The Book of Dave (60 page)

Broad, flat moto hands and feet displaced clods of earth and clumps of brick that rolled down the ravelin. Slowly yet unerringly
Tyga discovered a gap in the dyke and pushed a path deep into the crackling rhodie boughs. After a couple of hundred paces
they discovered a tiny clearing in the undergrowth, and here Carl bade Tyga lie down. The moto didn't want to – he was agitated,
he kept lumbering in a tight turning circle, his broad flanks sweeping the two humans into the bushes.

– Doan go, doan go, he implored Carl, Eyeth fwytunned, Eyeth fwytunned.

Carl tried to soothe him:

– Iss onle 4 a lyttul wyl, juss so Eye can fynd aht woss wot.

Yet it wasn't until Antonë closed in on the moto, took his huge head in his arms and stroked Tyga's agitated wattles that
the beast could be quietened:

– I'll cuddle you until Carl gets back, I'll get you a snack. You'll see, we'll have a great time. Turning to Carl, he continued:

– Don't worry about him, I'm sure he'll settle down as soon as you've gone.

Then it struck him – by this time in the tariff the motos should be filling the woods with their deep lowing, the reedy cries
of their young mushers and infant charges piercing the leafy canopy. The crackling thud of flanged moto feet and the mechanical
rasping of moto molars was so integral to Ham that without it, it was as if the very life force had been stilled. Carl shuddered,
even though every tree and bough was familiar to him, yet this was no more Ham than the painted hoardings of Stepney Green
were the proud buildings of New London foretold in the Book.

Lost in this reverie, Carl nearly tumbled over a figure that was bowed down between two mossy smoothbarks, grovelling in the
earth with a mattock. It started up and ran – he couldn't tell if it was mummy or daddy, so swathed was it in a cloakyfing.
Before he had time to consider what he was doing, Carl found himself running in hot pursuit, smashing through brack and sawleaf.
The figure was making for the Layn – soon they would be exposed to whatever watchers there were down below in the manor. Carl
put on a spurt and the pelting wraith tripped on a root and fell headlong into a boggy slough. Fell, sprawled and twisted
so that the cloakyfing was torn away from the freckled face of:

– Salli! Salli! Carl cried, Ware2, luv? Ware2?

She didn't answer his salutation – only glared up at him, her pale eyes brimming with the dull hatred of a toyist beast.

Carl stared at Salli. Her cheeks were hollow, her neck scrawny, there was a film over her frightened eyes. The cloakyfing
was wound round her emaciated body like a shroud on a living skeleton. The Beastlyman swam up again in Carl's fevered fancy
– was this a vision? Were he and Salli in the breaker's yard already, was she about to rise up and hail Dave? The cloakyfing
was wound so tightly, Carl hadn't seen such a cover-up even with the London mummies. He bent down to offer her his open hand,
and she spat in his face:

– Wanka! she cried, then, Fukkin wanka!

He knelt down beside her to show he was no threat, and she cowered, then spat at him again.

– Doan tuch me! she said cowering, Eyem a boylar nah!

– A boylar? Carl was incredulous. Waddya meen? Owzat?

– Lyke Eye say – Eyem a boylar, aniss yaw fukkin fawlt. U fink yaw awl davyn but U aynt – iss mummies wot mayd U juss lyke
we mayd vat fukkin kweer – wurs lukk!

Misunderstanding her ire, Carl began a halting explanation as to why he and Antonë had left the island. He told Salli of their
hardships on the way to London and what they had discovered there, then, as he told of his dead dad on the rocks of Nimar,
Carl became more and more agitated – he so needed her to comprehend the shifting sands of belief that quaked beneath them,
yet the only potent image he could call upon was one at the very core of Dävinanity.

– I-iss … iss lyke viss, Salli, he stammered. Ewe C Eyem lyke ve Loss Boy – ewe C wot Eye meen? Ve Loss Boy –

U! U aynt no Loss Boy! She spat again. Ure a wanka juss lyke enni uwa dad – juss lyke ve dads wot nokked me up.

– Wen?! Wen diddí appen!? Mummy shame and daddy jealousy curdled in his hammering chest.

– O ajez ago, she laughed bitterly, B4 U leff Am. Eye dunno oo í woz, if thass yaw nex kwestchun – coz sew menne ovem ad a
krakkat me – up ve kunt, up ve garri, U no owí

–
Stop! Carl shouted. Stop i! Then, groping for some new fact to dispel this sickening image, he asked, An ve baybee, wot appened 2 í?

– Ded, offcaws, stoan fukkin ded – an me, Eye aint got no fukkin woom no maw neevah. Vair woz no neewoman coz yaw nan woz
ded inall, an U, U took Tone wiv U wen U went, diddun U!

Salli Brudi was wailing by now and clawing at her hollow cheeks. Carl reached for her – and once more she recoiled.

Wossup wiv U! she snarled. U go motoraj aw sumffing? U wanna ava krakkat me inall? Wel go on, ven. She tore at her cloakyfing,
tore frantically until she ripped it apart to expose a breast lying slack on her corrugated ribcage. Go on! Fukkin av me!
Fukkin av me!

