The Abominable Snowman Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  The Abominable Snowman

  Coming Soon: DRAGONS AT CRUMBLING CASTLE

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Text copyright © 2014 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Mark Beech

  The Abominable Snowman was originally published in the “Children’s Circle” section of the Bucks Free Press in 1969.

  First U.S. edition, 2014

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK, a Penguin Random House Company.

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  eISBN 978-0-544-63066-6

  v1.1214

  The Abominable

  Snowman

  There was once a young man called Captain the Honorable Sir Herbert Stephen Ernest Boring-Tristram-Boring, who was known to his friends as Bill and was very rich indeed. He was also very bored with living in London.

  One day a man knocked at his door, pushed past Bill’s butler, and asked, “Are you Captain the Honorable Sir, and so on?”

  “That’s me!” said Bill.

  “Well, I’m Alfred Tence, the famous explorer,” said the visitor, brushing a heap of fifty-dollar bills off a chair and sitting down.

  “Not the man who walked up the Amazon?”

  “I am that man,” said Tence modestly.

  “Not the man who rowed from Brighton to Bombay in the bathtub?”

  “I am that man,” said Tence, swelling with pride.

  “The man who sailed across the Pacific on a raft made from mahogany and shoelaces, and discovered the lost islands of Odium?”

  “No, I wasn’t that man, actually,” said Tence, deflating suddenly. “That was another man. Anyway, look at this.” He whipped out his wallet and showed Bill a blurred photograph of a white blob in snowstorm. “Know what that is?” he asked. “That’s an abominable snowman! If I had twenty thousand dollars, I could go and capture it,” he added, looking sharply at Bill.

  Bill signaled to the butler. “Give this gentleman twenty thousand dollars from the jar in the hall,” he said.

  “Excellent!” cried Tence. “You must come, of course. We start tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Where to? Mount Everest?”

  “Nonsense! That’s like Disney World these days—the snowmen are only found on Ben Drumlin. That’s a real mountain for you. It’s in Chilistan. I must rush—I’ve got things to do.”

  Bill watched him go. “What a strange man, Twist,” he said to his butler. “But a genius when it comes to exploring, of course. I wonder where he got that photo.”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. Shall I pack?”

  “Yes, Twist. I think something warm is called for—hot-water bottles, long underwear, and so forth. Chuck a lot of money into a suitcase too.”

  They had locked up the house and were waiting on the step when Tence turned up the next morning wearing a blue parka and a hat with a pom-pom on it. He was followed by a small Chilistanian man—his guide and interpreter—pulling a suitcase along behind him. There were also a lot of reporters, asking questions all at once and taking photographs as they ran up.

  Tence waved them aside and shouted at Bill: “Just get a taxi, my boy!”

  Bill stepped into the road and waved his umbrella.

  “Where to, sir?” said the taxi driver as the vehicle pulled up.

  “Chilistan, please.”

  The taxi driver looked puzzled. “Is that anywhere near Shepherd’s Bush?” he asked.

  “It’s about six thousand miles away. Here’s five thousand dollars to start with,” said Bill.

  The taxi driver paled when he saw all that money. “Right-ho, then,” he said.

  “You can’t go by taxi all the way to Chilistan!” cried Tence. “There’s an ocean in the way!”

  Bill leaned forward and tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder. “I say, old chap,” he said, “have you got a passport?”

  “Yes, sir. I got it when we went to the Costa Lotta for our vacation last year,” said the taxi driver.

  Bill told him to fetch it, so they drove around to the taxi driver’s house, which was No. 8 Tramway Place, London. He went inside and reappeared not long afterward followed by a small fat woman in a brown coat and a velvet hat stuck full of hatpins. She carried two suitcases.

  “It’s my wife, sir!” said the taxi driver sadly. “She says she’s not going to have me gallivanting about abroad without her to keep an eye on me.”

  “Sensible woman!” said Bill. “What is your name, madam?”

  “Agnes Glupp,” she said, and curtsied, because she knew a gentleman when she saw one.

  “Twist, just shove the lady’s luggage on the roof. Get in, madam. Are you a good cook? Splendid! I can’t boil an egg myself.”

  “This is all wrong!” cried Tence, almost in tears. “This isn’t the proper way to go exploring! You can’t just take someone’s wife along! Madam, there are abominable snowmen, and man-eating plants, and dangerous mountains and things like that where we’re going!”

  Mrs. Glupp just smiled absent-mindedly.

  ∾

  Mr. Glupp drove down to Dover, and before long they were bowling through France.

  “Head south,” said Bill. “Down to the Costa Lotta—it’s sunny there.”

  They drove for ages through cabbage fields. When they reached the Costa Lotta, it was all blue sea, blue sky, and rich people in swimsuits.

  “Oh, I remember this,” said Mrs. Glupp.

  Bill bought a small villa for them to stay at, and then they all went down to the beach, where Mr. and Mrs. Glupp waded with their shoes tied together around their necks—Mr. Glupp even took his coat off. Tence, of course, was still wearing his fleece-lined explorer’s clothes, which made people stare.

