‘Leave me alone,’ he snarled.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, old sport,’ Calvin said. ‘I’m just trying to be friendly. Let’s make it up, huh?’
‘You mean you’re coming around?’ Charles Wallace asked.
‘Sure,’ Calvin’s voice was coaxing. ‘We’re reasonable people, after all. Just look at me for a minute, Charlibus.’
Charles Wallace stopped and turned slowly to look at Calvin with his cold, vacant eyes. Calvin looked back, and Meg could feel the intensity of his concentration. An enormous shudder shook Charles Wallace. For a brief flash his eyes seemed to see. Then his whole body twirled wildly, and went rigid. He started his marionette’s walk again. ‘I should have known better,’ he said. ‘If you want to see Murry you’d better come with me and not try any more hanky-panky.’
‘Is that what you call your father – Murry?’ Calvin asked. Meg could see that he was angry and upset at his near success.
‘Father? What is a father?’ Charles Wallace intoned. ‘Merely another misconception. If you feel the need of a father, then I would suggest that you turn to IT.’
IT again.
‘Who’s this IT?’ Meg asked.
‘All in good time,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘You’re not ready for IT yet. First of all I will tell you something about this beautiful, enlightened planet of Camazotz.’ His voice took on the dry, pedantic tones of Mr Jenkins. ‘Perhaps you do not realize that on Camazotz we have conquered all illness, all deformity –’
‘We?’ Calvin interrupted.
Charles continued as though he had not heard. And of course he hadn’t, Meg thought. ‘We let no one suffer. It is so much kinder simply to annihilate anyone who is ill. Nobody has weeks and weeks of runny noses and sore throats. Rather than endure such discomfort they are simply put to sleep.’
‘You mean they’re put to sleep while they have a cold, or that they’re murdered?’ Calvin demanded.
‘Murder is a most primitive word,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘There is no such thing as murder on Camazotz. IT takes care of all such things.’ He moved jerkily to the wall of the corridor, stood still for a moment, then raised his hand. The wall flickered, quivered, grew transparent. Charles Wallace walked through it, beckoned to Meg and Calvin, and they followed. They were in a small, square room from which radiated a dull, sulphurous light. There was something ominous to Meg in the very compactness of the room, as though the walls, the ceiling, the floor might move together and crush anybody rash enough to enter.
‘How did you do that?’ Calvin asked Charles.
‘Do what?’
‘Make the wall – open – like that.’
‘I merely rearranged the atoms,’ Charles Wallace said loftily. ‘You’ve studied atoms in school, haven’t you?’
‘Sure, but –’
‘Then you know enough to know that matter isn’t solid, don’t you? That you, Calvin, consist mostly of empty space? That if all the matter in you came together you’d be the size of the head of a pin? That’s plain scientific fact, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘So I simply pushed the atoms aside and we walked through the space between them.’
Meg’s stomach seemed to drop, and she realized that the square box in which they stood must be an elevator and that they had started to move upwards with great speed. The yellow light lit up their faces, and the pale blue of Charles’s eyes absorbed the yellow and turned green.
Calvin licked his lips. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Up.’ Charles continued his lecture. ‘On Camazotz we are all happy because we are all alike. Differences create problems. You know that, don’t you, dear sister?’
‘No,’ Meg said.
‘Oh, yes, you do. You’ve seen at home how true it is. You know that’s the reason you’re not happy at school. Because you’re different.’
‘I’m different, and I’m happy,’ Calvin said.
‘But you pretend that you aren’t different.’
‘I’m different, and I like being different,’ Calvin’s voice was unnaturally loud.
‘Maybe I don’t like being different,’ Meg said, ‘but I don’t want to be like everybody else, either.’
Charles Wallace raised his hand and the motion of the square box ceased and one of the walls seemed to disappear. Charles stepped out, Meg and Calvin following him, Calvin just barely making it before the wall came into being again, and they could no longer see where the opening had been.
‘You wanted Calvin to get left behind, didn’t you?’ Meg said.
‘I am merely trying to teach you to stay on your toes. I warn you, if I have any more trouble from either of you, I shall have to take you to IT.’
As the word IT fell from Charles’s lips, again Meg felt as though she had been touched by something slimy and horrible. ‘So what is this IT?’ she asked.
‘You might call IT the Boss.’ Then Charles Wallace giggled, a giggle that was the most sinister sound Meg had ever heard. ‘IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist.’
Meg spoke coldly, to cover her fear. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That’s s-a-d-i-s-t, not s-a-d-d-e-s-t, you know,’ Charles Wallace said, and giggled again. ‘Lots of people don’t pronounce it correctly.’
‘Well, I don’t care,’ Meg said defiantly. ‘I don’t ever want to see IT, and that’s that.’
Charles Wallace’s strange, monotonous voice ground against her ears. ‘Meg, you’re supposed to have some mind. Why do you think we have wars at home? Why do you think people get confused and unhappy? Because they all live their own, separate, individual lives. I’ve been trying to explain to you in the simplest possible way that on Camazotz individuals have been done away with. Camazotz is ONE mind. It’s IT. And that’s why everybody’s so happy and efficient. That’s what old witches like Mrs Whatsit don’t want to have happen at home.’
‘She’s not a witch,’ Meg interrupted.
‘No?’
‘No,’ Calvin said. ‘You know she’s not. You know that’s just their game. Their way, maybe, of laughing in the dark.’
‘In the dark is correct,’ Charles continued. ‘They want us to go on being confused instead of properly organized.’
Meg shook her head violently, ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I know our world isn’t perfect, Charles, but it’s better than this. This isn’t the only alternative! It can’t be!’
‘Nobody suffers here,’ Charles intoned. ‘Nobody is ever unhappy.’
‘But nobody’s ever happy, either,’ Meg said earnestly. ‘Maybe if you aren’t unhappy sometimes you don’t know how to be happy. Calvin, I want to go home.’