HUFFER
  [30] In Birmingham Airport international arrivals James met his three
visitors, who were delayed by Customs searching all their mass of luggage. They
and James had sent each other photographs of themselves, and James wore a red
and white carnation as arranged.
  "I better let you sleep a night to get over the jet lag before we discuss
anything. I've got some beds at my works." James said.
  "In an ambulance!? What's going on?" one of them said suspiciously when they
saw Ratchet parked outside the airport building.
  "It's all right." said James, "I had it at my works to install a computerized
medical system in it. I thought my car might be too small for all your luggage."
as they loaded the luggage into its rear. One of them noticed that its sides and
roof seemed rather thick and looked jointed, and its stylized robot face badge
was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't place it.
  "Unload on the pavement below this window." James said as they stopped at his
works, "I'll go and unlock and feed the guard dog.". This last was to tell them
that he had a guard dog: a habitual precaution of his. "I'll lift your luggage
up, to save you having to carrying it up." said an electrosynthesized voice from
somewhere. It seemed to come from James's ambulance; but they could see nobody
in it.
  "Oooh! Jet lag!" one of the three complained, "I'll be glad to go to bed. I've
started imagining things. I'm sure I heard that ambulance talking. My insides
still think it's the middle of the night.".
  "I heard it as well." said another, "What <have> we been riding in? Or is it a
radio link and a loudspeaker and some sort of joke?".
  "I wonder." said the third, "All these recent advances in computer design.
After all, it <is> computers we came to discuss.". The ambulance unfolded and
rearranged itself into a tall white robot. They backed away in alarm with
startled exclamations. One of them recognized it as Ratchet from his son's
Transformers videocartoons, and said so. "It's all right, it exists." said
James, and led them to their room, where in a feeling of sleepy unreality they
took their luggage in through a window as Ratchet handed it up to them. They sat
about sleepily and went to bed. They were already asleep when I looked in
through the window at them.
  [31] They woke in the morning. "Jet lag!" one moaned, wondering dazedly
whether `8.02' on the clock was a.m. or p.m., "He didn't offer us a drink
(except tea, not even coffee), he didn't have any himself, I bet there's none in
the place! Fetched in an ambulance, I dreamed it became a giant robot.".
  "It wasn't a dream." said another, sitting up in bed and stretching, "That was
a real Transformer. Computers with minds of their own: whatever next? I bet he's
an up with the lark type who'll want to discuss business as soon as we're up.".
  "Toys and the comic, I hadn't heard of real ones." said the third yawning as
he opened his eyes, "We've more to do in California than read British
newspapers. It told me that it had been a witness in a drunk driving case: if
it's that much like a man, I bet it'll want to join in the discussion, me having
to discuss things with some talking vehicle that can't have dinner or a drink
with me. I knew that Wernicke's Computers make some advanced stuff, but ...".
  "Not me, till I've had a big steak and a few beers." said the first yawning,
"I bet that just as we're getting into the swing of the evening, he'll go
yawning to bed at ten leaving us with only that Ratchet for company.".
  James put Timmy his alsatian on its lead, and led it and them across his
garage. "Those two trucks look a bit familiar." thought one of them, looking at
a big red three-axled artic cab with vertical chromed exhaust pipes and a
slightly smaller two-axled orange artic cab with claw-ended telescopic
load-handling arms going up the back edges of its driver's compartment, and a
large vertical exhaust pipe between them.
  The four sat down. The discussion somehow kept wandering away from ordering
goods from Wernicke's. They complained that competition from Wernicke's cost
them customers; they talked about market-sharing agreements, and percentages of
profits, and arrangements, and quotas of how much of what he sold where, and
wanting to be his intermediary in buying supplies and selling products, and
other things. The atmosphere got tense. James got up and went to the door to go
somewhere for a moment, and the three stood up and made as if to stop him from
leaving the room, then on what seemed to be a codeword from one of them thought
better of it. The discussion continued. They said what may or may not have been
veiled threats, and kept changing the subject when he asked them what they
wanted to buy off him. Finally he lost patience and exclaimed: "Five hours
talking and where are you three leading to? You said in your letters that you
were coming to buy stuff that I make. Look: I've got all the insurance I need.
