The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I could use a break,” Simon says, though we have only fenced a couple of minutes. I feel stupid; I know he is doing it for me, and I should not be upset, but I am upset. Now it comes again and again, the feel in my hand, the smell of Don’s breath whooshing out, the sound and sight and feel all together. Part of my mind remembers the book, the discussion of memory and stress and trauma, but most of it is simply misery, a tight spiral of sadness and fear and anger all tied together.

  I struggle, blinking, and a phrase of music ripples through my mind; the spiral opens out again and lifts away. “I… am… all… right…” I say. It is still hard to talk, but already I feel better. I lift my blade; Simon steps back and lifts his.

  We salute again. This time his attack is just as fast but different; I cannot read his pattern at all and decide to attack anyway. His blade gets past my parry and hits low on the left abdomen. “Good,” I say.

  “You are making me work entirely too hard,” Simon says. I can hear that he is breathing hard; I know I am. “You almost got me four times.”

  “I missed that parry,” I say. “It wasn’t strong enough—”

  “Let’s see if you make that mistake again,” he says. He salutes, and this time I am the one to attack first. I do not get a touch, and his attacks seem to be faster than mine; I must parry two or three times before I can see an opening. Before I get a touch, he has made one on my right shoulder.

  “Definitely too hard,” he says. “Lou, you are quite a fencer. I thought so at the tournament; first-timers never win and you had some first-timer problems, but it was clear you knew what you were doing. Did you ever consider taking up classical fencing?”

  “No,” I say. “I just know Tom and Lucia—”

  “You should think about it. Tom and Lucia are better trainers than most backyard fencers—” Simon grins at Tom, who makes a face back at him. “But some classical technique would improve your footwork. What got you that last time wasn’t speed but the extra reach that came from my knowing exactly how to place my foot for the best extension with the least exposure.” Simon takes off his mask, hangs his épée on the outdoor rack, and holds out his hand to me. “Thanks, Lou, for a good round. When I catch my breath, maybe we can fight again.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and shake his hand. Simon’s grasp is firmer than Tom’s. I am out of breath; I hang up my blade and put my mask under an empty chair and sit down. I wonder if Simon really likes me or if he will be like Don and hate me later. I wonder if Tom has told him I am autistic.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’M SORRY, ” LUCIA SAYS; SHE HAS COME OUTSIDE WITH HER GEAR and sits beside me on my right. “I should not have blown up like that.”

  “I am not upset,” I say. I am not, now that I know she knows what was wrong and is not doing it.

  “Good. Look… I know that you like Marjory and she likes you. Don’t let this mess with Don ruin it for you, okay?”

  “I do not know if Marjory likes me in a special way,” I say. “Don said she does, but she has not said she does.”

  “I know. It’s difficult. Grownups are not as direct as preschoolers and make a lot of trouble for themselves that way.”

  Marjory comes out of the house, zipping up her fencing jacket. She grins at me or at Lucia—I am not sure of the direction of her grin—as the zipper jams. “I have been eating too many doughnuts,” she says. “Or not walking enough or something.”

  “Here—” Lucia holds out her hand, and Marjory comes over so that Lucia can unjam the zipper and help her. I did not know that holding out a hand was a signal for offering help. I thought holding out a hand was a signal for asking help. Maybe it only goes with “here.”

  “Do you want to fence, Lou?” Marjory asks me.

  “Yes,” I say. I can feel my face getting hot. I put my mask on and pick up my épée. “Do you want to use épée and dagger?”

  “Sure,” Marjory says. She puts her mask on and I cannot see her face, only the gleam of her eyes and her teeth when she speaks. I can see the shape of her under the fencing jacket, though. I would like to touch that shape, but that is not appropriate. Only boyfriends with their girlfriends.

  Marjory salutes. She has a simpler pattern than Tom’s and I could make a touch, but then it would be over. I parry, thrust short, parry again. When our blades touch, I can feel her hand through the connection; we are touching without touching. She circles, reverses, moves back and forth, and I move with her. It is like some kinds of dance, a pattern of movement, except for not having music. I sort through the music I remember, trying to find the right music for this dance. It gives me a strange feeling to match my pattern to hers, not to defeat her but just to feel that connection, that touch-and-touch of blades to hands and back.

  Paganini. The First Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 6, the third movement. It is not exactly right, but it is closer than anything else I can think of. Stately but quick, with the little breaks where Marjory does not keep an exact rhythm changing directions. In my mind, I speed up or slow the music to stay with our movements.

  I wonder what Marjory hears. I wonder if she can hear the music I hear. If we were both thinking of the same music, would we hear it the same way? Would we be in phase or out? I hear the sounds as color on dark; she might hear the sounds as dark lines on light, as music is printed.

  If we put the two together, would they cancel out sight, dark on light and light on dark? Or…

  Marjory’s touch breaks the chain of thought. “Good,” I say, and step back. She nods, and we salute again.

  I read something once where thinking was described as light and not thinking as dark. I am thinking about other things while we fence, and Marjory was faster to make a touch than I was. So if she is not thinking about other things, did this not-thinking make her faster, and is that dark faster than the light of my not-thinking?

