Joseph McElroy - Plus

But his sight held him, and so did the bone-knob morphogens fixed round the Concentration electrode. This electrode was fixed in the gray-amber anti-fold at the solar wire.

So he must see through whatever his sight joined and collabored.

Be drawn between the three sizes of body with all their infinitesimal orbiting point-bodies in the tail of the blue-black idea of green and what he found in the waters and in the airs above, through which the periodic drops rammed the water surface to fix craters there and centers becoming circumferences. And what he saw was what he had seen but not made clear to himself: namely, that, with Ground treating him now like some alien monitor, he wanted only to live on. But not name. Yet the fence on Earth would not go away. For he was the fence. And so he knew that two of the bodies in the blue-black tail rebonded in the plant beds to be water; and that the third body in the blue-black tail though changed from its look in the plantward tube had arms like valences of memory which told him it was the smaller middle shell of the unit flowing in such numbers plantward.

Which told him in turn that the large shell with its arms, and its electrons — they were electrons — was the same body that helped form the water.

But not the same as the now-amber Sunbraids flowing also plantward which after bursting into the plant house divided above and below the waters. And below blasted some of the bonds apart — apart, up, and out, lowering the surface of the water. But then (with another body not from the tail of the blue-black inner molecule but from its main ring-system) the Sunbraids increased both parts of the water bond immeasurably in volume and rebound them so as to make of the water a net increase.

And he knew through the recollected pain of the nets of charged fence that those Sunbraids that did so much had once come from Earth and had been of Earth even if not in their bonds of braid now.

But not giving Ground what it wanted, Imp Plus found his way back by way of the musing faldoream to the prior transmission. Step by step. Like steps in tests: deep unmanned tests to the asteroids, that was it. For what? A drogue of concentration jammed, thickened, and slowed him toward what he foresaw as solid with one and only one number of crests or crusted angles. Thus, he felt the risk of sleep in the faldoream’s musing words “Nuclear fishing.” So he told Ground Ground had been right that there would be no advantage in a capsule that could enlarge, for after all it was not as if this was one of the old Biosatellite experiments with salmonella that multiplied.

But when Ground replied that Imp Plus had not given the requested information, Imp Plus felt a further frequency in Ground’s transmission.

Like a pause for thought.

Imp Plus did not know pause . He could wonder what his limits were.

But then the transmission did go on and in all his being Imp Plus found symmetroid increase that was not the old growth.

This increase was result but cause of the words that came from Ground. They came in the known pulses. But they bore an unknown bond. But a bond he understood he must take the charge of, for then he remembered the bond and it was in his memory of the future, and the words carried a voice he knew: IMP PLUS REMEMBER TWO KINDS OF SALMONELLA NOT ONE. EVEN THE ONE THAT MULTIPLIED ALMOST THREE TIMES FASTER THAN THE OTHER DID NOT GO ON FOREVER IMP PLUS.

Ground stopped and went on, but there was a disturbance around the solar feed wire. Or rather there had been a disturbance and now was none: CAP COM TO IMP PLUS REPEAT PLEASE GIVE ORBITAL SPEED.

This second transmission seemed designed to do away with the first.

But the bond came back. And with a force it hadn’t had chance to have on Earth for it had been unknown by Imp Plus. But clear now: clear as aqueous humor in an Earthly eye that led in memory through sugar systems to microsight.

The bond had been drawn on a green blackboard by bone-white chalk. Drawn frequently. In numbers and words. And in an ellipse that talked. With two foci, one not there but one the Earth.

Drawn by a hand from which Imp Plus in the smoke of death had withdrawn dividing known illness by known desire until, instead of multiplying, the particles of illness seemed to dissolve in a resolution to proceed.

The bond was with the Acrid Voice.

The Acrid Voice had given him attention. Had briefed. Had smoked because it could not stop. Had talked smoke which drove Imp Plus out of his mind into a towering headache, then out of a green room into the Sun to a telephone. But the Acrid Voice had been talking from known point to known point without promises. Had stopped short of goodness. Not like the repeating Good Voice advancing into emptiness.

“You don’t want to go on forever,” the Acrid Voice knew how to say, and “What would be the advantage of a capsule that could change size?”

Maybe the Acrid Voice had known what Imp Plus had in his head. The Acrid Voice anchored itself to fact.

The bond had been there in fact. Imp Plus had known it.

But what bond now?

None but the interruption of the Acrid Voice by Ground to put Imp Plus again to the test whether it was he there or an alien monitor. No, the bonds were not there but here. With the Sun. With the power of braid. Bonds among himself.

But bonds he desired only to be — was that it?

Bonds he need only be. Albedo , said the faldoream among the turns of Imp Plus’s being; said softly or hoarsely through ciliary fringes slowly conversing into structures of saffron salts— Albedo, albedo .

And from one direction came the old choking, and Imp Plus said to himself that maybe nothing he thought to find here was a thing but was only recalled from the windy drogues of Earth: but this thought was not brisk enough to solve the choking coagulation— coagulation was the word to use. But it was Ground’s word. He was picking up some of Ground’s words which asked to be used. But for what?

But then in the choking and the converse chasm of not caring, the coagulation that like further processes had been slowing, stiffening, thickening, fixing him from function into a thing of crusted angles, gathered and carried the stalled presence of the Sunbraids into light that now opened the chloroplasts deep within the plants. Which Imp Plus saw so well he saw electrons and holes. In a rush. A promised migration that seemed to let him outside the IMP to see how the Sun hit the photovoltaic cells in the solar panels and drove electrons out of those cells into a circuit of power.

Which the Acrid Voice had not had to tell him. For Imp Plus had been somebody. That is, who had known ultramicrons.

Two faldoreams at right angles tried to shake with humor. The longitudinal drapings crystallized away from saffron toward a discolor like that of the long-dispersed optic chiasma.

But the night warmth came not from such fun. The warmth came upon this now almost wholly interior spiral so constant now that it did not come back because it did not go away.

It had to go somewhere: or go nowhere except the faldoream’s “Nuclear fishing.” He did not get away from fish. The osprey off the beach plummeted and was pulled under briefly by its prey. Imp Plus’s sight of the wendings speeded up or the wendings slowed down: so they were fixed past motion — and past color — functions thus then recalled into a new solid. Certain wendings — inside themselves at least — moved like circumferences one way; certain inner wendings diametrically narrower moved the other way. A string of morphogens, more than he’d known he had, inclined across two or three faldoreams (exactly two or three) grown close together, and the train of morphogen-knobs having joined inner to outer wendings winked red so slow the train spread into milder and milder light until Imp Plus wondering why it spread no more saw that it spread no more.