by James Gault
Chapter 11
Peregrine Pratt got off to a bad start with Antonia.
“Why are you wearing that stupid hat and grotesque frock made from curtain material?” he asked, even before being introduced.
So he really was a totally obnoxious nerd. Why this time, of all times, had Ogg chosen not to change her dress? And who was he to talk about her appearance, anyway? He looked like a broomstick with pipe cleaners for arms and legs. Ogg, aware of her antagonism, thought he had better introduce them immediately.
“Ant, this is Perg.” Surely he meant ‘Peg’.
“Pleased to meet you,” Peregrine Pratt said.
Antonia couldn’t in all honesty say the same.
She chose instead, “How do you do?” Now she felt that she knew the overgrown matchstick well enough to take him to task over his previous rudeness.
“If you don’t mind me saying, Mr Perg”- not that she cared whether he minded or not, but a least she knew how to be polite. The young man interrupted her.
“Perg is just Ogg’s nickname. My real name is Peregrine Pratt.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said Antonia. “But Mr. the Pratt, I do think it was a bit presumptuous of you to comment on my attire after such a short acquaintance.”
Peregrine Pratt was already regretting his opening remarks. He had been talking to this girl for all of thirty seconds and he hadn’t screamed or shouted once. Could she be the first true love of his life? When you are hideous as him and romance strikes, the last thing you need is to open your mouth and put your foot in it. But Peregrine couldn’t help it, he suffered from dual disabilities of being both piercingly perceptive and naively honest.
“The truth is the truth, and your frock is definitely outrageous,” he began.
‘There are times when discretion should be chosen over frankness, Mr. Wally.”
“But while the dress is unbelievably ugly, the wearer is incredibly beautiful.”
This did not have the effect he had hoped. The last thing to impress Antonia was another smarmy smooth talker! Next he would be calling her ‘sweetheart’ or ‘honey’. She communicated silently with Ogg.
“This creature isn’t another of my unknown and unlovable relatives, is he?"
“No Ant, not yet.”
“NOT YET!!! Ogg, you don’t mean,” Antonia began threateningly.
“Only joking, Ant.”
There was a moment of silence. Peregrine Pratt was wondering how his complement had gone down, but he wasn’t confident. Antonia hadn’t attacked him verbally or physically, but there were dark flashing thoughts somewhere behind her eyes. She was considering if she could get away with a sly kick to his shins. Ogg was smiling to himself. He was having fun.
“Perg has a rather interesting theory about the end of the world, Ant.”
“Oh, have you, Perg?” If the name ‘Perg’ upset the emaciated lollipop, what better reason was there to use it?
“Yes I have, Ant. I’m convinced that we’re being threatened by aliens from another planet.”
When did she give him permission to call her ‘Ant’. Presumptuous gigantic twig!
“And what logic brought you to such a confident conclusion?”
“There just isn’t any other explanation of the facts.”
Antonia wondered how long Peregrine Nincumpoop had been one of Ogg’s chosen friends. Not too long, she suspected. His thinking abilities weren’t up too much. There were a hundred other explanations of the facts. Still, his theory was a possibility that they hadn’t yet explored. Ogg must have thought so too, otherwise why were they there?
“Perg thinks he knows where we can get hold of some of these aliens, Ant.”
“Yes, if we hang around here long enough, we’re sure to come across some.”
Antonia had a look round. It didn’t seem too promising a location. Dirty red dust, no vegetation apart from a few stunted scrubs or spindly trees. If they had to hang around here, she hoped that it wouldn’t be for too long.
“Why here?”
“This is their landing ground. The alien Earth invasion base camp.”
“Really?” She thought hard before asking her next question. She had an uneasy feeling it might be a mistake. “How do you know?”
“I’m glad you asked that,” Peregrine Pratt began. Antonia knew that if he was glad, she wouldn’t be. “It’s a matter of mathematics. This exact location is at the centre of gravity of an equilateral triangle that joins an ancient and mysterious temple of the Maya in Mexico with the secret burial place of the Holy Grail in Southern Florida. In addition, if you take the latitude and longitude of this exact point, accurate to fifteen decimal places, add the individual digits together and divide by the number you first thought of, the remainder is the mystical and magical ‘777’.”
