Ogg Read online

  Chapter 14

  That night, Antonia hardly slept. For most of the time she lay awake, her troubled thoughts battling against her drowsiness and winning. She had tried so hard and yet she was a failure. She had thought to help the world and instead all she would have done was make things infinitely worse. An idea formed with the best of intentions and with the worst of effects. She reflected on the nature of ideas. How quickly did they appear? Physiologically speaking, a few electrical impulses inside her brain and the seeds of hate and destruction were successfully sown. She reflected also on the power of ideas. How people were prepared to kill and die for something you couldn’t even see, or touch. And she reflected on the ephemeral nature of ideas. How they could appear and disappear so fast, and how they changed constantly as they were passed around from one thinker to another. Ogg believed, or at least she thought he believed, that correct thinking led to solid dependable ideas that would put the world onto the right path and keep it there. But hadn’t she been thinking correctly when she put together her dangerous plan? It seemed to her now that all ideas were nothing but the internal combustion engines of vehicles of unhappiness. Better perhaps not to think at all. To obey blindly. But what to obey? Someone else’s ideas? How then to choose? Only by thinking. Maybe Ogg was right. We have to think; better to think correctly rather than sloppily.

  Her mind raced around in this fashion all night, and she tossed and turned. She lay on one side when she was in a pro-Ogg frame of mind, and tossed herself onto the other side when she became anti-Ogg. Eventually the confusion and tiredness would send her off into short fitful dozes, which were, if anything, worse than her tormented waking thoughts. She was prey to nightmares, where witches of teachers armed with whips asked her questions she couldn’t answer, or hooded torturers would force her to confess to heinous thought crimes. In the last one, she felt the sensation of a shadow lying across her body, a heavy weighted blanket pinning her to the bed, trapping her arms and legs so she couldn’t move, while above her a toothless grinning head was muttering what seemed like an evil spell. When she opened her eyes, a worried Ogg was looking down at her.

  “Have you seen Perg?” he asked her.

  She was still dazed. Perg had gone home after their meeting. Surely he was still there. What time was it? 7.30 am. Surely he would be in his bed, sleeping. Unless he was having the same miserable night that she was just finishing. She shook her head.

  “I can’t get on touch with him.”

  “He’s probably asleep,” Antonia suggested.

  “That doesn’t stop me making contact.”

  Antonia’s jaw fell open. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Even though Ogg was her best friend she could not hold back the wave of indignation that was sweeping over her. Great Beings are Great Beings, but everyone has a right to some small corner of privacy.

  “You mean you can rummage around in our thoughts even when we’re SLEEPING?”

  “Why not?”

  “We could be having thoughts we don’t even know about but you would know.”

  “Yes”

  “You could know us better than we know ourselves.”

  “It’s possible”

  “It’s not right.”

  “No, I promise you, it’s quite right. It’s one of my powers.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean it’s not morally right. Everyone is entitled to their privacy. It’s bad enough that you can read our thoughts, uninvited, when we’re awake. But you have absolutely no right to read those unconscious secret thoughts that even we can’t control. It’s just not fair.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ogg, surely you can see why? Can’t Great Beings tell right from wrong?”

  “No, we can’t. Can you?”

  “Of course I can?”

  “So how do you know what’s right and what’s wrong?”

  “You mean, you want an explanation?”

  “Yes please,” said Ogg and Antonia saw the corners of his mouth turn up into a rarely suppresses self-satisfied smile. He had led her into a logic trap again, and, even if it was for her own good, she couldn’t help but find it annoying.

  “GPQ, I suppose?” Her voice was cold, and she hoped he had retained enough sensitivity to register her displeasure.

  “Afraid so!”

  “Look,” she said, “I know that on one hand morality is just the accumulation of received opinions from my social environment, but I do think there is a logic to these opinions.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes”

  “So what is it?”

  “Look, this is a GPQ. I’m not going to get the answer to this, am I?”

  “Probably not, but you mustn’t stop trying.”

  “Why not? Why not stop trying? Because it would be morally the wrong thing to do?”

  Ogg looked at her. He knew where the argument was going. And he knew that she knew too. It was her turn for the supercilious smile.

  “We should try to get hold of Perg,” he said, one –because Ant had twisted him into a corner and he needed to change the subject, and two –because he was bit uneasy that Perg had slipped temporarily out of his sphere of influence.

