"Elizabeth Moon. The Speed of Dark " - читать интересную книгу автора

moment with questions, blocking off every sensation but the thorn stab of
questions.
And orders. If it wasn't, "Lou, what is this?" it was, "Tell me what
this is." A bowl. The same bowl, time after time. It is a bowl and it is an
ugly bowl, a boring bowl, a bowl of total and complete boring blandness,
uninteresting. I am uninterested in that uninteresting bowl.
If they aren't going to listen, why should I talk?
I know better than to say that out loud. Everything in my life that I
value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and
saying what they want me to say.
In this office, where I am evaluated and advised four times a year,
the psychiatrist is no less certain of the line between us than all the
others have been. Her certainty is painful to see, so I try not to look at
her more than I have to. That has its own dangers; like the others, she
thinks I should make more eye contact than I do. I glance at her now.
Dr. Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her
head not quite imperceptibly. Autistic persons do not understand these
signals; the book says so. I have read the book, so I know what it is I do
not understand.
What I haven't figured out yet is the range of things they don't
understand. The normals. The reals. The ones who have the degrees and sit
behind the desks in comfortable chairs.
I know some of what she doesn't know. She doesn't know that I can
read. She thinks I'm hyperlexic, just parroting the words. The difference
between what she calls parroting and what she does when she reads is
imperceptible to me. She doesn't know that I have a large vocabulary. Every
time she asks what my job is and I say I am still working for the
pharmaceutical company, she asks if I know what pharmaceutical means. She
thinks I'm parroting. The difference between what she calls parroting and
my use of a large number of words is imperceptible to me. She uses large
words when talking to the other doctors and nurses and technicians,
babbling on and on and saying things that could be said more simply. She
knows I work on a computer, she knows I went to school, but she has not
caught on that this is incompatible with her belief that I am actually
nearly illiterate and barely verbal.
She talks to me as if I were a rather stupid child. She does not like
it when I use big words (as she calls them) and she tells me to just say
what I mean.
What I mean is the speed of dark is as interesting as the speed of
light, and maybe it is faster and who will find out?
What I mean is about gravity, if there were a world where it is twice
as strong, then on that world would the wind from a fan be stronger because
the air is thicker and blow my glass off the table, not just my napkin? Or
would the greater gravity hold the glass more firmly to the table, so the
stronger wind couldn't move it?
What I mean is the world is big and scary and noisy and crazy but also
beautiful and still in the middle of the windstorm.
What I mean is what difference does it make if I think of colors as
people or people as sticks of chalk, all stiff and white unless they are
brown chalk or black?