“What’s that got to do with invading aliens?” Ant asked, not convinced that she really wanted to know.
“If you add seven and seven and seven together, you get twenty one.” - there was no denying the arithmetic - “and the aliens we’re talking about come from the twenty first planet in their planetary system. So where else would they choose for their landing base?”
“And the connection with the Mayas and the Holy Grail?”
“Everyone knows that the Mayas were in fact early settlers from outer space. What other explanation could there be for their advanced civilisation? As for the Holy Grail, it is an established fact that it was a drinking cup abandoned by early alien explorers. Its special powers are no more than the mysterious and incomprehensible properties of the liquids that these ancient space travellers used to drink from it. All this is too much of a coincidence, and no other explanation could possibly fit all these facts.”
“Mr. Halfwit, don’t you think that your logic is a bit fantastic? The information which you put forward as facts are merely unsubstantiated assumptions. Nor is there any connection between those assumptions and your core hypothesis, i.e. that this location is an entry point for invading spacemen. And your implicit suggestion that you have the only explanation for everything is no more than sheer arrogance.”
“I knew you would understand,” the great stick-like thinker answered.
Antonia had had enough. She smoothed out a piece of the dusty ground and lay down in the sun, her great-grandfather’s hat over here eyes to keep protect her.
“If we have to wait here for goodness-knows-how-long until some goodness-knows-who comes along goodness-knows-when, I’m going to have a little snooze and a sunbathe. Should anything exciting happen, you can wake me.”
Peregrine Pratt also sat down to wait. They waited. They waited some more. Peregrine got totally bored. Antonia too soon found the snoozing and sunbathing less than interesting. Only Ogg seemed quite happy, but then he had the advantage of being able to buzz about in time and space and seek diversion elsewhere.
“I suppose you’re enjoying yourself by buzzing about in time and space, Ogg,” Antonia challenged him.
“Well, yes I am. But you know I have work to do.”
“You don’t need to make those guilty excuses! We really don’t mind, do we, Perg? Only, if you could find time to stop off at a supermarket in your travels, a couple of ice-cold cans of Coke would be nice.”
“Of course, Ant. We wouldn’t want you to dry up in this heat.”
They were there a long time. Long enough for Peregrine Pratt to begin to doubt his heart-felt convictions about the ‘Alien Theory’. Long enough for Antonia to wish she had brought her history notes so she could catch up on a bit of revision. Ogg’s mobility through time and space proved very useful. They acquired a nice flowery sunbed to match Antonia’s dress. Peregrine Pratt got a folding deckchair after complaining about blisters on his bum. A couple of umbrellas were brought to keep them from suffering from sunstroke. As night came, and the temperature fell, Ogg appeared with some jacket
s, two small tents and sleeping bags. Later on he turned up with a coffee pot, primus stove, cups and plates, cooking utensils, and a Fortnum and Mason’s picnic hamper. Their casual stop had turned into a real encampment. And still no spaceships came.
By the end of the second day, their camp had begun to approach the dimensions of a village, and they had developed a routine. Ogg’s magical talents had been pressed into use to ensure their safety and comfort in what Ant expected would turn out to be an infinitely long wait. Tables and chairs, a calor-gas barbecue, a latrine tent with chemical WC had all appeared. Ogg delivered regular supplies of fresh water in plastic buckets. Antonia had requested and been given sunglasses, a bikini and sun-tan oil. Ogg had also thoughtfully stopped off in her bedroom and brought back her history notes and a couple of other books he thought might keep her occupied. Peregrine Pratt had pleaded for and been supplied with a laptop powered by solar batteries. So while Antonia got steadily browner and mugged up on the causes of the First World War, Peregrine Pratt was frantically pounding on his computer keyboard, recalculating all his formulae and verifying that he hadn’t made a mistake in his calculation of the alien landing location. The conversation was limited. Ogg was too busy fetching supplies and running around space and time looking for information to say much. From time to time, Peregrine Pratt would murmur,
“No, I’m sure I’m right! This is definitely the place,” and Antonia would mutter from beneath her grandfather’s hat, her sunglasses and her notebook,
“Shut up, Perg! I’m trying to study.”
