“That is an advantage I have over you. Never having met him, I was forced to construct my image of him from his letters and his magazine. They impressed me favorably. And poetry seemed a part of him. It was as natural as... as...”
He broke off and stood up. I left a tip, picked up the check and paid it. Kennedy and the cashier exchanged a few pleasant words and we left. The poetry angle continued to stick in my craw.
Picture that man, Louise. Picture him standing there in my office that first day, his back to the wall, away from the glass door. Picture him figuring his way out of a frame-up. Or maybe landing in jail and being pushed around a bit.
And then picture the same man writing poetry.
Outside the restaurant the wind hit us. The wind is a devil of a lot colder in Chicago, too. We tramped in silence to Sacramento and turned south. A huge brick school building loomed up on the left.
Kennedy’s earlier remark about his prescience came back to me as we strode along in the wind. Scientists are careful not to admit any such thing exists, but that doesn’t prove anything. On the other hand, there are probably thousands of occultists and just plain people who would claim it did exist. Like Kennedy.
Did Evans share the gift? Or was it actually a gift?
It could be a galling saddle and Evans might have been saddled with it. At least it might explain his coming into my office with that crazy-sounding story. It might explain his belief that he would be arrested. And like Kennedy, what he foresaw in his “flash” could have been sufficiently different from what was to actually happen that he failed to recognize the real danger.
I asked Kennedy, “Did Evans mention prescience?”
“What—?” He had been several miles away from me.
“This prescience; did Evans have it, too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t recall him saying so, although he took part in the discussions concerning it. Most of us are pretty frank in our discussions, you see. We know we have a limited, sympathetic audience.”
“People laugh at you, eh?”
“Outsiders? Yes. So our society is limited to a membership of one hundred and the primary rule is that you be interested in our subjects or membership is denied. We print only enough copies for the membership; except of course a copy for the museum. There is a museum in Philadelphia which collects amateur publications.”
We walked another block in silence. He broke it the next time.
“Do you know,” he asked me as though I was as well acquainted with his publishing world as a full-fledged member, “I believe the most beautiful poem Evans ever printed was a love lyric he dedicated to a Chinese girl.”
“Well I’ll be damned!”
Joquel Kennedy flashed me a pleased grin. He held open the door and stood aside to give me a better view.
“You like my studio?”
Did I like it? Louise, I was confounded. It was a second-floor back bedroom at 6636½, converted into what he was pleased to call his studio. To me it looked like bedlam.
Directly before my eyes hung something from the ceiling that resembled a round, full moon. It was. Complete with painted-in craters, dead-sea shadings and meteor pits. There was even a long, straight wall standing out on a plain that I remembered from school. A perfect imitation of the moon as one would see it through a telescope on a clear night.
Scattered elsewhere across the ceiling at various levels were eight planets and their attending satellites. Some were large, some small. Some were brilliantly painted and some dull. Foil rings circled one large globe.
It was a replica of the solar system.
“Okay, mister,” I said, getting my wind. “I’m ready. Do they explode, spin, light up and bingo, or what?”
Kennedy flipped a wall switch. The moon glowed with an inner illumination, bringing into sharp relief the crevices and craters. It seemed realistic enough. Some of the planets took on a dull glow but I couldn’t determine whether or not it was reflected from the center moon.
“Ninety per cent scientifically correct,” Kennedy explained. “Just imagine that you are outside on a summer night. Providing your eyesight was equal to the task, you would see in the skies almost this exact scene. It required the better part of last winter to complete this much. This winter I’m going to add the ninth planet and try to find a way to cause the rings of Saturn to revolve. They do, you know.”
“They do what?”
“Revolve.”
“Who does?”
“Saturn’s rings.”
“In clockwise,” I inquired gently, “or counter-clockwise motion?”
He didn’t mind. “You’re pulling my leg. Come on in and sit down.”
I did. At least I tried to. I walked across the studio, ducked under the low-hanging moon and pulled up the most comfortable looking chair. Kennedy jumped at me.
“Look out!”
It was my turn to jump. “What’s the matter?”
“You almost sat on my szopelka.” He rescued it from the chair seat. The thing looked like an oboe to me. Kennedy and his studio and his szopelka began to arouse the smallest suspicion in me. Eccentricity has reasonable limits.
