“Breathe, Meg, breathe.” It was Proginoskes, using the same words which Louise was using with Charles Wallace. “Breathe, Meg. You’re all right.”
She reeled, staggered, regained her balance.
Again she heard the ugly laugh, and the false Mr. Jenkins voice urging, “Kill the fara!”
Then came Mr. Jenkins’s own voice. “I see. I understand.” She felt emanating from him a dry, dusty acknowledgment of unpleasant fact.
She returned sharply, still slightly breathless, “I don’t understand.”
Mr. Jenkins asked her, “Why did Hitler want to control the world? Or Napoleon? Or Tiberius?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would. I think it would be awful.”
“But you admit that they did, Margaret?”
“They wanted to,” she conceded. “But they didn’t succeed.”
“They did a remarkably good job of succeeding for a period of time, and they will not lightly be forgotten. A great many people perished during the years of their rules.”
“But farandolae—why would little farandolae like Sporos—“
“They appear to be not that unlike human beings.”
She felt cold and quiet. Once Mr. Jenkins had accepted the situation, he understood it better than she did. She asked, “Okay, then, what have the Echthroi got to do with it? They’re behind it, aren’t they?”
Proginoskes answered, “The Echthroi are always behind war.”
Meg turned in anguish towards Senex, calm and strong as an oak tree, but, unlike the oak, pliable, able to bend with wind and weather. “Senex, we’ve been sent to help, but I’m not strong enough to fight the Echthroi. I can’t stop Sporos and the other farandolae from killing the fara. Oh, Senex, if they succeed, won’t they kill themselves, too?”
Senex responded coldly, quietly. “Yes.”
“This is insane,” Mr. Jenkins said.
Proginoskes answered, “All war is insane.”
“But, as I understand it,” Mr. Jenkins continued, “we are a minutely immeasurable part of Charles Wallace?”
“We are.”
“Therefore if, while we are on—or, rather, in—this mitochondrion, if Charles Wallace were to die, then—er—urn— we—“
“Die, too.”
“Then I fight not only for Charles Wallace’s life but for Meg’s, and Calvin’s, and—“
“Your own.”
Meg felt Mr. Jenkins’s total indifference to his own life. She was not yet willing to accept the burden of his concern for her. “We musn’t think about that! We musn’t think about anything but Charles!”
Proginoskes wound around and through her thoughts: “You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos. Don’t you understand that we’re all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they’re trying to destroy all Creation?”
The dancing farandolae whirled and screamed, and Meg thought she could hear Sporos’s voice: “We’re not part of anybody! We’re farandolae, and we’re going to take over Yadah. After that—“
A hideous screech of laughter assailed Meg’s ears. Again she flung herself at the dance, trying to pull Sporos out of it.
Senex drew her back with the power of his kythe. “Not that way, not by force.”
“But Sporos has to Deepen! He has to!”
Then, around the edges of her awareness, Meg heard a twingling, and Calvin was with Sporos, trying to reach out to him, to kythe with him.
Sporos’s response was jangly, but he came out of the wild circle and hovered on its periphery. “Why did Blajeny send you alien life forms to Yadah with me? How can you possibly help with my schooling? We make music by ourselves. We don’t need you.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s volcanic upheaving, felt a violent wind, searing tongues of flame. “Idiot, idiot,” Proginoskes was sending, “we all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other.”
“I don’t need you.”
Suddenly Proginoskes kythed quietly and simply, “I need you, Sporos. We all of us need you. Charles Wallace needs you.”
“I don’t need Charles Wallace.”
Calvin kythed urgently, “Don’t you? What happens*to you if something happens to Charles Wallace? Who have you been listening to?”
Sporos withdrew. Meg could not feel him at all.
Calvin emanated frustration. “I can’t reach him. He slips away from me every time I think I’m getting close.”
Sporos was pulled back into the whirling circle. The surrounded fara was limp, all life draining rapidly. Senex mourned, “His song is going out.”
Proginoskes kythed, “Xed. Snuffed out like a candle.”
