by Jane Langton
Their light voices clashed with the chant of the Hari Krishna, but it didn’t matter. The more noise the better. The churchwomen behind the food table smiled as they served hot soup in paper cups, ladling it out of hot pots plugged into Palmer Nifto’s immense network of extension cords.
“Oh!” cried everyone as the lights on the Christmas tree went on. Then—ppppfffft—there was a small explosion, and the lights went out.
There were gasps, then laughter. Inside his command headquarters Palmer Nifto swore as his computer went down. In all the tents the electric heaters faded to black. The Hari Krishna people stopped singing, then gamely started up again in the dark.
For a moment Mary Kelly had the insane idea that Dr. Box’s blasphemy against the sun had blacked out all the lights. Then she tried to think what to do, because it was obvious that these people couldn’t sleep out-of-doors without heat. Looking around at the jumble of dark lumpish dwellings and the thick silhouettes of men, women, and children wrapped up against the cold, she saw them once again as a medieval village struggling to endure the winter while the mistral blew from the Alps, and snow piled up to the rooftops, and the wind shrieked across a thousand miles of Siberian steppe.
Her first impulse was to shout, Make the sun come back! Bang on kettles! Bang on pots! Her second was to call out, “Gretchen! Has anybody seen Gretchen?”
But Gretchen was half a mile away, far from the dishevelment of Harvard Towers with its blown fuses, far away beyond the cold grass of Cambridge Common and the heavy traffic on Massachusetts Avenue and Garden Street.
Gretchen was experiencing the Christmas season among the beautiful houses on Brattle Street. She was not aware that Thomas Brattle had corresponded with Isaac Newton; she didn’t know that George Washington had lived here, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She saw only the splendid picket fences and the great arks of houses, their windows glowing softly. If there was wretchedness inside those walls, Gretchen did not know it. If suicidal sons and anorexic daughters, alcoholic mothers and unemployed fathers lived on Brattle Street, it was unsuspected by Gretchen Milligan. She saw only the glimmer of lighted Christmas trees, and imagined the happy families within.
Heavy as she was with a baby about to be born, Gretchen was wearied by her long walk. But she pushed on to the Divinity School and found her secret passage to Berkeley Street.
Yes, here was the place she loved best. Gretchen stopped and leaned against the fence to stare. The house looked lovelier than ever, with electric candles in the windows and a wreath on the wall of the front porch. If the Cambridge City Council were to say to her, “Gretchen Milligan, this document grants you ownership of any property in the city—take your pick,” she would choose this house on Berkeley Street with its yellow clapboards and tall windows and pretty trees.
From behind the fence Gretchen inspected all the windows in turn, hoping to see the mistress of the house. Sometimes she was visible, striding quickly from room to room, a handsome woman, smartly dressed—but today she was nowhere to be seen. Gretchen walked boldly up the driveway, hoping to see her through the kitchen window, but the woman remained out of sight. Gretchen began moving around to the back.
“May I help you?”
Someone was standing on the porch. It was the master of the house. Indoors he appeared to be a slow-moving man with gray hair and glasses, but outside he seemed different—taller, balder, paler. He was looking at her strangely.
“Oh, no thanks,” said Gretchen. “I was just—I mean, I just moved in down the street. I got mixed up. I thought this was my house.”
“Oh?” the man said gently. “Which house is your house?”
“Oh, wow, like I forget the number. You see, I’m so new.” Gretchen laughed, and started back down the driveway. “Well, I’m glad to meet my new neighbor. We’ll be seeing each other often, I’ll bet. Ciao!”
The owner of the house stared after the odd-looking pregnant girl with the freckled face and bushy hair. He guessed she was homeless, because he had seen her on JFK Street pushing a grocery cart full of her stuff.
Ernest Henshaw went back indoors and hurried to the living room at the front of the house. Edging through a clutter of small tables covered with brass ornaments, he moved to the window to watch Gretchen’s retreat.
Longing sprang up in his heart.
CHAPTER 18
I am the dragon, here are my jaws!
I am the dragon, here are my claws!
