"My Object All Sublime"
(1942)
Future, February 1942
Robert A. Heinlein
(as by Lyle Monroe)
The city editor tells me to go to Seventh and Spring.
"There's a story there," he says. "Go down and check it."
"What kind?"
"They say it smells."
"Why shouldn't it?" I told him. "Columbia Bank on once corner, Fidelity-First National on the other, and the City Hall and the Daily Tide building just down the street."
"Wise guy," he answers. "I mean a real smell—like yourself."
Dobbs is all right—with him it's stomach ulcers and matrimony. "What's the sketch?" I asked, ignoring the crack.
"Seems like it ain't safe to drive a car through that intersection," he answered seriously. "You come out smelling like a telephone booth. Find out why."
I eased down there and looked the situation over. Nothing I could put my finger on, but a general air of nervousness and uncertainty. Now and then I'd catch a whiff of something, some ancient rottenness. It put me in mind of the morgue, again it was more like a Chinese river boat. When something happened that gave me a lead—
A truck came charging through as the lights were changing. He had time to stop, but didn't—and just missed a feeble old gal in the crosswalk. There was a sharp "fsss"; the truck driver got a look of agonized surprise, and wipes at his eyes. As he passed me I smelled it.
No mistake this time—it stunk like a convention of pole kitties, with prizes for range and distance.
The truck wobbled along for a few yards, then double-parked on the car tracks. I came alongside. "What happened, Buddy?" I asked the driver, but he is too far gone with choking and gasping. I left, not wanting the perfume to soak into my clothes.
I went back to the corner, having an idea and wanting to check it. In the next thirty minutes seventeen drivers did things I didn't like, bulling their way through left turns, jumping signals, ignoring pedestrians, and the like. And every one of them gets dosed with eau de cologne. Usually with the sound of a hiss just before it happened.
I was beginning to plot a curve, as it were, when I leaned up against a postal storage box on the corner. "Oh, excuse me!" comes this polite voice in my ear.
"No harm done, chum," I answered, and looked around. Nobody near me, nobody at all.
The stuff a leg-man drinks has to be cheap, but I was sure I hadn't gotten any quite that green. I considered it, then moved my hand toward the box. I encountered something in the air about a foot over the box and grabbed. There was a smothered gasp, then silence.
I waited, then said very soft, "Well, Cagliostro, it seems to be your move." No answer. I clamped down on the chunk of breeze and twisted it. "Well?"
"Oh, dear!" comes this same mild little voice. "You seem to have captured me. What shall I do?"
I thought. "We can't stand here playing statues. People would talk. There's a beer joint just around the corner. If I let you go, will you meet me there?"
"Oh, yes, indeed," I'm answered, "anything to get out of this predicament."
"No tricks now," I warned. "Fail to show up and I'll have them search for you with a paint spray gun. That'll put a stop to your fun games."
"Oh, no!" empty air assures me, and I let go.
I had killed a bottle of suds in the joint in question when this mousy little bird shows up. He glanced nervously around, came up to my booth and gulped at me.
"Are you," I asked incredulously, "Cagliostro?"
He gulped again and nodded.
"Well, I'll be a—skip it. Draw up a chair. Beer?"
He fidgeted. "Uh, might I have a little Bourbon whiskey?"
"You know best, Pop." I fingered the waiter. "Joe, bring this gentleman some eight-year-old Kentucky." When Joe got back Caspar Milquetoast took a tumbler, poured four fingers in it, and drank it, swallowing steadily. Then he sighed.
"I feel better," he announced. "My heart, you know."
"Yes, I know," I agreed. "I hated to upset you, but it's in the interest of science."
His face lit up. "You are a student of science, too? In what field, pray tell?"
"Mob psychology," I told him. "I'm a reporter for the Graphic."
He seemed upset at once, so I calmed him. "Take it easy. We'll make it off the record for the moment and talk about a story later." He relaxes a little and I continued, "Right now I'm curios on my own account. I figure you had something to do with the gymkhana around the corner on Spring—not to mention finding you holed up in a slice of air. Come clean, professor."
"But I am not a professor," he protests in that same diffident voice, after tucking away another four fingers of corn. "I am a private research student in spectroscopy. My name is Cuthbert Higgins."
"Okay, Cuthbert. Mine's Carter. Call me Cleve. Let's get to it. What is it? Mirrors?"
"Not precisely. It may be hard to explain to a layman. Are you versed in advanced mathematics? The use of tensors, for example?"
"I was doing all right," I said, "up to improper fractions. Do they come after that?"
"I am, uh, afraid so."
"Okay," I told him, "I'll hang on where I can."
"Very well," he agreed, "you are familiar with the gross phenomena associated with seeing. Light strikes an object, is reflected or refracted by it to the eye, where it is interpreted as sight. The only ordinary substance which reflects or refracts so little as to be invisible is air."
"Sure."
"For a number of reasons it is difficult to change the optical characteristics of the human body to the point where it would match air and be invisible. But there remains two possibilities: To bend the light rays around the body is one way. The other is psychological invisibility."
