For his project Calvin had worked out a variation on the theme of plant response. He had no way of measuring the subjective responses of a plant, so he decided to plant three bean seeds.
Mr. Jenkins did not think much of this.
Meg kythed him a warning, “Wait! This was all Calvin’s own idea. He was only nine years old then, and he didn’t know that experiments of the same kind were already being made.”
Calvin planted one of the seeds in a pot which he left in the kitchen at home. He put it on a windowsill where it would get sunlight, and he watered it daily. His brothers and sisters were warned that if they touched it they’d get clobbered. They knew he meant it, and they left his plant physically alone. However, the plant heard—
“Without ears?” Mr. Jenkins kythed crossly.
“Like Louise, maybe,” Meg returned.
The plant heard the automatic ugly invective of daily speech in Calvin’s home. Calvin himself stayed in the house as little as possible.
The other two seeds he took to the library, where the librarian gave him permission to put his pots in two sunny windows. One of these beans he watered and
cared for dutifully. That was all. The third bean he talked to, encouraging it, urging it to grow. When the first green shoot appeared he lavished on it all the love which had so little outlet in his home. He sat, after school, close by his plant, doing his homework, reading aloud when nobody was around, sharing.
The first of the bean plants, the one in the O’Keefe’s kitchen, was puny, and too pale a green, like the twins’ sickly peppers. The second plant, in the library window, the plant given regular care but no special time or attention, grew normally. The third plant, the plant Calvin loved, grew strong and green and unusually large and healthy.
Mr. Jenkins kythed thinly but quite comprehensibly, “If philodendron and beans can react like that, it should help me to understand farandolae—is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Sort of,” Meg replied.
Calvin added, “See? Distance doesn’t matter. They can know and converse with each other and distance doesn’t really exist for them.”
Mr. Jenkins sent out waves of disbelief. “And if they’re loved, they’ll grow? And if they aren’t loved—”
“The Echthroi can move in.”
Now she heard what could only be Sporos’s twingling. “They’re dull and slow, like all human beings, but you’re getting through to them at last, cherub.”
“My name is Proginoskes, if you please, mouse-creature.”
The farandola was not amused. “My name is Sporos.” A reproving twingle.
“Meg.” Proginoskes kythed deeply into her. “Do you realize what has just been happening? You’ve been close to Mr. Jenkins, haven’t you?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“And yet your bodies are not close together. And you already know that nothing can separate you from Calvin when you kythe together.”
Yes. She was with Calvin. They were together. She felt the warmth of his quick smile, a smile which always had a slight quirk of sadness and acceptance unusual in a sixteen-year-old. He was not kything in words now, but in great waves of courage, of strength, flowing over and through her.
She accepted it, absorbed it. Fortitude. She was going to need a great deal. She opened herself, drank it in.
“All right,” Proginoskes told them. “We are together. We can continue.”
“What are we to do?” Mr. Jenkins asked.
“The second test,” the cherubim urged. “We must pass the second test.”
“And that is?”
“To Name Sporos. As Meg had to Name you.”
“But Sporos is already Named!”
“Not until he has Deepened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When Sporos Deepens,” Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, “it means that he comes of age. It means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.”
Meg asked, “The little farandolae who saved me—”
“They came of age, Meg.”
She pondered this. “I
think
I understand—”
“I don’t,” Mr. Jenkins said. “I thought we came here to try to help Charles Wallace, that he is ill because of his mitochondria—”
Proginoskes pushed back impatience. “He is.”
“But what does Sporos have to do with Charles Wallace?”
“The balance of life within Yadah is precarious. If Sporos and the others of his generation do not Deepen, the balance will be altered. If the farandolae refuse to Deepen, the song will be stilled, and Charles Wallace will die. The Echthroi will have won.”
“But a child—” Mr. Jenkins asked. “One small child—why is he so important?”
“It is the pattern throughout Creation. One child,
one man, can swing the balance of the universe. In your own Earth history what would have happened if Charlemagne had fallen at Roncesvalles? One minor skirmish?”
“It would have been an Echthroi victory?”
“And your history would have been even darker than it is.”
“Mr. Jenkins!” Meg called. “Listen, I just remembered: For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
“We must save Charles Wallace!” Mr. Jenkins cried. “What can we do, Progo? What can we do?”
A
burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never separated from each other, no matter how great the distance.
We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.
Calvin asked, “How can you sing with the
stars?
”
There was surprise at the question: it is the song. We sing it together. That is our joy. And our Being.
“But how do you know about stars—in here—inside—”
How could farae not know about stars when farae and stars sing together?
“You can’t see the stars. How can you possibly know about them?”
Total incomprehension from the farae. If Meg and Calvin kythed in visual images, this was their limitation. The farae had moved beyond physical sight.
“Okay,” Calvin said. “I know how little of ourselves, and of our brains, we’ve learned to use. We have billions of brains cells, and we use only the tiniest portion of them.”