Apart from these tetchy interludes, they were having an idyllic and restful time.
They were all getting tired of ice-cream and MacDonald take-aways, and Peregrine Pratt had the bad sense to suggest that some home-cooked food might be welcome, and that Antonia, being a woman, might be well employed in preparing it. Antonia pointed out that this was a sexist male-chauvinist remark and just what she would have expected from him. There was no logical reason whatever to suggest a woman would be a better cook than a man and if he could find one, she would be only too glad to prepare some tasty food for him. Peregrine Pratt agreed that she was indeed right, that in general men and women’s capability in the culinary field may well be equivalent, and that he generously conceded the argument to her. However, on a personal level, if she left him to cook, they would almost certainly be poisoned. Antonia found herself stooping over a hot barbecue, reflecting on another of those paradoxical situations where, having won the argument, she appeared to have lost it at the same time.
It was about midday on the third day when he appeared. Antonia was lying in the sun, well-oiled for protection, having a rest from reading. She was gazing absent-mindedly into the horizon when his body appeared out of the haze. He was alone There was no sign of a spacecraft.
“Someone coming! Could be you were right after all, Perg,” she said. “No sign of a spaceship, though.”
Peregrine jumped excitedly to his feet. Ogg remained impassive. When you’ve already seen everything already an infinite number of times it’s difficult to get excited.
“Why is he walking? You’d have thought these ultra-clever aliens would have had some slick transport at their disposal.”
“Still this penchant for the exotic, Ant,” Ogg chided her.
They sat in silence watching him come nearer. Would he be friendly, or did he come with extermination on his mind? As he got closer they saw he was wearing a pair of tattered denim shorts and a loud loose shirt which might have been made, Antonia noticed with satisfaction, from old curtain material. He had a small rucksack on his back. With his dark sunglasses and his straw hat, he certainly didn’t look much like a warrior from outer space. When he came within range, he raised his arm to wave and shouted,
“Peace!”
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Antonia thought.
“Where you from, stranger?” Ogg asked. Ogg had decked himself out as a cowboy for this trip, so Antonia might have known he would adopt dialogue from old John Wayne movies. For a Great Being he was really quite predictable.
“Everywhere and nowhere.”
“What ya lookin’ for?” Ogg continued.
“Good and Evil. Peace and War. Food for the body, food for the soul.”
If she had had the free choice of companions, Antonia wasn’t too sure she would have picked the ones she had been landed with. Ogg, who only asked difficult questions without answering any. Perg, whose ugliness was only matched by his stupidity. And now the mysterious stranger, whose hobby seemed to be talking in riddles. She would almost have been better off in the Maths class. Still, she had been a well brought up child, and the habit of politeness was ingrained deeply.
“Well, I’m just about to cook, so I can offer you some food for the body.”
The stranger joined his hands together as if in prayer, and bowed from his waist.
“May the spirit bless you!”
So polite and charming! And the guy had style. But what did he mean? Did he want something to eat or not? And how to ask him without appearing totally stupid?
“I’m going to barbecue some steaks. Will that be all right?”
“Oh, my poor child. Not steaks! You are poisoning yourself. You are what you eat.”
“You are what you think,’ Ogg said quietly, inside Antonia’s head, “What a pratt!’
“I always eat fish, myself. Fish and vegetables! Food for the soul and the body!”
They didn’t have any fish. It hadn’t been on any of Ogg’s shopping lists. She looked over at Ogg, who shrugged his shoulders and nodded. She walked over and opened the cool box, and, as she expected, there was a package of freshly frozen salmon lying on the top by the time she got there. She smiled at Ogg and began to prepare the food.
The visitor bore no resemblance to Peregrine Pratt’s preconceived notions of the physical appearance of an alien. However, when Perg examined his soul and found that deep down he really had no justifications for these preconceptions. It was entirely possible that the stranger might indeed be a visitor from another planet, however implausible he looked.
