A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (40 page)

—Home, Meg thought comfortably, and regarded her parents and brothers with affectionate gratitude. They
had put up with her all through her prickly adolescence, and she still did not feel very grown up. It seemed only a few months ago that she had had braces on her teeth, crooked spectacles that constantly slipped down her nose, unruly mouse-brown hair, and a wistful certainty that
she would never grow up to be a beautiful and self-confident woman like her mother. Her inner vision of herself was still more the adolescent Meg than the attractive young woman she had become. The braces were gone, the spectacles replaced by contact lenses, and though her chestnut hair might not quite rival her mother’s rich auburn, it was thick and lustrous and became her perfectly, pulled softly
back from her face into a knot at the nape of her slender neck. When she looked at herself objectively in the mirror she knew that she was lovely, but she was not yet accustomed to the fact. It was hard to believe that her mother had once gone through the same transition.

She wondered if Charles Wallace would change physically as much as she had. All his outward development had been slow. Their
parents thought he might make a sudden spurt in growth.

She missed Charles Wallace more than she missed the twins or her parents. The eldest and the youngest in the family, their rapport had always been deep, and Charles Wallace had an intuitive sense of Meg’s needs which could not be accounted for logically; if something in
Meg’s world was wrong, he knew, and was there to be with her, to help
her if only by assuring her of his love and trust. She felt a deep sense of comfort in being with him for this Thanksgiving weekend, in being home. Her parents’ house was still home, because she and Calvin spent many weekends there, and their apartment near Calvin’s hospital was a small, furnished one, with a large sign saying NO PETS, and an aura that indicated that children would not be welcomed,
either. They hoped to be able to look for a place of their own soon. Meanwhile, she was home for Thanksgiving, and it was good to see the gathered family and to be surrounded by their love, which helped ease her loneliness at being separated from Calvin for the first time since their marriage.

“I miss Fortinbras,” she said suddenly.

Her mother turned from the stove. “Yes. The house feels empty
without a dog. But Fort died of honorable old age.”

“Aren’t you going to get another dog?”

“Eventually. The right one hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Couldn’t you go look for a dog?”

Mr. Murry looked up from the tesseract. “Our dogs usually come to us. If one doesn’t, in good time, then we’ll do something about it.”

“Meg,” her mother suggested, “how about making the hard sauce for the plum pudding?”

“Oh—of course.” She opened the refrigerator and got out half a pound of butter.

The phone rang.

“I’ll get it.” Dropping the butter into a small mixing bowl en route, she went to the telephone. “Father, it’s for you. I think it’s the White House.”

Mr. Murry went quickly to the phone. “Mr. President, hello!” He was smiling, and Meg watched as the smile was wiped from his face and replaced with
an expression of—what? Nothingness, she thought.

The twins stopped talking. Mrs. Murry stood, her wooden spoon resting against the lip of the saucepan. Mrs. O’Keefe continued to stare morosely into the fire. Charles Wallace appeared to be concentrating on the tesseract.

—Father is just listening, Meg thought.—The president is doing the talking.

She gave an involuntary shudder. One minute the
room had been noisy with eager conversation, and suddenly they were all silent, their movements arrested. She listened, intently, while her father continued to hold the phone to his ear. His face looked grim, all the laughter lines deepening to sternness. Rain lashed against the windows.—It ought to snow at this time of year, Meg thought.—There’s something wrong with the weather. There’s something
wrong.

Mr. Murry continued to listen silently, and his silence spread across the room. Sandy had been opening the oven door to baste the turkey and snitch a spoonful of stuffing, and he stood still, partly bent over, looking at his father. Mrs. Murry turned slightly from the stove and brushed one hand across her hair, which was beginning to be touched with silver at the temples. Meg had opened
the drawer for the beater, which she held tightly.

It was not unusual for Mr. Murry to receive a call from the president. Over the years he had been consulted by the White House on matters of physics and space travel; other conversations had been serious, many disturbing, but this, Meg felt, was different, was causing the warm room to feel colder, look less bright.

“Yes, Mr. President, I understand,”
Mr. Murry said at last. “Thank you for calling.” He put the receiver down slowly, as though it were heavy.

Dennys, his hands still full of silver for the table, asked, “What did he say?”

