but steadily towards the city and the domed building where IT lay.
Now she approached the outlying buildings of the city. In each of them was a vertical line of light, but it was a dim, eerie light, not the warm light of stairways in cities at home. And there were no isolated brightly lit windows where someone was working late, or an office was being cleaned. Out of each building came one man, perhaps a watchman, and each man started walking the width of the building. They appeared not to see her. At any rate they paid no attention to her whatsoever, and she went on past them.
— What have I got that IT hasn’t got? she thought suddenly. — What have I possibly got?
Now she was walking by the tallest of the business buildings. More dim vertical lines of light. The walls glowed slightly to give a faint illumination to the streets. CENTRAL Central Intelligence was ahead of her. Was the man with red eyes still sitting there? Or was he allowed to go to bed? But this was not where she must go, though the man with red eyes seemed the kind old gentleman he claimed to be when compared with IT. But he was no longer of any consequence in the search for Charles Wallace. She must go directly to IT.
IT isn’t used to being resisted. Father said that’s how he managed, and how Calvin and I managed as long as we did. Father saved me then. There’s nobody here to save me now. I have to do it myself. I have to resist IT by myself. Is that what I have that IT hasn’t got? No, I’m sure IT can resist, IT just isn’t used to having
CENTRAL Central Intelligence with its huge rectangle blocked the end of the square. She turned to walk round it, and almost imperceptibly her steps slowed.
It was not far to the great dome which housed IT.
I’m going to Charles Wallace. That’s what’s important. That’s what I have to think of. I wish I could feel numb again the way I did at first. Suppose IT has him somewhere else? Suppose he isn’t there?
I have to go there first, anyhow. That’s the only way I can find out.
Her steps got slower and slower as she passed the great bronzed doors, the huge slabs of the CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building, as she finally saw ahead of her the strange, light, pulsing dome of IT.
Father said it was all right for me to be afraid. He said to go ahead and be afraid. And Mrs Who said — I don’t understand what she said but I think it was meant to make me not hate being only me, and me being the way I am. And Mrs Whatsit said to remember that she loves me. That’s what I have to think about. Not about being afraid. Or not as smart as IT. Mrs Whatsit loves me. That’s quite something, to be loved by someone like Mrs Whatsit.
She was there.
No matter how slowly her feet had taken her at the end, they had taken her there.
Directly ahead of her was the circular building, its walls glowing with violet flame, its silvery roof pulsing with a light that seemed to Meg to be insane. Again she could feel the light, neither warm nor cold, but reaching out to touch her, pulling her towards IT.
There was a sudden sucking, and she was within.
It was as though the wind had been knocked out of her. She gasped for breath, for breath in her own rhythm, not the permeating pulsing of IT. She could feel the inexorable beat within her body, controlling her heart, her lungs.
But not herself. Not Meg. It did not quite have her.
She blinked her eyes rapidly and against the rhythm until the redness before them cleared and she could see. There was the brain, there was IT, lying pulsing and quivering on the dais, soft and exposed and nauseating. Charles Wallace was crouched beside IT, his eyes still slowly twirling, his jaw still slack, as she had seen him before, with a tic in his forehead reiterating the revolting rhythm of IT.
As she saw him it was again as though she had been punched in the stomach, for she had to realize afresh that she was seeing Charles, and yet it was not Charles at all. Where was Charles Wallace, her own beloved Charles Wallace?
What is it I have got that IT hasn’t got?
‘You have nothing that IT hasn’t got,’ Charles Wallace said coldly. ‘How nice to have you back, dear sister. We have been waiting for you. We knew that Mrs Whatsit would send you. She is our friend, you know.’
For an appalling moment Meg believed, and in that moment she felt her brain being gathered up into IT.
‘No!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘No! You lie!’
For a moment she was sfree from IT’s clutches again.
As long as I can stay angry enough IT can’t get me.
Is that what I have that IT doesn’t have?
‘Nonsense,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘You have nothing that IT doesn’t have.’
‘You’re lying,’ she replied, and she felt only anger towards this boy who was not Charles Wallace at all. No, it was not anger, it was loathing; it was hatred, sheer and unadulterated, and as she became lost in hatred she also began to be lost in IT. The red miasma swam before her eyes; her stomach churned in IT’s rhythm. Her body trembled with the strength of her hatred and the strength of IT.
With the last vestige of consciousness she jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing that IT didn’t have, it knew all about hate.
‘You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs Whatsit!’ she screamed.
‘Mrs Whatsit hates you,’ Charles Wallace said.
And that was where IT made IT’s fatal mistake, for as Meg said, automatically, ‘Mrs Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,’ suddenly she knew.
She knew!
Love.
That was what she had that IT did not have.
She had Mrs Whatsit’s love, and her father’s, and her mother’s, and the real Charles Wallace’s love, and the twins’, and Aunt Beast’s.
And she had her love for them.
But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?
If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was not too much to ask of her, but she could not do it.
But she could love Charles Wallace.
She could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace.
Her own Charles Wallace, the real Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to Camazotz, to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable.
She could love Charles Wallace.
Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.
Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love.
I love you. Charles Wallace, I love you. I love you. I love you.
Slowly his mouth closed. Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in the forehead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced towards her.
‘I love you!’ she cried. ‘I love you, Charles! I love you!’
Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs. ‘Meg! Meg! Meg!’
‘I love you, Charles!’ she cried again, her sobs almost as loud as his, her tears mingling with his. ‘I love you! I love you! I love you!’
A whirl of darkness. An icy cold blast. An angry, resentful howl that seemed to tear through her. Darkness again. Through the darkness to save her came a sense of Mrs Whatsit’s presence, so that she knew she could not be in IT’s clutches.
And then the feel of the earth beneath her, of something in her arms, and she was rolling over on the sweet smelling autumnal earth, and Charles Wallace was crying out, ‘Meg! Oh, Meg!’
Now she was hugging him close to her, and his little arms were clasped tightly about her neck. ‘Meg, you saved me! You saved me!’ he said over and over.
