THE SPEED OF DARK by Elizabeth Moon

 

This is a warm, engaging, human and humane book:  what I like best about it is the glimpse into the life of a character so not like most of us . . . and yet very like us after all. 

            This is the book I was reading at my last Octopus and Chandelier rehearsal last Sunday week—the book that pulled me into its story so persuasively that I could forget that sitting and waiting is not in my skill set.*   EMoon and I had a swap a few months back:  she wanted a copy of the now out of print A KNOT IN THE GRAIN and I was having trouble getting hold of SPEED.  Although it claims to be in print it kept not arriving and I had grown testy. 

            But the edition she sent me** happens to be gorgeous.  Hardback.  Leather.  Gilt-edged.  Eeek.  So I haven't been reading it in the bath.***  I read a page or two standing up in the kitchen† and you know that eyeball-sucking sensation when a story really wants to make off with a large portion of the next day or two of your life?  Yes.  Like that.  So I knew that standing up in the kitchen was not how I wanted to read it:  I wanted to read it in a great thrilling whump.  So what an excellent thing I had a boring rehearsal ten days ago.

            Lou Arrendale is autistic.  He works in a special department of a large corporation with other autistic people—autists—in an area set up for their special needs:  Division A.  The story takes place in some undefined time in the near future in what still looks like present-day America.  There are a few crucial differences:  one of them is a live space-exploration programme.  Another is a cure for autism.  Autism is now treated in the womb, before the baby is born;   Lou is a member of the last generation of 'genuine' autists, of people who have had to learn the hard—the gruellingly hard—way to cope in the 'normal' world.  Lou is the high functioning end;  not only does he have a good job, he lives alone in his own apartment, and drives his own car.  He also takes fencing lessons, and has a heavy crush on one of the women he fences with. 

            At the beginning of the book, Lou is in his psychiatrist's office: 

            '. . .  If they aren't going to listen, why should I talk?

            'I know better than to say that out loud.  Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say.

            'In this office, where I am evaluated and advised four times a year, the psychiatrist is not less certain of the line between us than all the others have been.  Her certainty is painful to see, so I try not to look at her more than I have to.  That has its own dangers;  like the others, she thinks I should make more eye contact than I do.  I glance at her now.

            'Dr Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head not quite imperceptibly.  Autistic persons do not understand these signals;  the book says so.  I have read the book, so I know what it is I do not understand.

            'What I haven't figured out yet is the range of things they don't understand.  The normals. . . .  I know some of what she doesn't know.  She doesn't know that I can read.  She thinks I'm hyperlexic, just parroting the words. . . . She knows I work on a computer, she knows I went to school, but she has not caught on that this is incompatible with her belief that I am actually nearly illiterate and barely verbal. . . .  She does not like it when I use big words (as she calls them) and she tells me to just say what I mean.

            'What I mean is the speed of dark is as interesting as the speed of light, and maybe it is faster and who will find out?

            ' . . . She doesn't want to know what I mean.  She wants me to say what other people say.  "Good morning, Dr. Fornum." . . .  "Yes, I can wait.  I don't mind."

            'I don't mind.  When she answers the phone I can look around her office and find the twinkly things she doesn't know she has.  I can move my head back and forth so the light in the corner glints off and on over there, on the shiny cover of a book in the bookcase.  If she notices that I'm moving my head back and forth she makes a note in my record. . . . It is called stereotypy when I do it and relaxing her neck when she does it. . . .'

            The large corporation that Lou and his fellow autists work for is a pharmaceutical company, and there is news before the end of chapter one:  their company has a new experimental drug protocol that might 'fix' the last generation of autists;  and their boss—their 'normal' boss—has a new boss.  This new boss, Mr Crenshaw, fancies himself as the new broom, and one of the things he would like to sweep away is Division A.  He sees an opportunity to do a big flashy corporate thing that will boot him up the ladder even higher:  he is going to bully Division A into being human guinea pigs for the new protocol.  He is going to bully them by threatening to fire them if they don't cooperate:  that this is illegal is beside the point, as Mr Crenshaw sees it.††

            I genuinely didn't know till the end—till Division A makes its individual decisions—which way any of them would decide;  and there is some suspense about whether the Machiavellian Mr Crenshaw is going to get his comeuppance or not.  There's also a fascinating subplot about Lou being stalked by someone who feels Lou gets an unfair advantage by being classed as 'disabled'.  The stalking isn't fascinating, just sad:  but Lou's reactions to what is happening is fascinating, because of the little sharp graphic view it gives you into what it might be like to be autistic.  (Lou says:  'The only role I play is normal.')  Lou and Lou's thoughts and reactions are the real delight of this book, and the seamless way Moon presents Lou to the reader:  he is so clearly as human as you or I†††, and Dr Fornum is just daft.  I don't know about you, but I've been known to move my head back and forth not to relax my neck, but to make something twinkle.

