The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  I turn to go, aware of Emmy behind me, radiating dark feelings faster than I can get away. Linda and Eric come in. Before I can say anything, Emmy blurts out, “Lou’s been seeing that girl again, that researcher.”

  Linda looks down and away; she does not want to hear. She does not like to get involved in arguments anyway. Eric’s gaze brushes across my face and finds the pattern on the floor tiles. He is listening but not asking.

  “I told him she was a researcher, just out to use him, but he won’t listen,” Emmy says. “I saw her myself and she’s not even pretty.”

  I feel my neck getting hot. It is not fair of Emmy to say that about Marjory. She does not even know Marjory. I think Marjory is prettier than Emmy, but pretty is not the reason I like her.

  “Is she trying to get you to take the treatment, Lou?” Eric asks.

  “No,” I say. “We do not talk about that.”

  “I do not know her,” Eric says, and turns away. Linda is already out of sight.

  “You don’t want to know her,” Emmy says.

  Eric turns back. “If she is Lou’s friend, you should not say bad things about her,” he says. Then he walks on, after Linda.

  I think about following them, but I do not want to stay here. Emmy might follow me. She might talk more. She would talk more. It would upset Linda and Eric.

  I turn to leave, and Emmy does say more. “Where are you going?” she asks. “You just got here. Don’t think you can run away from your problems, Lou!”

  I can run away from her, I think. I cannot run away from work or Dr. Fornum, but I can run from Emmy. I smile, thinking that, and she turns even redder.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “I am thinking about music,” I say. That is always safe. I do not want to look at her; her face is red and shiny and angry. She circles me, trying to make me face her. I look at the floor instead. “I think about music when people are angry with me,” I say. That is sometimes true.

  “Oh, you’re impossible!” she says, and storms off down the hall. I wonder if she has any friends at all. I never see her with other people. That is sad, but it is not something I can fix.

  Outside it feels much quieter, even though the Center is on a busy street. I do not have plans now. If I am not spending Saturday morning at the Center, I am not sure what to do. I did my laundry. My apartment is clean. The books say that we do not cope well with uncertainty or changes in schedule. Usually it does not bother me, but this morning I feel shaky inside. I do not want to think of Marjory being what Emmy says she is. What if Emmy is right? What if Marjory is lying to me? It does not feel right, but my feelings can be wrong.

  I wish I could see Marjory now. I wish we were going to do something together, something where I could look at her. Just look and listen to her talk to someone else. Would I know if she liked me? I think she does like me. I do not know if she likes me a lot or a little, though. I do not know if she likes me the way she likes other men or as a grownup likes a child. I do not know how to tell. If I were normal I would know. Normal people must know, or they could not ever get married.

  Last week at this time I was at the tournament. I did enjoy it. I would rather be there than here. Even with the noise, with all the people, with all the smells. That is a place I belong; I do not belong here anymore. I am changing, or rather I have changed.

  I decide to walk back to the apartment, even though it is a long way. It is cooler than it has been, and fall flowers show in some of the yards I walk past. The rhythm of walking eases my tension and makes it easier to hear the music I’ve chosen to walk with. I see other people with earphones on. They are listening to broadcast or recorded music; I wonder if the ones without earphones are listening to their own music or walking without music.

  The smell of fresh bread stops me partway home. I turn aside into a small bakery and buy a loaf of warm bread. Next to the bakery is a flower shop with ranked masses of purples, yellows, blues, bronzes, deep reds. The colors carry more than wavelengths of light; they project joy, pride, sadness, comfort. It is almost too much to bear.

  I store the colors and textures in my memory and take the bread home, breathing in that fragrance and combining it with the colors I pass. One house I pass has a late-blooming rose trained up a wall; even across the yard I can catch a hint of its sweetness.

  IT HAS BEEN OVER A WEEK, AND MR. ALDRIN AND MR. CRENSHAW have not said anything more about the treatment. We have had no more letters. I would like to think this means something has gone wrong with the process and they will forget about it, but I think they will not forget. Mr. Crenshaw always looks and sounds so angry. Angry people do not forget injuries; forgiveness dissolves anger. That is what the sermon this week was about. My mind should not wander during the sermon, but sometimes it is boring and I think of other things. Anger and Mr. Crenshaw seem connected.