I've got all the security I need. I don't need any agents or handlers in buying
supplies or selling what I make. I'm not selling my business or shares in it.
Will you please come to the point and place your order!".
  The three went out into James's yard for some fresh air, and wondered if
anyone around there sold a decent T-bone steak. They saw Laserbeak, who was
commenting to Ratchet about the amount of starlings round a hospital where had
gone to deliver some transplant organs, and the risk that birds are to
jetmotors. One of the three recognized Laserbeak from fiction and took fright,
running for shelter into James's garage, where the orange artic cab still stood
with its engine running. As he climbed up it, dropping his briefcase in his
panic, it said "Oi! Get out of me!", although nobody was in it.
  "Oh help, another one." he said desperately.
  "I am Huffer, Autobot engineer." the artic cab said, "Optimus Prime brought me
to life yesterday.". He realized that the larger red artic cab was probably
Optimus Prime, and wondered just how many real Transformers Mr.Wernicke did
have; he did not like the likely consequences if he went back to his boss
empty-handed. "Mr.Wernicke, my papers, some of them are personal, please." he
said in a tone hinting vaguely of trouble to James who had come in and was
picking up the papers that had spilt out of his briefcase.
  "Sorry Laserbeak scared you. He won't hurt you. Here's your papers." he said,
handing them over, then, sharply: "What's this on this one!? You three are <not>
the firm you said you were! You're the lot that sent me those strange letters
earlier! What is this?".
  [32] "You better forget you saw that!" the owner of the papers ordered,
"You're costing important people a lot of money! selling your fancy advanced
stuff all over the place. Now lets carry on our discussion where we were, and we
won't take orders from a talking truck. I'll chair the meeting from now on,
since you seem to have a one-track mind or be ignorant or stupid. Plan B.".
  The other two started to obey those last two words when they heard mechanical
noises behind them, and turned round. "Oh Charlie." said one feebly, feeling
unreal at his first sight of me transforming into my 25 foot tall robot form.
Huffer turned his handling arms downwards and with them raised his front end.
His rear end lengthened and split into legs. His cab collapsed, revealing his
head. He stood upright. But the two men recovered their will and set about their
plan. Realizing that they could dodge "those two big clumsy tin King Kongs" for
long enough, they ran quietly up to James from behind wielding a long heavy
spanner and an iron bar that they had found.
  "It's clear you three aren't from Silicon Valley like you said you were!"
James replied angrily to the owner of the papers, "You know little about
computers. I'm not joining any funny organizations under threat and end up as a
badly paid manager in my own place which I did all the work, <work>, not just
organizing, to set up. I'm not pricing myself out of the market. I'm not asking
for permission all over the place when it's a free country. I've nothing more to
discuss about who I buy and sell with and what and how. It was your idea to come
here wasting my time and Ratchet's, after saying falsely that you were coming
here to buy stuff that I make. I don't tell <you> who to trade with.".
  The other two heard a brief swishing above them, then found themselves
entangled in a nine-foot-wide handnet swung down on them by Huffer. I caught the
third while James ran for handcuffs and phoned the police. He searched the three
while Ratchet searched all their luggage, forcing it open where necessary. The
names on their personal stuff didn't match the names in their passports.
  "I told you it was no good trying." said one of the three to another, not
caring who listened, "On someone else's turf so far from base and backup, unable
to check out the site first, we can't tell the whole world what to do. Soon the
cops find our real names, and we're for it, both from the law and from our
boss.".
  "Second lot of three that thought I'd be a pushover by myself." said James.
The police came and stuffed the three into their van. I and Huffer and Ratchet
connected ourselves to a lineprinter and printed out our statements. James told
his statement to me, and I lineprintered it out for him. The police were
surprised and pleased at getting that part over far quicker than taking down
oral statements in scribble on paper. The police van left; Ratchet followed with
the prisoners' property. The three were identified from copies of their
fingerprints which were sent back to the USA.

