‘Where are you, Mrs Who?’ Charles Wallace asked. ‘Where is Mrs Which?’
‘We cannot come to you now,’ Mrs Who’s voice blew to them like the wind. ‘Allwissend bin ich nicht; doch viel ist mir bewisst. Goethe. I do not know everything; still many things I understand. That is for you, Charles. Remember that you do not know everything.’ Then the voice was directed to Meg. ‘To you I leave my glasses, little blind-as-a-bat. But do not use them except as a last resort. Save them for the final moment of peril.’ As she spoke there was another shimmer of spectacles, and then it was gone, and the voice faded out with it. The spectacles were in Meg’s hand. She put them carefully into the breast pocket of her blazer, and the knowledge that they were there somehow made her a little less afraid.
‘Tto alll tthreee off yyou I ggive mmy ccommandd,’ Mrs Which said. ‘Ggo ddownn innttoo tthee ttownn. Ggo ttogetherr. Ddoo nnott llett tthemm ssepparate yyou. Bbee sstrongg.’ There was a flicker and then it vanished. Meg shivered.
Mrs Whatsit must have seen the shiver, for she patted Meg on the shoulder. Then she turned to Calvin. ‘Take care of Meg.’
‘I can take care of Meg,’ Charles Wallace said rather sharply. ‘I always have.’
Mrs Whatsit looked at Charles Wallace, and the creaky voice seemed somehow both to soften and to deepen at the same time. ‘Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.’
At the tone of Mrs Whatsit’s voice, both warning and frightening, Meg shivered again. And Charles Wallace butted up against Mrs Whatsit in the way he often did with his mother, whispering, ‘Now I think I know what you meant about being afraid.’
‘Only a fool is not afraid,’ Mrs Whatsit told him. ‘Now go.’ And where she had been there was only sky and grasses and a small rock.
‘Come on,’ Meg said impatiently. ‘Come on, let’s go!’ She was completely unaware that her voice was trembling like an aspen leaf. She took Charles Wallace and Calvin each by the hand and started down the hill.
Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted grey. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.
‘Look!’ Charles Wallace said suddenly. ‘They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.’
This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them.
‘How can they do it?’ Meg asked wonderingly. ‘We couldn’t do it that way if we tried. What does it mean?’
‘Let’s go back.’ Calvin’s voice was urgent.
‘Back?’ Charles Wallace asked. ‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. Back to the hill. Back to Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who and Mrs Which. I don’t like this.’
‘But they aren’t there. Do you think they’d come to us if we turned back now?’
‘I don’t like it,’ Calvin said again.
‘Come on.’ Impatience made Meg squeak. ‘You know we can’t go back. Mrs Whatsit said to go into the town.’ She started on down the street, and the two boys followed her. The houses, all identical, continued, as far as the eye could reach.
Then, all at once, they saw the same thing, and stopped to watch. In front of one of the houses stood a little boy with a ball, and he was bouncing it. But he bounced it rather badly and with no particular rhythm, sometimes dropping it and running after it with awkward, furtive leaps, sometimes throwing it up into the air and trying to catch it. The door of his house opened and out ran one of the mother figures. She looked wildly up and down the street, saw the children and put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a scream, grabbed the little boy and rushed indoors with him. The ball dropped from his fingers and rolled out into the street.
Charles Wallace ran after it and picked it up, holding it out for Meg and Calvin to see. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary, brown rubber ball.
‘Let’s take it to him and see what happens,’ Charles Wallace suggested.
Meg pulled at him. ‘Mrs Whatsit said for us to go on into the town.’
‘Well, we are in the town, aren’t we? The outskirts anyhow. I want to know more about this. I have a hunch it may help us later. You go on if you don’t want to come with me.’
‘No,’ Calvin said firmly. ‘We’re going to stay together. Mrs Which said we weren’t to let them separate us. But I’m with you on this. Let’s knock and see what happens.’
They went up the path to the house, Meg reluctant, eager to get on into the town. ‘Let’s hurry,’ she begged, ‘please! Don’t you want to find father?’
‘Yes,’ Charles Wallace said, ‘but not blindly. How can we help if we don’t know what we’re up against? And it’s obvious we’ve been brought here to help him, not just to find him.’ He walked briskly up the steps and knocked at the door. They waited. Nothing happened. Then Charles Wallace saw a bell, and this he rang. They could hear the bell buzzing in the house, and the sound of it echoed down the street. After a moment the mother figure opened the door. All up and down the street other doors opened, but only a crack, and eyes peered towards the three children and the woman looking fearfully out of the door at them.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t paper time yet; we’ve had milk time; I’ve given my Decency Donations regularly. All my papers are in order.’
‘I think your little boy dropped his ball,’ Charles Wallace said, holding it out.
The woman pushed the ball away. ‘Oh, no! The children in our section never drop balls! They’re all perfectly trained. We haven’t had an Aberration for three years.’