  Antonia switched on her computer and opened her chat program. Perg was on-line. She sent him a message.

  ‘Hi Perg, are you really there?’

  ‘Hi Ant. Just doing a bit of work.’

  ‘Seen Ogg?’

  ‘No’

  ‘He’s looking for you.’

  ‘Ant, Ogg doesn’t look for people. He just KNOWS where you are.’

  ‘Apparently not you today.’

  ‘??’

  ‘?? too. Let me talk to Ogg!’

  “Ogg, I’ve got Perg on the internet. He’s at home working.”

  “He’s not.”

  “I’m talking to him.”

  “It must be someone else. Check his identity”

  Antonia went back to the computer.

  ‘What did my mum give you yesterday?’

  ‘She said it was lemonade. I don’t know what it really was. I managed to avoid tasting it’

  She turned to Ogg.

  “It’s definitely Perg.”

  Ogg screwed up his face in concentration. He even resorted to some inaudible incantations. This looked promising. Antonia found herself hoping that, when the chips were down the magic would come into the scene at last, and there would be a bit of a spectacle.

  Her disappointment, when it came, was total. Not only had Ogg not produced any flashing lights or whiz-bangs, but he had completely failed to make contact with the recalcitrant Peregrine.

  “Can’t be him! Someone must be using his computer,” Ogg muttered.

  Antonia picked up her mobile and dialled.

  “Hi Ant,” a voice of unmistakable ‘Pergness’ replied.

  “Perg, I’ve got Ogg here. He says he can’t talk to you.”

  “Of course he can. Put him on!”

  “It is Perg. He wants to talk to you too.” Antonia held the phone out for Ogg to take it, but he looked at her askance.

  “I don’t use these things, Ant.”

  “Well, your thing isn’t working, so why don’t you try normal communication, just for once.”

  If there’s one thing Great Beings hate, it’s being bossed about by teenage girls, especially when they display hints of a triumphant smile. Ogg considered refusing her offer of the use of her mobile phone, just on principle. It would have been a stupid but understandable thing to do, for an ordinary person. But Ogg was a Great Being, and also a role model for the young, and he took the phone from her with as much good grace as he could manage.

  “Hello Perg. … Hello! … Are you there, Perg? … He’s not there, Ant.”

  “Let me try!” She took the phone back.

  “Perg?”
<
br />   “What happened, Ant.”

  “You couldn’t hear Ogg?”

  “Not a word. Couldn’t he hear me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m only getting half of this conversation, Ant,” Ogg chipped in. “It’s as if Perg were…”

  “…A non-human? No, that’s impossible.” Antonia knew that it was logically possible, but it wasn’t something she was prepared to accept. She didn’t know why, but her mind quite simply rejected the idea that Perg was no longer Perg as he had been yesterday.

  “There’s no other logical explanation.”

  “There must be!” He was OK yesterday. He sounds the same. He can’t have changed overnight.”

  “Why not?” Ogg asked.

  Antonia frowned. It was Ogg that had taught her that ‘Why not?’ is one of the most dangerous questions that can be asked. You can ‘why not’ anything, and from there it’s a simple step to presenting the most atrocious lies and deceptions as facts, and before you know where you are you’re speaking like a politician. And, as far as she could work out, one of Ogg’s main aims was to eliminate politicians and political thought from the minds of mankind. So was he slipping, or was there some ulterior motive to his off-hand question? Well, if it was a trap, she wasn’t going to fall into it!

  “I’m not even going to answer that stupid question,” she told him, and his smile told her that that was exactly the response Ogg had expected from her. She ignored him, and spoke softly into her phone. “Perg, is there anything different about you today, compared to yesterday?”

  “I’m wearing a clean T-shirt, and my acne’s a lot better.”

  It was good news about the acne. Antonia supposed that someday someone she knew was bound to see her with Perg, and for the sake of her street cred the less spots the better. As for the T-shirt, she didn’t dare to ask what that was like. True, her mother hadn’t even noticed the awful abomination he had been wearing yesterday, but who else in the world could have the lack of aesthetic sensibility her mother was gifted with. She would have to take him on as a challenge, and try to make him more presentable. And in the meantime, keep him out of sight as much as possible.

  “What’s he saying?” she heard Ogg ask. Antonia blushed a little, feeling guilty at letting her mind stray from the point and being caught.