        [33] Normal life resumed. James, who, wary after recent events, now wore his
riotsquad-type helmet and had a shield slung on his back and a pickaxe handle
with wrist strap slung from his belt most of the time while on his premises, was
soldering microchips to some circuit boards for a job for ICI Stanlow Point in
Cheshire. Laserbeak had said he would deliver it: the only way with all the
contraflows on the motorways round about. Nearby a lineprinter was printing. He
briefly reflected that personal safety mattered more than whether it looked odd
for a man in full riotsquad gear to be sitting making delicate electronics. By
now he could almost work out what the lineprinter was printing by the variation
in the irregular chitterings and bumpings that it made. Suddenly this changed to
a steady sequence of `tksipp' noises which he recognized all too well. "Stop
that!" he shouted, and cursing his current batch of lineprinter paper reached
out with his stick and pressed a button on the side of the lineprinter, which
aggrievedly said "tkbp." and stopped. He imitated my annoyed `brrrrrm' and
looked at the output to find how far back to re-list from to recover the part of
the output spoilt by the paper jam. That batch of lineprinter paper split at its
joins and jammed far too often. He worked out where to start re-soldering from,
and restarted work. "At least Ratchet and Wheeljack are helping me with this
job, to earn their keep. I wonder how far they've got?" he thought.
  He finished the ICI job and embedded its circuitry in resin. While the resin
was setting, he slung his shield on his left arm and drew his stick and had a
baton fight with a computerized opponent-simulator that he had made. "Previous
job was a speech decoder." he thought as his stick and the simulator's clashed,
"I make them. That's why I chose `Wernicke' as a trading name. Complications.
Everybody wants speech simulators to pronounce right from ordinary English
spelling, then moan that the programming can't pick up every stray exception.
Can't people spell phonetically when programming speech simulators? E.g.
`say("fyu~l levl lou, yu~ziN riz@~v taNk")'. That way there's much less
programming to go wrong in service. One customer complained that he programmed
`say("have you read the notice?")', and the chip said `have you reed ...'!
`Read' <is> pronounced `reed' sometimes! Unless I program those chips to parse
everything for grammar before they say it!". Suddenly the simulator telescoped
itself right down and cross-swiped hard at James's shins. He jumped up out of
the way just in time. "Who taught the simulator that? It's getting a bit too
clever!" he thought.
  When the first batch's embedding resin had set, he used his shield as a tray
to take them to his secretary to pack. "Down dog! Sit! Mind my work! I'll feed
you in a bit." he said to Timmy who met him on the way and reared up. Tabbins
came up miaowing and purring. "Of all the times for those two to be
affectionate." he thought, and managed to get to a table and put his shield and
its valuable load down on it. Tabbins shed hairs on his overalls. Timmy jumped
up him and slobbered over his visor. "Oi! That's not for sharpening claws on!"
he said as he jerked his dangling pickaxe handle away from Tabbins, who,
brushing against it, had found that it was made of wood and started to paw it,
"Down dog! All right, I'll get you your dinners.". He fed them and went to
Ratchet and Wheeljack to get the other circuit boards to take them to the
embedder.
  [34] Hoist had gone out earlier to help to tidy up where an artic had braked
too sharply at the start of a contraflow opposite Oddingley and jackknifed and
strewn its load of girders over the M5, and other vehicles ran into them. The M5
was choked by blocked traffic, and Hoist had to transform and walk in,
reflecting that people's lives matter more than some farmer moaning about a
trail of giant robot footprints across a field. I, who by now had got Smith &
Malton's to make a trailer for me, had taken it there to take the wreckage away.
"Optimus's trailer is a flatbed, not a box trailer like in the stories. Another
difference to get used to." said Wheeljack telling James about it, "We've
finished the rest of the ICI Stanlow boards. They're in my right glove
compartment. Lot of bats flying about this evening.".

