A Wind in the Door Page 9

  Meg thought,--Good for you, Charles, to think of Louise the Larger. If you terrified Mr. Jenkins, that would send you up a notch in the other kids' estimation. If there's one thing everybody in school agrees on, it's that Mr. Jenkins is a retarded rodent.

  Mr. Jenkins Three said severely, "You know perfectly well that small pets were meant, Charles Wallace. Turtles or tropical fish or perhaps even a hamster."

  "Or a gerbil," Mr. Jenkins Two added. "A gerbil would be acceptable."

  "Why have you multiplied?" Charles Wallace asked. "I found one of you quite enough."

  Louise clacked again; it was a flesh-chilling sound.

  Mr. Jenkins Three demanded, "Why aren't you in class, Charles?"

  "Because the teacher told me to take Louise the Larger and go home. I really don't understand why. Louise is friendly and she wouldn't hurt anybody. Only the girls were scared of her. She lives in our stone wall by the twins' vegetable garden."

  Meg looked at Louise, at the hooded eyes, the wary position of the head, the warning twitching of the last few inches of her black tail. Blajeny had told them that Louise was a Teacher. Louise herself had certainly shown in the past twenty-four hours that she was more than an ordinary garden snake. Louise would know--did know, Meg was sure--the real Mr. Jenkins. Swallowing her own shyness of all snakes, she reached out towards Charles Wallace. "Let me have Louise for a little while, please, Charles."

  But Proginoskes spoke in her mind. "No, Meg. You have to do it yourself. You can't let Louise do it for you."

  All right. She accepted that. But perhaps Louise could still help.

  Charles Wallace regarded his sister thoughtfully. Then he held out the arm around which Louise's lower half was coiled. The snake slithered sinuously to Meg. Her body felt cold, and tingled with electricity. Meg tried not to flinch.

  "Mr. Jenkins," Meg said. "Each of you. One at a time. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and Louise? Charles Wallace can't possibly walk home alone. It's too far. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and school in general?"

  Nobody volunteered an answer. All three folded their arms impassively across their chests.

  "Mr. Jenkins Three," Meg said.

  "Are you Naming me, Meg? That's right."

  "I'm not Naming anybody yet. I want to know what you're going to do."

  "I thought I had already told you. It is a situation which I shall have to guide carefully. It was foolish of Charlie to bring a snake to school. Snakes are quite frightening to some people, you know."

  Louise hissed slowly. Mr. Jenkins Three turned visibly paler.

  He said, "I shall have a long, quiet session with Charles Wallace's teacher. Then I will speak to each child in the first-grade room, separately. I shall see to it that each one has an understanding of the problem. If any of them group together and try bullying, I shall use strong disciplinary methods. This school has been run in far too lax and permissive a manner. From now on, I intend to hold the reins. And now, Charles Wallace, I shall drive you home. Your sister will bring your pet."

  Meg turned away from him. "Mr. Jenkins Two?"

  Mr. Jenkins Two detached himself by one pace from the others. "Force, that's what that impostor is advocating. Dictatorship. I will never put up with a dictatorship. But you should not have brought the snake to school, Charlie. You should have known better. But I think I understand. You thought it would enhance your social prestige, and make you more of an equal in the eyes of your peers. There's where happiness lies, in success with your peer group. I want all my children to be like each other, so we must help you to be more normal, even if it means that you must go to school elsewhere for a while. I understand there's someone from another galaxy who's interested in helping you. Perhaps that's our answer for the time being."

  Meg turned to Mr. Jenkins One. He gave a small, annoyed, Mr. Jenkins shrug. "I really do not foresee much change in my relationship with Charles Wallace in the future. Why interplanetary travel should be thought of as a solution to all earth's problems I do not understand. We have sent men to the moon and to Mars and we are none the better for it. Why sending Charles Wallace a few billion light-years across space should improve him any, I fail to see. Unless, of course, it helps his physical condition, about which nobody except myself appears concerned." He looked at his wristwatch. "How much longer does this farce continue?"

  Meg could feel sharp, painful little flickers as the cherubim thought at her. She did not want to listen.

  "It's all a waste of time!" she cried. "Why do I have to bother with all these Mr. Jenkinses? What can it possibly have to do with Charles?"