  “He reports only minor changes in his appearance,” she replied, lowering her voice and assuming a serious scientific tone. Then she realised that this subterfuge was pointless as far as Ogg was concerned, and she blushed again.

  “You seem to be concentrating more on Peregrine Pratt than on the business in hand,” Ogg slipped in.

  “I’m not, Ogg. I’m not!” she protested too much. Then she lowered her voice again. “And anyway, this is a very serious matter which we need to get to the bottom of. Look, wouldn’t it better if we met in person, instead of this silly three-way conversation over the phone.”

  “Get Ogg to whizz me over there!” Peregrine suggested.

  “Can you whizz Perg over here?”

  “No I can’t, I can’t get in contact with him, remember? I’ll have to whizz us over to him.”

  “Stand by, Perg, we’re coming to you.”

  “No, don’t do that!” Peregrine panicked.

  “He doesn’t want us to go there,” she told Ogg, and then to Perg. “Why ever not?”

  Peregrine stumbled over his words. “My place is a bit of a mess, not really fit for visitors.” This was true, but it wasn’t the real reason. His bedsit cum office was decorated with pictures of Antonia, poems to Antonia, and various keepsakes he had managed to appropriate from their time together in the desert. The thought of the object of his affections actually seeing all these tributes suddenly made him conscious that she might think him a bit obsessive. And Ogg would no doubt rag him to bits.

  Antonia shrugged. She could accept his reason at face value, but then her own room hardly qualified as tidy minimalist. But let him have his eccentricities. Yesterday she would have revelled in rubbing his nose in it; today for some reason she was inclined to spare his embarrassment.

  “Look, I’ll meet you at MacDonald’s, Chiswick High Street!” Perg suggested.

  Antonia thought he must know that that was where her group hung out. It was the second time he had suggested it as a meeting place. But where else? She reluctantly agreed, feeling martyred for the cause of saving civilisation.

  “OK, but we’ll be at the back, as far as possible from the counter. And wear a decent T-shirt! We’ll be there before you. I’m travelling Great Being transport, you’ll need to get the bus.”

  Ogg whisked himself and Antonia to a back table in MacDonald’s. He left her sitting there, went to the counter, and came back with three milk shakes. Antonia found herself wondering how, no matter where and when they went, Ogg managed to always have a plentiful supply of the right currency. She supposed it was small detail for a Great Being with supernatural powers, but it would be extremely useful facility for the likes of her, or her mother and father. She could always have decent clothes, for a start.

  They waited in silence for Perg. Antonia wished they had made a more conventional entrance into the place through the front door. They were in a hidden corner and she couldn’t see most of the restaurant, so she couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the place who knew her. Suppose Perg arrived and walked right up to her table, followed by eager pairs of eyes belonging to her classmates. It would be so embarrassing. She shivered. He really wasn’t in a fit state to be shown off. Not yet!

  Antonia had just finished her milk shake when Peregrine arrived, but she noticed that Ogg hadn’t touched his, so to the casual observer to whom Ogg was invisible it would seem that she and Peg were sitting there, in deep conversation, their drinks forgotten in the intensity of their debate. It crossed her mind that maybe the Ogg-Perg non-communication was a wind-up, and she was the subject of a clever conspiracy to compromise her.

  “Didn’t Ogg come, then?” Perg asked, and she immediately concluded that her last thought had been a bit paranoiaic. Unless Perg was much more quick thinking and a better actor than she had been led to believe.

  “Of course he’s come. You really don’t see him?” she asked.

  “Oh, is that Perg here now?” Ogg chipped in.

  “Did he say something?” Perg enquired.

  Antonia narrowed her eyes and peered at the pair of them. It suddenly all seemed a bit too pat.

  “You two are winding me up?”

  “Who me?” they both said, together.

  “Have I ever lied to you?” Ogg asked. For someone who had dedicated a considerable amount of his time to teaching her the ambiguous nature of truth, this was a stupid question, and she told Ogg so in no uncertain manner.

  “That’s a stupid question,” she said.

  “I didn’t ask a question,” Perg answered.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Antonia told him.

  “Sorry. I suppose you were talking to Ogg. Only, it’s hard for me to know when you’re talking to me and when you’re talking to him. Maybe you could preface every utterance with our names, so we would know.”

  “Perg, shut up!” Antonia screamed.

  “Yeah, like that Ant!”

  Antonia crossed her arms and waited for calm to descend. She was giving out those feminine waves that brook no male interference, whether from the human or Great Being variety. Ogg and Peregrine instinctively said nothing.

