The Speed of Dark (2 page)

Page 5

No one interrupts me while I bounce; the strong thrust of the trampoline followed by weightless suspension makes me feel vast and light. I can feel my mind stretching out, relaxing, even as I keep perfect time with the music. When I feel the concentration returning and curiosity drives me once more toward my assignment, I slow the bouncing to tiny little baby bounces and swing off the trampoline.

No one interrupts me as I walk to my desk. I think Linda is there, and Bailey, but it doesn’t matter.

Later we may go for supper, but not now. Now I am ready to work.

The symbols I work with are meaningless and confusing to most people. It is hard to explain what I do, but I know it is valuable work, because they pay me enough to afford the car, the apartment, and they supply the gym and the quarterly visits to Dr. Fornum . Basically I look for patterns. Some of the patterns have fancy names and other people find them hard to see, but for me they have always been easy. All I had to do was learn the way to describe them so others could see that I had something in mind.

I put headphones on and choosea music . For the project I’m on now, Schubert is too lush. Bach is perfect, the complex patterns mirroring the pattern I need. I let the place in my mind that finds and generates patterns sink into the project, and then it is like watching ice crystals grow on the surface of still water: one after another, the lines of ice grow, branch, branch again, interlace… All I have to do is pay attention and ensure that the pattern remains symmetrical or asymmetrical or whatever the particular project calls for. This time it is more intensely recursive than most, and I see it in my mind as stacks of fractal growth, forming a spiky sphere.

When the edges blur, I shake myself and sit back. It has been five hours, and I didn’t notice. All the agitation from Dr. Fornum has gone, leaving me clear. Sometimes when I come back I can’t work for a day or so, but this time I got back into balance with the bouncing. Above my workstation, a pinwheel spins lazily in the draft of the ventilation system. I blow at it, and after a moment—1.3 seconds, actually—it spins faster, twinkling purple-and-silver in the light. I decide to turn on my swiveling fan so all the pinwheels and spin spirals can spin together, filling my office with twinkling light.

The dazzle has just started when I hear Bailey calling from down the hall, “Anyone for pizza?” I am hungry; my stomach makes noises and I can suddenly smell everything in the office: the paper, the workstation, the carpet, the metal/plastic/dust/cleaning solution… myself. I turn off thefan, give a last glance at the spinning and twinkling beauty, and go out into the hall. A quick flick of a glance at my friends’ faces is all I need to know who is coming and who is not. We do not need to talk about it; we know one another.

We come into the pizza place about nine.Linda, Bailey, Eric, Dale, Cameron, and me. Chuy was ready to eat, too, but the tables here hold only six. He understands. I would understand if he and the others were ready first. I would not want to come here and sit at another table, so I know that Chuy will not come here and we will not have to try to squeeze him in. A new manager last year did not understand that. He was always trying to arrange big dinners for us and mix us up in seating. “Don’t be so hidebound,” he would say. When he wasn’t looking, we went back to where we like to sit. Dale has an eye tic that bothers Linda, so she sits where she can’t see it. I think it’s funny and I like to watch it, so I sit on Dale’s left, where it looks like he’s winking at me.

The people who work here know us. Even when other people in the restaurant look too long at us for our movements and the way we talk— or don’t—the people here don’t ever give us that go-away look I’ve had other places. Linda just points to what she wants or sometimes she writes it out first, and they never bother her with more questions.

Page 6

Tonight our favorite table is dirty. I can hardly stand to look at the five dirty plates and pizza pans; it makes my stomach turn to think of the smears of sauce and cheese and crust crumbs, and the uneven number makes it worse. There is an empty table to our right, but we do not like that one. It’s next to the passage to the rest rooms, and too many people go by behind us.

We wait, trying to be patient, as Hi-I’m-Sylvia—she has that on her name tag, as if she were a product for sale and not a person—signals to one of the others to clean up our table. I like her and can remember to call her Sylvia without the Hi-I’m as long as I’m not looking at her name tag. Hi-I’m-Sylvia always smiles at us and tries to be helpful; Hi-I’m-Jean is the reason we don’t come in on Thursdays, when she works this shift. Hi-I’m-Jean doesn’t like us and mutters under her breath if she sees us. Sometimes one of us will come to pick up an order for the others; the last time I did, Hi-I’m-Jean said, “At least he didn’t bring all the other freaks in here,” to one of the cooks as I turned away from the register. She knew I heard. She meant me to hear. She is the only one who gives us trouble.

