A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (39 page)
Read A Wrinkle in Time Quintet Online
Authors: Madeleine L’Engle
there go on just as miserably as ever?”
do
, Mr. Jenkins? Can you make things different?”
morning. Now I think that I am going to find upgrading an elementary school a pleasant change, and at the moment it seems a quite possible challenge.”
of the strain eased from her face. “I’m afraid I can’t manage that, but I can thaw some steaks from the freezer.”
the three of them were alone, Charles Wallace said to Calvin, “You didn’t say a word.”
is he?”
I am having feelings. They hurt.”
“Why don’t you and Calvin go out to the north pasture and the big rocks and look around?”
of the garden. “There are things we aren’t going to be able to talk about in front of people except in kything.”
stone wall.
down Meg’s cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of one mitten.
know
he’s all right. But my mind would like to be in on the knowing.” She shivered.
extraordinary reluctance to leave, but she allowed Calvin to lead her away. When they reached the stone wall she stopped. “Wait a minute—”
felt comforted and reassured. In silence they returned to the
house. In the pantry they hung their jackets on the hooks; the door to the lab was closed. So was the door to the kitchen.
open
the door, you don’t have to take
it off its hinges.”
“You were gone long enough.”
Swiftly
Tilting
Planet
MADELEINE
L’ENGLE
A
Swiftly
Tilting
Planet
OTHER NOVELS IN THE TIME QUINTET
An Acceptable Time
Many Waters
A Wind in the Door
A Wrinkle in Time
Square Fish
An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers
A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET.
Copyright © 1978 by Crosswicks, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for “a swiftly tilting planet” from the poem entitled “Senlin: A Biography” by Conrad Aiken, published by Oxford University Press in
Collected Poems
.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
L’Engle, Madeleine.
A swiftly tilting planet.
p. cm.
Summary: The youngest of the Murry children must travel
through time and space in a battle against an evil dictator
who would destroy the entire universe.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36856-2
ISBN-10: 0-312-36856-9
[1. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L5385 Sw 1978
[Fic] 78-09648
Originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book design
by Jennifer Browne
First Square Fish Edition: May 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Hal Vursell
ONE
In this fateful hour
The big kitchen of the Murrys’ house was bright and warm, curtains drawn against the dark outside, against the rain driving past the house from the northeast. Meg Murry O’Keefe had made an arrangement of chrysanthemums for the dining table, and the yellow, bronze, and pale-gold blossoms seemed to add light to the room. A delectable smell of roasting turkey came from
the oven, and her mother stood by the stove, stirring the giblet gravy.
It was good to be home for Thanksgiving, she thought, to be with the reunited family, catching up on what each one had been doing. The twins, Sandy and Dennys, home from law and medical schools, were eager to hear about Calvin, her husband, and the conference he was attending in London, where he was—perhaps at this very minute—giving
a paper on the immunological system of chordates.
“It’s a tremendous honor for him, isn’t it, Sis?” Sandy asked.
“Enormous.”
“And how about you, Mrs. O’Keefe?” Dennys smiled at her. “Still seems strange to call you Mrs. O’Keefe.”
“Strange to me, too.” Meg looked over at the rocker by the fireplace, where her mother-in-law was sitting, staring into the flames; she was the one who was Mrs. O’Keefe
to Meg. “I’m fine,” she replied to Sandy. “Absolutely fine.”
Dennys, already very much the doctor, had taken his stethoscope, of which he was enormously proud, and put it against Meg’s burgeoning belly, beaming with pleasure as he heard the strong heartbeat of the baby within. “You are fine, indeed.”
She returned the smile, then looked across the room to her youngest brother, Charles Wallace,
and to their father, who were deep in concentration, bent over the model they were building of a tesseract: the square squared, and squared again: a construction of the dimension of time. It was a beautiful and complicated creation of steel wires and ball bearings and Lucite, parts of it revolving, parts swinging like pendulums.
Charles Wallace was small for his fifteen years; a stranger might
have guessed him to be no more than twelve; but the expression in his light blue eyes as he watched his father alter one small rod on the model was
mature and highly intelligent. He had been silent all day, she thought. He seldom talked much, but his silence on this Thanksgiving day, as the approaching storm moaned around the house and clapped the shingles on the roof, was different from his usual
lack of chatter.
Meg’s mother-in-law was also silent, but that was not surprising. What was surprising was that she had agreed to come to them for Thanksgiving dinner. Mrs. O’Keefe must have been no more than a few years older than Mrs. Murry, but she looked like an old woman. She had lost most of her teeth, and her hair was yellowish and unkempt, and looked as if it had been cut with a blunt
knife. Her habitual expression was one of resentment. Life had not been kind to her, and she was angry with the world, especially with the Murrys. They had not expected her to accept the invitation, particularly with Calvin in London. None of Calvin’s family responded to the Murrys’ friendly overtures. Calvin was, as he had explained to Meg at their first meeting, a biological sport, totally different
from the rest of his family, and when he received his M.D./Ph.D. they took that as a sign that he had joined the ranks of the enemy. And Mrs. O’Keefe shared the attitude of many of the villagers that Mrs. Murry’s two earned Ph.D.s, and her experiments in the stone lab which adjoined the kitchen, did not constitute proper
work
. Because she had achieved considerable recognition, her puttering was
tolerated, but it was not work,
in the sense that keeping a clean house was work, or having a nine-to-five job in a factory or office was work.
—How could that woman have produced my husband? Meg wondered for the hundredth time, and imaged Calvin’s alert expression and open smile.—Mother says there’s more to her than meets the eye, but I haven’t seen it yet. All I know is that she doesn’t like
me, or any of the family. I don’t know why she came for dinner. I wish she hadn’t.
The twins had automatically taken over their old job of setting the table. Sandy paused, a handful of forks in his hand, to grin at their mother. “Thanksgiving dinner is practically the only meal Mother cooks in the kitchen—”
“—instead of out in the lab on her Bunsen burner,” Dennys concluded.
Sandy patted her
shoulder affectionately. “Not that we’re criticizing, Mother.”
“After all, those Bunsen-burner stews did lead directly to the Nobel Prize. We’re really very proud of you, Mother, although you and Father give us a heck of a lot to live up to.”
“Keeps our standards high.” Sandy took a pile of plates from the kitchen dresser, counted them, and set them in front of the big platter which would hold
the turkey.