But the dark cycle was ending. The Sun warmed the strands. They breathed more easily with the braids. And while the lumen quanta streamed over the lattice, the Sun seemed now not so much fingers as palm. A palm or fist Imp Plus could collide with and carom off. A palm infinitely inclined and blindingly and vastly creased, and, whether by Imp Plus’s memory or foresight, a palm faintly cupped.
Not knowing the creases except that they were motion, Imp Plus nonetheless through them felt a shape of shapes among the lattice cells yielding the answer he needed, which old and new pain dissolved into itself to make an unknown between the Sunbraids and a fusion they almost embraced. But in the Acrid Voice’s continuing thought this answer’s question had been overlain and lost. The shape of shapes was that swirling chance he had inhaled in pale green rooms on Earth. Inhaled having seen through the particles of smoke. Particles which had come he now saw as much out of the strange voice with its fossil foci in an oval in an oblong green chalkboard as the smoke had come at his own ill body. He had seen through the particles to forms which were not beyond the particles — forms of acrid loss which if it could be made good could yield clear process but must be areas left truly empty by the loss which the stark voice had hardly sensed it meant in the ill will of Think what you’re going to lose. Words privately conveyed to Imp Plus, who coughed in time to a towering headache. And in that moment that was more like an area rising through his reddening throat to be in reality more a locus Imp Plus concentrated in his racing brain than ill will and a mad anguish over a future dead or vacant, so the one chased the other: he saw it now through the bone-hard energy of the lattice that was himself: saw the warm concentration of the moment in the pale green rooms fail or fall into this chase: so that the gap that moved between the chasing two became their multiplying.
But in whatever part of his cells Imp Plus was seeing this — it had foreshadowed itself in pale green rooms at the moment of entwined division, ill will, anguish, anger, and cascading inclination. The chase was in him, and the migration of the gaps drew — had drawn — into forms of process cleared of everything impure except ahead-thrown possibility whose locus was the paler and paler coral lattice in whose simultaneous community he passed — had passed — through what he was: damp muscles of light; rains of nourishing; caves of growth and of the emptiness brought into being by the very escape stretching over it; the look of thought standing dispersed; glucose made or thought along a pulse of rainbow color contracted across a pupil gap; forms of equilibrium he was more than saw amid the tumbling IMP attitudes of Ground’s unknowing plan; forms of stranded breathing within breathing in and in, and elsewhere paths of particles breathed through locks of light by oval power plants so nearly crossing the lives of brain and algae that in the shadow of the idea of green Imp Plus could seem to the Acrid Voice to be photosynthesic — and if heterotrophic at will, autotrophic in root form — seem, that is, to this stark presence that was yet another form, this Acrid presence transolved by Imp Plus somehow to particle patterns so like his own cascades of spindling axis-parts broken down into fresh motion that the Acrid Voice could look to Imp Plus like his own substance. But caves, color, form, power — now what he must have was the way to keep the more he had become — whereas the Acrid Voice seemed persistently to want that more.
Say that again.
The lattice absorbed the words.
The words went together into an unsaid emptiness where, having been said more than once before, they were left unsaid. Oh what did that mean? Anguish, anger, ill will, vacancy, pain old and new dissolved to make something between the Sunbraids and a fusion they almost embraced.
He was being thanked. For what?
Yes, a braid structure, the Acrid Voice agreed; and if visible, where? and did it in some way go with the previously mentioned red that increased with heat?
Imp Plus was being thanked for responding to say that again by saying — but it had been the lattice gathering — the pain old, the pain new — the Sunbraids and fusion and the something between.
He wanted to say cascades. He did not know himself even after the Cap Com voice stranded with the first stark friendly voice demanded to know what had ever been said about braids, and was Imp Plus telling them Sunbraids and the red had actually been seen?
He could not explain the sight membranes.
But they had been him. No, they were him now.
Cap Com was demanding again.
Now where was the other voice?
In the silence the lattice layers were busy. Somewhere hard to recover in the lattices the other voice out loud had asked what cascades. For cascades had been conveyed direct to the particles of Acrid Voice ovalling on Earth yet also here in the lattice as if parts severed there to be chalked up to experience had been in body still here too among the layers of charged, hard, blanched comb-work. And this time the particles of Acrid Voice had not said Say that again. For, having been said more than once before, say that again was left unsaid. There was static infecting the friendly particles; it was in a lattice layer and it was also on the Earthly island where the Acrid Voice was also a companion body working with Cap Com; the reason for the water remained unknown while each fresh ellipse slung the IMP harder at Earth; more static invaded the friendly particles; a voice was claiming that nothing had been said about braids or cascades; the lattice drew more Sun into what it and the Sun each seemed to want — an inward spiral like a compound eye hunting (though here was no more insect than vegetable); but elsewhere in the particles of Acrid Voice cascades swirled but did not stop the static: cascades and salmonella swirled but swirled inward among the particles’ own ovalling swirls yet the static came between and the static was from outside but not the pale lattice but there on the Earthly island; the photons spiralled inward compounded with lattice cells which could seem to move by holding motion — compounded into an eye whose corner by turning and turning hunted the place in the layers where one caving might lead past the pains of all that would be lost and on to all sweet humor in a sheer sea of Sun; but something came between and it was not the static but the thought that the static was Cap Com and that the friendly particles were in danger; and in a sudden spinelike move that the fixed lattice made by drawing Sun into a conduit to grip and jolt the Earthbound attitude circuit, the IMP was stabilized, its tumble toward Earth’s threat stopped, and lattice intervened between the friendly particles of Acrid Voice and the static which had to be Cap Com and thereupon from Earth could just be heard old words: Think what we’re going to lose.