The Speed of Dark

“Oh, Tom made him pick up lots of the gear, and Don was going to just shove it in the racks anyhow. Tom made him do it right. As many times as he’s seen it done, he ought to have the way of it by now, but Don… he just will not learn. Now that he’s not with Helen anymore, he’s really backsliding into the slapdash boy we had years back. I wish he’d grow up.”

Tom listened without joining in. He knew the signs: any moment now Lucia would tackle Marjory about her feelings for Lou and for Don, and he wanted to be far away when that happened. He finished stretching and stood up just as Lou came around the corner of the house.

As he checked the lights and made a final sweep of the area for possible hazards that might cause injury, Tom watched Lou stretching… methodical as always, thorough as always. Some people might think Lou was dull, but Tom found him endlessly fascinating. Thirty years before, he might well never have made it in the ordinary way; fifty years before, he would have spent his life in an institution. But improvements in early intervention, in teaching methods, and in computer-assisted sensory integration exercises had given him the ability to find good employment, live independently, deal with the real world on near-equal terms.

A miracle of adaptation and also, to Tom, a little sad. Younger people than Lou, born with the same neurological deficit, could be completely cured with gene therapy in the first two years of life. Only those whose parents refused the treatment had to struggle, as Lou had done, with the strenuous therapies Lou had mastered. If Lou had been younger, he’d not have suffered. He might be normal, whatever that meant.

Yet here he was, fencing. Tom thought of the jerky, uneven movements Lou had made when he first began — it had seemed, for the longest time, that Lou’s fencing could be only a parody of the real thing. At each stage of development, he’d had the same slow, difficult start and slow, difficult progression… from foil to epee, from epee to rapier, from single blade to foil and dagger, epee and dagger, rapier and dagger, and so on.

He had mastered each by sheer effort, not by innate talent. Yet now that he had the physical skills, the mental skills that took other fencers decades seemed to come to him in only a few months.

Tom caught Lou’s eye and beckoned him over. “Remember what I said — you need to be fencing with the top group now.”

“Yes…” Lou nodded, then made a formal salute. His opening moves seemed stiff, but he quickly shifted into a style that took advantage of his more fractal movement. Tom circled, changed direction, feinted and probed and offered fake openings, and Lou matched him movement for movement, testing him as he was tested. Was there a pattern in Lou’s moves, other than a response to his own? He couldn’t tell. But again and again, Lou almost caught him out, anticipating his own moves… which must mean, Tom thought, that he himself had a pattern and Lou had spotted it.

“Pattern analysis,” he said aloud, just as Lou’s blade slipped his and made a touch on his chest. “I should have thought of that.”

“Sorry,” Lou said. He almost always said, “Sorry,” and then looked embarrassed.

“Good touch,” Tom said. “I was trying to think how you were doing what you were doing, rather than concentrating on the match. But are you using pattern analysis?”

“Yes,” Lou said. His tone was mild surprise, and Tom wondered if he was thinking, Doesn’t everyone?

“I can’t do it in real time,” Tom said. “Not unless someone’s got a very simple pattern.”

“Is it not fair?” Lou asked.

“It’s very fair, if you can do it,” Tom said. “It’s also the sign of a good fencer — or chess player, for that matter. Do you play chess?”

“No.”

“Well… then let’s see if I can keep my mind on what I’m doing and get a touch back.” Tom nodded, and they began again, but it was hard to concentrate. He wanted to think about Lou — about when that awkward jerkiness had become effective, when he’d first seen real promise, when Lou had begun reading the patterns of the slower fencers. What did it say about the way he thought? What did it say about him as a person?

Tom saw an opening and moved in, only to feel the sharp thud on his chest of another touch.

“Shoot, Lou, if you keep doing this we’ll have to promote you to tournaments,” he said, only half joking. Lou stiffened, his shoulders hunching. “Does that bother you?”

“I… do not think I should fence in a tournament,” Lou said.

“It’s up to you.” Tom saluted again. He wondered why Lou phrased it that way. It was one thing to have no desire for competition but another to think he “shouldn’t” do it. If Lou had been normal — Tom hated himself for even thinking the word, but there it was — he’d have been in tournaments for the past three years. Starting too early, as most people did, rather than keeping to this private practice venue for so long. Tom pulled his mind back to the bout, barely parried a thrust, and tried to make his own attacks more random.