‘Well – a line: –’
‘Okay. And the second dimension?’
‘Well, you’d square the line. A flat square would be in the second dimension.’
‘And the third?’
‘Well, you’d square the second dimension. Then the square wouldn’t be flat any more. It would have a bottom and sides, and a top.’
‘And the fourth?’
‘Well, I guess if you want to put it into mathematical terms you’d square the square. But you can’t take a pencil and draw it the way you can the first three. I know it’s got something to do with Einstein and time. I guess maybe you could call the fourth dimension Time.’
‘That’s right,’ Charles said. ‘Good girl. Okay, then, for the fifth dimension you’d square the fourth, wouldn’t you?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Well, the fifth dimension’s a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way round. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.’
For a brief, illuminating second Meg’s face had the listening, probing expression that was so often seen on Charles’s. ‘I see!’ she cried. ‘I got it! For just a moment I got it! I can’t possibly explain it now, but there for a second I saw it!’ She turned excitedly to Calvin. ‘Did you get it?’
He nodded. ‘Enough. I don’t understand it the way Charles Wallace does, but enough to get the idea.’
‘Sso nnow wee ggo,’ Mrs Which said. ‘Tthere iss nott all thee ttime inn tthe worrlld.’
‘Could we hold hands?’ Meg asked.
Calvin took her hand and held it tightly in his.
‘You can try,’ Mrs Whatsit said, ‘though I’m not sure how it will work. You see, though we travel together, we travel alone. We will go first and take you afterwards in the backwash. That may be easier for you.’ As she spoke the great white body began to waver, the wings to dissolve into mist. Mrs Who seemed to evaporate until there was nothing but the glasses, and then the glasses, too, disappeared. It reminded Meg of the Cheshire Cat.
I’ve often seen a face without glasses, she thought; – but glasses without a face! I wonder if I go that way, too. First me and then my glasses?
She looked over at Mrs Which. Mrs Which was there and then she wasn’t.
There was a gust of wind and a great thrust and a sharp shattering as she was shoved through – what? Then darkness; silence; nothingness. If Calvin was still holding her hand she could not feel it. But this time she was prepared for the sudden and complete dissolution of her body. When she felt the tingling coming back to her fingertips she knew that this journey was almost over and she could feel again the pressure of Calvin’s hand about hers.
Without warning, coming as a complete and unexpected shock, she felt a pressure as though she were being completely flattened out by an enormous steamroller. This was far worse than the nothingness had been; while she was nothing there was no need to breathe, but now her lungs were squeezed together so that although she was dying for want of air there was no way for her lungs to expand and contract, to take in the air that she must have to stay alive. This was completely different from the thinning of atmosphere when they flew up the mountain and she had had to put the flowers to her face to breathe. She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can’t gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.
But then she seemed to hear a voice, or if not a voice, at least words, words flattened out like printed words on paper. ‘Oh, no! We can’t stop here! This is a two-dimensional planet and the children can’t manage here!’
She was whizzed into nothingness again, and nothingness was wonderful. She did not mind that she could not feel Calvin’s hand, that she could not see or feel or be. The relief from the intolerable pressure was all she needed.
Then the tingling began to come back to her fingers, her toes; she could feel Calvin holding her tightly. Her heart beat regularly; blood coursed through her veins. Whatever had happened, whatever mistake had been made, it was over now. She thought she heard Charles Wallace saying, his words round and full as spoken words ought to be, ‘Really, Mrs Which, you might have killed us!’
This time she was pushed out of the frightening fifth dimension with a sudden, immediate jerk. There she was, herself again, standing with Calvin beside her, holding on to her hand for dear life, and Charles Wallace in front of her, looking indignant. Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which were not visible, but she knew that they were there; the fact of their presence was strong about her.
‘Cchilldrenn, I appolloggize,’ came Mrs Which’s voice.
‘Now, Charles, calm down,’ Mrs Whatsit said, appearing not as the beautiful creature she had been when they last saw her, but in her familiar wild garb of shawls and scarves and the old tramp’s coat and hat. ‘You know how difficult it is for her to materialize. If you are not substantial yourself it’s very difficult to realize how limiting protoplasm is.’
‘I ammm ssorry,’ Mrs Which’s voice came again; but there was more than a hint of amusement in it.
‘It is not funny.’ Charles Wallace gave a childish stamp of his foot.
Mrs Who’s glasses shone out, and the rest of her appeared more slowly behind them. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ She smiled broadly. ‘Prospero in The Tempest. I do like that play.’
‘You didn’t do it on purpose?’ Charles demanded.
‘Oh, my darling, of course not,’ Mrs Whatsit said quickly. ‘It was just a very understandable mistake. It’s very difficult for Mrs Which to think in a corporeal way. She wouldn’t hurt you deliberately; you know that. And it’s really a very pleasant little planet, and rather amusing to be flat. We always enjoy our visits there.’
‘Where are we now, then?’ Charles Wallace demanded. ‘And why?’
‘In Orion’s belt. We have a friend here, and we want you to have a look at your own planet.’
‘When are we going home?’ Meg asked anxiously. ‘What about mother? What about the twins? They’ll be terribly worried about us. When we didn’t come in at bedtime – well, mother must be frantic by now. She and the twins and Fort will have been looking and looking for us, and of course we aren’t there to be found!’
‘Now, don’t worry, my pet,’ Mrs Whatsit said cheerfully. ‘We took care of that before we left. Your mother has had enough to worry her without our adding to her anxieties. We took a time wrinkle as well as a space wrinkle. It’s very easy to do if you just know how.’