A Wrinkle in Time Quintet (65 page)

“Yes, Mr. President?” Mr. Murry listened, and as he listened, he smiled. “El Zarco is setting up a Congress for the working out of peace plans and the equitable distribution and preservation of the earth’s resources. What’s
that, Mr.
President? He wants me to come as an advisor on the use of space for peace? Well, yes, of course, for a few weeks … This is splendid news. Thank you for calling.” He put down the receiver and turned to his family.

“El Zarco—” Meg whispered.

“Madog Branzillo’s favorite nickname, you know that,” her father said. “The Blue-eyed.”

“But his threats—”

Her father looked at her in surprise. “Threats?”

“Of war—”

Everybody except Charles Wallace and Mrs. O’Keefe was looking at her.

“The phone call before dinner—” she said. “Wasn’t the president afraid of war?”

“El Zarco has put down the militant members of his cabinet. He’s always been known as a man of peace.”

Charles Wallace spoke softly, so only Meg could hear. “They haven’t traveled with a unicorn, Meg. There was no El Rabioso for them.
When Matthew sent Zillah to marry Bran, and when Gedder was killed, that was the Might-Have-Been. El Rabioso was never born. It’s always been El Zarco.” He held her hand so tightly that it hurt.

Mrs. O’Keefe looked at Meg, nodding. “Baby will be born.”

“Oh, Mom,” Meg cried. “Will you be glad to be a grandmother?”

“Too late,” the old woman said. “Take me home. Chuck and Grandma are waiting for
me.”

“What’s that?” Mr. Murry asked.

“Chuck and Grandma—never mind. Just take me home.”

“I’ll drive you,” Mr. Murry said.

Meg kissed her mother-in-law good night. It was the first time she had ever kissed her. “See you, Mom. See you soon.”

When the car drove off, Dennys turned to his sister. “I’m not sure she’ll make it to be a grandmother, Meg. I think her heart’s running out.”

“Why?”

“Badly swollen ankles. Blue tinge to her fingernails and lips. Shortness of breath.”

“She ran all the way to the star-watching rock.”

“She was short of breath before then. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill her. And what all that was about I’ll never know.”

“This whole evening’s confusing,” Sandy agreed. “I suggest we just forget it and go to bed. And Mrs. O’Keefe would never have made it back without
Dennys and me, Meg. But you’re right, Mother, she’s quite an old girl.”

“She is, indeed,” Mrs. Murry agreed. “And I agree with you, Sandy, about getting to bed. Meg, you need your sleep.”

The baby within Meg stirred. “You’re more than right about Mom O’Keefe, Mother, more right than any of us could possibly have imagined. There’s much much more to her than meets the eye. I hate the thought of
losing her, just as we’re discovering her.”

Charles Wallace had once again been contemplating the intricate model of the tesseract. He spoke softly to his sister. “Meg, no matter what happens, even if Dennys is right about her heart, remember that it was herself she placed, for the baby’s sake, and yours, and Calvin’s, and all of us—”

Meg looked at him questioningly.

Charles Wallace’s eyes
as he returned her gaze were the blue of light as it glances off a unicorn’s horn, pure and clear and infinitely deep. “In this fateful hour, it was herself she placed between us and the powers of darkness.”

MADELEINE L’ENGLE

Square Fish

An Imprint of Holtzbrinck Publishers

MANY WATERS.

Copyright © 1986 by Crosswicks, Ltd. All rights reserved. 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.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

L’Engle, Madeleine.

Many waters.

p. cm.

Summary: The fifteen-year-old Murry twins, Sandy and Dennys, are accidentally sent back to a strange biblical time period, in which mythical beasts
roam the desert and a man named Noah is building a boat in preparation for a great flood.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36857-9

ISBN-10: 0-312-36857-7

1. Noah (biblical figure)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Noah (biblical figure)—Fiction. 2. Noah’s ark—Fiction. 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Time travel—Fiction. 5. Fantasy] I. Title.

