LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 12

      RANDAL SIX CROSSES SPHINX with XENOPHOBE, finishing the last crossword puzzle in the book.

      Other collections of puzzles await him. But with the completion of this current book, he is armored against the fearsome disorder of the world. He has earned protection.

      He will be safe for a while, although not forever. Disorder builds. Chaos presses at the walls. Eventually he will have to fill more patterns of empty boxes with more judiciously chosen letters for the purpose of denying chaos entrance to his private space.

      Temporarily safe, he gets up from the worktable, sits on the edge of his bed, and presses a call button on his nightstand. This will summon lunch.

      He is not served meals on a regular schedule because he cannot eat when obsessed with crossword puzzles. He will let food grow cold rather than interrupt the important work offending off chaos.

      A man in white brings his tray and places it on the worktable. While this attendant is present, Randal Six keeps his head bowed to discourage conversation and to prevent eye contact.

      Every word he speaks to another person diminishes the protection that he has earned.

      Alone again, Randal Six eats his lunch. Very neatly.

      The food is white and green, as he likes it. Sliced turkey breast in cream sauce, mashed potatoes, white bread, peas, beans. For dessert, vanilla ice cream with creme de menthe.

      When he finishes, he dares to open his door and slide the tray into the corridor. He quickly closes the door again, and feels as safe now as he ever does.

      He sits on the edge of his bed and opens his nightstand drawer. The drawer contains a few magazines.

      Having been educated by direct-to-brain data downloading, Randal Six is encouraged by Father to open himself to the world, to stay abreast of current events by the more ordinary means of reading various periodicals and newspapers.

      He cannot tolerate newspapers. They are unwieldy The sections become confused; the pages fall out of order.

      Worse, the ink. The ink comes off on his hands, as if it is the dirty disorder of the world.

      He can wash the ink away with enough soap and hot water in the bathroom that adjoins this chamber, but surely some of it seeps into his pores and thence into his bloodstream. By this means, a newspaper is an agent of contagion, infecting him with the world’s disorder.

      Among the magazines in the drawer, however, is a story that he tore from a local newspaper three months ago. This is his beacon of hope.

      The story concerns a local organization raising research funds to find a cure for autism.

      By the strictest definition of the affliction, Randal Six might not have autism. But he suffers from something very much like that sad condition.

      Because Father has strongly encouraged him to better understand himself as a first step toward a cure, Randal reads books on the subject. They don’t give him the peace he finds in crossword puzzles.

      During the first month of his life, when it wasn’t yet clear what might be wrong with him, when he had still been able to tolerate newspapers, he read about the local charity for autism research and at once recognized himself in descriptions of the condition. He then realized that he was not alone.

      More important, he has seen a photo of another like himself: a boy of twelve, photographed with his sister, a New Orleans police officer.

      In the photo, the boy isn’t looking at the camera but to one side of it. Randal Six recognizes the evasion.

      Incredibly, however, the boy is smiling. He looks happy.

      Randal Six has never been happy, not in the four months since he has come out of the creation tank as an eighteen-year-old. Not once. Not for a moment. Occasionally he feels sort of safe…but never happy

      Sometimes he sits and stares at the newspaper clipping for hours.

      The boy in the photo is Arnie O’Connor. He smiles.

      Maybe Arnie is not happy all the time, but he must be happy sometimes.

      Arnie has knowledge that Randal needs. Arnie has a secret to happiness. Randal needs it so bad he lies awake at night desperately trying to think of some way to get it.

      Arnie is in this city, so near. Yet for all practical purposes, he is beyond reach.

      In his four months of life, Randal Six has never been outside the walls of Mercy. Just being taken to another floor in this very building for treatment is traumatic.

      Another neighborhood of New Orleans is as unaccessible to him as a crater on the moon. Arnie lives with his secret, untouchable.

      If only Randal can get to the boy, he will learn the secret of happiness. Perhaps Arnie will not want to share it. That won’t matter. Randal will get it from him. Randal will get it.

      Unlike the vast majority of autistics, Randal Six is capable of extreme violence. His inner rage is almost equal to his fear of the disordered world.

      He has hidden this capacity for violence from everyone, even from Father, for he fears that if it is known, something bad will happen to him. He has seen in Father a certain…coldness.

      He puts the newspaper photo in the drawer once more, under the magazines. In his mind’s eye, he stills sees Arnie, smiling Arnie.

      Arnie is out there on the moon in New Orleans, and Randal Six is drawn to him like the sea to lunar tides.