            The story is told mostly from Lou's perspective—and in present tense:  I should really shut up about how much I dislike present tense narration, because once again it works a treat here—but there are occasional shifts to other people:  Mr Aldrin, Division A's boss, and Tom, Lou's fencing instructor.  One of the things this does is give you a reality check on Lou:  he is very bright and very observant, and it would be easy to assume that what he says is the truth, because he explains it so painstakingly.‡  But he's wrong sometimes, as we all are.  Another semi-incidental pleasure, and I don't know if Moon meant it as ironically as I read it, is that some of the things that make Lou an autist also make him a hero:  not merely the protagonist but an honest-to-goodness heroic-type hero.  When Lou's stalker confronts him—and manages to confront him because Lou is careless the way anyone might be careless—Lou defends himself partly by his fencing reflexes, but also because of his pattern recognition.  He recognises his stalker's attack pattern, and merely blocks it.  Hot gonzo.  I love this.  And when he decides he needs to think seriously about the drug protocol he concludes that he needs to learn how the brain works . . . so he merely picks up a few upper-level college texts on brain function and brain chemistry and reads them.‡‡  He's good at patterns, you see. . . .           

* * *

* Even when I'm not sitting on the world's most uncomfortable too-low backless bench.  This is another reason to learn to knit, of course:  productive fidgeting.  Fiona yesterday said that was one of its purposes for her:  there are times you can knit when you're being bored out of your tiny mind when it's rude to read—and if you can't fidget you'll die.  Indeed.  I'm seriously considering taking MY KNITTING with me to the big horrible bell ringers' admin meeting this weekend.  No, I'm listening!  Really I am!  I can knit and listen!  —Actually I'm not sure I can, but they don't have to know that.  And even if I'm not listening it won't be the knitting that's the problem. . . .  It is really providential that I decided/was yarnbombed into trying to learn to knit just now. ^

            Do autists ever like knitting?  It's sure a pattern thing.       

^ And no, I haven't forgotten since yesterday.   

** On the grounds that I know only too well:  'The wretched thing has disappeared, this was the only edition I could find.'

*** I have to get over the idea that all my fiction reading happens in the bathtub.  Once I get to bed lately it's either large heavy hardback homeopathy books or frelling bob major on Pooka. 

† WAITING FOR HELLHOUNDS TO EAT

†† 'Mr Crenshaw is in the hall again. . . . I say, "Good morning, Mr Crenshaw," because that is appropriate, and he grunts something that might have been, "Morning."  If he had had my speech therapist, he would enunciate more clearly.'

††† One of the reasons I'm writing about this book tonight rather than some other night is because of an article on 'creative people' that was tweeted earlier today:  http://bit.ly/hZGe9i  which really pisses me off.   This is the rankest Othering, thinly veiled as psychological research.  These twerps would get along with Dr Fornum.  Creativity is a continuum, and we're all on it, like we've got beating hearts and some hard wiring to learn language.  This article would have a lot more credibility with me if it said something more to the effect that these are the kinds of things that happen if you find a way to USE your own individual creativity and integrate it with the rest of your life.  Professional writers are just one of the visible ends;  we're not the whole show.  The autistic spectrum/continuum connects here too, although I don't know how or where;  I know there are 'creative' autists—like I know that I have some Asperger's, OCD, schizophrenic, you name it, if it's weird mental I have it, symptoms.  I don't think this is because I'm crazy or an artist:  I think it's because I'm a NORMAL HUMAN.^

            Grrrrrrrrr.

^ Lou says:  '[Marjory] uses her hands when she talks.  A couple of times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism.  I have seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or partly autistic.'

‡ 'Supposedly autistic persons do not care what others think of them, but this is not true.  I do care, and it hurts when people do not like me because I am autistic.'

‡‡ 'If I understand the textbook, I remember things like what percentage of cars in the parking lot are blue because I pay attention to color and number more than most people.  They don't notice, so they don't care.  I wonder what they do notice when they look at a parking lot.  What else is there to see besides the rows of vehicles, so many blue and so many tan and so many red?  What am I missing, as they miss seeing the beautiful numeric relationships?'