Will Self - The Book of Dave

So it took a full blob of lengthy debate and preparation before the day dawned when the party was readied for departure. First the pedalo was dragged out from its shed and every seam caulked anew, each dad working on his allotted portion of the vessel. Next the fowling ropes were oiled and coiled, the cradle repaired and lashed to the pedalo's gunnels; finally the supplies — chiefly takeaway, tanks of moto gubbins and evian — were stowed.

While all this was under way, Carl and Antonë had little opportunity to talk alone, for they were constantly observed by the other islanders. Böm assumed that Carl had volunteered because he hoped to use the pedalo to effect their escape and was learning how to handle it. When they did manage to grab a few words in private he was disabused of this notion: Nah, Carl said, lookit ve syz uvit. Vares no way we cúd andle it. Nah, Eyem gonna distrak vem, an wyle Eyem gon Ure gonna gé ve stuff togewer 4 ve trip. In answer to Böm's quite reasonable inquiry as to how they were going to cross the five clicks of open water separating Ham from Barn, Carl had a single word: Motos. Antonë, weer gonna swim wiv ve motos.

The Sentrul Stac reared from the waters of the great lagoon about five clicks due southeast of Manna Ba. Its jagged peak was thus the opposite pole of the Hamsters' diminutive world to the rubble of Nimar in the northwest. Effi Dévúsh's legends told of how this stack — and the three further to the east, as well as the four smaller ones grouped around it — were the stepping stones that the Mutha and her giant company had thrown down in the waters so as to cross between Ham and the scattering of uninhabited islands to the south.

Those Hamsters more under the influence of the Driver were inclined to view the stacks as natural features, left behind during the MadeinChina, when the sea had broken into the lagoon and washed away the land. From the moment when he first rounded the Gayt and saw the great lagoon, Antonë Böm had entertained a different hypothesis concerning these curious features and longed to visit them. Each year that he'd remained on the island, he had asked to be allowed on a fowling expedition. The Hamstermen would never take him: fowling was too dävine and too dangerous a pursuit for off-islanders to be allowed to participate. To climb the stacks was the most daddyish of all the rituals in a daddyish world. If a mummy or an opare so much as looked at the cradles or ropes when an expedition was being organized, it would have to be aborted.

This was to be Carl's first time out to the stacks, although he'd sat at the feet of the Council for enough fowling seasons to know what to expect. Sat at the dads' feet and listened in minute detail while they mulled over the nature of their adversary. For, to the Hamstermen, the Sentrul Stac itself had a brooding personality. It was like a rocky pine cone — a series of open chambers, all set in tiers, one upon the other, rising up sheer out of the waves to the height of forty men. At the top of the stack there was a platform forty paces across; this was thick with shrubbery, as were the cavities below. All the stacks had this coating of vegetation; where the lagoon washed at their bases, hanks of seaweed clung to the crete, while above the waterline clumps of buddyspike furred their contours. In the summer, they tinged the air with their flowers, so that a bluish nimbus formed about the summits of the stacks. Now they were gone, and the Sentrul Stac was a grim snaggle, streaked white and black with birdshit.

The Hamstermen maintained that their forefathers had deliberately seeded the birdshit with buddyspike to provide handholds; however, this shrubbery was only shallowly rooted, and it was a foolhardy fowler who relied on it to support him. The first Hamster off the pedalo and on to the stack was charged with climbing to the summit, where he would tie one end of the rope he carried to an irony stanchion buried in the crete; the other end he would let down to his companions, so that they might lash on the cradle. It was also the first bloke's task to descend the rope and dispatch the sentinel blackwing. The Hamstermen would arrive at the allotted stack by night, when the blackwings were all asleep save for the one bird charged with guarding them. If this one could be prevented from uttering a warning cry, then the rest would remain oblivious as the birders swung their cradle from one nest to the next, twisting their necks with the same easy rhythm they employed ashore when casting seed or scything the wheatie crop. If the stack jumper failed in his task, the whole colony would lift off and mob the invaders. With their wingspan as great as a man's outstretched arms, and their sharp, downward-curving beaks, the blackwings were fearful aggressors. Many a Hamsterman had fallen to his death from the stacks, the blood from his ruptured eyes spreading slick on the heaving swell. Carl's own granddad, Peet Dévúsh, had fallen from the Sentrul Stac and died. This was the curse upon the Dévúsh line — for the Hamsters believed that if a bloke was sufficiently dävine the choppa would come. This was a great host of seafowl, flying in such close formation that the falling man could be caught on their backs, then lifted up and set safely back on the stack once more.

Shuvoff, mì luvs! Fred Ridmun cried, and under a bigwatt screen the prow of the Ham pedalo flattened a stand of blisterweed, grated on shingle, then hit the water, sending up a plume of emerald spray. The dads pushed the stern of the craft, their bare, moto-oiled feet slithering on the mat of vegetation, while the lads splashed thigh-deep in the wavelets, yanking on the prow. In the effort of their final push was a dread anticipation — but then came the mysterious moment when the dead weight of the beached pedalo was transformed into the live motion of being afloat. There was a clamour of shouting and more bellowed instructions from the Guvnor as the dads and lads unshipped the long pedals and took their places. The mummies came out from their gaffs and commenced an eerie ululating. The motos had been led down from their wallows especially to participate in the leave-taking — and they sent up a frightful bellowing.

Then there came a shout from the bow, Reef up! There was the swish of seaweed and the patter of Daveworks against the hull. Ship pedals! the Guvnor cried, and they all waited, frozen in their frail shell, as the screen wheeled around them and the reef grated beneath them. Then they were over, the pedals dipped to the water, and the pedalo sped offshore.

Seated in the bows with the other lads, Carl turned back and saw the green wall of the island stretch into a band, then a ribbon, and eventually shrink until it was but a green cap set on the massive furrowed brow of the sea. The Hamsters on the shore were reduced to an agitation of waving arms, while some way apart from them, in front of his semi, Carl could make out the Driver, a black stroke on the ledger of the land. Even from this distance Carl could sense that the Driver's savage gaze was upon him, doubtless willing him to mistime his leap on to the stack, to fall and release his final flying breaths as bubbles in the briny.

Carl grabbed Fred Funch's belt and leaned forward over the gnarled stempost. Fred let his head dangle down so that the bow wave tangled with his hair. Using both hands, he picked out the Daveworks that had lodged in the seams of the boat's timbers as they ran over the reef. Dragging him back up, Carl sat, tense and expectant, as Fred sorted the plastic shards into the appropriate categories: reel, toyist, reel, toyist, reel, toyist… The others amplified these words into a chant with which to punctuate the rhythm of their pedalling. The pedalo, slewing in the current, shook itself like a leviathan breaching for air and picked up speed. Carl picked up one of the Daveworks, biggish, bone-white and the size of his own middle finger. The way its two smooth sides met at a sharp right angle recalled to him the corners of Luvvie Joolee's whitewashed room. It was the stillest place Carl had ever been in: stiller than the Shelter, the doors of which were always open to the breeze; stiller than the blackened interiors of the Hamsters' gaffs, which were ever eddying with smoke, milling with people and motos; stiller even than the deepest thicket in Norfend, where a leaf fragment spun or a scuttlebug trundled.