“’Ad. ’AD.”
He meant SAD. And it was true, the yetis had never been so sad. Never in all their lives. So sad that they simply didn’t want to live. Without firing a single shot, the hunters had already done their filthy work.
Chapter 13
The Round-Up
Y THE SECOND DAY AFTER THE YETIS’ KIDNAPPING, Con and Ellen were starting to despair.
Perry, grim-faced and silent, had driven them to London. There, in his rented room, with its portraits of famous pigs tacked on the walls, he’d developed photos he’d taken on the journey from Nanvi Dar: photos of Uncle Otto building a campfire, of Lucy saying sorry to an outsize tin of baked beans, of Ambrose trying to get Hubert to sit on his knee …
With this proof that yetis really existed, they had gone into action. Perry had visited all the newspaper offices. Con and Ellen had gone with Leo Letts, the boy who had been lost on Death Peak, to the studio of the Metropolitan Television Company, which was run by his father.
“I knew it wasn’t the dogs who found me,” Leo had said when they’d tracked him down in his smart Hampstead house. “I knew it!” And he was at once as helpful and efficient as anyone could be.
By the time the evening papers came out on that first day, all of them carried pictures of the yetis, while the headlines screamed things like: ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN COME AND GO or YETI SNATCH IN STATELY HOME or MARATHON JOURNEY ENDS IN TRAGEDY. And every hour, from the studios of the Metropolitan Television Company, there was a news flash announcing the arrival, and kidnapping, of five Abominable Snowmen, possibly the rarest and most valuable creatures in the world.
“Now they’ll do something, won’t they?” said Con, when they came back, exhausted, to Perry’s room that night. “Now they’ll save the yetis.”
But they didn’t. Perhaps it was because no one really knew who “they” were. The police said it was nothing to do with them; they were there to catch people who had broken the law, and there was no law against shooting yetis because no one had known that yetis existed. The army said it was not their business — their job was to deal with wars and revolutions, and this was neither. And the Minister of the Environment didn’t say anything because he was away in the Mediterranean sailing his yacht.
So on the afternoon of the second day, Con and Ellen were sitting wearily on the bed in Perry’s tiny flat, while Perry made a cup of tea. All day they had been doing the rounds of government offices and departments. They had been turned away by doormen and security men. They had left messages. They had waited on uncomfortable chairs in outer offices, only to be told that unfortunately the Undersecretary for the Environment, or the Assistant Adviser to the Government Blood Sports Commission, could not see them today.
And there was only one day left. Just one short day before the hunt began.
“There has to be someone,” cried Con. “Someone who has power. Someone who would listen.”
“There is someone,” said Ellen suddenly. “One person. The obvious person.”
“Who?”
“The Queen. She has planes — I’ve heard of them. The airplanes of the Queen’s Flight. And she is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. She could stop the hunters.”
“The Queen!” Con felt like hitting his sister because for a moment he’d really hoped. “That’s rich! Two children walking into Buckingham Palace with a crazy story about yetis. Who on earth would take any notice of us?”
“No one,” said Ellen. “Of us. Of two children no one would take any notice. But of two hundred — or two thousand — or twenty thousand,” said Ellen, and her thin face looked as though someone had lit a lamp inside it. “We must have a demonstration, a March for the Yetis. We can demonstrate outside the palace. They’ll have to listen.”
“That won’t be easy,” said Perry, who was stirring three spoonfuls of sugar into each teacup. He knew that when you are tired and depressed, sweet tea is just the thing. “I’ve been to one or two demos in my time, and they take weeks to organize, and you have to have permission from the police or they just come and break it up. And even so, nothing much changes.”
They were quiet for a moment, sipping their scalding tea. Then Ellen said, “What else can we do?”
And, as usual, she was right.
So Perry went out for fish and chips, while Con and Ellen started making posters. Con’s said, ON THURSDAY THE YETIS WILL DIE … UNLESS YOU COME! and then gave the time and place for the demonstration — Buckingham Palace, two o’clock. Ellen’s said, PLEASE, PLEASE, IF YOU CARE ABOUT ANYTHING, CARE ABOUT THIS …
“Right,” said Perry, when they had eaten their fish and chips and wiped the grease off their fingers. “It’s just before five. I’ll go and get these copied. Then you’ll have to get to work.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” asked Ellen.
“’Fraid not,” said Perry. “I’ve got business of my own to attend to.”
Con said nothing. What could he say? Perry had brought them all the way from the Himalayas; he had helped them in a thousand ways. If he had had enough, then it was only fair — more than fair. But still, it felt like a nail in Con’s heart. Now they really were on their own.
Con and Ellen didn’t get back to Perry’s flat until around midnight. They let themselves in with the key that Perry had given them and sank exhausted onto the bed. They had been all over the place with their carrier bags of posters, sticking them on lampposts and walls, in Underground train stations and bus stops. Sometimes they had been shooed away by irritated shopkeepers and traffic wardens, but sometimes they had met friendly and interested faces. An old lady with a walking stick, making her way slowly along the pavement, had asked Con what it was all about. When he explained, she said that she would tell all her friends. “Not that there are many left,” she said. “And how we’ll get to Buckingham Palace, I don’t know.” Ellen had been stopped by a bearded man who was bundled up in an old blanket in the doorway of a posh office building. Beside him sat a small dog that obviously hadn’t had a bath either. The man had been mumbling quietly to himself, but when he saw Ellen, he shouted suddenly, “That’s it, girl, you tell those—” and he used a word that Ellen hadn’t heard before but was quite sure she shouldn’t use herself.
And tomorrow was the last day. “Do you think anybody will come?” said Con. He was lying on his back in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.
“Con, I don’t know, I just don’t know,” said Ellen. “In the morning we’ll do the schools …” And then sleep took her.
For Con and Ellen, running through the London streets, jumping onto buses, fighting their way through the tunnels of the Underground, the following morning was even more exhausting than the evening before. What they had decided to do was simple enough: call out all the schoolchildren they could find and get them to join the demonstration in front of Buckingham Palace that afternoon and beg the Queen to save the yetis.
They began in Central London, near the river and the docks, and worked their way outward.
Sometimes they separated while Con went to a boys’ school and Ellen, overcoming her shyness, tackled a girls’. Sometimes they came together again before running on to the next district and the next and the next …
The first school Con came to was called Bermeyside Primary, and it was a tough one. There was a fight going on in the asphalt play yard when he arrived, and children were standing round in a circle jeering and cheering. There was no teacher to be seen. But when Con whistled, the fight broke up and the children advanced toward him. A tall boy with dreadlocks spoke.