by John Larkin
‘Brilliant!’ said Kevin as he watched Rebecca’s enormous horse skeleton appear on the monitor. ‘Can I have a go?’
The man who monitored the monitor turned to look at Kevin. ‘Did you ping or pong?’
‘Sorry,’ said Kevin, as he began flapping his arms around himself.
‘I mean,’ interrupted the monitor monitor. Did you ping or pong when you went through the ping and pong metal-detector thingy?’
‘Oh, that?’ said Kevin, embarrassed. ‘Er, no. I didn’t.’
‘Well, in that case, no, you can’t have a go.’ The monitor monitor went back to monitoring his monitor.
Rebecca climbed down from the conveyor belt at the end of the X-ray machine. Of all the weird things that had happened to her since she’d been turned into a horse by a halfwit, getting prodded through an airport hand-baggage X-ray machine would have to have been the weirdest.
‘Can I go now?’ said Rebecca.
‘It’s probably because you’re so tall,’ said Darlene as she ran her hand-held ping and pong machine over Rebecca again. ‘Lots of iron in your blood.’
‘So I can go,’ pleaded Rebecca. They’d have to go soon, or they might miss their plane.
‘Unfortunately not just yet,’ said Darlene and Rebecca groaned. ‘We have to make sure that it is just the iron in your blood that’s making the ping and pong machine ping and pong. Can’t be too careful these days.’
Rebecca understood that safety had to come first when it came to flying. Although surely twelve-year-old girls who had been turned into 300-kilogram horses by halfwits had to be fairly low down on the suspect list of likely hijackers.
‘So what happens now?’ asked Rebecca.
‘Oh, it won’t take long,’ said Darlene. ‘We just have to drain all the blood out of your body, put it through a washing machine and then inject it back into you again. My boss has just gone to get the syringe that has a metre-long needle on it.’
Rebecca could feel herself turning white. She felt as though she was going to faint.
‘Just my little joke,’ said Darlene. ‘You’re free to go.’
Ten minutes later Rebecca and Kevin were getting comfortable in their plane seats. Fortunately because Rebecca was so tall they had been allocated seats next to the door so she had plenty of legroom to stretch out in.
Just before the plane rolled back, however, the head flight attendant came rushing up to them with a concerned expression on her face.
‘You two look very young to be travelling by yourselves,’ said the head flight attendant. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Hawaii,’ said Kevin. ‘Big international hole-inspecting conference.’
‘Well, I’m not sure we can permit you to fly alone,’ said the head flight attendant.
Rebecca took off her headphones and reached into her tracksuit pocket. She somehow managed to pull a piece of paper out of her pocket and hand it to the flight attendant.
The flight attendant examined the note carefully.
I give permission for my son/daughter to attend this year’s school-holiday excursion to visit the mystical one-legged Sherpas of the Upper Langtang Valley in Nepal. I enclose $10,000 to go towards airfares, accomerdation urcomidatshun hotels and stuff.
Signed Parent/Guardian Mr and Mrs Yallop
‘Yes, well, that seems to be in order,’ said the head flight attendant. She handed the note back to Rebecca. ‘Would you like me to get you both some colouring-in books and crayons?’
‘Yes please,’ said Kevin.
‘You can get some for my brother, please,’ said Rebecca.
The head flight attendant smiled at Rebecca and then went to attend to an old lady who was trying to stuff about fifteen bags and a walking stick into her overhead locker.
So while Kevin played around with his remote control trying to find a Kaptain Kersplat kartoon on his personal in-flight entertainment system, Rebecca slipped her headphones back on and nodded off to sleep as the warm afternoon sun streamed in through her window.
33
The cold bit into their faces as they made their way down the plane’s steps and onto the tarmac at Kathmandu Airport. Kevin looked as though he’d stuck his head inside the supermarket freezer looking for his favourite ice-cream, again.
‘Man, it’s cold,’ said Kevin, his teeth chattering away like an old typewriter.
‘It’s going to get even colder the higher up into the mountains we go,’ said Rebecca. ‘I hope that the Amazing Beryl’s got her heater on.’
