Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

I call up yesterday’s work, and the beautiful patterns form again in my mind. One parameter after another flows in, shifting the pattern from one structure to another, seamlessly. I vary the parameters across the permitted range, checking to see that there is no unwanted shift. When I look up again, it is an hour and eleven minutes later. Mr. Crenshaw will not be in our building now. He never stays this long. I go out in the hall for some water. The hall is empty, but I see the sign on the gym door. Someone is in there. I do not care.

I write down the words I will need to say, then call the police and ask for the investigating officer from the first incident, Mr. Stacy. When he comes onto the line, I can hear noises in the background. Other people are talking, and there is a kind of rumbling noise.

“This is Lou Arrendale,” I say. “You came when my car had its tires slashed. You said to call—”

“Yes, yes,” he says. He sounds impatient and as if he is not really listening. “Officer Isaka told me about the windshield the following week. We haven’t had time to follow that up—”

“Last night my battery was stolen,” I say. “And someone put a toy where the battery should be.”

“What?”

“When I went out this morning, my car would not start. I looked under the hood and something jumped at me. It was a jack-in-the-box someone had put where the battery should have been.”

“Just stay there and I’ll send someone over—” he says.

“I am not at home,” I say. “I am at work. My boss would be angry if I did not come on time. The car is at home.”

“I see. Where is the toy?”

“In the car,” I say. “I did not touch it. I do not like jack-in-the-box toys. I just shut the lid.” I meant “hood,” but the wrong word came in my mouth.

“I’m not happy about this,” he says. “Someone really does not like you, Mr. Arrendale. Once is mischief, but — do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“The only person I know who has been angry with me is my boss, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. “When I came in late, that time. He does not like autistic people. He wants us to try an experimental treatment—”

“Us? Are there other autistic people where you work?”

I realize he does not know; he did not ask about this before. “Our section is all autistic people,” I say. “But I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would do this sort of thing. Although… he does not like it that we have special permits to drive and a separate parking lot. He thinks we should all ride the train like everyone else.”

“Hmmm. And all the attacks have been on your car.”

“Yes. But he does not know about my fencing class.” I cannot imagine Mr. Crenshaw driving around the city to find my car and then smashing the windshield.

“Anything else? Anything at all?”

I do not want to make false accusations. Making false accusations is very wrong. But I do not want my car to be damaged again. It takes my time away from other things; it messes up my schedule. And it costs money.

“There is someone at the Center, Emmy Sanderson, who thinks I should not have normal friends,” I say. “But she does not know where the fencing group is.” I do not really think it is Emmy, but she is the one person, besides Mr. Crenshaw, who has been angry with me in the last month or so. The pattern does not really fit for her or for Mr. Crenshaw, but the pattern must be wrong, because a possible name has not come out.

“Emmy Sanderson,” he says, repeating the name. “And you don’t think she knows where the house is?”

“No.” Emmy is not my friend, but I do not believe she has done these things. Don is my friend, and I do not want to believe he has done these things.

“Isn’t it more likely someone connected to your fencing group? Is there someone you don’t get along with?”

I am sweating suddenly. “They are my friends,” I say. “Emmy says they can’t really be friends, but they are. Friends do not hurt friends.”

He grunts. I do not know what that grunt means. “There are friends and friends,” he says. “Tell me about the people in that group.”

I tell him about Tom and Lucia first and then the others; he takes down the names, asking me how to spell some of them.

“And were they all there, these last few weeks?”

“Not all every week,” I say. I tell him what I can remember, who was on a business trip and who was there. “And Don switched to a different instructor; he got upset with Tom.”

“With Tom. Not with you?”

“No.” I do not know how to say this without criticizing friends, and criticizing friends is wrong. “Don teases sometimes, but he is my friend,” I say. “He got upset with Tom because Tom told me about something Don did a long time ago and Don wanted him not to have told me.”

“Something bad?” Stacy asks.

“It was at a tournament,” I say. “Don came to me after the match and told me what I did wrong, and Tom — my instructor — told him to let me alone. Don was trying to help me, but Tom thought he wasn’t helping me. Tom said I had done better than Don had at his first tournament, and Don heard him, and then he was angry with Tom. After that he quit coming to our group.”

“Huh. Sounds more like a reason to slash your instructor’s tires. I suppose we’d better check him out, though. If you think of anything else, let me know. I’ll send someone over to retrieve that toy; we’ll see if we can get some fingerprints or something off of it.”

When I have put the phone down, I sit thinking of Don, but that is not pleasant. I think of Marjory instead, and then Marjory and Don. It makes me feel a little sick in my stomach to think of Don and Marjory as… friends. In love. I know Marjory does not like Don. Does he like her? I remember how he sat beside her, how he stood between me and her, how Lucia shooed him away.

Has Marjory told Lucia she likes me? This is another thing that normal people do, I think. They know when someone likes someone and how much. They do not have to wonder. It is like their other mind reading, knowing when someone is joking and when someone is serious, knowing when a word is used correctly and when it is used in a joking way. I wish I could know for sure if Marjory likes me. She smiles at me. She talks to me in a pleasant voice. But she might do that anyway, as long as she did not dislike me. She is pleasant to people; I saw that in the grocery store.

Emmy’s accusations come back to me. If Marjory does see me as an interesting case, a research subject even though not in her field, she might still smile and talk to me. It would not mean she liked me. It would mean she is a nicer person than Dr. Fornum, and even Dr. Fornum smiles an appropriate smile when she says hello and good-bye, though it never reaches her eyes as Marjory’s smile does. I have seen Marjory smile at other people and her smile is always whole. Still, if Marjory is my friend, she is telling me the truth when she tells me about her research, and if I am her friend, I should believe her.

I shake my head to drive these thoughts back into the darkness where they belong. I turn on the fan to make my spin spirals whirl. I need that now; I am breathing too fast and I can feel sweat on my neck. It is because of the car, because of Mr. Crenshaw, because of having to call the police. It is not because of Marjory.

After a few minutes, my brain’s functionality returns to pattern analysis and pattern generation. I do not let my mind drift to Cego and Clinton. I will work through part of my lunch hour to make up the time I spent talking to the police, but not the two minutes and eighteen seconds Mr. Crenshaw cost me.

Immersed in the complexity and beauty of the patterns, I do not emerge for lunch break until 1:28:17.