The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  “What effect will this have on my basic intelligence?” I ask.

  “Shouldn’t have any, really. That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing—it’s what makes generalization so difficult—and it’s you people, autistic people, who sort of proved that it’s possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way below the curve in expressive language.”

  Shouldn’t have any is not the same thing as won’t have any. I do not really know what my intelligence is—they would not give us our own IQ scores, and I’ve never bothered to take any of the publicly available ones—but I know I am not stupid, and I do not want to be.

  “If you’re concerned about your pattern-analysis skills,” he says, “that’s not the part of the brain that the treatment will affect. It’s more like giving that part of your brain access to new data—socially important data—without your having to struggle for it.”

  “Like facial expressions,” I say.

  “Yes, that sort of thing. Facial recognition, facial expressions, tonal nuance in language—a little tweak to the attention control area so it’s easier for you to notice them and it’s pleasurable to do so.”

  “Pleasure—you’re tying this to the intrinsic endorphin releasers?”

  He turns red suddenly. “If you mean are you going to get high on being around people, certainly not. But autistics do not find social interaction rewarding, and this will make it at least less threatening.” I am not good at interpreting tonal nuances, but I know he is not telling the whole truth.

  If they can control the amount of pleasure we get from social interaction, then they could control the amount normal people get from it. I think of teachers in school, being able to control the pleasure students get from other students… making them all autistic to the extent that they would rather study than talk. I think of Mr. Crenshaw, with a section full of workers who ignore everything but work.

  My stomach is knotted; a sour taste comes into my mouth. If I say that I see these possibilities, what will happen to me? Two months ago, I would have blurted out what I saw, what I worried about; now I am more cautious. Mr. Crenshaw and Don have given me that wisdom.

  “You mustn’t get paranoid, Lou,” the doctor says. “It’s a constant temptation to anyone outside the social mainstream to think people are plotting something dire, but it’s not a healthy way to think.”

  I say nothing. I am thinking about Dr. Fornum and Mr. Crenshaw and Don. These people do not like me or people like me. Sometimes people who do not like me or people like me may try to do me real harm. Would it have been paranoia if I had suspected from the first that Don slashed my tires? I do not think so. I would have correctly identified a danger. Correctly identifying danger is not paranoia.

  “You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm you—”

  “I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not upset.”

  He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not just let us do our work and you do yours:

  Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest—or even my interest at all—in mind.

  “Who I am is important to me,” I say.

  “You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he cannot imagine anyone wanting to be like me.

  “I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.

  “So—if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”

  He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had that expression in their repertoire, the worried/ caring look.

  What frightens me most is that they may—surely they will—tinker with memory, not just current connections. They must know as well as I do that my entire past experience is from this autistic perspective. Changing the connections will not change that, and that has made me who I am. Yet if I lose the memory of what this is like, who I am, then I will have lost everything I’ve worked on for thirty-five years. I do not want to lose that. I do not want to remember things only the way I remember what I read in books; I do not want Marjory to be like someone seen on a video screen. I want to keep the feelings that go with the memories.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ON SUNDAYS, THE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION DOES NOT run on the usual workday schedule, even though Sunday is a holy day for only a minority of people. If I do not drive to church, then I get there either very early or a little late. It is rude to be late, and being rude to God is ruder than other kinds of rude.

  It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and Marjory.

  I am not supposed to think about Don and Marjory but about God. Fix your mind on God, said a priest who used to be here, and you will not go far wrong. It is hard to fix your mind on God when the image in my mind is that of the open end of the barrel of Don’s gun. Round and dark like a black hole. I could feel the attraction of it, the pull as if the hole, the opening, had mass that wanted to pull me into itself, into permanent blackness. Death. Nothingness.

  I do not know what comes after death. Scripture tells me one thing here and another there. Some people emphasize that all the virtuous will be saved and go to heaven, and others say that you have to be Elect. I do not imagine it is anything we can describe. When I try to think of it, up to now, it always looks like a pattern of light, intricate and beautiful, like the pictures astronomers take or create from space-telescope images, each color for a different wavelength.

  But now, in the aftermath of Don’s attack, I see dark, faster than light, racing out of the barrel of the gun to draw me into it, beyond the speed of light, forever.

