by P. B. Kerr
Love of money and nothing else will ruin Sparta.
Know thyself and to thine own self be true.
Nothing in excess and nothing excessively.
Sure, ’tis better to be a live dog than a dead lion.
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbor. It makes you shoot an arrow at your landlord and it makes you miss him, too.
Nimrod smiled to himself as he almost seemed to hear the Irish voice of Mr. Rakshasas in some of these words. Was it possible that some of his proverbial wisdom had been inspired by the time the old djinn had spent in the omphalos?
An intoxicating smell like incense filled the dank air of the omphalos and, not having any nostrils to smell it, Nimrod wondered how he did. And yet it was there and getting stronger until he perceived it wasn’t a smell at all but some powerful force — older than antiquity itself — that seemed intent on becoming mixed in with Nimrod’s own spirit. Instinctively, Nimrod felt himself pull away and, for a moment, the force fragmented like a broken window and a hundred ancient voices suddenly crowded in sharply upon his thoughts, as if in recrimination for his desire to be a thing apart.
“See not what you see and hear not what you hear,” he seemed to tell himself, but when he tried to give himself up to the voices, he experienced a brief moment of panic as his mind struggled to accommodate all of these whispered sounds, and he cried out as the clamor of what he heard was too much for him.
And almost immediately, he realized that hearing wasn’t required so much as feeling and, relaxing a little, he gave himself up to it and soon enough, their separate voices and his became one clear thought. It was as if his mind had suddenly expanded tenfold and he experienced insights into existence and the universe he had never even suspected were possible. Most of these insights could never have been put into words, for they were beyond articulation, which is sometimes the way with revelation. But gradually, one omniscient voice seemed to make itself plain. Nimrod could not have put a name to the voice that seemed like his own and yet was not; nor did the voice identify itself, but Nimrod was quite certain that the voice he heard inside his head was nothing less than Wisdom itself. And yet it was Wisdom with a definite love of the obscure:
“When a man shall become a mule, you will begin to have found what you are looking for,” said the voice.
“I don’t understand,” said Nimrod. “Speak again.”
“The way to the stars is not signposted, nevertheless it does exist. If you don’t know the way, then walk slowly, in thin air, and you will find it between a rock and a hard place.”
“You speak in riddles,” said Nimrod.
“Of course. It’s up to you to find the meaning.”
“Really,” said Nimrod, “this is most frustrating.”
“A man may die of frustration, perhaps, but he’ll never die of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.”
“Nevertheless, I would ask you to speak again,” said Nimrod. “My mission is an important one. And not for myself, but for all mankind.”
“I count the grains of sand on the beach and measure the sea; I understand the speech of the dumb and hear the voiceless. So, believe me, I know what your mission is.”
“Well then,” said Nimrod.
“Sharpen the claws on your feet and the one in your hand,” said the voice. “Take hold of the field and don’t let go. Stand on a shelf and reach for the sky. Hang yourself from a face and rejoice at every hammer blow for you will still be alive.”
Nimrod sighed. “I was hoping for something a little more obvious.”
“Look, you have to guess or I can’t help.” “Very well,” sighed Nimrod.
“You must climb over the bodies of those who went before,” said the voice. “Those whom a winter blanket now covers and whose faces are hardened to you forever.”
“Yes. Go on. I think I’m getting warmer now.”
“There are several routes you can choose,” said the voice. “They all reach the same place, but not all of them will get you to where you most want to go. When it becomes impossible to breathe then you will have succeeded where others failed.”
Nimrod groaned. “Yes, all right, I get it now,” he said. “You’re talking about a mountaineering expedition, aren’t you?”
The voice tutted loudly. “Yes, of course, I thought you’d never get it. Duh!”
“Sorry.”
“All right. Let me unpack some of what I’m talking about here.”
“I wish you would,” said Nimrod.
“You wish to bring about the impossible: suddenly to make a great many people feel that the world is a better, happier place than it was before and that they themselves can actively share in the world’s new good fortune.”
“Yes. That’s it exactly. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“To do this is no small thing because you can’t build a barrel around a bunghole,” said the voice. “Nevertheless, you must do something very like it and make people believe that there is much more than there is. So look for that which is impossible or that which cannot be found.”
“I thought this was you being a little less obscure,” observed Nimrod. “We seem to be losing sight of clarity again.”
“Such as,” said the voice, raising its voice, “the cure for a disease, the white whale, the Holy Grail, El Dorado, the fountain of youth. Something like that. Or perhaps some utopia, a perfect paradise that exists hidden from man. My opinion is that this is the best thing to look for. Shangri-la. Hence all the mountaineering references.”
“Shangri-la? That old fairy story about a secret earthly paradise in Tibet?”
“Is it? A fairy story?”
“I always thought so,” admitted Nimrod. “Either that or something dreamed up by people suffering from oxygen deprivation.”
“Maybe you’re wrong. But you won’t know unless you look, will you?”
Nimrod sighed. “Gosh, that’s quite an undertaking. Finding Shangri-la. But you really think that might do the trick?”
“Yes. For while it’s true that all men must die, be sure it takes much more than a lifetime to get used to the idea. Remember, the seeking of one thing will find another.”