  Twist, the butler, bought himself a copy of The Times, his favorite newspaper, and settled down to read it, while Tence’s Chilistanian guide said he wanted to stay with the taxi, where he had made himself a home among the suitcases.

  “I say, sir,” said Twist suddenly. “It says here that a party of Arbrovian gentlemen are climbing Ben Drumlin to look for the abominable snowman. I thought we were.”

  Tence almost exploded. “They’ll get there before us! All my work is in ruins!”

  “Let me see that paper!” said Bill. “Hmm . . . it says here that those Arbrovians have just set out for Chilistan. I reckon we could get there before them. Stop crying, Tence. Twist, find me a telephone.”

  A moment later he was back and ordered everyone to pile into the taxi.

  “Drive to Nasti airport, runway three,” he said to Mr. Glupp.

  Fifteen minutes later they were driving up a ramp and through the giant doors of a cargo plane. The propellers were already spinning.

  “How did you arrange this?” gasped Tence.

  “I bought it,” said Bill. “That’s the best part of being a multimillionaire—you don’t have to hang around.”

  “Oh! I’ve never been up in the air before,” said Mrs. Glupp. She sat down and put her hat-pinned hat on the table. Except that it wasn’t a table. It was the control panel, and she accidentally moved a switch.

  “We appear to be moving, sir,” said Twist, the butler. “And sir, there is a uniformed gentleman running along behind us shouting, ‘Hey,’ sir. I venture to suggest
that he is the pilot, sir.”

  The plane trundled along the runway, gathering speed. The wall at the edge of the airfield was getting very near.

  “Has anyone got any suggestions?” asked Tence.

  Everyone stood around looking embarrassed. Then Tence’s guide, the small Chilistanian, leaned forward and cautiously pushed a lever.

  The plane left the ground.

  He sat down and hit some switches.

  “How did he learn to fly an airplane?” asked Bill.

  “Search me,” said Tence. “When I first met him, he was driving camels. He is clearly a man of many talents.”

  The plane looped the loop twice, dived under some telephone wires, climbed straight upward, and settled down flying more or less properly in the direction of Chilistan. The radio started to crackle frantic messages from the control tower, but their new pilot ignored them.

  Soon they were over the sea, while Mrs. Glupp and Twist prepared lunch in the galley.

  It took several days to get to Chilistan, because they had to keep landing to refuel—usually at little desert airstrips, where fuel was brought to the plane on camels. They also got lost for a while around Turkey.

  “I’ve just remembered something,” said Tence, as the Himalayan mountains loomed up. “Chilistan hasn’t got an airport.”

  “That’s funny,” said Bill. “We seem to be landing.”

  ∾

  Chilistan is a very small country, mostly tropical jungle, stony desert, and mountains. The capital city, Chilblaine, lies on the bank of the red River McPherson, named after the man who claimed to have discovered the country, and it was toward this that the plane was descending.

  Fishermen on the bank were amazed to see it drop out of the clouds, skim up the river, bounce onto the bank, and come to rest in a thicket of baza trees.

  The doors opened and a small black taxi shot out at great speed. Then the plane exploded.

  “Not a bad landing at all,” said Tence to his guide. “I reckon we’re ahead of the Arbrovians now.”

  Mr. Glupp braked as a small man in a blue suit dashed up to the taxi. Tence leaped out and shook hands with him, and there started a long conversation in Chilistanian, which sounded to Bill like a wet finger being dragged across a window.

  “It’s my old friend Godli, the prime minister,” Tence explained to the others. “He says he’ll give us all the help we need.”

  “That’s pretty decent, considering we’ve just set fire to a splendid thicket of baza trees,” said Bill.

  “Yes, but he doesn’t like Arbrovians, because he had an Arbrovian camera that broke, as far as I can understand it,” said Tence.

  “Where is Ben Drumlin?” asked Mrs. Glupp.

  Tence pointed.

  The mountain rose out of the jungle and went on rising, higher and higher, until it disappeared into the clouds.

  “Good heavens,” she said, “and is that snow on top?”

  “Some do say it’s sherbet,” said Tence sarcastically. “I don’t think we’ll have to go more than a third of the way up, though,” he added. “The abominable snowmen are supposed to live in caves not too far above the jungle.”

  The rest of the day was spent buying warm clothes and hiring porters, and the tropical night had fallen suddenly, like a brick, when they went to bed at Chilblaine’s best hotel, La Grande Magnifique Ritz Splendide Carlton. Twist, the butler, had to sleep in the bathtub.

  ∾

  Early the next morning they piled into the taxi again, with Twist driving a truck full of porters and provisions. A small crowd gathered to see them off, and a brass band played the Chilistan national anthem, “God Save Us All.”

  Then they started off through the forests around Ben Drumlin, the taxi nosing along tiny tracks between huge trees full of brightly colored birds. Monkeys swung through the trees and shrieked, and millions of insects hummed and clicked.

