There was much more of this, all spoken in a rush by Symun, his voice strangely breathy and high-pitched. If this was blasphemous to Gari, it was also beguiling. All his life Dave had been present to him yet invisible, untouchable and unreachable; now here was Sy — who Gari knew as well as he knew himself — claiming to have spoken with Dave and saying that he'd received a second Book, which did away with all of the tiresome strictures inhibiting the Hamsters' natural inclinations. Gari wasn't the most credulous of the Hamsters, but, even if he'd been disposed to challenge Symun, he was forestalled by the Geezer, who began to spout whole chunks of the new Book. They were beautiful to Gari's ears: sonorous, ringing — incontrovertibly the words of Dave. Gari felt his bowlegs buckling beneath him, and he collapsed to the ground. Worming forwards in the muddy lane, he reached out and touched Symun's foot — now reassuringly earthbound — with a trembling hand. Orlrì, ven, Geezer, he said faintly.
Geezers had been a part of the religious life of Ham for as far back as the chain of linked individual memories reached. These were charismatic dads — and occasionally mums — touched by the Word of Dave, who sprang on to the stage afforded by the island and strutted there for a few months or even years. Certain brick-built hovels on the margins of the Gayt were known as the 'Geezers' gaffs', and among the Hamsters the feeling was that the Geezers had been present in the time of the giants — or even before. Naturally, whenever a Driver had been among them, all talk of the Geezers was suppressed, yet the receptivity of the Hamsters to such things remained high, so that when Symun came down through the home field spouting revelation the daddies and mummies cast away their tools and followed him to the Shelter. The screen itself responded to Symun's new calling; Dave's demister powered up and swept the clouds up into higher and higher masses, which teetered, then dispersed with supernatural rapidity, leaving the foglamp blazing down on the green isle.
— Yeah, rí, Symun began, U Ió av sussed Eyev bin angin aht in ve Zön. Bú wotchoo doan no iss Eyev bin ailed bì Dave, C, an Eyem iz fare. Ee gayv me iz sekkun Búk. An ee sat wiv me wyl Eye red ve öI fing — coz Eye can dú fonix nah — an ee mayd me tayk í awl on bord so az Eye can caul í ovah, rì?
— So caul í ovah, ven, clevah clogs! shouted out Symun's uncle, Fil Edduns, from the back of the little throng. His sister, Effi, may have been the repository of the old folkways, but Fil was the most rigidly dävist of the daddies. Despite the long years that Ham had been beyond the PCO's writ, he still looked to London in all things spiritual.
If Fil had been hoping to expose Symun and to put paid to this new Geezer, he was utterly vanquished. The granddad stood, kneading the mulberry birthmark that stained the left side of his face, while the Knowledge flowed out of his nephew: a flood of eloquence that slaked his audience's thirst for poetry. While Symun spoke, skipping from verse to verse of the new book — so az Eye can stikk í strayt 2 yer — a remarkable thing happened.
The older lads who'd been away on the other side of the island tending the motos came fanning down from the woodland, their charges plodding at their heels, and joined the congregation. It was said years later, when the boilers met together in secret, away from the ears of the new Driver, and recalled this time of delirious heterodoxy, that even the birds fluttered from the trees to hear Sy Dévúsh preach. Perching here and there on the shoulders of the Hamsters, or the broad backs of the recumbent motos, they twittered their assent to his words. The only Hamsters who were absent were the infants, still propped in their furrows at the top of the home field; their reedy cries could be heard piercing Symun's calling over with their own message of eternal need.
There was no mystery as to why the Hamsters heeded the Geezer: the message he brought them from Dave was highly congenial. Henceforth they should regard Ham and all its fruits as theirs and theirs alone.
