Chapter 9

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 throw up 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
soft cheek against hers in loving comfort. But the demon
Charles Wallace snickered. She turned away from him and
looked again at the man in the column.
  "Oh, Father-" she whispered longingly, but the man
in the column did not move to look at her. The horn-
rimmed glasses, which always seemed so much a part of
him, were gone, and the expression of his eyes was turned
inward, as though he were deep in thought He had grown
a beard, and the silky brown was shot with gray. His hair,
too, had not been cut. It wasn't just the overlong hair of the
man m the snapshot at Cape Canaveral; it was pushed
back from his high forehead and fell softly almost to his
shoulders, so that he looked like someone in another cen-
tury, or a shipwrecked sailor. But there. was no question,
despite the change in him, that he was her father, her own
beloved father.
  "My, he looks a mess, doesn't he?" Charles Wallace said,
and sniggered.
  Meg swung on him with sick rage. "Charles, that's Father!
Father!"
  "So what?"
  Meg turned away from him and held out her arms to the
man m the column.
  "He doesn't see us, Meg," Calvin said gently.
  "Why? Why?"
  "I think it's sort of like those little peepholes they have
in apartments, in the front doors," Calvin explained.
"You know. From inside you can look through and see
everything. And from outside you can't see anything at all.
We can see him, but he can't see us."
  "Charles!" Meg pleaded. "Let me in to Father!"
  "Why?" Charles asked placidly.
  Meg remembered that when they were in the room
with the man with red eyes she had knocked Charles Wal-
lace back into himself when she tackled him and his head
cracked the floor; so she hurled herself at him. But before
she could reach him his fist shot out and punched her hard
in the stomach. She gasped for breath. Sickly, she turned
away from her brother, back to the transparent wall. There
was the-cell, there was the column with her father inside.
Although she could see him, although she was almost close
enough to touch him, he seemed farther away than he
had been when she had pointed him out to Calvin in the
picture on the piano. He stood there quietly as though
frozen in a column of ice, an expression of suffering and
endurance on his face that pierced into her heart like an
arrow.
  "You say you want to help Father?" Charles Wallace's
voice came from behind her, with no emotion whatso-
ever.
  "Yes. Don't you?" Meg demanded, swinging around and
glaring at him.
  "But of course. That is why we are here.
  "Then what. do we do?" Meg tried to keep the frantic-
ness out of her voice, trying to sound as drained of feeling as
Charles, but nevertheless ending on a squeak.
  "You must do as I have done, and go in to IT," Charles
said.
  "No."
  "I can see you don't really want to save Father."
  "How will my being a zombie save Father?"
  "You will just have to take my word for it, Margaret,"
came the cold, flat voice from Charles Wallace. "IT wants
you and IT will get you. Don't forget that I, too, am part of
IT, now. You know I wouldn't have done IT if IT weren't
the right thing to do."
  "Calvin," Meg asked in agony, "will it really save Father?"
  But Calvin was paying no attention to her. He seemed to
be concentrating with all his power on Charles Wallace.
He stared into the pale blue that was all that was left of
Charles Wallace's eyes. "And, for thou wast a spirit too
delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands.
she did confine thee  into a cloven pine " he whispered,
and Meg recognized Mrs. Who's words to him.
  For a moment Charles Wallace seemed to listen. Then he
shrugged and turned away. Calvin followed him, trying to
keep his eyes focused on Charles's. "If you want a witch,
Charles," he said, "IT's the witch. Not our ladies. Good
thing I had The Tempest at school this year, isn't it,
Charles? It was the witch who put Ariel in the cloven pine,
wasn't it?"
  Charles Wallace's voice seemed to come from a great
distance. "Stop staring at me."
  Breathing quickly with excitement, Calvin continued to
pin Charles Wallace with his stare. "You're like Ariel in the
cloven pine, Charles. And I can let you out. Look at me,
Charles. Come back to us. "
  Again the shudder went through Charles Wallace.
  Calvin's intense voice hit at him. "Come back, Charles.
Come back to us.
  Again Charles shuddered. And then it was as though an
invisible band had smacked against his chest and knocked
him to the ground' and the stare with which Calvin had
held him was broken. Charles sat there on the floor of the
corridor whimpering, not a small boy's sound, but a fearful,
animal noise.
  "Calvin." Meg turned on him, clasping her hands in-
tensely. "Try to get to Father."
