OPUS 21

by Philip Wylie

  -looked up to see, in a vast blue area above, three letters: NUT

  Sedately the word moved toward the city area. People began to speculate about the product thus being advertised. Two or three of the quicker-thinking formed hat-pools for dimes and quarters--best guess to take all. At the same time, a considerable discussion arose over the fact that these letters were not being formed by a plane--a glinting speck at the head of a comet of smoke--but were the result of a composing of clouds which had thitherto appeared to be in the random distribution familiar to all. A vague alarm became observable in the voices and the postures of the beholders although it was suggested by the calm among them that the sky-writer had lost the first part of his message--a PEA, for example, or a GRAPE. At the same time, the discomforting fact remained that no performer, and no aerial equipment of any nature, could be descried.

  The growing strain--and strain came easily amongst persons who had lived through eight years of the Atomic Age--rather suddenly diminished. Clouds boiled, rotated and stretched out to make what people began to recognize (in the order of individual percipience) as a pluralizing Sand an exclamation point. The great letters on the sky said:

  NUTS!

  This, clearly, was a joke. Someone who possessed a slightly malicious sense of humor, some technician with a novel trick, had seen fit to write above Lake Michigan a laconic comment: NUTS! People laughed and went back to their activities--and their deliberate eschewals of all activity.

  Other clouds appeared and offered no further entertainment. A few cars on the Lake Shore Drive ground to a stop. Their operators and passengers looked up to see what still intrigued the residual gazers--chuckled--and drove on.

  Perhaps only Calk, of all those myriads, had a real premonition of evil. He referred it, not unnaturally, to the fact that this was the occasion of his engagement.

  Looking at the long, shiny limbs of Miss Lurp, the nodes on them, at her rather dangly breasts and her somewhat overteased brown hair (that now smelled of a plastic bathing cap into which had been "built" a perfume that did not quite eradicate the cap's original odor of phenol) he could not help wondering if it was auspicious to behold, upon their first venture as affianced persons, a great NUTS! floating overhead. Following the word with his eye, as it drifted toward the metropolis, he also observed, with distaste, that it maintained its continuity better than any sky-writing he had ever seen.

  Other citizens, not having witnessed the formation of the word, took it for granted that some prankster had done the deed and, since Chicago is a city where a burp will bring down the house, hugely enjoyed it. The Sun had a box about it. The News had a cartoon about it--bad municipal government shuddering as the word in the sky threatened. The Tribune carried a long editorial attributing the whole affair to communists.

  The next day was rainy.

  The day after, however, was immaculately clear and from the azure reaches above the lake there floated to and over Chicago a second giant syllable: CRAP!

  The formation, this time, was witnessed by the officers and crew of the Matthew T. Handless, a freighter. Her skipper, acting as spokesman for the group, seemed less awed by the reporters and news cameramen than by his memory. "It was an absolutely cloudless morning out there," he said. "Dry weather. Barometer at 30.46. Nothing in sight. Then clouds just seemed to appear of their own accord in the sky. Not a wave below-flat calm. They worked themselves into this here, now, word--and they started drifting for Chicago on a high-altitude breeze. I watched pretty much the whole thing with my glasses--and they're good glasses. I just had 'em checked at Davis's Optometrical, and there was no plane of any sort."

  The news spread across an amused United States.

  WRITING IN SKY PANICS CHI

  "Disgruntled Chicagoan" was the universal solution. Disgruntled Chicagoan with a new process for sky-writing. Somebody sore about the housing shortage, the garbage disposal, the taxes, the materials scarcities, the innumerable blanks to be made out for local, state and federal governments, the new bonus, the rising menace of prohibition, the thousand things at which people were indignant in 1953. "Chicago per se," the New York Times rather uncouthly suggested.