  Yet I am here, in this seat, in this church, still alive. Light pours in through the old stained-glass window over the altar, rich glowing color that stains the altar linens, the wood itself, the carpet. This early, the light reaches farther into the church than during the service, angling to the left because of the season.

  I take a breath, smelling candle wax and the faintest hint of smoke from the early service, the smell of books—our church still uses paper prayer books and hymnals—and the cleaning compounds used on wood and fabric and floor.

  I am alive. I am in the light. The darkness was not, this time, faster than the light. But I feel unsettled, as if it were chasing me, coming nearer and nearer behind me, where I can’t see.

  I am sitting at the back of the church, but behind me is an open space, more unknown. Usually it does not bother me, but today I wish there were a wall there.

  I try to focus on the light, on the slow movement of the colored bars down and across as the sun rises higher. In an hour, the light moves a distance that anyone could see, but i
t is not the light moving: it is the planet moving. I forget that and use the common phrasing just like everyone else and get that shock of joy each time I remember, again, that the earth does move.

  We are always spinning into the light and out of it again. It is our speed, not the light’s speed or the dark’s speed, that makes our days and nights. Was it my speed, and not Don’s speed, that brought us into the dark space where he wanted to hurt me? Was it my speed that saved me?

  I try again to concentrate on God, and the light recedes enough to pick out the brass cross on its wooden stand. The glint of yellow metal against the purple shadows behind it is so striking that my breath catches for a moment.

  In this place, light is always faster than dark; the speed of dark does not matter.

  “Here you are, Lou!”

  The voice startles me. I flinch but manage not to say anything, and even smile at the gray-haired woman holding out a service leaflet. Usually I am more aware of the time passing, people arriving, so that I am not surprised. She is smiling.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.

  “It’s all right,” I say. “I was just thinking.”

  She nods and goes back to greet other arrivals without saying anything more. She has a name tag on, Cynthia Kressman. I see her every third week handing out service leaflets, and on other Sundays she usually sits across the center aisle and four rows ahead of me.

  I am alert now and notice people coming in. The old man with two canes, who totters down the aisle to the very front. He used to come with his wife, but she died four years ago. The three old women who always come in together except when one is sick and sit in the third row on the left. One and two and three, four and two and one and one, people trickle in. I see the organist’s head lift over the top of the organ console and drop back down. Then a soft “mmph” and the music begins.

  My mother said it was wrong to go to church just for the music. That is not the only reason I go to church. I go to church to learn how to be a better person. But the music is one reason I go to this church. Today it is Bach again—our organist likes Bach—and my mind effortlessly picks up the many strands of the pattern and follows them as she plays them.

  Hearing music like this, all around in real life, is different from hearing a recording. It makes me more aware of the space I am in; I can hear the sound bouncing off the walls, forming harmonies unique to this place. I have heard Bach in other churches, and somehow it always makes harmonies, not disharmonies. This is a great mystery.

  The music stops. I can hear a soft murmur behind me as the choir and clergy line up. I pick up the hymnal and find the number for the processional hymn. The organ starts again, playing the melody once, and then behind me the loud voices ring out. Someone is a little flat and slides up to each pitch a moment behind the others. It is easy to pick out who it is, but it would be rude to say anything about it. I bow my head as the crucifer leads the procession, and then the choir comes past me. They walk by, in their dark-red robes with the white cottas over them, the women first and then the men, and I hear each individual voice. I read the words and sing as best I can. I like it best when the last two men come by; they both have very deep voices, and the sound they make trembles in my chest.

  After the hymn, there is a prayer, which we all say together. I know the words by heart. I have known the words by heart since I was a boy. Another reason besides the music that I go to this church is the predictable order of service. I can say the familiar words without stumbling over them. I can be ready to sit or stand or kneel, speak or sing or listen, and do not feel clumsy and slow. When I visit other churches I am more worried about whether I am doing the right thing at the right time than about God. Here the routines make it easier to listen to what God wants me to do.

  Today, Cynthia Kressman is one of the readers. She reads the Old Testament lesson. I read along in the service leaflet. It is hard to understand everything just listening or just reading; both together work better. At home I read the lessons ahead of time, from the calendar the church hands out every year. That also helps me know what is coming. I enjoy it when we read the Psalm responsively; it makes a pattern like a conversation.