  On Monday, we all get a notice that we are to meet on Saturday. I do not want to give up my Saturday, but the notice does not include any reason for staying away. Now I wish I had waited to talk to Maxine at the Center, but it is too late.

  “Do you think we have to go?” Chuy asks. “Will they fire us if we don’t?”

  “I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I want to find out what they’re doing, so I would go anyway.”

  “I will go,” Cameron says. I nod, and so do the others. Linda looks most unhappy, but she usually looks most unhappy.

  “LOOK… ER… PETE. …” CRENSHAW’S VOICE OOZED FALSE friendliness; Aldrin noticed his difficulty in remembering the name. “I know you think I’m a hard-hearted bastard, but the fact is the company’s struggling. The space-based production is necessary, but it’s eating up profits like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Oh, wouldn’t I? Aldrin thought. It was stupid, in his opinion: the advantages to low- and zero-G facilities were far outweighed by their expense and the drawbacks. There were riches enough to be made down here, on the earth, and he would not have voted for the commitment to space if anyone had given him a vote.

  “Your guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, that designed slaughterhouses or something—”

  “Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.

  “One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys would be just as bad. Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”

  Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took that silence for consent and went on.

  “And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”

  Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a clue about fairness.

  “Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in artificial intelligence, do you?”

  Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able to do what they do,” he said.

  “Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, would you?”

  Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with
paper and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.

  “You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.

  “Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”

  Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.

  “Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to replace them with machines?”

  “Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment. But we have to cut costs—have to. In this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would call efficiency.”

  The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. He also didn’t say it.

  “So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law or no law.”

  “The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I can’t fathom.”

  “So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.

  Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need that stuff, or…” He ran a finger across his throat. “They can’t hold the company hostage. There’s not a law in this land we can’t find a way around or get changed.” He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “We have the resources.”

  Aldrin felt sick. He had known this all his adult life, but he had never been at a level where anyone said it out loud. He had been able to hide it from himself.

  “I’ll try to explain,” he said, his tongue stiff in his mouth.

  “Pete, you’ve got to quit trying and start doing,” Crenshaw said. “You’re not stupid or lazy; I can tell that. But you just don’t have the… the push.”

  Aldrin nodded and escaped from Crenshaw’s office. He went into the washroom and scrubbed his hands… He still felt soiled. He thought of quitting, of turning in his resignation. Mia had a good job, and they had chosen not to have children yet. They could coast a while on her salary if they had to.

  But who would look after his people? Not Crenshaw. Aldrin shook his head at himself in the mirror. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could help. He had to try, but… who else in the family could pay his brother’s bills for residential treatment? What if he lost his job?

  He tried to think of his contacts: Betty in Human Resources. Shirley in Accounting. He didn’t know anyone in Legal; he’d never needed to. HR took care of the interface with laws concerning special-needs employees; they talked to Legal if it was necessary.

  MR. ALDRIN HAS INVITED THE WHOLE SECTION OUT TO DINNER. We are at the pizza place, and because the group is too large for one table, we are at two tables pushed together, in the wrong part of the room.

  I am not comfortable with Mr. Aldrin sitting at the table with us, but I do not know what to do about it. He is smiling a lot and talking a lot. Now he thinks the treatment is a good idea, he says. He does not want to pressure us, but he thinks it would benefit us. I try to think about the taste of the pizza and not listen, but it is harder.

  After a while he slows down. He has had another beer, and his voice is softening at the edges, like toast in hot chocolate. He sounds more like the Mr. Aldrin I am used to, more tentative. “I still don’t understand why they’re in such a hurry,” he says. “The expense of the gym and things is minimal, really. We don’t need the space. It’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the profitability of the section. And there aren’t enough autistics like you in the world to make this a profitable treatment even if it does work perfectly for all of you.”

  “Current estimates are that there are millions of autistic persons in the United States alone,” Eric says.