  It was not until the 14th of August, however-a day much like the 9th--that the matter took on different proportions. For, by then, the marshaled resources of science were as ready as set rattraps. When the clouds began to churn significantly, no less than one hundred and eighteen planes, not counting the planes of photographers and mere sightseers, climbed to the region from fields all around the Windy City, which, of course, as on the ninth, was enjoying a mild zephyr.

  A huge S took shape. Traffic stopped. Customers and employees poured out of stores like lava, offices regurgitated their hordes, housewives left bacon burning and babies sodden; all were witness to an impromptu air circus. It had three phases, or acts.

  First, police planes and military aircraft drove off unofficial spectators--light planes and helicopters belonging to the curious and two or three commercial pilots who carried their fares off the flyways for a closer look. Second, science went to work.

  The letter S was photographed. Samples of it were taken. The air currents in and around it were measured by instruments operated through ports in airplanes readied just for the task. Various tagged atoms were then dusted into the letter and their courses were pursued by scientists in helicopters, armed with counters. From the ground, spectroscopes were trained upon the initial and diffraction gratings laid bare its spectrum. Everything was done that had been planned at the University of Chicago--and elsewhere in the city--

  and by a variety of physical scientists who phoned and wrote in their suggestions.

  Meantime, an H formed next to the S and subdued titter filled the watching streets.

  The third plane followed when an ineluctable I was added to the throbbing sky-scene. As if this was carrying cosmic anagrams too far, military aircraft undertook to break up the phenomenon--also according to plan.

  Four-letter words, so called, are one of the great American taboos. In this connotation, nuts and crap are not considered precisely forbidden, though each has a special reference which is impermissible. All people know all the four-letter words, of course, since they are scribbled everywhere and commonly used by lower caste persons when under duress. And substitute words are employed, by the most devout, for every profane or obscene term. So the taboo is of a magical nature (speaking anthropologically). Primitive people, such as the Americans, generally employ medicine men, witch doctors, or priests against magical threats. In this case, however, physical rather than spiritual results were expected from the efforts of the airmen.

  First, formations of jets flew through the cloud-spelling--along its own paths and then in series of crisscrosses.

  Nothing much happened; the streaming jets blew wisps and curls of mist out of alignment but it swiftly filled itself in again. Heavy bombers followed, but the washes of their props were equally ineffectual. During the bomber maneuvers, furthermore, one Paul Kully, a student flier, eluded the police and ventured close to the now-completed T.

  The pilot of the leading bomber, a B-36, took evasive action too late, and Mr. Kully's light plane, shorn of a wing and set on fire, came spiraling to earth--a sight enormously exciting to the already enthralled Chicagoans.

  This ended the main spectacle. Most of the planes descended to earth. The word--

  awful, unprintable, unacknowledgable, obscene and illegal--which, as has been noted, many use in private and in public, and everybody sees constantly chalked on fences and carved into cement by rude boys--and which is pronounced "shucks" by the super-superstitious--now rode in the Chicago heavens. The breeze dropped. Surrounding cumulus clouds retreated as if to frame the sign; air movement died aloft; the four corrupt letters and their following exclamation point came to rest directly over the Loop. This was widely regarded as the supreme practical joke--until the extras began to appear.

  These were in a way disappointing: photographers had spir
aled vainly in the high blue, for not one newspaper made bold to print a picture of what all could see if they bent their necks.

  But the published statement concerning the scientific investigation had a tendency to diminish the widespread mirth. Dr. A. B. Cummings, acting for a General Committee, wrote the report. It said, in part: ". . . a gross examination showed a special arrangement of clouds which cannot be accounted for by the laws of chance. Emphasis should be made of the fact that absolutely no clue to human agency, domestic, enemy, or other--

  either in the air or on the ground--was found. There was no evidence of interference from the stratosphere above. No abnormal radiation was detected. No use of sonic devices may be presumed in view of the study. After the mass became stationary, it was found that currents of air were moving as they should (according to all known laws and principles of meteorology) above, below, and on both sides of the phenomenon.