Mr. Jenkins added with his dry, ropy kythe, “I have heard that the number of cells in the brain and the number of stars in the universe is said to be exactly equal.”
“Progo!” Meg asked. “You memorized the names of all the stars—how many are there?”
“How many? Great heavens, earthling, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.”
“I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that’s a great many.”
“But how many?”
“What difference does it make? I know their
names
. I don’t know how many there are. It’s their names that matter.”
The strong kything of the farae joined Proginoskes. “And the song. If it were not for the support of the
singing of the galaxies, we farae on Yadah would have lost the melody, so few of the farandolae are Deepening. The un-Namers are at work.”
Meg felt a sudden chill, a pulling back, a fading of the Deepened farae; there was dissonance in the harmony; the rhythm faltered.
In her mind’s eye an image was flashed of a troop of farandolae dancing wildly about one fara-tree, going faster and faster, until she felt dizzy.
“Sporos is with them,” Proginoskes told her.
“What are they doing? Why are they spinning faster and faster?” The circle of farandolae revolved so rapidly that it became a swirling blur. The fronds of the great fara around whom they swirled began to droop.
“They are absorbing the nourishment which the fara needs. The fara is Senex, from whom Sporos came.” There was chill in Proginoskes’s words.
The speed of the dancing farandolae became like a scream in Meg’s ears. “Stop!” she cried. “Stop it at once!” There was nothing merry or joyful in the dance. It was savage, wild, furious.
Then, through the raging of the dance came a strong, pure strain of melody, quiet, certain, noble. The dancing farandolae broke their circle and scampered about aimlessly; then, led by Sporos, they raced to another fara and began circling it.
The fronds of Senex greened, lifted.
Proginoskes said, “He is strong enough to hold out longer than any of the other farae. But even Senex cannot hold out forever.” He stopped abruptly. “Feel.”
“Feel?”
“The rhythm of the mitochondrion. Is it my fearfulness, or is Yadah faltering?”
“It is not you,” Meg answered the cherubim. They were all very still, listening, feeling. Again there came a slight irregularity in the steady pulsing. A faltering. A missed beat. Then it steadied, continued.
Like a gash through the non-light of Yadah Meg had a brief vision of Charles Wallace lying in his small room, gasping for air. She thought she saw Dr. Louise, but the strange thing was that she could not tell whether it was Dr. Louise Colubra, or Louise the actual colubra. “Don’t give up. Breathe, Charles. Breathe.” And a steady voice, “It’s time to try oxygen.”
Then she was drawn back within the mitochondrion to Senex, the parent tree of Sporos. She tried to convey to him what she had just seen, but she received nothing from him in return. His incomprehension was even greater than Mr. Jenkins’s had been. She asked Proginoskes, “Does Senex know that Charles Wallace even exists?”
“As you know that your galaxy, the Milky Way, exists.”
“Does he know that Charles Wallace is ill?”
“As you know that your Earth is ill, by fish dying in
the rivers, birds dying in the forests, people dying in the choked cities. You know by war and hate and chaos. Senex knows his mitochondrion is ill because the farandolae will not Deepen and many farae are dying. Listen. Kythe.”
A group of farandolae whirled about a fara; fronds drooped; color drained. The dance was a scream of laughter, ugly laughter. Meg smelled the stench which was like the stench in the twins’ garden when she had first encountered an Echthros.
She heard a voice. It was like a bad tape recording of Mr. Jenkins. “You need not Deepen and lose your power to move, to dance. No one can force you to. Do not listen to the farae. Listen to me.”
The great central trunk of the surrounded fara began to weaken.
Meg tried to project herself into the dance, to break the vortex. “Sporos, come out! Don’t listen. You were sent to the Teacher. You belong with us. Come out, Sporos, you are meant to Deepen!”
Then it was as though she were the end skater in a violent game of crack-the-whip and suddenly was flung so wildly across the ice that she crashed into the end of the rink. The force with which she had been thrown was so fierce that her kything was completely blacked out.
“Breathe, Meg, breathe.” It was Proginoskes, using
the same words which Louise was using with Charles Wallace. “Breathe, Meg. You’re all right.”
She reeled, staggered, regained her balance.
Again she heard the ugly laugh, and the false Mr. Jenkins voice urging, “Kill the fara!”
Then came Mr. Jenkins’s own voice. “I see. I understand.” She felt emanating from him a dry, dusty acknowledgment of unpleasant fact.
She returned sharply, still slightly breathless, “I don’t understand.”
Mr. Jenkins asked her, “Why did Hitler want to control the world? Or Napoleon? Or Tiberius?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would. I think it would be awful.”
“But you admit that they did, Margaret?”
“They wanted to,” she conceded. “But they didn’t succeed.”
“They did a remarkably good job of succeeding for a period of time, and they will not lightly be forgotten. A great many people perished during the years of their rules.”
“But farandolae—why would little farandolae like Sporos—”
“They appear to be not that unlike human beings.”
