Chapter 10

10      Absolute Zero.

The first sign of returning consciousness was cold. Then
sound. She was aware of voices that seemed to be traveling
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 am 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. "Anyhow you got her away from IT.
You got us both away and we couldn't have gone on holding
out. IT's 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's 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 centers have
become soft and atrophied through lack of use. ff you
hadn't come to me when you did Im 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
ut 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 lust have
to go on waiting?"
  Her father: "We can't leave her. And we must stay to-
gether. 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 il 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 di-
rection. 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 work-
ing 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 flicker. 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 L 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 a humbler man. Fm 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. One
thing I have to tell the others is that we know nothing."
  Calvin: "What do you mean, sir?"
  Her father: "Just what I say. We're children playing with
dynamite. In our mad rush we've plunged into this be-
fore."
  With a desperate effort Meg made a sound. It wasn't a
very loud sound, but it was a sound. Mr. Murry stopped.
"Hush. Listen."
  Meg made a strange, croaking noise. She found that she
could pull open her eyelids. They felt heavier than marble
but she managed to raise them. Her father and Calvin were
hovering over her. She did not see Charles Wallace. Where
was he?
  She was lying in an open field of what looked like rusty,
stubby grass. She blinked, slowly, and with difficulty.
  "Meg," her father said. "Meg. Are you all right?"
  Her tongue felt like a stone tongue in her mouth, but she
managed to croak, "I can't move."
  "Try," Calvin urged. He sounded now as though he were
very angry with her. "Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your
fingers."
  "I can't. Where's Charles Wallace?" Her words were
blunted by the stone tongue. Perhaps they could not un-
derstand her, for there was no answer.
  "We were knocked out for a minute, too," Calvin was
saying. "You'll be all right, Meg. Don't get panicky." He
was crouched over her, and though his voice continued to
sound cross he was peering at her with anxious eyes. She
knew that she must still have her glasses on because she
could see him clearly, his freckles, his stubby black lashes,
the bright blue of his eyes.
  Her father was kneeling on her other side. The round
lenses of Mrs. Who's glasses still blurred his eyes. He took
one of her hands and rubbed it between his. "Can you feel
my fingers?" He sounded quite calm, as though there were
nothing extraordinary in having her completely paralyzed.
At the quiet of his voice she felt calmer. Then she saw that
there were great drops of sweat-standing out on his fore-
head, and she noticed vaguely that the gentle breeze that
touched her cheeks was cool. At first his words had been
frozen and now the wind was mild: was it icy cold here or
warm? "Can you feel my fingers?" he asked again.
  Yes, now she could feel a pressure against her wrist, but
she could not nod. "Where's Charles Wallace?" Her words
were a little less blurred. Her tongue, her lips were begin-
ning to feel cold and numb, as though she had been given a
massive dose of novocaine at the dentist's. She realized with
a start that her body and- limbs were cold, that not only
was she not warm, she was frozen from head to toe, and it
was this that had made her father's words seem like ice,
that had paralyzed her.
  "I'm frozen-" she said faintly. Camazotz hadn't been
this cold, a cold that cut deeper than the wind on the bitter-
est of winter days at home. She was away from rr, but this
unexplained iciness was almost as bad. Her father had not
saved her.
  Now she was able to look around a little, and everything
she could see was rusty and gray. There were trees edging
the field in which she lay, and their leaves were the same
brown as the grass. There were plants that might have
been flowers, except that they were dull and gray. In con-
trast to the drabness of color, to the cold that numbed her,
the air was filled with a delicate, springlike fragrance, al-
most imperceptible as it blew softly against her face. She
looked at her father and Calvin. They were both in their
shirt sleeves and they looked perfectly comfortable. It was
she, wrapped in their clothes, who was frozen too solid
even to shiver.
  "Why am I so cold?" she asked. "Where's Charles Wal-
lace?" They did not answer. "Father, where are we?"
  Mr. Murry looked at her soberly. "I don't know, Meg. I
don't tesser very well. I must have overshot, somehow.
We're not on Camazotz. I don't know where we are. I think
you're so cold because we went through the Black Thing,
and I thought for a moment it was going to tear you away
from me.
  "Is this a dark planet?" Slowly her tongue was beginning
to thaw; her words were less blurred.
  "I don't think so,  Mr. Murry said, "but I know so little
about anything that I can't be sure."
  "You shouldn't have tried to tesser, then." She had never
spoken to her father in this way before. The words seemed
hardly to be hers.
  Calvin looked at her, shaking his head. "It was the only
thing to do.  At least it got us off Camazotz."
  "Why did we go without Charles Wallace? Did we just
leave him there?" The words that were not really hers came
out cold and accusing.
  "We didn't "just leave him " her father said. "Remember
that the human brain is a very delicate organism, and it can
be easily damaged."
  "See, Meg," Calvin crouched over her, tense and worried,
"if your father had tried to yank Charles away when he
tessered us, and if IT had kept grabbing hold of Charles, it
might have been too much for him, and we'd have lost him
forever. And we had to do something right then."