“The seeking of one thing will find another what?”
“That is my advice. I have spoken. Good-bye.”
Nimrod shook his head, or at least he did something as close to shaking his head as he was able given that he had no head. “What a cryptic fellow,” he muttered.
“I’m an oracle,” said the voice. “Not a stupid fortune cookie. None of this is supposed to be obvious.”
“It isn’t,” said Nimrod. “Really, it isn’t obvious at all.”
CHAPTER 21
A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
Sitting on top of the box of stores now occupying the last three or four square feet of the flying carpet that continued to smolder underneath him like a dying barbecue, Groanin prayed that he and it would stay aloft long enough to avoid a landing in the snow-covered tops of the trees that seemed uncomfortably close and pointed. Beyond the tall trees lay open fields of snow, which, he hoped, would be deep and soft enough to break his fall and not his neck. A thin plume of smoke drifted for miles behind him so that he felt he must have resembled a stricken airplane, or perhaps a meteor.
Groanin was reasonably sure he was over Yellowstone because a little earlier on, he’d seen an immense volume of water projected into the air to a height of more than a hundred feet for almost three minutes. He thought that this might be Old Faithful, which is the park’s largest geyser. The water was hot, too — hot enough for the steam to warm his face — because, as Nimrod had said back in Morocco, Yellowstone is an active volcanic area and the geyser effect is the result of surface water coming into contact with hot, melted rock called magma.
Suddenly, the flying carpet stuttered a little and dropped several feet, narrowly missing the top of an immense lodgepole pine.
“Flipping heck,” yelled Groanin as the remnants of the
flying carpet steered its way between the remaining treetops like a car on a fairground ride that had left the fairground far behind. After a couple of near misses with tree trunks and boughs, Groanin and the box of stores emerged safely beyond the tree line into the wide snowfield. The carpet, what was left of it, incapable of supporting its load anymore, dipped precipitously, and then died. Groanin and the stores flew on for several seconds before the realization that he was no longer flying but falling drew a loud yell from the frightened butler’s lungs that lasted for as long as it took gravity to bring him back down to earth.
For a while, Groanin lay winded in a snowdrift that was several feet deep and that had certainly saved his life. And hardly moving, he contemplated a life that, as an English butler, ought to have been, he thought, a little less packed with incident. But at last he stirred, picked snow out of his ears, nostrils, and mouth, and forced his way to the surface.
The snowfield was covered with bright sunlight but the air was cold and still, and Groanin’s angry, hot breath already erupted from his mouth like a mini-geyser. It was lucky he was wearing a thick fur coat because the temperature was well below freezing.
“I never signed on for any of this,” he moaned. “I say, I never signed on for any of this malarkey. And when I get back to London — if ever I get back to London — I am going to give His Lordship a piece of my mind. No, I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell him I quit. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll hand in me notice. He can stuff this job. Djinn or not.”
He looked around for the box of stores and saw that it had broken on impact with something harder than his own place of landing; and most of the stores were spread out over a distance of several hundred yards. Slowly, for the snow was very deep, he walked and sometimes crawled after his supplies. Fortunately for him, almost the first thing he found was a pair of snowshoes and as soon as he had put them on, he found it a little easier to travel across the snow and retrieve the remainder of his stores: a backpack containing food and fire-making materials, a one-man tent, a good sleeping bag, a pair of thick fur mittens, a fur hat, a compass, a rifle with spare ammunition, a pair of snow goggles, and — what he thought was probably Nimrod’s idea of a joke — a snorkel and a pair of flippers.
“Very amusing, I’m sure,” said Groanin. “I’ll show him where he can stick this snorkel when I see him again.” He shook his head. “Idiot even left the price tag on.” And he threw the snorkel and the flippers into the snow.
As soon as he was properly attired for cold weather — as Nimrod had said, he looked like something out of a novel by Jack London — Groanin searched his pocket for his cell phone. But switching it on, he found there was no signal and, cursing Nimrod for not adding a satellite phone to his stores, Groanin thrust the cell phone back in his coat pocket and looked around, wondering which direction to go in. He decided his best hope was to find some sort of park guide who could direct him to a main road where he might hitch a lift to the nearest town.
Now that the flying carpet was no more, the idea of finding John in an area covering several thousand square miles seemed too remote a possibility. And it was only when he heard the howl of some wolves in the distance that he remembered exactly what Nimrod had told him: One rug could be directed to follow the other, much as a bloodhound could be encouraged to follow a scent.
John had come in pursuit of Mr. Rakshasas in his new incarnation as a Yellowstone timber wolf. Was it possible, Groanin asked himself, that the flying carpet had brought him nearer John than he might have supposed?
Encouraged by this idea, Groanin cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted John’s name several times. And then comforted by the fact that he had a loaded rifle and could shoot anything that tried to eat him, he started to walk toward the sound of the howling wolves in the hope that one of them might be Mr. Rakshasas, and that John might be somewhere nearby.
Even in the snowshoes it was hard work walking across the snowfield, and after a couple of hours he had reached some trees where, with the sun already beginning to set, he decided to make camp for the night.
