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.
Fred Ridmun had a few words of the Book; Bill Edduns and Sid Brudi also. Symun Dévúsh had some as well. The granddads didn't set any great store on reading. Fukka Funch, who had no words at all, held more of the Knowledge than any of the other young men, and it was often he who led the calling over in the Shelter. There may not have been a Driver on Ham for five years, although Mister Greaves had promised them another, yet it was universally — if tacitly — understood that for any Hamsterman to have too many words would be a usurpation of that role. In the meantime, the Guvnor needed only enough words to mark out the sections of the Book: where a run began and where it ended, the order of the points, the headings for the Doctrines and Covenants, the instructions set out in the Letter to Carl. This was sufficient, for the dads' collective memory furnished the rest.
When old Dave Brudi knew that he was dying he called Fred Ridmun to him in the Brudi gaff and handed over his Guvnor's cap and the Council cudgel. The screen was tinting earlier and earlier in the second tariff, while the final darkness was fast approaching, for the old Guvnor as well. Passing by the door on cold mornings, when the ground was irony hard and his breath misty, Symun saw his mate bent low over the old granddad's sofabed and heard Dave grunting:
— Iss nó nó, iss no-t, no-t. Ve Búk iz awl in Arpee, C. Vese wurds wiv ough in em — vair trikki. Sumtyms vair off sahnds lyke coff, uvvatyms vair ow sahnds lyke plow. Nah less ear yer kee wurds, mì sun.
It was a testament to the departing Guvnor's bearing and fortitude that he had enough strength at the end to instruct Fred in these phonics, for, by the time the kipper season came, Dave was dead and buried in the little graveyard behind the Shelter, where the wheels on top of the headstones spun crazily in the mournful winds.
Symun made a point of always being the last to leave the Shelter after the dads had called over the runs and points. He helped Fred to tidy up the tincans, swab the table and straighten its cover, then put the Hamstermen's sole copy of the Book away in the micro. Fred was usually preoccupied — the office of Guvnor brought heavy responsibilities and only modest rewards. He was entitled to an extra tank of moto oil from every slain beast, an extra rip of land in the home field, and an extra share of both feathers and seafowl whenever the pedalo went out to the Sentrul Stac or Nimar. In turn he had to be the first to make the leap on to the rocks when the dads were birding, and he had to be first up the stack — a dizzying, dangerous ascent. He also had to settle all disputes on the island, thus making himself the focus of much resentment. When the Hack came, it was Fred who would have to negotiate with him, bartering the Hamsters' produce for the rent, and this too was a thankless task.
Fred thought it a bit odd the way Symun would open the Book whenever they were alone together and, pointing to this or that word, ask him to read it out; yet not very, for Symun had never been like the other Hamstermen. Where they adapted themselves to the rhythms of their island, its seasons and its tides, he jibed against them. Where they found certainty in the Book and its Knowledge, he was always questioning, his dancing eyes piercing to the core of things.
As autumn progressed, the island's multitudinous greens changed to a cascade of copper finery, which then faded to tawny browns, dull silvers and mossy blacks. The equinoctial gale rose one night and come lampon the trees were bare, their branches making thin cracks in the clear, kipper screen. The mums retreated to the mummies' gaffs, where they wove rough bubbery with the woolly the Hack had brought that summer. The dads also retreated to their own gaffs, where they turned this coarse stuff into cloakyfings, jeans, T-shirts and jackets; for just as weaving was mummies' graft, so was tailoring daddies'. The motos were brought into the byres that took up half of each gaff, and the kids hunkered down with them for warmth. So the Hamsters drew in upon themselves in their little manor. All the Hamsters save one, for Sy Dévúsh began to spend more and more time in that peculiar state, so unfamiliar to his fellows, of being alone.
All that kipper Symun haunted the foreshore. The blisterweed lay on the ground, hollow, papery reeds that crunched harmlessly beneath his feet. The tide was never that high or low on Ham — even at dipped and full beam it only rose a matter of a few steps. This moderation was seemingly in harmony with the temperate clime of the isle. When the tide was out at the curryings on the north coast of Ham, Symun could gain the shallows, then wade unobserved, either to the east, under the Gayt, or to the west beneath the bluffs of the Ferbiddun Zön. Here, on the most isolated promontory of Ham, facing due south, stood the Exile's pathetic semi. Often Symun would see Luvvie Joolee wandering up and down one of the groynes, her gaunt face set, her eyes fixed on distant and unattainable prospects.