The Book of Dave (19 page)

While all this was under way, Carl and Antonë had little opportunity to talk alone, for they were constantly observed by the
other islanders. Böm assumed that Carl had volunteered because he hoped to use the pedalo to effect their escape and was learning
how to handle it. When they did manage to grab a few words in private he was disabused of this notion: Nah, Carl said, lookit
ve syz uvit. Vares no way we cúd andle it. Nah, Eyem gonna distrak vem, an wyle Eyem gon Ure gonna gé ve stuff togewer 4 ve
trip. In answer to Böm's quite reasonable inquiry as to how they were going to cross the five clicks of open water separating
Ham from Barn, Carl had a single word: Motos. Antonë, weer gonna swim wiv ve motos.

The Sentrul Stac reared from the waters of the great lagoon about five clicks due southeast of Manna Ba. Its jagged peak was
thus the opposite pole of the Hamsters' diminutive world to the rubble of Nimar in the northwest. Effi Dévúsh's legends told
of how this stack – and the three further to the east, as well as the four smaller ones grouped around it – were the stepping
stones that the Mutha and her giant company had thrown down in the waters so as to cross between Ham and the scattering of
uninhabited islands to the south.

Those Hamsters more under the influence of the Driver were inclined to view the stacks as natural features, left behind during
the MadeinChina, when the sea had broken into the lagoon and washed away the land. From the moment when he first rounded the
Gayt and saw the great lagoon, Antonë Böm had entertained a different hypothesis concerning these curious features and longed
to visit them. Each year that he'd remained on the island, he had asked to be allowed on a fowling expedition. The Hamstermen
would never take him: fowling was too dävine and too dangerous a pursuit for off-islanders to be allowed to participate. To
climb the stacks was the most daddyish of all the rituals in a daddyish world. If a mummy or an opare so much as looked at
the cradles or ropes when an expedition was being organized, it would have to be aborted.

This was to be Carl's first time out to the stacks, although he'd sat at the feet of the Council for enough fowling seasons
to know what to expect. Sat at the dads' feet and listened in minute detail while they mulled over the nature of their adversary.
For, to the Hamstermen, the Sentrul Stac itself had a brooding personality. It was like a rocky pine cone – a series of open
chambers, all set in tiers, one upon the other, rising up sheer out of the waves to the height of forty men. At the top of
the stack there was a platform forty paces across; this was thick with shrubbery, as were the cavities below. All the stacks
had this coating of vegetation; where the lagoon washed at their bases, hanks of seaweed clung to the crete, while above the
waterline clumps of buddyspike furred their contours. In the summer, they tinged the air with their flowers, so that a bluish
nimbus formed about the summits of the stacks. Now they were gone, and the Sentrul Stac was a grim snaggle, streaked white
and black with birdshit.

The Hamstermen maintained that their forefathers had deliberately seeded the birdshit with buddyspike to provide handholds;
however, this shrubbery was only shallowly rooted, and it was a foolhardy fowler who relied on it to support him. The first
Hamster off the pedalo and on to the stack was charged with climbing to the summit, where he would tie one end of the rope
he carried to an irony stanchion buried in the crete; the other end he would let down to his companions, so that they might
lash on the cradle. It was also the first bloke's task to descend the rope and dispatch the sentinel blackwing. The Hamstermen
would arrive at the allotted stack by night, when the blackwings were all asleep save for the one bird charged with guarding
them. If this one could be prevented from uttering a warning cry, then the rest would remain oblivious as the birders swung
their cradle from one nest to the next, twisting their necks with the same easy rhythm they employed ashore when casting seed
or scything the wheatie crop. If the stack jumper failed in his task, the whole colony would lift off and mob the invaders.
With their wingspan as great as a man's outstretched arms, and their sharp, downward-curving beaks, the blackwings were fearful
aggressors. Many a Hamsterman had fallen to his death from the stacks, the blood from his ruptured eyes spreading slick on
the heaving swell. Carl's own granddad, Peet Dévúsh, had fallen from the Sentrul Stac and died. This was the curse upon the
Dévúsh line – for the Hamsters believed that if a bloke was sufficiently dävine the choppa would come. This was a great host
of seafowl, flying in such close formation that the falling man could be caught on their backs, then lifted up and set safely
back on the stack once more.

