Joseph McElroy - Plus

For the shade over the algae and anabaena beds chilled him to the bone, contracted the wendings, clouded the crusts of force that glinted from the pores of the faldoreams. But most — the spindle-radii of his own radiance raced through him toward the plantward tube as if against a thing so like them he’d not seen different motions. And the morphogen beats now snapped that growing shearow out of its embrace to test by contrast what the shade-chill had done; for Imp Plus saw that the plant-tube currents ran full tilt again, likewise the pump in the housing at what had been the brainward end.

So the pump slowed when the plant-works lost their Sun. But the particles of radiance not already bound with the great Sun into braids raced through Imp Plus to get to the plantward tube. But if the pump — pumping what? — got its power through the volt circuit from the solar cells, the only thing that could make that pump slow (or stop, as it had stopped when Imp Plus had choked) was a change in that power.

The loss of power had come with the loss of Sun when Imp Plus had shaded the plant beds. Only one thing connected the two losses: the race of unbraided radiance through all parts of him including the parts where lay sections of the bus cable from the solar arrays mounted outside.

The radiance was rays, was brightness, was his own sun. But in the radiation of its promise he did not know what it could be, this sun of his. A race of radiance, but an impeded race to the plantward tube.

From his angle at the window seeing inward he thought he saw transmission waves had stopped coming in to all the hanging slivers but one. Yet other slivers might remain. Shallow, deep. If deep, maybe now mobile through all streams and intersections of his work. Which he found hard to sense without the multi-sight he was trying not to use.

There seemed more, but it seemed slower. Racing for the underhousing to get into the plantward tube, the spindle-radiations of his own sun seemed impeded by a thing — a potion: until Imp Plus saw this was the old radiant force from the once-flaming gland which for the moment he did not find.

He found his microsight burned into action and found the gland’s flood all over again now pulsed of particles and meshed so fine that as he understood why his spindle-radii had such wading impedance to breathe their way through, and as he saw the flood’s charged and deviant lattices through which the radiant spindle-radii fought to pass, he barely understood in the opening of all the pain he had ever known which now burned whole in breath after breath that pulsed away his very name — barely understood — that the particles of the gland’s flood, though infinitesimal next to the spindle-radii, were in every other way and every place identical and the same.

This turn — this motion or mind — came in him not from a site-source like that of the funnel fields; it came all over him at once; so he felt equal to himself at the same time that he had nowhere else to turn.

And at this moment he was trapped in a multi-sight that felt the reverse of trapped because it was not stop but passage, though sieved through lattices and lattices inside and out. And he could not stand off the one lattice fixed like potion crystal that came at him.

Until he saw it was an Earthly fence.

Inside was one thing, outside another.

And the fence with a red high-voltage sign told him that here, in the capsule and his being, the silver insulation about the solar-power cable had not been strong enough against the lattices of his own field, his radii seeking use.

He was sieved back and forth through the fence but the pain went into his knowing he was the fence.

If potioned by the lattice, he became the lattice. Dissolved, reconstituted.

It was hard and he needed help, but he had had it.

He was hardening but not choking.

What had saved him from choking was that he must think his own growth. But in the last long while he had not grown. He had moved, reached, contracted, and held up. But he had not increased.

Yet chances to go further led to chances. A chill from the plant beds had told him he was a part of them. A child coughed in winter smoke. Strands loosened and tightened in the corner of eyes, turned red when warm and then resiliently resumed their x-ray breath. The blind news vendor said he could have been a vegetable. The Acrid Voice said something that was not bad. Imp Plus saw he himself was the Micronesian giant with algae inside — though why not brown from the Sun? — but while the big clam could open its shell with its adductor muscle he could not enlarge his capsule.

He was tired but warm. The words reminded him: but of almost nothing: then the spines of the shearows drew a ripple of morphogens down their length like a hand under a cover and Imp Plus saw that though lacking lips he had laughed.

There were more spindle-radii but not more of himself. The spindle-radii found themselves braiding equally with the streaming quanta radiating from the Sun’s early-evening hand.

He must take hold, vegetable, animal, or himself. In daylight he knew the algae, anabaena, and other plants worked with what came to them to work with, and something came back up the upward tube. At night the dark upon the plants should have chilled him but had not. And while the pump had slowed or stopped when the plants were dark, and when the pump had stopped he had choked, while when he choked the pump stopped — he did not choke at night. At night, glucose and other life signs were high. But the cable from the solar-power bus ran to the pump house — pump house? — the morphogens rippled down the slow faldoreams and then the wendings waved the living knobs of the morphogens — he was laughing — so, chill or not, the pump pumped at night by Sun power stored from the day. But Ground had said that at night electricity remained at maximum.

He must think to grow, but what now happened he must watch.

A sleeve of orbiting Sunbraids shrank around the silver-sheathed cable and became hard. The pump paused. The sleeve flew slowly off. The pump went on.

He had the power. So he could kill himself. Perhaps with help.

The wendings turned slower and a pale grid of vacancy made a move counter to the wendings. Some new returning center was gearing into him.

He felt himself everywhere latticed. To counter this he moved. But only sleeved the cable and saw the funnel fields of charge stop spraying from the open end of the wire that came from the pump housing into which the solar cable went.

And then the pump did not stop.

For though he did not know how, he now knew the power could come from him, which was why the solar batteries did not lose juice at night.

He found he had known already.

The sleeve let go, and the solar circuit took over, but the radiant particles had done that sleeving to show him what he half knew. He knew half .

But must know more. Must know what down in the plant beds reflected his limb when it lay touching the plant housing.

He had known ultramicron , and thought he had not known it from the Dim Echo or the Acrid Voice. The fiery fence was himself as he had been, and the project engineers had handled him with kid gloves for he was to be hooked up to their system and then spent. But he would use them too.

He had looked into an ingrown body of mouth upon grooves and arches of a tongue laid with velvet nipples of light-receptor cells: he saw he had been the point of the dune watcher’s long, unknowing gaze, for Imp Plus had looked into her mouth— her not him , but how to mouth the difference, for was there a difference between a her mouth and a him mouth? — and he had known he did not fear loss on an operating table the next week: had known that as his microsight came to him by division upon division, the unknown desire that had come to him on the beach in place of fear divided its long vacancy to yield the pain of caving, the knowledge that contained the pain, and a lasting division of body-brain by will, to yield what he was and would be.