Carl – appalled and repelled – shuffled backwards, rose, turned tail and ran away through the woods, plunging into dense patches
of pricklebush and whippystalk. He ran along the margin of the Gayt field, then crashed on, tripping over crete rubble and
brick piles, ripping the flesh from his knees and elbows. It wasn't until he'd floundered into the deepest portion of the
Zön, where the ancient tumuli brooded beneath their bushy covering, that he collapsed to the ground. A crow, disturbed from
its roost in an old crinkleleaf throttled by ivy, cawed once and, leisurely whipping the hot air with its oily wings, lifted
into the screen. Carl registered neither this nor any other phenomena – he was lost. Lost in tears, lost in grief for Salli,
for himself and for Ham.

– What is the matter here? Did Salli speak of the Driver or of the other Hamsters?

– Nah, Carl replied, she sed nuffing, but Eye tellya, maytë, iss bad wotevah í iz. Vey gotta awl B banged up in ve manna .
. . Vey gotta B.

They spent a fitful night in the clearing, Tyga rousing up many times and waking the two equally nervy humans. At lampon they
took stock. Both were in agreement – there was nothing for it, they would have to see what was going down on their manor.
After a few miserable spoonfuls of oatie and another slug of jack, they coaxed Tyga up and began their laborious progress;
avoiding the easy tracks and keeping to the woodland, they worked their way round to where the dyke dividing the Gayt from
the home field joined the Layn.

Fortunately mist had blown in off the lagoon during the night. Even so, as they crept along behind the dyke, they were painfully
aware that only its earthen bulk separated them from the full glare of publicity. Carl urged Tyga to keep his belly pressed
to the ground, while he and Antonë also went on all fours. It took them many units to reach the point of closest proximity
to the manor. Then, with a final soothing caress of Tyga's jonckheeres, Carl instructed the moto to lie still in a furrow,
while he and Antonë scrambled up the bank and peeked over.

The scene below impressed itself on Carl Dévúsh with nightmarish immediacy. The Hamsters' manor was gone. Gone like it had
never been there before – every brick, flag, rope and thatch bundle of the ancient structures had been removed, leaving behind
only seven pod-shaped depressions in the turf to show where the gaffs had once hunkered down. Some hundred paces away, lined
up across the little headland that interrupted the smooth curve of Manna Ba, there was a new manor: ten sharp-cornered, four-square
semis with gabled roofs. Their bottom halves were of the reddest brick, their tops rendered in white plaster between black
beams. Bëfan semis, Carl gasped, Ees mayd em bild bëfan semis. The bëthan semis were laid out in two straight lines of five,
divided not by the merry twinkle of running evian but by a severe brick wall that rose up taller than two dads.

It wasn't only bëthan semis that the Hamsters had been building – nor their old gaffs they'd been demolishing. With a shock
Böm saw that his own little semi at Sid's Slick was gone – as was the old Shelter. In their stead was a new place of calling
over, impossibly large and commanding for this isolate place. It was perhaps thirty paces long and three storeys high. It
stood very near the shore, and beside its raw, unpainted sides the stands of blisterweed looked as small as burgerparsley.

There was an even more shocking piece of new construction a few paces beyond this: a huge stockade of rough-hewn crinkleleaf
stakes had been hammered into the sod. Inside it the bristly backs of the island's entire moto population were ranked up.
Carl counted twenty-three motos together with seventeen mopeds. The motos were restive – snorting and butting against their
enclosure – yet, as was the creatures' way when afeared, they made no utterance. Alongside this vile pen there stood the stark
rectangle of an elongated moto gibbet – far larger even than that which was customary for the autumn slaughter.

As the two returnees watched, a posse of Hamstermen emerged from one of the semis on the daddy side of the wall and, carefully
skirting the mummies' side, made their way over to the Shelter. They carried slopping cans of green paint and were under the
direction of:

– A Dryva! Carl blurted out.

However, it wasn't the Driver himself– this one was short and dumpy; his robes were cut in the London fashion, his trainers
were high and his mirror dangled from a golden rod. As the work posse reached the new Shelter, it was met by more Drivers
who came out from inside, together with a large gang of off-islanders – alien chavs, a posse of Chilmen, and the Lawyer of
Chil's chaps. Such a swarm of dads Carl had never known to be on Ham before. It was no wonder Salli looked to be starving
– they must be eating all the Hamsters' curried preserves.

Then the Hamsters' own Driver appeared. He limped from his semi leaning heavily upon a staff. Set beside the bustling incomers,
he was a diminished figure – bent over, his white hair greasy and unkempt. Fred Ridmun, together with Mister Greaves, emerged
from the doorway behind him, and, following the Driver towards the gibbet, Fred called out: Peet! Bert! Billi! The lads detached
from the milling crowd and came over. Carl had grown up with these three, and, like him, they had suddenly reached dadhood.
They carried themselves erect in a sharp jabber of knees and elbows yet from the way they also shuffled their bare feet and
spat their gum juice in the dirt, it was clear that this was to be no welcome task.