The gulls were fighting over the yellowing strips of flesh that they tore from a corpse — the corpse of the Beastlyman, for it could be no other. Carl started forward screaming and striking at the gulls, and a humming vortex opened up. One oilgull poised, webbed feet on gory eye sockets, pulling a slack goo away from the corpse's exposed, mulish teeth. This, this was his dad … this tattered puppet, manipulated by a bird with a tendon in its beak. Nó U! Carl cried. Nó U Beestlimun! And Tyga hearkened to his call, letting out a bellow of motorage as he charged over the rocks scattering the gulls. He stood at Carl's side looking down and lisping: Ith not a beethlimun, ith a nithemun.
To cover up his confusion and his own grief for the Geezer he'd revered, Antonë Böm took refuge in surgical detachment. I would say that he cannot have expired much more than a tariff before we arrived, he pronounced as they shifted bricks to furnish a safe tomb for the dead dad. Then, remembering the way he had failed to recognize his Geezer, Antonë said falteringly, I'm so very sorry, Carl, so very sorry. The lad was, however, almost serene as he dropped a flag on to his dad's face. He reached a hand out to Antonë, so that they stood hand in hand as, through some spasm of dying faith, they called over the funeral run:
— Leave on left Homerton High Street, forward Urswick Road … And the point at the beginning:
— Homerton Hospital.
And the point at the end:
— Jewish Federation Cemetery.
— Djoo no wot kyld im? Carl asked as they went over to the Geezer's hovel of a gaff. Woz í wunnuv vose wankas, he said, gesturing towards Ham.
— I doubt it, Carl, Antonë replied. It is naught save the saddest happenstance. For long years now he had been here, in pain, in hunger, tormented by memories of grievous handling, and still routinely abused by those who had once embraced him. That we should have arrived too late to save him … well, even so, perhaps there was some dävine mercy in it, for our own future is so uncertain.
They found Symun Dévúsh's changingbag easily enough. The battered old moto-hide satchel was lying in his hovel on a pallet of gull feathers and rags. Carl lifted it up and heard the pitter-purling of hundreds of tiny bits of plastic. He reached inside and withdrew a strange discoid container of metal, metal mottled with the verdigris of age yet unrusted. I have seen such artefacts before, Antonë said, they are exceedingly rare. See how perfect the circle is, how skilfully milled as if by a metermaker. If you find the seam betwixt the top and bottom you may open it up. Carl did so. Peering inside, all he could see were Daveworks, a shingly mound that he combed with his hesitant fingers. nuffing, Carl said eventually, no Búk, no nuffing. His voice was as lacklustre as the box from before the MadeinChina, and for the first time Antonë heard his young companion speak with an accent of despair.
It was an odd flotilla that breasted the current towards Ham. The humans held fast to the evian skins, and with the changingbags lashed about Tyga's thick neck they positioned themselves so as to contribute their churning feet to the moto's more efficient motions. In the gathering darkness and the open water, both Antonë and Carl were gripped by the same nightmarish vision: the Driver, his face a mush of decay, rising revivified from the ground where he had been lying dead these past seven months.
The foglamp had been switched off when they at last came ashore, to discover that the current had pushed them some way along the coast to the curryings at Goff. The headlight was driving up over the woodland, illuminating every stately tree and twisted shrub. Despite this, they would be safe for now — no Hamster or moto would be abroad until first tariff. They could even risk a fire to dry their wet robes. While Antonë plied his lighter, Carl went forward with Tyga and watched with pleasure as he foraged smoothbark nuts and acorns, the motos' favourite snack.
Home — Carl was home. The old rutted lane of Stel curved up through the woodland to the Layn and the Gayt field beyond. A scant few paces and Carl would find himself standing on the southern shore at Sid's Slick by Antonë's old gaff. Home, apprehensible, recognizable, graspable home — every criss-crossing greenspike, bending sawleaf and feathery frond of brack spelled HOME as clearly as if the phonics had been inscribed upon them. For a few units, as Carl abandoned himself to the cool green embrace of the woodland, he dared to imagine that the Hamsters might greet him with open arms the following day. That they might embrace him as if he were the Lost Boy come among them.
The humans picked at the greasy takeaway the Guvnor of the Fairway had slung at them, while Tyga, gorged on his native fodder, fell asleep. His huge body curled up to provide a living windbreak for their little encampment. The flames from the fire shot up into the screen as the driftwood burned with vivid licks of green and blue flame. Repose did not come readily for Carl and Antonë — yet the chitchat flowed easily enough between them. So they ranged in speech back and forth, from Ham, to Chil, to London, then to Ham once more, recalling the sights they had seen and the adventures they had had. In this dark time the queer and the stripling found themselves most completely engrafted, until at last, with only a few units to go before Dave switched on the foglamp, they slumbered.
Acting with entire accord, the two blokes urged the moto on into the deep undergrowth of the Gayt. They had awoken late and scrambled to break camp and quit the curryings before the Hamsterwomen were abroad gathering kale and samphire. It had been agreed that Antonë and Tyga would hide up in the Gayt while Carl — with his more intimate knowledge of the island — went forth to discover how things stood in the tiny commonwealth. Beyond that they had no other plan, or at least none that either was prepared to confide to the other, for Antonë also had fantasies of confronting the Hamstermen with their deception and how poorly they had used Symun Dévúsh.
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.
Carl decided to make for the point where the Layn debouched into the moto wallows. As he tramped through the dense scrub of Turnas Wud, then the dells and clearings of Norfend, an uncanny sensation gathered in the small of his back. After Nimar, after London, after the burbs and the forests he had seen on their trek across Chil, these, the playing grounds of his boyhood, were eerily still. There was no rat-scuttle, bunny-hop or tree-rat-scratch. No flying rats coo-burbled in the crinkleleafs. He took his smart trainers off the better to feel his homeland — yet even beneath bare feet the bark chips and leaf fall felt desiccated and lifeless.