  I do not know what the speed of thought is. I do not know if the speed of thought is the same for everyone. Is it thinking faster or thinking further that makes different thinking different?

  The violin rises up in a spiraling pattern and Marjory’s pattern falls apart and I sweep forward in the dance that is now a solo dance and make my touch on her.

  “Good,” she says, and steps back. Her body is moving with the deep breaths she’s taking. “You wore me out, Lou; that was a long one.”

  “How about me?” Simon says. I would like to be with Marjory more, but I liked fencing Simon before and want to do that, too.

  This time the music starts when we do, different music. Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy… perfect for the feline prowl that is Simon circling me, looking for an opening, and for my intense concentration. I never thought I could dance before—it was a social thing, and I always got stiff and clumsy. Now—with a blade in hand—it feels right to move to the internal music.

  Simon is better than I am, but it does not bother me. I am eager to see what he can do, what I can do. He gets a touch, another one, but then I get another one on him. “Best of five?” he asks. I nod, breathless. This time neither of us gets a touch right away; this time we fight on and on, until I finally make another touch, more by luck than skill. We are even now. The others are quiet, watching. I can feel their interest, a warm space on my back as I circle. Forward, sideways, around, back. Simon knows and counters every move I make; I am just able to counter his. Finally he does something I do not even see—his blade reappears just where I thought I had parried it away, and he gets the final touch of the match.

  I am dripping with sweat even though it is a cool night. I am sure I smell bad, and I am surprised when Marjory comes up to me and touches my arm.

  “That was gorgeous, Lou,” she says. I take off my mask. Her eyes are gleaming; the smile on her face goes all the way to her hair.

  “I am sweaty,” I say.

  “So you should be, after that,” she says. “Wow again. I didn’t know you could fence like that.”

  “Neither did I,” I say.

  “Now t
hat we know,” Tom said, “we’ve got to get you to more tournaments. What do you think, Simon?”

  “He’s more than ready. The top fencers in the state can take him, but once he gets over tournament nerves, they’ll have to work at it.”

  “So, would you like to come with us to another tournament, Lou?” Tom asks.

  I feel cold all the way through. I think they mean to do something nice for me, but Don got mad at me because of the tournament. What if someone gets mad at me every tournament and because of me one after another have to have a PDD chip?

  “It is all day Saturday,” I say.

  “Yes, and sometimes all day Sunday as well,” Lucia says. “Is that a problem?”

  “It—I go to church on Sunday,” I say.

  Marjory looks at me. “I didn’t know you went to church, Lou,” she says. “Well, you could just go on Saturday… What’s the problem with Saturdays, Lou?”

  I have no answer ready. I do not think they will understand if I tell them about Don. They are all looking at me, and I feel myself folding together inside. I do not want them to be angry.

  “The next tournament nearby is after Thanksgiving,” Simon says. “No need to decide tonight.” He is looking at me curiously. “Are you worried about someone not counting hits again, Lou?”

  “No…” I feel my throat closing up. I close my eyes to steady myself. “It is Don,” I say. “He was angry at the tournament. I think that is why he… got so upset. I do not want that to happen to anyone else.”

  “It is not your fault,” Lucia says. But she sounds angry. This is what happens, I think. People get angry about me even when they are not angry with me. It does not have to be my fault for me to cause it.

  “I see your point,” Marjory says. “You don’t want to make trouble, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you cannot be sure that no one will be angry with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “But—Lou—people get mad at other people for no reason, too. Don was angry with Tom. Other people may have been angry with Simon; I know people have been angry with me. That just happens. As long as people aren’t doing anything wrong, they can’t stop and think all the time if it is making someone else angry.”

  “Maybe it does not bother you as much,” I say.

  She gives me a look that I can tell is supposed to mean something, but I cannot tell what. Would I know if I were normal? How do normal people learn what these looks mean?

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” she says. “I used to think it was always my fault. I used to worry about it more. But that is—” She pauses and I can tell she is searching for a polite word. I know that because so often I am slow speaking when I am searching for a polite word. “It is hard to know how much to worry about it,” she says finally.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “People who want you to think everything is your fault are the problem,” Lucia says. “They always blame other people for their feelings, especially anger.”

  “But some anger is justified,” Marjory says. “I don’t mean with Lou and Don; Lou didn’t do anything wrong. That was all Don’s jealousy getting the better of him. But I see what Lou means, that he doesn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s getting in trouble.”

  “He won’t,” Lucia says. “He’s not the type.” She gives me a look, a different look than Marjory gave me. I am not sure what this look means, either.

  “Lucia, why don’t you fight Simon,” Tom says. Everyone stops and looks at him.

  Lucia’s mouth is a little open. Then she closes it with a little snap. “Fine,” she says. “It’s been a long time. Simon?”

  “My pleasure,” he says, smiling.

  I watch Lucia and Simon. He is better than she is, but he is not making as many points as he could. I can tell that he is fighting at the edge of her level, not using everything he could. That is very polite. I am aware of Marjory beside me, of the smell of the dry leaves that have drifted against the stone edging, of the chilly breeze on the back of my neck. It feels good.

