Joseph McElroy - Plus

Also Imp Plus thought the lattice must have put him through nonexistence again. For he was missing now the means, whatever they had ever been, to distinguish the Acrid Voice on the main beam from the direct thoughts of its milky reconstituted particles on the other beam. Imp Plus wanted to find the foot he had put in the yellow leather shoe; to find the voice in which he had told the blind news vendor in that cold place on another sea, “That’s my daughter,” as she ran down the pavement to meet the dark-haired woman. He wanted to find the shouldered spine to be laughed up by the beach woman’s touch; find the eyes to see spilt blood, spilt smells, the point of jokes, things not so beautiful as what had come to him through growth that was now (he thought) possibly stopped. Yet the Acrid inferences would not let up; because Imp Plus recognized them. They pumped against his other gradient. Like what drew charged particles of sodium uphill through the skin of cells. Or like the very carbon atoms these inferences jumped through to get back to nitrogen, glucose, water, the crimson process that was more crimson when warm. Carbon, so small the shell of its electron cloud gets unthinkably close to the nucleus of other atoms; and so strangely able to both give up electrons and take them on that it can form bonds left and right.

But the growth, said Cap Com (but not on the beam!), the growth, the growth.

Now if out beyond the Earth (continued the Acrid thinking) the ten-times-greater carbon bombardment is largely lost on IMP’s shield, we still have solar wind.

But wait — who said anything about Acrid particles — braid structure — who is feeding you data the rest of us are not getting?

It was Cap Com speaking to Acrid Voice — Cap Com, who could not interfere with the Acrid inferences about rays from the Sun’s corona hitting plant-bed nitrogen to form carbon-14 or light quanta hitting carbon in the brain breaking bonds to make a new state so reactively rich in energy as to be new — but Cap Com did break in upon the Acrid questions asked of Imp Plus: to say, IMP PLUS WE QUESTION WHETHER YOU HAVE ANY POWER LEFT, READ ANY , IMP PLUS, ANY .

For though Imp Plus had barely answered the Acrid inferences these had transmitted data Cap Com might not wish to fall into the wrong hands — he saw hands moving away from each other: that research into brain-cell regrowth had seen far enough to see that the splitting of neurons led nowhere unless it was to some embryonic regress; that the lattice repeatedly referred to might be giving to photon potential a radically receptive new grid or charged fence; that the nitrogen window of the IMP might have accelerated carbon recompounding; that given a jump in glucose, hence a jump in oxidation and energy, the sodium pump would work harder and faster, the sodium concentration be even more unequal either side of the cell with increase likewise of potassium, which binds and hence may bear upon growth just as the resting membrane potential caused by uphill sodium flow may relate growth to electrical power.

But asking again about the braid structure and whether in the absence of glucose and water this lattice could be organic and if not what of the crimson process, the Acrid transmissions went away, went away with some breath of Imp Plus.

There was nothing, then.

And afterward Imp Plus saw there had been not even a memory of the suns, his own which was now the lattice’s, and the great Sun.

For Imp Plus had been blinked out by the lattice. The lattice evolved from Imp Plus had taken Imp Plus in. Such a way in he had been forgotten. Which he knew, having been brought back. For he was back but into — for the IMP was into — a new driving stumble. And as if Imp Plus had been given by the lattice knowledge necessary to it as an idea, Imp Plus knew that the fading form of the spinelike conduit leading as if to Imp Plus himself though he had no place, had been the lattice destabilizing the IMP to show Cap Com the real power still here. But from Cap Com’s response Imp Plus knew it had been a several-times-on-and-off demonstration and thought again of where he could have been and the thought came with what he took to be a memory of pain because it felt like understanding and relief, and the understanding sucked into it the dream he thought he had had while just now not existing, and it was that he would die but the others would be there, Cap Com, the Acrid Voice, the Acrid particles, the great lattice, and the Sun. For was his growth not over? And was he not at the mercy of the being he had once become only then to lessen into a part of?

No dream. It was that last breath Acrid Voice had taken away from Imp Plus.

But the Acrid word had been fence —a new grid for photon potential. To receive rays. A brain. No, the lattice the brain had become. Imp Plus had recognized so much of what the Acrid had said that he had been he saw one reason the Acrid had not let up. But had let up now, and only dimly did Imp Plus hear the war on the Ground.

He tried — did the lattice let him? or in some new power he had, was he the gift which the lattice was glad to allow? — to push one more time the phototelic beam to the particles of reconstituted Acrid Voice, to try to say what he did say: Your enemy Cap Com is right: you are being fed data that Cap Com and the others are not getting: it is a force of concentration gradient far greater than any loop you think still operates here. You don’t know exactly that this is what is happening, but you incline and you recall and you know — you know—

He could not complete.

He did not know why the lattice did not restabilize the IMP. The spine of power conduit felt closer, but Imp Plus did not know if it still gripped the attitude and retro rocket systems. Ground had dropped the orbit still more.

Getting back to Earth was the journey. Or Earth’s crust of atmosphere. The memory of morphogen-knobs made the memory of wendings shake so hard that the shearows and faldoreams cast shadows nearer to confirm this a monitor-compound of humor over what was ahead: a landing: a soft landing to feel out the surface: acres of radiant Sun-collectors, desert spectacles with monitored properties, gibbous Earth with that jagged dot he could nearly recall.

The Acrid — the friendly — particles did not return Imp Plus a message. But Acrid words aloud with Cap Com were real enough, telling in detail what was in danger of being lost. And the threat to cut off the Acrid Voice from this and future projects beamed out to Imp Plus like the false Sun of some other day when he’d let himself be scoffed into thoughts of survival. Was it the Good Voice thwarting the Acrid? Imp Plus did not know — for he was tired, or the lattice let him feel tired — but now in a last try that made him suddenly doubt he could ever show the Acrid particles the telepathic — he knew telepathic —beam between them but made him think that he and the lattice could go on together for a long time, he broke into the Acrid Voice’s protest before it had finished as the Acrid Voice said We must go on—

IMP PLUS TO GROUND, IMP PLUS TO GROUND. WHAT HAPPENS TO BRAIN’S THREE-DIMENSIONAL MAP OF RETINA WHEN NO RETINA IS LEFT TO PLUG INTO? WHAT HAPPENS TO FLAMING GLAND BELOW DISCOLORED OPTIC CROSSING WHEN BRAIN DISPERSES? HAVE SEEN AND BEEN BUT DO NOT KNOW.

He had them again, he thought; and he went on. The lattice, he felt, also wished to know; or Imp Plus was one part of the lattice’s wish. But answering Cap Com that the sight he had had had been solid yet possibly not had but something else, Imp Plus saw into the flesh of his past motion: only deep enough to think what would make them believe. Yet then deep enough to let him feel further, as if a sliver had been implanted in him out of sight by him himself., why did he want them to believe him? So they would not kill him? They had their reflectors cooking water in villages, smoking in the deserts of the gibbous Earth. Maybe not gibbous now, where from orbit the one familiar mark had been the Great Wall of China, he knew for never having seen it before. And the search went on for the intermediate compound — he recalled that! — that might store electrons dislodged by radiation — how much later? — after some Sun-turned molecular change and the evolution of light these particles could produce thermoluminescence — when let go, like birds, thoughts, micropumps primed by future chance, infinitesimal maps seeking a place to be of.