Oliver Fibbs and the Abominable Snow Penguin

by Steve Hartley

  On Saturday evening, I had to stand on my head in the bathtub again to get a signal on the phone. Just as my uncle was giving me his latest update, disaster struck: I overbalanced and crashed over in the bath. My left leg bashed against the cold tap and a jet of water poured out. The satellite phone skidded down towards the plughole, and sat in a puddle that was getting deeper by the second.

  I slid around, desperately fumbling with the tap to turn it off. When I picked the phone up, water gushed out of every nook and cranny. I rubbed it dry with a towel, did a headstand, stuck my wet leg out of the window and tried to call again, but it was no use: the phone had drowned.

  Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

  A shudder rattled down my spine. What was I going to do? Even if Uncle Sir Randolph did get attacked by Arctic ants, there was nothing I could do about it – I was his LIFELINE, and the line had been cut.

  I thought about what my uncle does when things go wrong, and I heard his voice in my head say, ‘Keep calm, Ollie!’

  OK, I thought, taking a deep breath, maybe the satellite phone just needs to dry out properly.

  I decided to leave it on the radiator in my bedroom overnight, and try again tomorrow.

  The house was like an airport all Sunday: someone arrived as someone else departed, grabbing bags and keys, bustling and hurrying, always complaining about being late.

  The twins had got over their costume calamities, and were rehearsing for another ballet show.

  Algy had Brain Training Club with the rest of the National Junior Genius Squad.

  Dad had a meeting about the new, state-of-the-art penguin house he was designing for Florida Zoo.

  Mum was filming a brain operation on Crumbles the Clown for a popular medical reality TV show called I’m A Celebrity – Cut It Out Of Me!

  I went nowhere fast. I spent a lot of time taking Poochie for walks, or eating raspberry ripple ice cream and reading with Constanza. I checked the satellite phone every half-hour, hoping desperately to get a signal, but it was still deader than the dead donkeys in . I shook it, banged it, pressed every button, but I couldn’t even get a crackle, never mind a hiss.

  I’d have given up reading comics for a week – no, a month – if I could just hear Uncle Sir Randolph’s BOOMING voice telling me how much it had snowed today.

  . . . something bad had really happened to him?

  One by one, my family came home in time for supper. By now I was so worried about my uncle that I decided to come clean about drowning the phone. Before I went downstairs, I tried it one more time. There was a sound like bacon frying in a pan, which was an improvement, but I still couldn’t get in touch with him.

  As we sat around the dining table, I swallowed hard and told everyone what had happened.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said finally.

  ‘We must-a do something!’ cried Constanza, hurling spaghetti in all directions.

  ‘Keep trying the phone,’ answered Mum calmly. ‘And if you still haven’t been able to make contact in another day or so, we’ll open the CODE RED envelope. Don’t worry, just because your uncle can’t talk to us doesn’t mean he needs to be rescued.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Dad. ‘It’ll take more than a broken phone to stop Randolph.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I asked.

  ‘I know so.’

  I breathed a massive sigh of relief. ‘It’s as though the expedition’s ,’ I said.

  Algy went as red as the toxic tomatoes in .

  ‘Oh no! I forgot to shake the lucky snow globe!’ he cried. ‘I’ve been so busy at university, and with the Junior Genius Squad, and practising for the World Team Chess Championships, and . . .’ He frowned and bit his lip. ‘Do you think it’s my fault you haven’t heard from Uncle Sir Randolph?’

  ‘Could be,’ I answered, shaking my head. I thought back to Bobby Bragg’s , when he talked about those evil killer birds called giant petrels. ‘And . . . while the phone’s on the blink, he’s attacked by psycho seagulls?’

  The pictures reeled through my mind. ‘ . . . as he tries to escape, the ice cracks, and . . .’

  My family stared at me, silent and , like I’d just done a really noisy trump.

  Poochie’s ears drooped, and he gave a little whine, as though he understood everything I’d said.

  ‘Oliver!’ Emma and Gemma, putting their hands over the dog’s ears.

  ‘Nothing dares to eat Sir Randolph!’ said Constanza.

