At third tariff, following a mournful curry eaten alone in the sumptuous dining room of Somerset House, Antonë and Carl were back in their own chamber when they heard the sounds of a limmo arriving in the courtyard below. Shortly afterwards, and not proceeded by fony, gaffer or retinue of any sort, the Lawyer of Blunt came to them, sliding diffidently through the door. He was a smallish dad, the skin stretched tight on his close-cropped head. His cheekbones were sharp, his green eyes deeply recessed and fiercely acute. His small hands fidgeted at a bundle of signets and seals that hung on a chain from his neck. His threads were bespoke — yet hardly sumptuous. On receiving him, Antonë and Carl fell to their knees crying, Where to, guv? but he waved for them to rise, stuttering: P-please, my d-dear blokes, no such deference is required, truly — I beseech you.
While Carl sat, sunk in his own sad thoughts of Tyga and his miserable confinement, the Lawyer and the teacher spoke in hushed tones of weighty matters. From his notebook Antonë produced a brief he had been labouring on, the essence of which was a petition requesting information on the fate of Symun Dévúsh. I understand and appreciate your strategy, the Lawyer said; the CSA can prevent no lad from knowing his own dad, no more than any dad be kept from his lad. This much is sacrosanct. Such a course will alert both the King and the PCO to our intentions, yet it may well be that they would prefer to reach a private accommodation — for if we cry it abroad through standards and decauxs it could spark rebellion. To treat with those lawds and commonfolk who oppose the Breakup and the Changeover would be no less than they have done hitherto, and such pragmatism might commend itself to our purposes if it allowed for — and here he sighed deeply — the return of my poor wife from her exile, and the pardon of yourself, Antonë Böm, and your young companion.
This effusion led, quite naturally, to a request by the Lawyer for news of Luvvie Joolee and her sojourn on Ham. So it was that they passed the remaining units of that tariff until the lampon with Antonë and Carl telling tales of the remote island demesne.
With none of them having had any repose, the Lawyer nonetheless proposed that they sally forth once more before the second tariff. I would speak with you concerning your speculative philosophy, he averred to Böm. The doubts you have expressed concerning the origins of the Book engage me powerfully, and I warrant the drive to Hampstead will be a most satisfying backdrop to our discourse. Furthermore — and here, for the first time, Carl apprehended a shadow of anxiety pass across the Lawyer's bony countenance — we will be in the manner of sitting ducks if we remain within doors and the PCO comes a-knocking.
All was as before: the Taffy on the roof rack, the glossy jeejees straining in the shafts, the long black limmo pressing the mob into the gutter. They drove up the Finchley Road and by the time they had passed the Swizz Cottage they were in the sticks. Carl was thrilled to see open field strips and woodlands for the first time in blobs, while up ahead the burbs rose, wave after wave of hewer, streaked purple, lavender and blue, gently steaming under the bigwatt foglamp of buddout. Ringnecks dipped and rose through the shreds of mist while gulls circled overhead. The characteristic London reek — which had filled the lad's nostrils for so long he had become unaware of it — had abated.
How can we conceive of this scene in the time of Dave? the Lawyer mused. Why, in contradiction of the Knowledge itself, we see that these roads out of London are not straight but winding up and over steep hills and down into deep defiles. And where is the great mass of brick and crete that the Book describes? How can it be that here in London itself it has gone so entirely, while in so many other places in the kingdom there are the remains of many ancient gaffs? The Drivers charged with the Book's interpretation cite the MadeinChina — yet they swaddle themselves in ambiguities when it comes to the question of whether this deluge preceded or followed the Age of Dave.
The Lawyer of Blunt would have continued with these flying speculations were it not that the limmo had now gained a spur of burbland and was jolting along a flagged highway towards Beech House itself. As they drew closer, Carl saw a high facade topped with a triangular pediment, twelve-paned windows, irony fencing and two staircases curving up to a grand door on the first storey. Crowds were milling on the beaten earth in front of the dävine semi: Drivers and Inspectors, mendicant stalkers, pilgrims who had struggled on foot up from the city below, and even a handful of outrageous mushers who flapped about in the hewer crying out broken orisons to the Lost Boy. At the very eye of this hurly-burly stood a row of wooden booths, and as the Taffy reined in the jeejees, leaped down and the travellers stepped out, Carl saw that these were tenanted by still more Drivers and that the pilgrims who mobbed them — lawds, luvvies, commoners, even a few chavs — were all sore afflicted.
One after another they presented themselves to the Drivers in the booths, placing before their mirrors a crippled leg, a scrofulous neck, an arm purulent with the discharge of a carbuncle. The Driver called over a run and a few points, sprinkled the diseased or damaged member with a few drops of dävine evian, palmed the supplicant the tinfoil badge, then held out his hand for some dosh. Eyeing the scene critically the Lawyer of Blunt muttered: Such peculation defiles our faith more than any grander exactions of the PCO or even the King. Then, as they worked their way towards Beech House, he wisely remained silent, save for saluting the indulgence sellers: Where to, guv? Where to, guv? Where to …
While the common pilgrims had to queue to enter the shrine, the Lawyer and his companions were ushered straight in by an obsequious fony. Beech House was bare and unprepossessing, the chambers stark and without any adornment. In the harsh foglight that streamed through the uncurtained windows, every scuff that tens of thousands of trainers had left on the boards could be seen. At the centre of each room was an eerie tableau of life-sized figures. One showed Dave in his cab; a second, Dave, Chelle and the Lost Boy at the Breakup; a third, Dave burying the Book. The effigies were wax and obviously of considerable antiquity, for they were clad in worn and tatty garments, and their features disfigured by the heat of summer and the chill of kipper. In one of the tableaux the Lost Boy's nose was missing, and the effigy of Chelle had been so assailed with stones and brickbats that one leg had come away from the body and dangled in its sagging hose.
Initially the fony, like his Bedlam counterpart, was disposed to offer a commentary; however, the Lawyer of Blunt soon disabused him of this requirement, and so it was in silence that they at last descended to the inner sanctum of the shrine, down a corkscrewing staircase that bore into the very earth. The fony sparked a letric and by its faint wattage they saw weeping brickwork and the white tendrils of deep, questing roots. The fony could not forbear from affecting a tone of great reverence and informing them that:
— Viss, yer reervús, iz ware íall Bgan 2 fouzand yeers ago, wen Dave berried ve Búk. Eer í lay til ve Kings great-great-granddad — but an umble woolly bloke on ve burbz — duggí up.
Carl looked and all he saw was a yok-flagged pit. It had no resonance, no atmosphere of sanctity. Its revelation was only in its emptiness — a void on to which any idea or belief might be superimposed.
When they were once more without, the Lawyer took the opportunity to point out to his young companion the biggest points of the distant city: the NatWest Tower, the Lloyd's Building; No. 1 Canada Square; the Gherkin and the vast complex of the PCO itself — the dreaded Tower. It squatted by the river, its high walls forming a rough rectangle with a sentinel tower at each corner. In the centre rose the white keep, and from its roof flew the banner of the PCO. Even from twenty clicks away the Tower emanated overbearing power, its flint walls glinting with embedded broken glass and coils of razor wire. Carl looked up to the screen, hoping to see a harbinger of the dävine, but there was only a single gull, its wings flexing in the airy currents, swinging back and forth as if it were suspended from a wire.