"Huh?" I demanded. "Come again. Do you mean hypnosis?"
"Not at all," he told me. "Invisibility by suggestion is a common phenomenon … a stock in trade of stage magicians. They suggest that an object in plain sight is not in plain sight, and surely enough, it is not."
I nodded. "I catch. Thurston used to do that in his levitation stunt. The frame that supports the gal is in plain sight, but the audience never sees it. I never saw it until it was pointed out to me, then I couldn't see why in the hell I hadn't seen it."
Higgins nodded happily. "Exactly. The eye ignores what is actually there and the brain fills in the background. Lots of people have that quality. Good detectives. Pickpockets. I have it myself—that is what got me interested in the problem of invisibility."
"Slow up!" I said. "Don't sit there and tell me that I didn't see you a while ago simply because you are inconspicuous. Dammit, I looked through you."
"Not quite," he corrected. "You looked around me."
"How?"
"By application of the laws of optics."
"Listen," I said, slightly irked, "I'm not quite as ignorant as I made out. I never heard of any optical laws that would fit."
"It does," he conceded, "involve certain advances of my own. The principle is similar to total reflection. I throw a prolate ellipsoid field around my body. Light strikes the screen at any point, runs on the surface of the field for a hundred and eight degrees, and departs at the antipodal point with its direction and intensity unchanged. In effect, it makes a detour around me."
"It sounds simple," I commented, "but I don't think I could build one."
"It is hard to make it clearer without recourse to higher mathematics," he apologized, "but perhaps I can give a somewhat analogous example with prisms and mirrors. When a ray of light strikes a surface, it may be reflected through twice the angle of incidence or refracted through the angle of refraction, thusly—" and he started to sketch on the menu. "When an optical system in arranged in this fashion—" He sketched a sort of daisy chain of mirrors and prisms "—a beam of light striking the system at any point 'A' and at any angle 'theta,' will be reflected and refracted around the system to point 'A prime,; and exit at angle theta. So you see—"
"Skip it," I cut in. "I can see that it gallops half way around and heads out in the same direction; the rest is over my head. All right, that clears up half the mystery, but how about that reign of terror in the traffic?"
"Oh, that." He gives me a silly grin and hauls out a gat as long as my foot.
I don't like that look in his eyes. "Put that thing down!" I yelled.
He does so reluctantly. "I don't see why you should make such a fuss," he protests. "It's not dangerous—not very. It's just a squirt gun."
"Huh?" I looked at it more closely. "Pardon My I.Q., Cuthbert. I begin to see the sketch. What's it got in it?"
His face lit up. "Synthetic essence mephitis—skunk juice!"
"Mmm …"
"Hmmm!"
"It was a by-product of an attempt to find a synthetic base for perfume," he explained. "No real use, but I had made up quite a supply for experimental purposes—"
"And squirting it on traffic is our idea of a joke."
"Oh, no! For years I have been incensed—as who hadn't?—at the reckless drivers that infest our city. It would never have occurred to me that I might do anything about it myself, had I not heard a less inhibited victim refer to one of these loutish persons as 'stinking'—along with less repeatable things. It brought a whimsical thought to mind—would it not be a capital jest to make dangerous drivers smell physically the way they already smelled spiritually. At first the project seemed impractical; then I recalled the invisibility apparatus which had been gathering dust in my laboratory for ten years."
"What!" I demanded. "You mean to say you've had this gadget for years and have not used it?"
He gave me a big-eyed stare. "Why, certainly. Obviously there was no use for it. In the hands of an irresponsible person it could be the source of much wrong doing."
"But—Hell, you could turn it over to the government."
He shook his head.
"All right, then," I persisted. "You could use it yourself. Think of the things you could do. You could start out by cleaning up that mess down at the City Hall. Sit in on the crooked deals and expose them."
He shook his head again. "I am force to regard your viewpoint as naïve. Good government grows out of the people, it cannot be handed to them."
"Oh, well," I shrugged. "You're probably right. Still, think of the fun you could have—" I was thinking about backstage at the Follies.
But he shook his head again. "Uses for amusement only would almost certainly involve some violation of the right of privacy."
I gave up. "Go on with your story, Cuthbert."
"Having determined to try the jest, I made my preparations. They were simple. A water gun suggested itself as the applicator and a hot water bottle served as a source of supply. Earlier today I sought an outlying intersection and experimented. The results exceeded by fondest hopes—there are at least a dozen drivers who regret having jumped the light.
"Then I came down here where the hunting is better. I was just warming up when you apprehended me."
I stood up. "Cuthbert Higgins," I said, "you are a public benefactor. Long may you squirt!"
He was pleased as a kid. "Would you like to try it?"
"Would I! Half a sec while I phone in my story."
His face fell. "Oh dear!" he moaned. "I had forgotten you were connected with the press."
" 'Chained' is the word, Cuthbert. But don't give it a thought. I'll cover you like a grave."
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