  ‘But I haven’t finished,’ I said. ‘ . . .’

  I laughed at the silly voices I’d given the three killer whales while telling the story. But my family wasn’t laughing. They were FROWNING like a family of frowners on a frowning holiday to Frownsville, USA

  Uh-oh, I thought, I’ve done it again. I’m going to get the ‘Going Bad Talk’.

  (Mum and Dad think I’m going ‘like that Peter Cowper next door’. Mum says Peter’s a ‘difficult teenager’ because you can see the top of his underpants over his trousers. Dad thinks he’s a ‘’ because he wears his baseball cap back to front and grunts when you say hello to him.)

  ‘What I meant was,’ I explained quickly, ‘Uncle Sir Randolph always gets into tight scrapes on his adventures, but he always survives. “Trouble” is his middle name.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Algy. ‘It’s Maxwell.’

  Even though Mum and Dad said they weren’t worried, they kept asking me all evening if I’d managed to get through to my uncle. I kept trying, but all I got was crackles and hisses.

  I tried one more time the next morning, but it was hopeless. In the car on the way to school, Constanza frowned at me and muttered in Italian. ‘I hope you are wrong in your stories, Oliver,’ she said. ‘I no like the fibbing with Sir Randolph. Orribile!’

  ‘Ignore him, Constanza,’ said Emma. ‘Oliver’s a nerd.’

  ‘But . . . someone writes a ballet about Uncle Randolph’s Antarctic adventure?’ I wondered. ‘ . . . in the ballet, he finds the beautiful Snow Princess, by the wicked Ice Witch to sleep in a frosty tomb until woken by the kiss of a big hairy explorer . . .’

  Constanza and the twins smiled and sighed.

  ‘ . . .’ I continued, ‘when she wakes, she turns into a vampire penguin, and bites him on the neck?’

  ‘You’re worse than a nerd,’ said Gemma. ‘You’re a dweeb.’

  My little brother didn’t say anything. He just sat there, shaking the snow globe over and over again.

  ‘Uncle Sir Randolph will be OK,’ I said, light-heartedly. ‘Algy’s got the snow globe going now.’

  But even though Mum and Dad seemed not to be too bothered, I was getting worried.

  I bit my lip and stared out of the window.

  At school, my project presentation was getting to be worse than the normal time. I stood up in front of the class, and gave them Uncle Sir Randolph’s Friday update, then explained that we were having ‘technical difficulties’, so there were no more updates for now.

  Peaches did her project update standing in front of the class in her new emperor-penguin costume. She looked spectacular, even if one of the toenails on her wellington-boot feet had fallen off. She told us about giant penguins that roamed the Earth millions of years ago but were now extinct.

  ‘I’m glad they are!’ squeaked Millie Dangerfield.

  ‘Yes, how scary!’ agreed Miss Wilkins.

  Jamie Ryder showed us a video clip of the Antarctic night sky he’d downloaded from the internet. Stars through great folds of green wavy light, like a huge fluttering flag.

  ‘These are the Southern Lights,’ he said. ‘They’re just the same as the Northern Lights, but in the south.’

  ‘How beautiful,’ sighed Miss Wilkins.

  Toby Hadron said that the Earth is a massive magnet, and a ‘real’ compass wasn’t much use at the South Pole because the needle doesn’t know which way to point. He explained why, but I didn’t understand a word he said.

  ‘How confusing,’ remarked Miss Wilki
ns.

  Melody Nightingale told us about the wandering albatross, a massive seabird with a wingspan of over three metres that lives for fifty years, and spends almost all its life flying.

  ‘How tiring!’ laughed Miss Wilkins.

  Melody then gave us a demonstration of the albatross’s call. It was like the sound of someone trying very hard to rub marker pen off a white-board, and then BURPING.

  It’s not fair, Algy,’ I complained to my little brother when I got home from school. ‘Everyone else is doing fantastic projects, and even though Sir Randolph’s my uncle, all I’ve got is a few pins stuck in a map.’

  Algy was working out an incredibly complicated maths sum for his university homework, furiously scribbling numbers, lines and shapes in his notebook with one hand, while swirling Uncle Sir Randolph’s snow globe with the other.