  Calvin shook his head. "Charles almost came out. I almost
did it. He almost came back to us."
  "Try Father," Meg said again.
  "How?"
  "Your cloven pine thing. Isn't Father imprisoned in a
cloven pine even more than Charles? Look at him, in that
column there. Get him out, Calvin."
  Calvin spoke in an exhausted way. "Meg. I don't know
what to do. I don't know how to get in. Meg, they're asking
too much of us."
  "Mrs. Who's spectacles!" Meg said suddenly. Mrs. Who
had told her to use them only as a last resort, and surely
that was now. She reached into her pocket and the specta-
cles were there, cool and light and comforting. With trem-
bling fingers she pulled them out.
  "Give me those spectacles!" Charles Wallace's voice came
in a harsh command, and he scrambled up off the floor and
ran at her.
  She barely- had time to snatch off her own glasses and
put on Mrs. Who's, and, as it was, one earpiece dropped
down her cheek and they barely stayed on her nose. As
Charles Wallace lunged at her she flung herself against
the transparent door and she was through it. She was in the
cell with the imprisoning column that held her father. With
trembling fingers she straightened Mrs. Who's glasses and
put her own in her pocket.
  "Give them to me," came Charles Wallace's menacing
voice, and he was in the cell with her, with Calvin on the
outside pounding frantically to get in.
  Meg kicked at Charles Wallace and ran at the column.
She felt as though she were going through something dark
and cold. But she was through. "Father!" she cried. And
she was in his arms.
  This was the moment for which she had been waiting, not
only since Mrs. Which whisked them off on their journeys,
but during the long months and years before, when the
letters had stopped coming, when people made remarks
about Charles Wallace, when- Mrs. Murry showed a rare
flash of loneliness or grief. This was the moment that meant
that now and forever everything would be all right.
  As she pressed against her father all was forgotten except
joy. There was only the peace and comfort of leaning
against him, the wonder of the protecting circle of his arms)
the feeling of complete reassurance and safety that his
presence always gave her.
  Her voice broke on a happy sob. "Oh, Father! Oh,
Father!"
  "Meg!" he cried in glad surprise. "Meg, what are you
doing here? Where's your mother? Where are the boys?"
  She looked out of the column, and there was Charles
Wallace in the cell, an alien expression distorting his face.
She turned back to her father. There was no more time for
greeting, for joy, for explanations. "We have to go to
Charles Wallace," she said, her words tense. "Quickly."
  Her father's hands were moving gropingly over her face,
and as she felt the touch of his strong, gentle fingers, she
realized with a flooding of horror that she could see him,
that she could see Charles in the cell and Calvin in the
corridor, but her father could not see them, could not see
her. She looked at him in panic, but his eyes were the same
steady blue that she remembered. She moved her hand
brusquely across his line of vision, but he did not blink.
  "Father!" she cried. "Father! Can't you see me?"
  His arms went around her again in a comforting, re-
assuring gesture. "No, Meg."
  "But, Father, I can see you."  Her voice trailed off.
Suddenly she shoved Mrs. Who's glasses down her nose and
peered over them, and immediately she was in complete
and utter darkness. She snatched them off her face and
thrust them at her father. "Here."
  His fingers closed about the spectacles. "Darling," he
said, "I'm afraid your glasses won't help."
  "But they're Mrs. Who's, they aren't mine," she explained,
not realIzing that her words would sound like gibberish to
him. "Please try them, Father. Please!" She waited while
she felt him fumbling in the dark. "Can you see now?" she
asked. "Can you see now, Father?"
  "Yes," he said. "Yes. The wall is transparent, now. How
extraordinary! I could almost see the atoms rearranging!"
His voice had its old, familiar sound of excitement and dis-
covery. it was the way he sounded sometimes when he
came home from his laboratory after a good day and began
to tell his wife about his work. Then he cried out, "Charles!
Charles Wallace!" And then, "Meg, what's happened to
him? What's wrong? That is Charles, isn't it?"
  "IT has him, Father," she explained tensely. "He's gone
into IT. Father, we have to help him."
  For a long moment Mr. Murry was silent. The silence
was filled with the words he was thinking and would not
speak out loud to his daughter. Then he said, "Meg, I'm in
prison here. I have been for."
  "Father, these walls. You can go through them. I came
through the column to get in to you. It was Mrs. Who's
glasses."
  Mr. Murry did not stop to ask who Mrs. Who was. He
slapped his hand against the translucent column. "It seems
solid enough."
