Joseph McElroy: Plus

Which then on Earth in the large green room had been not decay of orbit, much less provision for initiating decay of orbit. No, the point had been protection of orbit. And the word was camouflage .

Imp Plus thought himself alive. Cap Com meant Capsule Communicator .

The shadows of birds were not birds and not shadows. And not high-gain antennae. But now among the chlorella green were fresh shadows.

Of what?

Of the Sun.

No shadow without the Sun.

Ground knew there would be shadows and darkness. And could darkness be camouflaged? The orbit was synchronous with Earth’s: which meant it stayed even with the same one point on Earth. The point from which Cap Com’s words READ YOU came in darkness and in Sun. But no other words had come down the grid of darkness that Imp Plus could recall, and against the order SLEEP Imp Plus had stayed awake on one side or the other or both.

The shadow on the capsule wall was not mainly dark. It was more.

And the more that was all around was getting closer and closer to Imp Plus.

The green thing did not have eyes. Imp Plus had thought of its eyes, but he had not really seen the green thing. Yet he had seen green. Was he in error?

He had spotted birds or shadows beyond him inside where he was. Was he in error?

Error was accepting the wrong perigee. Or giving the wrong velocity.

Yet adding TL to the frequency had been no error.

The orbit took the same time as Earth’s daily turn, and the near point nearly equalled the far, and the velocity of this stationary orbit 22,300 miles from Earth was 1.9 miles per second. It was a synchronous orbit. To be persuaded not, you would require a lie. Yet to lie about orbit or velocity was not to be in error. It was camouflage manipulated to persuade; for someone had said so, no less than someone, the camouflage was the decay of something. Maybe you could not stop this decay. It was too late. Yet you could not go out to meet it.

Camouflage .

Imp Plus knew the word. He didn’t know manipulate . He didn’t know from where he knew camouflage .

In place of where, was acrid , another word.

But acrid was not a word that had been said in the place where there had been acrid laughing. Camouflage had been said. The place was a room on Earth. Imp Plus had stood there. But when he had said to the acrid laughter, “Stick to the point,” the word camouflage had not been one of the words that had made him speak.

Camouflage had been said in that room on Earth. But before. Not then.

Someone was to be persuaded by the camouflage.

Imp Plus was putting unknowns over unknowns; that was what this felt like.

He did not know what felt was like.

Someone was to be persuaded by the camouflage; someone had said so. In that room on Earth near the end of things it was not the laugher who was acrid. Imp Plus had said to that laugher, “Stick to the point”—had said in the same hard voice but at another point, “Do you mind.”

And this other point had been when that person in the pale green room on Earth had said camouflage .

He had used the word acrid in that room on Earth. And he had felt separate. Which was why this laughter broke out later when someone said, “You don’t want to go on forever, do you?”

Someone was to be persuaded by the camouflage. But not yet. Persuaded by false perigee, false velocity. It was not the someone who had precipitated acrid laughter by asking Imp Plus if his desire was to go on forever. Who was it who was to be persuaded?

It must be someone on a frequency. Hence later in orbit the frequency check Imp Plus had thought needless.

But Imp Plus was putting unknowns over unknowns.

The someone could be an alien monitor.

The shapes like birds and shadows were not only longer or larger or more; they were now more an answer.

Say they were the alien monitor. But they were inside here, and the letters TL had been transmitted from inside here.

The alien monitor would be outside. If the letters TL had never till now been transmitted at the end of the frequency, the alien monitor would know only the frequency, not the TL . So the TL which Imp Plus came up with would show Ground it was not getting the answer from an alien monitor which might have been manipulating.

What was manipulating?

But Imp Plus was the IMP PLUS of the transmissions, and the dim echo inside his head had said the letters TL which Imp Plus knew stood for Travel Light; and since he had no head, the dim echo with these extra words that had made Ground say O.K. could be the alien monitor, except the dim echo had felt familiar, and if it was not inside Imp Plus’s head because Imp Plus himself was not inside his head because he did not have a head, the echoing voice was still inside; and was it then more familiar to Ground than Imp Plus was?