— Dave sez stikk í 2 ve Ack, stikk í 2 ve Loyah uv Chil inall — loyahs, vare awl skum. Vay swyp arf uv awl we mayk, an weave nuffing 2 shew 4 í. Stikk í 2 Nú Lundun ëvun. Iss nó abaht bildin nuffing but Am — Am iz 4 U an U iz 4 Am. An ee sez ve mummies can dú wottevah vay lyke. If Ewe wanna B wiv a dad, fayre Enuff, iss no bovvah, juss dú í. Ee tayks bakk all vat guff abaht mummitym an dadditym, ve Braykup an ve Chaynjova. Ve kids shúd B wiv vair mums an vair dads awluv ve tym. Í aint dahn 2 ve granddads 2 decyd awl vat stuff, iss dahn 2 awluv uz in R arts.
Many of the Hamstermen spoke with Dave on the intercom — such was the effect of their calling over. It was an angry voice, a harsh voice — a voice that drowned out their memories of the mummytime. Now, in turn, Symun's words shouted that voice down. Furthermore, if the granddads were inclined to dispute with the Geezer, they were silenced by their own uneasy acknowledgement that he was only restating the true status quo of the community, long disrupted by Dävinity and now triumphantly reasserted.
The original Book was spurned by the Geezer in its entirety:
— Dave sed ee roat í wen ee woz off iz rokkah, vass wy iss fulluv awl vat mad shit — runs an poynts an stuff. U doan aff 2 dú awl vat 2 luv Dave — awl we gotta dú iz luv eech uvvah. Ee sez weer awl Carl — weer awl iz lads, an if we luv eech uwah iss lyke luwin im.
Concerning the whereabouts of the miraculous, second Book, the Geezer was equally emphatic:
— Dave tuk í bakk, he told those who asked. Ee borrered me í, an ven ee túk í bakkoffuv me. Iss nó 4 uz 1ó 2 reed, we shúd be reedin uvvah stuff, maykin R oan búks ëvun.
Those Hamsters disposed to follow the new teaching took this to heart and began, under Symun's tutelage, to learn their phonics. However, they didn't believe what he said about the second Book, for the Geezer never went anywhere without his changingbag.
The two young Hamsters lay a pace apart from one another. Beyond their bare and horny feet the curryings spread away into lapping water. Here and there the green tendrils of samphire twitched in the breeze, and small mounds of pebbles showed where the mummies had piled up the shingle to blanch the kale. A small flock of oyster-catchers picked at the seaweed frilling the tide line, their black and white plumage sharp strokes on the bobbled ground. From where the couple lay, on the east side of the spit, there was nothing to seaward save for the islet of Hitop in the far distance, which, having no colony of seafowl, the Hamstermen never visited. Symun Dévúsh and Caff Ridmun had never known the confinement of landscape; only in the dark core of their gaffs or the deepest thickets of the woodland were they ever parted from the sea's effortless superfluity.
The legends spoke of giants in former times, yet each generation of these isolates were giant to one another, looming large and pale against the island's arboreal backdrop. When carnal love struck a Hamster, he or she tossed in its fiery embrace. So Symun groaned in his motorage, Eye wan yaw sex, and reached towards Caff again and again, while she slapped him away again and again. Giwi a ress, willya! she cried, Freds yer best bluddë mayt. Symun had already made his seductive speeches and spoken of how, under the new dispensation, all were free to do as they wished: ĺ doan má-er vat ewe an Fred woz wed coz í wurnt 4 reel. He'd even insinuated that if it had been his and her baby who'd been anointed by Effi, the child would have lived.
Caff was in turmoil. It was true, she had no great feeling for Fred — she barely even knew him, and, while some of the daddies had got to know their wives since the Geezer came among them, Fred was not one of their number. Caff couldn't deny that she found Symun attractive, and the older mummies and boilers told her there would be great honour in lying with the Geezer, yet still she slapped him away. He wouldn't give up — he pursued her, over the fields, through the underbrush, along the foreshore guarded by its umbelliferous sentinels, until at last, here, in the blue of noon, he reached for her and she didn't slap him away. His hand pulled up the hem of her cloakyfing, then lay brown on her white thigh; it lingered, then advanced, his fingers gliding over pinky-brown moles, their tips caressing the golden down. Soon they were married — Caff leaned back against the shingle bank, her thighs imprisoned in his.