Joseph McElroy - Plus

Yet spindles. Axis upon axis. Not wingless fuselages, and so much more than logs in a river, and not the first time or pale green room. But cascades shuttling from plasms to light too fast for ionizing words like chromosomes to yield fear for the things they named any more than for the one part of him that would be left when the words of the operation had subtracted him. Axis upon axis. Electromagnetic cascade. Parts broken down into fresh motion, not decayed dioxide — that was the idea. Or it itself. Or his desire or desired memory. Also fear. Of being a vegetable hawked as an Extra by the vendor who had taken hold. For Imp Plus would be news.

But he had been stranded between knowing. He had thought electromagnetic cascade. It was not wrong. And was so much more than logs in a river, but he had seen those logs in his thought like solids. But now that Earthly sight was dark years off and best so.

That sight as far off now as a spring day when he’d been touched — he couldn’t cast away the touch — by another laughter which moved up the grid of his back, and he had turned from the unhooded carburetor of a car that would not go and had seen first acres of sea crest skimmed by three broad-winged shearwaters.

And nearer had seen the light laughter and the mouth. And in order to save face started to say that the cause of the trouble was between the points and the carburetor. But the mouth was saying, “Forget the car,” and saying words that folded the soft laughter inward into words that said, “Glad I didn’t pack a bag.”

Something lay between those words and the next words. Was it CO 2or was it Oxygen?

Whatever it was, it came not from the acrid mouth that blew the flattening ellipse, but another mouth — in words this other mouth did not know all the meaning of. And these next words were “Travel light.”

Between which the dim echo now must come transmitting correct velocities. But were they correct? And Imp Plus did not know if the transmission was to Ground or him. He seemed to be transmitting within himself. DIM ECHO. ACRID VOICE. GOOD VOICE.

He must heed the cavings-in, he must heed the cavings-out, and the shapes around whether they heeded him or not.

There was more all around, and the more all around was joining itself to Imp Plus.

But then Imp Plus had not prepared to remember he’d lost all those parts of the body. He had not had to prepare.

Then Operation TL had been upon him about to start. And instead of desired memory to help him into what might lie ahead, he’d been cast back into remembered desire.

The smell of those eyes at the seashore came only now when Earth was far away. The eyes above the parted mouth.

What brought them? The same mouth that had laughed a spiral up the grid of his spine, and turned him around.

The mouth had said the words. This mouth that Imp Plus had not prepared to remember had come between its own words dividing them. It came. And then it went into Imp Plus when he closed the eyes.

Which eyes?

Eyes he’d had.

For it had been with his own eyes that he had held the eyes that were not his and the mouth also, until those eyes blurred and weren’t there, and Imp Plus’s eyes shut and the other mouth was not really lost but found upon his. For he had had one too.

But whose was the mouth found upon his?

Her mouth. He’d not prepared to remember the mouth, or the word her . He leaned into all his own words. They were a lattice so deep they would not sound. For he had changed. He sank through their chances toward an unknown.

Imp Plus had prepared to remember that eyes arise out of a need for nourishment. Yet now instead he found that the eyes would nourish him. Found it in the odor of those eyes above her mouth. Sweet, for there had been sugar in the chambers of the eyes. Not loaded to shoot out at Imp Plus. Instead a slow movement inside. A slow flow over the guy-line fibers gripping the lens. That was it.

But it had been not now in orbit but then on Earth, with a body breaking into smaller pieces that got so small he thought about them being themselves not him. The thing was, he had thought this then on Earth but knew only now that he had. As if his unknown thought then on Earth had been the pieces themselves. Whose point was that they were to be later known. Pieces turning inside out. But it was now in orbit that Imp Plus saw what he saw. He saw into eyes that were not here and saw the sugar of their flow.

And sugar not so sweet as the flow itself seen along the northern rainbow slightly parted in front of the lens. He knew rainbow, but what he had prepared to recall was iris . A rainbow northern because blue. More blue but more distant than green. More green than the long wavelengths of blood Imp Plus saw were red.

And the waves of color were the pulsing of the rainbow. Closing it and opening it. And rings of muscle that were celled could change size. But here — or there — in eyes on Earth the rings had contracted to squeeze the parts of the rainbow toward each other across the pupil’s gap which grew small and the Earthly mouth said to Imp Plus, “Glad I didn’t pack a bag.”

He grew happy.

Imp Plus had not known mouth or her .

But that odor of sweetness from the eyes whose dots now opened again, as the rings relaxed and the rainbow parted and sweetness ran from chamber to vein sweeter than Ground’s or the Dim Echo’s glucose levels, was a mealy infant smell like the breath of the bird that had tipped out of a nest and been fed with an eyedropper.

“You can go just so far with glucose levels,” Imp Plus thought, and Ground came back, NEGATIVE IMP PLUS NEGATIVE. GLUCOSE LEVELS HIGH AND YOU’LL GO FAR. HOW DO THEY READ UP THERE, IMP PLUS?

The Dim Echo read glucose back to Ground: Imp Plus let it happen. Glucose was not just high. It was so high that Ground asked for another reading. Glucose seemed so much the reverse of low that maybe the gauge print-out was in error.

Imp Plus let the Dim Echo go and when it was gone felt like a touch what this Dim Echo was to him.

Imp Plus was seeing more of the green thing. Seeing more than that it had eyes. And he had been seeing these turns of shape in the green thing without having to name them as you name the ocean that contains a spacecraft’s recovery area. Imp Plus remembered having prepared to remember that eyes came from a need for nourishment. But he had not prepared to remember the cell’s power plants, so called by the Acrid Voice which added, “Mitochondria to you,” as mitochondria would be more clear to Imp Plus than power plants . And Imp Plus had not prepared to remember, yet now couldn’t help remembering, the Go-Between of the High-Energy Bond-World, words of the Acrid Voice, which added, “ATP to you,” as if Imp Plus would know.

In these reversals the Acrid Voice’s ill will had grown like an elastic breath of protective coating Imp Plus couldn’t get through. The ill will persisted like the shape of his blood after being let into a clear sac. Imp Plus found many words he knew.

“Better bone up,” the Acrid Voice had said.

But Imp Plus had had to know a lot for Operation TL, and he had prepared so much else that those reversals could no more command him than what the Acrid Voice had said to the Good Voice in the larger green room at the end of things. The Good Voice had told of the semiautomatic nature of Contingency Camouflage, how it defended against an alien monitor. The Good Voice had added, with that signal concern kept for Imp Plus, that Imp Plus of course would have more than enough to monitor without being responsible for Contingency Camouflage as well.

The Acrid Voice said, “After those mechanics get through with him, what will he have left to monitor?”