  Louise the Larger's breath was cool and gentle against her ear. "It doess, it doess," the snake hissed.

  Proginoskes said, "You don't need to know why. Just get on with it."

  Charles Wallace spoke wearily. "Give me Louise, please, Meg. I want to go home."

  "It's too far for you to walk."

  "We'll take it slowly."

  Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply, "I have already said I will drive you home. You may take the snake as long as it stays in the back seat."

  Mr. Jenkins One and Two said simultaneously, "I will drive Charles Wallace. And the snake." They shuddered slightly, not quite simultaneously, but in syncopation.

  Charles Wallace held out his arm and Louise slithered from Meg to the little boy. "Let's go," he said to the three men, turned away from them, and started to walk to where the faculty parked their cars. The Mr. Jenkinses followed him, walking abreast, all with the stiff, ungainly gait which was distinctively and solely Mr. Jenkins.

  "But who will he go with?" Meg asked Proginoskes.

  "The real one."

  "But then--"

  "I think that when they turn the corner there'll be only one of them. It gives us a small respite, at any rate." The cherubim materialized slowly, becoming at first a shimmer, then a transparent outline, then deepening in dimensions until he moved into complete visibility as the three Mr. Jenkinses disappeared. "Don't waste time," he thought sharply at her. "Think. What's the nicest thing you've ever heard about Mr. Jenkins?"

  "Nice? Nothing nice. Listen, maybe all of them are impostors. Maybe they won't come back."

  Again the sharp little pain. "That's too easy. One of them's real, and for some reason he's important. Think, Meg. You must know something good about him."

  "I don't want to know anything good about him."

  "Stop thinking about yourself. Think about Charles. The real Mr. Jenkins can help Charles."

  "How?"

  "We don't need to know how, Meg! Stop blocking me. It's our only hope. You must let me kythe with you." She felt him moving about within her mind, more gently now, but persistently. "You're still blocking me."

  "I'm trying not to--"

  "I know. Do some math problems in your head. Anything to shut out your un-love and let me in about Mr. Jenkins. Do some math for Calvin. You love Calvin. Good. Think about Calvin. Meg! Calvin's shoes."

  "What about them?"

  "What kind of shoes does he have on?"

  "His regular school shoes, I suppose. How would I know? I think he has only one pair of shoes, and his sneakers."

  "What are the shoes like?"

  "I don't know. I didn't notice. I don't bother much about clothes."

  "Think some more math and let me show them to you."

  Shoes. Strong, fairly new Oxfords which Calvin wore over mismated red and purple socks, the kind of shoes Mr. O'Keefe could ill afford to buy for his family. Meg saw the shoes vividly; the image was given her by Proginoskes; she had been quite truthful when she told him that she didn't notice clothes. Nevertheless, her mind registered all that she saw and it was there, stored, available to the kything of the cherubim. She saw with a flash of intuition that her kything was like a small child's trying to pick out a melody on the piano with one finger, as against the harmony of a full orchestra, like the cherubic language.

  In her mind's ear came the echo of Calvi
n's voice, coming back to her from an afternoon when she had been sent--unfairly, she thought--to Mr. Jenkins's office, and been dealt with--unfairly--there. Calvin's voice, quiet, calming, infuriatingly reasonable. "When I started seventh grade and went over to Regional, my mother bought me some shoes from a thrift shop. They cost her a dollar, which was more than she could spare, and they were women's Oxfords, the kind of black laced shoes old women wear, and at least three sizes too small for me. When I saw them, I cried, and then my mother cried. And my pop beat me. So I got a saw and hacked off the heels, and cut the toes out so I could jam my feet in, and went to school. The kids knew me too well to make remarks in my presence, but I could guess what they were sniggering behind my back. After a few days Mr. Jenkins called me into his office and said he'd noticed I'd outgrown my shoes, and he just happened to have an extra pair he thought would fit me. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to make them look used, as though he hadn't gone out and bought them for me. I make enough money in the summers now to buy my own shoes, but I'll never forget that he gave me the first decent pair of shoes I ever had. Sure I know all the bad things about him, and they're all true, and I've had my own run-ins with him, but on the whole we get along, maybe because my parents don't make him feel inferior, and he knows he can do things for me that they can't."

