The Book of Dave (43 page)

Böm, his wet eyes magnified by his eyeglasses, would blink at Carl. His plump hands would go to his tank and tap it. He'd
rock on his heels, a buzzing noise coming from his plump lips. Who, he wondered, was this lad with the merry blue eyes and
why was his peasant mind so acute? When the Driver came to shoo the teacher and his class out of the Shelter, it seemed only
natural for Böm and Carl to find themselves proceeding apart from the rest. Natural too for Carl to go to the dads and suggest
tasks that would take him and the teacher roving over the island. Slowly, in the course of these rambles, the queer and his
pupil found each other out – discovering that they shared the same inquisitive bent, the same mummyness sealed away in their
male breasts.

Böm preferred to have his curry in the old Bulluk house, where the boilers gathered. One night he looked up from his pannikin
to see Caff Ridmun and Effi Dévúsh sitting beside him. He blinked back the tears that always gathered in his eyes when he
was in the Hamsters' smoky gaffs and peered at them.

– W-wot iz í, mummies? he stammered, sensing that they had something important to divulge.

– U bin a long tym ear nah, Tonë, innit? Effi began.

– Long enuff – nyn yeers cum nex JUN.

– Anjoo no a Ió abaht uz bì nah, innit?

Böm shifted to Arpee:

– I like to imagine that I have studied your ways thoroughly, if that's what you mean, Effi.

– Vares sumffing U av no Nolidj uv, sumffing big.

– Oh and what's that? Böm was altogether without guile – he had no thought of trying to gain any advantage over Effi. He had
learned to respect these Hamsterwomen, who, despite being treated like beasts of burden by their menfolk, kept the community
alive and functioning.

Effi Dévúsh leaned close in, her own eyes were lost in deep wrinkles, her nose was a knife blade, her fingers talons that
suddenly swooped on Böm's plump thigh and pulled up the leg of his jeans. He didn't flinch as the welts of the old branding
scar were revealed.

– Vare í iz, Effi breathed – and Caff sighed as well. U nevah spoakuv í, didja?

– No, no, I saw no need.

– An ve Dryva – ee sed nuffing neevah.

– No, no, I believe he thinks it will do nothing to further his work among you.

– Av U evah erred tel ov ve Geezer?

Effi and Caff sat back while Böm straightened his clothes. There, their expressions seemed to say – it's out now. The Geezer!
Böm was aghast. You mean the dad who said he'd found a second Book, the flyer?

– Ve verrë saym.

– Yes, well … Böm said, hanging his head, you could say he's the reason I'm here at all. It was his calling over in London
that had me branded.

This intelligence was of no concern to the mummies; the London of which the teacher spoke was a remote – near mythical – realm.
When Symun Dévúsh had been taken from them, he was gone for ever.

– Didjoo no, Effi continued, ee woz a sunuv Am, didjoo no vat?

– The Geezer, from here, from this Ham? Böm was incredulous. Surely not?

– Nah, Effi sighed, iss ve troof

– An mì Carl, Caff broke in, mì Carl … ees … ees iz lad.

The Geezer. To Antonë Böm it was an age ago and half a world away. He had carried the Geezer's teaching locked up inside of
himself, along with his mummyself, for all the dank days of his exile. The tenets of the new faith were as close to his heart
as the first time he had heard them from the lips of his fellow teacher at the City of London School: No Breakup or Changeover,
mummies and daddies to be with one another, touch one another, speak with one another, care for one another, with all the
gentleness of a young opare tending to her infant charge. No PCO, no Knowledge, no Dävinanity – Dave himself disavowed it
all, and had seen fit to tell this young, near-illiterate peasant that the first Book had been naught save the ravings of
a dävine mind misshapen by anger and hatred.

Dave bore no hatred towards mummies – not even Chelle. He truly wanted His fares to be fulfilled by whatever manner of life
that they pursued. He did not wish them to build New London; only to live in the cities and towns that they themselves founded.
And if they wanted to speak with Him, to reach up through the screen and touch Him, to sit back, give Him directions and let
Him drive them to their destination – then that was what Dave wanted as well. He was there for all daddies and mummies – whatever
their estate. He could be reached with the intercom – or even a loud call. No Drivers or Inspectors were needed to intercede
– no laborious recitation of arcane Knowledge was required.

It was to this Dave that Antonë Böm called over each night in his mean semi. Settled on a low stool, his arms held out straight
in front of him, feeding the Wheel as he opened his heart. Expressing his innermost thoughts and secret yearnings to a perfect
and loving Supreme Driver. Often, upon falling silent, he would become aware of that mundane Driver, a scant distance away,
who called over to a very different Dave, a savage, hate-filled Dave, who wished nothing for his fares save toil and strife,
the Breakup and the Changeover.

No one in London had known precisely where the Geezer had hailed from – the name Ham was whispered, yet this meant nothing,
for there were thousands of Hams scattered over the archipelago of Ing. In the time before the dävidic line was established
in the city that came to be called London, many of these places were claimants to be the true cradle of the faith. Antonë
had never conceived of the Geezer's Book as having a material reality, any more than he had imagined it being found in the
same place as the first. Now two kinds of Knowledge joined together in Antonë Böm's mind, two worlds irrupted into each other.
If … if the Geezer spoke the truth … Böm could barely formulate the thoughts … Then then, this … this is Ham-
Hampstead … and that … beyond the reef… below the lagoon … is … is London. For did not Dave speak of a
mighty flood, a great wave transforming the city's streets into raging rivers?

