Last week at this time I was at the tournament. I did enjoy it. I would rather be there than here. Even with the noise, with all the people, with all the smells. That is a place I belong; I do not belong here anymore. I am changing, or rather I have changed.
I decide to walk back to the apartment, even though it is a long way. It is cooler than it has been, and fall flowers show in some of the yards I walk past. The rhythm of walking eases my tension and makes it easier to hear the music I’ve chosen to walk with. I see other people with earphones on. They are listening to broadcast or recorded music; I wonder if the ones without earphones are listening to their own music or walking without music.
The smell of fresh bread stops me partway home. I turn aside into a small bakery and buy a loaf of warm bread. Next to the bakery is a flower shop with ranked masses of purples, yellows, blues, bronzes, deep reds. The colors carry more than wavelengths of light; they project joy, pride, sadness, comfort. It is almost too much to bear.
I store the colors and textures in my memory and take the bread home, breathing in that fragrance and combining it with the colors I pass. One house I pass has a late-blooming rose trained up a wall; even across the yard I can catch a hint of its sweetness.
It has been over a week, and Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw have not said anything more about the treatment. We have had no more letters. I would like to think this means something has gone wrong with the process and they will forget about it, but I think they will not forget. Mr. Crenshaw always looks and sounds so angry. Angry people do not forget injuries; forgiveness dissolves anger. That is what the sermon this week was about. My mind should not wander during the sermon, but sometimes it is boring and I think of other things. Anger and Mr. Crenshaw seem connected.
On Monday, we all get a notice that we are to meet on Saturday. I do not want to give up my Saturday, but the notice does not include any reason for staying away. Now I wish I had waited to talk to Maxine at the Center, but it is too late.
“Do you think we have to go?” Chuy asks. “Will they fire us if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I want to find out what they’re doing, so I would go anyway.”
“I will go,” Cameron says. I nod, and so do the others. Linda looks most unhappy, but she usually looks most unhappy.
“Look… er… Pete…” Crenshaw’s voice oozed false friendliness; Aldrin noticed his difficulty in remembering the name. “I know you think I’m a hard-hearted bastard, but the fact is the company’s struggling. The space-based production is necessary, but it’s eating up profits like you wouldn’t believe.”
Oh, wouldn’t I? Aldrin thought. It was stupid, in his opinion: the advantages to low—and zero-G facilities were far outweighed by their expense and the drawbacks. There were riches enough to be made down here, on the earth, and he would not have voted for the commitment to space if anyone had given him a vote.
“Your guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, that designed slaughterhouses or something—”
“Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.
“One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys would be just as bad. Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”
Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took that silence for consent and went on.
“And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”
Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a clue about fairness.
“Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in artificial intelligence, do you?”
Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able to do what they do,” he said.
“Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, would you?”
Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with paper and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.
“You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.
“Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”
Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.
“Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to replace them with machines?”
“Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment. But we have to cut costs—have to. In this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would call efficiency.”
The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. He also didn’t say it.
“So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law or no law.”
“The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I can’t fathom.”
“So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.
Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need that stuff, or…” He ran a finger across his throat. “They can’t hold the company hostage. There’s not a law in this land we can’t find a way around or get changed.” He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “We have the resources.”
Aldrin felt sick. He had known this all his adult life, but he had never been at a level where anyone said it out loud. He had been able to hide it from himself.
“I’ll try to explain,” he said, his tongue stiff in his mouth.
“Pete, you’ve got to quit trying and start doing,” Crenshaw said. “You’re not stupid or lazy; I can tell that. But you just don’t have the… the push.”
Aldrin nodded and escaped from Crenshaw’s office. He went into the washroom and scrubbed his hands… He still felt soiled. He thought of quitting, of turning in his resignation. Mia had a good job, and they had chosen not to have children yet. They could coast a while on her salary if they had to.
But who would look after his people? Not Crenshaw. Aldrin shook his head at himself in the mirror. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could help. He had to try, but… who else in the family could pay his brother’s bills for residential treatment? What if he lost his job?
He tried to think of his contacts: Betty in Human Resources. Shirley in Accounting. He didn’t know anyone in Legal; he’d never needed to. HR took care of the interface with laws concerning special-needs employees; they talked to Legal if it was necessary.
Mr. Aldrin has invited the whole section out to dinner. We are at the pizza place, and because the group is too large for one table, we are at two tables pushed together, in the wrong part of the room.
I am not comfortable with Mr. Aldrin sitting at the table with us, but I do not know what to do about it. He is smiling a lot and talking a lot. Now he thinks the treatment is a good idea, he says. He does not want to pressure us, but he thinks it would benefit us. I try to think about the taste of the pizza and not listen, but it is harder.
After a while he slows down. He has had another beer, and his voice is softening at the edges, like toast in hot chocolate. He sounds more like the Mr. Aldrin I am used to, more tentative. “I still don’t understand why they’re in such a hurry,” he says. “The expense of the gym and things is minimal, really. We don’t need the space. It’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the profitability of the section. And there aren’t enough autistics like you in the world to make this a profitable treatment even if it does work perfectly for all of you.”
“Current estimates are that there are millions of autistic persons in the United States alone,” Eric says.
“Yes, but—”
“The cost of social services for that population, including residential facilities for the most impaired, is estimated at billions a year. If the treatment works, that money would be available—”
“The workforce can’t handle that many new workers,” Mr. Aldrin says. “And some of them are too old. Jeremy—” He stops suddenly and his skin turns red and shiny. Is he angry or embarrassed? I am not sure. He takes a long breath. “My brother,” he says. “He is too old to get a job now.”
“You have a brother who is autistic?” Linda asks. She looks at his face for the first time. “You never told us.” I feel cold suddenly, exposed. I thought Mr. Aldrin could not see into our heads, but if he has an autistic brother, then he may know more than I thought.
“I… didn’t think it was important.” His face is still red and shiny, and I think he is not telling the truth. “Jeremy is older than any of you. He’s in a residential facility—”
I am trying to put this new idea about Mr. Aldrin, that he has an autistic brother, together with his attitudes toward us, so I say nothing.
“You lied to us,” Cameron says. His eyelids have pulled down; his voice sounds angry. Mr. Aldrin’s head jerks back, as if someone had pulled a string.
“I did not—”
“There are two kinds of lie,” Cameron says. I can tell he is quoting something he was told. “The lie of commission, which states an untruth known to the speaker to be untrue, and the lie of omission, which omits to state a truth known to the speaker to be true. You lied when you did not tell us your brother was autistic.”
“I’m your boss, not your friend,” Mr. Aldrin blurts out. He turns even redder. He said earlier he was our friend. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? “I mean… it had nothing to do with work.”
“It is the reason you wanted to be our supervisor,” Cameron says.
“It’s not. I didn’t want to be your supervisor at first.”
“At first.” Linda is still staring at his face. “Something changed. It was your brother?”
“No. You are not much like my brother. He is… very impaired.”
“You want the treatment for your brother?” Cameron asks.
“I… don’t know.”
That does not sound like the truth, either. I try to imagine Mr. Aldrin’s brother, this unknown autistic person. If Mr. Aldrin thinks his brother is very impaired, what does he think of us, really? What was his childhood like?
“I’ll bet you do,” Cameron says. “If you think it’s a good idea for us, you must think it could help him. Maybe you think if you can get us to do it, they’ll reward you with his treatment? Good boy: here’s a candy?”
“That’s not fair,” Mr. Aldrin says. His voice is louder, too. People are turning to look. I wish we were not here. “He’s my brother, naturally I want to help him any way I can, but—”
“Did Mr. Crenshaw tell you that if you talked us into it, your brother could get treatment?”
“I… it’s not that—” His eyes slide from side to side; his face changes color. I see the effort on his face, the effort to fool us convincingly. The book said autistic persons are gullible and easily fooled because they do not understand the nuances of communication. I do not think lying is a nuance. I think lying is wrong. I am sorry Mr. Aldrin is lying to us but glad that he is not doing it very well.
