— 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.
At first tariff of the next day the Council of Ham assembled. It was a breezy autumnal day, the clouds scudding across the screen, the foglamp casting an ever-mutating pattern on the tawny land. Wrapped in their cloakyfings, the four granddads propped themselves upon the highest piles of bricks. These greybeards were all bent and pained, racked by all the cracked bones and wrenched muscles they'd acquired in a lifetime of risky endeavour. The four older dads took their positions sitting on lower piles, while the seven of their lads who were of an age to join in deliberations lay at their feet, sprawled on the turf by a smouldering fire. It was only three months since the Hack's party had left the island and there were still a few fags and plenty of gum to go round, so the granddads puffed and squinted out from the drifting smoke with benign, abstracted expressions.
— 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.