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Meg paced through the orchard, not really seeing the beauty of the trees and the late-fall apples around her, though ordinarily she would have noticed and taken pleasure in the way the sun shone through the variously colored leaves, making them almost luminous. She usually relished being back at her parents' home where she had grown up, and this time she was even without any of her children, except for Polly, who had been spending the semester with Meg's parents. Meg and Calvin had hoped that Polly would find this a time of recovery after her friend and mentor's death that summer, which had hit her hard, and also that her grandparents would teach her some subjects that Meg and Calvin didn't think her high school was adequately covering.
It was rare that Meg was able to visit her parents, much less without seven children in tow. Especially when the children had been younger and it was harder for Meg to travel without them, it was much more common for her parents to come to them, in Portugal and then in South Carolina. But now the children were all a little older – Rosy, the youngest, was now four – and her parents and Polly had asked her to come. And Calvin had encouraged her, saying that he could certainly hold down the fort for a few days while she relaxed with them.
But it had not been relaxing. When she had arrived, she had found a very odd story waiting for her. Her parents and her daughter had sat down with her and told her that Polly had gone through a time gate to the distant past, where she had almost been used as a human sacrifice, but had instead saved herself and another young man who had gone to the past with her. If all three of them had not assured her of this story, and pointed out that she could also check with their family friend Dr. Louise and the doctor's brother for further corroboration, she would not have believed them.
It was all over now, and the time gate was closed and would not be reopened. So, as her mother had said, all was well that ended well, and Polly was safe; there was nothing to be concerned about. But Meg was having many conflicting feelings anyway. She was both proud of Polly and horrified that this had happened to her; and at the same time, it brought back all the experiences she and Calvin and Charles Wallace had had when they were younger. And she was upset that she hadn't been told about it before she arrived at the house. It felt, even though she knew it hadn't been intended that way, as if Polly and her parents had been colluding to keep secrets from her. She needed time to sort out all her emotions, and so she was walking outside, by herself.
She would go to the star-watching rock. The large glacial rock was where she had always gone to think, and to calm down, especially in her adolescence when she was so frequently upset and angry. But as she approached the star-watching rock, like a mirror image, she saw a woman, a little younger than she was, walk up to the star-watching rock. Meg frowned. There was no reason for anyone else to be there, and Polly and her parents were still at the house. Could it be that the time gate was still open, even though Polly and her parents said it was shut?
As they drew nearer each other, Meg realized that the woman seemed very familiar. She had glasses and shorter hair, but otherwise looked very much like Meg herself; indeed, almost identical.
But, Meg thought, this was ludicrous. It couldn't be herself, or could it be -- Her mind swiftly went to dark possibilities of possession and the Echthroi she had dealt with as a child, remembering when there had been three versions of her grade school principal, two of whom had not really existed. No, there must be more rational explanations. And the woman did not look exactly like her, after all, not having Meg's contacts or longer hair. "Hello, who are you?" Meg asked, still trying to be as gracious as she could.
"Margaret Murry O'Keefe."
Meg blinked. The woman also had her voice. She said slowly, "That's... a bold claim. Who do you think I am?"
"Margaret Murry O'Keefe, of course!" the other woman said, a bit impatiently. Then, looking at Meg's face and seeming to catch herself, she took a deep breath. "So you don't know, then. I'd hoped that you'd understand when you saw me." She sighed. "I'm from another universe. Do you not know how it works? It's an integral part of my – our – my – research. Sometimes universes split off from each other, similar but wholly different. Your universe and mine split off not that long ago."
"Hold on," Meg said, "you're from what?" Was the woman insane, perhaps? But she did look like Meg. She had Meg's voice. She even had Meg's impatience, that she tried to act as if she had grown out of, although she never had, not really; she just hid it better. But then, this woman did not seem to hide it particularly well. And there was that comment about research; what could she mean? Meg had worked with Calvin quite a lot, doing statistics and computer work, but that could hardly be called her research.
