2

More where?

In the light. In the units of it which found their place in Imp Plus.

Imp Plus had had no sockets to hold the light. Or the darkness. He was patient. Darkness had gone on, and it had been steady and as familiar as Ground’s order SLEEP. But now Imp Plus was for the time being unable to think anything of that darkness.

Now there was more all around. Not darkness. Not just light. But more. So there might be sockets. Light that folded into Imp Plus was not the two bandages of the news vendor who could have been a vegetable but was not. The vendor was in Imp Plus’s head. And the vendor had sockets.

Imp Plus was full of new holes made by particles just departed. But the holes raced after them until the particles hit other particles and vanished to become the holes they had made, but to become more, which was a radiance.

Imp Plus thought, I am IMP PLUS.

But the words Imp Plus came also from Ground, as if distance like all the routine transmissions till now echoed Imp Plus without the I am.

Lately there was more all around. Holes in motion, holes of light in a lattice he knew on sight but had not seen before. He did not know lattice, did not know how he knew on sight these grids of moving light-holes, more and more of them. Nor how he knew orbit meant eye socket too.

Imp Plus wished to use the word and found other words to send with it: REQUEST PRESENT IMP PLUS ORBIT.

Numbers came back and he felt them in his head, a head for figures. But he had no head, though it was filled with light. Holes and lines of light. Lines spun. Spun round but also elsewhere like circles proving themselves a field. Lines whose spin he could slow by concentrating lines he then saw were each a radius detached.

He was amid the numbers for apogee, far point, and perigee, nearest point, getting them without incident; they were nearly the same. But then now the numbers were not in his head, he was outside, seeing only the shapes of the numbers.

As if he were those shadows on the bulkhead that was his skull.

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.

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—foresaw 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.”

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.