“If there is not enough market for this treatment to autistic persons, what else is it good for?” Linda asks. I wish she had not changed the subject back to before, but it is too late. Mr. Aldrin’s face relaxes a little.
I have an idea, but it is not clear yet. “Mr. Crenshaw said he would be willing to keep us on without the treatment if we gave up the support services, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, why?”
“So… he would like to have what we—what autistic persons—are good at without the things we are not good at.”
Mr. Aldrin’s brow wrinkles. It is the movement that shows confusion. “I suppose,” he says slowly. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with the treatment.”
“Somewhere in the original article is the profit,” I say to Mr. Aldrin. “Not changing autistic persons—there are no more kids born like we were born, not in this country. There are not enough of us. But something we do is valuable enough that if normal people could do it, that would be profitable.” I think of that time in my office when for a few moments the meaning of the symbols, the beautiful intricacy of the patterns of data, went away and left me confused and distracted. “You have watched us work for years now; you must know what it is—”
“Your ability in pattern analysis and math, you know that.”
“No—you said Mr. Crenshaw said the new software could do that as well. It is something else.”
“I still want to know about your brother,” Linda says.
Aldrin closes his eyes, refusing contact. I was scolded for doing just that. He opens them again. “You’re… relentless,” he says. “You just don’t quit.”
The pattern forming in my mind, the light and dark shifting and circling, begins to cohere. But it is not enough; I need more data.
“Explain the money,” I say to Aldrin.
“Explain… what?”
“The money. How does the company make money to pay us?”
“It’s… very complicated, Lou. I don’t think you could understand.”
“Please try. Mr. Crenshaw claims we cost too much, that the profits suffer. Where do the profits really come from?”
Chapter Ten
I decide to walk back to the apartment, even though it is a long way. It is cooler than it has been, and fall flowers show in some of the yards I walk past. The rhythm of walking eases my tension and makes it easier to hear the music I’ve chosen to walk with. I see other people with earphones on. They are listening to broadcast or recorded music; I wonder if the ones without earphones are listening to their own music or walking without music.
The smell of fresh bread stops me partway home. I turn aside into a small bakery and buy a loaf of warm bread. Next to the bakery is a flower shop with ranked masses of purples, yellows, blues, bronzes, deep reds. The colors carry more than wavelengths of light; they project joy, pride, sadness, comfort. It is almost too much to bear.
I store the colors and textures in my memory and take the bread home, breathing in that fragrance and combining it with the colors I pass. One house I pass has a late-blooming rose trained up a wall; even across the yard I can catch a hint of its sweetness.
It has been over a week, and Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw have not said anything more about the treatment. We have had no more letters. I would like to think this means something has gone wrong with the process and they will forget about it, but I think they will not forget. Mr. Crenshaw always looks and sounds so angry. Angry people do not forget injuries; forgiveness dissolves anger. That is what the sermon this week was about. My mind should not wander during the sermon, but sometimes it is boring and I think of other things. Anger and Mr. Crenshaw seem connected.
On Monday, we all get a notice that we are to meet on Saturday. I do not want to give up my Saturday, but the notice does not include any reason for staying away. Now I wish I had waited to talk to Maxine at the Center, but it is too late.
“Do you think we have to go?” Chuy asks. “Will they fire us if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I want to find out what they’re doing, so I would go anyway.”
“I will go,” Cameron says. I nod, and so do the others. Linda looks most unhappy, but she usually looks most unhappy.
“Look… er… Pete…” Crenshaw’s voice oozed false friendliness; Aldrin noticed his difficulty in remembering the name. “I know you think I’m a hard-hearted bastard, but the fact is the company’s struggling. The space-based production is necessary, but it’s eating up profits like you wouldn’t believe.”
Oh, wouldn’t I? Aldrin thought. It was stupid, in his opinion: the advantages to low—and zero-G facilities were far outweighed by their expense and the drawbacks. There were riches enough to be made down here, on the earth, and he would not have voted for the commitment to space if anyone had given him a vote.
“Your guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, that designed slaughterhouses or something—”
“Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.
“One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys would be just as bad. Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”
Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took that silence for consent and went on.
“And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”
Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a clue about fairness.
“Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in artificial intelligence, do you?”
Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able to do what they do,” he said.
“Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, would you?”
Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with paper and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.
“You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.
“Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”
Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.
“Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to replace them with machines?”
“Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment. But we have to cut costs—have to. In this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would call efficiency.”
The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. He also didn’t say it.
“So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law or no law.”
“The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I can’t fathom.”
“So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.
Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need that stuff, or…” He ran a finger across his throat. “They can’t hold the company hostage. There’s not a law in this land we can’t find a way around or get changed.” He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “We have the resources.”
Aldrin felt sick. He had known this all his adult life, but he had never been at a level where anyone said it out loud. He had been able to hide it from himself.
“I’ll try to explain,” he said, his tongue stiff in his mouth.
“Pete, you’ve got to quit trying and start doing,” Crenshaw said. “You’re not stupid or lazy; I can tell that. But you just don’t have the… the push.”
Aldrin nodded and escaped from Crenshaw’s office. He went into the washroom and scrubbed his hands… He still felt soiled. He thought of quitting, of turning in his resignation. Mia had a good job, and they had chosen not to have children yet. They could coast a while on her salary if they had to.
But who would look after his people? Not Crenshaw. Aldrin shook his head at himself in the mirror. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could help. He had to try, but… who else in the family could pay his brother’s bills for residential treatment? What if he lost his job?
He tried to think of his contacts: Betty in Human Resources. Shirley in Accounting. He didn’t know anyone in Legal; he’d never needed to. HR took care of the interface with laws concerning special-needs employees; they talked to Legal if it was necessary.
Mr. Aldrin has invited the whole section out to dinner. We are at the pizza place, and because the group is too large for one table, we are at two tables pushed together, in the wrong part of the room.
I am not comfortable with Mr. Aldrin sitting at the table with us, but I do not know what to do about it. He is smiling a lot and talking a lot. Now he thinks the treatment is a good idea, he says. He does not want to pressure us, but he thinks it would benefit us. I try to think about the taste of the pizza and not listen, but it is harder.
After a while he slows down. He has had another beer, and his voice is softening at the edges, like toast in hot chocolate. He sounds more like the Mr. Aldrin I am used to, more tentative. “I still don’t understand why they’re in such a hurry,” he says. “The expense of the gym and things is minimal, really. We don’t need the space. It’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the profitability of the section. And there aren’t enough autistics like you in the world to make this a profitable treatment even if it does work perfectly for all of you.”
“Current estimates are that there are millions of autistic persons in the United States alone,” Eric says.
“Yes, but—”
“The cost of social services for that population, including residential facilities for the most impaired, is estimated at billions a year. If the treatment works, that money would be available—”
“The workforce can’t handle that many new workers,” Mr. Aldrin says. “And some of them are too old. Jeremy—” He stops suddenly and his skin turns red and shiny. Is he angry or embarrassed? I am not sure. He takes a long breath. “My brother,” he says. “He is too old to get a job now.”
“You have a brother who is autistic?” Linda asks. She looks at his face for the first time. “You never told us.” I feel cold suddenly, exposed. I thought Mr. Aldrin could not see into our heads, but if he has an autistic brother, then he may know more than I thought.
“I… didn’t think it was important.” His face is still red and shiny, and I think he is not telling the truth. “Jeremy is older than any of you. He’s in a residential facility—”
I am trying to put this new idea about Mr. Aldrin, that he has an autistic brother, together with his attitudes toward us, so I say nothing.
“You lied to us,” Cameron says. His eyelids have pulled down; his voice sounds angry. Mr. Aldrin’s head jerks back, as if someone had pulled a string.
“I did not—”
“There are two kinds of lie,” Cameron says. I can tell he is quoting something he was told. “The lie of commission, which states an untruth known to the speaker to be untrue, and the lie of omission, which omits to state a truth known to the speaker to be true. You lied when you did not tell us your brother was autistic.”
