The Book of Dave (9 page)

As if the zone needed any more mystique – to Symun it was thickly permeated by Dave's prophecies of the world that had been
and the world that would come again. He pushed on past the thicket, feeling the waxy rhodie leaves cool and damp on his exposed
arms. The cries of his companions came again as Symun shouldered his way on into the zone, but he ignored them. Another ringneck
flew whirring overhead in a greenish blur – and he took this to be a good omen, an excuse to push on still further.

After another hundred paces Symun sat down on a mound and lowered his head between his knees. He breathed deeply, inhaling
the atmosphere of the place, its brooding silence redolent of ancient abandonment. Muttering to himself he scrabbled in the
mud: Vare ass 2 B sum, vare awlways iz, awl U gotta do iz dig. Sure enough, he soon exposed a corner of brickwork encrusted
with a rough rind of morta. Holding his mattock close to its blade, slowly and deliberately Symun bludgeoned the earth, until
the beginnings of a substantial course were revealed. London bricks: the very stuff of Dave, created by Him, the material
that old London had been built from and out of which New London was rising once more – or so Mister Greaves assured them.
When the Hamstermen dug up courses of these sacred artefacts from the undergrowth, most were too cracked and weathered to
be of use. However, if they broke off the outer layer there were almost always one or two inside that retained their vivid
redness, their sharp edges and their incised legend: LONDON BRICK.

Here, alone, deep in the Ferbiddun Zön for the first time in his life, Symun Dévúsh allowed what had, up until now, been only
stray intuitions and inchoate thoughts to coalesce. How could it be, he wondered, that his mummy's account of Ham and that
of the dävine dads were both true? Where the other Hamstermen remained credulous, he sensed a profound jibing between the
old natural religion of the island and the doctrine of the Book. What was the truth? The answer – if there were one – must
lie here.

Then Symun heard a rustling in the bushes behind him and leaped to his feet, staring wildly about at the rhodies. Scuttling
into his fevered mind came all the sharp-toothed fears that infested the zone, protecting its secrets. Symun's curiosity vanished,
swallowed up by terror – he'd been crazy to stray this far in, he must get out. His throat constricted, his breath bulged
in his lungs, he felt himself losing consciousness. Then, a blunt, pink muzzle parted the glossy leaves and he was staring
straight into the baby-blue eyes of Champ.

– Thy-mun, sing-songed the moto, Thy-mun, wanna wawwow wiv me?

Symun let out a peal of delighted laughter and lunged forward to embrace the beast's great bristly head. It was like this,
still hugging, that the two of them emerged from the thick undergrowth of the zone a few units later. Man and moto, together
under the suspicious eyes of the other young Hamstermen, who were resting on their mattocks, the pile of newly mined bricks
at their bare feet.

– U bin a wyle, Sy, said Fred Ridmun, his narrow grey eyes piercing under his ragged fringe.

– An nuffing much 2 show 4 í neevah, put in Ozzi Bulluk, who stood with his brawny red arms held loosely at his sides. As
ever Ozzi looked ready for a fight. If any Hamster was too long alone it caused disquiet – and to seek solitude within the
zone was more subversive than eccentric.

– Yeah, wen we wuz vair vay layd anifyng we wannid on uz, said Ozmun Bulluk, who was standing in for Dave Brudi and so led
the discussion. Eye tel U wot, vo, vey wuz ryte moodë if we gayv vair opares ve wunceovah. Ozmun settled back on his pile,
stroking his thick, reddish-brown beard with an equally hairy hand. He was a heavy-set dad, quick to anger like all the Bulluks.
When he was shouting – which was often – spittle flecked his beard. Yet he cooled as fast as he heated – and for a granddad
was unusually tolerant.

– Meenin? his son, Ozzi, queried.

– Meenin booze, fagz, anifyng á awl. Eye diddun fancee vair byrds much ennëway, dodji if U ask me, awl spillinahtuv vair cloff
dressis.