“Which planet are you from?” he ventured.
“I’m from a dying planet. We all are. Everywhere, everything is being destroyed. We’re killing our future.”
This last remark caught everyone’s attention. Even Ogg, for whom nothing could really be a surprise, sat up and took notice. Did this overdressed hippy have the answer they were seeking?
“Would you care to expand on that last statement?” Antonia asked.
The stranger only smiled. He had moved a few paces away from the settlement, and was kneeling, his face towards the midday sun. His open rucksack was sitting beside him, and he was taking items from it and placing them on the ground in front of him – a stained yellow fragment of cloth which may have once served as a towel, a broken plastic candlestick in the shape of the Eiffel tower, a piece of pebble painted in psychedelic colours, a tattered paperback copy of a novel by Jack Kerouac. These items were all arranged with ostentatious care. When he had finished, he leaned back on his knees and inspected them. They weren’t quite right. He squinted up at the sun, measured the length and direction of shadows. He made a few adjustments. He re-inspected, readjusted. Eventually he was satisfied. He opened the Kerouac novel. He closes his eyes and began to chant in a low melodic voice.
“Because I do not hope to turn again, because I know I shall not know, because I know that time is always time, and place is always and only place, because I cannot hope to turn again,”
“Why is he reciting TS Eliot from a book by Jack Kerouac?” Antonia asked.
“Why is he reciting TS Eliot, anyway?” Peregrine Pratt added.
Ogg was about to open his mouth but Antonia caught him, and said,
“Great Philosophical Questions?”
“Not great, Ant, but intere
sting enough in their own way. Let’s watch and see what happens.”
The stranger’s eyes were now open, but glazed. He was rocking back and forward between his knees and his heels. And all the time they could hear the quiet snatches of Eliot’s verses.
“Because I know I shall not know, because I know that time is always time.”
“He must be on something,” Peregrine Pratt suggested.
“Not at all, my friend,” the stranger answered in a perfectly normal voice. “This is a well understood and practiced ritual which will liberate my soul for a few moments of tranquillity from the oppressive hubbub of modern city life.” And he returned to his chant.
“Hubbub of modern city life? We’re in the middle of the flaming desert!” Peregrine remarked. This elicited no response other than a continuation of
“Because I do not hope to turn again…”
The others watched him intently. At least Ogg and Peregrine Pratt did. Antonia was struggling over the cooking. She wasn’t all that good at it. Why had she let Pratt trick her into it? She was intensely interested in the stranger’s ceremony, but could only afford the occasional quick glance in his direction.
Her attention was wrenched from her cooking by a loud thump. The stranger had rolled back on his heels and right over onto his back, and was sprawling on the hot red earth. He had stopped intoning his mantra, and was lying silent and beaming, in a state of blissful oblivion.
“Are you OK?” Peregrine Pratt asked.
“Leave him!” Ogg said. “He’s no longer with us. He’ll be OK later.”
They went back to their tasks. Antonia wiped her brow with her dishtowel and began to chop up some onions. Peregrine Pratt took out his computer, and began keying in a description of the stranger and trying to correlate it with other information in his database of alien sightings. Ogg returned to his frantic wanderings in search of information, and Antonia took advantage of his travels to get him to stop off somewhere and pick up a bottle of good white wine.
“Grub’s up!” Antonia shouted, a few minutes later. Ogg instantaneously arranged a beautiful table set with silver cutlery, candlesticks, white linen tablecloth and crystal wine glasses. Great Beings can always pull out all the stops whenever they have guests. Antonia was a bit concerned about the guest in question, who was still comatose beside his home-made alter, but she needn’t have worried. The mention of food brought him back to life instantaneously.
They settled down to sample Antonia’s uninspired but adequate cooking. The stranger proffered suitably polite praise for her modest efforts. Peregrine Pratt, not wishing to be left out, concurred. Ogg, believing himself a true friend, didn’t feel the need for such hypocrisy.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Mr….” Antonia began.
“You can call me Ogg,” the stranger replied.
What was he saying? Who did he think he was? She wasn’t having that.
