"So it's obvious that Professor Kizu thinks you're a pretty special per- son. Dancer tells me that my answers to you shouldn't be for you alone, but for all of you, Dancer and Ogi included. In other words, whatever I say is connected to the movement I'm about to launch. In Guide's case, however, there's a separate issue at stake. Guide sympathizes with you, Ikuo, and the difficult questions you have, which is why he's advising you. I know him very well, though, and I know that can't be all there is to it.
"Guide is making the following proposal to me through you, Ikuo: In the past, God called to this young man. And I want you, for the sake of this young man, to act as intermediary to revive God's call to him.
"Guide is throwing up a challenge to me. He's also proposing that we try once more to do an important job that he and I weren't able to complete in the past. How this will come about, he's leaving up to me. According to Professor Kizu's letter, the God that appeared to you, Ikuo, told you to do something, and though you were still a child then, you waited with all your might to see what God wanted you to do. But you waited in vain.
"This is similar to the time before our Somersault, when Guide wanted me to act as intermediary between God and the radical sect he created. Around the time our church was getting established and really beginning to grow, he gathered a group of elite young people and created a place where they could freely conduct their research-his own special vanguard, in other words.
Doesn't it seem now as if he's singling you out, hoping to raise you up as a firm believer, as a kind of replacement for the sect? What I need to know is what fundamental difference Guide sees between then and now, between you and the radical faction in Izu.
"In the past we used to have these kinds of heavy discussions as he tried to grasp the vision I saw in my trance. Right now I've come back from an unsuccessful attempt to enter into a deep trance-my first in a decade. Guide tells me this is a preliminary to the return of those trances of old.
"I don't know yet what form it will take, but I've taken the first steps toward starting a new movement. Guide is essential to this, but you young people are also crucial. This is why I responded to Ikuo's appeal and asked you three to travel with me.
"I'd like to tell you young people about what Guide and I used to do in the old days and how our Somersault came about. Until we abandoned our movement, what was it I preached to our followers? In a nutshell, it was my hope that the world be filled with people who repent what's happened to our world, because that is the only way for life to be restored to our planet. In the visions I had in my trances, I grasped how to do this. The sect that Guide created came up with tactics for accomplishing this, tactics that would forc- ibly drag people with us until everyone realized the kind of future mankind was facing.
"I can't deny that that's the direction in which I led the church. Those who can envision the end of the world, the end time, will, in the near future, cre- ate an actual crisis that will be a productive opportunity for repentance; those people are out there, I said in my sermons. This is the point at which the sect Guide created rose to prominence within the church-working to bring about a crisis that would lead everyone to immediate repentance and preparing the meth- ods and shock troops to carry it out.
"Up till the stage where the ideology behind this young elite sect in Izu was set, Guide and I worked in harmony. Once the whole body of believers accepted the Izu sect's ideas, and the shock troops that would initiate a crisis grew until they had the power to destroy an entire city, then my sermons anticipating a crisis would take on a real sense of power. Guide wasn't the only one who believed this; I did too.
"The reason I preached about making my visions of the end of the world a reality is that I wanted the people who live on this planet to have the courage to face that crisis, while they still had the energy to be restored to life out of the ruins that, even then, were already appearing. What would be the point of hav- ing the human race repent en masse if they didn't have the courage or energy to do anything about it? That was my doctrine, and this was supposed to be the source of the orders for whatever actions the church was about to take."
This is a sermon in itself, Ogi thought. The sense of emotional tension that came across struck him as incongruous, so much so that he felt like in- terrupting Patron to say, Hey! I'm not one of your believers, I just work here!
Though he was, of course, up to his ears in helping Patron restart his reli- gious activities. What did Dancer think about all this? Just as this thought occurred to Ogi, Dancer interrupted Patron, though what she said didn't answer Ogi's unspoken question.
"Ogi and I have heard all this before from Guide," she said. "He painted a vivid picture of what the end of the world looks like in visions. Isn't that right?" Ogi, suddenly urged to agree, nodded but felt uneasy about how Patron would interpret his assent. "We've all read newspaper articles about overpopulation, our lack of resources, and the destruction of the environment, but the images that Guide painted for us really struck us to the core. They were heartrending. Guide told us you have profound visions, which you de- scribe in a torrent of words. He also told us he feels a great anxiety as he interprets these visions, anxiety about whether or not he's getting them right."
"It's not that I see visions," Patron said, "but rather that I'm assaulted by them, and the question then is how to convey this to people. The only way I could put them into some sort of logical language was through Guide's help.
He's the one who understands better than I-at the linguistic level-what my visions are all about."
"But it seems to me you're the one who established the basic system of the church," Dancer said. "Guide told me, too, that it might be impossible to convey the whole of your visions in language people can understand. Man- kind faces a cruel future, is at a dead end, staring at a wall; as long as people don't have a way to scale that wall, they'll never understand the depths of the crisis they're in. People are really good at ignoring danger. The task for your church was to bring the end of the world closer, to let people actually see it.
How was this supposed to happen? The only alternative was to present a model of this crisis to force people to repent. The tactics of the Izu radical faction were to precipitate this crisis, radically and concretely. That's what Guide said. Patron has just spoken of this, but the point I'm trying to make is that the two of them were in agreement at that time."
Ogi decided that Dancer's long interruption was a tactic of her own to give Patron a break from doing all the talking. But it also worked to encour- age the others to speak up, and now Ikuo raised a question.
"Setting aside the issue of the Izu radical faction and their gaining power in the church, if Patron's visions were the basis for the church's teachings, wasn't that doctrine correct and isn't it still correct? I mean, during the past ten years this crisis hasn't been resolved, has it? So why was it necessary at the time of the Somersault to deny these teachings? You and Guide announced that it was all nonsense, right?"
Sitting in a faded purple chair that Ogi remembered from childhood, Patron shifted to face Ikuo. As if to put a stop to this, Dancer spoke up.
"If you're going to talk about Patron's state of mind at the time of the Somersault, then all of us-since we weren't present at the time-need to consider the background. Don't you agree, Ikuo? The elite group that Guide created was already acting on its own, trying to bring ordinary people face- to-face with what Patron envisioned in his trances. When they got the idea to move the whole church body in that direction, the radical sect went ahead and took action, attempting to get the entire church implicated. Although the church's attitude wasn't yet set, the radical faction went ahead with its adventurist schemes."