Saint George and the Dragon
The overloading of the wiring system at Harvard Towers resulted in a general power failure all over Harvard University. When Millie from Phillips Brooks House attached the plug of the Christmas-tree lights to an extension cord connected to a labyrinth of other extension cords already supplying power to twenty-two electric heaters, ten television sets, twenty-five lamps, four hot pots, and Palmer Nifto’s computer and fax machine, the effect was catastrophic.
The Director of Buildings and Grounds insisted that it couldn’t happen, but it did. Harvard University went black.
There were howls of anguish from men and women all over the university when the terminals of their computers were suddenly extinguished. Classrooms went dark. A slide projector in the Fogg Museum paused in its progress through the history of classical architecture with a flashing glimpse of the ruins of Baalbek. Scholars in the depths of Widener Library had to grope their way out of pitch-black stacks, then find the stairs and ascend flight after flight, to stumble into the dimness of the catalogue room at last with pitiful cries. The babel of language instruction in the earphones of students in the basement of Boylston Hall was cut off in mid-syllable. The power tools of workmen rehabbing the Lowell Lecture Hall went dead. The electron microscopes in the Gordon McKay Physics Lab fizzled out. The centrifuges splicing one gene to another stopped working, and a billion genes milled around in confusion. Heat leaked out of all the buildings as the oil feed to a hundred furnaces lost power. The new clocks on the tower of Memorial Hall stopped cold at four-forty-eight. A couple of security guards from the Harvard Police Department rushed off to dormitories in the Radcliffe Yard with batteries for the newfangled locks on the doors, to keep the electronic card keys working.
Only in Harvard Divinity School’s Andover Hall did work go on as before. Bundles of candles from the second-floor chapel were passed from hand to hand, and people began moving through the halls like medieval monks.
When the lights went out in Sanders Theatre, Arlo Field was rehearsing the part of Saint George, lying on the floor of the stage playing dead. As the cry went up, “Power’s out,” he leaped to his feet.
“It’s out all over,” reported Kevin Barnes.
“Jesus,” said Arlo to Tom Cobb, “my camera, the timing will be thrown off.” He looked at his watch, couldn’t see it, and held it up to the light from the windows above the mezzanine, which were glimmering with the flicker of headlights moving along Quincy Street. The watch said four-forty-eight. Arlo tore off his Red Cross tunic and jumped off the stage.
“Hey,” said Homer, who was curious about Arlo’s camera, “can I come?” He looked at Sarah. “Is it okay? Are we through for the day?”
“Oh, well, hell,” said Tom Cobb, “we might as well quit.”
“Great,” said Jeffery Peck, one of the other Morris dancers. “Let’s get out of here.”
Arlo looked at Sarah in the dim light and said boldly, “Would you like to come too? There’s a great view up there.”
“Oh, yes,” said Sarah, “yes, I would.” She seemed pleased. But then, to Arlo’s chagrin, Kevin, Tom, and Jeff volunteered to come along.
They poured out of the north door of Memorial Hall and headed across the street. The stepped pyramid of the Science Center, normally so brilliant with lighted classrooms and laboratories, was completely dark. Beyond it, blacked-out buildings stretched along Oxford Street as far as the eye could see.
“Oh, God, I forgot,” said Arlo, “we’ll have to climb the stairs to the eighth floor. Th
e elevators won’t be working.” He glanced at Sarah. “Do you mind climbing all that way?”
“Of course not.” Sarah linked arms with Homer on one side and Tom on the other. Come on, baby, this will shake you up.
“Wait, Sarah!” Someone was running after them, shouting.
“Why, Morgan,” said Sarah, “what are you doing here?”
“I just thought I’d come to meet you,” said Morgan defensively. “Anything wrong with that?”
Sarah hurried back to him and took his arm and squeezed it. “Of course not. Come on. Arlo’s going to show us something on the eighth floor.”
“But what happened?” said Morgan. “Why is everything so dark?”
“Nobody knows,” said Tom Cobb. “Everything went kapoof.”
