Then they were outside. The column rose up in the middle of the room, crystal clear and empty.
Meg blinked at the blurred figures of Charles and her father, and wondered why they did not clear. Then she grabbed her own glasses out of her pocket and put them on, and her myopic eyes were able to focus.
Charles Wallace was tapping one foot impatiently against the floor. “IT is not pleased,” he said. “IT is not pleased at all.”
Mr. Murry released Meg and knelt in front of the little boy. “Charles,” his voice was tender. “Charles Wallace.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m your father, Charles. Look at me.”
The pale blue eyes seemed to focus on Mr. Murry’s face. “Hi, Pop,” came an insolent voice.
“That isn’t Charles!” Meg cried. “Oh, Father, Charles isn’t like that. IT has him.”
“Yes.” Mr. Murry sounded tired. “I see.” He held his arms out. “Charles. Come here.”
Father will make it all right. Meg thought. Everything will be all right now.
Charles did not move toward the outstretched arms. He stood a few feet away from his father, and he did not look at him.
“Look at me,” Mr. Murry commanded.
“No.”
Mr. Murry’s voice became harsh. “When you speak to me you will say ‘No, Father,’ or ‘No, sir.'”
“Come off it. Pop,” came the cold voice from Charles Wallace – Charles Wallace who, outside Camazotz, had been strange, had been different, but never rude. “You’re not the boss around here.”
Meg could see Calvin pounding again on the glass wall. “Calvin!” she called.
“He can’t hear you,” Charles said. He made a horrible face at Calvin, and then he thumbed his nose.
“Who’s Calvin?” Mr. Murry asked.
“He’s-” Meg started, but Charles Wallace cut her short.
“You’ll have to defer your explanations. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To IT.”
“No,” Mr. Murry said. “You can’t take Meg there.”
“Oh, can’t I!”
“No, you cannot. You’re my son, Charles, and I’m afraid you will have to do as I say.”
“But he isn’t Charles!” Meg cried in anguish. Why didn’t her father understand? “Charles is nothing like that. Father! You know he’s nothing like that!”
“He was only a baby when I left,” Mr. Murry said heavily.
“Father, it’s IT talking through Charles. IT isn’t Charles. He’s-he’s bewitched.”
“Fairy tales again,” Charles said.
“You know IT, Father?” Meg asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you seen IT?”
“Yes, Meg.” Again his voice sounded exhausted. “Yes. I have.” He turned to Charles. “You know she wouldn’t be able to hold out.”
“Exactly,” Charles said.
“Father, you can’t talk to him as though he were Charles! Ask Calvin! Calvin will tell you.”
“Come along,” Charles Wallace said. “We must go.” He held up his hand carelessly and walked out of the cell, and there was nothing for Meg and Mr. Murry to do but to follow.
As they stepped into the corridor Meg caught at her father’s sleeve. “Calvin, here’s Father!”
Calvin turned anxiously toward them. His freckles and his hair stood out brilliantly against his white face.
“Make your introductions later,” Charles Wallace said. “IT does not like to be kept waiting.” He walked down the corridor, his gait seeming to get more jerky with each step. The others followed, walking rapidly to keep up.
“Does your father know about the Mrs. W’s?” Calvin asked Meg.
“There hasn’t been time for anything. Everything’s awful.” Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg’s stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be all right. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything.
And instead of this happy and expected outcome, they seemed to be encountering all kinds of new troubles.
“He doesn’t understand about Charles,” she whispered to Calvin, looking unhappily at her father’s back as he walked behind the little boy.
“Where are we going?” Calvin asked.
“To IT. Calvin, I don’t want to go! I can’t!” She stopped, but Charles continued his jerky pace.
“We can’t leave Charles,” Calvin said. “They wouldn’t like it.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Mrs. Whatsit & Co.”
“But they’ve betrayed us! They brought us here to this terrible place and abandoned us!”
Calvin looked at her in surprise. “You sit down and give up if you like,” he said. “I’m sticking with Charles.” He ran to keep up with Charles Wallace and Mr. Murry.
“I didn’t mean-” Meg started, and pounded after them.
Just as she caught up with them Charles Wallace stopped and raised his hand, and there was the elevator again, its yellow light sinister. Meg felt her stomach jerk as the swift descent began. They were silent until the motion stopped, silent as they followed Charles Wallace through long corridors and out into the street. The CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building loomed up, stark and angular, behind them.
-Do something, Meg implored her father silently. -Do something. Help. Save us.
They turned a comer, and at the end of the street was a strange, domelike building. Its walls glowed with a flicker of violet flame. Its silvery roof pulsed with ominous light. The light was neither warm nor cold, but it seemed to reach out and touch them. This, Meg was sure, must be where IT was waiting for them.
They moved down the street, more slowly now, and as they came closer to the domed building the violet flickering seemed to reach out, to envelop them, to suck them in: they were inside.
Meg could feel a rhythmical pulsing. It was a pulsing not only about her, but in her as well, as though the rhythm of her heart and lungs was no longer her own but was being worked by some outside force. The closest she had come to the feeling before was when she had been practicing artificial respiration with Girl Scouts, and the leader, an immensely powerful woman, had been working on Meg, intoning OUT goes the bad air, IN comes the good! while her heavy hands pressed, released, pressed, released.
Meg gasped, trying to breathe at her own normal rate, but the inexorable beat within and without continued. For a moment she could neither move nor look around to see what was happening to the others. She simply had to stand there, trying to balance herself into the artificial rhythm of her heart and lungs. Her eyes seemed to swim in a sea of red.
Then things began to clear, and she could breathe without gasping like a beached fish, and she could look about the great, circular, domed building. It was completely empty except for the pulse, which seemed a tangible tiling, and a round dais exactly in the center. On the dais lay- what? Meg could not tell, and yet she knew that it was from this that the rhythm came. She stepped forward tentatively. She felt that she was beyond fear now. Charles Wallace was no longer Charles Wallace. Her father had been found but he had not made everything all right. Instead everything was worse than ever, and her adored father was bearded and thin and white and not omnipotent after all. No matter what happened next, things could be no more terrible or frightening than they already were.
Oh, couldn’t they?
As she continued to step slowly forward, at last she realized what the Thing on the dais was.
IT was a brain.
A disembodied brain. An oversized brain, just enough larger than normal to be completely revolting and terrifying. A living brain. A brain that pulsed and quivered, that seized and commanded. No wonder the brain was called IT. IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating than anything she had ever imagined with her conscious mind, or that had ever tormented her in her most terrible nightmares.
But as she had felt she was beyond fear, so now she was beyond screaming.
She looked at Charles Wallace, and he stood there, turned towards IT, his jaw hanging slightly loose; and his vacant blue eyes slowly twirled.
Oh, yes, things could always be worse. These twirling eyes within Charles Wallace’s soft round face made Meg icy cold inside and out.
She looked away from Charles Wallace and at her father. Her father stood there with Mrs. Who’s glasses still perched on his nose-did he remember that he had them on?-and he shouted to Calvin. “Don’t give in!”
“I won’t! Help Meg!” Calvin yelled back. It was absolutely silent within the dome, and yet Meg realized that the only way to speak was to shout with all the power possible. For everywhere she looked, everywhere she turned, was the rhythm, and as it continued to control the systole and diastole of her heart, the intake and outlet of her breath, the red miasma began to creep before her eyes again, and she was afraid that she was going to lose consciousness, and if she did that she would be completely in the power of IT.