She felt cold and quiet. Once Mr. Jenkins had accepted the situation, he understood it better than she
did. She asked, “Okay, then, what have the Echthroi got to do with it? They’re behind it, aren’t they?”
Proginoskes answered, “The Echthroi are always behind war.”
Meg turned in anguish towards Senex, calm and strong as an oak tree, but, unlike the oak, pliable, able to bend with wind and weather. “Senex, we’ve been sent to help, but I’m not strong enough to fight the Echthroi. I can’t stop Sporos and the other farandolae from killing the fara. Oh, Senex, if they succeed, won’t they kill themselves, too?”
Senex responded coldly, quietly. “Yes.”
“This is insane,” Mr. Jenkins said.
Proginoskes answered, “All war is insane.”
“But, as I understand it,” Mr. Jenkins continued, “we are a minutely immeasurable part of Charles Wallace?”
“We are.”
“Therefore if, while we are on—or, rather, in—this mitochondrion, if Charles Wallace were to die, then—er—um—we—”
“Die, too.”
“Then I fight not only for Charles Wallace’s life but for Meg’s, and Calvin’s, and—”
“Your own.”
Meg felt Mr. Jenkins’s total indifference to his own life. She was not yet willing to accept the burden of his
concern for her. “We musn’t think about that! We musn’t think about anything but Charles!”
Proginoskes wound around and through her thoughts: “You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos. Don’t you understand that we’re all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they’re trying to destroy all Creation?”
The dancing farandolae whirled and screamed, and Meg thought she could hear Sporos’s voice: “We’re not part of anybody! We’re farandolae, and we’re going to take over Yadah. After that—”
A hideous screech of laughter assailed Meg’s ears. Again she flung herself at the dance, trying to pull Sporos out of it.
Senex drew her back with the power of his kythe. “Not that way, not by force.”
“But Sporos has to Deepen! He has to!”
Then, around the edges of her awareness, Meg heard a twingling, and Calvin was with Sporos, trying to reach out to him, to kythe with him.
Sporos’s response was jangly, but he came out of the wild circle and hovered on its periphery. “Why did Blajeny send you alien life forms to Yadah with me? How can you possibly help with my schooling? We make music by ourselves. We don’t need you.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s volcanic upheaving, felt a violent
wind, searing tongues of flame. “Idiot, idiot,” Proginoskes was sending, “we all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other.”
“I don’t need you.”
Suddenly Proginoskes kythed quietly and simply, “I need you, Sporos. We all of us need you. Charles Wallace needs you.”
“I don’t need Charles Wallace.”
Calvin kythed urgently, “Don’t you? What happens to you if something happens to Charles Wallace? Who have you been listening to?”
Sporos withdrew. Meg could not feel him at all.
Calvin emanated frustration. “I can’t reach him. He slips away from me every time I think I’m getting close.”
Sporos was pulled back into the whirling circle. The surrounded fara was limp, all life draining rapidly. Senex mourned, “His song is going out.”
Proginoskes kythed, “Xed. Snuffed out like a candle.”
Senex’s fronds drooped in grief. “Sporos and his generation listen to those who would silence the singing. They listen to those who would put out the light of the song.”
Mr. Jenkins raised shadowy arms prophetically. “To kill the song is the only salvation!”
“No!” Mr. Jenkins cried to Mr. Jenkins. “You are only a mirror vision of me. You are nothing!”
Nothing nothing nothing
The word echoed, hollow, empty, repeating endlessly. Everywhere Meg kythed she seemed to meet a projection of an Echthros-Mr. Jenkins.
“Don’t you understand that the Echthroi are your saviors? When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death. There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation—”
Senex kythed through the Echthros. “No more singing!”
Proginoskes joined Senex. “No more stars, or cherubim, or the light of the moon on the sea.”
And Calvin: “There will never be another meal around table. No one will ever break bread or drink wine with his companions.”
Meg kythed violently against the nearest Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, “You are nothing! You’re only borrowing Mr. Jenkins in order to be something. Go away! You are nothing!”
Then she was aware that the real Mr. Jenkins was trying to reach her. “Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Calvin replied, “Then we must fill the vacuum. That is the only thing to do.”
“How?”
“If the Echthroi are nothingness, emptiness, then that emptiness can be filled.”
“Yes, but how do we fill it?”
Senex kythed calmly, “Perhaps you don’t want to fill it strongly enough. Perhaps you do not yet understand what is at stake.”
“I do! A little boy, my brother—what do you know about my little brother?”
Senex conveyed considerable confusion. He had a feeling for the word “brother” because all farae are—or had been—brothers. But “little boy” meant nothing to him whatsoever.
“I know that my galactic host is ill, perhaps dying—”
“That’s Charles Wallace! That’s my little brother! He may be a galactic host to you, but to me he’s just a little boy like—like Sporos.” She turned her kythe from Senex and towards the wildly dancing farandolae who had surrounded another fara. This time she kythed herself towards them cautiously. How could she be sure which one was Sporos?