Shuvoff, mì luvs! Fred Ridmun cried, and under a bigwatt screen the prow of the Ham pedalo flattened a stand of blisterweed,
grated on shingle, then hit the water, sending up a plume of emerald spray. The dads pushed the stern of the craft, their
bare, moto-oiled feet slithering on the mat of vegetation, while the lads splashed thigh-deep in the wavelets, yanking on
the prow. In the effort of their final push was a dread anticipation – but then came the mysterious moment when the dead weight
of the beached pedalo was transformed into the live motion of being afloat. There was a clamour of shouting and more bellowed
instructions from the Guvnor as the dads and lads unshipped the long pedals and took their places. The mummies came out from
their gaffs and commenced an eerie ululating. The motos had been led down from their wallows especially to participate in
the leave-taking – and they sent up a frightful bellowing.

Then there came a shout from the bow, Reef up! There was the swish of seaweed and the patter of Daveworks against the hull.
Ship pedals! the Guvnor cried, and they all waited, frozen in their frail shell, as the screen wheeled around them and the
reef grated beneath them. Then they were over, the pedals dipped to the water, and the pedalo sped offshore.

Seated in the bows with the other lads, Carl turned back and saw the green wall of the island stretch into a band, then a
ribbon, and eventually shrink until it was but a green cap set on the massive furrowed brow of the sea. The Hamsters on the
shore were reduced to an agitation of waving arms, while some way apart from them, in front of his semi, Carl could make out
the Driver, a black stroke on the ledger of the land. Even from this distance Carl could sense that the Driver's savage gaze
was upon him, doubtless willing him to mistime his leap on to the stack, to fall and release his final flying breaths as bubbles
in the briny.

Carl grabbed Fred Funch's belt and leaned forward over the gnarled stempost. Fred let his head dangle down so that the bow
wave tangled with his hair. Using both hands, he picked out the Daveworks that had lodged in the seams of the boat's timbers
as they ran over the reef. Dragging him back up, Carl sat, tense and expectant, as Fred sorted the plastic shards into the
appropriate categories: reel, toyist, reel, toyist, reel, toyist… The others amplified these words into a chant with which
to punctuate the rhythm of their pedalling. The pedalo, slewing in the current, shook itself like a leviathan breaching for
air and picked up speed. Carl picked up one of the Daveworks, biggish, bone-white and the size of his own middle finger. The
way its two smooth sides met at a sharp right angle recalled to him the corners of Luvvie Joolee's whitewashed room. It was
the stillest place Carl had ever been in: stiller than the Shelter, the doors of which were always open to the breeze; stiller
than the blackened interiors of the Hamsters' gaffs, which were ever eddying with smoke, milling with people and motos; stiller
even than the deepest thicket in Norfend, where a leaf fragment spun or a scuttlebug trundled.

Carl fingered the broken jagged top of the Davework and looked back towards the island, now wholly encompassed by the ragged
edge of the sea. How small it was, and how vast were the waters; if they chose to – if they could will such a thing – they
might simply stretch a little and swamp it for ever. The Davework was real: it had a single, enigmatic figure 7 incised in
it. Carl recalled the one moving thing in Luvvie Joolee's chamber besides its inhabitant's grooved lips. As she had droned
on about the PCO, her husband's sectaries, the politicking of the Guilds – matters of which Carl could not even begin to frame
a comprehension – he had watched the dial of the meter. A black stick was pegged to its centre, and when the Exile began the
stick was aimed at a 6; when she finished at 7.

The Sentrul Stac mounted from the waves as the Hamstermen's pedalo drew closer. While from the island it gleamed in the foglight,
near to it had a dark and impenetrable appearance. The shaggy, shit-spattered greenery merged with glossy seaweed at the point
where the swell washed its flanks. The mephitic fumes of the birdshit enveloped them. There were also strange hanks and even
coils of a nacreous substance Carl couldn't identify encrusting the base.

– Wossvose? he asked his stepdad, who had shipped his pedal and come forward.

– Vem? Fred laughed. Vemiz oystahs, mì sun, oystahs. Gúd eatin, yeah, we av em on fowlin trips, but we nevah taykem bak oam.

–Y nó?

– Coz vey iz lyttul creetchus an U gotta suckemup alyve, innit.