“I’m your boss, not your friend,” Mr. Aldrin blurts out. He turns even redder. He said earlier he was our friend. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? “I mean… it had nothing to do with work.”
“It is the reason you wanted to be our supervisor,” Cameron says.
“It’s not. I didn’t want to be your supervisor at first.”
“At first.” Linda is still staring at his face. “Something changed. It was your brother?”
“No. You are not much like my brother. He is… very impaired.”
“You want the treatment for your brother?” Cameron asks.
“I… don’t know.”
That does not sound like the truth, either. I try to imagine Mr. Aldrin’s brother, this unknown autistic person. If Mr. Aldrin thinks his brother is very impaired, what does he think of us, really? What was his childhood like?
“I’ll bet you do,” Cameron says. “If you think it’s a good idea for us, you must think it could help him. Maybe you think if you can get us to do it, they’ll reward you with his treatment? Good boy: here’s a candy?”
“That’s not fair,” Mr. Aldrin says. His voice is louder, too. People are turning to look. I wish we were not here. “He’s my brother, naturally I want to help him any way I can, but—”
“Did Mr. Crenshaw tell you that if you talked us into it, your brother could get treatment?”
“I… it’s not that—” His eyes slide from side to side; his face changes color. I see the effort on his face, the effort to fool us convincingly. The book said autistic persons are gullible and easily fooled because they do not understand the nuances of communication. I do not think lying is a nuance. I think lying is wrong. I am sorry Mr. Aldrin is lying to us but glad that he is not doing it very well.
“If there is not enough market for this treatment to autistic persons, what else is it good for?” Linda asks. I wish she had not changed the subject back to before, but it is too late. Mr. Aldrin’s face relaxes a little.
I have an idea, but it is not clear yet. “Mr. Crenshaw said he would be willing to keep us on without the treatment if we gave up the support services, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, why?”
“So… he would like to have what we—what autistic persons—are good at without the things we are not good at.”
Mr. Aldrin’s brow wrinkles. It is the movement that shows confusion. “I suppose,” he says slowly. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with the treatment.”
“Somewhere in the original article is the profit,” I say to Mr. Aldrin. “Not changing autistic persons—there are no more kids born like we were born, not in this country. There are not enough of us. But something we do is valuable enough that if normal people could do it, that would be profitable.” I think of that time in my office when for a few moments the meaning of the symbols, the beautiful intricacy of the patterns of data, went away and left me confused and distracted. “You have watched us work for years now; you must know what it is—”
“Your ability in pattern analysis and math, you know that.”
“No—you said Mr. Crenshaw said the new software could do that as well. It is something else.”
“I still want to know about your brother,” Linda says.
Aldrin closes his eyes, refusing contact. I was scolded for doing just that. He opens them again. “You’re… relentless,” he says. “You just don’t quit.”
The pattern forming in my mind, the light and dark shifting and circling, begins to cohere. But it is not enough; I need more data.
“Explain the money,” I say to Aldrin.
“Explain… what?”
“The money. How does the company make money to pay us?”
“It’s… very complicated, Lou. I don’t think you could understand.”
“Please try. Mr. Crenshaw claims we cost too much, that the profits suffer. Where do the profits really come from?”
Chapter Ten
Mr. Aldrin just stares at me. Finally he says, “I don’t know how to say it, Lou, because I don’t know what the process is, exactly, or what it could do if applied to someone who isn’t autistic.”
“Can’t you even—”
“And… and I don’t think I should be talking about this. Helping you is one thing…” He has not helped us yet. Lying to us is not helping us. “But speculating about something that doesn’t exist, speculating that the company is contemplating some broader action that may be… that could be construed as…” He stops and shakes his head without finishing the sentence. We are all looking at him. His eyes are very shiny, as if he were about to cry.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he says after a moment. “This was a big mistake. I’ll pay for the meal, but I have to go now.”
He pushes back his chair and gets up; I see him at the cash register with his back to us. None of us says anything until he has gone out the front door.
“He’s crazy,” Chuy says.
“He’s scared,” Bailey says.
“He hasn’t helped us, not really,” Linda says. “I don’t know why he bothered—”
“His brother,” Cameron says.
“Something we said bothered him even more than Mr. Crenshaw or his brother,” I say.
“He knows something he doesn’t want us to know.” Linda brushes the hair off her forehead with an abrupt gesture.
“He doesn’t want to know it himself,” I say. I am not sure why I think that, but I do. It is something we said. I need to know what it was.
“There was something, back around the turn of the century,” Bailey says. “In one of the science journals, something about making people sort of autistic so they would work harder.”
“Science journal or science fiction?” I ask.
“It was—wait; I’ll look it up. I know somebody who will know.” Bailey makes a note on his handcomp.
“Don’t send it from the office,” Chuy says.
“Why—? Oh. Yes.” Bailey nods.
“Pizza tomorrow,” Linda says. “Coming here is normal.”
I open my mouth to say that Tuesday is my day to shop for groceries and shut it again. This is more important. I can go a week without groceries, or I can shop a little later.
“Everybody look up what you can find,” Cameron says.
At home, I log on and e-mail Lars. It is very late where he is, but he is awake. I find out that the original research was done in Denmark, but the entire lab, equipment and all, was bought up and the research base shifted to Cambridge. The paper I first heard about weeks ago was based on research done more than a year ago. Mr. Aldrin was right about that. Lars thinks much of the work to make the treatments human-compatible has been done; he speculates on secret military experiments. I do not believe this; Lars thinks everything is a secret military experiment. He is a very good game player, but I do not believe everything he says.
Wind rattles my windows. I get up and lay a hand on the glass. Much colder. A spatter of rain and then I hear thunder. It is late anyway; I shut down my system and go to bed.
Tuesday we do not speak to one another at work, other than “good morning” and “good afternoon.” I spend fifteen minutes in the gym when I finish another section of my project, but then I go back to work. Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw both come by, not quite arm in arm, but as if they were friendly. They do not stay long, and they do not talk to me.
After work, we go back to the pizza place. “Two nights in a row!” says Hi-I’m-Sylvia. I cannot tell if she is happy or unhappy about that. We take our usual table but pull over another one so there is room for everybody.
“So?” Cameron says, after we’ve ordered. “What have we found out?”
I tell the group what Lars said. Bailey has found the text of the old article, which is clearly fiction and not nonfiction. I did not know that science journals ever published science fiction on purpose, and apparently it only happened for one year.
“It was supposed to make people really concentrate on an assigned project and not waste time on other things,” Bailey said.
“Like Mr. Crenshaw thinks we waste time?” I say.
Bailey nods.
“We don’t waste as much time as he wastes walking around looking angry,” Chuy says.
We all laugh, but quietly. Eric is drawing curlicues with his colored pens; they look like laughing sounds.
“Does it say how it was going to work?” Linda asks.
“Sort of,” Bailey says. “But I’m not sure the science is good. And that was decades ago. What they thought would work might not be what really works.”
“They don’t want autistic people like us,” Eric says. “They wanted—or the story said they wanted—savant talents and concentration without the other side effects. Compared to a savant we waste a lot of time, though not as much as Mr. Crenshaw thinks.”
“Normal people waste a lot of time on nonproductive things,” Cameron says. “At least as much as we do, maybe more.”
“It would take what to turn a normal person into a savant without the other problems?” Linda asks.
“I don’t know,” Cameron says. “They would have to be smart to start with. Good at something. Then they would have to want to do that instead of anything else.”
“It wouldn’t do any good if they wanted to do something they were bad at,” Chuy says. I imagine a person determined to be a musician who has no rhythm and no pitch sense; it is ridiculous. We all see the funny side of this and laugh.
“Do people ever want to do what they aren’t good at?” Linda asks. “Normal people, that is?” For once she does not make the word normal sound like a bad word.