  ". . . that last fact, taken by itself, is perhaps the most disturbing, although it is possibly equaled by one other. Viz--the mass is not subject to the known laws of dissipation. The slipstream of jets and the wash of huge propellers ought to have caused it to disintegrate in a few minutes. They made only a moderate and local effect which, again in violation of understandable principles, was offset by the reassemblage of the mass along its original contours. It has been proposed that if there is a repetition of this totally unprecedented and inexplicable effect, antiaircraft artillery with ordinary fused shells be used in an attempt to break it up. In such a case, citizens will have to be sheltered from falling fragments during the bombardment. This will probably be tried--

  although the tendency of the mass to hold its shape, resembling as it does a similar tendency in plastics of special molecular structures, at least suggests that even artillery may not be effective. . . .

  ". . . the demand made by a committee of quite understandably outraged churchmen, led by Msgr. Loyola O'Tootle, of St. Plimsol's Roman Catholic Cathedral, that an atomic bomb be used to disperse the sacrilege is, of course, impractical, as such a bomb, in the caliber now being stored by our government, would destroy not only the cloud mass in question (presumably) but (predictably) the entire city of Chicago for a radius of four miles. Any smaller atomic bomb is no more to be thought of in connection with the riddance of this bizarre pest, as not only demolitional but genetic effects . . .

  "To sum up, the mass seems to consist merely of cloud material, somewhat more densely packed than usual. Its formational aspects cannot be traced to any conceivable person or device. Its violation of certain simple physical laws is the great scientific puzzle of it. But it is definitely not poisonous or harmful. The only 'danger' to be expected from it, so far as the most elaborate examination and the most learned extrapolation can discern, is psychological. Until science explains the phenomenon, the layman should regard it without dismay--or other emotion, if possible. Doubtless when the formed-mass principle is unraveled the explanation will not only be quite simple, but of some currently unguessable great value to engineering, to industry, to the military, and hence to the whole people."

  Dr. Cummings's job was detached, thorough--and satisfied nobody.

  For it was a statement of absolute mystification.

  Auburn-haired little Jeanne Sheets, aged seven, of Mallow Road Apartments, running into her yard that afternoon, cried, "Mummy, there's a dirty word in the sky!"

  "Yes, dear."

  "Who put it there?"

  "Mummy doesn't know, dear."

  "Can I say it? It's in the sky--real big."

  "No, dear."

  "Maybe God put it there?"

  "You mustn't think things like that, you naughty child!"

  Jeanne Sheets knew as much about it as Cummings, or any other physicist or any meteorologist, or anybody.

  The next day, through unimpeachable sources in Sofia, a world that had been amused--and somewhat agog--learned that, over the city of Moscow had appeared: МАЛАРХИ

  The smile on the world's face faltered.

  Why?

  Here the subtleties of the human spirit are evinced. People were stunned for the obvious reason that the appearance of an expletive over the Soviet capital tended to indicate human enmity was not involved in the phenomenon. There was a deeper reason.

  The Moscow affliction gave universality to what had been, thitherto, an ailment of the skies, over the guilty-feeling democracies. The profanation of the Soviets, in other words, eliminated all subconscious hope of escape into the Opposite, that natural area which the aware mind detests, or at least resists, but upon which the instincts depend. Laughter ceased and the world made up its mind that steps had to be taken instantly to solve, resolve, and dissolve the indecent chimera.

  Then, on the morning of August 27th, in the city of New York, between the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, a great B took shape against a cloudless zenith. No Gorgon's head could have paralyzed the city more effectively. All traffic stopped and most persons who were physically able descended to the hot streets.

  Amateurs' telescopes on Long Island and slot-machine viewers as far away as Eagle Rock Park in New Jersey were turned upon the pale sky in which Manhattan's buildings had for so long fastened their lean teeth.