Homer waved his arms and explained the whole thing. “Somebody threw this huge enormous switch labeled Main Fuse, Harvard University. It must be some diabolical anti-intellectual plot, the end of higher education as we know it.”
They climbed the steps to the east door of the Science Center. Within the glass walls flashlights fumbled in the dark.
Jeffery Peck glanced back at Morgan and Sarah. “Funny guy,” he said to Arlo.
“Famous ornithologist,” said Arlo.
“No kidding? Funny guy just the same.”
“Sarah,” whispered Morgan, “you shouldn’t be climbing a lot of stairs, not now.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Sarah. “I’ll take it easy.”
But all of them were worn out by the time they reached Arlo’s lab on the eighth floor.
“Oh, hey, hi there.” Giggling, Chickie Pickett loomed out of the shadows. Chickie knew almost everybody, even in the dark. “Hi, Arlo; hi, Morgan; hi, Sarah.” Morgan was surprised to discover that Chickie even knew Kevin Barnes. In fact, he was putting his arms around her. She must know him very well indeed. “Oh, hey, Arlo,” said Chickie, disentangling herself from Kevin, “the camera clock’s stopped. And, wow, like I forgot to notice the time.”
“It’s okay,” said Arlo, “I looked at my watch. The power went off at four-forty-eight. I hope to God it comes on again soon. There’s only one more exposure before the shortest day.”
Kevin and Chickie withdrew to the far side of the room to whisper in the corner. Chickie was shivering in a skintight athletic suit. Morgan watched enviously as Kevin wrapped his jacket around her.
Sarah wanted to know what Arlo’s camera was for, what it was that he did up here, what his work was all about. Arlo explained about the analemma in a couple of sentences. Homer didn’t understand, and he asked questions. Sarah said, “Oh, right, but—” Morgan was silent, Chickie squealed from the back of the room, and Tom Cobb opened the door and went out on the terrace.
They followed him, and everybody gasped at the view.
“Great place you’ve got up here,” said Tom, looking southwest at Harvard Square, glowing brightly beyond the dark blotch that was the university. Below them the tents of Harvard Towers glimmered from within with fiery sources of light.
Arlo and Homer leaned over the railing to the west and looked out over Cambridge Common. “Is it true you used to be a policeman?” said Arlo, who had heard a rumor somewhere. “A traffic cop?”
“Well, yes, for a while. Then I investigated homicides for the District Attorney of Middlesex County.”
“Homicides, no kidding! Did you catch any murderers?”
“One or two,” admitted Homer, puffed up with false modesty.
Tom moved to the east side of the terrace and looked beyond the dark bulk of Memorial Hall. “My God, you can see all of Boston from here.”
Morgan stood next to him and craned his neck over the railing to look at the courtyard far below. Directly below them was the glass roof of the Greenhouse cafeteria. If you dropped something, it would fall a long way down.
Drawing closer, he slipped something into the pocket of Tom’s padded parka.
PART THREE
THE HERO COMBAT
TURKEY SNIPE
Battle, battle, battle I will call,
And see which on the ground shall fall.
KING GEORGE
Battle, battle, I will cry,
To see which on the ground shall lie.
Traditional British Mummers’ Play
CHAPTER 19
In comes I, Old Beelzebub
Over my shoulder I carries my club,
In my hand a dripping pan,
Don’t you think I’m a jolly old man?
Traditional British Mummers’ Play
The power outage at Harvard University lasted only a few hours.
Donald Maderna, mechanical foreman for the North Yard, listened with relief to the dull rumble of the furnace in the basement of the Science Center. “How the hell did it happen anyhow?”
“God knows,” said the building manager.
On the eighth floor Arlo Field scribbled 8:14 p.m. in his notebook and set to work at once to adjust the timer on his camera.
A lost scholar in Widener Library who had snuggled down on the floor and gone to sleep next to the bottom shelf of Indochinese folklore on Level D of the stacks, woke up as the lightbulb over his head turned on. Deep down in the center of the earth he was perfectly warm. He staggered to his feet, turned off the light switch, and lay down again, his head pillowed on the 1938 volume of the Journal of the Siam Society. Shutting his eyes, he went back to sleep.