Groanin had little experience of camping beyond the kind of luxury, five-star camping practiced by his master, and he knew nothing about bear safety while camping. He had wolves on his mind and had quite forgotten that Yellowstone Park also has some of the largest grizzly bears in the world. If Groanin had remembered this, he might have taken a few elementary precautions such as cooking his food downwind of his tent, burning his garbage, and suspending his stores — even his toothpaste — from a tree. Bears have a very keen sense of smell, not to mention a keen and omnivorous appetite. Groanin took none of these precautions — but then he wasn’t Jack London, but an English butler camping in the wilderness. And having made himself a pot of tea, he set about frying some pork sausages over the campfire in front of his tent, quite unaware that smelly, greasy food — which was, of course, the kind of food Groanin liked best of all — should always be avoided in bear country. If he had stuck to the jars of baby food Nimrod had also put in the butler’s stores, it is certain he would not have encountered any problems. Worst of all, Groanin, whose eyes were always larger than his stomach, fried far too many sausages and was obliged to throw several away, thinking that some hungry birds would probably be grateful for them. In short, Groanin made every mistake that it was possible to make, including the mistake of not washing his frying pan after using it. Short of sending a bear a gold-edged and heavily embossed invitation to a picnic, there wasn’t much else he could have done to ensure that he would have an unwelcome nocturnal visitor.
Not long after he had finished dinner, it started to snow heavily.
“That’s all I flipping need,” he muttered. “As if things weren’t miserable enough out here. I hope that lad had the good sense to equip himself properly for this trip. Because there’s fat chance of his djinn power working in these temperatures.”
Groanin went inside his tent and, still wearing his coat for it was fearfully cold, he climbed inside his sleeping bag. Turning the lamp up, he tried to read a bit of David Copperfield before going to sleep. Or to be more exact, he tried to read a bit of David Copperfield so that it might send him to sleep. Some people take sleeping pills. Some people have hot cocoa. Some people count sheep. Groanin always read David Copperfield. He had been using this book as a sleep-inducing technique for many years and it had always worked, with the result that he had read no further than chapter nine, in which David has a memorable birthday. Reading this might have prompted Groanin to remember that it was in fact his own birthday and if, in the minutes after his crash, he had searched the bottom of the store box a little more thoroughly, he would have found the birthday cake and card that Nimrod had thoughtfully provided for his journey. The snorkel and the flippers he had tossed angrily away had been Nimrod’s birthday present to his butler and the price tag had in fact been a birthday tag.
Despite the absence of cake and card and a present, however, Groanin was about to have a very memorable birthday of his own.
David Copperfield fell out of his fingers about halfway down the second page of chapter nine, and sleepily Groanin yawned and reached up to turn down the light. He was just drifting nicely off to sleep when he heard a short and muffled growl outside the tent.
The butler’s eyes opened wide, and very slowly, he reached for the rifle, which was just visible in the dimly lit tent.
Slowly, he sat up and, cradling the rifle on his lap, listened carefully. Something was moving about in the snow outside his tent. Something large. Groanin swallowed loudly and tried to keep calm, even when something tore at the bottom of his tent.
“Flipping heck,” he whispered. “Must be a bear.”
Groanin worked the bolt-action rifle and prepared to fire even as a long, hairy, very muscular, apelike arm came under the bottom of the tent and an almost human-looking hand started to feel around the groundsheet that covered the floor. Groanin knew nothing about bears except that they were dangerous, but even he could se
e that this was no bear, but something rather more horribly mysterious and perhaps rare.
“Flipping heck,” he remarked. “Must be a bigfoot.”
But the rarity and mystery of bigfoot were lost on the terrified Groanin and, raising the rifle to his shoulder, he pointed the barrel at the wall of the tent and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened for the simple reason that Groanin had forgotten to release the safety catch on his rifle. This was just as well for the creature — whatever it was — that had thrust its importunate arm into Groanin’s tent, but it left the butler in a state of near panic as he squeezed the trigger once again and, once again, the rifle refused to fire.
Bellowing loudly with fear, Groanin scrambled out of his tent and started to run away from the tent, which was enough to scare the shy humanoid creature away. In the full moonlight, the butler caught a glimpse of something tall and shaggy and vaguely apelike running into the darkness. Then, recognizing that he had scared the bigfoot away — by now he had little doubt that this was what he had seen — he walked back to camp, his heart still beating like the sound of feet on a fast treadmill.
“Flipping heck,” he breathed. “That was frightening. I say, that was frightening.” Full of bravado now that he had scared the bigfoot away, Groanin yelled after it:
“Now I know why it’s called Yellowstone Park,” he cried. “Because them as are daft enough to live in it are yellow themselves. I say, them as are daft enough to live in it are yellow themselves.”
Chuckling nervously, Groanin was about to reenter his tent when he saw an enormous human footprint in the snow. A bare footprint about fifteen or sixteen inches long.
“Blimey,” he said. “That’s a big foot, all right.”
Inside his tent, he climbed back into his sleeping bag and, wide awake with jangled nerves, he returned to chapter nine of David Copperfield. This time he managed to read as far as chapter twelve, in which David forms a great resolution, before he felt his eyelids droop.