  “OK, you two, listen! Can you both hear me?”

  “Yes, I can,” they answered together. Antonia took a deep breath, preparing herself to astound them with a great revelation.

  “If you really can’t communicate with each other, then this might be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. If we can find out why your communication has broken down, it might explain what is happeni
ng – is going to happen – when the end of the world arrives. I know that not being able to talk to each other is annoying for both of you, but actually it’s quite comforting. I mean, we don’t really know that the world is going to end, do we? All we know is that Ogg will have this problem with communication. And here you are having it right now with Perg, and Perg is still here, with all his important bits attached more or less where they should be, as far as I can see. I think that proves that it’s highly likely that Ogg’s loss of communication is just that, a mere loss of communication, and not the end of the world, which we all supposed and feared.”

  Peregrine gave her a look of loving admiration. Ogg, however, is a much bigger nut to crack when it comes to impressing people. He reflected for an instant, and then asked,

  “How do you know Perg is real?”

  “Of course he’s real, look at him. Can’t we see him, touch him.” She ruffled his hair, felt his barely perceptible biceps. She felt Perg’s little purr from somewhere deep in tummy, and immediately regretted it. It had only been a scientific demonstration, after all. “I mean, how real do you want? I can’t even think how you could begin to suggest that my Perg isn’t real.”

  Her Perg! She blushed when she realised what she had just said. Perg seemed to have missed it, thank goodness.

  “Wrong answer, Ant. You’re getting a little bit emotional. Not that I’m not flattered, but Ogg will demolish you.”

  Antonia allowed herself the luxury of a rather mild swearword. And it said a lot for her intellectual progress under Ogg’s tutorship that she was instantaneously able to recover, and without a noticeable pause in her flow.

  “And what exactly do you mean by ‘real’ anyway?”

  If there’s one way to bring an argument to a speedy end, it’s to throw in a Great Philosophical Question just at the right moment. No one said anything for a few minutes. Then Peregrine piped up.

  “All the same, Ant, I’m not sure that your argument is really watertight. I mean, granted, I have a problem with my Ogg communication. And of course it is possible that that it’s the same problem that will cause Ogg to lose all communication in the future, and therefore you could be right that our end if the world isn’t the end of the world at all. But we don’t know that today’s and the future’s communication problem is the same problem, and this seems to me the fatal flaw in your logic. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Antonia minded very much him saying so. She had it hard enough with Ogg, she didn’t need him to criticise her as well. After all, wasn’t he the one who had come up with that stupid idea of the alien invasion, and dragged all of them to the middle of a desert to wait for something that was never going to happen? And another thing, she had been careful to nuance her proposition. She had said it was ‘highly likely ’ that Ogg’s loss of communication wasn’t the end of the world. OK. Maybe should could have said ‘probably’ or even ‘possibly’, but she had admitted the possibility of being wrong. And besides, wasn’t there such a thing as loyalty? She gave him a look which threatened to kill, and, just in case he missed it, she reinforced with a vehement outburst.

  “Who the hell do you think you are to talk, Mr Spaceman Lover? I could kill you!”

  “I was only trying to help, to make sure we’re thinking straight about this problem.”

  “Yes, Ant, he was only trying to help,” Ogg interrupted.

  Antonia’s mouth fell open. The pair of bastards! (Excuse me, but they deserve it) So they had been winding her up all along. Well, it was a really stupid trick to play, especially when the world was in such deep trouble. Of course, boys will be boys. With their love of games and lack of feelings! A woman would never have done such a thing.

  “You could understand each other all the time!” she screamed at them.

  Both Ogg and Peregrine started to mouth their denials, but it was too late. Antonia was not in a mood for being convinced. Of course, she was wrong. They really hadn’t been able to relate with each other until Antonia’s violent outburst against Peregrine. And had she reflected on this lack of ability to interact, and on the manner in which the interaction had been restored, she might well have come up with some interesting thoughts in the relationship between Great Beings and Ordinary People. But her feelings were too bruised, and once again sentiment had got in the way of a great opportunity for all of us to understand ourselves and the rest of the world a lot better.

  “I’m not talking to either of you at the moment. Whiz me back home, Ogg!”

  And Ogg immediately whizzed her back to her bedroom, demonstrating that Great Beings are entirely at the beck and call of ordinary people.