‘Well,’ Cameron said as they walked over to the Site Tycho, ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it must be like to run the Waldorf-Astoria.’ They picked one of the sidewalk tables and sat down. ‘I haven’t been here for weeks,’ Cameron said. ‘How are you getting on with the Man in the Moon?’
‘Kandinski? I hardly ever see him,’ Ward said.
‘I was talking to the Time magazine stringer about Charles,’ Cameron said, cleaning his sunglasses. ‘He thought he might do a piece about him.’
‘Hasn’t Kandinski suffered enough of that sort of thing?’ Ward asked moodily.
‘Perhaps he has,’ Cameron agreed. ‘Is he still working on his crossword puzzle? The tablet thing, whatever he calls it.’
Casually, Ward said: ‘He has a theory that it should be possible to see the lunar bases. Refuelling points established there by the Venusians over the centuries.’
‘Interesting,’ Cameron commented.
‘They’re sited near Copernicus,’ Ward went on. ‘I know Vandone at Milan is mapping Archimedes and the Imbrium, I thought I might mention it to him at his semester tomorrow.’
Professor Cameron took off his glasses and gazed quizzically at Ward. ‘My dear Andrew, what has been going on? Don’t tell me you’ve become one of Charles’ converts?’
Ward laughed and shook his head. ‘Of course not. Obviously there are no lunar bases or alien space-craft. I don’t for a moment believe a word Kandinski says.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘At the same time I admit I have become involved with him. There’s something about Kandinski’s personality. On the on hand I can’t take him seriously—’
‘Oh, I take him seriously,’ Cameron cut in smoothly. ‘Very seriously indeed, if not quite in the sense you mean.’ Cameron turned his back on the sidewalk crowds. ‘Jung’s views on flying saucers are very illuminating, Andrew; they’d help you to understand Kandinski. Jung believes that civilization now stands at the conclusion of a Platonic Great Year, at the eclipse of the sign of Pisces which has dominated the Christian epoch, and that we are entering the sign of Aquarius, a period of confusion and psychic chaos. He remarks that throughout history, at all times of uncertainty and discord, cosmic space vehicles have been seen approaching Earth, and that in a few extreme cases actual meetings with their occupants are supposed to have taken place.’
As Cameron paused, Ward glanced across the tables for Kandinski, but a relief waiter served them and he assumed it was Kandinski’s day off.
Cameron continued: ‘Most people regard Charles Kandinski as a lunatic, but as a matter of fact he is performing one of the most important roles in the world today, the role of a prophet alerting people of this coming crisis. The real significance of his fantasies, like that of the ban-the-bomb movements, is to be found elsewhere than on the conscious plane, as an expression of the immense psychic forces stirring below the surface of rational life, like the isotactic movements of the continental tables which heralded the major geological transformations.’
Ward shook his head dubiously. ‘I can accept that a man such as Freud was a prophet, but Charles Kandinski—?’
‘Certainly. Far more than Freud. It’s unfortunate for Kandinski, and for the writers of science fiction for that matter, that they have to perform their tasks of describing the symbols of transformation in a so-called rationalist society, where a scientific, or at least a pesudo-scientific explanation is required a priori. And because the true prophet never deals in what may be rationally deduced, people such as Charles are ignored or derided today.’
‘It’s interesting that Kandinski compared his meeting with the Venusian with Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus,’ Ward said.
‘He was quite right. In both encounters you see the same mechanism of blinding unconscious revelation. And you can see too that Charles feels the same overwhelming need to spread the Pauline revelation to the world. The AntiApollo movement is only now getting under way, but within the next decade it will recruit millions, and men such as Charles Kandinski will be the fathers of its apocalypse.’
‘You make him sound like a titanic figure,’ Ward remarked quietly. ‘I think he’s just a lonely, tired man obsessed by something he can’t understand. Perhaps he simply needs a few friends to confide in.’
Slowly shaking his head, Cameron tapped the table with his glasses. ‘Be warned, Andrew, you’ll burn your fingers if you play with Charles’ brand of fire. The mana-personalities of history have no time for personal loyalties — the founder of the Christian church made that pretty plain.’