PZ7.L5385 Man 1986

[Fic] 86-14911

Originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

First Square Fish Edition: May 2007

eISBN 9781429994361

First eBook edition: June 2013

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

For Stephen Roxburgh

ONE

Virtual particles and virtual unicorns

A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice.

“We can’t even see the puck,” Sandy Murry shouted across the wind. “Let’s go home.” He skated over to the side of the frozen pond, sitting on an already snow-covered rock to take off his skates.

There were calls of agreement from the other skaters. Dennys, Sandy’s twin brother, followed him, snow
gathering in his lashes, so that he had to blink in order to see the rock. “Why do we have to live in the highest, coldest, windiest spot in the state?”

Hoots of laughter and shouted goodbyes came from the other boys. “Where else would you want to live?” Dennys was asked.

Snow was sliding icily down the inside of his collar. “Bali. Fiji. Someplace warm.”

One of the boys knotted his skate laces
and slung his skates around his neck. “Would you really? With all those tourists?”

“Yeah, and jet-setters crowding the beach.”

“And beautiful people.”

“And litterbugs.”

One by one the other boys drifted off, leaving the twins. “I thought you liked winter,” Sandy said.

“By mid-March, I’m getting tired of it.”

“But you wouldn’t really want to go to some tourists’ paradise, would you?”

“Oh,
probably not. Maybe I would have, in the olden days, before the population explosion. I’m famished. Race you home.”

By the time they reached their house, an old white farmhouse about a mile from the village, the snow was beginning to let up, though the wind was still strong. They went in through the garage, past their mother’s lab. Pulling off their windbreakers, they threw them at hooks, and
burst into the kitchen.

“Where’s everybody?” Sandy called.

Dennys pointed to a piece of paper held by magnets to the refrigerator door. They both went up to it, to read:

DEAR TWINS, AM OFF TO TOWN WITH MEG AND CHARLES WALLACE FOR OUR DENTAL CHECKUPS. YOUR TURN IS NEXT WEEK. DON’T THINK YOU CAN GET OUT OF IT. YOU’VE BOTH GROWN SO MUCH THIS YEAR THAT IT IS ESSENTIAL YOU HAVE YOUR TEETH CHECKED.

LOVE, MOTHER

Sandy bared his teeth ferociously. “We’ve never had a cavity.”

Dennys made a similar grimace. “But we
have
grown. We’re just under six feet.”

“Bet if we were measured today we’d be over.”

Dennys opened the door to the refrigerator. There was half a chicken in an earthenware dish, with a sign:

VERBOTEN. THIS IS FOR DINNER.

Sandy pulled out the meat keeper. “Ham all right?”

“Sure. With cheese.”

“And mustard.”

“And sliced olives.”

“And ketchup.”

“And pickles.”

“No tomatoes here. Bet you Meg made herself a BLT.”

“There’s lots of liverwurst. Mother likes that.”

“Yuck.”

“It’s okay with cream cheese and onion.”

They put their various ingredients on the kitchen counter and cut thick slices of bread fresh from the oven. Dennys peered in to sniff apples slowly baking.
Sandy looked over to the kitchen table, where Meg had spread out her books and papers. “She’s taken more than her fair share of the table.”

“She’s in college,” Dennys defended. “We don’t have as much homework as she does.”

“Yeah, and I’d hate that long commute every day.”

“She likes to drive. And at least she gets home early.” Dennys plunked his own books down on the big table.

Sandy stood
looking at one of Meg’s open notebooks. “Hey, listen to this. Do you suppose we’ll have this kind of junk when we’re in college?
It seems quite evident that there was definite prebiotic existence of protein ancestors of polymers, and that therefore the primary beings were not a-amino acids.
I suppose she knows what she’s writing about. I haven’t the foggiest.”

Dennys flipped back a page. “Look
at her title.
The Million Doller question: the chicken or the egg, amino acids or their polymers.
She may be a mathematical genius, but she still can’t spell.”