– W-w-wots cloff? stuttered Sid Brudi, one wiry finger twining his ginger hair, his freckled face full of stupid awe.

– Yeah, wel, nah yer Lundun cloff iz prittë bluddë smart, Eyel grant yer, said Ozmun, settling into his yarn. Seams í cums
from viss bush, rì, iss a froot aw sumffing, sorta wyte bawl uv fluff, wych cums in bì ferry from dahn souf. Ennë wä, vey
gé a bit uv vis geer an sorta teese í aht, lyke cardin vool, rì?

– O Dave! Symun suddenly exclaimed. U gonna go on lyke vis awl fiikkin day! He spat his gum out and stood up. Ow mennë tymes
av Eye erred all vis bollox abaht Chil – iss gotta B a fouzand aw maw. Eyev erred abaht vair cloff, Eyev erred abaht vair
traynors an vair barnets, an vair beefansemis an vair fukkin opares. Wot Eye wanna no iz, wy didunchew ask em abaht fishin
aw farmin, or sumffing – anifyng vat myte B an urna eer on Am!

The other dads coughed and stared pointedly at the ground. They waited for Ozmun to administer a drubbing – which he duly
did, leaning down from his pile and striking Symun hard with his cudgel. Symun shook more with the effort of repressing his
fury than with the pain. He groped for his discarded gum, stuck it back in his cheek, then sat cross-legged, staring out through
the blisterweed at the lagoon, with its glaucous tinge of subsurface algae.

– Sorrë, Dad, he said to Ozmun, Eye juss sorta lost í.

– Vass orlrì, Ozmun replied, í appuns.

Then he resumed his account of the voyage the Hamstermen had made to Wyc, to the Bouncy Castle of the Lawyer of Chil – a journey
that had taken place over thirty years before, when Ozmun was himself a young dad of twenty-three. This was the last time
the Hamstermen had visited Chil as a group. Isolated individuals had been taken away by the Hack, either because of wrongdoing,
or because they were opares fancied by one of his party. However, these emigrants never sent back any news of the outside
world; for that the Hamsters had to depend on the Chilmen, and they were usually too ill and too overawed by the strangeness
of the island to be effective informers.

Over the years that he had been Hack, Mister Greaves himself had been reluctant to remedy the islanders' deficiency. His own
view was a conflicted one. To begin with he considered that the business of the island, ensuring its continuing productivity
of moto oil and seafowl feathers, would be impaired if the Hamsters understood the commercial value of their products. However,
latterly, as the value of these products declined in the rest of Ing, and Mister Greaves found himself having to subsidize
his own tenants some years, he inclined to the view that the Hamsters' ignorance was a large part of what made them the happy,
healthful, seemingly naturally dävine folk they were.

Furthermore, the Hamsters' hunger for information was difficult to assuage, so utterly ignorant were they of the world beyond
their shores. The last King of Ing of whom Ozmun and his contemporaries had heard was David I, who was on the throne at London
in the time of their own granddads. Try as he might, Mister Greaves could not convince them that this monarch was long dead,
for the meter was not well calibrated within them. As for the last Driver, while he had spent seventeen years among the Hamsters,
his vocation had been to awaken them to the world to come, not enlighten them as to their place in this one.

So this decades-old visit to Chil, which had lasted a scant few blobs, remained the most comprehensive picture the Hamstermen
had of the lands beyond. In the intervening years, at Council after Council, its tapestry had been picked over and over again,
until in some parts it was worn threadbare, while in others it had been fancifully embroidered. Although not much, for the
Hamstermen had encountered a peculiar fact about themselves when they tied their pedalo up to the landing stage at Wyc, and,
doffing their caps, shuffled into the awesome presence of their Lawd. This was, that while when they left their own island
they had spoken in their usual, competitive babble, by the time they came to address the Lawyer of Chil they found that they
spoke in complete unison: twelve dads with a single, polyphonic voice. This curious unanimity – born, perhaps, of the intense
harmoniousness of their secluded lives – extended to their vivid impressions of this outer world, so that they also recalled
it as one, in a sole, unanimous remembering.