  "Why?"
  "IT was taking us. You and I were slipping, and if your
father had gone on trying to help us he wouldn't have been
able to hold out much longer, either."
  "You told him to tesser," Meg charged Calvin.
  "There isn't any question of blame," Mr. Murry cut in
severely. "Can you move yet?"
  All Meg's faults were uppermost in her now, and they
were no longer helping her. `Not And you'd better take
me back to Camazotz and Charles Wallace quickly. You're
supposed to be able to help!" Disappointment was as dark
and corrosive in her as the Black Thing. The ugly words
tumbled from her cold lips even as she herself could not
believe that it was to her father, her beloved, longed-for
father, that she was talking to in this way. If her tears had
not still been frozen they would have gushed from her eyes.
  She had found her father and he had not made every-
thing all right. Everything kept getting worse and worse.
If the long search for her father was ended, and he wasn't
able to overcome all their difficulties, there was nothing
to guarantee that it would all come out right in the end.
There was nothing left to hope for. She was frozen, and
Charles Wallace was being devoured by IT, and her omnip-
otent father was doing nothing. She teetered on the see-
saw of love and hate, and the Black Thing pushed her down
into hate. "You don't even know where we are!" she cried
out at her father. "We'll never see Mother or the twins
again! We don't know where earth is! Or even where Ca-
mazotz is! We're lost out in space! What are you going to
do!" She did not realize that she was as much in the power
of the Black Thing as Charles Wallace.
  Mr. Murry bent over her, massaging her cold fingers.
She could not see his face. "My daughter, I am not a Mrs.
Whatsit, a Mrs. Who, or a Mrs. Which. Yes, Calvin has told
me everything he could. I am a human being, and a very
fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for
something. And we know that all things work together for
good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose."
  "The Black Thing!" Meg cried out at him. "Why did you
let it almost get me?"
  "You've never tessered as well as the rest of us," Calvin
reminded her. "It never bothered Charles and me as much
as it did you."
  "He shouldn't have taken me, then," Meg said, "until he
learned to do it better."
  Neither her father nor Calvin spoke. Her father con-
tinued his gentle massage. Her fingers came back to life
with tingling pain. "You're hurting me!"
  "Then you're feeling again," her father said quietly. "I`m
afraid it is going to hurt, Meg."
  The piercing pain moved slowly up her arms, began in
her toes and legs. She started to cry out against her father
when Calvin exclaimed, "Look!"
  Coming toward them, moving in silence across the brown
grass, were three figures.
  What were they?
  On Uriel there had been the magnificent creatures. On
Camazotz the inhabitants had at least resembled people.
What were these three strange things approaching?
  They were the same dull gray color as the flowers. If they
hadn't walked upright they would have seemed like ani-
mals. They moved directly toward the three human beings.
They had four arms and far more than five fingers to each
hand, and the fingers were not fingers, but long waving
tentacles. They had heads, and they had faces. But where
the faces of the creatures on Uriel had seemed far more
than human faces, these seemed far less. Where the fea-
tures would normally be there were several indentations,
and in place of ears and hair were more tentacles. They
were tail' Meg realized as they came doser, far taller than
any man. They had no eyes. Just soft indentations.
  Meg's rigid, frozen body tried to shudder with terror,
but instead of the shudder all that came was pain. She
moaned.
  The Things stood over them. They appeared to be look-
ing down at them, except that they had no eyes with which
to see. Mr. Murry continued to kneel by Meg, massaging
her.
  He's killed us, bringing us here, Meg thought I'll never
see Charles Wallace again, or Mother, or the twins.
  Calvin rose to his feet. He bowed to the beasts as though
they could see him. He said, "How do you do, sir-ma'am?
  "Who are you?" the tallest of the beasts said. His voice
was neither hostile nor welcoming, and it came not from
the mouthlike indentation in the furry face, but from the
waving tentacles.
  They'll eat us, Meg thought wildly. They're making
me hurt My toes-my fingers-I hurt.
  Calvin answered the beast's question. "We're-we're
from earth. I'm not sure how we got here. We've had an
accident. Meg-this girl-is-is paralyzed. She can't move.
She's terribly cold. We think that's why she can't move."
  One of them came up to Meg and squatted down on its
huge haunches beside her, and she felt utter loathing and
revulsion as it reached out a tentacle to touch her face.
  But with the tentacle came the same delicate fragrance
that moved across her with the breeze, and she felt a soft,
tingling warmth go all through her that momentarily as-
suaged her pain. She felt suddenly sleepy.
  I must look as strange to it as it looks to me, she thought
drowsily, and then realized with a shock that of course the
beast couldn't see her at all. Nevertheless a reassuring sense
of safety flowed through her with the warmth which con-
tinued to seep deep into her as the beast touched her. Then
it picked her up, cradling her in two of its four arms.
  Mr. Murry stood up quickly. "What are you doing?"
  "Taking the child."