Wrinkle in Time

this beautiful, enlightened planet of Camazotz.’ His voice took on the dry, pedantic tones of Mr Jenkins. ‘Perhaps you do not realize that on Camazotz we have conquered all illness, all deformity —’

‘We?’ Calvin interrupted.

Charles continued as though he had not heard. And of course he hadn’t, Meg thought. ‘We let no one suffer. It is so much kinder simply to annihilate anyone who is ill. Nobody has weeks and weeks of runny noses and sore throats. Rather than endure such discomfort they are simply put to sleep.’

‘You mean they’re put to sleep while they have a cold, or that they’re murdered?’ Calvin demanded.

‘Murder is a most primitive word,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘There is no such thing as murder on Camazotz. IT takes care of all such things.’ He moved jerkily to the wall of the corridor, stood still for a moment, then raised his hand.The wall flickered, quivered, grew transparent. Charles Wallace walked through it, beckoned to Meg and Calvin, and they followed. They were in a small, square room from which radiated a dull, sulphurous light. There was something ominous to Meg in the very compactness of the room, as though the walls, the ceiling, the floor might move together and crush anybody rash enough to enter.

‘How did you do that?’ Calvin asked Charles.

‘Do what?’

‘Make the wall — open — like that.’

‘I merely rearranged the atoms,’ Charles Wallace said loftily. ‘You’ve studied atoms in school, haven’t you?’

‘Sure, but —’

‘Then you know enough to know that matter isn’t solid, don’t you? That you, Calvin, consist mostly of empty space? That if all the matter in you came together you’d be the size of the head of a pin? That’s plain scientific fact, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but —’

‘So I simply pushed the atoms aside and we walked through the space between them.’

Meg’s stomach seemed to drop, and she realized that the square box in which they stood must be an elevator and that they had started to move upwards with great speed. The yellow light lit up their faces, and the pale blue of Charles’s eyes absorbed the yellow and turned green.

Calvin licked his lips. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Up.’ Charles continued his lecture. ‘On Camazotz we are all happy because we are all alike. Differences create problems.You know that, don’t you, dear sister?’

‘No,’ Meg said.

‘Oh, yes, you do.You’ve seen at home how true it is.You know that’s the reason you’re not happy at school. Because you’re different.’

‘I’m different, and I’m happy,’ Calvin said.

‘But you pretend that you aren’t different.’

‘I’m different, and I like being different,’ Calvin’s voice was unnaturally loud.

‘Maybe I don’t like being different,’ Meg said, ‘but I don’t want to be like everybody else, either.’

Charles Wallace raised his hand and the motion of the square box ceased and one of the walls seemed to disappear. Charles stepped out, Meg and Calvin following him, Calvin just barely making it before the wall came into being again, and they could no longer see where the opening had been.

‘You wanted Calvin to get left behind, didn’t you?’ Meg said.

‘I am merely trying to teach you to stay on your toes. I warn you, if I have any more trouble from either of you, I shall have to take you to IT.’

As the word IT fell from Charles’s lips, again Meg felt as though she had been touched by something slimy and horrible. ‘So what is this IT?’ she asked.

‘You might call IT the Boss.’Then Charles Wallace giggled, a giggle that was the most sinister sound Meg had ever heard. ‘IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist.’

Meg spoke coldly, to cover her fear. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘That’s s-a-d-i-s-t, not s-a-d-d-e-s-t, you know,’ Charles Wallace said, and giggled again. ‘Lots of people don’t pronounce it correctly.’

‘Well, I don’t care,’ Meg said defiantly. ‘I don’t ever want to see IT, and that’s that.’

Charles Wallace’s strange, monotonous voice ground against her ears. ‘Meg, you’re supposed to have some mind. Why do you think we have wars at home? Why do you think people get confused and unhappy? Because they all live their own, separate, individual lives. I’ve been trying to explain to you in the simplest possible way that on Camazotz individuals have been done away with. Camazotz is ONE mind. It’s IT. And that’s why everybody’s so happy and efficient. That’s what old witches like Mrs Whatsit don’t want to have happen at home.’

‘She’s not a witch,’ Meg interrupted.

‘No?’

‘No,’ Calvin said. ‘You know she’s not. You know that’s just their game. Their way, maybe, of laughing in the dark.’

‘In the dark is correct,’ Charles continued. ‘They want us to go on being confused instead of properly organized.’

Meg shook her head violently, ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I know our world isn’t perfect, Charles, but it’s better than this. This isn’t the only alternative! It can’t be!’

‘Nobody suffers here,’ Charles intoned. ‘Nobody is ever unhappy.’

‘But nobody’s ever happy, either,’ Meg said earnestly. ‘Maybe if you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy. Calvin, I want to go home.’

‘We can’t leave Charles,’ Calvin told her, ‘and we can’t go before we’ve found your father.You know that. But you’re right, Meg, and Mrs Which is right. This is Evil.’

Charles Wallace shook his head, and scorn and disapproval seemed to emanate from him. ‘Come. We’re wasting time.’ He moved rapidly down the corridor, but continued to speak. ‘How dreadful it is to be low, individual organisms. Tch-tch-tch.’ His pace quickened from step to step, his short legs flashing, so that Meg and Calvin almost had to run to keep up with him. ‘Now see this,’ he said. He raised his hand and suddenly they could see through one of the walls into a small room. In the room a little boy was bouncing a ball. He was bouncing it in rhythm, and the walls of his little cell seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the ball. And each time the ball bounced he screamed as though he were in pain.

‘That’s the little boy we saw this afternoon,’ Calvin said sharply, ‘the little boy who wasn’t bouncing the ball like the others.’

Charles Wallace giggled again. ‘Yes. Every once in a while there’s a little trouble with cooperation, but it’s easily taken care of. After today he’ll never desire to deviate again. Ah, here we are.’

He moved rapidly down the corridor and again held up his hand to make the wall transparent. They looked into another small room or cell. In the centre of it was a large, round, transparent column, and inside this column was a man.

‘FATHER!’ Meg screamed.

9

IT

Meg rushed at the man imprisoned in the column, but as she reached what seemed to be the open door she was hurled back as though she had crashed into a brick wall.

Calvin caught her. ‘It’s just transparent like glass this time,’ he told her. ‘We can’t go through it.’

Meg was so sick and dizzy from the impact that she could not answer. For a moment she was afraid that she would be sick or faint. Charles Wallace laughed again, the laugh that was not his own, and it was this that saved her, for once more anger overcame her pain and fear. Charles Wallace, her own real, dear Charles Wallace, never laughed at her when she hurt herself. Instead, his arms would go quickly around her neck and he would press his