After clearing Customs and Immigration, Rebecca and Kevin collected their bags. Then they made their way through the mayhem of the airport and into the frosty Kathmandu morning.
Outside in the streets of Kathmandu it was utter chaos. Someone tried to sell them some fruit. Someone else tried to sell them some vegetables. Another guy wanted to sell them a one-legged chicken. Rebecca thought that this was a good omen (though not necessarily for the chicken) considering where they were headed: the Upper Langtang Valley and the mystical one-legged Sherpas.
There were countless buses, mini-buses, vans, cars, taxis, motorbikes and basically anything that you could get an engine and some wheels onto, all heading out of Kathmandu to the tracks and climbs of the famous and breathtaking valleys and mountain ranges of Nepal.
Rebecca and Kevin scanned the destination boards of the buses until they found one that was going to the Langtang Valley.
They paid the fare and then climbed on board; although it was tightly packed full of trekkers and mountaineers and their gear, they still managed to bags the back seat of the bus for themselves. It was nice and warm on the back seat. Rebecca figured that they must have been sitting above the engine.
‘What are you kids up to?’ said a friendly looking guy of about forty who was loaded down with a mountain of midlife-crisis climbing gear.
Rebecca loosened the zip on her tracksuit top with her teeth. ‘Well, I accidentally got turned into a 300-kilogram horse by a halfwit called the Amazing Beryl when we visited her Make-a-Wish Tent at the Dingaling Brothers’ Big Top, Flying Monkeys and Sea Slug Circus Extravaganza. She’s gone off to meditate with the mystical one-legged Sherpas of the Upper Langtang Valley. Though I did have a dream that she was living on the summit of Chomolungma having kicked off the mountain-goddess Miyo Lungsungama. She’s got a pet toucan that isn’t a toucan at all, but a wounded seagull that she’s painted black and gold and stuck a couple of cardboard cylinders on its beak. Anyway, we’re here to find her and get her to put me back to how I was before.’
Rebecca and Kevin looked at the guy for his reaction. His expression didn’t waiver. It seemed as though he’d been frozen in time. Finally, when his brain had processed all the information that Rebecca had thrown at it, he smiled at them and said, ‘I’m going to climb Mount Everest.’ Then he turned back to his gear and started fiddling around with various straps.
They bumped along the country roads of Nepal for what seemed like five eternities. Soothed by the rhythm of the bumps and the blast furnace of the bus’s heater, Rebecca’s head lolled about on her shoulders like a pumpkin on a stick. Kevin gazed out the window trying to play spotto, but there weren’t many yellow cars and trucks and so on about, so even though Rebecca was sound asleep, they were both still on zero points.
‘Are we there yet?’ said Kevin for about the millionth time since they’d set off from Kathmandu.
Finally, after about five hours bumping and lolling, the bus dropped them in the picturesque town of Langtang.
They didn’t know where one-legged Sherpas hung out, or even how to go about getting to them once they discovered where they hung out. The (eighth) prize in the competition only included the tickets to Nepal. Once they’d arrived they were on their own. So it was hardly the ‘all-expenses-paid trip’ that the Hills District Cake Makers’, Knitters’ and Karaoke-singing, Hovering Old Ladies’ Society had said it would be. They were now, more or less, a couple of street urchins that had been left at large i
n the world. They could just have easily been in a Charles Dickens novel. Although from the few Dickens movies that Rebecca had seen on TV, she couldn’t ever recall any of his characters suddenly being turned into 300-kilogram horses by halfwits. Then again, one of his characters did once spontaneously blow up, for no adequately explained reason, so maybe Rebecca was in no position to judge.
‘Look,’ said Kevin, ‘there’s an information booth over there.’
Rebecca and Kevin trotted over to join the end of the long queue at the information booth. As they neared the front of the queue, about an hour later, they noticed that the booth was being manned (personed, whatever) by a mysterious little old man in orange flowing robes. And the questions that he was being asked were not of the ‘Where’s the toilets?’, ‘What’s the rupee to dollar exchange rate?’, ‘Are there any good hotels in town?’ type. Instead they were more, well . . . mysterious.
