Again the thoughts coming at her broke into laughter. ‘Isn’t she the funny girl, though! It’s lucky for you that you amuse me, my dear, or I shouldn’t be so easy on you. The boys I find not nearly so diverting. Ah, well. Now, tell me, young lady, if I feed you will you stop interfering with me?’
‘No,’ Meg said.
‘Starvation does work wonders, of course,’ the man told her. ‘I hate to use such primitive methods on you, but of course you realize that you force them on me.’
‘I wouldn’t eat your old food, anyhow.’ Meg was still all churned up and angry as though she were in Mr Jenkins’s office. ‘I wouldn’t trust it.’
‘Of course our food, being synthetic, is superior to your messes of beans and bacon and so forth; I assure you that it’s far more nourishing, and though it has no taste of its own, a slight conditioning is all that is necessary to give you the illusion that you are eating a roast turkey dinner.’
‘If I ate now I’d be sick, anyhow,’ Meg said.
Still holding Meg’s and Calvin’s hands, Charles Wallace stepped forward. ‘Okay, what next?’ he asked the man on the chair. ‘We’ve had enough of these preliminaries. Let’s get on with it.’
‘That’s exactly what we were doing,’ the man said, ‘until your sister interfered by practically giving you a brain concussion. Shall we try again?’
‘No!’ Meg cried. ‘No, Charles. Please. Let me do it. Or Calvin.’
‘But it is only the little boy whose neurological system is complex enough. If you tried to conduct the necessary neurons your brains would explode.’
‘And Charles’s wouldn’t?’
‘I think not.’
‘But there’s a possibility?’
‘There’s always a possibility.’
‘Then he mustn’t do it.’
‘I think you will have to grant him the right to make his own decisions.’
But Meg, with the dogged tenacity that had so often caused her trouble, continued, ‘You mean Calvin and I can’t know who you really are?’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t say that. You can’t know it in the same way, nor is it as important to me to have you know. Ah, here we are!’ From somewhere in the shadows appeared four more men in dark smocks carrying a table. It was covered with a white cloth, like the tables used by Room Service in hotels, and held a metal hot box containing something that smelled delicious, something that smelled like a turkey dinner.
There’s something phoney in the whole set-up, Meg thought. – There is definitely something rotten in the state of Camazotz.
Again the thoughts seemed to break into laughter. ‘Of course it doesn’t really smell, but isn’t it as good as though it really did?’
‘I don’t smell anything,’ Charles Wallace said.
‘I know, young man, and think how much you’re missing. This will all taste to you as though you were eating sand. But I suggest that you force it down. I would rather not have your decisions come from the weakness of an empty stomach.’
The table was set up in front of them, and the dark-smocked men heaped their plates with turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy and little green peas with big yellow blobs of butter melting in them and cranberries and sweet potatoes topped with gooey browned marshmallows and olives and celery and rosebud radishes and –
Meg felt her stomach rumbling loudly. The saliva came to her mouth.
‘Oh, Jeeminy –’ Calvin mumbled.
Chairs appeared and the four men who had provided the feast slid back into the shadows.
Charles Wallace freed his hands from Meg and Calvin and plunked himself down on one of the chairs.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘If it’s poisoned it’s poisoned, but I don’t think it is.’
Calvin sat down. Meg continued to stand indecisively.
Calvin took a bite. He chewed. He swallowed. He looked at Meg. ‘If this isn’t real, it’s the best imitation you’ll ever get.’
Charles Wallace took a bite, made a face, and spat out his mouthful. ‘It’s unfair!’ he shouted at the man.
Laughter again. ‘Go on, little fellow. Eat.’
Meg sighed and sat. ‘I don’t think we should eat this stuff, but if you’re going to, I’d better, too.’ She took a mouthful. ‘It tastes all right. Try some of mine, Charles.’ She held out a forkful of turkey.
Charles Wallace took it, made another face, but managed to swallow. ‘Still tastes like sand,’ he said. He looked at the man. ‘Why?’
‘You know perfectly well why. You’ve shut your mind entirely to me. The other two can’t. I can get in through the chinks. Not all the way in, but enough to give them a turkey dinner. You see, I’m really just a kind, jolly old gentleman.’
‘Ha,’ Charles Wallace said.
The man lifted his lips into a smile, and his smile was the most horrible thing Meg had ever seen. ‘Why don’t you trust me, Charles? Why don’t you trust me enough to come in and find out what I am? I am peace and rest. I am freedom from all responsibility. To come in to me is the last difficult decision you need ever make.’
‘If I come in can I get out again?’ Charles Wallace asked.
‘But of course, if you want to. But I don’t think you will want to.’
‘If I come – not to stay, you understand – just to find out about you, will you tell us where father is?’
‘Yes. That is a promise. And I don’t make promises lightly.’
‘Can I speak to Meg and Calvin alone, without your listening in?’
‘No.’
Charles shrugged. ‘Listen,’ he said to Meg and Calvin. ‘I have to find out what he really is. You know that. I’m going to try to hold back. I’m going to try to keep part of myself out. You mustn’t stop me this time, Meg.’
‘But you won’t be able to, Charles! He’s stronger than you are! You know that!’
‘I have to try.’
‘But Mrs Whatsit warned you!’
‘I have to try. For father, Meg. Please. I want – I want to know my father –’ For a moment his lips trembled. Then he was back in control. ‘But it isn’t only father, Meg. You know that, now. It’s the Black Thing. We have to do what Mrs Which sent us to do.’
‘Calvin –’ Meg begged.
But Calvin shook his head. ‘He’s right, Meg. And we’ll be with him, no matter what happens.’
‘But what’s going to happen?’ Meg cried.
Charles Wallace looked up at the man. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Now the red eyes and the light above seemed to bore into Charles, and again the pupils of the little boy’s eyes contracted. When the final point of black was lost in blue he turned away from the red eyes, looked at Meg, and smiled sweetly, but the smile was not Charles Wallace’s smile.
‘Come on, Meg, eat this delicious food that has been prepared for us,’ he said.
Meg snatched Charles Wallace’s plate and threw it on the floor, so that the dinner splashed about and the plate broke into fragments. ‘No!’ she cried, her voice rising shrilly. ‘No! No! No!’
From the shadows came one of the dark-smocked men who put another plate in front of Charles Wallace, and he began to eat eagerly. ‘What’s wrong, Meg?’ Charles Wallace asked. ‘Why are you being so belligerent and unco-operative?’ The voice was Charles Wallace’s voice, and yet it was different, too, somehow flattened out, almost as a voice might have sounded on the two-dimensional planet.
Meg grabbed wildly at Calvin, shrieking, ‘That isn’t Charles! Charles is gone!’
8. The Transparent Column