The bald head swivels. The voice honks like a klaxon across the senior common room. "I never make mistakes." There is a rustling of newspapers and clearing of throats. Martin has superior intelligence-my tests confirm it, and he holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering-but he happens to be autistic and has a problem with volume control. Is that a reason to bar him from the SCR? No. We'll enjoy our coffee.
He's been doing one of his party pieces: calendar calculation. Martin can give you the day of the week for any date you care to mention, and he's spot on every time. He seems disappointed when I soon run out of dates I can vouch for. "How do you do it, Martin? You didn't even think about the last one." "March 18th, 1988?" was the question (my son's birthday); "Friday" was the instant response. "That was easy," he says, "I went to the dentist the day before." He grins with satisfaction.
It's hard to tell his age. The face is lined, but unweathered. He's wearing a silver puffa jacket, sta-pressed trousers at half-mast, and trainers: 48 going on 14. That should be "trainer" in the singular. It's on his right foot. "I see you're wearing odd shoes," I say. "Yes," he replies. "It's Wednesday." I wait for further explanation but none is forthcoming. When I first saw him, for clinical assessments, he turned up with his parents and they'd put him in a suit. His shoes were polished, and matched. He hardly said a word. Today, in his casual attire, he is voluble. Before long, inevitably, he drops into the groove of his special interests. There are several. One is the Beatles. He knows the recording and release dates of every record. Another is the railways. He has memorised the regional timetable, of course, but what fascinates him is the movement of coal freight wagons. Then there is astronomy, which is the current preoccupation. "Do you know how many stars there are in the universe?" he asks. "There are ten to the power of 22." I make a little blowing sound and shake my head. He looks pleased. "Actually," I say, "I read somewhere that if you think of each star as a grain of sand, it would take all the beaches and deserts on the planet to match the number of stars in the universe." I thought this would impress him. But he becomes agitated, starts rocking back and forth on the edge of his seat. When he stops he says, "I don't think so." I ask him if he thinks there is intelligent life among all those grains of sand. He looks puzzled and I realise he's taken the question literally, so I clarify. Again, the grin. "Yes," he says, "there is." The smile is sustained. It is evidently a consoling thought.
Beth joins us. She's one of our research assistants. It's time to go to the lab for the testing session. His face lights up: Martin has taken a shine to Beth. "And what have you been up to?" she asks him. "I've been masturbating quite a lot," he replies, as if through a Tannoy. I press mouth against knuckles to block the laughter. It's no good. I snort and cough. "Excuse me," I say and cough again, for good measure. It's unprofessional, I know, but I'm only human. I am not trying to make Martin look ridiculous. He is ridiculous. Look at him in his daft clothes, booming on about masturbation, coal freight wagons and the number of stars in the universe. It's undeniable. I reckon it's a kind of snub if you don't acknowledge his absurdity. If you are to engage with Martin, you must, to some extent, enter his world. "Martin," I say. "This is funny. Do you mind if I laugh?" "No," he says, "Please laugh." But, given permission, I find the humour soon dissolves, and I'm left sitting red-faced with tears on my cheeks and everyone looking at me instead of him. I even find myself pondering Martin's confident assertion of the existence of extraterrestrial life. We are alone in the universe or we are not, I think. Either way, how astonishing.
Martin's head is abnormally large, as is the brain that fills it. My colleagues and I have taken measurements. We are profiling his cognitive strengths and limitations and setting these against detailed magnetic resonance observations of his brain. He is an enthusiastic research participant and has come to see himself as a neuro-engineering problem. He has a theory. In his view, autism has to do with flow dynamics. Most of the time his thought processes are stuck in the left hemisphere of his brain. Consequently, his thinking is rigid, categorical and analytic. If he could unblock the channel of the corpus callosum, which links the two sides, then the streams of the left and right brain would merge and he would be whole. Ordinary consciousness would flourish. This happens sometimes, he believes. For brief periods the world takes on a different appearance. He is more relaxed and it is less of an effort to connect with people. This is where masturbation comes in. Orgasm detonates a dam-busting explosion in the right hemisphere of his brain.
As Beth sees Martin to the door, I catch a fragment of their conversation. "But if your boyfriend leaves you..." he says. "We'll see," says Beth. Martin's grin has an unworldly beauty.