But tonight it’s Hi-I’m-Sylvia and Tyree, who is picking up the plates and dirty knives and forks as if it didn’t bother him. Tyree doesn’t wear a name tag; he just cleans tables. We know he’s Tyree because we heard the others call him that. The first time I used his name to him, he looked startled and a little scared, but now he knows us, though he doesn’t use our names.

“Be done in a minute here,” Tyree says, and gives us a sidelong look. “You doin ’ okay?”

“Fine,” Cameron says. He’s bouncing a little from heel to toe. He always does that a little, but I can tell he’s bouncing a bit faster than usual.

I am watching the beer sign blinking in the window. It comes on in three segments, red, green, then blue in the middle, and then goes off all at once.Blink, red. Blink, green, blink blue, then blink red/green/blue, all off, all on, all off, and start over. A very simple pattern, and the colors aren’t that pretty (the red is too orange for my taste and so is the green, but the blue is a lovely blue), but still it’s a pattern to watch.

“Your table’s ready,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, and I try not to twitch as I shift my attention from the beer sign to her.

We arrange ourselves around the table in the usual way and sit down. We are having the same thing we have every time we come here, so it doesn’t take long to order. We wait for the food to come, not talking because we are each, in our own way, settling into this situation. Because of the visit to Dr.

Fornum , I’m more aware than usual of the details of this process: that Linda is bouncing her fingers on the bowl of her spoon in a complex pattern that would delight a mathematician as much as it does her.

I’m watching the beer sign out of the corner of my eye, as is Dale. Cameron is bouncing the tiny plastic dice he keeps in his pocket, discreetly enough that people who don’t know him wouldn’t notice, but I can see the rhythmic flutter of his sleeve. Bailey also watches the beer sign. Eric has taken out his multicolor pen and is drawing tiny geometric patterns on the paper place mat.First red, then purple, then blue, then green, then yellow, then orange, then red again. He likes it when the food arrives just when he finishes a color sequence.

This time the drinks come while he’s at yellow; the food comes on the next orange. His face relaxes.

We are not supposed to talk about the project off-campus. But Cameron is still bouncing in his seat, full of his need to tell us about a problem he solved, when we’ve almost finished eating. I glance around. No one is at a table near us. “ Ezzer,” I say.
Ezzer
means “go ahead” in our private language. We aren’t supposed to have a private language and nobody thinks we can do something like that, but we can.

Many people have a private language without even knowing it. They may call it jargon or slang, but it’s
Page 7

really a private language, a way of telling who is in the group and who is not.

Cameron pulls a paper out of his pocket and spreads it out. We aren’t supposed to take papers out of the office, in case someone else gets hold of them, but we all do it. It’s hard to talk, sometimes, and much easier to write things down or draw them.

I recognize the curly guardians Cameron always puts in the corner of his drawings. He likes anime. I recognize as well the patterns he has linked through a partial recursion that has the lean elegance of most of his solutions. We all look at it and nod. “Pretty,” Linda says. Her hands jerk sideways a little; she would be flapping wildly if we were back at the campus, but here she tries not to do it.

“Yes,” Cameron says, and folds the paper back up.

I know that this exchange would not satisfy Dr. Fornum . She would want Cameron to explain the drawing, even though it is clear to all of us. She would want us to ask questions, make comments,talk about it. There is nothing to talk about: it is clear to all of us what the problem was and that Cameron’s solution is good in all senses. Anything else is just busy talk. Among ourselves we don’t have to do that.

“I was wondering about the speed of dark,” I say, looking down. They will look at me, if only briefly, when I speak, and I don’t want to feel all those gazes.

“It doesn’t have a speed,” Eric says. “It’s just the space where light isn’t.”

“What would it feel like if someone ate pizza on a worldwith more than one gravity ?” Linda asks.

“I don’t know,” Dale says, sounding worried.

