Shortest Day

by Jane Langton

  Mary put down her briefcase and hugged her coat around her. “He forgot again. It’s cold as ice in here.”

  Homer had taught his last class in overcoat and mittens, while the students huddled in their seats, their fingers too cold to take notes. They had scuttled out before his favorite joke. “Damnit, I talked to the manager. He promised it wouldn’t happen again.”

  “If we lived in the Congo with the Musurongo,” said Mary, thinking of Dr. Box, “we’d be basking in jungle heat right now.”

  Homer shuffled his papers, trying to find his part of the morning lecture. He couldn’t concentrate. He was remembering what Mary had said yesterday: I sometimes wonder how our ancestors survived the winter. How did they keep themselves alive?

  “Are you ready, Homer? It’s your turn first.”

  Homer wasn’t ready, and kids were beginning to come in and take off their jackets and settle down and open their notebooks. In his head he saw a bonfire, somewhere in the cold northland, some time in prehistory. People were dancing around the fire in the polar dusk, with the sun barely skimming the horizon and beginning to sink. They were howling, tonking on kettles, ringing wild bells, and the combined racket, the crashing rattle of the pots, the crazed vibration of the hollow bells, mounted to the sky to summon back the sun. And the sun heard it, and condescended to obey. Slowly and reluctantly at first, but then with increasing power and strength, it shone longer every day, until at last it warmed and loosened the frozen ground.

  “Come on, Homer,” whispered Mary, “shape up. Everybody’s waiting.”

  On that December morning, thirteen days before the shortest day of the year, there were fifteen tents and one shack on the grassy islands of the overpass. And more shelters were popping up, antic constructions with flimsy supports and drooping canvas walls. The tent city was catching on.

  CHAPTER 9

  We bring you love, the faithful light

  Of dawn that comes to end the night;

  Sing we Noël, Noël, Noël!

  Carol, “Sing We Noël”

  Arlo’s work was like a thicket into which he could burrow, a private place of his own. Unlocking the door of Room 804 in the Science Center was like entering the hollow place in the middle of the thicket. This morning he was glad to find himself alone. His colleague Harley Finch was elsewhere. Of course Harley was clever enough at his own line of expertise, but in Arlo’s opinion he was an ambitious bastard, and too nosy into the bargain. He always seemed less interested in his own stuff than in whatever Arlo was up to.

  The day was bright and sunny. Arlo inspected his silent camera. It was an ordinary-looking big box camera with a plateholder, a ninety-millimeter wide-angle lens, a digital alarm clock, and an electronic shutter attachment. This morning everything looked the same as usual.

  In four days, if all went well, the shutter would open at eight-thirty in the morning for the next-to-last exposure of the sun. Then, on the twenty-second of December, it would click open once again to record the lowest point in the sun’s annual journey.

  But that wasn’t all. There would still be another exposure, different from the rest. After the last shot of the sun on the twenty-second, Arlo would remove the filter and set the clock to take a picture of Memorial Hall on the same afternoon. The result would be an extraordinary multiple-image picture of the tower of Mem Hall in the afternoon sunlight, and behind it the great figure eight of the sun’s changing position in the sky throughout an entire year, forty-four bright suns in a double loop.

  From beginning to end the lens must be aimed in precisely the same direction. Arlo squinted through the rifle-sight scope. It still showed him the northeastern finial on the top of the tower, and the feet of the tripod were still firmly taped to the floor. It was important that they stay that way. If anything happened to joggle them, the last solar images would be out of line.

  Then he turned to the spectrohelioscope. The heliostat on the terrace was a clock-driven sun-tracking mirror that sent back an image through the big window to another mirror, on the rear wall, which flashed it to a third mirror, which sent it to the spectrohelioscope, which sorted out its light and dropped a solar image on the observing table below.

  This morning the image was full of detail, boiling slowly like a bowl of oatmeal in the light of the alpha line of hydrogen. Like the minute hand of a clock, the movement of the granules was almost fast enough to be perceived by the eye, but not quite.