Meg had already been told today that there had been a time gate, by the people in the world whom she trusted most to tell her the truth. So instead of rejecting her out of hand, Meg instead said cautiously, "Let's say that I believe you. Why are you here?"
The other Meg frowned and sat down hard on the star-watching rock. "We shouldn't in fact be able to talk to one another this way. There's a – " She hesitated. "Maybe you don't – do you? – have the mathematics to understand? Imagine it as a hole, a tear, between the universes. I'm not sure what caused it. Perhaps a temporal instability. Have you noticed any temporal instabilities around here recently?"
Meg shuddered. Temporal instability was one way to describe what had happened to Polly. A time slip, she was saying. Meg said sharply, "Are you saying that the temporal instability could cause a tear between universes?"
The other woman nodded. "If you've seen a temporal nexus, that's certainly suggestive."
Meg was still not entirely sure what to make of all this or even whether to believe the other woman. She approached the star-watching rock and was about to go up to the other woman when the other said, "No, stop!" so urgently that Meg did, indeed, stop in her tracks.
"Don't come any farther!" said the other, with a barely suppressed note of panic in her voice. "Do you see the discontinuity? I'm not sure, but I think any large amount of mixing could make the decoherence more rapid."
Meg scrutinized her surroundings more carefully. She now saw that there was something like a line in the middle of the star-watching rock; on one side of the line, the side that the woman was sitting on, the colors seemed not quite right, though when she tried to understand whether the colors were brighter or duller, more reddish or bluish, none of those seemed to quite fit. Her eyes wanted to slide away from the division between one side and another. She felt, too, as if the wind were pushing back against her, although it was a calm windless day. There was a frisson of wrongness about the place, as if her senses understood something that her brain was still struggling with.
All right. Meg wasn't sure she completely understood, but she could accept the caution of not moving too quickly, whatever else the situation involved. She said, "How bad is it, if the tear remains?"
The other Meg's lips pressed together. "I asked myself that as well, whether anything needed to be done. But it would only get bigger, until both universes merged. And the way I think it would work would be that some pieces of each universe would be, let's say, overwritten by the other, in the process of merging. I think most of us would find that rather objectionable."
"So the gap needs to be closed."
The other Meg nodded. "We have some time. If my calculations are correct, it will be a few days at least before we start seeing any noticeable growth in the rift. Maybe even weeks. And I have some ideas on how to fix it. With any luck, the fix could be much faster than that, hours or less." She scowled, in a frustrated way that looked very familiar to Meg. "If I could only just show you the math! Look, I have a pad of paper with me, let me show you." She produced a yellow pad and a pencil from what must have been a rather voluminous jacket pocket. "Um – you do know quantum mechanics, right? You had it in college?"
"I did have one class," Meg said warily, "though I don't know how much of it I'd remember now. I could do the math still, I'm pretty sure."
"Yes, all right, I think I can describe most of the problem, at least, with college-level math, and I suppose we will just have to wing it from there. Okay." Her pencil moved rapidly across the pad, filling it with symbols. "So, if you remember from your class –"
Meg remembered more than she had thought she would, but started feeling overwhelmed after a short period of time. If only, she thought, she'd gone to graduate school, or at least had kept up with her college mathematics as she had promised herself and Calvin she would do when she had decided not to go to grad school.
She could tell that her counterpart was also getting more and more frustrated. It was a feeling that was intimately familiar to her; she remembered teaching Polly and Charles math, and being exasperated that they couldn't pick up things as quickly as she wanted them to. Calvin had taken over teaching math to the two of them, and by the time she needed to do the same with Xan and Den, Meg had learned a little more patience. But she was not the one teaching this time.
Xan and Den were now old enough that they didn't want their mother teaching them what they could learn in school, but what would Meg do if she were teaching the little ones, Johnny and Rosie, right now? She'd try something different.