We sit and think a moment; then Chuy says, “I had an uncle who wanted to be a writer. My sister—she reads a lot—she said he was really bad. Really, really bad. He was good at doing things with his hands, but he wanted to write.”
“Here y’are, then,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, putting down the pizzas. I look at her. She is smiling, but she looks tired and it is not even seven yet.
“Thank you,” I say. She waves a hand and hurries away.
“Something to keep people from paying attention to distraction,” Bailey says. “Something to make them like the right things.”
Distractibility is determined by the sensory sensitivity at every level of processing and by the strength of sensory integration,’” Eric recites. “I read that. Part of it’s inborn. That’s been known for forty or fifty years; late in the twentieth century that knowledge had worked its way down to the popular level, in books on parenting. Attention control circuitry is developed early in fetal life; it can be compromised by later injury…”
I feel almost sick for a moment, as if something were attacking my brain right now, but push that feeling aside. Whatever caused my autism is in the past, where I cannot undo it. Now it is important not to think about me but about the problem.
All my life I’ve been told how lucky I was to be born when I was—lucky to benefit from the improvements in early intervention, lucky to be born in the right country, with parents who had the education and resources to be sure I got that good early intervention. Even lucky to be born too soon for definitive treatment, because—my parents said—having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.
What would they have said if this treatment had been available for me when I was a child? Would they have wanted me to be stronger or be normal? Would accepting treatment mean I had no strength of character? Or would I find other struggles?
I am still thinking about this the next evening as I change clothes and drive to Tom and Lucia’s for fencing. What behaviors do we have that someone could profit from, other than the occasional savant talents? Most of the autistic behaviors have been presented to us as deficits, not strengths. Unsocial, lacking social skills, problems with attention control… I keep coming back to that. It is hard to think from their perspective, but I have the feeling that this attention control issue is at the middle of the pattern, like a black hole at the center of a space-time whirlpool. That is something else we are supposed to be deficient in, the famous Theory of Mind.
I am a little early. No one else is parked outside yet. I pull up carefully so that there is the most room possible behind me. Sometimes the others are not so careful, and then fewer people can park without inconveniencing others. I could be early every week, but that would not be fair to others.
Inside, Tom and Lucia are laughing about something. When I go in, they grin at me, very relaxed. I wonder what it would be like to have someone in the house all the time, someone to laugh with. They do not always laugh, but they seem happy more often than not.
“How are you, Lou?” Tom asks. He always asks that. It is one of the things normal people do, even if they know that you are all right.
“Fine,” I say. I want to ask Lucia about medical things, but I do not know how to start or if it is polite. I start with something else. “The tires on my car were slashed last week.”
“Oh, no!” Lucia says. “How awful!” Her face changes shape; I think she means to express sympathy.
“It was in the parking lot at the apartment,” I say. “In the same place as usual. All four tires.”
Tom whistles. “That’s expensive,” he says. “Has there been a lot of vandalism in the area? Did you report it to the police?”
I cannot answer one of those questions at all. “I did report it,” I say. “There is a policeman who lives in our apartment building. He told me how to report it.”
“That’s good,” Tom says. I am not sure if he means it is good that a policeman lives in our building or that I reported it, but I do not think it is important to know which.
“Mr. Crenshaw was angry that I was late to work,” I say.
“Didn’t you tell me he’s new?” Tom asks.
“Yes. He does not like our section. He does not like autistic people.”
“Oh, he’s probably…” Lucia begins, but Tom looks at her and she stops.
“I don’t know why you think he doesn’t like autistic people,” Tom says.
I relax. It is so much easier to talk to Tom when he says things this way. The question is less threatening. I wish I knew why.
“He says we should not need the supportive environment,” I say. “He says it is too expensive and we should not have the gym and… and the other things.” I have never actually talked about the special things that make our workplace so much better. Maybe Tom and Lucia will think the same way as Mr. Crenshaw when they find out about them.
“That’s…” Lucia pauses, looks at Tom, and then goes on. “That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what he thinks; the law says they have to provide a supportive work environment.”
“As long as we’re as productive as other employees,” I say. It is hard to talk about this; it is too scary. I can feel my throat tightening and hear my own voice sounding strained and mechanical. “As long as we fit the diagnostic categories under the law…”
“Which autism clearly does,” Lucia says. “And I’m sure you’re productive, or they wouldn’t have kept you this long.”
“Lou, is Mr. Crenshaw threatening to fire you?” Tom asks.
“No… not exactly. I told you about that experimental treatment. They didn’t say anything more about it for a while, but now they—Mr. Crenshaw, the company—they want us to take that experimental treatment. They sent a letter. It said people who were part of a research protocol were protected from cutbacks. Mr. Aldrin talked to our group; we are having a special meeting on Saturday. I thought they could not make us take it, but Mr. Aldrin says that Mr. Crenshaw says they can shut down our section and refuse to rehire us for something else because we are not trained in something else. He says if we do not take the treatment they will do this and it is not firing because companies can change with the times.”
Tom and Lucia both look angry, their faces knotted with tight muscle and the shiny look coming out on their skin. I should not have said this now; this was the wrong time, if anything was the right time.
“Those bastards,” Lucia says. She looks at me and her face changes from the tight knots of anger, smoothing out around the eyes. “Lou—Lou, listen: I am not angry with you. I am angry with people who hurt you or do not treat you well… not with you.”
“I should not have said this to you,” I say, still uncertain.
“Yes, you should,” Lucia says. “We are your friends; we should know if something goes wrong in your life, so that we can help.”
“Lucia’s right,” Tom says. “Friends help friends—just as you’ve helped us, like when you built the mask rack.”
“That is something we both use,” I say. “My work is just about me.”
“Yes and no,” Tom says. “Yes in that we are not working with you and cannot help you directly. But no when it is a big problem that has general application, like this one. This isn’t just about you. It could affect every disabled person who’s employed anywhere. What if they decided that a person in a wheelchair didn’t need ramps? You definitely need a lawyer, all of you. Didn’t you say that the Center could find one for you?”
“Before the others get here, Lou,” Lucia says, “why don’t you tell us more about this Mr. Crenshaw and his plans?”
I sit down on the sofa, but even though they have said they want to listen it is hard to talk. I look at the rug on their floor, with its wide border of blue-and-cream geometric patterns—there are four patterns within a frame of plain blue stripes—and try to make the story clear.
“There is a treatment they—someone—used on adult apes,” I say. “I did not know apes could be autistic, but what they said was that autistic apes became more normal when they had this treatment. Now Mr. Crenshaw wants us to have it.”
“And you don’t want it?” Tom asks.
“I do not understand how it works or how it will make things better,” I say.
“Very sensible,” Lucia says. “Do you know who did the research, Lou?”
“I do not remember the name,” I say. “Lars—he’s a member of an international group of autistic adults—e-mailed me about it several weeks ago. He sent me the journal Web site and I went there, but I did not understand much of it. I did not study neuroscience.”
“Do you still have that citation?” Lucia asks. “I can look it up, see what I can find out.”
“You could?”
“Sure. And I can ask around in the department, find out if the researchers are considered any good or not.”
“We had an idea,” I say.
“We who?” Tom asks.
“We… the people I work with,” I say.
“The other autistic people?” Tom asks.
“Yes.” I close my eyes briefly to calm down. “Mr. Aldrin bought us pizza. He drank beer. He said that he did not think there was enough profit in treating adult autistic persons—because they now treat pre-borns and infants and we are the last cohort who will be like us. At least in this country. So we wondered why they wanted to develop this treatment and what else it could do. It is like some pattern analysis I have done. There is one pattern, but it is not the only pattern. Someone can think they are generating one pattern and actually generate several more, and one of those may be useful or not useful, depending on what the problem is.” I look up at Tom and he is looking at me with a strange expression. His mouth is a little open.
He shakes his head, a quick jerk. “So—you are thinking maybe they have something else in mind, something that you people are just part of?”
“It might be,” I say cautiously.