        Next day promised to be long and busy, so James went to bed early. Nextdoor's
two guard dogs howling at the moon woke him briefly from a dream of flying in
Jetfire, which made a change from a persistent dream that he had been having, in
which the three men that he and Jazz had caught burgling [see 25-28] and the
three Americans that he had had a scrape with recently [see 30-32], all equipped
with odd-looking silent guns, chased and caught him and formed a firing squad
and shot him. Later that night that same dream returned, except that the six
were driven off by a supernatural giant wolf which turned into Timmy who had
jumped onto his bed and woken him. "Down dog." he said sleepily, "I've enough to
do without analysing bad dreams. I suppose it'll stop after a bit. I wish you
could talk, Timmy. If only dogs' brains had a proper `arcuate fasciculus'
linking cable like human brains have between the hearing cortex and the mouth
movement cortex. Time I got up, I must parcel up ICI's circuit boards and send
them off in Laserbeak, then start on Van IJzenhoeve Maatschappij's accounts
computer.". [Dutch "ij" is pronounced `eye']
  Laserbeak, with the circuit boards in his cargo compartment, followed the A442
and then the River Severn northwards. At about halfway on his journey of 90
miles he passed a mountain called the Wrekin standing alone in lowish country;
in old times men lit message-fires called `beacons' on top of it, and a beacon
on the Wrekin could be seen in six counties. Below him passed expanses of green
country and small towns. Humans' food was no use to him, and farmland and forest
meant little to him. He passed Kidderminster and Bridgnorth and Telford and
Whitchurch. He missed the high forested mountains of Oregon in the stories. "I
hope that ICI Stanlow have heard of me, such as via that TV program about
Wernicke's, and not run off in a panic. People forget that we haven't got
drivers. If we had an `energon cube' for every meal that's been offered to us,"
he thought, referring to the technology of the stories, "we could have built an
`Ark' and got back to Cybertron by now.". "Skwaak!" he exclaimed as an eddy
suddenly threw him about,"That was CAT! [= Clear Air Turbulence] No wonder the
hang-gliders like it round here. The sooner I get to Stanlow, the sooner I get
out of this fuel- wasting headwind.".
  He reached ICI Stanlow, one of the biggest chemicals factories in Britain.
Along the Manchester Ship Canal where it runs along the south bank of the
stomach-shaped inner estuary of the Mersey it stretches, a giant forest of
distillation towers and storage tanks. He radioed in to warn that he was coming,
then flew over it and landed on the north side of the canal, where there was a
bridge across. The gateman (who yet again had a meal ready for the presumed
human delivery driver) looked once at him and ran in and rang his head office in
a fright:-
  "Hallo? A funny-looking small jetplane landed opposite, too small to have a
pilot, it's got a beak and claws like a hawk's. Someone says over its radio that
he's a Mr.Laserbeak.".
  "No, I don't drink. Is it something of the Army's? Best call bomb disposal.".
  "Sorry, I've seen no pink elephants. We had one here, but a poacher shot it
for its tusks. There's a lot of that happens.".
  "OK, sorry, I got sarky [= sarcastic], but this thing <is> here.".
  After repeating everything to three more people, someone came on the line who
knew better.
  "What? Electronic but alive? Who's Mr.Fur-knickers?".
  "OK, `Wernicke', I'll look in the book. OK, I'll go out and talk to it.".
  Before letting ICI's goods-incoming man have the delivery, Laserbeak had to
get the cheque. They had promised James that the cheque would be ready when the
delivery came, but it wasn't. Following James's instructions, Laserbeak ignored
promises that the cheque would be in the post, and excuses about procedure, and
particular people not being allowed to do particular things, and computer
trouble, and people gone for coffee, but refused to unlock his cargo compartment
until the cheque was in his beak, even though that meant someone having to
commit the ultimate lese-majeste' of interrupting someone from his coffee to
sign it. James had had too much experience of slow payers. He set off back,
unloaded so lighter, and glad that the wind was from behind, with the cheque in
his cargo compartment. On the way back he got a radio call:
  "Collect blood from Shrewsbury Hospital and take it to Plas Rhiw Saeson (go to
Welshpool, then 25 miles west along the A458, then 5 miles south). Farm work
accident. Doctor attending there. Shrewsbury Hospital's got some petrol for you,
if you need some.".
  The usual tedious technical argument followed.
  "Sorry. Not petrol. Jet motors use paraffin. You best ring Wernicke's to tell
them I'll be late in." Laserbeak radioed.