  ‘It’s all my fault, Ollie,’ he said. ‘I’m shaking this all the time now, to try and make his bad luck change.’

  As my brother held up the globe to show me, it slipped from his grasp. He grabbed for the lucky charm as it tumbled away from him, plummeting towards the floor.

  Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

  We both dived, but . . .

  We stared in shocked silence at the plastic snowflakes floating in the pool of water, and the family of plastic penguins lying scattered among the fragments of the globe’s cover.

  ‘What have I done?’ whispered Algy, tears springing to his eyes.

  I tried to make my brother feel better. ‘ . . . the snow globe is the problem?’ I said. ‘ . . . it’s sending out some kind of anti-radio blocking waves that are interfering with the signal from the satellite phone?’

  Algy began clearing up the mess. ‘Do you think so?’ he sniffed.

  ‘I’ll go and try the phone right away,’ I replied. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.’

  I hurried down the hallway, but was intercepted by Poochie bursting from the twins’ bedroom, with Emma and Gemma in hot pursuit.

  The frizzy pepper-grey fur around his head and front legs had been dyed luminous blue, brushed and blown to a soft, feathery fluffiness, and tied with a silver bow. The fur on his back legs had been clipped short and dyed vivid daffodil yellow, and the end of Poochie’s tail was now a puffed-up glittery pink pom-pom, shooting up from his bottom like a little hairy firework. To finish off the poor dog’s new look, the twins had dressed him in a frilly white tutu.

  ‘Poochie won’t play properly,’ grumbled Emma.

  ‘He doesn’t like being pampered, and he hates his pom-pom,’ complained Gemma.

  ‘He’s a dog,’ I pointed out, watching as Poochie began chasing his tail, spinning round and round in , dizzying circles. ‘He’s not a toy.’

  ‘Then you look after him,’ said Emma.

  ‘We’ve got to practise our pas de deux,’ said Gemma.

  They back into their room and slammed the door. Poochie collapsed at my feet, wagged his tail and stared pleadingly up at me. I picked him up and ruffled his fluffy blue head.

  Just then, Dad came up the stairs. He took one look at me, one look at Poochie, shook his head and frowned.

  ‘Oliver,’ he said, and then did his talking-in-capital-letters-thing. ‘I think We Need To Talk.’

  He took me into his office, and told me to sit down next to him at his desk. The drawings for the new penguin house he was designing were spread out in front of us. It looked like three enormous glass igloos, with glass tunnels running under the water to allow the visitors to see the penguins swimming. Inside each igloo were pretend icebergs, and towering snowy-white cliffs. It was spectacular.

  Dad dropped on top of the drawing. It landed with an almighty thump.

  ‘I hope your Thinking’s going well, Oliver,’ he began, nodding at the book.

  I stroked my chin, and gazed thoughtfully out of the window. ‘I’ve been pondering about the problem of global warming,’ I replied, pausing and nodding like intelligent, deep-thinking people do. ‘I think . . . it’s a problem.’

  ‘Is that it?’ said Dad.

  ‘For now. I need to think about it a bit more.’

  Dad sighed. ‘Oliver, your mum and I are worried about you. We’ve noticed disturbing signs that you’re slipping back into silliness: standing on your head in the bath; trying to frighten Algy and the twins with tall tales –’ he nodded towards Poochie, who was sitting on my lap, trying to bite the big pink pom-pom on the end of his tail – ‘making this poor dog look like it’s survived an explosion in a paint factory . . .’

  I began to protest. ‘But—’

  ‘And Constanza tells us that you’re telling FIBS in class again.’

  ‘They’re not FIBS – they’re stories,’ I complained. ‘And Miss Wilkins doesn’t seem to mind. As long as I write them down during playtime detention, she doesn’t knock points off my score any more.’

  Dad sighed again. He’d been doing a lot of sighing recently. And frowning.

  ‘Your uncle gave you a very serious job to do, and you don’t seem to be taking it very seriously,’ he said. ‘You’re his LIFELINE. If things go wrong, you’re the one who’s supposed to help.’