  New York's streets solidified. Even ambulances ceased to attempt to move--their drivers either helping patients out for a look or resigning themselves to the delivery of D.O.A.'s. Ministers of churches, priests, and rabbis now made some attempt at excoriation. A band of volunteer hymn singers fought against the steadily forming BAS

  at Trinity Church; censors swung and holy water splashed about St. Pat's. Useless. The TARDS! filled itself out with no regard for fear or fury, lewd ripostes or prayers. And all could see that this new comment was less general than its precursors. Here the sky had not simply engraved an expletive upon itself but called the most numerous people of any city a vile name.

  At the same time, moreover (9:12 in the morning when the first wraith of cloud was observed), strange events were occurring elsewhere on earth. An underling at the near deserted offices of the AUP, watching the clatter of a ticker, yelled to his superior some seconds after 9:30, "Hey, chief! They got it in Paris."

  "What does it say?"

  The youth perplexedly spelled it out. His chief, better educated and possessed of a greater imagination, envisioned the jam-packed Champs-Elyseés and the azure vault above the Arc de Triomphe inscribed

  MERDE, ALORS!

  New York was the first city to stampede.

  Before the S in BASTARDS! was completed, a 10ft caught fire in Seventh Avenue. The engines were unable to reach it, the fire spread, a wall fell into the crowd, and horrified survivors pressed both north and south in the thoroughfare, screaming.

  Their hysteria went ahead of them and, since the neck-craning throngs could not know the cause of it, they interpreted the oncoming roar in the wildest fashions. They, also, turned to run. Central Park furnished a place in which one-half of this tumultuous and trampling herd was able to spread out and regain some composure, though it had left the streets behind dotted with the maimed and slain. There was no sizable park to the south, however, and those who took that direction (save for a few thousands who sought shelter in the Pennsylvania Station) built up an avalanche of humanity which pelted and thundered clear to the Battery, itself its own Juggernaut.

  The infection spread to side streets and to other avenues, inevitably. Within an hour, a great part of middle and lower Manhattan became such an abattoir as history has no record of. The show-windows along Fifth Avenue were burst in by the push of people who were then sliced and guillotined by the cascading glass. Wooden buildings were knocked askew in places.

  Nobody could cope with such a situation but the mayor did his resourceful best.

  He ordered airplanes equipped with loud-speakers of great power to fly over the self-beleaguered city and explain what the source of the great stampede had been. Every morgue and hospital in the city and in its environs was mo
bilized. All bridges and tunnels were instantly cleared for the transport of the injured, as Manhattan's hospitals could not handle five per cent of the casualties. Police, using pistols with little ceremony, brought to a partial halt the epidemic of looting that occurred in the early afternoon. People were commanded to take the equivalent of air-raid shelter and to stay there.

  The military, acting with their usual belated but firm ineffectuality, again essayed the problem of the Word itself. Unveiling a new weapon--a rocket adapted for air-to-air combat, with a warhead of a secret explosive--the Army launched squadrons of fighters and bombers to the attack. A great cannonade over the city began near five o'clock. It was futile: the blasts disrupted edges and fringes of the letters in the sky but they mended themselves as fast as they were tattered. Army Ordinance then tried its supersecret, twenty-four-inch rockets. Careless fusing caused one of these to explode at a low level, destroying the upper stories of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building--but subsequent accurate salvos of the tremendous weapon merely caused the letters to undulate.

  Shortly after six o'clock the Navy, carrying out a suggestion of Cardinal Bleatbier, tried a new tactic--the interposition of a smoke screen between the abomination and the desolated city. The idea was greeted by officers with enthusiasm. The effect of it was not.

  For, after some fifty Navy planes had laid a great, brown carpet underneath the Word and above the buildings, there came new and hitherto unobserved eddyings of the air and the Navy smoke was drawn into the writing on the heavens--not only fortifying and clarifying what it had been intended to obscure but also giving the letters a phosphorescent glow which became visible as soon as twilight descended.

  That night, as electricity began to fail in the city, the surviving people undertook to leave en masse. They had no stomach for another day such as they had passed through.