"We could kythe," Meg suggested, dredging up the word from the back of her brain. She hadn't thought of kything, hadn't used this way of talking in a language that was deeper than words, since before Polly had been born. And yet if one couldn't kythe with one's alternate self, who could one kythe with? It could also, she thought, be a way of showing whether what the other woman said was the truth.
The other Meg said, troubled, "I haven't done it since Charles Wallace had mitochondritis. I don't know --"
Meg, reminded of Charles Wallace, burst out: "But you've kythed with Charles Wallace since then! At Thanksgiving that one year, when the unicorn came!"
The other woman stared at her. "Not me! That was Calvin! I was in Paris, giving a talk on probabilistic surfaces. His mother was having some health issues, so he stayed with her instead of coming with me. That was the only year she'd ever come to Thanksgiving with our family –"
"And Calvin kythed with Charles Wallace that night?"
"Yes! He wrote about it in his second novel. That's the one that he's still best known for. It made everyone get quite a bit more interested in Matthew Maddox again."
Meg blinked. Not to have had that experience with Charles Wallace going through time with the unicorn? Calvin to have had that instead? It was an odd and somewhat bitter thought. She would not have traded that experience to Calvin for the world; but, when she thought about it for a minute, perhaps Calvin would also not have traded for the world the opportunity, through Charles Wallace, to learn about his family. And Calvin writing novels? "In any case --" Meg assured her, as Charles Wallace had assured her then: "It's like swimming, or riding a bike. Once you learn, you never forget." She hoped that was true, in any case.
Meg had always been relieved to have a plan of action, something she could concentrate on doing, and the other Meg looked to be the same. "Let's try, then," said the other.
Meg slowly held out her hand to the other woman. "I think physical contact will help, even a little. Do you think that would be all right?"
The other said, "If we keep it at a minimum, I think that won't be too bad for the rift." She extended her hand in return, as if they were on either side of a mirror, and touched her fingers to Meg's. Something like electricity went between their fingers. Meg closed her eyes.
She was with the other Meg.
(No, they thought together, they didn't like this talk of other woman and other Meg. She was herself. Better to call her Margaret. That's what she had started being known by in graduate school, and what everyone called her these days.)
(Graduate school? thought Meg.)
They were together. Meg with Margaret; Margaret with Meg.
Meg, still wondering about Margaret, questioned in the kythe: how did you become who you are? who are you? who is Margaret?
And in return, slowly and hesitantly at first, there were images: her parents, the twins Sandy and Dennys, Charles Wallace. Meeting Calvin; rescuing her father; Calvin and Meg (and Mr. Jenkins!) in Charles Wallace's mitochondrion, with the farandolae. Meg could feel the images and memories running both ways down the kythe, identical for both of them.
She found herself falling deeper into the kythe, into a memory that could have been her own: she and Calvin were at the star-watching rock, late on a summer evening, the glory of the Milky Way spread out across the sky. She leaned against Calvin, enjoying feeling his arms around her and his hand idly caressing her shoulder. For a while neither of them said anything; there was no sound except that of the crickets chirping in the grass. Her thumb touched the back of the engagement ring she was still unaccustomed to wearing; Calvin had proposed to her a few weeks ago with the small sapphire ring, although they were not planning to marry until she graduated the summer after this one.
Finally Calvin said in her ear, "Have you thought about what you want to do next year?" His hand tightened around her shoulder. "You know that we'll find a way to make it work, whatever you want to do. But we do need to figure it out."
Meg sighed. Calvin was currently working with her parents while she finished up college, but he wouldn't do that forever. He was right; both of them would have to decide what they were doing, together, and soon. One possibility they'd talked about was that he would go to graduate school, either for his Ph.D. or M.D. or both, and she would go with him, perhaps doing some mathematics on the side, and they would try to start a family. Another possibility was that she would go to graduate school for her Ph.D. in mathematics, and he would go with her, perhaps writing on the side; in this case they might well delay having a family. They had agreed that they didn't want to try to coordinate having both of them in graduate school, particularly if it meant being separated.