‘What’s the fastest animal in the world?’ asked a small boy, clutching his mother and what appeared to be a school assignment folder.
The mysterious little old man considered the question for a moment. ‘The fastest animal in the world,’ he said, ‘is the peregrine falcon in full dive. Though I suspect if an elephant jumped out of an aircraft at thirty-nine thousand feet, it would also get up a good head of steam.’
The boy scratched his head and looked up at his mother.
‘The fastest land animal, however,’ continued the mysterious little old man, ‘and I am, of course, excluding dogs that are being hurled along in the back of a high-powered ute, is the cheetah.’
The boy thanked the mysterious little old man for his information and then a little girl stepped up to the booth. She was also holding a school assignment folder. Perhaps the mysterious little old man was Nepal’s answer to the internet.
‘Is a zebra a black animal with white stripes, or a white animal with black stripes?’
‘Ah,’ said the mysterious little old man, ‘a question that has plagued humankind since the dawn of time. Or for at least as long as there have been zebras. The answer is of course neither. A zebra is what it is.’
The little girl wrote this down in her school project book, though she did seem a little disappointed.
Next in line was a tall, worried-looking man. ‘Why do people watch reality-TV shows like Big Bother?’
Rebecca’s ears pricked up when the tall, worried-looking man asked about Big Bother. She’d come so close to making a complete idiot of herself on the celebrity tween and teen edition of Big Bother. Rebecca wondered why the guy had asked this question at all. Then she realised that he was probably some kind of TV executive and that he’d come to Nepal looking for a few answers.
The mysterious little old man pondered the question for a moment. ‘Why do people watch reality TV shows like Big Bother?’ said the mysterious little old man out loud. ‘The answer is, of course, very simple.’
‘So what is it?’ yelled the tall, worried man. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s the stress of working in TV.’
‘Then you must go for a long trek in the hills and valleys of Nepal,’ suggested the mysterious little old man.
‘I will, I will,’ said the tall, worried-looking man. ‘But first I must know the answer.’
‘Very well,’ said the mysterious little old man. ‘But I don’t think that you’ll like it.’
‘I don’t care,’ said the tall, worried-looking man. ‘I need to know. I have to know.’ He dropped to his knees and started sobbing. It was all getting too much for him to bear, he said through his tears. He’d once produced a wonderful drama about the hardships of life on board the convict ships of the late eighteen hundreds, only to see it out-rated by a football player making a cheese omelette on a celebrity cooking show. Aaarrrggghhh! It was enough to make you scream.
The mysterious little old man patted the tall, worried-looking man. ‘It’s because the human race is devolving.’
The tall, worried-looking man looked up from his sobs. ‘What?’
‘Yes, my tall worried-looking friend, the human race is devolving. It’s obvious. IQs around the planet are dropping at a frightening rate. People, in the quest for a simple life, no longer wish to challenge themselves intellectually. The wisdom of the world is contained within a bookshop. Yet only a small percentage of the populace visit bookshops any more. The evidence is all there. In fifty million years’ time, the human race will be just a bunch of mudskippers, attempting to crawl back into the ocean.’
The tall, worried-looking man got to his feet. ‘What a great idea for a documentary,’ he said out loud, suddenly excited. ‘We could have a camera crew follow a group of people, like on Survivor, and record them as they turn back into apes and dinosaurs, and mudskippers, and mud and so on. This is brilliant! Thank you, oh, mysterious little old man.’ He then pulled out his mobile phone and called his executive assistant. ‘Simon, it’s Chuck, we need to find a group of really, really dumb people. Yeah, anyone who turns up to be part of the studio audience for the World’s Dumbest People Caught on Camera awards show should do it.’
Finally, it was Rebecca and Kevin’s turn to step up to the booth.
‘Yes, my young friends,’ said the mysterious little old man. ‘How may I be of assistance?’
‘We’re looking for the mystical . . . ’ began Rebecca, but Kevin cut her off.
‘We want to know why when hubcaps fall off car wheels, they always land leaning against telegraph poles or trees?’