  Here on this sheet of paper was the object of all Arlo’s studies—oh, not this big blank photosphere with the blotch of sunspots on its face, but the deeper levels below the surface, with their mysteriously reversing pulsations. Arlo had studied solar oscillations at the Big Bear solar observatory in California, and last winter he had joined an expedition to the Antarctic to observe the sun in uninterrupted daylight.

  The analemma project and the spectrohelioscope were simple matters, unrelated to Arlo’s pulsation researches. They were teaching tools for his students. The real attraction that drew him to the eighth floor of the Science Center every day was the computer with which he was analyzing data from his own Antarctic observations of periodic solar oscillations.

  Of course, it was mostly number-crunching, but Arlo didn’t care. Ninety-nine percent of one’s working life was mechanical routine. It was the remaining 1 percent that made it all worthwhile, the precious 1 percent that formed the drifting visions of his mind in sleep, the undercurrent of his thoughts as he pushed his tray along the line in the cafeteria downstairs or sat around in Sanders Theatre waiting for his turn to take the part of Saint George.

  Arlo zipped up his parka and left the lab, leaving the door unlocked for Chickie Pickett. He had an appointment with the chairman of the astronomy department, over there on Garden Street, in one of the old observatory buildings.

  He left the Science Center by the west door. Looking back at the mall over Cambridge Street, he was surprised to see a cluster of tents. Last night there had been only one or two.

  What was going on? It must be some kind of homeless protest. For a moment Arlo stopped to watch. He was amused to see a figure he recognized as Guthrie grabbing at a passerby. No, it wasn’t just a passerby, it was an officer of the Harvard Police Department. What the hell would they do about Guthrie and his homeless friends and all those shacks and tents?

  Then Arlo forgot Guthrie in the tricky business of crossing Massachusetts Avenue to Cambridge Common and negotiating Garden Street. On the corner where First Congregational Church reared its stone steeple, a few homeless men were leaving the church shelter. A procession of church women streamed past Arlo, carrying trays of hot food in the direction of Palmer Nifto’s tent city. In their flapping coats they were an argosy in full sail.

  Arlo nodded at the women, but he was thinking about his own problems, not those of the fragile village between the Science Center and the Yard. There was a rumor of an approaching cutback in the astronomy department. Who would be asked to leave? Who but the junior members of the staff, Harley Finch and Arlo Field?

  “One of us or both of us?” Arlo had said to Harley. “Do you think they’ll knock off you and me?”

  Harley had not wanted to discuss it. “Jesus,” he mumbled, “I hope to God they don’t go through with it.”

  Arlo didn’t waste time thinking about it. He was content to bide his time with his own future, his own life. He would find his level sooner or later. But he couldn’t help noticing Harley’s new habit of hanging around the office of the chairman of the department. Was he currying favor, or what?

  The observatory complex was a collection of buildings on a hilltop between Concord Avenue and Garden Street. Once upon a time it had made use of its famous telescope, the Great Refractor, but in the polluted atmosphere of Cambridge the old instrument had long since become a historical curiosity. Astronomy on Observatory Hill was no longer optical. It was X-ray, gamma ray, radio astronomy, using instruments scattered all over the world and on satellites high above the earth.

&n
bsp; But some of the observatory’s old functions were still going strong. Arlo dropped in to say hello to Johnny Mitchell in the tiny office of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. Johnny was in charge of a clearing-house for information about comets and novae and black holes and variable stars. As Arlo looked in his door, Johnny’s telephone was ringing, his computer screen was reporting the arrival of electronic mail, and paper was coming out of his fax machine.

  Johnny nodded at Arlo and picked up the phone. “Right,” he said, “gotcha. R. Coronae Borealis, magnitude estimate 6.7. This was last night, right? Right.”