  Meg muttered, "It'd have been a lot easier if I could have gone on hating him."

  Now it was Proginoskes's voice in her mind's ear, not Calvin's. "What would be easier?"

  "Naming him."

  "Would it? Don't you know more about him now?"

  "Secondhand. I've never known him to do anything else nice."

  "How do you suppose he feels about you?"

  "He's never seen me except when I'm snarly," she admitted. She found herself almost laughing as she remembered Mr. Jenkins saying, "Margaret, you are the most contumacious child it has ever been my misfortune to have in this office," and she had had to go home and look up "contumacious."

  Proginoskes probed, "Do you think he'd believe anything good about you?"

  "Not likely."

  "Would you like him to see a different Meg? The real Meg?"

  She shrugged.

  "Well, then, how would you like to be different with him?"

  Frantically, she said, "I wish I had gorgeous blond hair."

  "You wouldn't, not really."

  "Of course I would!"

  "If you had gorgeous blond hair, you wouldn't be you."

  "That might be a good idea. Ouch, Progo, you hurt!"

  "This isn't any time for self-indulgence."

  "When Mr. Jenkins is being nice, he's not being Mr. Jenkins. Being nice on Mr. Jenkins would be like blond hair on me."

  Proginoskes sent ice-cold anger through her. "Meg, there's no more time. They'll be back any moment now."

  Panic churned in her. "Progo, if I don't Name right, if I fail, what will you do?"

  "I told you. I have to choose."

  "That's not telling me. I want to know which way you're going to choose."

  Proginoskes's feathers shivered as though a cold wind had blown through them. "Meg, there isn't much time. They're on their way back. You have to Name one of them."

  "Give me a hint."

  "This isn't a game. Mr. Jenkins was right."

  She shot him an anguished glance, and he lowered several sets of eyelashes in apology. "Progo, even for Charles Wallace, how can I do the impossible? How can I love Mr. Jenkins?"

  Proginoskes did not respond. There was no flame, no smoke; only a withdrawing of eyes behind wings.

  "Progo! Help me! How can I feel love for Mr. Jenkins?"

  Immediately he opened a large number of eyes very wide. "What a strange idea. Love isn't feeling. If it were, I wouldn't be able to love. Cherubim don't have feelings."

  "But--"

  "Idiot," Proginoskes said, anxiously rather than crossly. "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people."

  "Progo, you matter to me."

  Proginoskes puffed enveloping pale blue clouds. "That's not what I meant. I meant that cherubim only matter with earth people. You call it materializing."

  "Then, if you become visible only for us, why do you have to look so terrifying?"

  "Because when we matter, this is how we come out. When you got mattered, you didn't choose to look the way you do, did you?"

  "I certainly did not. I'd have chosen quite differently. I'd have chosen to be beautiful--oh, I see! You mean you don't have any more choice about looking like a drive of deformed dragons than I do about my hair and glasses and everything?You aren't doing it this way just for fun?"

  Proginoskes held three of its wings demurely over a great many of its eyes. "I am a cherubim, and when a cherubim takes on matter, this is how."

  Meg knelt in front of the great, frightening, and strangely beautiful creature. "Progo, I'm not a wind or a flame of fire. I'm a human being. I feel. I can't think without feeling. If you matter to me, then what you decide to do if I fail matters."

  "I fail to see why."

  She scrambled to her feet, batting at the last wisps of pale blue smoke which stung her eyes, and shouted, "Because if you decide to turn into a worm or whatever and join the Echthroi, I don't care whether I Name right or not! It just doesn't matter to me! And Charles Wallace would feel the same way--I know he would!"

  Proginoskes probed gently and thoughtfully into her mind. "I don't understand your feelings. I'm trying to, but I don't. It must be extremely unpleasant to have feelings."

  "Progo! What will you do?"

  Silence. No flame. No smoke. All eyes closed. Proginoskes folded the great wings completely. His words were very small as they moved into her mind. "X. If you fail, I will X myself."

  He vanished.

  Meg swung around and three Mr. Jenkinses were walking towards her from the direction of the parking lot. She faced them. "Mr. Jenkins."

  Identical, hateful, simultaneous, they stepped towards her.

