The Speed of Dark

“It is the pattern of people who do not really believe we need supports and resent the supports. If I — if we — did worse, they would understand more. It is the combination of doing well and having the supports that upsets them. I am too normal—” I look back at Mr. Stacy; he is smiling and nodding. “That is silly,” I say. “I am not normal. Not now. Not ever.”

“It may not seem that way to you,” he says. “And when you do something like you did with that old catchphrase about coincidence and enemy action, you are clearly not average… but most of the time you look normal and act normal. You know, I even thought — what we were told back in the psych classes we had to take was that autistic people were mostly nonverbal, reclusive, rigid.” He grins. I do not know what the grin means when he has just said so many bad things about us. “And here I find you driving a car, holding down a job, falling in love, going to fencing meets—”

“Only one so far,” I say.

“All right, only one so far. But I see a lot of people, Mr. Arrendale, who function less well than you and some who look to function at the same level. Doing it without supports. Now I see the reason for supports and the economy of them. It’s like putting a wedge under the short leg of a table — why not have a solid, foursquare table? Why endure a tippy unstable surface when such a little thing will make it stable? But people aren’t furniture, and if other people see that wedge as a threat to them… they won’t like it.”

“I do not see how I am a threat to Don or to Mr. Crenshaw,” I say.

“You personally may not be. I don’t even think your supports are, to anyone. But some people don’t think too well, and it’s easy for them to blame someone else for anything that’s wrong in their own lives. Don probably thinks if you weren’t getting preferential treatment he’d be successful with that woman.”

I wish he would use her name, Marjory. “That woman” sounds as if she had done something wrong.

“She probably wouldn’t like him anyway, but he doesn’t want to face that — he’d rather blame you. That is, if he’s the one doing all this.” He glances down at his pocket set. “From the information we have on him, he’s had a series of low-level jobs, sometimes quitting and sometimes being fired… his credit rating’s low… he could see himself as a failure and be looking for someone to blame for everything.”

I never thought of normal people as needing to explain their failures. I never thought of them as having failures.

“We’ll send someone to pick you up, Mr. Arrendale,” he says. “Call this number when you’re ready to leave for home.” He hands me a card. “We aren’t going to post a guard here, your corporate security’s good enough, but do believe me — you need to be careful.”

It is hard to go back to work when he is gone, but I focus on my project and accomplish something before it is time to leave and call for a ride.

Pete Aldrin took a deep breath after Crenshaw left his office, in a rage about the “stuck-up cop” who had come to interview Lou Arrendale, and picked up the phone to call Human Resources. “Bart—” That was the name Paul had suggested in Human Resources, a young and inexperienced employee who would certainly ask around for directions and help. “Bart, I need to arrange some time off for my entire Section A; they’re going to be involved in a research project.”

“Whose?” Bart asked.

“Ours — first human trial of a new product aimed at autistic adults. Mr. Crenshaw considers this a top priority in our division, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d expedite setting up indefinite leave. I think that’d be best; we don’t know how long it will take—”

“For all of them? At once?”

“They may go through the protocol staggered; I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know when the consent forms are signed. But it’ll be at least thirty days—”

“I don’t see how—”

“Here’s the authorization code. If you need Mr. Crenshaw’s signature—”

“It’s just not—”

“Thanks,” Aldrin said, and hung up. He could imagine Bart looking puzzled and alarmed both, then running off to his supervisor to ask what to do. Aldrin took a deep breath, then called Shirley in Accounting.

“I need to arrange for direct deposit of Section A’s salaries into their banks while they’re on indefinite leave—”

“Pete, I told you: that’s not how it works. You have to have clearance—”

“Mr. Crenshaw considers it a top priority. I have the project authorization code and I can get his signature—”

“But how am I supposed to—”

“Can’t you just say they’re working at a secondary location? That wouldn’t require any changes to the existing departmental budgets.”

He could hear her sucking her teeth over the phone. “I could, I guess, if you told me where the secondary location was.”

“Building Forty-two, Main Campus.”

A moment’s silence, then, “But that’s the clinic, Pete. What ate you trying to pull? Double-dipping for company employees as research subjects?”