  "But I got in Meg repeated. "I'm here. Maybe the glasses
help the atoms rearrange. Try it, Father."
  She waited, breathlessly, and after a moment she realized
that she was alone in the column. She put out her hands in
the darkness and felt its smooth surface curving about her
on all sides. She seemed utterly alone, the silence and dark.
ness impenetrable forever. She fought down panic until
she heard her father's voice coming to her very faintly.
  "I'm coming back in for you, Meg."
  It was almost a tangible feeling as the atoms of the
strange material seemed to part to let him through to her.
In their beach house at Cape Canaveral there had been a
curtain between dining and living room made of long
strands of rice. It looked like a solid curtain, but you could
walk right through it. At first Meg had flinched each time
she came up to the curtain; but gradually she got used to
it and would go running right through, leaving the long
strands of rice swinging behind her. Perhaps the atoms of
these walls were arranged in somewhat the same fashion.
  "Put your arms around my neck, Meg," Mr. Murry said.
"Hold on to me tightly. Close your eyes and don't be afraid."
He picked her up and she wrapped her long legs around
his waist and clung to his neck. With Mrs. Who's spectacles
on she had felt only a faint darkness and coldness as she
moved through the column. Without the glasses she felt
the same awful clamminess she had felt when they tessered
through the outer darkness of Camazotz. Whatever the
Black Thing was to which Camazotz had submitted, it was
within as well as without the planet. For a moment it
seemed that the chill darkness would tear her from her
father's arms. She tried to scream, but within that icy horror
no sound was possible. Her father's arms tightened about
her, and she clung to his neck in a strangle hold, but she
was no longer lost in panic. She knew that if her father
could not get her through the wall he would stay with her
rather than leave her; she knew that she was safe as long
as she was in his arms.
  Then they were outside. The column rose up in the
middle of the room, crystal clear and empty.
  Meg blinked at the blurred figures of Charles and her
father, and wondered why they did not clear. Then she
grabbed her own glasses out of her pocket and put them
on, and her myopic eyes were able to focus.
  Charles Wallace was tapping one foot impatiently
against the floor. "IT is not pleased," he said. "IT is not
pleased at all."
  Mr. Murry released Meg and knelt in front of the little
boy. "Charles," his voice was tender. "Charles Wallace."
  "What do you want?"
  "I'm your father, Charles. Look at me."
  The pale blue eyes seemed to focus on Mr. Murry's face.
"Hi, Pop," came an insolent voice.
  "That isn't Charles!" Meg cried. "Oh, Father, Charles
isn't like that. IT has him."
  "Yes." Mr. Murry sounded tired. "I see." He held his
arms out. "Charles. Come here."
  Father will make it all right, Meg thought. Everything
will be all right now.
  Charles did not move toward the outstretched arms. He
stood a few feet away from his father, and he did not look
at him.
  "Look at me," Mr. Murry commanded.
  "No."
  Mr. Murry's voice became harsh. "When you speak to
me you will say "No, Father," or "No, sir. "
  "Come off it, Pop," came the cold voice from Charles
Wallace-Charles Wallace who, outside Camazotz, had
been strange, had been different, but never rude. "You're
not the boss around here."
  Meg could see Calvin pounding again on the glass wall.
"Calvin!" she called.
  "He can't hear you," Charles said. He made a horrible
face at Calvin, and then he thumbed his nose.
  "Who's Calvin?" Mr. Murry asked.
  "He's." Meg started, but Charles Wallace cut her short.
  "You'll have to defer your explanations. Let's go."
  "Go where?"
  "To IT."
  "No," Mr. Murry said. "You can't take Meg there."
  "Oh, can't I!"
  "No, you cannot. You're my son, Charles, and I'm afraid
you will have to do as I say."
  "But he isn't Charles!" Meg cried in anguish. Why didn't
her father understand? "Charles is nothing like that, Father!
You know he's nothing like that!"
  "He was only a baby when I left," Mr. Murry said heavily.
  "Father, it's IT talking through Charles. IT isn't Charles.
He's, he's bewitched."
  "Fairy tales again," Charles said.
  "You know IT, Father?" Meg asked.
  "Yes."
  "Have you seen IT?"
  "Yes, Meg." Again his voice sounded exhausted. "Yes. I
have." He turned to Charles. "You know she wouldn't be
able to hold out."
  "Exactly," Charles said.