Their father shook his head. He did not speak.

Sandy closed the oven door. “Father?”

Meg cried, “Father, we know something’s happened. You have to tell us—please.”

His voice was cold and distant. “War.”

Meg put her hand protectively over her belly. “Do you mean nuclear war?”

The family seemed to draw together, and Mrs. Murry
reached out a hand to include Calvin’s mother. But Mrs. O’Keefe closed her eyes and excluded herself.

“Is it Mad Dog Branzillo?” asked Meg.

“Yes. The president feels that this time Branzillo is going to carry out his threat, and then we’ll have no choice but to use our
antiballistic missiles.”

“How would a country that small get a missile?” Sandy asked.

“Vespugia is no smaller than Israel, and Branzillo has powerful friends.”

“He really can carry out this threat?”

Mr. Murry assented.

“Is there a red alert?” Sandy asked.

“Yes. The president says we have twenty-four hours in which to try to avert tragedy, but I have never heard him sound so hopeless. And
he does not give up easily.”

The blood drained from Meg’s face. “That means the end of everything, the end of the world.” She looked toward Charles Wallace, but he appeared almost as withdrawn as Mrs. O’Keefe. Charles Wallace, who was always there for her, was not there now. And Calvin was an ocean away. With a feeling of terror she turned back to her father.

He did not deny her words.

The
old woman by the fireplace opened her eyes and twisted her thin lips scornfully. “What’s all this? Why would the president of the United States call here? You
playing some kind of joke on me?” The fear in her eyes belied her words.

“It’s no joke, Mrs. O’Keefe,” Mrs. Murry explained. “For a number of years the White House has been in the habit of consulting my husband.”

“I didn’t know he”—Mrs.
O’Keefe darted a dark glance at Mr. Murry—“was a politician.”

“He’s not. He’s a physicist. But the president needs scientific information and needs it from someone he can trust, someone who has no pet projects to fund or political positions to support. My husband has become especially close to the new president.” She stirred the gravy, then stretched her hands out to her husband in supplication.
“But why? Why? When we all know that no one can win a nuclear war.”

Charles Wallace turned from the tesseract. “El Rabioso. That’s his nickname. Mad Dog Branzillo.”

“El Rabioso seems singularly appropriate for a man who overthrew the democratic government with a wild and bloody coup d’état. He is mad, indeed, and there is no reason in him.”

“One madman in Vespugia,” Dennys said bitterly, “can
push a button and it will destroy civilization, and everything Mother and Father have worked for will go up in a mushroom cloud. Why couldn’t the president make him see reason?”

Sandy fed a fresh log onto the fire, as though taking hope from the warmth and light.

Dennys continued, “If Branzillo does this, sends missiles, it could destroy the entire human race—”

Sandy scowled ferociously. “—which
might not be so bad—”

“—and even if a few people survive in sparsely inhabited mountains and deserts, there’d be so much fallout all over the planet that their children would be mutants. Why couldn’t the president make him see? Nobody wants war at that price.”

“It’s not for lack of trying,” Mr. Murry said, “but El Rabioso deserves his nickname. If he has to fall, he’d just as soon take the human
race with him.”

“So they send missiles from Vespugia, and we return ours to them, and all for what?” Sandy’s voice cracked with anger.

“El Rabioso sees this as an act of punishment, of just retribution. The Western world has used up more than our share of the world’s energy, the world’s resources, and we must be punished,” Mr. Murry said. “We are responsible for the acutely serious oil and coal
shortage, the defoliation of trees, the grave damage to the atmosphere, and he is going to make us pay.”

“We stand accused,” Sandy said, “but if he makes us pay, Vespugia will pay just as high a price.”

Mrs. O’Keefe stretched her wrinkled hands out to the flames. “At Tara in this fateful hour …” she mumbled.

Meg looked at her mother-in-law questioningly, but the old woman turned away. Meg said
to the room at large, “I know it’s selfish, but I wish Calvin weren’t in London giving that paper. I wish I’d gone with him.”

“I know, love,” Mrs. Murry replied, “but Dr. Louise thought you should stay here.”

“I wish I could at least phone him …”

Charles Wallace moved out of his withdrawn silence to say, “It hasn’t happened yet, nuclear war. No missiles have been sent. As long as it hasn’t
happened, there’s a chance that it may not happen.”

