by James Gault
Chapter 5
Rampant rage is never conducive to rational reasoning. Ogg knew that. And he had full access to the turmoil of Antonia’s thoughts. He should have known when her anger had subsided. He should have been able to choose the perfect time to initiate a discussion. But impatience got the better of him and he plunged in too soon.
“What did you make of that?” he asked.
Antonia began with some words that no young lady of her age should ever resort to. And she ended with,
“And to think he’s my great grandfather!”
“Ant, in this world there are many kinds of people, some almost entirely, but not quite, good, and others almost entirely, but not quite, evil.”
“And the evil ones are the non-humans. My great-grandfather is a non-human, and what he did to that poor old woman was really evil; therefore non-humans do evil things. We have to get rid if the non-humans, that’s how to save the future for mankind.”
“Flawed thinking, Ant! What about what you, a human, did to your great-grandfather with that cup of tea? That was just as evil and quite dangerous. You could have burnt his eyes out.”
“He deserved it.”
“Revenge, Ant. An evil motivation for an evil act.”
“Oh, really, Ogg! I was angry, O.K! Don’t you Great Beings ever do anything even a little bit bad?”
“That, my dear Ant, is another Great Philosophical Question.”
Antonia huffed. She wasn’t expecting too much from her perfect friend, was she? I mean, he was after all a Great Being, Was to too much to ask that he was willing to accept the entire Antonia, with all her little deficiencies? She was beginning to think that Ogg was showing worrying signs of not measuring up to her standards.
“Let’s not waste time arguing, Ant! Our main problem for the moment is to find a way to save the world. So tell me, what did we learn from our trip?”
“Well,” she began, a little calmer now. “I think we can reject the theory that non-humanness is hereditary. My evil great-grandfather is a non-human. If non-humanness was hereditary, I’d be a non-human too.”
“What you say sounds reasonable, but unfortunately the laws of genetics are a little complicated. Sometimes family tendencies can skip a generation, or a brother may inherit a characteristic which a sister doesn’t get. So I’m not sure we can yet entirely eliminate the genetic factor.”
“Well, what about my parents? Are they human or non-human.”
“Your father is the perfect example of the hen-pecked human husband. And, in spite of her rather quaint taste in fashion, I can assure you that your mother is entirely human too.”
“And what about my children? You’ve been into my future. You know them. Will they be human or non-human?”
“Ant, it is an inviolable principle that I never give my friends any personal information about their future.”
“But Ogg, the future of the world is at stake here. Are there never any circumstances where expediency is more important then principle?”
“Another Great Philosophical Question, Ant.”
“You won’t get away with that this time,” Antonia shouted gleefully. “You have to make up your mind. Will you tell me or won’t you? What are you going to do?”
Ogg suddenly felt very uncomfortable. He moved in mysterious ways, specifically designed to avoid making pronouncements directly. Pronouncements were the job of his many friends, spread throughout the world and throughout time. Sometimes they would pronounce in his name, sometimes in their own, and frankly it made little difference to Ogg which they chose. It happened, of course, that some of his so-called friends made assertions in his name which were the exact opposite of his views. This could be very frustrating for him, particularly as it was just this sort of proclamation which resulted in the very misery and despair which it was his life’s work to prevent. Although Ogg was powerful, he was not, as many claimed, all-powerful, and, in spite of the drawbacks of having to rely on others, he felt that this was a good thing. But Antonia had backed him into a corner. Whatever he did would be a personal pronouncement by him on a very important issue. If he told her about her future children, he would be condoning pragmatism, white lies, and wars of convenience. If he didn’t tell her, he would be giving implicit support to reactionary views, to traditionalism, to senseless martyrdom for unworthy causes.
But Ogg was a Great Being, with all his wondrous powers allayed to a fearsome intelligence. There was one answer to his dilemma, and Ogg took it. He used his supernatural abilities to travel back in time. Not far, just a few moments, enough to avoid Antonia’s embarrassing Great Philosophical Question.
“And what about my children? You’ve been into my future. You know them. Will they be human or non-human?” Antonia asked, for the first time in her case and the second time in Ogg’s.
“Any of your children will be entirely and completely human.”
It was only an oblique hint at her future and Antonia was tempted to ask more. But she resisted, remaining focussed entirely on the current problem, a hopeful sign for someone who had already decided that her future would lie in reflection on the ‘Great Philosophical Questions facing the Modern World’.
“In that case, it would seem that Great-Grandpa Antonio was a bit of an exception in our family, and that he didn’t perpetuate his non-humanness through his genes to his descendants. Could we take the view that non-humanness, although perhaps not certainly, is very, very probably not a genetic condition and we need to look at behavioural factors for an explanation?”
“I could concur with such a carefully thought out and well-expressed concept, at least as a working hypothesis. Shall we proceed on this basis of your idea?”
Antonia beamed with pleasure and nodded.
“Why not? But what do we do next?”
“Ah, yes!” Ogg replied, and then, just as Antonia was expecting a particularly erudite suggestion, he fell silent. They both spent some time in thought. Ogg used his few spare microseconds to flashing about in time and space looking for inspiration. Nevertheless, it was Antonia who was first to speak.
“Can you tell me if my great-grandfather was always a non-human, right from birth?”
“Ah, you’ve hit on another problem. You see, I don’t really have much affinity with children before a certain age. It depends on the child, but usually it’s about ten or eleven. Before that, I really have no contact with them. I don’t know what’s going on in their minds, I can never have any conversations with them.”
“Do you mean that we all start life as non-humans?”
“No! Non-humanness is different. This is more a kind of not-yet-humanness. The essence of humanity is inquisitiveness. Of course, all children are inquisitive, but with young children the questions are all ‘what’ questions. Their parents or their teachers can help them with those. Where I come in is when they start asking ‘why’ questions. Parents and teachers try to answer these ‘why’ questions as well. But the children soon realise that their parents and teachers don’t know the answers to these questions any better than they do themselves. That’s when they turn to me.”
“And a fat lot of good it does them, Ogg! You don’t have any answers either. You just tell them that everything is a Great Philosophical Question.”
“Well, first of all, the truth is the truth. And secondly, I don’t always tell everyone the same thing.”
“You mean you tell lies to some people.”
“I never tell lies, Ant.”
Antonia thought about this for a few seconds. They were having one of those conversations which seem totally illogical. And yet she knew that Ogg was nothing if not completely logical. She suspected that this was another of his subtle ways of testing her thinking.
“Do you mean to tell me,’ she asked, carefully, “that there are different truths for different people.”
“Ah, that is another of the Great Philosophical Questions. Well done!”
“Oh Ogg, for goodness sake! You’re absolutely infuriating. And you’re distracting us from what we’re supposed to be thinking about. I suggest we stick strictly to practical matters until we have eliminated this threat to the future of mankind.”
“O. K. Ant,” Ogg replied, hanging his head in a suitably penitent fashion. Antonia felt she had got a bit of her own back for his interminable list of unanswerable questions.
“Fine! If we don’t know when Great-Grandpa Antonio became a non-human, why don’t we go back in time and find out?”
“O.K. Ant! You’re the boss! Let’s go!”