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