For Ground did not feel familiar now.

Yet in darkness and in light Imp Plus had, he felt, been able to respond.

Which was different from seeing eyes in the green thing that were not there.

But Imp Plus had called it chlorella . Now that was something. If he was putting unknowns over unknowns, maybe he’d get less.

Even if it was not chlorella. Or more than chlorella.

It was not animal. It was vegetable.

It gave off oxygen.

Unlike the blind news vendor who would not be a vegetable.

And unlike Imp Plus, who gave CO 2, Imp Plus did not know how he did that. Others knew about giving CO 2, so why didn’t he?

CO 2, said the dim echo. But this did not answer the question Imp Plus saw he had had the desire to ask: namely, how did he himself give CO 2?

The dim echo went on, but now from Ground came the words IMP PLUS SAY AGAIN. WHAT ABOUT CO 2?

Something up ahead caved, and he heard its absence of sound coil the way he had seen the green thing and had felt the green thing an idea and called it chlorella . And Imp Plus felt he could now answer Ground only in his own way, and the dim echo was not speaking to Earth now: and a thing caved out which was not metal though a ball glinting in a socket, yet caved in, a filament bulging in a space. And this was why the still dimmer echo that now was even more here with Imp Plus was no longer speaking to Earth, though he did not know why. And when Imp Plus thought about himself, he found he did not see how he gave CO 2—though he had known. And he found also he did not know why the echo was trying different numbers and saying arrow this arrow that, and all Imp Plus saw was that there was less space inside, and the capsule was more full, yet there was more of everything also, and the arraying of letters and numbers high and low breathed (for the dim echo said) a bond or bonds between the dim echo and him.

An orbit of bonds.

But then, CO 2IS BEAUTIFUL, Imp Plus said to Earth, and metabolism crackled back like a code or laughter, and Ground said, SUIT YOURSELF IMP PLUS, YOU ARE DEVELOPING A SENSE OF HUMOR. WHAT IS CORRELATION BETWEEN THIS AND GLUCOSE INCREASE?

But what was metabolism? What he recalled put a shadow over what he thought he saw. He did not recall metabolism. Did he see it?

But now the dim echo reviewed orbital period, apogee, perigee, velocity. And Imp Plus thought there was no more camouflage: velocity could not be increasing, for in synchronous orbit perigee was as nearly equal to apogee as ellipse permits.

More crackling came. Ground said, IMP PLUS HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

The crackling was acrid like camouflage. Arrows crackled from the dim echo. But arrows were only on a green space drawn partly white by an acrid hand. But crackling led by many lines which were now new holes to what now happened again: the caving in and out. This went faster to become silent, but the jets and the many sands of salt never fused no matter how fast, and Imp Plus did not himself have to tell anyone why, for the jets which were like strokes were not a pumping so much as an inclining so that he tilted in order to make a hill for the things to flow down or up. And, against the power outside, what was inside and was lately less was being pumped outside into what seemed more. And Imp Plus felt the caving in and out, and he thought because it burned it did not come through the protective window; then he felt the caving so much more that he felt other things. They moved within a wall not on the other side but in the wall. It was not one but many, while the things swarmed to get out or crackle it to pieces and were themselves pieces black and white. Or not black and white but other because of speeds at which pulses came from the fire-gold source of this light around or from the green chlorella itself or the green that was hard blue like the sea. For the voice that distant spring day on Earth just before it laughed its spiral up the spine that was not here now had cried, “Look at the colors of the sea.” For yes these pulses here now in orbit were color, yet depended on how Imp Plus inclined to see them. Pulses flying at you but never displaced. Yet pieces too. Or things beyond color. Too small to see but no less seen. He did not know you . Imp Plus desired the pieces but felt moved to name them first.