Joseph McElroy: Plus

The two words held together like one thing — one quantity — apart from other things said; the two words had come to Imp Plus from many points like seabirds swinging into him over paths of spray till they were out of focus.

But what was wrong with twelve hours of sunlight? It was more than one, still more than the first suborbital flights long before Apollo.

Again Imp Plus was knowing what he had not known he knew. And how did he know that this was not the same as the new and not-new or the something in the head that had seen erroneous figures while at the same time knowing them erroneous?

What was erroneous? Twelve hours of Sun uninterrupted? No, that was correct. For you didn’t want, say, 45 or 90 minutes in Sun and 45 or 90 out.

But what was wanted?

Words known before came back but not from Ground. Ground was wanting a frequency check again, and had been asking. But Ground knew the frequency as well as Imp Plus did, for it had been agreed upon on Earth. Even in the dark they had kept on talking to each other, Earth and Imp Plus. Many darks. Orbit was not requested. The 22,300-mile apogee was correct. Imp Plus must not give the alien figures he had seen or recalled for perigee. The difference so great, the perigee so short, the close point so close the resulting ellipse would dream its orbit right into the bite of Earth’s magnet. Why did Imp Plus see this shape that was not so? If something else had given the wrong figures, that something else would have answered to the name Imp Plus.

The transmission had been frequent. The frequency agreed upon on Earth.

The echo — there was an echo that was not Earth and not Imp Plus either though it seemed to be deep in his sprouts though not optical sprouts — seemed to be trying to dream its way out of the other sprouts giving Cap Com a frequency reading but so dim it might have been another frequency.

But it was indeed another frequency that was being given to Cap Com, and Cap Com thanked Imp Plus, adding that WE were getting some interference and the signal was dim.

So Imp Plus transmitted: CAP COM DO YOU READ ME?

And Cap Com came back with words: they were BEAUTIFUL IMP PLUS BEAUTIFUL.

Then to Imp Plus came his own answer. From himself but from the Sun. But also from Earth which seemed equally far away. And the answer was that Cap Com had said BEAUTIFUL before, and it had been in the middle of the dark, unlike now; and unless there was a Ground on the other side of the Earth who said the same thing, which some familiar but retreating control in Imp Plus automatically said was not possible, then the hours in dark might be roughly over the same transmitting point on Earth as the hours in Sun. But this had been agreed and known, and yet Imp Plus was discovering it, discovering what he knew already.

But keep to a point. A thing called laughter had been graying or dampening or decaying a graph. Imp Plus had been part of the laughter and of the graph. If he had not interrupted the laughter to say, “Stick to the point,” he had been overheard feeling it. And if the form of that shadow up the graph had been lost along with something he had been part of, the words remained of use, for laughter was a letting go of something coiled inside something else. But this coil was other than the coil Imp Plus had touched and touched again not the late winter day of the graph but one spring day. One spring day a voice in the air nearby spoke not of a coil Imp Plus was touching but of the shearwaters swooping back along the sea touching their wings to the whitecaps. Sun had filled that day on Earth, though the coil Imp Plus had touched was away from the Sun, and the voice had said, “Those birds, my God.”

And at another point there was laughter from the voice. Imp Plus recalled it. Not like the day of the graph but another laugh. Then the voice had touched Imp Plus where he could not see, and it had said, “Maybe it’s the points.” And Imp Plus had not quite seen what he had taken to be the distance between the ignition coil he had thought he’d been looking at and the distributor with its eight plus one arched and rubber-covered paths, but instead had seen — but now, not then — a great ellipse’s two foci: one the Earth, the other focus empty as the distance between the foci. He did not know focus or foci , he did not know ellipse . The words dimly echoed what he himself was slipping away from, decaying away from into what he was not sure.

But he knew IMP. It was Interplanetary Monitoring Platform. He wanted to answer these words with a motion he remembered but thought he could not make.

And without looking he had reached to a part of him that had been touched but was out of sight though in the Sun while the coil where he was looking was not in the Sun. And he was more touched and still more touched on this blind spot and something called laughter passed through him into his head bent toward the space between points and coil, and this laughter wasn’t like that other laughter that grayed the graph in the green room. For this laughter, he now saw, was radiant.

And Imp Plus had turned away from this distance with its mechanical advantages under the angled hood of the car. He had turned into the Sun and the laughing voice and its eyes and the sea and the three shearwaters racing the crests. And there far away on Earth the voice had said words which Imp Plus now would have transmitted to Ground 22,300 miles off if he had not instead transmitted the frequency Ground requested. Now it was Ground’s turn to not respond. Except for a small echo which didn’t sound like Ground: it said, I DO NOT READ YOU IMP PLUS, SAY AGAIN.

And Imp Plus did, and Cap Com still did not read, and queried the 2.4-mile-per-second orbital velocity Imp Plus had added just to see, and then Imp Plus read off the frequency one last time and the small echo from before seemed amplified by Imp Plus’s own wish, but Imp Plus could not see how, but the echo added the letters TL at the end of the frequency, and after another pause CAP COM said WE READ, but asked if glucose checked out as high as Ground’s reading and did Imp Plus have any idea why glucose was up.

Imp Plus said there was more of everything — might as well be more glucose.

But then the dim echo said: ORBITAL VELOCITY 1.9.

Which Imp Plus knew was correct but persisted in supplanting with new figures representing accelerated speeds as if Imp Plus saw — for Imp Plus saw — the orbit— fore saw the orbit swing down to a perigee much closer than that 22,300-mile apogee. CAP COM said READ YOU, and Imp Plus knew the echo had not been Ground but here — and in Imp Plus’s head if there was one.

Now whereas Ground had not said that orbital velocity could be other than 1. 9 miles per second, the frequency had not until now had those letters TL .

He was lost, and he was Imp Plus. One thing sure, he had been looking at a coil that spring day by the sea, and looking at distributor points, when what could he have told about the coil any more than about the distributor? The coil had thousands of turns.

There was an answer to that, and it was filled up with the laughter touching from behind. And as on Earth he had turned and seen the seabirds and the sea and much closer the voice, this laughter was not that other laughter. That other laughter spread up the graph in the large green room. It drew from Imp Plus the words Stick to the point . For though he did not now (and yet did) know what the thing was that was laughter, he did know that that other laughter had come inside a room from an acrid, lower, harder, and not laughing voice that was not touching him in that way, and it said, “You don’t want to go on forever, do you?”

At that Imp Plus had said, “Stick to the point.”