  "Father, you can't talk to him as though he were Charles!
Ask Calvin! Calvin will tell you.
  "Come along," Charles Wallace said. "We must go." He
held up his hand carelessly and walked out of the cell, and
there was nothing for Meg and Mr. Murry to do but to
follow.
  As they stepped into the corridor Meg caught at her
father's sleeve. "Calvin, here's Father!"
  Calvin turned anxiously toward them. His freckles and
his hair stood out brilliantly against his white face.
  "Make your introductions later," Charles Wallace said.
"IT does not like to be kept waiting." He walked down the
corridor, his gait seeming to get more jerky with each step.
The others followed, walking rapidly to keep up.
  "Does your father know about the Mrs. Ws ?" Calvin
asked Meg.
  "There hasn't been time for anything. Everything's aw-
ful." Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg's stomach.
She had been so certain that the moment she found her
father everything would be all right. Everything would be
settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands.
She would no longer be responsible for anything.
  And instead of this happy and expected outcome, they
seemed to be encountering all kinds of new troubles.
  "He doesn't understand about Charles," she whispered to
Calvin, looking unhappily at her father's back as he walked
behind the little boy.
  "Where are we going?" Calvin asked.
  "To IT. Calvin, I don't want to go! I can't!" She stopped,
but Charles continued his jerky pace.
  "We can't leave Charles," Calvin said. "They wouldn't
like it."
  "Who wouldn't?"
  "Mrs. Whatsit & Co."
  "But they've betrayed us! They brought us here to this
terrible place and abandoned us!"
  Calvin looked at her in surprise. "You sit down and give
up if you like," he said. "I'm sticking with Charles." He ran
to keep up with Charles Wallace and Mr. Murry.
  "I didn't mean." Meg started, and pounded after them.
  Just as she caught up with them Charles Wallace stopped
and raised his hand, and there was the elevator again, its
yellow light sinister. Meg felt her stomach jerk as the swift
descent began. They were silent until the motion stopped,
silent as they followed Charles Wallace through long cor-
ridors and out into the street. The CENTRAL Central In-
telligence Building loomed up, stark and angular, behind
them.
  Do something, Meg implored her father silently. Do
something. Help. Save us.
  They turned a corner, and at the end of the street was a
strange, domelike building. Its walls glowed with a flicker
of violet flame. Its silvery roof pulsed with ominous light.
The light was neither warm nor cold, but it seemed to
reach out and touch them. This, Meg was sure, must be
where IT was waiting for them.
  They moved down the street, more slowly now, and as
they came closer to the domed building the violet flickering
seemed to reach out, to envelop them, to suck them in:
they were inside.
  Meg could feel a rhythmical pulsing. It was a pulsing not
only about her, but in her as well, as though the rhythm of
her heart and lungs was no longer her own but was being
worked by some outside force. The closest she had come
to the feeling before was when she had been practicing atti-
ficial respiration with Girl Scouts, and the leader, an im-
mensely powerful woman, had been working on Meg, in-
toning OUT goes the bad air, IN comes the good! while
her heavy hands pressed, released, pressed, released.
  Meg gasped, trying to breathe at her own normal rate,
but the inexorable beat within and without continued. For
a moment she could neither move nor look around to see
what was happening to the others. She simply had to stand
there, trying to balance herself into the artificial rhythm of
her heart and lungs. Her eyes seemed to swim in a sea of
red.
  Then things began to clear, and she could breathe with-
out gasping like a beached fish, and she could look about
the great, circular, domed building. It was completely
empty except for the pulse, which seemed a tangible thing,
and a round dais exactly in the center. On the dais lay-
what? Meg could not tell, and yet she knew that it was
from this that the rhythm came. She stepped forward
tentatively. She felt that she was beyond fear now. Charles
Wallace was no longer Charles Wallace. Her father had
been found but he had not made everything all right. In-
stead everything was worse than ever, and her adored
father was bearded and thin and white and not omnipotent
after all. No matter what happened next, things could be no
more terrible or frightening than they already were.
  Oh, couldn't they?
  As she continued to step slowly forward, at last she real-
ized what the Thing on the dais was.
  IT was a brain.
  A disembodied brain. An oversized brain, lust enough
larger than normal to be completely revolting and terrify-
ing. A living brain. A brain that pulsed and quivered, that
seized and commanded. No wonder the brain was called
IT. IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she
had ever seen, far more nauseating than anything she had
ever imagined with her conscious mind, or that had ever
tormented her in her most terrible nightmares
  But as she had felt she was beyond fear, so now she was
beyond screaming.