  Arlo grinned at Johnny and headed for the chairman’s office, passing chambers sacred to Harvard astronomical history—the Library of Glass Plates, the room that had been Harlow Shapley’s. In the chairman’s office he found an ominous sign of trouble. Harley Finch was there before him, in close conversation with the chairman.

  Startled, they backed away from each other and stared at him. Harley moved his arm behind his back as if he were hiding something. They were like a couple of kids caught smoking behind the barn.

  “Well, hello there, Arlo,” said the chairman heartily. “What can I do for you?”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought we had an appointment.”

  “Whoops,” said the chairman, flipping open his calendar.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Arlo. “I’ll come back another time.” Turning to leave, he caught a glimpse of the object behind Harley’s back. It looked familiar. Its shiny cover was like the one attached to his report on his work at Kitt Peak last summer.

  Why were they whispering about his summer report? It had been blameless enough. Well, maybe its blameless-ness could itself be blamed. Arlo had been too unimportant to be permitted a lot of time with the McMath solar telescope, and therefore he hadn’t accomplished much science of his own.

  He left the office wondering if he should look for other employment. If they were about to fire somebody, it would surely be Arlo Field. Harley Finch would make sure of that.

  PART TWO

  THE BOAST

  No one could ever frighten me,

  For many I have slain.

  I long to fight,

  ’Tis my delight

  To battle once again.

  Saint George and the Dragon

  CHAPTER 10

  I’ll pierce thy body full of holes and make thy buttons fly.

  Traditional British Mummers’ Play

  The officer inspecting Palmer Nifto’s tent city was not employed by the city of Cambridge. Sumner Plover was a member of the Harvard Police Department. He was one of sixty-three sworn officers who had attended the Massachusetts Training Council Academy for firearms training and instruction in the general laws of Massachusetts.

  Sumner was a trusted and experienced officer, but this time he was very late in discovering what was going on.

  The overpass was part of his North Yard territory, but it was invisible from his cruiser. His territory was too big, that was the trouble. Officer Plover was responsible for patrolling the Law School and the Littauer School of Government on Massachusetts Avenue and the residence halls on Everett Street and a long stretch of Oxford Street with all its science buildings—McKay Laboratory and Mallinckrodt, the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the great glass edifice of the Science Center—and on Divinity Avenue the biological laboratories and the University Herbarium and William James Hall, and farther to the east the Yenching Library and the Semitic Museum and Hillel House and the Divinity School. It was an awful lot to keep track of.

  Sumner didn’t know much about the insides of all these buildings except for the glass flowers in the Museum of Comparative Zoology—everybody knew about the glass flowers. Sumner had a college degree from Boston University, but he had avoided math and science as much as possible, and as for the theological part of his beat, his own religion was a long way from that of the wild radicals in the Divinity School.

  But he felt an instinctive respect for the diversity of teaching and research going on around him. One of his friends in the other police department, the one belonging to the city of Cambridge, was always referring to Harvard professors as double-domed assholes, but not Sumner Plover. After all, some of these scientists had won Nobel Prizes. It pleased him to think that his own part of the university was pushing back the frontiers of scientific knowledge. On his day off he sometimes drove his wife around his district, telling her the names of the buildings and their special requirements for security. Bonnie loved the glass flowers.

  But his intimacy with the neighborhoods of the North Yard had failed him this time. The mall over Cambridge Street was largely invisible from the corner of Kirkland and Oxford Streets, where his cruiser patrolled every day. And therefore Sumner did not learn about the tent city until it had been in existence for two whole days, when his intercom suddenly burst into scratchy life while he was moseying around the MCZ parking lot, looking for cars without the right kind of sticker.

  It was the sergeant who was his patrol supervisor. “Woman named Box reports tents on the overpass. She sounds like a nutcase, but maybe you’d better look into it. Name of the party in charge is Tyler, Wat Tyler.”