– Vare 2 taystë 4 ve mummies Bsydes, put in Fukka Funch, an vay lookabit lyke cunt, wooden wannem gettin ennë Ideers!

There was a shout of laughter from the other dads. The separation from Ham was having a paradoxical effect on them: they were
all craven in the face of the mighty sea and the sweeping wind, yet dävine and pagan alike felt the dead weight of the Driver's
hand lift from them, and this led to ribaldry and defiance. That psychic melding that had occurred a generation before on
the voyage to Chil half happened again, and the Hamstermen experienced a complete accord with one another, sniggering and
jibing, slapping and teasing the lads.

Fred Ridmun brought them to order, and they pedalled the vessel in below Blakk Stac, which stood about half a click from the
Sentrul Stac. Here, in a patch of dead water, they could wait out the hours until darkness, when it would be time for Carl
to make the leap.

– Vat Dryva, said Sid Brudi, chewing meditatively on a piece of curried moto as the pedalo rocked gently on the swell, ee
stopsus wurkin awl ve tyme, ven sez ee wansus 2 B maw produktiv.

– Yeah, his brother Dave chimed in, maw produktiv but ee wansus 2 getridov ve motos. Iss nó rí.

Carl looked from one thin, green-eyed Brudi to the other. He thought of Salli, and unbidden a memory came to him, of the two
of them assisting motos to mate. Salli smearing Gorj's folds with moto oil, while he, crouching beneath Runti's great sagging
tank, guided his tiny cock in.

– Wotevah U fink abaht ve Dryva, said Fred Ridmun, breaking in on Carl's reverie, ee az ve faredar, ee nose ve runs an ve
poynts. U ló ardlee no nuffink. Nuffink. We ad bettah caul sumovah nah 4 Daves lukk, yeah?

This appeal to the Hamstermen's religious instincts had the desired result: they put aside their takeaway and, gathering themselves
into two cabs – one at the stern, one in the bow – they began to call over. Carl was joined by Fred and four other dads. Äteen!
cried Bill Edduns, and Fukka Funch – who had the knowledge of this one – commenced: Leev on leff Marryleebo, leff alsop playce,
leff baykastree, forrad pormanskware … The arcane words drifted over the waves, and some inquisitive oilgulls came spiralling
down from their nests on the Blakk Stac. The fowl floated alongside the pedalo and called over their own rasping Knowledge.

It wasn't until lampoff that the Guvnor halted the calling over. The Hamstermen stowed their gear and took to their pedals.
Slowly, the pedalo came out from behind the Blakk Stac and crept over the booze-dark swell, silvered at its peaks by a dipped
headlight. Hunched in the bow, wrapped in his cloakyfing, Carl felt little fear. Ever since the pedalo had cast off, in this
more compact version of Ham, this floating islet, he felt once again the tight and affectionate enclosure of his early childhood.
Whether the jump killed him or not, he was at least accepted.

Where the long skeins of oysters scraped at the sea there were streaks of phosphorescence. A milky deliquescence of birdshit
hung in the water at the base of the Sentrul Stac. High above the pedalo in the purpled darkness, the Hamstermen sensed the
sleeping blackwings – not so many as there had been earlier in the season, but, from the comings and goings through the long
second tariff, they knew there to be thousands. A remorseless coo-burbling was caught by the breeze and flung down to them.

– Ears ve roap. Fred hung the heavy, moto-oiled hank around Carl's neck and shoulder. U jump, U grab, U clyme. Wunce U R up
on ve Stac, ve clymin iz eezee Enuff slongas U doan slippup. Upontop yul fynd ve stayk eezee Enuff 2.

– Eye no, Dad, Eye no, Carl broke in. U toll me iofowzan tymes awlreddy.

The pedalo nosed in closer and closer, until Carl could make out the first ledge, a man's height above the top of the highest
swell. When the bow was only three paces away, he rose. Fukka grabbed the seat of his jeans, and Carl buckled his belt over
the hank of rope. His arms were grasped firmly by the Guvnor so that Carl could place his right foot on the stempost. Carl
relaxed his legs as the pedalo nosed still closer. Dave B wiv U! came the whispered invocation from the dads, and then, as
the pedalo reached the top of a wave, feeling his centre of gravity shift to the point of no return, Carl flung himself into
the darkness.