“Indeed I could not. I already know an Ogg, it would be too confusing. ” She looked over at her own Ogg, who hadn’t appeared to notice and was stuffing himself with over-grilled fish. “Don’t you have another name?”
“Well, my parents called me James T Wishbone, but I don’t use it much these days. Maybe you could call me ‘JT’?”
“I was interested in what you were doing earlier, JT. You couldn’t tell me a bit more about it, could you?”
“Ah, you mean the meditation?”
“I suppose so. What was it all about?”
“It’s impossible to explain. I have to show you”
‘You mean that it’s something which defies logic?”
“It certainly does!”
“Can there be anything which defies logic?” Ant asked, and looked at Ogg. That just had to be one of her best and most important Great Philosophical Questions and there was bound to be some reaction from the Great Being. So why was he sitting there picking his teeth with a cocktail stick and pretending – she was certain he was pretending – that his mind was elsewhere?
“Faith defies logic,” JT informed her. She turned to Ogg for confirmation but he shrugged his shoulders and helped himself to another glassful of wine.
“With faith and meditation you can transcend the mundane to the heavenly, you can pass from black and white into fully fledged Technicolor, you can cross over from silence to symphonic music.”
This was an attractive concept for Antonia. Ogg was great, but black and white seemed to describe him exactly. What this guy said had some promise. She wanted to know more.
“What’s it like? What’s it like when you cross over?”
“It’s like an exotic journey. Light, sound, music, smells, sensations like you’ve never felt before. You are yourself and you see yourself at the same time. You know everything, suddenly, without having to learn it. It’s fantastic!”
It sounded good to Antonia. And it would certainly be a help with the history revision.
“Tell me more!”
‘Fireworks explode. Rockets roar into the sky. Cities, continents, planets, galaxies whiz by as you fly through the universe. You swim in magic rivers of unknown fluids you have never seen or smelt before. You taste exotic fruits with unexpected juices of almost unbearable sweetness. You shiver painlessly in intense cold, you melt in searing heat without feeling uncomfortable. You voyage, you travel, you journey, to the depths of your imagination and beyond. And it’s all free!”
This was how journeys with Great Beings should be. Why didn’t Ogg realize this? Antonia was convinced. She could hardly wait to get started.
“How do I get a ticket?”
“First of all you must renounce rationality.”
“Oh! Do you mean……I have to abandon all attempts at correct thinking?”
“Yes.”
“I have to stop trying to answer Great Philosophical Questions?”
“Even to stop asking them.”
Ogg had to be in a state of extreme agitation by now. She knew how he hated the idea of anyone thinking in an incorrect fashion. Yet there he was, his elbows on the table and his chin resting in his cupped hands, his head cocked a little to the side and a silly contented grin on his face. He was looking at her in a curious and seemingly disinterested manner. It had to be an act. He must be boiling inside.
“And I have to stop seeking the solution to every problem?”
“Yes.”
“To give up thinking and theorising.”
“Replace thought with belief!”
“And if I do all this, I get all these transcendental benefits.”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it!”
“I hope this doesn’t upset you too much, Mr. JT, but I think I’m going to have to leave it.” Antonia heard a laugh which she could have sworn was Ogg, but when she turned her head his face was impassive.
“Your loss, young lady! But it’s an offer which is always open. If you ever change your mind, I’ll be back. Thanks for the lunch.”
JT Wishbone collected his little pile of artefacts and stuffed them back into his rucksack. Then slinging his burden over his shoulder, he gave them a wave and sauntered off into the desert.
“Ogg?”
“Yes, Ant?”
“Was Mr JT Wishbone a human or a non-human?”
“Oh, he was very much a human. Why do you ask?”
“Do you think he might have something to do with the end of the future?”
“Have you got a theory, Ant?”
“Not a theory. A hunch! Is a hunch OK? It’s not proper thinking, is it?”
“It’s incomplete thinking. But hold on to it. You never know, it may turn into a theory some day soon.”
Antonia decided to keep her hunch to herself and wait for it to grow into a theory.
