A part he must come to know.
He wondered what that would be.
The Dim Echo, which was not so dim, had said, “Cold will come.”
But what was will? Maybe he had known.
Imp Plus would like to ask the Dim Echo.
How long had it been asleep? It had been asleep when it said, “Cold will come.”
Will come was come, but not now. Come then.
Now was any point of the gold-pink sugar slides. Now was the gray glint of the sliver head here in the cleft which was one of many Imp Plus centered on.
He concentrated on the sliver head and then he saw that Earth’s last message had sunk into the night and he had been feeling the old sweet ripping burn of the pain and now was not.
That was then. Like the cave-crash of burn that had stopped for the time being or been turned now into the night work of the stored Sunlight. But not like the sugars that had slid past him down one of the dark cycles; for though that was then, too, the sugars slid now as well, they were not different, though what he did — if anything now — was different: what he’d done then when the sugars slid down a dark cycle, was stick up arms he did not have and press against the clear-curved skull he did not have, until it lifted off.
Ground was after him again but he had to be here now and he looked again at this premotor cleft. The bulge at its brink was now bigger. The cleft had dilated more. So the here and now were not now the same.
He had nothing to stand on; the bulge he was on was him. The bulge was on the brink of the cleft, the cleft was in a fold, the fold was more open, and when it was all open it would not be a fold. He could not help wanting this, but with each unfolding a fold was gone. Ground knew that the capsule was not as cold as expected and that there had been no drop in power stored in the accumulator, but Ground did not know other things. Imp Plus could keep answers from going to Ground but he could not keep the woman at the seashore. But this was not it: he meant instead that he could not keep the woman at the seashore from coming on the axis of distance; could not help her from unfolding him, yet he had wanted it.
And had always known the axis of distance was coming.
Always was then. Yet now, too.
Though not just here, though he was here. The night felt like many nights — nights of nights. The night divided and went on.
He could not bear something. Another pain. This pain was not the cave or split of growing, nor the axis of distance. But the axis of distance was one turning spoke of it. The new pain was as small as silence, but now, he saw, as large — a silent stretch, the absence of crash. But more stilclass="underline" an absence in general, but gold and many-colored.
An absence which he found then that he filled: by looking from all the night arcs of blood sugar whose idea he smelled; and by looking and straining from them beyond the one huge arc-part with its wheeling falls; staring unequally to where all these wheeled from. He felt what he saw — was that it? He found himself both seeing from all his membranes’ unequal distances and simultaneously waiting to receive his sight. It — was this it? — was waiting for itself before it got there: he was what he was seeing: so was this why he could take the sights beamed from the membrane-limbs’ unequal distances and receive this sight’s gathering onset and (wait) by being what he saw, both pin his sight into a point as small as (wait) a nerve head, as small as a pump pried by sight itself off the act of its own suck into infinitesimal function: and through it, in turn, see big too, because it held invisible inside its sight an idea of enlargement. See greater than big — far greater than the spreading large-scale sight he felt even at instants when he saw micro-small.
Maybe he was getting warmer, but his look or wish was turned before it got far enough.
For Ground asked if Imp Plus was asleep, and asked again, like a child aiming to wake a grownup. Asked if Imp Plus’s gauge showed a drop in temperature, asked for temperature but asked so that Imp Plus thought in a way he now recalled. Or smelled: for it was the ill will dividing him up: for Ground said Imp Plus could take those readings in his sleep, and the crackling Imp Plus thought he knew in the transmitted words was acrid laughing all over again: not the humor that once flowed from the bare woman’s eyes in California — no, the crackling humor now from Ground was what Imp Plus had smelt in the large green room when the Good Voice answered the Acrid Voice and gave Imp Plus time off the last weekend, “away from this goldfish bowl,” the Good Voice had said; “remember all that overtime ahead, day in day out, catching the Sun. A little private recreation is called for.” For the Acrid Voice had first said what if Imp Plus changed his mind, and now in answer to the Good Voice the Acrid Voice had said like a dim reflection, “Recreation,” and smoke came out of mouth and nose. So now Imp Plus felt the Acrid crackling when Ground said Imp Plus could take the temperature readings in his sleep.
Warm or cold was what the readings were. But was no temperature drop like no power drop in the accumulator?
Cap Com said the capsule couldn’t be so warm as the Ground gauge read. Warm was what Imp Plus thought the Sun was. The woman at the California seashore had said so when she rose out of the water. But the Sun was not here now. Ground was also not here.
The Sun came and went.
But Ground was always there.
The Sun could be where Ground was, but not always. There was more to it, and Imp Plus thought the Dim Echo knew. But the Dim Echo slept.
Not Ground. Its messages kept coming on the frequency. The frequency could not be the waves coming into the slivers that were adrift, for these slivers were not now implanted in Imp Plus.
IMP PLUS IMP PLUS DO YOU READ DO YOU READ?
He could not stop receiving but he did not have to answer.
CAP COM TO IMP PLUS CAP COM TO IMP PLUS WE READ MAXIMUM POWER IN ACCUMULATOR. WHAT’S UP? ARE YOU CONSERVING POWER?
He thought he would answer Ground. But he could only seek this other pain that offered. So he went on leaning to get where all the arcs of flow rolled from. To do this he must stretch across something inside him. A distance. Yet he did not see the distance till he had stretched. The brain with its scattered centers seemed to find the power to disperse still more. The distance inside did not make him feel good. The distance he straddled kept unfolding in what he had been feeling was the brain. He defended against the distance; but the distance was not more — not there — unless he stretched for the pain.
So that splitting he thought himself in two, thought of how Ground’s word SLEEP was like a line along a middle, and tried to see if the Dim Echo was on one side. The more he stretched the more he straddled, but straddling he was not on two sides of the lean over which he persisted in being, he was on many. When he was stretched too far, he recalled legs. And when he did, he dropped and was burned at a distance by that deep gland that once had furled and unfurled its fire. The gland was below the bodies or islands. But seemed to enrich and power them by filling the spaces up between them. Yet he was not seeing the power of the now flameless gland, for reaching at him into his straddling fall it caught him in an underfork of himself exposed. Then his stretch collapsed back into itself and with it distance it had leaned to cross. But as it did so, and also thought to do the opposite and open and stretch again, he knew that he had brought the gland to him.