Wrinkle in Time

it.Yes. ‘Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine.’ She shouted the words at her father, turned away from IT. ‘Neon. Sodium. Magnesium. Aluminium. Silicon. Phosphorus.’

‘Too rhythmical,’ her father shouted. ‘What’s the square root of five?’

For a moment she was able to concentrate. Rack your brains yourself, Meg. Don’t let IT rack them. ‘The square root of five is 2·236,’ she cried triumphantly, ‘because 2·236 times 2·236 equals 5!’

‘What’s the square root of seven?’

‘The square root of seven is —’ She broke off. She wasn’t holding out. IT was getting at her, and she couldn’t concentrate, not even on math, and soon she, too, would be absorbed in IT, she would be an IT.

‘Tesser, sir!’ she heard Calvin’s voice through the red darkness. ‘Tesser!’

She felt her father grab her by the wrist, there was a terrible jerk that seemed to break every bone in her body, then the dark nothing of tessering.

If tessering with Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which had been a strange and fearful experience, it was nothing like tessering with her father. After all, Mrs Which was experienced at it, and Mr Murry — how did he know anything about it at all? Meg felt that she was being torn apart by a whirlwind. She was lost in an agony of pain that finally dissolved into the darkness of complete unconsciousness.

10

Absolute Zero

The first sign of returning consciousness was cold. Then sound. She was aware of voices that seemed to be travelling through her across an arctic waste. Slowly the icy sounds cleared and she realized that the voices belonged to her father and Calvin. She did not hear Charles Wallace. She tried to open her eyes but the lids would not move. She tried to sit up, but she could not stir. She struggled to turn over, to move her hands, her feet, but nothing happened. She knew that she had a body, but it was as lifeless as marble.

She heard Calvin’s frozen voice: ‘Her heart is beating so slowly —’

Her father’s voice: ‘But it’s beating. She’s alive.’

‘Barely.’

‘We couldn’t find a heartbeat at all at first. We thought she was dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then we could feel her heart, very faintly, the beats very far apart. And then it got stronger. So all we have to do is wait.’ Her father’s words sounded brittle in her ears, as though they were being chipped out of ice.

Calvin: ‘Yes.You’re right, sir.’

She wanted to call out to them. ‘I’m alive! I’m very much alive! Only I’ve been turned to stone.’

But she could not call out any more than she could move.

Calvin’s voice again: ‘Anyway you got her away from IT. You got us both away and we couldn’t have gone on holding out. IT is so much more powerful and strong than — How did we stay out, sir? How did we manage as long as we did?’

Her father: ‘Because IT is completely unused to being refused. That’s the only reason I could keep from being absorbed, too. No mind has tried to hold out against IT for so many thousands of centuries that certain centres have become soft and atrophied through lack of use. If you hadn’t come to me when you did I’m not sure how much longer I would have lasted. I was on the point of giving in.’

Calvin: ‘Oh, no, sir —’

Her father: ‘Yes. Nothing seemed important any more but rest, and of course IT offered me complete rest. I had almost come to the conclusion that I was wrong to fight, that IT was right after all, and everything I believed in most passionately was nothing but a madman’s dream. But then you and Meg came in to me, broke through my prison, and hope and faith returned.’

Calvin: ‘Sir, why were you on Camazotz at all? Was there a particular reason for going there?’

Her father, with a frigid laugh: ‘Going to Camazotz was a complete accident. I never intended even to leave our own solar system. I was heading for Mars.Tessering is even more complicated than we had expected.’

Calvin: ‘Sir, how was IT able to get Charles Wallace before it got Meg and me?’

Her father: ‘From what you’ve told me it’s because Charles Wallace thought he could deliberately go into IT and return. He trusted too much to his own strength — listen! — I think the heartbeat is getting stronger!’

His words no longer sounded to her quite as frozen. Was it his words that were ice, or her ears? Why did she hear only her father and Calvin? Why didn’t Charles Wallace speak?

Silence. A long silence. Then Calvin’s voice again: ‘Can’t we do anything? Can’t we look for help? Do we just have to go on waiting?’

Her father:’We can’t leave her. And we must stay together. We must not be afraid to take time.’

Calvin: ‘You mean we were? We rushed into things on Camazotz too fast, and Charles Wallace rushed in too fast, and that’s why he got caught?’

‘Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know enough yet. Time is different on Camazotz, anyhow. Our time, inadequate though it is, at least is straightforward. It may not be even fully one-dimensional, because it can’t move back and forth on its line, only ahead; but at least it’s consistent in its direction. Time on Camazotz seems to be inverted, turned in on itself. So I have no idea whether I was imprisoned in that column for centuries or only for minutes.’ Silence for a moment. Then her father’s voice again. ‘I think I feel a pulse in her wrist now.’

Meg could not feel his fingers against her wrist. She could not feel her wrist at all. Her body was still stone, but her mind was beginning to be capable of movement. She tried desperately to make some kind of a sound, a signal to them, but nothing happened.

Their voices started again. Calvin: ‘About your project, sir. Were you on it alone?’

Her father: ‘Oh, no. There were half a dozen of us working on it and I daresay a number of others we don’t know about. Certainly we weren’t the only nation to investigate along that line. It’s not really a new idea. But we did try very hard not to let it be known abroad that we were trying to make it practicable.’

‘Did you come to Camazotz alone? Or were there others with you?’

‘I came alone. You see, Calvin, there was no way to try it out ahead with rats or monkeys or dogs. And we had no idea whether it would really work or whether it would be complete bodily disintegration. Playing with time and space is a dangerous game.’

‘But why you, sir?’

‘I wasn’t the first. We drew straws, and I was second.’

‘What happened to the first man?’

‘We don’t — look! Did her eyelids move?’ Silence. Then: ‘No. It was only a shadow.’

But I did blink, Meg tried to tell them. I’m sure I did. And I can hear you! Do something!

But there was only another long silence, during which perhaps they were looking at her, watching for another shadow, another nicker. Then she heard her father’s voice again, quiet, a little warmer, more like his own voice. ‘We drew straws, and I was second. We know Hank went.We saw him go. We saw him vanish right in front of the rest of us. He was there and then he wasn’t.We were to wait for a year for his return or for some message. We waited. Nothing.’

Calvin, his voice cracking: ‘Jeepers, sir. You must have been in sort of a flap.’

Her father: ‘Yes. It’s a frightening as well as an exciting thing to discover that matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. We can know this, but it’s far more than we can understand with our puny little brains. I think you will be able to comprehend far more than I. And Charles Wallace even more than you.’

‘Yes, but what happened, please, sir, after the first man?’

Meg could hear her father sigh. ‘Then it was my turn. I went. And here I am. A wiser and humbler man. I’m sure I haven’t been gone two years. Now that you’ve come I have some hope that I may be able to return in time.