Just then two young women wearing wide-brimmed Rapallo hats made their way through the tables. They sat down and smiled at Kandinski. He nodded to Ward and Cameron and went over to the young women, who began to chatter to him animatedly.
‘Well, he seems popular with them,’ Ward commented. ‘He’s certainly not what I anticipated. I hope I didn’t offend him over the plates. He was taking you seriously.’
‘He’s a little sensitive about them,’ Cameron explained. ‘The famous dustbin-lid flying saucers. You mustn’t think I bait him, though. To tell the truth I hold Charles in great respect. When all’s said and done, we’re in the same racket.’
‘Are we?’ Ward said doubtfully. ‘I haven’t read his book, Does he say in so many words that he saw and spoke to a visitor from Venus?’
‘Precisely. Don’t you believe him?’
Ward laughed and looked through the coins in his pocket, leaving one on the table. ‘I haven’t tried to yet. You say the whole thing isn’t a hoax?’
‘Of course not.’
‘How do you explain it then? Compensation-fantasy or—’
Professor Cameron smiled. ‘Wait until you know Charles a little better.’
‘I already know the man’s messianic,’ Ward said dryly. ‘Let me guess the rest. He lives on yoghurt, weaves his own clothes, and stands on his head all night, reciting the Bhagavadgita backwards.’
‘He doesn’t,’ Cameron said, still smiling at Ward. ‘He happens to be a big man who suffers from barber’s rash. I thought he’d have you puzzled.’
Ward pulled the transfer off the table. Some science fantast had skilfully pencilled in an imaginary topography on the planet’s surface. There were canals, craters and lake systems named Verne, Wells and Bradbury. ‘Where did he see this Venusian?’ Ward asked, trying to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
‘About twenty miles from here, out in the desert off the Santa Vera highway. He was picnicking with some friends, went off for a stroll in the sandhills and ran straight into the space-ship. His friends swear he was perfectly normal both immediately before and after the landing, and all of them saw the inscribed metallic tablet which the Venusian pilot left behind. Some sort of ultimatum, if I remember, warning mankind to abandon all its space programmes. Apparently someone up there does not like us.’
‘Has he still got the tablet?’ Ward asked.
‘No. Unluckily it combusted spontaneously in the heat. But Charles managed to take a photograph of it.’
Ward laughed. ‘I bet he did. It sounds like a beautifully organized hoax. I suppose he made a fortune out of his book?’
‘About 150 dollars. He had to pay for the printing himself. Why do you think he works here? The reviews were too unfavourable. People who read science fiction apparently dislike flying saucers, and everyone else dismissed him as a lunatic.’ He stood up. ‘We might as well get back.’
As they left the caf Cameron waved to Kandinski, who was still talking to the young women. They were leaning forward and listening with rapt attention to whatever he was saying.
‘What do the people in Vernon Gardens think of him?’ Ward asked as they moved away under the trees.
‘Well, it’s a curious thing, almost without exception those who actually know Kandinski are convinced he’s sincere and that he saw an alien space craft, while at the same time realizing the absolute impossibility of the whole story.’
"I know God exists, but I cannot believe in him"?’
‘Exactly. Naturally, most people in Vernon think he’s crazy. About three months after he met the Venusian, Charles saw another UFO chasing its tail over the town. He got the Fire Police out, alerted the Radar Command chain and even had the National Guard driving around town ringing a bell. Sure enough, there were two white blobs diving about in the clouds. Unfortunately for Charles, they were caused by the headlights of one of the asparagus farmers in the valley doing some night spraying. Charles was the first to admit it, but at 3 o’clock in the morning no one was very pleased.’
‘Who is Kandinski, anyway?’ Ward asked. ‘Where does he come from?’
‘He doesn’t make a profession of seeing Venusians, if that’s what you mean. He was born in Alaska, for some years taught psychology at Mexico City University. He’s been just about everywhere, had a thousand different jobs. A veteran of the private evacuations. Get his book.’
Ward murmured non-committally. They entered a small arcade and stood for a moment by the first shop, an aquarium called ‘The Nouvelle Vague’, watching the Angel fish and Royal Brahmins swim dreamily up and down their tanks.
‘It’s worth reading,’ Professor Cameron went on. ‘Without exaggerating, it’s really one of the most interesting documents I’ve ever come across.’
‘I’m afraid I have a closed mind when it comes to interplanetary bogey-men,’ Ward said.
‘A pity,’ Cameron rejoined. ‘I find them fascinating. Straight out of the unconscious. The fish too,’ he added, pointing at the tanks. He grinned whimsically at Ward and ducked away into a horticulture store halfway down the arcade.
While Professor Cameron was looking through the sprays on the hormone counter, Ward went over to a news-stand and glanced at the magazines. The proximity of the observatory had prompted a large selection of popular astronomical guides and digests, most of them with illustrations of the Mount Vernon domes on their wrappers. Among them Ward noticed a dusty, dog-eared paperback, The Landings from Outer Space by Charles Kandinski. On the front cover a gigantic space vehicle, at least the size of New York, tens of thousands of portholes ablaze with light, was soaring majestically across a brilliant backdrop of stars and spiral nebulae.
Ward picked up the book and turned to the end cover. Here there was a photograph of Kandinski, dressed in a dark lounge suit several sizes too small, peering stiffly into the eye-piece of his MacDonald.
Ward hesitated before finally taking out his wallet. He bought the book and slipped it into his pocket as Professor Cameron emerged from the horticulture store.
‘Get your shampoo?’ Ward asked.
Cameron brandished a brass insecticide gun, then slung it, buccaneerlike, under his belt. ‘My disintegrator,’ he said, patting the butt of the gun. ‘There’s a positive plague of white ants in the garden, like something out of a science fiction nightmare. I’ve tried to convince Edna that their real source is psychological. Remember the story "Leiningen vs the Ants"? A classic example of the forces of the Id rebelling against the Super-Ego.’ He watched a girl in a black bikini and lemon-coloured sunglasses move gracefully through the arcade and added meditatively: ‘You know, Andrew, like everyone else my real vocation was to be a psychiatrist. I spend so long analysing my motives I’ve no time left to act.’
‘Kandinski’s Super-Ego must be in difficulties,’ Ward remarked. ‘You haven’t told me your explanation yet.’
‘What explanation?’
‘Well, what’s really at the bottom of this Venusian he claims to have seen?’
‘Nothing is at the bottom of it. Why?’
Ward smiled helplessly. ‘You will tell me next that you really believe him.’
Professor Cameron chuckled. They reached his car and climbed in. ‘Of course I do,’ he said.
When, three days later, Ward borrowed Professor Cameron’s car and drove down to the rail depot in Vernon Gardens to collect a case of slides which had followed him across the Atlantic, he had no intention of seeing Charles Kandinski again. He had read one or two chapters of Kandinski’s book before going to sleep the previous night and dropped it in boredom. Kandinski’s description of his encounter with the Venusian was not only puerile and crudely written but, most disappointing of all, completely devoid of imagination. Ward’s work at the Institute was now taking up most of his time. The Annual Congress of the International Geophysical Association was being held at Mount Vernon in little under a month, and most of the burden for organizing the three-week programme of lectures, semesters and dinners had fallen on Professor Cameron and himself.