Senex’s fronds drooped in grief. “Sporos and his generation listen to those who would silence the singing. They listen to those who would put out the light of the song.”
Mr. Jenkins raised shadowy arms prophetically. ‘To kill the song is the only salvation!”
“No!” Mr. Jenkins cried to Mr. Jenkins. “You are only a mirror vision of me. You are nothing!”
Nothing nothing nothing
The word echoed, hollow, empty, repeating endlessly. Everywhere Meg kythed she seemed to meet a projection of an Echthros-Mr. Jenkins.
“Don’t you understand that the Echthroi are your saviors? When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death. There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation—“
Senex kythed through the Echthros. “No more singing!”
Proginoskes joined Senex. “No more stars, or cherubim, or the light of the moon on the sea.”
And Calvin: “There will never be another meal around table. No one will ever break bread or drink wine with his companions.”
Meg kythed violently against the nearest Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, “You are nothing! You’re only borrowing Mr. Jenkins in order to be something. Go away! You are nothing!”
Then she was aware that the real Mr. Jenkins was trying to reach her. “Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Calvin replied, “Then we must fill the vacuum. That is the only thing to do.”
“How?”
“If the Echthroi are nothingness, emptiness, then that emptiness can be filled.”
“Yes, but how do we fill it?”
Senex kythed calmly, “Perhaps you don’t want to fill it strongly enough. Perhaps you do not yet understand what is at stake.”
“I do! A little boy, my brother—what do you know about my little brother?”
Senex conveyed considerable confusion. He had a feeling for the word ‘brother’ because all farae are—or had been—brothers. But ‘little boy’ meant nothing to him whatsoever.
“I know that my galactic host is ill, perhaps dying—“
“That’s Charles Wallace! That’s my little brother! He may be a galactic host to you, but to me he’s just a little boy like—like Sporos.” She turned her kythe from Senex and towards the wildly dancing farandolae who had surrounded another fara. This tune she kythed herself towards them cautiously. How could she be sure which one was Sporos?
An Echthros-Mr. Jenkins whinnied with laughter. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.” A harsh twang wounded the melody of the farae who were still singing.
Once again Meg felt faltering in the mitochondrion. Yadah was in pain. Suddenly she remembered the farandolae who had saved her from the Echthros when Progi-noskes brought her into Yadah. Not all the farandolae had thrown in their lot with the Echthroi. Or were those ,who had Xed themselves that she might live the only ones who would defy the Echthroi?
She began calling urgently, “Sporos! Farandolae! Come away from the Echthroi. You will dance yourselves to death. Come to Senex and Deepen. This is what you were born to do. Come!”
Some of the farandolae faltered. Others whirled the faster, crying, “We don’t need to Deepen. That’s only an old superstition. It’s a stupid song they sing, all this Glory, glory, glory. We are the ones who are glorious.”
“The stars—“ Meg called desperately.
“Another superstition. There are no stars. We are the greatest beings in the universe.”
Ugliness seeped past Meg and to Sporos. “Why do you want to Deepen?”
Sporos’s twingling was slightly dissonant. “Farandolae are born to Deepen.”
“Fool. Once you Deepen and put down roots you won’t be able to romp around as you do now.”
“But—“
“You’ll be stuck in one place forever with those fuddy-duddy farae, and you won’t be able to run or move, ever again.”
“But—“
The strength and calm of Senex cut through the ugliness. “It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.”
Indecision quivered throughout Sporos.
Senex continued, “It is true, small offspring. Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with’the stars. I dance with the galaxies. I share in the joy—and in the grief. We farae must have our part in the rhythm of the mitochondria, or we cannot be. If we cannot be, then we are not.”
“You mean, you die?” Meg asked.
“Is that what you call it? Perhaps. I am not sure. But the song of Yadah is no longer full and rich. It is flaccid, its harmonies meager. By our arrogance we make Yadah suffer.”
Meg felt Calvin beside Senex, urging, “Sporos, you are my partner. We are to work together.”
“Why? You’re no use to me.”