next one locally is a couple of weeks away,” Tom said. “Saturday. You could ride with us; Lucia and I would be around to back you up, make sure you met the nice people.”

  “There are not-nice people?”

  “Well, yes. There are not-nice people everywhere, and a few always manage to get into the fencing groups. But most of them are nice. You might enjoy it.” He shouldn’t push, even though he felt more and more that Lou needed more exposure to the normal world, if you could call a bunch of historical re-creation enthusiasts normal. They were normal in their everyday lives; they just liked to wear fancy costumes and pretend to kill each other with swords.

  “I do not have a costume,” Lou said, looking down at his old leather jacket with the cut-off sleeves.

  “We can find you something,” Tom said. Lou would probably fit into one of his costumes well enough. He had more than he needed, more than most seventeeth-century men had owned. “Lucia could help us out.”

  “I am not sure,” Lou said.

  “Well, let me know next week if you want to try it. We’ll need to get your entry money in. If not, there’s another one later on.”

  “I will think about it,” Lou said.

  “Good. And about this other—I may know a lawyer who could help you. I’ll check with her. And what about the Center—have you talked to them?”

  “No. Mr. Aldrin phoned me, but no one has said anything official and I think I should not say anything until they do.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to find out what legal rights you have ahead of time,” Tom said. “I don’t know for sure—I know the laws have changed back and forth, but nothing I do involves research with human subjects, so I’m not up on the current legal situation. You need an expert.”

  “It would cost a lot,” Lou said.

  “Maybe,” Tom said. “That is something else to find out. Surely the Center can get you that information.”

  “Thank you,” Lou said.

  Tom watched him walk away, quiet, contained, a little frightening sometimes in his own harmless way. The very thought of someone experimenting on Lou made him feel sick. Lou was Lou, and fine the way he was.

  Inside, Tom found Don sprawled on the floor under the ceiling fan talking a blue streak as usual while Lucia stitched on her embroidery with that expression that meant “Rescue me!” Don turned to him.

  “So… you think Lou’s ready for open competition, huh?” Don asked.

  Tom nodded. “You overheard that? Yes, I do. He’s improved a lot. He’s fencing with the best we have and holding his own.”

  “It’s a lot of pressure for someone like him,” Don said.

  “ ‘Someone like him’… you mean autistic?”

  “Yeah. They don’t do well with crowds and noise and stuff, do they? I read that’s why the ones who are so good at music don’t become concert performers. Lou’s okay, but I think you shouldn’t push him into tournaments. He’ll fold.”

  Tom choked back his first thought and said instead, “Do you remember your first tournament, Don?”

  “Well, yeah… I was pretty young… It was a disaster.”

  “Yes. Do you remember what you told me after your first bout?”

  “No… not really. I know I lost… I just fell apart.”

  “You told me you’d been unable to concentrate because of the people moving around.”

  “Yeah, well, it’d be worse for someone like Lou.”

  “Don—how could he lose worse than you did?”

  Don’s face turned red. “Well, I—he—it would just be worse for him. Losing, I mean. For me—”

  “You went and drank a six-pack and threw up behind a tree,” Tom said. “Then you cried and told me it was the worst day of your life.”

  “I was young,” Don said. “And I let it all out, and it didn’t bother me after that… He’ll brood.”

  “I’m glad you’re worried about his feelings,” Lucia said. Tom almost winced at the sarcasm in her voice, even though it wasn’t directed at him.

  Don shrugged, though his eyes had narrowed. “Of course I worry,” he said. “He’s not like the rest of us—”

  “That’s right,” Lucia said. “He’s a better fencer than most of us and a better person than some.”

  “Jeez, Luci, you’re in a bad mood,” Don said, in the jokey tone that Tom knew meant he wasn’t joking.

  “You’re not improving it,” Lucia said, folding her needlework and standing; she was gone before Tom could say anything. He hated it when she said what he was thinking and then he had to cope with the aftermath, knowing that she had expressed the thoughts he tried to keep hidden. Now, predictably, Don was giving him a complicit man-to-man look that invited a shared view of women that he didn’t share.

  “Is she getting… you know… sort of midlife?” Don asked.

  “No,” Tom said. “She’s expressing an opinion.” Which he happened to share, but should he say that? Why couldn’t Don just grow up and quit causing these problems? “Look—I’m tired, and I have an early class tomorrow.”

  “Okay, okay, I can take a hint,” Don said, clambering up with a dramatic wince and a hand to his back.

  The problem was, he couldn’t take a hint. It was another fifteen minutes before he finally left; Tom locked the front door and turned off the lights before Don could think of something else to say and come back, the way he often did. Tom felt bad; Don had been a charming and enthusiastic boy, years ago, and surely he should have been able to help him grow into a more mature man than he’d become. What else were older friends for?

  “It’s not your fault,” Lucia said from the hall. Her voice was softer now, and he relaxed a little; he had not been looking forward to soothing a furious Lucia. “He’d be worse if you hadn’t worked on him.”

  “I dunno,” Tom said. “I still think—”

  “Born teacher that you are, Tom, you still think you should be able to save them all from themselves. Think: there’s Marcus at Columbia, and Grayson at Michigan, and Vladianoff in Berlin—all your boys once and all better men for knowing you. Don is not your fault.”

  “Tonight I’ll buy that,” Tom said. Lucia, backlit by the light from their bedroom, had an almost magical quality.

  “That’s not all I’m selling,” she said, her voice teasing, and she dropped the robe.

  IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME THAT TOM WOULD ASK ME again about entering a fencing tournament when I was talking about an experimental treatment for autism. I think about that on the drive home. It is clear that I am improving in my fencing and that I
can hold my own with the better fencers in the group. But what does that have to do with the treatment or with legal rights?

  People who fence in tournaments are serious about it. They have practiced. They have their own equipment. They want to win. I am not sure I want to win, though I do enjoy understanding the patterns and finding my way through them. Maybe Tom thinks I should want to win? Maybe Tom thinks I need to want to win in fencing so that I will want to win in court?

  These two things are not connected. Someone can want to win a game or want to win a case in court without wanting to do both.

  What is alike? Both are contests. Someone wins and someone else loses. My parents emphasized that everything in life is not a contest, that people can work together, that everyone can win when they do. Fencing is more fun when people are cooperating, trying to enjoy it with each other. I do not think of making touches on someone as winning but as playing the game well.

  Both require preparation? Everything requires preparation. Both require—I swerve to avoid a bicyclist whose taillight is out; I barely saw him.

  Forethought. Attention. Understanding. Patterns. The thoughts flick through my head like flash cards, each with its nested concepts topped by a neat word that cannot say everything.

  I would like to please Tom. When I helped with the fencing surface and the equipment racks, he was pleased. It was like having my father back again, on his good days. I would like to please Tom again, but I do not know whether entering this tournament will do it. What if I fence badly and lose? Will he be disappointed? What does he expect?

  It would be fun to fence with people I’ve never seen before. People whose patterns I do not know. People who are normal and will not know that I am not normal. Or will Tom tell them? Somehow I do not think he will.

  Next Saturday I am going to the planetarium with Eric and Linda. The following Saturday, it is the third of the month, and I always spend extra time cleaning my apartment on the third Saturday of the month. The tournament is the Saturday after. I do not have anything planned for then.