  Mr. Jenkins One sniffed, the end of his pink nose wriggling distastefully. "I am back. I left Charles Wallace with your mother. Now will you please get rid of these two--uh--pranksters. I resent this intrusion on my time and privacy."

  Mr. Jenkins Two pointed to One accusingly. "That impostor lost his temper and showed his true colors when your little brother brought his snake to school. The impostor forgot himself and called the child a sn--"

  "Delete," Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply. "He used words unsuitable for a child. Blip it."

  Mr. Jenkins Two said, "He doesn't love children."

  Mr. Jenkins Three said, "He can't control children."

  Mr. Jenkins Two said, "I will make Charles Wallace happy."

  Mr. Jenkins Three said, "I will make him successful."

  Mr. Jenkins One looked at his watch.

  Meg closed her eyes. And suddenly she did not feel. She had been pushed into a dimension beyond feeling, if such a thing is possible, and if Progo was right, it is possible. There was nothing but a cold awareness which had nothing to do with what she normally would have thought of as feeling. Her voice issued from her lips almost without volition, cold, calm, emotionless. "Mr. Jenkins Three--"

  He stepped forward, smiling triumphantly.

  "No. You're not the real Mr. Jenkins. You're much too powerful. You'd never have to be taken away from a regional school you couldn't control and made principal of a grade school you couldn't control, either." She looked at Mr. Jenkins One and Two. Her hands were ice-cold and she had the sensation in the pit of the stomach which precedes acute nausea, but she was unaware of this because she was still in the strange realm beyond feeling. "Mr. Jenkins Two--"

  He smiled.

  Again she shook her head. "I wasn't quite as sure about you at first. But wanting to make everybody happy and just like everybody else is just as bad as Mr. Jenkins Three manipulating everybody. Bad as Mr. Jenkins is, he's the only one of the three of y
ou who's human enough to make as many mistakes as he does, and that's you, Mr. Jenkins One--" Suddenly she gave a startled laugh. "And I do love you for it." Then she burst into tears of nervousness and exhaustion. But she had no doubt that she was right.

  The air about the schoolyard was rent with a great howling and shrieking and then a cold nothingness which could only be the presence of Echthroi. It was as though rip after rip were being slashed in the air, and then the edges were drawn together and healed.

  Silence. And quiet. And a small, ordinary, everyday wind.

  Proginoskes materialized, delicately unfolding wing after wing to reveal his myriad various eyes.

  Mr. Jenkins One, the real Mr. Jenkins, fainted.

  SEVEN

  Metron Ariston

  Meg bent over Mr. Jenkins. She did not realize that Blajeny was there until she heard his voice.

  "Really, Proginoskes, you ought to know better than to take anyone by surprise like that, particularly a stilllimited one like Mr. Jenkins." He stood between the cherubim and Meg, almost as tall as the school building, half amused, half angry.

  Proginoskes fluttered several wings in halfhearted apology. "I was very relieved."

  "Quite."

  "Will this--uh--Mr. Jenkins ever be anything but a limited one?"

  "That is a limited and limiting thought, Proginoskes," Blajeny said sternly. "I am surprised."

  Now the cherubim was truly abashed. He closed his eyes and covered them with wings, keeping only three eyes open, one each to gaze at Blajeny, Meg, and the prone Mr. Jenkins.

  Blajeny turned to Meg. "My child, I am very pleased with you."

  Meg blushed. "Shouldn't we do something about Mr. Jenkins?"

  Blajeny knelt on the dusty ground. His dark fingers, with their vast span, pressed gently against Mr. Jenkins's temples; the principal's usually pasty face was grey; his body gave a spasmodic twitch; he opened his eyes and closed them again immediately; moaned.

  Tension and relief had set Meg on the verge of hysteria; she was half laughing, half crying. "Blajeny, don't you realize you must be almost as frightening to poor Mr. Jenkins as Progo?" She, too, dropped to her knees beside the principal. "Mr. Jenkins, I'm here. Meg. I know you don't like me, but at least I'm familiar. Open your eyes. It's all right. Really it is."

  Slowly, cautiously, he opened his eyes. "I must make an appointment with a psychiatrist. Immediately."

  Meg spoke soothingly, as to a very small child. "You aren't hallucinating, Mr. Jenkins, honestly you aren't. It's all right. They're friends, Blajeny and Progo. And they're real."