  She looked at Charles Wallace, and he stood there,
turned towards IT, his law hanging slightly loose; and his
vacant blue eyes slowly twirled.
  Oh, yes, things could always be worse. These twirling
eyes within Charles Wallace's soft round face made Meg
icy cold inside and out.
  She looked away from Charles Wallace and at her father.
Her father stood there with Mrs. Who's glasses stilI perched
on his nose, did he remember that he had them on?  and
he shouted to Calvin. "Don't give in!"
  "I won't! Help Meg!" Calvin yelled back. It was abso-
lutely silent within the dome, and yet Meg realized that
the only way to speak was to shout with all the power pos-
sible. For everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned,
was the rhythm, and as it continued to control the systole'
and diastole of her heart, the intake and outlet of her
breath, the red miasma began to creep before her eyes
again, and she was afraid that she was going to lose Con-
sciousness, and if she did that she would be completely in
the power of IT.
  Mrs. Whatsit had said, "Meg, I give you your faults."
  What were her greatest faults? Anger, impatience, stub-
bornness. Yes, it was to her faults that she turned to save
herself now.
  With an immense effort she tried to breathe against the
rhythm of IT. But ITs power was too strong. Each time she
managed to take a breath out of rhythm an iron hand
seemed to squeeze her heart and lungs.
  Then she remembered that when they had been standing
before the man with red eyes, and the man with red eyes
had been intoning the multiplication table at them, Charles
Wallace had fought against his power by shouting out
nursery rhymes, and Calvin by the Gettysburg Address.
  "Georgie, porgie, pudding and pie," she yelled. "Kissed
the girls and made them cry."
  That was no good. It was too easy for nursery rhymes to
fall into the rhythm of IT.
  She didn't know the Gettysburg Address. How did the
Declaration of Independence begin? She had memorized
it only that winter, not because she was required to at
school, but simply because she liked it.
  "We hold these truths to be self-evident!" she shouted,
"that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
  As she cried out the words she felt a mind moving in on
her own, felt IT seizing, squeezing her brain. Then she
realized that Charles Wallace was speaking, or being
spoken through by IT.
  "But that's exactly what we have on Camazotz. Com-
plete equality. Everybody exactly alike."
  For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then
came a moment of blazing truth. "No!" she cried trium-
pliantly. "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!"
  "Good girl, Meg!" her father shouted at her.
  But Charles Wallace continued as though there had been
no interruption. "In Camazotz all are equal. In Camazotz
everybody is the same as everybody else," but he gave her
no argument, provided no answer, and she held on to her
moment of revelation.
  Like and equal are two entirely different things.
  For the moment she had escaped from the power of IT.
  But how?
  She knew that her own puny little brain was no match
for this great, bodiless, pulsing, writhing mass on the round
dais. She shuddered as she looked at IT. In the lab at school
there was a human brain preserved in formaldehyde, and
the seniors preparing for college had to take it out and look
at it and study it. Meg had felt that when that day came
she would never be able to endure it. But now she thought
that if only she had a dissecting knife she would slash at IT,
cutting ruthlessly through cerebrum, cerebellum.
  Words spoke within her, directly this time, not through
Charles. "Don't you realize that if you destroy me, you also
destroy your little brother?"
  If that great brain were cut, were crushed, would every
mind under ITs control on Camazotz die, too? Charles
Wallace and the man with red eyes and the man who ran
the number one spelling machine on the second grade
level and all the children playing ball and skipping rope
and all the mothers and all the men and women going in
and out of the buildings? Was their life completely de
pendent on IT? Were they beyond all possibility of salva-
tion?
  She felt the brain reaching at her again as she let her stub-
born control slip. Red fog glazed her eyes.
  Faintly she heard her father's voice, though she knew he
was shouting at the top of his lungs. "The periodic table
of elements, Meg! Say it!"
  A picture flashed into her mind of winter evenings spent
sitting before the open fire and studying with her father.
"Hydrogen. Helium," she started obediently. Keep them
in their proper atomic order. What next. She knew it. Yes.
"Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen,
Fluorine." She shouted the words at her father, turned away
from IT. "Neon. Sodium. Magnesium. Aluminum. 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 con-
centrate, 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 ter-
rible 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 WI
consciousness.