The mysterious little old man turned a deathly shade of white as the blood simply drained away from his head.
‘Oh, no,’ said Rebecca. ‘I think you’ve broken him.’
Eventually some colour worked its way back into the mysterious little old man’s face. ‘Do you know something?’ he said. ‘I’ve been occupying this booth answering questions about life, the universe, TV ratings and wildlife for the past ten years, but this is the first time that I’ve ever been unable to provide an answer. You have me completely stumped.’
Kevin smiled.
‘And now, my mysterious young friend,’ said the mysterious little old man to Kevin. ‘I would like to bestow on you honorary membership of our brotherhood.’
Kevin’s smile grew even wider.
‘What size are you?’ asked the mysterious little old man.
‘Er,’ replied Kevin. ‘Medium, I suppose.’
The mysterious little old man ducked under his table and pulled out a medium-sized orange flowing robe that he presented to Kevin. ‘Merchandising,’ he said, ‘but this one’s on the house.’
Kevin quickly slipped on his orange flowing robes. ‘Brilliant!’
‘You are now,’ said the mysterious little old man, ‘an honorary member of our brotherhood.’
‘And what brotherhood is that?’ asked Rebecca.
‘Oh,’ said the mysterious little old man. ‘Sorry, I forgot to mention it. We are the mystical one-legged Sherpas of the Upper Langtang Valley.’
34
Rebecca and Kevin sat in the café with the chief mystical one-legged Sherpa, a banana milkshake and a dinosaur donut, which the chief mystical one-legged Sherpa said were on him.
The most mysterious thing about the mystical one-legged Sherpas that Rebecca had noticed was that they weren’t one-legged. Not even a bit. The brotherhood, the chief mystical one-legged Sherpa informed them, took its name from their founding father, Sherpa Wonton, whose maiden expedition to the roof of the world on Chomolungma to visit the mountain goddess, Miyo Lungsungama, had struck a bit of bother.
Of their climbing party of 1963, only the expedition leader, Colonel Tristram Bannister-Smythe, and Sherpa Wonton had managed to make it to the summit. No sooner had the successful duo begun their descent, however, than Colonel Bannister-Smythe had slipped and banged his funny bone quite hard. With those at base camp unable to mount a rescue mission, it was left to Sherpa Wonton to try to get Colonel Bannister-Smythe and his badly bruised elbow down alone. What followed quickly found its
way into mountaineering folklore. Refusing to leave his stricken colleague behind, Sherpa Wonton scooped up Colonel Bannister-Smythe onto his back and then undertook what is now widely regarded as the greatest and longest piggyback in the history of mountaineering.
As he made his way cautiously over the Hillary Step, tragedy struck again when Sherpa Wonton tripped over an exposed boulder and broke his leg in ninety-three places. With his stricken colleague unconscious (or at least pretending to be), Sherpa Wonton was left with two choices: either lie down in the snow until hypothermia took them, or continue with his mammoth piggyback attempt on one leg. Summoning up all his remaining strength, Sherpa Wonton commenced what is undoubtedly the greatest hop in the history of human endeavour. It really was an incredible feat (or foot) of endurance. Not only did he manage to piggyback Colonel Bannister-Smythe down to the camp on one leg, his momentum was such that he hopped past all the other camps until he was back at base camp, whereupon Colonel Bannister-Smythe immediately regained consciousness and declared the climb a roaring success.
From then on, the followers of the legendary Sherpa Wonton held an annual hop from the base camp of Chomolungma to the village of Thame to raise funds for the building of a national hopscotch stadium, while the equally dedicated followers of Colonel Bannister-Smythe tended to spend the day unconscious.
‘Since then,’ said the chief mystical one-legged Sherpa, ‘we’ve moved into information, education, real estate, housing development, share trading and loan sharking, all while maintaining a peaceful and largely one-legged lifestyle.’
‘But you’ve all got two legs?’ said Rebecca.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the chief mystical one-legged Sherpa. ‘The surgeons even managed to save Sherpa Wonton’s badly broken and frost-bitten leg. So even our legendary founding father had his full complement of appendages.’