“I thought I told you these electrical connections are illegal,” said Sumner Plover, glaring at Palmer Nifto with his arms folded on his chest. Behind Sumner stood three more officers of the Harvard Police Department, glowering fiercely at Palmer.
“Do you expect us to freeze to death?” said Palmer piteously. He glanced around for bulging Gretchen, but she was nowhere in sight. “Linda,” he shouted. But Linda Bunting was enfolded between her children in her tent, and she wasn’t about to get up.
“Disconnect everything,” commanded Sumner.
At once the four officers began jerking at extension cords, moving from tent to tent, commandeering electric heaters, microwave ovens, and toasters, while Palmer protested loudly, “Those appliances are private property. You are condemning us to death. There are small children here, mothers-to-be, helpless elderly men and women.”
“You should have thought of that before bringing them here,” said Sumner, doing his best to stand up to Palmer Nifto, who always had the best lines. “Come on, you people,” he bawled, “it’s a cold night. We’ve got a bus to take you to the shelter at University Lutheran. Everybody out!”
They went—Emily Pollock, old man Maggody, Guthrie Jones, Linda Bunting and her two children, and all the rest—all but Bob Chumley and his dogs.
“It’s a two-dog night,” said Bob, grinning at the Harvard cop who looked into his tent. “We’ll be okay. Uny Lu wouldn’t take the three of us anyway.”
Sumner Plover gaped. “Uny Lu?”
“University Lutheran,” murmured Bob, burrowing back down between his dogs.
When Gretchen came back from Berkeley Street, everybody but Bob had been picked up. Mary and Homer Kelly had been looking for her. They swept her up and drove her to Bright Day House in Somerville, where she was welcomed with hugs and scoldings.
“What’s your due date, dean?” said the counselor, looking at her swollen tummy. “It must be pretty soon.”
“Oh, God, it was last week,” said Gretchen. “I’m overdue. The kid’s really jumping around in there. Feel it.”
The counselor put her hand on Gretchen’s abdomen. “It’s knocking on the door, all right. Now, Gretchen, you are not to budge from this house again, do you hear me?”
“Okay,” said Gretchen, but she didn’t mean it.
As for Palmer Nifto, shelters were not for him. Palmer had spent too many winter nights in the Pine Street Inn, where five hundred people were crowded in on top of one another, where there was no privacy, where some of the men were violent and some were crazies who shouted all night.
He had found a corner of Memorial Hall that was toasty and warm. It was the office of the director, right off the balcony above the great hall. There were stained-glass windows, a wall-to-wall carpet, a comfortable sofa, and the latest thing in telephones. Visiting the office one day on a phony errand, Palmer had stuffed a tiny piece of paper into the hole in the doorjamb. The latch clicked, but the door remained unlocked.
Tonight the telephone came in handy. Lounging on the sofa with the phone nestled on his shoulder, Palmer outfoxed Sumner Plover.
Next day he was back at Harvard Towers, beckoning to another truck. This one carried a very large and ugly machine. It was a secondhand generator, contributed by a neighbor on Francis Avenue, a professor of immense distinction who kept it in his garage. “Good, good,” shouted Palmer, walking in front of the truck. “A little more, a little more, okay, stop.”
The truck driver got out and climbed up on the back and wrestled with the generator. “Okay, now,” he said, “are you ready? I’ll throw in the clutch.”
At once there was a loud whining noise, and a steady supply of electric current passed through the field coils to support the new collection of electric heaters that had appeared out of nowhere as if by magic.
The whole citizenry of Harvard Towers was back. Even Gretchen Milligan, ever loyal to the cause, stole out of Bright Day to display her bulging figure to the world in the cause of justice and mercy and housing for the homeless.
Officer Plover was outraged. Looking up at the humming generator on the back of the truck, he said, “Where did you get that?”
Palmer uttered the prestigious name, and Sumner Plover blanched. “Well, you can’t have it here,” he said lamely.
“Why not?” said Palmer. “We’re not borrowing one single ampere of electricity from the sacred power supply of Harvard University.”