  “Yes, but—”

  “The cost of social services for that population, including residential facilities for the most impaired, is estimated at billions a year. If the treatment works, that money would be available—”

  “The workforce can’t handle that many new workers,” Mr. Aldrin says. “And some of them are too old. Jeremy—” He stops suddenly and his skin turns red and shiny. Is he angry or embarrassed? I am not sure. He takes a long breath. “My brother,” he says. “He is too old to get a job now.”

  “You have a brother who is autistic?” Linda asks. She looks at his face for the first time. “You never told us.” I feel cold suddenly, exposed. I thought Mr. Aldrin could not see into our heads, but if he has an autistic brother, then he may know more than I thought.

  “I… didn’t think it was important.” His face is still red and shiny, and I think he is not telling the truth. “Jeremy is older than any of you. He’s in a residential facility—”

  I am trying to put this new idea about Mr. Aldrin, that he has an autistic brother, together with his attitudes toward us, so I say nothing.

  “You lied to us,” Cameron says. His eyelids have pulled down; his voice sounds angry. Mr. Aldrin’s head jerks back, as if someone had pulled a string.

  “I did not—”

  “There are two kinds of lie,” Cameron says. I can tell he is quoting something he was told. “The lie of commission, which states an untruth known to the speaker to be untrue, and the lie of omission, which omits to state a truth known to the speaker to be true. You lied when you did not tell us your brother was autistic.”

  “I’m your boss, not your friend,” Mr. Aldrin blurts out. He turns even redder. He said earlier he was our friend. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? “I mean… it had nothing to do with work.”

  “It is the reason you wanted to be our supervisor,” Cameron says.

  “It’s not. I didn’t want to be your supervisor at first.”

  “At first.” Linda is still staring at his face. “Something changed. It was your brother?”

  “No. You are not much like my brother. He is… very impaired.”

  “You want the treatment for your brother?” Cameron asks.

  “I… don’t know.”

  That does not sound like the truth, either. I try to imagine Mr. Aldrin’s brother, this unknown autistic person. If Mr. Aldrin thinks his brother is very impaired, what does he think of us, really? What was his childhood like?

  “I’ll bet you do,” Cameron says. “If you think it’s a good idea for us, you must think it could help him. Maybe you think if you can get us to do it, they’ll reward you with his treatment? Good boy: here’s a candy?”

  “That’s not fair,” Mr. Aldrin says. His voice is louder, too. People are turning to look. I wish we were not here. “He’s my brother, naturally I want to help him any way I can, but—”

  “Did Mr. Crenshaw tell you that if you talked us into it, your brother could get treatment?”


  “I… it’s not that—” His eyes slide from side to side; his face changes color. I see the effort on his face, the effort to fool us convincingly. The book said autistic persons are gullible and easily fooled because they do not understand the nuances of communication. I do not think lying is a nuance. I think lying is wrong. I am sorry Mr. Aldrin is lying to us but glad that he is not doing it very well.

  “If there is not enough market for this treatment to autistic persons, what else is it good for?” Linda asks. I wish she had not changed the subject back to before, but it is too late. Mr. Aldrin’s face relaxes a little.

  I have an idea, but it is not clear yet. “Mr. Crenshaw said he would be willing to keep us on without the treatment if we gave up the support services, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “So… he would like to have what we—what autistic persons—are good at without the things we are not good at.”

  Mr. Aldrin’s brow wrinkles. It is the movement that shows confusion. “I suppose,” he says slowly. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with the treatment.”

  “Somewhere in the original article is the profit,” I say to Mr. Aldrin. “Not changing autistic persons—there are no more kids born like we were born, not in this country. There are not enough of us. But something we do is valuable enough that if normal people could do it, that would be profitable.” I think of that time in my office when for a few moments the meaning of the symbols, the beautiful intricacy of the patterns of data, went away and left me confused and distracted. “You have watched us work for years now; you must know what it is—”

  “Your ability in pattern analysis and math, you know that.”

  “No—you said Mr. Crenshaw said the new software could do that as well. It is something else.”

  “I still want to know about your brother,” Linda says.

  Aldrin closes his eyes, refusing contact. I was scolded for doing just that. He opens them again. “You’re… relentless,” he says. “You just don’t quit.”

  The pattern forming in my mind, the light and dark shifting and circling, begins to cohere. But it is not enough; I need more data.