Böm held the Knowledge of Ham as completely as any native granddad or grannie; it was his Knowledge of the Book that had faded.
Its runs and points had been sing-songed into mere sounds by the lads in the Shelter. For tariff after tariff, then blob after
blob, and finally year after year. While Böm leaned his weary head on the doorjamb and gazed out to sea, to where the stacks
were spray-dashed in the swell, what was it that the lads had chanted? Rì Wyldwúd Röd. Leff Norfend Wä. Compli Spanyads Layn,
Forrud Eef Street … The area of dense woodland along the north shore was known as the Wyldwúd. The lane that ran down
from the moto wallows between Wess Wúd and Sandi Wúd was called Norf to differentiate it from the Layn that ran along the
spine of the island. That these old tracks, worn by the feet of Hamsters and motos, conformed to the runs, conformed to the
Knowledge – could it mean anything?

Which had come first: the Knowledge or Ham? Surely it was more likely that the ancient Hamsters had named their rustic tramps
after the majestic thoroughfares described in the Book? Yet… and yet… Forward Heath Street… then into the Zön,
then left Beech Row … and was that where the Book had been disinterred some five hundred years before? If there was an
answer to the conundrum it lay in the shrub-choked Ferbiddun Zön. It lay here on Ham.

Antonë Böm did not sleep that night. When the first tariff came and the foglamp was switched on in the east, he was down at
the shore pacing back and forth. A rank of motos nosing down from the Layn sighted him. Knowing better than to approach the
teacher, they hung back, shrouded by the mist, their slushy calls muffled by the damp air. Alwyt, Tonë, alwyt, they cooed,
hoping he had overcome his old revulsion enough to come and pet them. Instead Böm walked on along the shore, past the dim
box of the Driver's semi, which seemed to suck solidity out of the nebulous atmosphere, then on around the bay to the manor.
All was silent and still, the occasional cooee chew-chew-chew of a gull banking over the beach as mournful as the wail of
an abandoned child.

Antonë Böm stood by a stand of blisterweed and regarded the Hamsters' humped and mossy gaffs. It wouldn't be long before the
first mummies and opares were up, stoking the fires with fresh wood, heating up cracked wheatie and moto gubbins for the dads
and kids. The Hamsterwomen's labours began early and were never done. The boilers and mummies told Böm that before the Driver
came there had been little or no violence on Ham. Now he understood – it was the Geezer's fault, the daddies were punishing
the mummies for what had happened during the time of the Geezer, and the Driver was inciting them.

Ware2, guv! It was Caff Ridmun who called to him, jerking the teacher away from his thoughts. She'd come out from the Bulluk
gaff and was heading over to the spring to fetch evian. 2 Nú Lundun! Böm called back – and in that unit his mind was made
up. He would penetrate the Ferbiddun Zön and discover its secrets – whatever the consequences might be.

The screenwash came late that autumn – not until NOV was almost over. The climate on Ham was always temperate, but this year
it seemed as if kipper would never arrive. The motos were still sleeping out in the woodland, while fat flies doodled in and
out of the shack where the Hamsters made waste of their natural products. The community became uneasy. The oldest of the grannies
and granddads told tales of former times, when during such spells freakish waves had reared up out of the Great Lagoon, drenching
the home field with curry and destroying the soil's fertility for a generation. On one occasion Ham had been almost completely
depopulated. When the Hack arrived from Chil, he found only a few mummies and kids huddled in the empty byres – almost all the
Hamstermen had died, some from starvation, others during a desperate fowling trip out to the stacks. The motos too were severely
reduced in numbers. Daddies had to be brought forcibly from Chil to settle on the island. It was said that it was then that
the decline began, and the Hamsters shrank until they were naught save pygmies compared to their mighty forefathers.

Against a backdrop of flaming autumnal leaves, the Driver called over the Book – while Antonë Böm scurried away from the Shelter
as fast as his chubby legs would carry him. Yaw blankin me! Carl Dévúsh called after him. Yaw blankin me, Tonë! The lad ran,
his bare feet sure on the slippery turf, and caught up with his mentor. Oi! Wossup? Ware U goin? Carl's hand was on Antonë's arm, and in its pressure the older man could feel all the weight of the
responsibility he sought to avoid, the daddystuff, the daddytime, the need to work and build, to make a better world. He shrugged
the hand off, turned from the expectant eyes, walked on hurriedly up to the Layn and went on down into the woodland. Carl
was not to be so easily discarded. He followed behind, crying out: Wot ve mummies bin tellin yer, Tonë? Eh, wot vey bin tellin
yer? Vey töl U abaht me dad, iz vat í, iz vat í?

Böm blundered in and out of boggy sloughs with no care for the state of his jeans. As the lad pursued him, he became increasingly
hysterical – the whirl of speculation about Ham and the agitation in his feelings it provoked sucked him into a vortex of
abandonment. Why? he implored aloud. Why O Dave have you dropped me off? He had never wanted it this way: to be queer was
bad enough, to be exiled as a flyer worse, now these chellish mummies conspired to place him for ever outside the Shelter.
Whippystalks tore at his beard and hair, the wind rose and the yellow leaves flashed against the deep, blue sky – the whole
spherical space of Ham was in motion, a flickering between faith and faithlessness. Sweetë, startled by Böm's thrashing through
the underbrush, started up from where she'd been lying and trundled off into a thicket. The sight of the moto's vast and brindled
flanks set Böm on another course: The motos … grotesque mutants … slobbering, giant babies … are we not all babies,
mired in our own ordure, babbling nonsense? Böm sank down in a boggy patch, and his hands drove into the brackish morass.
He moaned and brought clutches of the muddy weed up to his face, squeezing the sludge between his fingers. You fucking bitches!
he blubbered. You fucking bitches … You've taken – you've taken ev-ery-thing!