6. How did Cindy feel when Emily offered to look for Red Eye:
Answers
Calvin wants to enter the CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building by himself and then report back to Meg and Charles Wallace, but the Murry children insist that they heed the parting words of Mrs. Which and stay together. Just as they are trying to figure out how to enter the building, a door opens before them, revealing a great entrance hall of dull, greenish marble and icy cold walls. Filling the hall are a number of similar-looking men wearing nondescript business suits.
The children decide to ask one of the suited men how things work in CENTRAL. The man instructs them to present their papers to a series of slot machines. He seems unable to understand the fact that they are strangers to the planet and do not know anything about the elaborate mechanical system governing all transactions and interactions. He says that he runs a "number-one spelling machine" on the "second-grade level." He warns that he will have to report the children to the authorities in order to avoid the risk of "reprocessing." Before he leaves, he advises them, "just relax and don't fight it and it will all be much easier for you."
The marble wall in front of the children suddenly dissolves, and they find themselves in an enormous room lined with machines and their robot-like attendants. At the end of the room they approach a platform on which a man with red eyes is seated in a chair. Above his head a glowing light pulsates with the same rhythm as his red eyes. The children immediately sense that the cold blackness emanating from this man is the same as that exuded by the Dark Thing, and Charles Wallace instructs Meg and Calvin to close their eyes lest the man hypnotize them. The man tries to do so by having them recite the multiplication tables rhythmically with him, but Charles and Calvin resist by shouting out nursery rhymes and the Gettysburg Address, respectively.
The man speaks directly into the children's brains without opening his mouth or moving his lips. He asks the children why they want to see their father, unable to understand that the sheer fact that he is their father is reason enough. Suddenly, Charles darts forward and kicks the man; he believes that the man is somehow not in full possession of himself. The man tells Charles that of all the children, he is the only one endowed with a neuropsychological system complex enough to understand him; Charles must look into the man's eyes in an attempt to decipher his identity.
The Man with the Red Eyes serves the children an elaborate turkey dinner, but to Charles all the food tastes like sand. The man explains that the food is synthetic, but Charles would be able to taste it if only he would open his mind to IT. He invites Charles to come with him and learn who he really is, and Charles agrees in spite of Meg's strong protestations. The man stares into Charles Wallace's eyes until the boy's pupils fade into the surrounding blue irises. Once extricated from the man's hypnotic stare, Charles acts like a different person. He asks Meg why she is being so "belligerent and uncooperative" and bids her eat the food prepared for them, which he now claims is delicious. Horrified, Meg shrieks to Calvin that the boy beside them is no longer Charles; the Charles they know is gone.