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

lights.
    “Yes.” I can feel her warmth; she is standing very close beside me. I close my eyes a moment. “I just…
    I can get confused.” I point to an airplane coming toward a gate. “Is that the one?”
    “I think so.” She moves around me and turns to face me. “Are you all right?”
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    “Yes. It just… happens that way sometimes.” I am embarrassed that it happened tonight, the first time I have ever been alone with Marjory. I remember in high school wanting to talk to girls who didn’t want to talk to me. Will she go away, too? I could get a taxi back to Tom and Lucia’s, but I don’t have a lot of money with me.
    “I’m glad you’re okay,” Marjory says, and then the door opens and people start coming off the plane.
    She is watching for Karen, and I am watching her. Karen turns out to be an older woman, gray-haired.
    Soon we are all back outside and then on the way to Karen’s apartment. I sit quietly in the backseat, listening to Marjory and Karen talk. Their voices flow and ripple like swift water over rocks. I can’t quite follow what they’re talking about. They go too fast for me, and I don’t know the people or places they speak of. It’s all right, though, because I can watch Marjory without having to talk at the same time.
    When we get back to Tom and Lucia’s, where my car is, Don has gone and the last of the fencing group are packing things in their car. I remember that I did not put my blades and mask away and go outside to collect them, but Tom has picked them up, he says. He wasn’t sure what time we would get back; he didn’t want to leave them out in the dark.
    I say good-bye to Tom and Lucia and Marjory and drive home in the swift dark.

Chapter Three
    MY MESSAGER IS BLINKING WHEN I GET HOME. IT’S Lars’s code; he wants me to come on-line. It’s late. I don’t want to oversleep and be late tomorrow. But Lars knows I fence on Wednesdays, and he doesn’t usually try to contact me then. It must be important.
    I sign on and find his message. He has clipped a journal article for me, research on reversal of autistic-like symptoms in adult primates. I skim it, my heart thudding. Reversing genetic autism in the infant or brain damage that resulted in autisticlike syndromes in the small child has now become common, but I had been told it was too late for me. If this is real, it is not too late. In the last sentence, the article’s author makes that connection, speculating that the research might be applicable to humans and suggesting further research.
    As I read, other icons pop up on my screen.The logo of our local autistic society.Cameron’s logo and Dale’s. So they’ve heard about it, too. I ignore them for the time being and go on reading. Even though it is about brains like mine, this is not my field and I cannot quite understand how the treatment is supposed to work. The authors keep referring to other articles in which the procedures were spelled out. Those articles aren’t accessible—not to me, not tonight. I don’t know what “Ho and Delgracia’s method” is. I don’t know what all the words mean, either, and my dictionary doesn’t have them.
    When I look at the clock, it is long after midnight.Bed. I must sleep. I turn everything off, set the alarm, and go to bed. In my mind, photons chase darkness but never catch up.
    AT WORK THE NEXT MORNING, WE ALL STAND IN THE HALL, NOT quite meeting one anothers ’ eyes. Everybody knows.
    “I think it’s a fake,” Linda says. “It can’t possibly work.”
    “But if it does,” Cameron says. “If it does, we can be normal.”
    “I don’t want to be normal,” Linda says. “I am who I am. I’m happy.” She does not look happy. She Page 24

    looks fierce and determined.
    “Me, too,” Dale says. “What if it works for monkeys—what does that mean? They’re not people; they’re simpler than we are. Monkeys don’t talk.” His eyelid twitches more than usual.
    “We already communicate better than