The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon Read Free Book Online Page A

through; no one asks her anything. I put my keys, my wallet,my change into the little basket and walk through. No buzz, no bleep. The man in uniform stares at me as I pick up my keys, my wallet, my change and put them back in my pockets. I turn away, toward Marjory waiting a few yards away. Then he speaks.
    “May I see your ticket, please? And some ID?”
    I feel cold all over. He hasn’t asked anyone else—not the man with the long braided hair who pushed past me to get his briefcase off the conveyor belt, not Marjory—and I haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have to have a ticket to go through security for arrivals; you just have to know the flight number you’re meeting. People who are meeting people don’t have tickets because they aren’t traveling. Security for departures requires a ticket.
    “I don’t have a ticket,” I say. Beyond him, I can see Marjory shift her weight, but she doesn’t come closer. I don’t think she can hear what he is saying, and I don’t want to yell in a public place.
    “ID?” he says. His face is focused on me and starting to get shiny. I pull out my wallet and open it to my ID. He looks at it, then back at me. “If you don’t have a ticket, what are you doing here?” he asks.
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    I can feel my heartracing, sweat springing out on my neck. “I’m… I’m… I’m…
    “Spit it out,” he says, frowning. “Or do you stutter like that all the time?”
    I nod. I know I can’t say anything now, not for a few minutes. I reach into my shirt pocket and take out the little card I keep there. I offer it to him; he glances at it.
    “Autistic, huh?But you were talking; you answered me a second ago. Who are you meeting?”
    Marjory moves, coming up behind him. “Anything wrong, Lou?”
    “Stand back, lady,” the man says. He doesn’t look at her.
    “He’s my friend,” Marjory says. “We’re meeting a friend of mine on Flight Three-eighty-two, Gate Seventeen. I didn’t hear the buzzer go off…” There is an edge of anger to her tone.
    Now the man turns his head just enough to see her. He relaxes a little. “He’s with you?”
    “Yes. Was there a problem?”
    “No, ma’am.He just looked a little odd. I guess this”—he still has my card in his hand—“explains it. As long as you’re with him…”
    “I’m not his keeper,” Marjory says, in the same tone that she used when she said Don was a real heel.
    “Lou is my friend.”
    The man’s eyebrows go up, then down. He hands me back my card and turns away. I walk away, beside Marjory, who is headed off in a fast walk that must be stretching her legs. We say nothing until after we arrive at the secured waiting area for Gates Fifteen through Thirty. On the other side of the glass wall, people with tickets, on the departures side, sit in rows; the seatframes are shiny metal and the seats are dark blue. We don’t have seats in arrivals because we are not supposed to come more than ten minutes before the flight’s scheduled arrival.
    This is not the way it used to be. I don’t remember that, of course— I was born at the turn of the century—but my parents told me about being able to just walk right up to the gates to meet people arriving. Then after the 2001 disasters, only departing passengers could go to the gates. That was so awkward for people who needed help, and so many people asked for special passes, that the government designed these arrival lounges instead, with separate security lines. By the time my parents took me on an airplane for the first time, when I was nine, all large airports had separated arriving and departing passengers.
    I look out the big windows.Lights everywhere.Red and green lights on the tips of the airplanes’ wings.
    Rows of dim square lights along the planes, showing where the windows are.Headlights on the little vehicles that pull baggage carts. Steady lights and blinking lights.
    “Can you talk now?” Marjory asks while I’m still looking out at the