  Up and up the foothills of Ben Drumlin went the little convoy, until the lush forests gave way to pine trees and finally to rocks and stunted bushes.

  The road disappeared. There was nothing for it but to walk. Mr. Glupp locked the door of his taxi and hid the key in his hat.

  “How much farther before we find the abominable snowmen?” asked Bill, lacing up his climbing boots.

  Tence struggled to get his backpack on. “Another two or three thousand feet,” he said. “That’s where I saw them. By Jove, doesn’t the air smell good up here!”

  “Smells like air to me,” said Mr. Glupp.

  “Onward!” cried Tence.

  They trudged on up the slopes of Ben Drumlin, singing songs. At last they came to a little mountain stream that ran tinkling over the stones. Bill bent down to fill his water bottle and heard a whirring noise. There was a tiny water wheel in the stream, spinning at great speed.

  “And there’s something attached to it,” said Tence. It was a small piece of parchment. On it were two lines written in Chilistanian, and Tence translated them:

  “It’s a joke,” said Bill. “A very old one too.”

  “Extremely so, sir,” said Twist, the butler.

  “Hmm,” said Tence, tapping the paper. “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s a Joke Wheel. There must be a Joke Monastery up here—and Joke Monks.”

  He explained: “You see, they think the world was created as a joke, so everyone should give thanks by having a good laugh. That’s why they tie jokes to water wheels. Every time the wheel goes around, a joke goes up to heaven.”

  “What singular persons,” said Bill. “You mean they spend all their time telling jokes?”

  “Yes. They even get up in the middle of the night to invent some more.”

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was a small round man in a blue robe, with a bald head and a big grin. Slowly he took a custard pie from one of his voluminous sleeves.

  Tence ducked just in time. It hit Twist.

  It was a curious scene, halfway up the twenty-seventh tallest mountain in the world. The monk stood there, laughing, while everyone else looked embarrassed, and Twist stood with custard dripping into his collar. Then there was a green flash, a popping noise, and the monk was gone.

  Twist blew his nose.

  “Well!” said Bill. “What a strange man.”

  “That was one of them,” said Tence. “I forgot to add that they can do magic as well.”

  ∾

  For the rest of that day they wandered on up Ben Drumlin. They saw no more of the Joke Monks as they hurried on past large stones and bushes, although, as the stars were coming out, they saw, high on a spur of rock, a large building.

  As they passed it, they could hear a singsong voice telling a joke in Chilistanian, and a burst of laughter as the monks saw the funny side.

  “An odd bunch,” said Bill after they’d pitched camp and were sitting around the fire. “It can’t be much fun sitting up here all the time inventing jokes.”

  “They enjoy it,” said Tence. “Do you know, they reckon that there are 7,777,777,777,777 jokes in the world, and when they’ve all been told, the world will come to an end, like switching off a light. There’ll be no more need for it, see.”

  There was silence while everyone sat around thinking, or just watching the last of the sunset. The moon rose, painting Ben Drumlin’s snowy cap bright silver. More stars came out.

  “Like a light, you say?” asked Bill after a while.

  “Yes. Or a burst balloon.”

  There was another thoughtful pause, and they all listened to the monks’ laughter floating down from the monastery.

  “I wonder how many there are left?”

  “Millions,” said Tence reassuringly.

  “Eeeeeeeeeee!” screamed Mrs. Glupp, hurtling out of her tent. “There’s a hairy monster in my sleeping bag.”

  “A snowman!” screamed Tence. “Don’t panic!”

  Everyone did, trying to hide behind everyone else as the sleeping bag came bounding out of the tent, hopped high into the air, and b
urst.

  The thing inside landed on Twist’s head. It sat there, blinking.

  “That doesn’t look abominable to me,” said Mrs. Glupp. “It looks rather sweet.”

  It was about the size of a soccer ball, and the same shape, with a white coat and a small bushy tail. Two button eyes peered out of the fur. Then it started to cry.

  Mrs. Glupp lifted it down off Twist’s head and said something like “Izzo fwitened by der nasty man? Dere, dere.” Everyone wondered what she was going on about, but the small snowman seemed to understand.

  “It must be a baby one,” said Tence.

  It coughed and went to sleep. Mrs. Glupp made a bed for it out of Tence’s backpack, much to his annoyance; then, wondering how the baby snowman had come to be in their camp, the explorers crawled into their tents for the night.

  Bill dreamed that a Joke Monk was sitting in a bath of custard and telling the 7,777,777,777,777th joke, which would bring about the end of the world.

  The monk went on telling it regardless of the attempts of Tence to stop him by throwing sleeping bags at him.

  BANG!

  Bill woke up. Everything had gone dark. Something was treading on his stomach. The world has ended, he thought.

  But no. The tent had just collapsed. Bill squirmed about underneath it and raised the flap. A scene of utter confusion met his eyes. Tence was running around waving a gun. Most of the tents had collapsed, and everyone was shouting.

  It turned out that something large and furry had rushed into the camp and had run off with Twist, the butler. It was also now snowing.