Joseph McElroy: Plus

But they weren’t shadows, these birds. And not birds either, though apogee and perigee from Ground and in the head were near a bird’s two ratios, wingspread to body, body to wings. Until the wings near three times the body became again shearwater; and a new transmission said, CAP COM TO IMP PLUS SAY AGAIN IMP PLUS SAY AGAIN WATER WHAT WATER?

Imp Plus read back the numbers for apogee and perigee that had been read up to him. Flying low in his head was a dark seabird that was more than its ratios and dimensions. It banked up off the spray of a crest. The shearwater’s wingbeats turned white underneath.

But then Imp Plus had to listen to Ground and sometimes Ground said CAP COM to Imp Plus and Imp Plus went on answering. Imp Plus had been reading down to Ground glucose levels and langleys by the thousand, but now Ground was not asking for Sun radiation measured by the langley: CAP COM TO IMP PLUS: CHECK FREQUENCY CHECK FREQUENCY.

And again, from inside, not from Earth, came an answer Imp Plus had not requested in so many words: Cap Com was Capsule Communicator.

But there was no reason for Cap Com to want a frequency check this summer day in space, none at all. And the orbital figures Ground had read up to Imp Plus were familiar, he’d accepted them more than once before; but the numbers had shapes now, and Imp Plus wished Ground not to hear this — hear what? the thought of the shapes — and so Imp Plus transmitted the velocity for his synchronous orbit: IMP PLUS VELOCITY 1.9.

For he was doing something he desired to go on doing. It was not one thing and not many things; it was more. He’d been prepared to go on doing many things. But what he desired now to go on doing was not what his briefing recognized.

Twice he saw the back of a head kneeling, not the front. Then it was the number 2.

Imp Plus saw two curves on their sides, loops (not the same as the Concentration Loop) cut open to the left and stacked so they had a side in common. It was a 3.

He saw flattened circles, an alien trio, hatches into somewhere.

Still he read these numbers and the others back to Ground as if he were a radius that knew where it came from — and with a warmth that might not have been audible before in the transmissions. Imp Plus had said a summer day in space, maybe not to Ground.

Imp Plus had been in another state the word for which was lost.

What was a summer day in space?

Imp Plus felt new, and not new. The holes of light radiating fell away from him going to pieces. But Imp Plus saw not only two 2s, one 3, two zeros, for 22,300. He saw other numbers too and asked Ground for perigee but was not answered. Then he was seeing — but how could he see? — an orbit of an elongation almost as extreme as his request now for the orbit’s perigee seemed needless to Ground. And this long ellipse he was seeing was not the orbit the familiar figures he’d first read back to Ground said he was in. Yet how did he see anything, except by what he’d been prepared to remember, like a word ellipse? Yet here in his remembering were holes, for Ground was saying no sweat, perigee equals apogee as always. And if Imp Plus did not know sweat, still he was reading back to Ground the risen glucose levels that had been requested. Requested three times.

Imp Plus was new, but not new: and now Ground requested a galvanometer check, when what Imp Plus wanted to go on doing without these breaks was not one thing but more, and it embraced the colors and the shadows of arms or eyes or wings on the wall of where he was.

Not new, Imp Plus made use of the prepared orbital figures, breathed them in, breathed them out, had been briefed to recall those figures, relation to orbit, velocity, frequency — knew but now did not need to know.

New, he could not just accept those figures. Yet this was because he didn’t quite know what, down all his gradients, he now felt he had once been briefed to know, namely what way the figures were to be taken — and also because a thing he could not put his finger on said No to these figures.

Yet No not to the first set of five (the back of the head kneeling twice, the open truncated loops stacked on their sides; the openings into somewhere), but to the second set which he knew to be like the first five, but which he went on seeing as three.

So that this second set of three, the perigee, swung so close to Earth that the orbit must decay. But orbits did, and however Imp Plus had known it he did know that some orbits decayed. And if orbits decayed, so could this orbit. An echo near him tilted his thought into a negative: this orbit does not decay.

Yet whose orbit was this? Did he know? He did not know. Imp Plus did not know whose orbit this was. He did not know what the words new and not new said. Except that he had said them. And he did not see how the correct perigee, the mileage from Earth of the orbit’s nearest approach to Earth, could now seem wrong and alien and his new incorrect perigee be so familiar and acceptable.

When Imp Plus had said mileage he found that he said also distance from Earth , though at once a control like a dim echo in Imp Plus said Earth is clear . But no, something came between: sea level , not Earth , a voice had said.

It had been his own — no other. In the unit of chlorella with its eyes on Imp Plus there had seemed now to move like powers newer than green the motions of the former shadows leaning from his capsule wall, but this did not wholly draw him from the fact that he had known Earth from sea level yet also that here the difference did not matter. Also, he had spoken without knowing he knew. And had said sea level not because he must be correct but because seabirds touched his eyes, though he had no eyes.

Without knowing why, Imp Plus had said No to the numbers read up from Earth. Though those numbers were correct.

Whereas what he saw were these shapes. And they made the orbit an ellipse so elongated that the orbital period gave less uninterrupted sunlight. But here was more Imp Plus had not known he knew. But hours of Sun for what?

Sun was good. Then what was not?

Darkness was good, too. Why was that?

Cap Com was talking. Imp Plus got the last part: VELOCITY STABLE. IMP PLUS CHECK VELOCITY STABLE. IMP PLUS DO YOU READ? GLUCOSE UP. TRANSMISSION SLOWER. IMP PLUS DO YOU READ?

His thoughts on sunlight had come between those missed transmissions, but if Earth had overheard, Earth made no comment. Imp Plus felt he missed the point. But something was more. He remembered being thirsty; it had been a growing absence across something of him and he wanted it to give a little and slide and spread and be cool which was not the same as wet. But now this other something that was more, burned, but not through the window and not with thirst, for he only remembered thirst. He was reaching back from as far as he was near. Reaching also to those points from which he reached back. Points also which came into being by his reaching.

NEGATIVE NEGATIVE, Imp Plus answered, seeing much more than the data he was about to pass on, which was VELOCITY HOLDING AT 1.9. And then another voice, like an old dream if he had been sleeping (which he had not) echoed ONE NINER ONE NINER, and not only did Imp Plus see more than this information, he did not see this information at all, eyes or no eyes, though the eyes of the green chlorella breathed out and in in pulses for which Imp Plus had words but the wrong words.

CAP COM TO IMP PLUS. IS ORBITAL VELOCITY IN DOUBT? CHECK AGAIN. DO YOU READ? IMP PLUS DO YOU WANT TO CHECK VELOCITY AGAIN?

If Ground was the same as Cap Com and Cap meant Capsule, Imp Plus remembered capsule. Though not what it was. Imp Plus started to answer Ground: IMP PLUS TO GROUND. I WANT.