In buddout and summer Symun would have been with other Hamstermen, out netting prettybeaks, or else gathering the mussels that clung to the weedy flanks of the groynes. The mummies came on to the foreshore as well, if there were particular herbs they needed, or a dead seadog had been washed up. And all the Hamsters went there from time to time to gather fresh Daveworks, although this task was mostly left to the children, who, it was believed, benefited from it. Every Hamster had his or her Daveworks, strung on to lengths of thread. Now that the Driver was long gone, the dads would tell theirs as they sat in the Shelter and called over the runs and the points. The mums wore theirs as necklaces. Daveworks were also nailed to the lintels of the Hamsters' gaffs and garlanded their motos. Field strips were marked out by poles from which Daveworks dangled, serving both to scare off the birds and to sanctify the crops. Certain groves in the woods, because they were the site of an ancient calamity, had become shrines, adorned with posies, scrawled messages and Daveworks. Here the Hamsters came to speak to Dave through the intercom.
Real Daveworks were most prized, because they bore phonics and were therefore fragments of the Book. Toyist Daveworks, if they were particularly fine and realistic, were also kept by some, in the belief that sooner or later Dave himself would come to redeem them for that which they depicted. Daveworks came in many shapes: there were straight ones and bent ones, T-shaped and H-shaped, circular and square, spherical and triangular. These were all designated accordingly: strayts, bentuns, tees, aytchez, sirkúls, skwares, bawls and trys. Most were too convoluted to be given a name; even the term 'plastic' — for a great many Daveworks bore these phonics, or at least some — could not serve to differentiate them, for as it was written in the Book, plastic was only the vital clay from which the world had been moulded.
What the Hamsters did know was that the supply of Daveworks was inexhaustible, continual proof of the immanence of Dave. They were more common on the southern coast, where whole reefs lay offshore. After a storm fresh Daveworks would be freed and come floating in to lodge in the sand and shingle. The Hamsters could simply have waded out to the reef and gathered as many as they wanted, if the crabs in their thousands hadn't deterred them. Not because of their claws — which could deliver at most a nip — but because their presence suggested that the reef was toyist. Dävwurks cum in Daves oan tym, said Effi Dévúsh, no Rs.
Symun's expeditions in search of Daveworks were quite different. He sought only real Daveworks, and he looked for them with great single-mindedness. He was searching for those that bore discernible words, and when he found one that duplicated those already in his collection, he discarded it. For there were many bearing the phonics M-A-D-E, H-O-N-G or.-C-O-M; and quite a few that had E-N-G-L-A-N-D and C-H-I-N-A. 'England' he knew to be Dave's term for Ingerland, but of.COM there was no mention in the Book — at least not in the runs he knew. Symun kept his Daveworks in the hollow trunk of a dead groovebark on the fringes of the Ferbiddun Zön.
With the alphabet he had gleaned from Fred, Symun was able to decipher his Daveworks. By matching the words he had himself found to those words he could see on those rare occasions he could handle the Book, he came to be able to read. Symun was intelligent, formidably so, and while the first few phrases had cost him whole tariffs of frustration, once he had cracked the code entire rants of the Book leaped off the page at him.
Naturally Symun was familiar with the Book; all Hamstermen were. Its runs and points were called over by them in unison, in the Shelter. Its doctrines and covenants were constantly on their lips as they disciplined their mummies, opares and boilers. Its Ware2, guvs were what they welcomed one another with, and its farewells to the Lost Boy were their valedictions. Yet much of what they recited was gibberish to them — deprived, as they were, of the good offices of a Driver. Now that Symun could read he could provide his own interpretation: he could see how the Book explained Ham, its shape, its isolation, its peculiar character. This was the true revelation: the island, which had for all his life been an immutable given, now became fluidly legible. Then he knew what he must do. He understood what his mummy had implied but dared not openly state: he should use the Book to penetrate the mysteries of the Ferbiddun Zön.
The Hamsters were sowing the kipper wheatie. First the mummies went on their hands and knees rooting out the weeds; the daddies came after them, casting the seed along the rips. It was mummy-time, so babies in swaddling were propped up in the furrows; they bawled but no one paid them any mind. The Hamsters worked as one, the dads chatted a little among themselves while the mummies were silent. A sadness lay over the whole community. Caff Ridmun's baby had been born a month before, in due course it was anointed by Effi, and then, eight days later, after the most excruciating suffering, the mite had died. Unnamed and unblessed by Dave, its little corpse had been buried without a wheelstone in the waste ground beyond the graveyard.
It was a fresh, breezy day. Mountainous clouds passed over Ham, dark grey at their flat bases, brilliant white at their lumpy peaks. To the south the Sentrul Stac rose from the choppy sea, its crenellated sides streaked white and brown with gull shit; while beyond it the far islands of Surrë were a bright green streak along the horizon. Beams of foglight fell on the land and on the white-capped waves, yet there was a damp tang to the air — there would be screenwash before nightfall. Frogwash, the Hamsters called it, because they believed that at this time of the year the showers were sticky with spawn. The crinkleleafs and smoothbarks above the home field quickened with buds, and their limbs tossed in the breeze. The land birds had begun to return at the new headlight, and as they worked the Hamstermen hailed them, Orlrì, Bob! Orlrì, Jen! Orlrì, Tom! while the kids ran at them with flails, scaring them away from the newly sown seed.
Gari Funch had finished his changebag of seed and gone up into the trees to relieve himself when he saw Symun Dévúsh coming along the Layn from the moto wallows. Later on, Gari said there was an aura about Symun that struck him as soon as he saw the other young dad. His mates teased him about it, saying, Ure lyke awl ve Funchis, Fukka, so shortarsed anifyngs up in ve air 2 U! Yet he stuck to his recollection of Symun floating above the ground, with a wisp of mist wrapped around him like a cloakyfing, while his jeans and T-shirt were rent.
— Ware2, guv? Gari had hailed him, and then, as Symun wafted closer, he said, Orlrì, mayt?
Symun only looked straight through him, his blue eyes glassy. Gari stepped forward and made to take his shoulder, but Symun twisted away and blurted:
— Bakkoff! Eyem nó Symun no maw, Eyem ve Geezer nah, Eyev ung aht wiv Dave, C, an ees toll me ve troof.
— W-wotcher meen? Gari spluttered.
— Lyke Eye say, Eye bin in ve Zön, Eye bin 2 ve playce vair ee berried ve Búk, an ee cum 2 me, an ee giv me anuwah Búk — yeah, a nú 1 — an we cauled í ovah togevvah, yeah, an ee toll me 2 cum an tell U Ió abaht i, ri.
— Bluddyel.
— Bluddyel iz abaht ve syze uv í, mayt, coz iss awl chaynj fer nah. Dave sez weev gó ve rong end uv ve stikk — ee doan wannus livin lyke vis, nó torkin wiv ar mummies, treetin em lyke shit an vat. Iss ve saym wiv ve Nú Lundun stuff, ee sez iss awl bollox, ee doan give a toss abaht bildin Nú Lundun, aw ve Pee-See-bleedin-Oh. Ee sez we shood liv az bess we can an nó wurri, if we wanner do fings diffrent iss fyn bì im …