I know this exchange would not satisfy Dr. Fornum. She would want Cameron to explain the drawing, even though it is clear to all of us. She would want us to ask questions, make comments, talk about it. There is nothing to talk about: it is clear to all of us what the problem was and that Cameron's solution is good in all senses. Anything else is just busy talk. Among ourselves we don't have to do that.

One of the conditions of Lou's employment is that he must subject himself to quarterly psychiatric evaluations, to ensure that he is not "lapsing into mental illness."

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 imperceptably. 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?

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

The book is full of exchanges between Lou and 'normals' and how they surprise each other. Lou is constantly surprised by what 'normals' can do effortlessly, and 'normals' are constantly surprised by what he can do, when they allow themselves to. This window into the mind of an autist is fascinating, as he struggles with who he is, what makes him who he is, and how he fits into the world. He has a structure, a pattern in his life, that works for him. A supervisor at his job has become enraged at the "special privileges" created for the autist group (even though they are among the most productive units in the entire company), and is pressuring them to participate in an experimental therapy to make them more normal. But can Lou still be Lou if he is no longer autistic? Will he still like the same things, have the same skills, without autism?

Lou's gifts with pattern recognition are astounding, to the point that even people who are in the same field cannot grasp what he sees as quickly as he sees it. And this love of patterns flows into everything he does. He thinks of routes and directions as patterns. His daily living is set in a pattern. He began studying the sport of fencing with Tom and Lucia after meeting Lucia at the hospital, and he sees fencing as patterns.

I drag my eyes back and focus on Tom and his blade. When I concentrate, I can see his pattern -- a long and complicated one -- and now I can parry his attacks. Low, high, high, low, reverse, low, high, low, low, reverse, ... he's throwing a reverse shot every fifth and varying the setup to it. Now I can prepare for the reverse, pivoting and then making a quick diagonal step: attack obliquely, one of the old masters says, never directly. It is like chess in that way, with tthe knight and bishop attacking at an angle. At last I set up the series I like best and get a solid hit.

"Wow!" Tom says, "I thought I'd managed real randomness--"
"Every fifth is a reverse," I say.
"Damn," Tom said. "Let's try that again --"
This time he doesn't reverse for nine shots, the next time seven -- I notice he's always using a reverse attack on the odd numbers. I test that through longer series, just waiting. Sure enough... nine, seven, five, then back to seven. That's when I step past on the diagonal and get him again.
"That wasn't five," he says. He sounds breathless.
"No... but it was an odd number," I say.
"I can't think fast enough," Tom says. "I can't fence and think. How do you do it?"
"You move, but the pattern doesn't," I say. "The pattern -- when I see it -- is still. So it is easier to hold in mind because it doesn't wiggle around."
"I never thought of it that way," Tom says. "So--how do you plan your own attacks? So they aren't patterned?

"They are," I say. "But I can shift from one pattern to another..." I can tell this is not getting across to him and try to think of another way of saying it. "When you drive somewhere, there are many possible routes.. many patterns you might choose. If you start off on one and a road you would use for that pattern is blocked, you take another and get onto one of your other patterns, don't you?"

"You see routes as patterns?" Lucia says. "I see them as strings -- and I have real trouble shifting from one to another unless the connection is within a block."

"I get completely lost," Susan says. "Mass transit's a real boon to me -- I just read the sign and get on. In the old days, if I'd had to drive everywhere, I'd have been late all the time."

"So, you can hold different fencing patterns in your head and just... jump or something... from one to another?"

"But mostly I'm reacting to the opponent's attacks while I analyze the pattern," I say.

"That would explain a lot about your learning style when you started fencing," Lucia says. She looks happy. I do not understand why that would make her happy. "Those first bouts, you did not have time to learn the pattern -- and you were not skilled enough to think and fence both, right?"

This novel is a real treat full of differentness. I seek out novels that also teach me - reading about someone and their life in their ordinary profession is a special niche I enjoy. As I lived in Lou Arrandale's mind for a time, I not only got to explore the life of an autistic adult, but also of a novice fencer, a classical music buff, and a skilled mathematician learning about brain function and processing.

The conclusion of the novel was somewhat unsatisfying. I felt there were many loose ends not addressed, and in some ways I felt like the Ms. Moon ran out of pages to finish the story. I'm not sure I totally understand the ending. But, I will look forward to reading it again, no question.

With all the alarm bells we mothers are bombarded with about autism and Asperger's and all kinds of physical and mental differences in our children, I find this novel to be a valuable counterbalance. Different does not need to be scary, or bad.