  I nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  Dad stared at me for a while. ‘Don’t Go Bad, like that Peter Cowper next door. Don’t end up grunting, and riding a skateboard all day, showing everyone your underpants, and wearing your hat back to front.’

  I was going to say that at least Peter looked happy, but I’m not Dumb And Brainless; I knew that wasn’t the right answer, so I looked at the floor and shook my head.

  ‘Well, when you sit in your Thinking Room, I want you to think about that for a while,’ he said. ‘I want you to think about being a Bad Un.’

  He glanced at Poochie. ‘And I want you to think about giving that poor dog a bath.’

  When I got to school the next morning, all these problems were hanging over me like the bloody blade at the end of .

  ‘What’s the matter, Mr Grumpy-boots?’ asked Peaches as we filed into class.

  I told her everything, including what Dad had said to me.

  She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a little book called .

  ‘You need to read this,’ she said. ‘It has a happy thought for every day of the year. Yesterday’s was, “Butterflies are like little angels, sent to fill us full of joy.”’

  I pulled a face. ‘Thanks, Pea. Now I feel sick as well.’

  Peaches laughed as she flicked through the pages of the book. ‘Today’s happy thought is, “Cheer up! At least you’re not a bluebottle!”’

  Actually, it was Miss Wilkins who made me feel better. She gave me the best news I’d had for ages. The half-term break was coming at the end of the week and, because we had to prepare for a big assembly show on Friday, that morning’s presentation would be the last until after the holidays.

  ‘I want you all to get your projects finished over the holidays,’ she announced, ‘for a final the first Monday back at school.’

  I sighed with relief. After today, I wouldn’t have to suffer this for a while.

  We’d still had no contact with my uncle. Even though he was a BOLD adventurer, and ‘Trouble’ was his middle name, we were all getting really worried about him. When I stood up in front of my class that morning, I was really worried about me, because I had absolutely nothing to say.

  I thought about what Dad had said.

  I thought about being a Bad Un.

  Then I thought about being laughed at and called names again.

  No contest.

  I remembered the penguin-house plans spread out on Dad’s desk. . . . he was actually designing an ice palace?

  . . . it’s the Palace of the Emperor of the Penguins?

  ‘I haven’t been able to tell you up to now,’ I said. ‘But my uncle isn’t just Ambling Across the Antarctic. No! He’s on a TOP SECRET mission to find the mythical Ice Palace of Emperor Penguin Eric III . . .’

  Some of the class went, ‘Ooooooooo!’
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  ‘. . . and on Friday night, he phoned to tell me that his wooden compass had found it!’

  To add a bit of magic to my story, I thought about Jamie’s presentation on the Southern Lights. . . .

  ‘The palace is only visible when the Southern Lights are switched on,’ I told the class.

  Peaches’s penguin-suit presentation had also given me an idea. . . .

  ‘There is an ancient legend,’ I continued, ‘that in a cave deep in the ice beneath the palace, is the Tomb of the . Inside, frozen in a massive block of ice, with one frosty foot sticking out, stands the body of . . . Norman the Not Very Nice . . . the most giant penguin that ever lived.

  One vital part of his body is missing: a single colossal Toenail of Doom.’

  Bobby Bragg groaned as if he’d got a bad pain somewhere. ‘Here we go, here we go! Fibbs has got a big fat toe!’ he sang, and a few kids tittered.

  I carried on anyway.

  ‘The toenail is kept locked away in another cave on the far side of the palace, and GUARDED day and night. Emperor Eric and his followers will do everything in their POWER to stop the Toenail of Doom from being put back on Norman’s foot. It would be a disaster if that ever happened, because the evil giant penguin would defrost, and come back to life. His evil screeches and the flapping of his flippers would cause that have the power to freeze the atmosphere. That would start another Ice Age. Within weeks, the world would become one huge snowball!’

  ‘Cool,’ said Bobby. ‘I’d be able to skate all the time!’

  ‘But wouldn’t Emperor Eric and the other penguins want the Earth to freeze?’ asked Toby Hadron.

  Oops! I hadn’t thought of that! Luckily, Peaches came to my rescue with a really sensible explanation.