  "Help. Where to get that stuff? Blowlamps use butane or propane nowadays. OK.
I'll ring round for some.".
  "Try at an airport?" Laserbeak suggested.
  [35] He got there after a 47-mile flight across Cheshire countryside and bleak
Welsh moorland through a strong side wind, to find that the doctor had been
called away on another case. Luckily the real Laserbeak's mind was a near copy
of Ratchet's, not like in the stories, and he had been programmed to understand
Welsh. With the patient's wife's help he managed to set up the transfusion drip
himself, hanging it from one of the farmhouse's low beams; the people there were
less scared at his shape than he had feared that they might be. The doctor
returned from a wasted journey: `Freda' in labour that Tim Jones at Ty'r Bryn
was in such a panic about, turned out to be a cow calving; the doctor radioed
tiredly for a vet and hurried back. He had heard of Laserbeak before, so was
only mildly surprised to see him in person for the first time, but said "I'll
take over. You can go.".
  Laserbeak got home and was glad to refuel and rest. Huffer and James's
neighbour still found plenty to complain about: clear nights near full moon
still set those two guard dogs thinking they were a concert party; a cold wind
delayed the spring growing vegetables; the same traffic lights in town went
wrong yet again (can't they replace them?); roadworks plus a carnival jammed up
the town centre (couldn't the roadworks have waited till after the carnival?); a
party of schoolchildren called and were expecting to see every Autobot that was
then in the stories that men write about us; the price of fuel threatened to go
up again. In clear starry nights the constellations of Ophiuchus and Serpens and
the bright red star Antares in Scorpio kept catching my attention. "My faithful
second in command." I said to them, "Every clear night you walk the summer sky
and my dreams, like Ratchet did in the winter. All right, I'll bring you to
me.".
  "Somewhere among those remote points of light far too far away for any man
ever to go there, or for any real alien from them ever to come here, is
Cybertron, the ancient home of my people. There in hidden places old Xaaron
still rules the Autobots, waiting for me to return and overthrow the Decepticons
and mend all the damages of old and new wars." I thought. I still sometimes woke
thinking it was time for me and the six of my people who are here to get in a
shuttlecraft and return to my spaceship called the Ark in Oregon. Alas for my
fictional past of easy faster than light travel! I can't even fly to other parts
of Earth. I am far too big and heavy for real aircraft. Only by driving overland
or in a car ferry can I reach distant places. Brrrrm! There is no Cybertron, and
no Xaaron (unless I make here a copy of him, who in his turn will miss his home
and his people). Back to reality. I suppose it's similar with humans: when they
are very young, the fictional worlds of magic stories are real to them; when
they are older, space travel stories and suchlike; but eventually all this fades
into cold reality and the need to work for a living. Where is my past?, my
struggles and risks against Megatron? (In the sky is his likeness in stars,
irrelevantly high and remote, as the constellation of Bootes.) A man may boast
that he landed in Normandy on D-Day in 1944 and helped to overthrow Hitler, and
you can go to places in Normandy such as Arromanches and see old bullet marks on
buildings. A heroic and worthy time. But what of my many desperate defences of
Iacon on Cybertron? No such place. What about when my Aerialbots stopped
Megatron's plan at Boulder Dam on the Colorado River in USA? The place exists,
but there are no laser gun burns or giant drill scars there. Only stories, such
as I tell across the road's children in the evenings sometimes when they come
over. James tells me that my image is in the sky also: Capricornus and the west
end of Aquarius is my cab, the rest of Aquarius is my trailer, and Piscis
Australis is Roller, low in the south in the autumn night sky. As I rise,
Megatron sets, at England's latitude, which I suppose represents some sort of
eventual triumph of good over evil.".

        I had to sleep, to let my brain circuitry `sweep and tidy' itself. Next
morning I and Huffer were booked to take an enormous fractional distillation
column from Wednesbury to - ICI Stanlow again. We must work to earn money to buy
fuel. The load was on a flatbed (not my own), which I pulled and Huffer pushed.