“You mean, you know what she’s writing about?” Sandy demanded.

“I have a pretty good idea. It’s the kind of thing Mother and Dad argue about at dinner—polymers, virtual particles, quasars, all that stuff.”

Sandy looked at his twin. “You
mean, you
listen
?”

“Sure. Why not? You never know when a little useless knowledge is going to come in handy. Hey, what’s this book? It’s about bubonic plague. I’m the one who wants to be a doctor.”

Sandy glanced over. “It’s history, not medicine, stupe.”

“Hey, why are lawyers never bitten by snakes?” Dennys asked.

“I don’t know. And don’t care.”

“Well, you’re the one who wants to be the lawyer.
Come on. Why do lawyers never get bitten by snakes?”

“I give up. Why do lawyers never get bitten by snakes?”

“Professional courtesy.”

Sandy groaned. “Very funny. Ha. Ha.”

Dennys slathered mustard over a thick slice of ham. “When I think about the amount of schooling still ahead of us, I almost lose my appetite.”

“Almost.”

“Well, not quite.”

Sandy opened the refrigerator door, looking for
something else to pile on his sandwich. “We seem to eat more than the rest of the family put together. Charles Wallace eats like a bird. Well, judging by the amount we spend on bird feed, birds are terrible gluttons. But you know what I mean.”

“At least he’s settling down in school, and the other kids aren’t picking on him the way they used to.”

“He still doesn’t look more than six, but half
the time I think he knows more than we do. We’re certainly the ordinary, run-of-the-mill ones in the family.”

“The family can do with some ordinary, run-of-the-mill people. And we’re not exactly dumb. If I’m going to be a doctor and you’re going to be a lawyer, we’ve got to be bright enough for all that education. I’m thirsty.”

Sandy opened the cupboard above the kitchen door. Only a year before,
they had been too short to reach it without climbing on a stool. “Where’s the Dutch cocoa? That’s what I want.” Sandy moved various boxes of lentils, barley, kidney beans, cans of tuna and salmon.

“Bet Mother’s got it out in the lab. Let’s go look.” Dennys sliced more ham.

Sandy put a large dill pickle in his mouth. “Let’s finish making the sandwiches first.”

“Food first. Fine.”

With sandwiches
an inch or more thick in their hands, and full mouths, they went back out to the pantry and turned into the lab. In the early years of the century, when the house had been part of a working dairy farm, the lab had been used to keep milk, butter, eggs, and there was still a large churn in one corner, which now served to hold a lamp. The work counter with the stone sink functioned as well for
holding lab equipment as it had for milk and eggs. There was now a formidable-looking microscope, some strange equipment only their mother understood, and an old-fashioned Bunsen burner, over which, on a homemade tripod, a black kettle was simmering.

Sandy sniffed appreciatively. “Stew.”

“I think we’re supposed to call it
boeuf bourguignon.
” Dennys reached up to the shelf over the sink and pulled
down a square red tin. “Here’s the cocoa. Mother and Dad like it at bedtime.”

“When’s Dad coming home?” Dennys wanted to know.

“Tomorrow night, I think Mother said.”

Sandy, his mouth full, held his hands out to the wood stove. “If we had our driver’s licenses, we could go to the airport to meet him.”

“We’re good drivers already,” Dennys agreed.

Sandy stuffed another large bite of sandwich
into his mouth, and left the warmth of the stove to wander to the far corner of the lab, where there was a not-quite-ordinary-looking computer. “How long has Dad had this gizmo here?”

“He put it in last week. Mother wasn’t particularly pleased.”

“Well, it
is
supposed to be her lab,” Sandy said.

“What’s he programming?” Dennys asked.

“He’s usually pretty good about explaining. Even though I
don’t understand most of it. Tessering and red-shifting and space/time continuum and stuff.” Sandy stared at the keyboard, which had eight rather than the usual four ranks of keys. “Half of these symbols are Greek. I mean, literally Greek.”