  BY NINE IT IS MORE THAN CHILLY; IT IS COLD. WE ALL GO INSIDE, and Lucia fixes a kettle of hot chocolate. It is the first time this year. The others are all talking; I sit with my back against the green leather hassock and try to listen while I watch Marjory. She uses her hands a lot when she talks. A couple of times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism. I have seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or partly autistic.

  They are talking about tournaments now—ones they remember from the past, who won and who lost and who was the referee and how people behaved. Nobody mentions Don. I lose track of the names; I do not know the people. I cannot understand why “Bart is such a toad” from what they say about Bart, and I am sure they do not mean that Bart is actually an amphibian with warty skin, any more than Don was an actual heel. My gaze shifts from Marjory to Simon to Tom to Lucia to Max to Susan and back, trying to keep up with who is speaking when, but I cannot anticipate when one is going to stop and another is going to start, or which. Sometimes there is a break of two or three seconds between speakers, and sometimes one starts while another is still talking.

  It is fascinating, in its way. It is like watching almost-patterns in a chaotic system. Like watching molecules break apart and re-form as a solutions balance shifts this way and that. I keep feeling that I almost understand it, and then something happens I did not anticipate. I do not know how they can participate and keep track of it at the same time.

  Gradually I am able to notice that everyone pauses if Simon speaks and lets him into the conversation. He does not interrupt often, but no one interrupts him. One of my teachers said that the person who is speaking indicates who he expects to speak next by glancing at them. At that time I usually could not tell where someone was looking unless they looked there a long time. Now I can follow most glances. Simon glances at different people. Max and Susan always glance first at Simon, giving him priority. Tom glances at Simon about half the time. Lucia glances at Simon about a third of the time. Simon does not always speak again when someone glances at him; that person then glances at someone else.

  But it is so fast: how can they see it all? And why does Tom glance at Simon some of the time and not the rest of the time? What tells him when to glance at Simon?

  I realize that Marjory is watching me and feel my face and neck go hot. The voices of the others blur; my vision clouds. I want to hide in the shadows, but there are no shadows. I look down. I listen for her voice, but she is not talking much.

  Then they start on equipment: steel blades versus composites, old steel versus new steel. Everyone seems to prefer steel, but Simon talks about a recent formal match he saw in which composite blades had a chip in the grip to emit a steel-like sound when the blades touched. It was weird, he says.

  Then he says he has to go and stands up. Tom stands up, too, and Max. I stand up. Simon shakes Tom’s hand and says, “It was fun— thanks for the invitation.”

  Tom says, “Anytime.”

  Max puts out his hand and says, “Thanks for coming; it was an honor.”

  Simon shakes his hand and says, “Anytime.”

  I do not know whether to put out my hand or not, but Simon quickly offers his so I shake it even though I do not like to shake hands—it seems so pointless—and then he says, “Thanks, Lou; I enjoyed it.”

  “Anytime,” I say. There is a moment’s tension in the room, and I am worried that I said something inappropriate—even though I was copying Tom and Max—and then Simon taps my arm with his finger.

  “I hope you change your mind about tournaments,” he says. “It was a pleasure.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  While Simon goes out the door, Max says, “I have to leave, too,” and Susan uncoils from the floor. It is time to leave. I look around; all the faces look friendly, but I thought Don’s face looked friendly. If one of them is angry with me, how would I know?

  ON THURSDAY WE
HAVE THE FIRST OF THE MEDICAL BRIEFINGS where we have been able to ask the doctors questions. There are two doctors, Dr. Ransome, with the curly gray hair, and Dr. Handsel, who has straight dark hair that looks as if it had been glued onto his head.

  “It is reversible?” Linda asks.

  “Well… no. Whatever it does, it does.”

  “So if we don’t like it, we can’t go back to being our normal selves?”

  Our selves are not normal to start with, but I do not say that aloud. Linda knows it as well as I do. She is making a joke.

  “Er… no, you can’t. Probably. But I don’t see why—”

  “I’d want to?” Cameron says. His face is tense. “I like who I am now. I do not know if I will like who I become.”

  “It shouldn’t be that different,” Dr. Ransome says.

  But every difference is a difference. I am not the same person as before Don began to stalk me. Not only what he did but meeting those police officers has changed me. I know about something I didn’t know before, and knowledge changes people. I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Lou,” Dr. Ransome says.

  “I do not understand how it can not change us,” I say. “If it normalizes our sensory processing, that will change the rate and kind of data input, and that will change our perceptions, and our processing—”

  “Yes, but you—your personality—will be the same, or much the same. You will like the same things; you will react the same—”

  “Then what’s the change for?” Linda asks. She sounds angry; I know she is more worried than angry. “They tell us they want us to change, to not need the supports we need—but if we do not need them, then that means our likes and dislikes have changed… doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve spent so much time learning to tolerate overload,” Dale says. “What if that means I suddenly don’t pick up on things I should?” His left eye flickers, ticcing wildly.

  “We don’t think any of that will happen,” the doctor says again. “The primatologists found only positive changes in social interaction—”