She had loved doing math in college, and it came easily to her; she knew that graduate school would be more difficult, though she hoped she would still love it. The idea that they might be able to start a family right away was also extremely appealing; she loved her brothers and loved the idea of having children that took after both Calvin and herself.
"They're both good choices," she said to Calvin. She had been torn between the two, but she knew it was time to choose. "What if we –"
*
Meg surfaced from the kythe, her eyes snapping open. She remembered that night vividly. She had told Calvin that she would go with him as he went to medical school, and soon enough she had become pregnant with Polly, and then subsequently all the other children, while Calvin went deeper into his research into starfish.
But Margaret had chosen graduate school, while Calvin became a writer. That was the difference between them.
She closed her eyes again, willing herself to fall back into the kythe.
*
More images came through the kythe. Margaret realizing in graduate school that she loved mathematical research and that she was rather good at it, becoming interested in mathematical physics as well. The pressure of obtaining a tenure-track position, and juggling the interest of the government in some of her research, and the elation of starting to win many of the top awards in the field for her work. Calvin, writing science fiction and becoming more and more well known for his books. Finding worldwide friends as they traveled internationally for conferences and writing. The joy of understanding more and more, of insights and connections that built on each other –
How did you become who you are? who are you? who is Meg?
And through the kythe Meg found herself kything back her own images: Polly as a baby, then as an energetic red-haired toddler when Charles was born; the solitude of the Portugese island where Calvin did his research and Meg did statistics, but with international friends like Canon Tallis and Calvin's students. Xan, Den, Peggy, Johnny, Rosy, as babies, then as toddlers, as children, and the older ones now as teenagers; the rebuilt old hotel they lived in on Benne Seed Island; the friends they'd made there, through Calvin's research and the children's interests. The joy of watching her family grow and figuring out the unique people they were –
"But now let me show you the math!" Margaret kythed impatiently, cutting through the two-way streams of images from their lives.
Meg guessed that this impatience, which Meg herself had had to master in order to have any hope of wrangling all her children, was part of what made Margaret such a formidable mathematician. She laid herself more open to the kythe, and Margaret responded eagerly by kything a steady stream of mathematics and physics concepts.
Meg found that, as she had anticipated, everything made much more sense in the kythe than out of it. Here were the quantum physics concepts she had all but forgotten, made transparent (more transparent, in fact, than they had been when she learned them in college) by the kythe -- and here was the modified-many-world hypothesis that postulated via a probabilistic topological argument that there could be rifts leading to interaction between the universes, if there had already been a knot-like structure in space-time -- and here were Margaret's half-formed equations (that even as she kythed to Meg, she refined and elaborated upon) on how, building on tesseract theory, it might be possible to treat the rift as an error folded through a higher-dimensional space that could be corrected, while still keeping the distinct universes whole and coherent -- and here she had realized a way to do this: if from either side of the rift, two instantiations of the same consciousness were able to hold in both their minds, together, a way to resolve the states of the universes -- and here Meg tumbled out of the kythe.
Meg looked at Margaret, who was still sitting beside her on the star-watching rock, in awe of the mathematical concepts and structures she had seen in the kythe, so complex and intricate, and yet which Margaret treated with such effortless proficiency, with a joy and a love in the mathematics that Meg could not help but respond to. Margaret's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. "I think that was better, Meg. Did you understand?"
After a minute Meg said, "Yes, I think I understand now. It could work. But," she continued, a bit plaintively, "I'm tired out. I don't think I could manage thinking about even trig right now, much less hold something that complex in my brain."
"I agree," said Margaret, though she looked much less tired than Meg felt. "It would be better to do this when we're both fresh. Let's call it a night and sleep, and try it tomorrow when we're fully rested."
