I go into my office and stare at the monitor. The data are flat and empty, like a blank screen.
Somewhere in there are the patterns I am paid to find or generate, but today the only pattern I can see is closing like a trap around me, darkness swirling in from all sides, faster than I can analyze it.
I fix my mind on the schedule for tonight and tomorrow: Tom told me what to do to prepare and I will do it.
TOM PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT OF LOU’S APARTMENT building, aware that he had never before seen where Lou lived while Lou had been in and out of his house for years. It looked like a perfectly ordinary apartment building, built sometime in the previous century. Predictably, Lou was ready on time, waiting outside with all his gear, other than his blades, neatly stowed in a duffel. He looked rested, if tense; he had all the signs of someone who had followed the advice, who had eaten well and slept adequately. He wore the outfit Lucia had helped him assemble; he looked uncomfortable in it, as most first-timers did in period costume.
“You ready?” Tom asked.
Lou looked around himself as if to check and said, “Yes. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Lucia.”
“Good morning to you,” Lucia said. Tom glanced at her. They’d had one argument already about Lou; Lucia was ready to dismember anyone who gave him the least trouble, and Tom felt that Lou could handle minor problems on his own. She had been so tense about Lou lately, he thought. She and Marjory were up to something, but Lucia wouldn’t explain. He hoped it wouldn’t erupt at the tournament.
Lou was silent in the backseat on the way; it was restful, compared to the chatterers Tom was used to.
Suddenly Lou spoke up. “Did you ever wonder,” he asked, “about how fast dark is?”
“Mmm?”Tom dragged his mind back from wondering whether the middle section of his latest paper needed tightening.
“The speed of light,” Lou said. “They have a value for the speed of light in a vacuum… but the speed of dark…”
“Dark doesn’t have a speed,” Lucia said. “It’s just what’s there when light isn’t—it’s just a word for absence.”
“I think… I think maybe it does,” Lou said.
Tom glanced in the rear-view mirror; Lou’s face looked a little sad. “Do you have any idea how fast it might be?” Tom asked. Lucia glanced at him; he ignored her. She always worried when he indulged Lou in his word games, but he couldn’t see the harm in it.
“It’s where light isn’t,” Lou said. “Where light hasn’t come yet. It could be faster—it’s always ahead.”
“Or it could have no movement at all, because it’s already there, in place,” Tom said. “A place, not a motion.”
“It isn’t a thing,” Lucia said. “It’s just an abstraction, just a word for having no light. It can’t have motion…”
“If you’re going to go that far,” Tom said, “light is an abstraction of sorts. And they used to say it existed only in motion, particle, and wave, until early in this century when they stopped it.”
He could see Lucia scowl without even looking at her, from the edge in her voice. “Light is real.
Darkness is the absence of light.”
“Sometimes dark seems darker than dark,” Lou said. “Thicker.”
“Do you really think it’s real?” Lucia asked, half turning in the seat.
“‘Darkness is a natural phenomenon characterized by the absence of light,’ ” Lou’s singsong delivery made it clear this was a quote. “That’s from my high school general science book. But it doesn’t really tell you anything. My teacher said that although the night sky looks dark between the stars, there’s actually light—stars give off light in all directions, so there’s light or you couldn’t see them.”
“Metaphorically,” Tom said, “if you take knowledge as light and ignorance as dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark—to ignorance. Something more tactile and muscley than just lack of knowledge. A sort of will to ignorance. It would explain some politicians.”
“Metaphorically,” Lucia said, “you can call a whale a symbol of the desert or anything something else.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Tom asked. He saw her sudden shift in the seat from the corner of his eye.
“I’m feeling annoyed,” Lucia said. “And you know why.”
“I’m sorry,” Lou said from behind.
“Why are you sorry?” Lucia asked.
“I should not have said anything about the speed of dark,” Lou said. “It has