  When I look past the lessons and the Psalm to the Gospel reading, it is not what I expect. Instead of a reading from Matthew, it is a reading from John. I read intently as the priest reads aloud. It is the story of the man lying by the pool of Siloam, who wanted healing but had no one to lower him into the pool. Jesus asked him if he really wanted to be healed.

  It always seemed a silly question to me. Why would the man be by the healing pool if he did not want to be healed? Why would he complain about not having someone to lower him into the water if he did not want to be healed?

  God does not ask silly questions. It must not be a silly question, but if it is not silly, what does it mean? It would be silly if I said it or if a doctor said it when I went to get medicine for an illness, but what does it mean here?

  Our priest begins the sermon. I am still trying to puzzle out how a seemingly silly question could be meaningful when his voice echoes my thought.

  “Why does Jesus ask the man if he wants to be healed? Isn’t that kind of silly? He’s lying there waiting for his chance at healing… Surely he wants to be healed.”

  Exactly, I think.

  “If God isn’t playing games with us, being silly, what then does this question mean, Do you want to be healed? Look at where we find this man: by the pool known for its healing powers, where ‘an angel comes and stirs the water at intervals…’ and the sick have to get into the water while it’s seething. Where, in other words, the sick are patient patients, waiting for the cure to appear. They know—they’ve been told—that the way to be cured is to get in the water while it seethes. They aren’t looking for anything else… They are in that place, at that time, looking for not just healing, but healing by that particular method.

  “In today’s world, we might say they are like the person who believes that one particular doctor—one world-famous specialist—can cure him of his cancer. He goes to the hospital where that doctor is, he wants to see that doctor and no one else, because he is sure that only that method will restore him to health.

  “So the paralyzed man focuses on the healing pool, sure that the help he needs is someone to carry him into the water at the right time.

  “Jesus’s question, then, challenges him to consider whether he wants to be well or he wants that particular experience, of being in the pool. If he can be healed without it, will he accept that healing?

  “Some preachers have discussed this story as an example of self-inflicted paralysis, hysterical paralysis—if the man wants to stay paralyzed, he will. It’s about mental illness, not physical illness. But I think the question Jesus asks has to do with a cognitive problem, not an emotional problem. Can the man see outside the box? Can he accept healing that is not what he’s used to? That will go beyond fixing his legs and back and start working on him from the inside out, from the spirit to the mind to the body?”

  I wonder what the man would say if he were not paralyzed but autistic. Would he even go to the pool for healing? Cameron would. I close my eyes and see Cameron lowering himself into bubbling water, in a shimmer of light. Then he disappears. Linda insists we do not need healing, that there is nothing wrong with us the way we are, just something wrong with others for not accepting us. I can imagine Linda pushing her way through the crowd, headed away from the pool.

  I do not think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be less
of a burden.

  Since my parents died, I am not anyone’s burden. Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am a burden to the company, but I do not believe this is true. I am not lying beside a pool begging people to carry me into it. I am trying to keep them from throwing me into it. I do not believe it is a healing pool anyway.

  “… so the question for us today is, Do we want the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or are we just pretending?” The priest has said a lot I have not heard. This I hear, and I shiver.

  “Are we sitting here beside the pool, waiting for an angel to come trouble the water, waiting patiently but passively, while beside us the living God stands ready to give us life everlasting, abundant life, if only we will open our hands and hearts and take that gift?

  “I believe many of us are. I believe all of us are like that at one time or another, but right now, still, many of us sit and wait and lament that there is no one to lower us into the water when the angel comes.” He pauses and looks around the church; I see people flinch and others relax when his gaze touches them. “Look around you, every day, in every place, into the eyes of everyone you meet. Important as this church may be in your life, God should be greater—and He is everywhere, every-when, in everyone and everything. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be healed?’ and—if you can’t answer yes—start asking why not. For I am sure that He stands beside each of you, asking that question in the depths of your soul, ready to heal you of all things as soon as you are ready to be healed.”

  I stare at him and almost forget to stand up and say the words of the Nicene Creed, which is what comes next.

  I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen. I believe God is important and does not make mistakes. My mother used to joke about God making mistakes, but I do not think if He is God He makes mistakes. So it is not a silly question.

  Do I want to be healed? And of what?

  The only self I know is this self, the person I am now, the autistic bioinformatics specialist fencer lover of Marjory.