“The speed of not knowing,” Linda says.

I puzzle at that a moment and figure it out. “Not knowing expands faster than knowing,” I say. Linda grins and ducks her head. “So the speed of dark could be greater than the speed of light. If there always has to be dark around the light, then it has to go out ahead of it.”

“I want to go home now,” Eric says. Dr. Fornum would want me to ask if he is upset. I know he is not upset; if he goes home now he will see his favorite TV program. We say good-bye because we are in public and we all know you are supposed to say good-bye in public. I go back to the campus. I want to watch my whirligigs and spin spirals for a while before going home to bed.

CAMERON AND I ARE IN THE GYM, TALKING IN BURSTS AS WE
bounceon the trampolines.

We have both done a lot of good work in the last few days, and we are relaxing.

Joe Lee comes in and I look at Cameron. Joe Lee is only twenty-four. He would be one of us if he hadn’t had the treatments that were developed too late for us. He thinks he’s one of us because he knows he would have been and he has some of our characteristics. He is very good at abstractions and recursions, for instance. He likes some of the same games; he likes our gym. But he is much better—he is normal, in fact— in his ability to read minds and expressions.Normal minds and expressions. He misses with us, who are his closest relatives in that way.

“Hi, Lou,” he says to me.“Hi,Cam .” I see Cameron stiffen. He doesn’t like to have his name shortened.

Page 8

He has told me it feels like having his legs cut off. He has told Joe Lee, too, but Joe Lee forgets because he spends so much of his time with the normals . “ Howzitgoin?” he asks, slurring the words and forgetting to face us so we can see his lips. I catch it, because my auditory processing is better than Cameron’s and I know that Joe Lee often slurs his words.

“How is it going?” I say clearly, for Cameron’s benefit. “Fine, Joe Lee.” Cameron breathes out.

“ Didjahear?” Joe Lee asks, and without waiting for an answer he rushes on. “Somebody’s working on a reversal procedure for autism. It worked on some rats or something, so they’re trying it on primates. I’ll bet it won’t be long before you guys can be normal like me.”

Joe Lee has always said he’s one of us, but this makes it clear that he has never really believed it. We are “you guys” and normal is “like me.” I wonder if he said he was one of us but luckier to make us feel better or to please someone else.

Cameron glares; I can almost feel the tangle of words filling his throat, making it impossible for him to speak. I know better than to speak for him. I speak only for myself, which is how everyone should speak.

“So you admit you are not one of us,” I say, and Joe Lee stiffens, his face assuming an expression I’ve been taught is “hurt feelings.”

“How can you say that, Lou? You know it’s just the treatment—”

“If you give a deaf child hearing, he is no longer one of the deaf,” I say. “If you do it early enough, he never was. It’s all pretending otherwise.”

“What’s all pretending otherwise?Otherwise what?” Joe Lee looks confused as well as hurt, and I realize that I left out one of the little pauses where a comma would be if you wrote what I said. But his confusion alarms me—being not understood alarms me; it lasted so long when I was a child. I feel the words tangling in my head, in my throat, and struggle to get them out in the right order, with the right expression. Why can’t people just say what they mean, the words alone? Why do I have to fight with tone and rate and pitch and variation?

I can feel and hear my voice going tight and mechanical. I sound angry to myself, but what I feel is scared. “They fixed you before you were born, Joe Lee,” I say. “You never lived days—one day—like us.”

“You’re wrong,” he says quickly, interrupting. “I’m just like you inside, except—”

“Except what makes you different from others, what you call normal,” I say, interrupting in turn. It hurts to interrupt. Miss Finley, one of my therapists, used to tap my hand if I interrupted. But I could not stand to hear him going on saying things that were not true. “You could hear and process language sounds—you learned to talk normally. You didn’t have dazzle eyes.”

“Yeah, but my brain works the same way.”

I shake my head. Joe Lee should know better; we’ve told him again and again. The problems we have with hearing and vision and other senses aren’t in the sensory organs but in the brain. So the brain does not work the same if someone doesn’t have those problems. If we were computers, Joe Lee would have a different main processor chip, with a different instruction set. Even if two computers with different chips
Page 9