"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 spiraled
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:
МАЈІАРХЍ
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-Élysées and the azure vault above the Arc de Triomphe inscribed