Every glancing detail and minute observation culled from the Hamstermen's sojourn on Chil was already seared into Symun and
he found it torture to listen yet again, as Ozmun called over this lore in his sing-song voice: the fine stitching of cotton
shirts and the scissoring of hair, the curious motion of wheeled vehicles, and the equally peculiar burdening of jeejees and
burgakine. Even decades later the amazement that had prevented the Hamstermen from getting to the nub of it all was still
evident. For theirs was a word picture of only the surface of these remarkable things: the chaps with their shooters and railings
on the Bouncy Castle ramparts, the ocean-going ferries in the harbour, the beefansemis that clustered about it. Symun cherished
a desire to read, so he considered it foolish of the granddads not to have attempted to set down their account, so that it
might be read in the same manner as the Book. He sighed and, gathering his legs under him, got up. Eyem ahtuví, U Ió, he said
to no one in particular.

Symun strolled away from the Council ground, slid between the shitter and the Edduns gaff, then sauntered up the stream through
the heart of the manor. Down by the Council wall the dads could hear the mummies singing: We R ve Amster gurls, we ware R
air in curls … When Symun appeared they fell silent. It was daddytime, with two days to go until Changeover. The opares
were minding the babies and toddlers in the dads' gaffs; the older kids were out with the motos. The bare earth surrounding
the walls of the gaffs was beaten and churned by the hurrying feet of the mummies as they worked. Symun stood and, since there
were no dads to observe him doing so, watched them intently.

Shell Brudi and Bella Funch sat on the ground grinding flour in the quern set between them. Their legs were outstretched and
each bent forward in turn to grasp the wooden rod and pull the heavy top stone for half of its rotation. The air was white
with wheatie dust, and sweat stood out on their brows. Shell's sister, Liz, was nursing her newborn baby as she sat in the
lea of the Brudi gaff. The infant, a girl, was only a day old and had been anointed with moto oil by Effi that tariff. If
she survived the next two blobs without dying of lockjaw, she would then receive both a name and the wheel of Dave.

Effi herself stood at a trestle table braiding the tops of some crybulbs together, so that they could be hung up in the rafters
for the kipper. On the table were piles of herbs: jack-by-hedge, comforty, blacktartdog and piss-a-bed. Two other mummies
were carding wool, two more were spinning thread. Another posse were changing the thatch on the Bulluk gaff. Three mummies
carried bundles of dried pricklebush on their backs and clambered up and down the curved walls, depositing them on the eaves,
while one remained aloft so she could lash them down. Nearer to Symun, at another trestle table set up between the Ridmun
and Dévúsh gaffs, stood Caff Ridmun, who was dyeing cloth in a tub. Caff, with her withered leg, who leaned heavily so as
to favour the sound one. Caff, whom he loved – much as he had once loved his mummy, and still loved Champ, his moto. Caff,
who as an opare had been courted, then wed, by Fred Ridmun. Yet, now Caff was knocked up, Fred had no more eyes for her than
any daddy did for a mummy. He had paid her childsupport, so he would lie with her again in the mummies' gaff once the baby
was weaned – but he would seldom, if ever, speak to her. When she was on the blob Caff would wear a red rag on her cloakyfing
– and at that time her old man would not come near her at all.

Symun burned with his desire for Caff – or was it that strange mummyself left inside of him after his final Changeover that
wanted not only to lie with her but also to be with her, look at her and talk with her? He could not say; he knew only a desperate
motorage as he stared at her slim shoulders and the thick brown plait that trailed from her headdress. If she felt his gaze
on her, Caff made no response. She went on pummelling the cloth, gently shoving her full, round tank against the tabletop.
Eventually Symun turned and walked away along the shore in the direction of the Shelter.