He looks at Lucia, and she nods. “It certainly could be,” he says. “Trying whatever it is on you would give them additional data, and then… Let me think…”
“I think it is something to do with attention control,” I say. “We all have a different way of perceiving sensory input and… and setting attention priorities.” I am not sure I have the words right, but Lucia nods vigorously.
“Attention control—of course. If they could control that in the architecture, not chemically, it’d be a lot easier to develop a dedicated workforce.”
“Space,” Tom says.
I am confused, but Lucia only blinks and then nods.
“Yes. The big limitation in space-based employment is getting people to concentrate, not be distracted. The sensory inputs up there are not what we’re used to, what worked in natural selection.” I do not know how she knows what he is thinking. I would like to be able to read minds like that. She grins at me. “Lou, I think you’re onto something big, here. Get me that citation, and I’ll run with it.”
I feel uneasy. “I am not supposed to talk about work outside the campus,” I say.
“You’re not talking about work,” she says. “You’re talking about your work environment. That’s different.”
I wonder if Mr. Aldrin would see it that way.
Someone knocks on the door, and we quit talking. I am sweaty even though I have not been fencing. The first to arrive are Dave and Susan. We go through the house, collect our gear, and start stretching in the backyard.
Marjory is next to arrive, and she grins at me. I feel lighter than air again. I remember what Emmy said, but I cannot believe it when I see Marjory. Maybe tonight I will ask her to go to dinner with me. Don has not come. I suppose he is still angry with Tom and Lucia for not acting like friends. It makes me sad that they are not all still friends; I hope they do not get angry with me and quit being friends with me.
I am fencing with Dave when I hear a noise from the street and then a squeal of tires moving fast. I ignore it and do not change my attack, but Dave stops and I hit him too hard in the chest.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “That sounded close; did you hear it?”
“I heard something,” I say. I am trying to replay the sounds, thump-crash-tinkle-tinkle-squeal-roar, and think what it could be. Someone dropped a bowl out of their car?
“Maybe we’d better check,” Dave says.
Several of the others have gotten up to look. I follow the group to the front yard. In the light from the streetlight on the corner I can see a glitter on the pavement.
“It’s your car, Lou,” Susan says. “The windshield.”
I feel cold.
“Your tires last week… what day was that, Lou?”
“Thursday,” I say. My voice shakes a little and sounds harsh.
“Thursday. And now this…” Tom looks at the others, and they look back. I can tell that they are thinking something together, but I do not know what it is. Tom shakes his head. “I guess we’ll have to call the police. I hate to break up the practice, but—”
“I’ll drive you home, Lou,” Marjory says. She has come up behind me; I jump when I hear her voice.
Tom calls the police because, he says, it happened in front of his house. He hands the phone to me after a few minutes, and a bored voice asks my name, my address, my phone number, the license number of the car. I can hear noise in the background on the other end, and people are talking in the living room; it is hard to understand what the voice is saying. I am glad it is just routine questions; I can figure those out.
Then the voice asks something else, and the words tangle together and I cannot figure it out. “I’m sorry…” I say.
The voice is louder, the words more separated. Tom shushes the people in the living room. This time I understand.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” the voice asks.
“No,” I say. “But someone slashed my tires last week.”
“Oh?” Now it sounds interested. “Did you report that?”
Yes, I say.
“Do you remember who the investigating officer was?”
“I have a card; just a minute—” I put the phone down and get out my wallet. The card is still there. I read off the name, Malcolm Stacy, and the case number.
“He’s not in now; I’ll put this report on his desk. Now… are there any witnesses?”
“I heard it,” I say, “but I didn’t see it. We were in the backyard.”
“Too bad. Well, we’ll send someone out, but it’ll be a while. Just stay there.”
By the time the patrol car arrives, it is almost 10:00 P.M.; everyone is sitting around the living room tired of waiting. I feel guilty, even though it is not my fault. I did not break my own windshield or tell the police to tell people to stay. The police officer is a woman named Isaka, short and dark and very brisk. I think she thinks this is too small a reason to call the police.
She looks at my car and the other cars and street and sighs. “Well, someone broke your windshield, and someone slashed your tires a few days ago, so I’d say it’s your problem, Mr. Arrendale. You must’ve really pissed someone off, and you probably know who it is, if you’ll just think. How are you getting along at work?”
“Fine,” I say, without really thinking. Tom shifts his weight. “I have a new boss, but I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would break a windshield or cut tires.” I cannot imagine that he would, even though he gets angry.”
“Oh?” she says, making a note.
“He was angry when I was late for work after my tires were slashed,” I say. “I do not think he would break my windshield. He might fire me.”
She looks at me but says nothing more to me. She is looking now at Tom. “You were having a party?”
“A fencing club practice night,” he says.
I see the police officer’s neck tense. “Fencing? Like with weapons?”
“It’s a sport,” Tom says. I can hear the tension in his voice, too. “We had a tournament week before last; there’s another coming up in a few weeks.”
“Anyone ever get hurt?”
“Not here. We have strict safety rules.”
“Are the same people here every week?”
“Usually. People do miss a practice now and then.”
“And this week?”
“Well, Larry’s not here—he’s in Chicago on business. And I guess Don.”
“Any problems with the neighbors? Complaints about noise or anything of that sort?”
“No.” Tom runs his hand through his hair. “We get along with the neighbors; it’s a nice neighborhood. Not usually any vandalism, either.”
“But Mr. Arrendale has had two episodes of vandalism against his car in less than a week… That’s pretty significant.” She waits; no one says anything. Finally she shrugs and goes on.
“It’s like this. If the car was headed east, on the right-hand side of the road, the driver would have had to stop, get out, break the glass, run around his own car, get in, and drive off. There’s no way to break the glass while in the driver’s seat of a car going the same way your car was parked, not without a projectile weapon—and even then the angles are bad. If the car was headed west, though, the driver could reach across with something—a bat, say—or lob a rock through the windshield while still in motion. And then be gone before anyone got out to the front yard.”
“I see,” I say. Now that she has said it, I can visualize the approach, the attack, the escape. But why?
“You have to have some idea who’s upset with you,” the police officer says. She sounds angry with me.
“It does not matter how angry you are with someone; it is not all right to break things,” I say. I am thinking, but the only person I know who has been angry with me about going fencing is Emmy. Emmy does not have a car; I do not think she knows where Tom and Lucia live. I do not think Emmy would break windshields anyway. She might come inside and talk too loud and say something rude to Marjory, but she would not break anything.
“That’s true,” the officer says. “It’s not all right, but people do it anyway. Who is angry with you?”
If I tell her about Emmy, she will make trouble for Emmy and Emmy will make trouble for me. I am sure it is not Emmy. “I don’t know,” I say. I feel a stirring behind, me, almost a pressure. I think it is Tom, but I am not sure.
“Would it be all right, Officer, if the others left now?” Tom asks.
“Oh, sure. Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything; well, you heard something, but you didn’t see anything—did anyone?”
A murmur of “no” and “not me” and “if I had only moved faster,” and the others trickle away to their cars. Marjory and Tom and Lucia stay.
“If you’re the target, and it appears you are, then whoever it is knew you would be here tonight. How many people know you come here on Wednesdays?”
Emmy does not know what night I go fencing. Mr. Crenshaw does not know I do fencing at all.
“Everyone who fences here,” Tom answers for me. “Maybe some of those from the last tournament—it was Lou’s first. Do people at your job know, Lou?”
“I don’t talk about it much,” I say. I do not explain why. “I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t remember telling anyone where the class is. I might have.”
“Well, we’re going to have to find out, Mr. Arrendale,” the officer says. “This kind of thing can escalate to physical harm. You be careful now.” She hands me a card with her name and number on it. “Call me, or Stacy, if you think of anything.”
When the police car moves away, Marjory says again, “I’ll be glad to drive you home, Lou, if you’d like.”
“I will take my car,” I say. “I will need to get it fixed. I will need to contact the insurance company again. They will not be happy with me.”