They stayed in the desert for another two days. Peregrine Pratt spent most of
his time tapping frantically on his computer keyboard and staring anxiously at the sky. He saw a good number of birds of various types, the occasional jet stream of an airliner, two low flying fighter jets, but nothing that could that could be interpreted as a spacecraft by even the most optimistic and biased observer. Antonia finished her history revision, and succeeded in acquiring a glowing skin tint worthy of a lazy summer beach holiday. She was quite pleased with it until Peregrine Pratt reminded her that her skin would revert to its normal colour as soon as she got back to her own time and place.
“Does this mean my history revision’s been a waste of time too?” she demanded fearfully of Ogg.
“No mental exercise is ever wasted,” Ogg assured her. She sighed with relief.
Both Antonia and Peregrine Pratt ended up being quite frankly bored. Ogg had his instantaneous voyages to divert him, but he either wasn’t finding out anything of note or for some reason he was keeping it to himself. He brought them back plenty of ice-cream and cool fruit-based drinks but it wasn’t exactly intellectual stimulation, was it?
Then the bombshell dropped. Antonia was lounging on the sun-bed, her great grandfather’s hat protecting the skin on her nose from peeling, while mentally making a list of the good and bad points of the Austrian Emperor’s chancellor Metternich. Suddenly she felt a dark shadow pass across her face. She looked up to find Peregrine Pratt staring down at her.
“Ant, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Oh blast! She’d lost the plot. She’d have to start form the beginning again with her list.
“What is it now, Perg?”
Peregrine Pratt paused, then exposed his piano keyboard teeth in a wide smile. With his teeth and his acne, he was a pitiful patchwork of red, pink white and black.
“I love you,” he announced.
Oh my god!!! She didn’t need this. Did she deserve it for flaunting her body in that stupid bikini just for the sake of a useless and extremely temporary sun-tan? What was she going to do now?
“I think I have loved you from the first moment I saw you?”
Even if he hadn’t been so ugly, there was no way she could surrender her soul to someone who only spoke in clichés.
“Don’t be silly, Perg, you’re just bored.”
“You must take me seriously, Ant. I know I’m not pretty, but I’m faithful.”
“If I want faithful, I’ll get a dog, Perg.”
“I’ll be your dog. I’ll follow you everywhere.”
“We’ve been thrown together by circumstances. Out here, just you I and Ogg. When we get back to civilisation, you’ll meet lots of girls your own age. I’m much too young for you.”
“I’m only seven years older than you. It’s nothing.”
Nothing!
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ogg staring at them. He was wearing a sickening silly grin. It might be entertainment to him, but she needed help. He might be a bit weird, but Peregrine Pratt was basically an all right sort of person. Not perhaps the sort of person to make your life with, but too all right to be destroyed by a callous and painful rejection. Solving this one could well be as hard as finding the answer to a Great Philosophical Question.
“Look, I appreciate your attention and I’m very flattered by your infatuation,” she began. Her admirer was displaying his chessboard teeth in the same sickening smile as her so-called friend Ogg. “But, what we have to ask ourselves, Perg, my dear – oops, she shouldn’t have said that – …… the important thing to consider ….. the essential question facing us is…...” Pratt was listening eagerly. Why couldn’t he insult her like he often did and make this easy for her? “…..what we have to know is…..” She had it! The solution. “What is love?” she ended, with a squeal of triumph.
“Great Philosophical Question, Ant!” Ogg interrupted.
Antonia thought it was a really great Great Philosophical Question, especially as it had turned up just exactly when she needed it. Peregrine Pratt frowned.
“You don’t know what love is?” he asked.
“Do you?” she replied, confidently.
“Well,” he started. But then he stopped. He screwed up his face. He twisted his mouth. He scratched his head. “I need to think about it a bit more,” he finally announced.
Antonia watched him as he sat back in his deck chair, his finger in his mouth and his head in the clouds. She felt a bit guilty. He wasn’t a bad guy. His acne might disappear in a couple of months and she could always send him to the dentist. If she fed him up a bit he wouldn’t look so awkwardly tall.
But no, it really didn’t bear thinking about.