The writer should never stop writing. The writer cannot stop writing. The magic words are “what if…?”

The Zoggian

There are not many orphans from the Zog wars who made it to planet Earth, but Gerdin was certainly one. At least that was the firmly stated opinion of Robert Root, and one he never tired of sharing with his classmates at Alderley Grammar.

“Check the ears,” he would whisper excitedly “Not pointy enough for a Romulan like Spock but pointy nevertheless and practically see-through!” As the Star Trek expert of 10C, Robert’s words were generally taken with a mock seriousness that was appropriate to his position as the Foremost of the Four, his collection of acolytes who so successfully set the tone for the whole of Year 10.

He happily pointed out the further evidence. The boy’s absence of proper knees was painfully obvious in the changing-room. ‘They don’t need knees on Zog’, Robert explained, ’they just float about in the low gravity and make Bleep noises’. Then there was his stoop, his inability to look people in the eye, his desperate attempts to be in the Gang. “Above all,” he added “He can’t even spell his name correctly! Who on earth would spell Gordon ‘Gerdin’ except for an off-worlder who had just learned English!” It was the final evidence they needed, and, led by the Four, the whole of Year 10 joyfully joined in the project of Alien destruction.

It became quite the right thing to torment the strange boy with a variety of verbal and sometimes physical attacks. They called him, to his face and behind his back, the “Zoggian”. His Letter of Application to be Five of the Gang of Four was torn up in front of his tear-filled eyes, and the entire project reached an ‘apogee of excellence’ (Robert’s words) when they locked him In a cupboard which they called his spaceship and made vooshing noises, assuring him they were sending him “back where he came from”

You would think some adult would have noticed…but it was not that kind of school. As far as the teachers were concerned, the boys should ‘sink or swim’ and we are, after all, writing about a period of the sixties in which only the strong survived, especially in posh grammar schools in the shires. Gerdin just had to bear it, and when he went home spattered with dirt and blood to adoptive parents who were, after all, rather busy and not, let’s face it, terribly fond of their bookish, undemonstrative ward, nothing was said beyond ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Get cleaned up will you!’

So the campaign continued right into the Sixth when Gerdin’s incredible ability to do Maths beyond the capabilities of any child of his age made him a candidate for Oxford to the chagrin of the Four, none of whom was considered suitable.

That was when he disappeared.

I would love to report that Robert was found very dead one day with a mysterious wound which could have been made only with an unknown possibly alien weapon, but he wasn’t.

That is yet to come.