“Let’s see if there’s glass on the seat,” Tom says. He opens the car door. Light glitters on the tiny bits of glass on the dashboard, the floor, in the sheepskin pad of the seat. I feel sick. The pad should be soft and warm; now it will have sharp things in it. I untie the pad and shake it out onto the street. The bits of glass make a tiny high-pitched noise as they hit the pavement. It is an ugly sound, like some modern music. I am not sure that all the glass is gone; little bits may be in the fleece like tiny hidden knives.
“You can’t drive it like that, Lou,” Marjory says.
“He’ll have to drive it far enough to get a new windshield,” Tom says. “The headlights are all right; he could drive it, if he took it slow.”
“I can drive it home,” I say. “I will go carefully.” I put the sheepskin pad in the backseat and sit very gingerly on the front seat.
At home, later, I think about things Tom and Lucia said, playing the tape of it in my head.
“The way I look at it,” Tom said, “your Mr. Crenshaw has chosen to look at the limitations and not the possibilities. He could have considered you and the rest of your section as assets to be nurtured.”
“I am not an asset,” I said. “I am a person.”
“You’re right, Lou, but we’re talking here of a corporation. As with armies, they look at people who work for them as assets or liabilities. An employee who needs anything different from other employees can be seen as a liability—requiring more resources for the same output. That’s the easy way to look at it, and that’s why a lot of managers do look at it that way.”
“They see what is wrong,” I said.
“Yes. They may also see your worth—as an asset—but they want to get the asset without the liability.”
“What good managers do,” Lucia said, “is help people grow. If they’re good at part of their job and not so good at the rest of it, good managers help them identify and grow in those areas where they’re not as strong—but only to the point where it doesn’t impair their strengths, the reason they were hired.”
“Can’t you even—”
“And… and I don’t think I should be talking about this. Helping you is one thing…” He has not helped us yet. Lying to us is not helping us. “But speculating about something that doesn’t exist, speculating that the company is contemplating some broader action that may be… that could be construed as…” He stops and shakes his head without finishing the sentence. We are all looking at him. His eyes are very shiny, as if he were about to cry.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he says after a moment. “This was a big mistake. I’ll pay for the meal, but I have to go now.”
He pushes back his chair and gets up; I see him at the cash register with his back to us. None of us says anything until he has gone out the front door.
“He’s crazy,” Chuy says.
“He’s scared,” Bailey says.
“He hasn’t helped us, not really,” Linda says. “I don’t know why he bothered—”
“His brother,” Cameron says.
“Something we said bothered him even more than Mr. Crenshaw or his brother,” I say.
“He knows something he doesn’t want us to know.” Linda brushes the hair off her forehead with an abrupt gesture.
“He doesn’t want to know it himself,” I say. I am not sure why I think that, but I do. It is something we said. I need to know what it was.
“There was something, back around the turn of the century,” Bailey says. “In one of the science journals, something about making people sort of autistic so they would work harder.”
“Science journal or science fiction?” I ask.
“It was—wait; I’ll look it up. I know somebody who will know.” Bailey makes a note on his handcomp.
“Don’t send it from the office,” Chuy says.
“Why—? Oh. Yes.” Bailey nods.
“Pizza tomorrow,” Linda says. “Coming here is normal.”
I open my mouth to say that Tuesday is my day to shop for groceries and shut it again. This is more important. I can go a week without groceries, or I can shop a little later.
“Everybody look up what you can find,” Cameron says.
At home, I log on and e-mail Lars. It is very late where he is, but he is awake. I find out that the original research was done in Denmark, but the entire lab, equipment and all, was bought up and the research base shifted to Cambridge. The paper I first heard about weeks ago was based on research done more than a year ago. Mr. Aldrin was right about that. Lars thinks much of the work to make the treatments human-compatible has been done; he speculates on secret military experiments. I do not believe this; Lars thinks everything is a secret military experiment. He is a very good game player, but I do not believe everything he says.
Wind rattles my windows. I get up and lay a hand on the glass. Much colder. A spatter of rain and then I hear thunder. It is late anyway; I shut down my system and go to bed.
Tuesday we do not speak to one another at work, other than “good morning” and “good afternoon.” I spend fifteen minutes in the gym when I finish another section of my project, but then I go back to work. Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw both come by, not quite arm in arm, but as if they were friendly. They do not stay long, and they do not talk to me.
After work, we go back to the pizza place. “Two nights in a row!” says Hi-I’m-Sylvia. I cannot tell if she is happy or unhappy about that. We take our usual table but pull over another one so there is room for everybody.
“So?” Cameron says, after we’ve ordered. “What have we found out?”
I tell the group what Lars said. Bailey has found the text of the old article, which is clearly fiction and not nonfiction. I did not know that science journals ever published science fiction on purpose, and apparently it only happened for one year.
“It was supposed to make people really concentrate on an assigned project and not waste time on other things,” Bailey said.
“Like Mr. Crenshaw thinks we waste time?” I say.
Bailey nods.
“We don’t waste as much time as he wastes walking around looking angry,” Chuy says.
We all laugh, but quietly. Eric is drawing curlicues with his colored pens; they look like laughing sounds.
“Does it say how it was going to work?” Linda asks.
“Sort of,” Bailey says. “But I’m not sure the science is good. And that was decades ago. What they thought would work might not be what really works.”
“They don’t want autistic people like us,” Eric says. “They wanted—or the story said they wanted—savant talents and concentration without the other side effects. Compared to a savant we waste a lot of time, though not as much as Mr. Crenshaw thinks.”
“Normal people waste a lot of time on nonproductive things,” Cameron says. “At least as much as we do, maybe more.”
“It would take what to turn a normal person into a savant without the other problems?” Linda asks.
“I don’t know,” Cameron says. “They would have to be smart to start with. Good at something. Then they would have to want to do that instead of anything else.”
“It wouldn’t do any good if they wanted to do something they were bad at,” Chuy says. I imagine a person determined to be a musician who has no rhythm and no pitch sense; it is ridiculous. We all see the funny side of this and laugh.
“Do people ever want to do what they aren’t good at?” Linda asks. “Normal people, that is?” For once she does not make the word normal sound like a bad word.
We sit and think a moment; then Chuy says, “I had an uncle who wanted to be a writer. My sister—she reads a lot—she said he was really bad. Really, really bad. He was good at doing things with his hands, but he wanted to write.”
“Here y’are, then,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, putting down the pizzas. I look at her. She is smiling, but she looks tired and it is not even seven yet.
“Thank you,” I say. She waves a hand and hurries away.
“Something to keep people from paying attention to distraction,” Bailey says. “Something to make them like the right things.”
Distractibility is determined by the sensory sensitivity at every level of processing and by the strength of sensory integration,’” Eric recites. “I read that. Part of it’s inborn. That’s been known for forty or fifty years; late in the twentieth century that knowledge had worked its way down to the popular level, in books on parenting. Attention control circuitry is developed early in fetal life; it can be compromised by later injury…”
I feel almost sick for a moment, as if something were attacking my brain right now, but push that feeling aside. Whatever caused my autism is in the past, where I cannot undo it. Now it is important not to think about me but about the problem.
All my life I’ve been told how lucky I was to be born when I was—lucky to benefit from the improvements in early intervention, lucky to be born in the right country, with parents who had the education and resources to be sure I got that good early intervention. Even lucky to be born too soon for definitive treatment, because—my parents said—having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.
What would they have said if this treatment had been available for me when I was a child? Would they have wanted me to be stronger or be normal? Would accepting treatment mean I had no strength of character? Or would I find other struggles?
I am still thinking about this the next evening as I change clothes and drive to Tom and Lucia’s for fencing. What behaviors do we have that someone could profit from, other than the occasional savant talents? Most of the autistic behaviors have been presented to us as deficits, not strengths. Unsocial, lacking social skills, problems with attention control… I keep coming back to that. It is hard to think from their perspective, but I have the feeling that this attention control issue is at the middle of the pattern, like a black hole at the center of a space-time whirlpool. That is something else we are supposed to be deficient in, the famous Theory of Mind.