*
Meg didn't tell anyone about Margaret when she got back to the house, which had the perhaps predictable effect that she couldn't sustain any kind of strong emotion about her parents and Polly not telling her about the time gate earlier without realizing that she was doing the same thing. What could I say to them? she thought, but of course they must have had the same thoughts about the time gate. Would it have really changed anything if they'd told her about it before she had flown up to see them?
Dinner was quiet – it seemed especially quiet to Meg, used to the cacophony of seven children – though Polly and Meg's father seemed to want to show off how much Polly knew about tesseracts. It was a way, Meg suspected, of demonstrating that it was still worth it to have Polly here, even with time gates as an unexpected side effect. Both her parents seemed to be relieved that Meg wasn't trying to say much about the time gate or what had happened during Polly's trip into the past.
After dinner, Meg went to see Polly in Charles Wallace's old room. It had been made over, and the look of the new room suited Polly much more than it now suited Charles Wallace, although Meg missed the way it had been. Perhaps some of this was because she missed her brother, whom she didn't get to see very often because of how much he traveled for his government work. She sighed. Was it part of the human condition to always want things to be different than they presently were?
Polly was sprawled on the bed, reading. "Listen to this, Mother. I'd never read Dante before Grandmother gave it to me. I'm learning the Italian, but here it is in English:
"I saw—ingathered
and bound by love into one single volume—
what, in the universe, seems separate, scattered:
substances, accidents, and dispositions
as if conjoined.
"Isn't that marvelous?"
Meg sat down on the bed next to her. "That's lovely, yes, that imagery that everything that is scattered is really all gathered in." She wondered if that was how Polly thought of her recent adventures. She added, "And I'm glad the Grands are encouraging you in all your subjects, not just science."
Polly nodded. "They are. I love it here with the Grands. Everything... everything that happened, that doesn't change that."
"I don't want you to think that you can't talk about it," Meg said, trying to make her voice as gentle as possible. "I was worried for you -- and I still am; you're my firstborn child -- but I think you know I won't be angry with you, or anything like that." She remembered how her own parents had squelched all talk of the tesseract, when she was a child, and how much she had wanted to talk about it. Now, as an adult, she understood that a large part of that had been because of the high security classification around all of her father's work, but she hadn't quite understood that when she was younger. "I know," she said aloud to Polly, "that the Grands aren't good at talking about things after they think everything is settled." Meg worried quite a bit that Polly might think she had to keep things from her, while she also knew that this was bound to happen as Polly grew older and more independent.
And yet, wasn't she keeping things from Polly, even tonight? And she had never told any of her children about the experiences she and Calvin and Charles Wallace had had; it almost seemed like those things had happened to someone else, long ago.
Polly considered. "I'd like to talk to you about it, Mother. Just... not yet. I think I need to think about it some more first." She said abruptly, "Mother, what would you think if I went to medical school?"
Meg remembered that her mother and Polly had told her about how Polly had healed the young man who had gone back with her in time. "Polly, you know that your father and I don't want to push you into any particular path." She smiled, with a bit of effort. "You have so many talents, and we do want you to do whatever you feel is right for you." She had herself thought that Polly might pursue writing, but Polly was always surprising her by not being the person she had envisioned.
Polly grinned. "I know, Mother. And I appreciate it, you know. I know some kids whose parents have their lives all planned out for them, or who expect their kids to be miniature versions of them. I'm glad you and Daddy are letting me decide for myself what I want my life to be, and you don't feel like I need to do exactly what you did, or what Daddy did." She laughed, and Meg's heart melted at the sound, as it always had since the time when Polly was a small baby, laughing up at her and Calvin. "Which is good, because even if I go to medical school, I don't think I'll actually be much like Daddy. I don't have any drive to do research at all!"
Meg gazed affectionately at her oldest child and ruffled her hair. "I will love you whatever you decide for your life, my darling."
