Mr. Murry absent-mindedly began working out an equation on the tablecloth. For once Mrs. Murry did not even seem to notice. He said, “They’ve never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove home from Washington the traffic was so bad I could have made better time with a horse. There were huge signs proclaiming SPEED LIMIT 65 MPH, and we were crawling along at 20.”
“And the children and I kept dinner hot for you for three hours, and finally ate, pretending we weren’t worried that you might have been in an accident,” Mrs. Murry said bitterly. “Here we are, at the height of civilization in a well-run state in a great democracy. And four ten-year-olds were picked up last week for pushing hard drugs in the school where our six-year-old is regularly given black eyes and a bloody nose.” She suddenly noticed the equation growing on the tablecloth. “What are you doing?” ‘
“I have a hunch that there’s some connection between your discoveries about the effects of farandolae on mitochondria, and that unexplained phenomenon out in space.” His pencil added a fraction, some Greek characters, and squared them.
Mrs. Murry said in a low voice, “My discoveries are not very pleasant.”
“I know.”
“I isolated farandolae because something beyond increasing air pollution has to account for the accelerating number of deaths from respiratory failure, and this so-called flu epidemic. It was the micro-sonarscope which gave me the first clue—“ She stopped abruptly, looked at her husband. “It’s the same sound, isn’t it? The strange ‘cry* of the ailing mitochondria, and the ‘cry’ picked up in those distant galaxies by the new paraboloidoscope—there’s a horrid similarity between them. I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that we don’t even see what’s going on in our own back yard. L.A. is trying as honorably as a president can try in a world which has become so blunted by dishonor and violence that people casually take it for granted. We have to see a great, dramatic fissure in the sky before we begin to take danger seriously. And I have to be deathly worried about our youngest child before I regard farandolae except in a cool and academic manner.”
Meg had turned from the kitchen sink at the pain in her mother’s voice, and had seen her father reach across the table for her mother’s hand. “My dear, this is not like you. With my intellect I see cause for nothing but pessimism and even despair. But I can’t settle for what my intellect tells me. That’s not all of it.”
“What else is there?” Mrs. Murry’s voice was low and anguished.
“There are still stars which move in ordered and beautiful rhythm. There are still people in this world who keep promises. Even little ones, like your cooking stew over your Bunsen burner. You may be in the middle of an experiment, but you still remember to feed your family. That’s enough to keep my heart optimistic, no matter how pessimistic my mind. And you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”
Proginoskes said, “He’s a wise man, your father.”
“Could you hear me remembering?”
“I was remembering with you. Most of that conversation you didn’t hear with your conscious mind, you know.”-
“I have a very good memory—“ Meg started. Then she stopped herself. “Okay. I know I couldn’t have remembered all that by myself. I suppose I just sort of took in the sound waves, didn’t I? But how did you get it all from me?”
Proginoskes looked at her with two, ringed owl-like eyes. “You’re beginning to learn how to kythe.”
“To what?”
“Kythe. It’s how cherubim talk. It’s talking without words, just the same way that I can be myself and not be enfleshed.”
“But I have to be enfleshed, and I need words.”
“I know, Meg,” he replied gently, “and I will keep things worded for you. But it will help if you will remember that cherubim kythe without words among each other. For a human creature you show a distinct talent for kything.”
She blushed slightly at the compliment; she had a feeling that paying compliments is a habit not often indulged in by cherubim. “Progo, I wish I’d been able to see the equation Father was doodling on the tablecloth. If I’d seen it, then it might be somewhere in my mind for you to pull out.”
“Think,” Proginoskes said. “I’ll help.”
“Mother put the tablecloth in the wash.”
“But you remember there were some Greek letters.”
“Yes . . .”
“Let me try to find them with you.”
She closed her eyes.
“That’s right. Relax, now. Maybe this is the way for us to kythe. —Don’t you try to think. Just let me move about.”
Out of the corner of her mind’s eye she seemed to see three Greek characters among the numbers in the loosely strung equation her father was scribbling on the cloth. She thought them at Proginoskes.
“exo- Epsilon, chi, and theta. That’s Echth,” the cherubim told her.
“Echthroi—but how could Father—“
“Think of the conversation we just recalled, Meg. Your parents are very aware of the evil in the world.”
“All right. Yes. I know. Okay.” Meg sounded cross, “Until Charles started school I hoped maybe we could ignore it. Like ostriches or something.”
The cherubim withdrew its wings from her entirely, leaving her exposed and cold on the strange hilltop. “Open your eyes and look where the sky is torn.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Go on. I’ve got all my eyes open, and you only have to open two.”
Meg opened her eyes. The rent in the sky was still there. She wondered what this distant phenomenon could have to do with Charles Wallace’s pallor, with mitochondritis, or whatever it was. “How—oh, Progo, how did the Echthroi do that?”
Like Charles Wallace, he picked up her particular anxiety. “It has to do with un-Naming. If we are Namers, the Echthroi are un-Namers, non-Namers.”
“Progo, what does that have to do with Mr. Jenkins?”
She felt a wave of apprehension roll through her. “Little-ling, I think that is what we must find out. I think that it is part of our first ordeal. Let us go.” He drew her back into himself again; again she was confronted with the single eye, was pulled through the opening, oval pupil. Then the pupil snapped shut, and they were together on the star-watching rock with dawn slowly lightening the east.
Progo spread his wings wide, and she moved out. “What do we do now?” he said.
The cherubim was asking her? “I am only a human being, not quite full-grown,” she replied. “How would I know?”
“Megling, I’ve never been on your planet before. This is your home. Charles Wallace is your brother. You are the one who knows Mr. Jenkins. You must tell me what we are to do now.”
Meg stamped, loudly and angrily, against the hard, cold surface of the rock. “This is too much responsibility! I’m still only a child! I didn’t ask for any of this!”
“Are you refusing to take the test?” Proginoskes pulled away from her.
“But I didn’t ask for it! I didn’t ask for Blajeny, or you, or any of it!”
“Didn’t you? I thought you were worried about Charles Wallace.”
“I am! I’m worried about everything!”
“Meg.” Proginoskes was somber and stern. “Are you going to enter into the ordeal? I must know. Now.”
Meg stamped again. “Of course I’m going to. You know I have to. Charles Wallace is in danger. I’ll do anything to help him, even if it seems silly.”
“Then what do we do now?”
She shoved at her glasses as though that would help her think. “I’d better go home now and have breakfast. Then I’ll get on my school bus—it stops at the bottom of the hill and maybe you’d better wait for me there. Fortinbras might bark at you; I’m sure he’d know you were in the house even if you dematerialize, or whatever you call it.”
“Whatever you think best,” Proginoskes said meekly.
“I’ll be down at the foot of the road at seven o’clock. The high-school bus covers so much distance and makes so many stops it takes an hour and a half, and I get on at one of the first stops.”
She felt an acquiescing response from the cherubim, and then he disappeared; she could not see even a shimmer, or feel a flicker of him in her mind. She headed back to the house. She kept the flashlight on, not for the known turnings of the path, but for whatever new, unknown surprises might be waiting for her.
When Meg got to the stone wall Louise the Larger was there. Waiting. Neither greeting nor attacking. Waiting. Meg approached her cautiously. Louise watched her through eyes which shone in the flashlight like the water of a very deep well.