I am a little early. No one else is parked outside yet. I pull up carefully so that there is the most room possible behind me. Sometimes the others are not so careful, and then fewer people can park without inconveniencing others. I could be early every week, but that would not be fair to others.
Inside, Tom and Lucia are laughing about something. When I go in, they grin at me, very relaxed. I wonder what it would be like to have someone in the house all the time, someone to laugh with. They do not always laugh, but they seem happy more often than not.
“How are you, Lou?” Tom asks. He always asks that. It is one of the things normal people do, even if they know that you are all right.
“Fine,” I say. I want to ask Lucia about medical things, but I do not know how to start or if it is polite. I start with something else. “The tires on my car were slashed last week.”
“Oh, no!” Lucia says. “How awful!” Her face changes shape; I think she means to express sympathy.
“It was in the parking lot at the apartment,” I say. “In the same place as usual. All four tires.”
Tom whistles. “That’s expensive,” he says. “Has there been a lot of vandalism in the area? Did you report it to the police?”
I cannot answer one of those questions at all. “I did report it,” I say. “There is a policeman who lives in our apartment building. He told me how to report it.”
“That’s good,” Tom says. I am not sure if he means it is good that a policeman lives in our building or that I reported it, but I do not think it is important to know which.
“Mr. Crenshaw was angry that I was late to work,” I say.
“Didn’t you tell me he’s new?” Tom asks.
“Yes. He does not like our section. He does not like autistic people.”
“Oh, he’s probably…” Lucia begins, but Tom looks at her and she stops.
“I don’t know why you think he doesn’t like autistic people,” Tom says.
I relax. It is so much easier to talk to Tom when he says things this way. The question is less threatening. I wish I knew why.
“He says we should not need the supportive environment,” I say. “He says it is too expensive and we should not have the gym and… and the other things.” I have never actually talked about the special things that make our workplace so much better. Maybe Tom and Lucia will think the same way as Mr. Crenshaw when they find out about them.
“That’s…” Lucia pauses, looks at Tom, and then goes on. “That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what he thinks; the law says they have to provide a supportive work environment.”
“As long as we’re as productive as other employees,” I say. It is hard to talk about this; it is too scary. I can feel my throat tightening and hear my own voice sounding strained and mechanical. “As long as we fit the diagnostic categories under the law…”
“Which autism clearly does,” Lucia says. “And I’m sure you’re productive, or they wouldn’t have kept you this long.”
“Lou, is Mr. Crenshaw threatening to fire you?” Tom asks.
“No… not exactly. I told you about that experimental treatment. They didn’t say anything more about it for a while, but now they—Mr. Crenshaw, the company—they want us to take that experimental treatment. They sent a letter. It said people who were part of a research protocol were protected from cutbacks. Mr. Aldrin talked to our group; we are having a special meeting on Saturday. I thought they could not make us take it, but Mr. Aldrin says that Mr. Crenshaw says they can shut down our section and refuse to rehire us for something else because we are not trained in something else. He says if we do not take the treatment they will do this and it is not firing because companies can change with the times.”
Tom and Lucia both look angry, their faces knotted with tight muscle and the shiny look coming out on their skin. I should not have said this now; this was the wrong time, if anything was the right time.
“Those bastards,” Lucia says. She looks at me and her face changes from the tight knots of anger, smoothing out around the eyes. “Lou—Lou, listen: I am not angry with you. I am angry with people who hurt you or do not treat you well… not with you.”
“I should not have said this to you,” I say, still uncertain.
“Yes, you should,” Lucia says. “We are your friends; we should know if something goes wrong in your life, so that we can help.”
“Lucia’s right,” Tom says. “Friends help friends—just as you’ve helped us, like when you built the mask rack.”
“That is something we both use,” I say. “My work is just about me.”
“Yes and no,” Tom says. “Yes in that we are not working with you and cannot help you directly. But no when it is a big problem that has general application, like this one. This isn’t just about you. It could affect every disabled person who’s employed anywhere. What if they decided that a person in a wheelchair didn’t need ramps? You definitely need a lawyer, all of you. Didn’t you say that the Center could find one for you?”
“Before the others get here, Lou,” Lucia says, “why don’t you tell us more about this Mr. Crenshaw and his plans?”
I sit down on the sofa, but even though they have said they want to listen it is hard to talk. I look at the rug on their floor, with its wide border of blue-and-cream geometric patterns—there are four patterns within a frame of plain blue stripes—and try to make the story clear.
“There is a treatment they—someone—used on adult apes,” I say. “I did not know apes could be autistic, but what they said was that autistic apes became more normal when they had this treatment. Now Mr. Crenshaw wants us to have it.”
“And you don’t want it?” Tom asks.
“I do not understand how it works or how it will make things better,” I say.
“Very sensible,” Lucia says. “Do you know who did the research, Lou?”
“I do not remember the name,” I say. “Lars—he’s a member of an international group of autistic adults—e-mailed me about it several weeks ago. He sent me the journal Web site and I went there, but I did not understand much of it. I did not study neuroscience.”
“Do you still have that citation?” Lucia asks. “I can look it up, see what I can find out.”
“You could?”
“Sure. And I can ask around in the department, find out if the researchers are considered any good or not.”
“We had an idea,” I say.
“We who?” Tom asks.
“We… the people I work with,” I say.
“The other autistic people?” Tom asks.
“Yes.” I close my eyes briefly to calm down. “Mr. Aldrin bought us pizza. He drank beer. He said that he did not think there was enough profit in treating adult autistic persons—because they now treat pre-borns and infants and we are the last cohort who will be like us. At least in this country. So we wondered why they wanted to develop this treatment and what else it could do. It is like some pattern analysis I have done. There is one pattern, but it is not the only pattern. Someone can think they are generating one pattern and actually generate several more, and one of those may be useful or not useful, depending on what the problem is.” I look up at Tom and he is looking at me with a strange expression. His mouth is a little open.
He shakes his head, a quick jerk. “So—you are thinking maybe they have something else in mind, something that you people are just part of?”
“It might be,” I say cautiously.
He looks at Lucia, and she nods. “It certainly could be,” he says. “Trying whatever it is on you would give them additional data, and then… Let me think…”
“I think it is something to do with attention control,” I say. “We all have a different way of perceiving sensory input and… and setting attention priorities.” I am not sure I have the words right, but Lucia nods vigorously.
“Attention control—of course. If they could control that in the architecture, not chemically, it’d be a lot easier to develop a dedicated workforce.”
“Space,” Tom says.
I am confused, but Lucia only blinks and then nods.
“Yes. The big limitation in space-based employment is getting people to concentrate, not be distracted. The sensory inputs up there are not what we’re used to, what worked in natural selection.” I do not know how she knows what he is thinking. I would like to be able to read minds like that. She grins at me. “Lou, I think you’re onto something big, here. Get me that citation, and I’ll run with it.”
I feel uneasy. “I am not supposed to talk about work outside the campus,” I say.
“You’re not talking about work,” she says. “You’re talking about your work environment. That’s different.”
I wonder if Mr. Aldrin would see it that way.
Someone knocks on the door, and we quit talking. I am sweaty even though I have not been fencing. The first to arrive are Dave and Susan. We go through the house, collect our gear, and start stretching in the backyard.
Marjory is next to arrive, and she grins at me. I feel lighter than air again. I remember what Emmy said, but I cannot believe it when I see Marjory. Maybe tonight I will ask her to go to dinner with me. Don has not come. I suppose he is still angry with Tom and Lucia for not acting like friends. It makes me sad that they are not all still friends; I hope they do not get angry with me and quit being friends with me.
I am fencing with Dave when I hear a noise from the street and then a squeal of tires moving fast. I ignore it and do not change my attack, but Dave stops and I hit him too hard in the chest.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “That sounded close; did you hear it?”