*
Meg went downstairs after putting Polly to bed. Of course Polly was years too old to be tucked into bed with a snuggle and a kiss as Meg still tucked in Rosy and Johnny (Peggy having lately decided she was all grown up and could put herself to bed as her older siblings did), but Polly hadn't made any complaint, and Meg suspected that, even though Polly's words declared she was almost grown and independent, it was as reassuring to her to be occasionally taken care of by her mother as it was reassuring to Meg to be able to do so.
Her mother looked up from the paper she was reading as Meg entered the room. "Ah, Meg, there you are. I suppose Polly's in bed now?"
"Yes, she was tired," Meg said, sitting next to her mother and randomly picking up another paper from the pile on the table. It was one of Father's tesseract-related papers. Normally she would have just put it back down again, but thinking about her afternoon with Margaret, she picked up a pencil and idly tried to work out one of the equations on the first page. After a few tries, she thought she had it. Would she be able to read all these papers without difficulty if she'd studied math, instead of –? Maybe, she thought, she would apply this fall to finally do that graduate degree. There was still time to apply, and Rosy would be in kindergarten by the time any such program would start. "Where's Father?"
"Swimming." Her mother cleared her throat. "I just wanted you to know, Polly's been asking questions. Of why you had seven children." So it was going to be like it always was, Meg thought. Now that the episode of time-traveling was over, it wasn't going to be talked about, at least not by her parents. For a Nobel-prize-winning scientist, she thought, not for the first time, her mother had a curious antipathy to talking about anything that was out of the ordinary in life, whether it was journeys to a mitochondrion or even the emotions associated with her youngest son almost dying of mitochondritis. Not all of it, after all, could be explained by the security classifications around her father's work.
"What did you tell her?" Meg inquired.
Her mother shrugged. "I asked her whether she'd wish not to have any of them, and of course she said no, she loves her brothers and sisters. But of course that's not an answer." This, Meg could see, was a not-very-veiled attempt to get information out of her.
"I'm glad she loves her siblings," Meg said mildly, as she might have said to Charles or Xan, declining to rise to the bait. "Remember when she had the idea that she would trade in Den for chocolate?" And from there the conversation devolved into amusing memories of her mother's grandchildren.
Meg could not tell her mother the reasons that she had leaned into being a mother. Because she herself had been so unhappy as a child, feeling that her mother had never had enough time for her and the other children, always being tied to her microscope; because she'd been so unhappy at school and wanted to give her children a chance not to have to experience school at all, to be taught just by their parents; because she'd been intimidated by her own mother's beauty and brilliance and didn't want her daughters to be intimidated in the same way. (And Polly and Peggy didn't seem to be at all, and hopefully Rosy wouldn't be either.) And then the most fundamental reason she wanted to be a mother of seven, underlying all the others, she could not say because she and her parents never talked about these things: because she had been told that she had a gift for Naming, and she felt that being a mother to her children, loving them from birth and nurturing their unique identities as they grew, would be the best way of honoring that gift.
Meg wondered what Polly would think of all this. She was ruefully aware that she had made her own share of mistakes; she knew that Polly and Charles, for starters, resented having been thrust into high school at Benne Seed Island suddenly, without ever having had the experience of mainstream school before that. Perhaps Polly would turn away from her and her choices in the same way that she had turned away from her mother's. And that would have to be all right with her, as she had told Polly, even though she didn't have to always like it. She was grateful that her own mother, though certainly not flawless, had also let her make her own choices, whether they agreed with her own or not.
She wondered what Margaret would say about why she had not had children.
*
Meg slept, and dreamed. She dreamed that she kythed with Margaret, even in the dream. Margaret, on returning to the farmhouse, had a quiet dinner with her parents, after which her father mentioned that he would be going swimming.
When he had left, Margaret and her mother read papers for a while, companionably. Margaret was reading some recent research on manifold entanglement which she thought could be useful, while her mother flipped through some recent work on farandolae maturation. The argument in the paper was clever and subtle, and she was thoroughly engrossed in it when she heard her mother clear her throat. Her mother said, "You and Calvin don't get lonely in Boston, do you?"
