“Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know enough yet. Time is different on Camazotz, anyhow. Our time, inadequate though it is, at least is straightforward. It may not be even fully one-dimensional, because it can’t move back and forth on its line, only ahead; but at least it’s consistent in its direction. Time on Camazotz seems to be inverted, turned in on itself. So I have no idea whether I was imprisoned is that column for centuries or only for minutes.” Silence for a moment. Then her father’s voice again. “I think I feel a pulse in her wrist now.”
Meg could not feel his fingers against her wrist. She could not feel her wrist at all. Her body was still stone, but her mind was beginning to be capable of movement. She tried desperately to make some kind of a sound, a signal to them, but nothing happened.
Their voices started again. Calvin: “About your project, sir. Were you on it alone?”
Her father: “Oh, no. There were half a dozen of us working on it and I daresay a number of others we don’t know about. Certainly we weren’t the only nation to investigate along that line. It’s not really a new idea. But we did try very hard not to let it be known abroad that we were trying to make it practicable.”
T)id you come to Camazotz alone? Or were there others with you?”
“I came alone. You see, Calvin, there was no way to try it out ahead with rats or monkeys or dogs. And we had no idea whether it would really work or whether it would be complete bodily disintegration. Playing with time and space is a dangerous game.”
“But why you, sir?”
“I wasn’t the first. We drew straws, and I was second.”
“What happened to the first man?”
“We don’t-look! Did her eyelids move?” Silence. Then:
“No. It was only a shadow.”
But I did blink, Meg tried to tell them. I’m sure I did. And I can hear you! Do something!
But there was only another long silence, during which perhaps they were looking at her, watching for another shadow, another flicker. Then she heard her father’s voice again, quiet, a little warmer, more like his own voice. “We drew straws, and I was second. We know Hank went. We saw him go. We saw him vanish right in front of the rest of us. He was there and then he wasn’t. We were to wait for a year for his return or for some message. We waited. Nothing.”
Calvin, his voice cracking: “Jeepers, sir. You must have been in sort of a flap.”
Her father: “Yes. It’s a frightening as well as an exciting thing to discover that matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. We can know this, but it’s far more than we can understand with our puny little brains. I think you will be able to comprehend far more than I. And Charles Wallace even more than you.”
“Yes, but what happened, please, sir, after the first man?”
Meg could hear her father sigh. “Then it was my turn. I went. And here I am. A wiser and a humbler man. I’m sure I haven’t been gone two years. Now that you’ve come I have some hope that I may be able to return in time. One thing I have to tell the others is that we know nothing.”
Calvin: “What do you mean, sir?”
Her father: “Just what I say. We’re children playing with dynamite. In our mad rush we’ve plunged into this before-”
With a desperate effort Meg made a sound. It wasn’t a very loud sound, but it was a sound. Mr. Murry stopped. “Hush. Listen.”
Meg made a strange, croaking noise. She found that she could pull open her eyelids. They felt heavier than marble but she managed to raise them. Her father and Calvin were hovering over her. She did not see Charles Wallace. Where was he?
She was lying in an open field of what looked like rusty, stubby grass. She blinked, slowly, and with difficulty.
“Meg,” her father said. “Meg. Are you all right?”
Her tongue felt like a stone tongue in her mouth, but she managed to croak, “I can’t move.”
‘Try,” Calvin urged. He sounded now as though he were very angry with her. ‘Wggle your toes. Wiggle your fingers.”
“I can’t. Where’s Charles Wallace?” Her words were blunted by the stone tongue. Perhaps they could net understand her, for there was no answer.
“We were knocked out for a minute, too,” Calvin was saying. “You’ll be all right, Meg. Don’t get panicky.” He was crouched over her, and though his voice continued to sound cross he was peering at her with anxious eyes. She knew that she must still have her glasses on because she could see him clearly, his freckles, Ins stubby black lashes, the bright blue of his eyes.
Her father was kneeling on her other side. The round lenses of Mrs. Who’s glasses still blurred his eyes. He took one of her hands and rubbed it between his. “Can you feel my fingers?” He sounded quite calm, as though there were nothing extraordinary in having her completely paralyzed. At the quiet of his voice she felt calmer. Then she saw that there were great drops of sweat standing out on his forehead, and she noticed vaguely that the gentle breeze that touched her cheeks was cool. At first his words had been frozen and now the wind was Hoild: was it icy cold here or warm? “Can you feel my fingers?” he asked again.
Yes, now she could feel a pressure against her wrist, but she could not nod. “Where’s Charles Wallace?” Her words were a little less blurred. Her tongue, her lips were beginning to feel cold and numb, as though she had been given a massive dose of novocaine at the dentist’s. She realized with a start that her body and limbs were cold, that not only was she not warm, she was frozen from head to toe, and it w