  So it was not until then, far too late for prompt removal, that Sumner discovered to his horror the wooden shack and the nine tents, and the throngs of homeless people and students and hangers-on, and the tangled lengths of extension cord and the open mike and the interference with the pedestrian crosswalk of the new encampment called Harvard Towers.

  As he stood gaping, a truck pulled up, its flatbed filled with tall blue Portapotties. There were cheers and whistles. The truck driver grinned and yelled, “Where do you want ’em?”

  “Hold it, hold it,” shouted Sumner, waving his arms. “Is there somebody here named Tyler?”

  Nobody was listening. They were all gathering around the Portapotty truck, which was backing up carefully beside the hedge, while a tall guy in dark glasses walked backward beside it, beckoning with both hands. He was obviously in charge.

  Sumner adopted his most authoritative manner. “Is your name Tyler? Listen here—” And then he saw his mistake. “No, no, you’re not Tyler. I’ve seen you before. You’re Palmer Nifto, right? Well, I’m afraid I must ask you and your friends to leave.”

  Palmer smiled, and stepped back to watch the descent of the Portapotties onto the frozen grass. Turning his inscrutable dark shades on Sumner, he said mildly, “May I ask what you think you’re doing? Harvard Police, rights? Well, listen, friend, it’s my understanding this overpass is the property of the city of Cambridge. Therefore, you have no right to evict us. I should warn you we are represented by legal counsel.” Palmer raised his voice. “Hey, Frank, you got your camera?”

  Frank was a heavyset young guy with a bald head and yellow whiskers. He came running, snapping pictures of Officer Plover and Palmer Nifto as he ran.

  Sumner stared at the camera openmouthed. Then he collected himself. “Your electric power—may I ask where it comes from? It doesn’t matter who owns this property if you’re stealing power from Harvard University.”

  Palmer folded his arms. “Get Gretchen over here, will you?” he said to Frank.

  “Hey, Gretchen,” bawled Frank.

  Gretchen appeared at once, struggling out of a small tent. She was a very young girl in the last stages of pregnancy.

  Sumner was trapped. He didn’t back away in time. It took Frank only a minute to push Gretchen between him and Palmer Nifto and record for posterity the confrontation of police power with a homeless young mother-to-be.

  “Good,” said Nifto. “Now, can you get it to the Cambridge Chronicle right away?”

  Afterward, when Sumner made his report about the incident to the sergeant at headquarters on Garden Street, he was almost speechless. “Like he raised the question, did the overpass belong to Harvard or the city of Cambridge? I didn’t know who the hell it belonged to.”

  “We’re too late, that’s the trouble,” said the p
atrol supervisor gloomily. “We should have got in there as soon as they put up the first tent.”

  “But suppose he’s right? Suppose the overpass does belong to the city? I mean, the tunnel underneath where the traffic goes through, that must be Cambridge, right?”

  “Oh, God,” said the supervisor. “I’ll find out. I’ll call the office of Harvard’s General Counsel.” He shook his head sadly at Sumner. “We should have evicted them first thing, not given them a chance to take hold.”

  “I know.” Guiltily Sumner remembered the breezy way he had swept his cruiser around the curve of Oxford Street. He should have parked the car, he should have walked around the building to the overpass, he should have found this little canker at the very beginning, before it metastasized into a tumor on the body of the university, before it became a Problem with a capital P. He should have said, Out! Get out of here right now, you hear me? Get this tent out of here before I call the Chief of Harvard Police.

  But he hadn’t, and it was too late now.

  “Who else should we notify?” said Sumner’s supervisor, with his hand on the phone. “The Harvard Planning Office? Wait, I know. I’ll call Community Affairs. They’re the ones should be handling a thing like this. What’s that guy’s name, the Vice-President in charge of Government and Community Affairs? Hernshaw, something like Hernshaw?”

  “Henshaw, I think,” said Sumner. “His name is Ernest Henshaw.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Here comes I that never come yit,

  With my big head and my little wit.