“I heard something,” I say. I am trying to replay the sounds, thump-crash-tinkle-tinkle-squeal-roar, and think what it could be. Someone dropped a bowl out of their car?
“Maybe we’d better check,” Dave says.
Several of the others have gotten up to look. I follow the group to the front yard. In the light from the streetlight on the corner I can see a glitter on the pavement.
“It’s your car, Lou,” Susan says. “The windshield.”
I feel cold.
“Your tires last week… what day was that, Lou?”
“Thursday,” I say. My voice shakes a little and sounds harsh.
“Thursday. And now this…” Tom looks at the others, and they look back. I can tell that they are thinking something together, but I do not know what it is. Tom shakes his head. “I guess we’ll have to call the police. I hate to break up the practice, but—”
“I’ll drive you home, Lou,” Marjory says. She has come up behind me; I jump when I hear her voice.
Tom calls the police because, he says, it happened in front of his house. He hands the phone to me after a few minutes, and a bored voice asks my name, my address, my phone number, the license number of the car. I can hear noise in the background on the other end, and people are talking in the living room; it is hard to understand what the voice is saying. I am glad it is just routine questions; I can figure those out.
Then the voice asks something else, and the words tangle together and I cannot figure it out. “I’m sorry…” I say.
The voice is louder, the words more separated. Tom shushes the people in the living room. This time I understand.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” the voice asks.
“No,” I say. “But someone slashed my tires last week.”
“Oh?” Now it sounds interested. “Did you report that?”
Yes, I say.
“Do you remember who the investigating officer was?”
“I have a card; just a minute—” I put the phone down and get out my wallet. The card is still there. I read off the name, Malcolm Stacy, and the case number.
“He’s not in now; I’ll put this report on his desk. Now… are there any witnesses?”
“I heard it,” I say, “but I didn’t see it. We were in the backyard.”
“Too bad. Well, we’ll send someone out, but it’ll be a while. Just stay there.”
By the time the patrol car arrives, it is almost 10:00 P.M.; everyone is sitting around the living room tired of waiting. I feel guilty, even though it is not my fault. I did not break my own windshield or tell the police to tell people to stay. The police officer is a woman named Isaka, short and dark and very brisk. I think she thinks this is too small a reason to call the police.
She looks at my car and the other cars and street and sighs. “Well, someone broke your windshield, and someone slashed your tires a few days ago, so I’d say it’s your problem, Mr. Arrendale. You must’ve really pissed someone off, and you probably know who it is, if you’ll just think. How are you getting along at work?”
“Fine,” I say, without really thinking. Tom shifts his weight. “I have a new boss, but I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would break a windshield or cut tires.” I cannot imagine that he would, even though he gets angry.”
“Oh?” she says, making a note.
“He was angry when I was late for work after my tires were slashed,” I say. “I do not think he would break my windshield. He might fire me.”
She looks at me but says nothing more to me. She is looking now at Tom. “You were having a party?”
“A fencing club practice night,” he says.
I see the police officer’s neck tense. “Fencing? Like with weapons?”
“It’s a sport,” Tom says. I can hear the tension in his voice, too. “We had a tournament week before last; there’s another coming up in a few weeks.”
“Anyone ever get hurt?”
“Not here. We have strict safety rules.”
“Are the same people here every week?”
“Usually. People do miss a practice now and then.”
“And this week?”
“Well, Larry’s not here—he’s in Chicago on business. And I guess Don.”
“Any problems with the neighbors? Complaints about noise or anything of that sort?”
“No.” Tom runs his hand through his hair. “We get along with the neighbors; it’s a nice neighborhood. Not usually any vandalism, either.”
“But Mr. Arrendale has had two episodes of vandalism against his car in less than a week… That’s pretty significant.” She waits; no one says anything. Finally she shrugs and goes on.
“It’s like this. If the car was headed east, on the right-hand side of the road, the driver would have had to stop, get out, break the glass, run around his own car, get in, and drive off. There’s no way to break the glass while in the driver’s seat of a car going the same way your car was parked, not without a projectile weapon—and even then the angles are bad. If the car was headed west, though, the driver could reach across with something—a bat, say—or lob a rock through the windshield while still in motion. And then be gone before anyone got out to the front yard.”
“I see,” I say. Now that she has said it, I can visualize the approach, the attack, the escape. But why?
“You have to have some idea who’s upset with you,” the police officer says. She sounds angry with me.
“It does not matter how angry you are with someone; it is not all right to break things,” I say. I am thinking, but the only person I know who has been angry with me about going fencing is Emmy. Emmy does not have a car; I do not think she knows where Tom and Lucia live. I do not think Emmy would break windshields anyway. She might come inside and talk too loud and say something rude to Marjory, but she would not break anything.
“That’s true,” the officer says. “It’s not all right, but people do it anyway. Who is angry with you?”
If I tell her about Emmy, she will make trouble for Emmy and Emmy will make trouble for me. I am sure it is not Emmy. “I don’t know,” I say. I feel a stirring behind, me, almost a pressure. I think it is Tom, but I am not sure.
“Would it be all right, Officer, if the others left now?” Tom asks.
“Oh, sure. Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything; well, you heard something, but you didn’t see anything—did anyone?”
A murmur of “no” and “not me” and “if I had only moved faster,” and the others trickle away to their cars. Marjory and Tom and Lucia stay.
“If you’re the target, and it appears you are, then whoever it is knew you would be here tonight. How many people know you come here on Wednesdays?”
Emmy does not know what night I go fencing. Mr. Crenshaw does not know I do fencing at all.
“Everyone who fences here,” Tom answers for me. “Maybe some of those from the last tournament—it was Lou’s first. Do people at your job know, Lou?”
“I don’t talk about it much,” I say. I do not explain why. “I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t remember telling anyone where the class is. I might have.”
“Well, we’re going to have to find out, Mr. Arrendale,” the officer says. “This kind of thing can escalate to physical harm. You be careful now.” She hands me a card with her name and number on it. “Call me, or Stacy, if you think of anything.”
When the police car moves away, Marjory says again, “I’ll be glad to drive you home, Lou, if you’d like.”
“I will take my car,” I say. “I will need to get it fixed. I will need to contact the insurance company again. They will not be happy with me.”
“Let’s see if there’s glass on the seat,” Tom says. He opens the car door. Light glitters on the tiny bits of glass on the dashboard, the floor, in the sheepskin pad of the seat. I feel sick. The pad should be soft and warm; now it will have sharp things in it. I untie the pad and shake it out onto the street. The bits of glass make a tiny high-pitched noise as they hit the pavement. It is an ugly sound, like some modern music. I am not sure that all the glass is gone; little bits may be in the fleece like tiny hidden knives.
“You can’t drive it like that, Lou,” Marjory says.
“He’ll have to drive it far enough to get a new windshield,” Tom says. “The headlights are all right; he could drive it, if he took it slow.”
“I can drive it home,” I say. “I will go carefully.” I put the sheepskin pad in the backseat and sit very gingerly on the front seat.
At home, later, I think about things Tom and Lucia said, playing the tape of it in my head.
“The way I look at it,” Tom said, “your Mr. Crenshaw has chosen to look at the limitations and not the possibilities. He could have considered you and the rest of your section as assets to be nurtured.”
“I am not an asset,” I said. “I am a person.”
“You’re right, Lou, but we’re talking here of a corporation. As with armies, they look at people who work for them as assets or liabilities. An employee who needs anything different from other employees can be seen as a liability—requiring more resources for the same output. That’s the easy way to look at it, and that’s why a lot of managers do look at it that way.”
“They see what is wrong,” I said.
“Yes. They may also see your worth—as an asset—but they want to get the asset without the liability.”
“What good managers do,” Lucia said, “is help people grow. If they’re good at part of their job and not so good at the rest of it, good managers help them identify and grow in those areas where they’re not as strong—but only to the point where it doesn’t impair their strengths, the reason they were hired.”