That, Margaret could see, was a not-very-veiled attempt to get information out of why she and Calvin hadn't had children. Normally, she might have flared up at her mother, might have been upset at what her mother might or might not be trying to imply.
But with Meg in the back of her head, she said mildly, "Not at all, Mother. Oh, did I tell you that Sandy came to visit with his two oldest last week?" And from there the conversation devolved into discussing her mother's grandchildren, and when they might expect to see Sandy's children again. Margaret thought: she could talk to her colleagues, to Calvin – but would she also know how to talk to her mother without thinking about it so hard, if she'd had children, or even studied psychology, instead of single-mindedly –? Maybe, she thought, she would take a class in human psychology next semester, to learn something new.
Margaret could not tell her mother the reasons that she and Calvin had never had children. Because she had been so unhappy as a child, feeling that her mother had never had enough time for her and the other children, always being tied to her microscope; because she'd been so unhappy at school; because she'd been intimidated by her own mother's beauty and brilliance; and she worried that any children of hers would feel all these things. And then the most fundamental reason, underlying all the others, she could not say because she and her parents never talked about these things: because she had been told that she had a gift for Naming, and she felt that giving her whole heart to mathematical research, deeply understanding and naming the unique beauties of the universe and sharing them with students and colleagues, would be the best way of honoring that gift.
She wondered what Meg would say about why she had had so many children.
And that night she slept, and dreamed, the kythe in the back of her head, dreaming that she kythed with Meg, kything with her, even within the dream.
*
Meg rose early the next morning. No one else was out and about; Polly was surely still sleeping, and although she thought perhaps her parents were awake, there was no sign from their bedroom. She shrugged on a jacket, scribbled a note that she was going for a walk and affixed it to the refrigerator, and went quietly out the door.
Would it really be so bad if the universes merged? she thought slowly as she walked towards the star-watching rock. If one could decide, could keep the best of each, couldn't it result in a universe where everything was better? Where she could have, perhaps, have had children and -- But she pushed all those thoughts aside as she approached the star-watching rock. Because of the kything link, still in her head, she was unsurprised to find Margaret there at the star-watching rock already. "Are you ready?" Margaret inquired.
"I think so," Meg said, and they touched hands, as they had done the previous day.
The day before, kything the math and physics had taken effort; kything did not come as naturally to Meg or Margaret as it did to, say, Charles Wallace, But it had been straightforward, and easier than Meg had remembered it being when she had kythed with others in the past. But today it took so much effort that it was almost painful. Meg tried to hold in her head the resolution of the rift, as she had seen in the kythe the day before, but it was as if it kept slipping away from her.
Can kything muscles become sore? she thought, or perhaps it was Margaret thinking it.
"There's something blocking us," Margaret said, echoing her thoughts. "Both of us."
"Could it be --" Meg hesitated. "Do you think it could be the Echthroi?" Both Meg and Margaret shuddered at the mention of the name -- the cosmic destroyers, the ones who caused galaxies to rip in half and farandolae not to mature. Meg thought: it would make sense if they were behind everything that had happened here, that they were trying to stop Margaret and Meg. It would almost be a relief to find that out, to know that this was what was happening.
"I don't know," she said. "Let's try again." And this time it was easier. Somehow, this time she found herself moving easily past the block. Now, she could work to construct the edifice in her mind that Margaret had kythed to her the day before: the edifice that would, when fully constructed in both of their minds, resolve the rift and separate the universes again.
But what she was building now was not quite what Margaret had kythed to her, though it was still based on what she had learned from Margaret. This would wholly merge the universes, not separate them. She did not want to separate them, and she knew now that this was what had blocked them before.