A faint flicker of hope moved across Meg’s face.—Would it be better, she wondered,—if we were like the rest of the world and didn’t know the horrible possibility of our lives being snuffed out before another sun rises? How do we prepare?

“… in this fateful hour,” the old woman mumbled again, but turned her head away when the Murrys looked at
her.

Charles Wallace spoke calmly to the whole family, but looked at Meg. “It’s Thanksgiving, and except for Calvin, we’re all together, and Calvin’s mother is with us, and that’s important, and we all know where Calvin’s heart is; it’s right here.”

“England doesn’t observe Thanksgiving,” Sandy remarked.

“But we do.” His father’s voice was resolute. “Finish setting the table, please. Dennys,
will you fill the glasses?”

While Mr. Murry carved, and Mrs. Murry thickened the gravy, Meg finished beating the hard sauce, and the twins and Charles Wallace carried bowls of rice, stuffing, vegetables, cranberry sauce, to the table. Mrs. O’Keefe did not move to help. She looked at her work-worn hands, then dropped them into her lap. “At Tara in this fateful hour …”

This time nobody heard her.

Sandy, trying to joke, said, “Remember the time Mother tried to make oatmeal cookies over the Bunsen burner, in a frying pan?”

“They were edible,” Dennys said.

“Almost anything is, to your appetite.”

“Which, despite everything, is enormous.”

“And it’s time to go to the table,” Mrs. Murry said.

When they were in their places she automatically held out her hands, and then the family, with Mrs.
O’Keefe between Mr. Murry and Meg, was linked around the table.

Charles Wallace suggested, “Let’s sing
Dona nobis pacem
. It’s what we’re all praying for.”

“Sandy’d better start then,” Meg said. “He’s got the
best voice. And then Dennys and Mother, and then Father and you and I.”

They raised their voices in the old round, singing over and over,
Give us peace, give us peace, give us peace
.

Meg’s voice trembled, but she managed to sing through to the end.

There was silence as the plates were served, silence instead of the usual happy noise of conversation.

“Strange,” Mr. Murry said, “that the ultimate threat should come from a South American dictator in an almost unknown little country. White meat for you, Meg?”

“Dark, too, please. Isn’t it ironic that all this should be happening
on Thanksgiving?”

Mrs. Murry said, “I remember my mother telling me about one spring, many years ago now, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were so tense that all the experts predicted nuclear war before the summer was over. They weren’t alarmists or pessimists; it was a considered, sober judgment. And Mother said that she walked along the lane wondering if the pussy
willows would ever bud again. After that, she waited each spring for the pussy willows, remembering, and never took their budding for granted again.”

Her husband nodded. “There was a reprieve then. There may be again.”

“But is it likely?” Sandy’s brown eyes were sober.

“It wasn’t likely then. The pussy willows, nevertheless,
have budded for a good many springs.” He passed cranberry sauce to
Mrs. O’Keefe.

“In this fateful hour,” she mumbled, and waved the sauce away.

He bent toward her. “What was that?”

“At Tara in this fateful hour,” she said irritably. “Can’t remember. Important. Don’t you know it?”

“I’m afraid not. What is it?”

“Rune. Rune. Patrick’s rune. Need it now.”

Calvin’s mother had always been taciturn. At home she had communicated largely in grunts. Her children,
with the exception of Calvin, had been slow to speak, because they seldom heard a complete sentence until they went to school. “My grandmother from Ireland.” Mrs. O’Keefe pointed at Charles Wallace and knocked over her glass.

Dennys fetched paper towels and mopped up the spilled liquid. “I suppose, cosmically speaking, it doesn’t make much difference whether or not our second-rate little planet
blows itself up.”

“Dennys!” Meg cried, then turned to her mother. “Excuse me for using this as an example, but Den, remember when Mother isolated farandolae within a mitochondrion?”

He interrupted, “Of course I remember. That’s what she got the Nobel Prize for.”

Mrs. Murry held up her hand. “Let Meg speak.”

“Okay then: farandolae are so minuscule and insignificant it doesn’t seem they could
possibly have any importance, and yet they live in a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria—”