Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

She takes a deep breath. I like to watch her take deep breaths; the front of her clothes pulls tight. “Why?” she asks in a quieter voice. “It isn’t because of… because of… us, is it? Me?”

“No,” I say. “It is not about you. It is about me.”

Her shoulders sag. I do not know if it is relief or sadness. “Then was it Don? Did he make you do this, convince you that you weren’t all right as you were?”

“It was not Don… not only Don…” It is obvious, I think, and I do not know why she cannot see it. She was there when the security man at the airport stopped me and my words stuck and she had to help me. She was there when I needed to talk to the police officer and my words stuck and Tom had to help me. I do not like being the one who always needs help. “It is about me,” I say again. “I want not to have problems at the airport and sometimes with other people when it is hard to talk and have people looking at me. I want to go places and learn things I did not know I could learn…”

Her faces changes again, smoothing out, and her voice loses some of its emotional tone. “What is the treatment like, Lou? What will happen?”

I open the packet I have brought. We are not supposed to discuss the treatment since it is proprietary and experimental, but I think this is a bad idea. If things go wrong, someone outside should know. I did not tell anyone I was taking my packet out, and they did not stop me.

I begin to read. Almost at once, Lucia stops me.

“Lou — do you understand this stuff now?”

“Yes. I think so. After Cego and Clinton, I could read the on-line journals pretty easily.”

“Why don’t you let me read that, then? I can understand it better if I see the words. Then we can talk about it.”

There is nothing to talk about, really. I am going to do it. But I hand Lucia the packet, because it is always easier to do what Lucia says. Marjory scoots closer to her and they both begin to read. I look at Tom. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.

“You’re a brave man, Lou. I knew that, but this-! I don’t know if I’d have the guts to let someone mess with my brain.”

“You don’t need to,” I say. “You are normal. You have a job with tenure. You have Lucia and this house.” I cannot say the rest that I think, that he is easy in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and smells and feels what others do, so his reality matches theirs.

“Will you come back to us, do you think?” Tom asks. He looks sad.

“I do not know,” I say. “I hope that I will still like to fence, because it is fun, but I do not know.”

“Do you have time to stay tonight?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Then let’s go on out.” He gets up and leads the way to the equipment room. Lucia and Marjory stay behind, reading. When we get to the equipment room, he turns to me. “Lou, are you sure you aren’t doing this because you’re in love with Marjory? Because you want to be a normal man for her? That would be a noble thing to do, but—”

I feel myself going hot all over. “It is not about her. I like her. I want to touch her and hold her and… things that are not appropriate. But this is…” I reach out and touch the upright end of the stand that holds the blades, because suddenly I am trembling and afraid I might fall. “Things do not stay the same,” I say. “I am not the same. I cannot not change. This is just… faster change. But I choose it.”

“ ‘Fear change, and it will destroy you; embrace change, and it will enlarge you,’ ” Tom says, in the voice he uses for quotes. I do not know what he is quoting from. Then in his normal voice, with a little joking voice added, he says, “Choose your weapon, then: if you aren’t going to be here for a while, I want to be sure to get my licks in tonight.”

I take my blades and my mask and have put on my leather before I remember that I did not stretch. I sit down on the patio and begin the stretches. It is colder out here; the flagstones are hard and cold under me.

Tom sits across from me. “I’ve done mine, but more never hurts as I get older,” he says. I can see, when he bends to put his face on his knee, that the hair on the top of his head is thinning, and there is gray in it. He puts one arm over his head and pulls on it with the other arm. “What will you do when you’re through the treatment?”

“I would like to go into space,” I say.

“You-? Lou, you never cease to amaze me.” He puts the other arm on top of his head now and pulls on the elbow. “I didn’t know you wanted to go into space. When did that start?”

“When I was little,” I say. “But I knew I could not do it. I knew it was not appropriate.”

“When I think of the waste-!” Tom says, bending his head now to his other knee. “Lou, as much as I worried about this before, I think you’re right now. You have too much potential to be locked up in a diagnosis the rest of your life. Though it’s going to hurt Marjory when you grow away from her.”

“I do not want to hurt Marjory,” I say, “I do not think I will grow away from her.” It is a strange expression; I am sure it cannot be literal. If two things close to each other both grow, they will get closer together, not apart.

“I know that. You like her a lot — no, you love her. That’s clear. But, Lou — she’s a nice woman, but as you say, you’re about to make a big change. You won’t be the same person.”

“I will always like — love — her,” I say. I had not thought that becoming normal would make that harder or impossible. I do not understand why Tom thinks so. “I do not think she pretended to like me just to do research on me, whatever Emmy says.”

“Good heavens, who thought that up? Who’s Emmy?”

“Someone at the Center,” I say. I do not want to talk about Emmy, so I hurry through it. “Emmy said Marjory was a researcher and just talked to me as a subject, not a friend. Marjory told me that her research was on neuromuscular disorders, so I knew Emmy was wrong.”

Tom stands up, and I scramble up, too. “But for you — it’s a great opportunity.”

“I know,” I say. “I wanted— I thought once— I almost asked her out, but I don’t know how.”

“Do you think the treatment will help?”

“Maybe.” I put on my mask. “But if it does not help with that, it will help with other things, I think. And I will always like her.”

“I’m sure you will, but it won’t be the same. Can’t be. It’s like any system, Lou. If I lost a foot, I might still fence, but my patterns would be different, right?”

I do not like thinking of Tom losing a foot, but I can understand what he means. I nod.

“So if you make a big change in who you are, then you and Marjory will be in a different pattern. You may be closer, or you may be further apart.”

Now I know what I did not know a few minutes ago, that I had had a deep and hidden thought about Marjory and the treatment and me. I did think it would be easier. I did have a hope that if I were normal, we might be normal together, might marry and have children and a normal life.

“It won’t be the same, Lou,” Tom says again from behind his mask. I can see the glitter of his eyes. “It can’t be.”

Fencing is the same and it is not the same. Tom’s patterns are clearer now each time I fence with him, but my pattern slides in and out of focus. My attention wavers. Will Marjory come outside? Will she fence? What are she and Lucia saying about the consent packet? When I concentrate, I can make touches on him, but then I lose track of where he is in his pattern and he makes touches on me. It is three touches to five when Marjory and Lucia come out, and Tom and I have just stopped for breath. Even though it is a cool night, we are sweaty.