The Echthroi could not stop her. The two universes would be destroyed, and there would be one left in its place. There would be one Meg/Margaret, who would be able to do groundbreaking mathematical research and who would be able to give her children all the time and attention they needed. She would decide for both universes. She would determine which parts would be taken from each universe. With a growing sense of triumph, she realized that she and Margaret could hold it all in their minds, they could decide for everyone --
I'm glad you're letting me decide for myself, Polly said in her memory. It was like a dash of cold water over her. And then she knew what she had resisted seeing.
She did not disbelieve in the ancient enemy, the Echthroi she had contended against as a child. But here the enemy was not an outside force of evil, a dark cosmic shadow. It was herself. She had created the block at the beginning. She was the force who was working against what was right. It was her own desires made monstrous that stood in their way.
But it would be so much easier! she thought. It would be better! We could choose the best of both universes!
But I don't have that right. All the people of both the universes: I don't have the right to decide for all of them, I don't have the right to control who all of them would be, and which parts of them would be destroyed.
And she realized that some part of her had been thinking, this way she might be able to have it all – she could have children, she could also have the mathematics career that she gave up to have the children – and it was so breathtakingly selfish that she reeled back from the enormity of it: to destroy everyone, or parts of everyone, in two universes just so that she could have what she had chosen not to have.
And now that she could step back and think about it more calmly for a moment, she realized that most likely she would not have been able to have all her children or all her career, in such a universe. Would she have lost Polly, or Charles, or Rosy, because of her desires? Would she really have been able to do all that Margaret had done, understand all that Margaret understood, if she also had Xan and Den and Peggy? Would she, or Margaret, been able to have the friendships they had had? They could not have had both sets of friends and been one person.
Margaret had hunched over and covered her eyes with her hands. "It wasn't just you. It was me too, Meg. I wanted that too. And I didn't see how wrong it was until you showed me."
Meg put a hand on her shoulder. "I know. I know." She drew in a ragged breath. "But you were the one who told me, yesterday, that it was a bad idea." Had it only been yesterday? It seemed like years ago. "And we realized in time. We didn't do it." She breathed out, and in again. "But I think now we can fix it, the way it should be fixed."
Margaret straightened. "Yes. And, Meg, you know, I think we won't see each other again, not if we succeed in closing the rift." She swallowed. "I wanted to say, I think you're wonderful. That was why I was tempted so much."
Meg said, moved, "I think you're wonderful too, and the same for me." That had been why she had been tempted as well; because seeing the person that she could have been, had she made different choices, some part of her wanted so much to be that person.
But in the end, now that they had pulled each other away from the brink, she didn't regret who she was now. And neither, she knew, did Margaret. One volume of love, though separate and scattered, she thought: the words another gift from her daughter.
She closed her eyes, centering herself, and felt in the back of her head Margaret doing the same. And then they started to build the edifice in their thoughts that they were meant to have built all along: the one that split the universes up again. A few times Meg wavered, but Margaret steadily kythed her the math and the physics she needed until she was able to hold it all in her head. And at the very end, Margaret stumbled, not knowing what the last step was or how to take it. But this, Meg knew.
You are Margaret, Meg said.
You are Margaret,
who chose math and physics,
who in the end was able to formulate how to save the universes.
I Name you Margaret.
You are Meg, Margaret said.
You are Meg,
who chose Polly and Charles and Xan and Den and Peggy and Johnny and Rosy,
who in the end was able to keep hold of what was important.
I Name you Meg.
And in an instant Margaret was gone. Meg no longer felt her in the back of her head; and when Meg looked closely at the star-watching rock, there was no oddness there of color or focus.
Meg took a deep breath and started back to the house. This time, she let herself notice and enjoy the cool breeze in the air, the sun higher in the sky than it had been when she left, making dappled patterns on the ground as she made her way through the trees. As she let herself in the pantry door, she saw Polly was mixing up eggs on the countertop as Meg's father flipped pancakes at the stove beside his granddaughter and Meg's mother poured milk into glasses. "Mother!" Polly said, looking up and smiling.
Meg came to them and embraced all three of them. "Let me tell you," she said, "what I've been doing this morning."