It was a long slow journey, but at least we were well paid for it. [36] That
sort of `abnormal indivisible load' needs a police escort. The police have many
calls in this time of high crime rates, and I had hoped to lessen their burden
by having Laserbeak to scout ahead for obstructions and traffic; but his left
jetmotor was making doubtful noises, and Ratchet had to look inside him. Oh
well. The A442 again: Droitwich, Kidderminster, Bridgnorth, and in Telford in
the shadow of the Wrekin we stopped for the night. Only about 5mph is safe with
a load this size. Next morning we continued: Whitchurch, avoid Chester on the
east bypass, all the way green countryside and small towns. I knew what ICI
Stanlow was like, for Laserbeak had played back his memories of his visit there.
I and Huffer caused a minor sensation among the locals there when we transformed
to help unload ourselves and erect the distillation column. The job went to
plan.
  While I was there, ICI's man who was in charge of their arrangements with me
answered the phone. The people ringing him said that they were Head Wrightson's
of Thornaby on Tees (who had made another fractional distillation column for
them), and at other times Mammoet-Econofreight Haulage (who were under contract
to bring it to ICI Stanlow); then he realized that it was both and that he was
in a three-cornered phone conversation. Confusing. It seemed that Econofreight's
artic had done something unprintable to its gearbox and that ICI's need for the
column and Head Wrightson's unwillingness to have it blocking their factory yard
until the gearbox was repaired conflicted directly with the bindingness of the
contract, and would I and Huffer fetch the column from Tees-side instead?
Someone who knew some law about contracts realised that there was a case for
pleading `force majeure' and that there was no point prosecuting or suing a
lorry's gearbox that %$#@'ed itself at the last moment; in the end, to avoid
trouble, I subcontracted myself to Econofreight to do the job. ICI's man
regretted that there was no point bringing me a meal as he would have to a
human.
  For us two running light it was in easy unremarkable though long journey:
Warrington, M62, Wetherby, Thirsk, Tees-side. Few people noticed two large artic
cabs among hundreds of lorries at that time of week. The sun and blue sky
started to disappear behind filmy high cloud which gradually thickened. After
the bridge over the Milnrow valley, the M62 climbed steeply and was in a cutting
past strange- shaped outcrops of Millstone Grit rock. Over the high flat moor
top. The long descent into Yorkshire. Over the Scammonden dam. The M62 continued
past Leeds: it wasn't that easy getting through Warrington. Beyond Leeds the
land was green again at last: unlike with Laserbeak, some of James's human
liking for the Earth countryside has got into my brain circuitry. Beyond Thirsk
the road passed the west edge of the North York Moors. Not far to go now. [37]
In Thornaby on Tees we turned right off Mandale Road into the side road to Head
Wrightson's. Their man knew we were coming and had seen pictures of us in
newspapers. The load was an enormous hollow cylinder weighing 170 tons with its
front end rounded. We transformed to robot form and examined it. I told him that
we would need some ballast over our back wheels, to tow something that heavy on
a full-trailer rather than on a semitrailer. He brought us two heavy crated
loads that were to go to Birkenhead. We transformed back to lorry form, but with
our arms free, and loaded each other, since he had no crane free there then.
Other men came out, thankful that their yard was not going to be blocked for a
fortnight after all. One saw that Huffer was running driverless and, yelping
"Runaway lorry!", ran at him and tried to climb into him to pull his handbrake
on. Another saw me transform and thought he was hallucinating after too much
late night overtime after watching too many Transformers videocartoons with his
children. "It's all right, they exist." said ICI Stanlow's man who had come in
me, "He's got a computer brain that can think like a human's. He's a lot more
intelligent than a lot of my place's workmen are.".
  We got the cheques for the hauling with no more than the usual amount of
excuses such as "will be in the post" and the like; such blasphemous suggestions
as interrupting their cheque-signer from a (real or alleged) coffee break were
unnecessary that time. One of them regretted that there was no point offering us
meals; ICI Stanlow's man accepted - and they hadn't provided a meal, but had to
hurriedly interrupt their canteen woman from cashing-up to provide it. [38] We
hitched onto our load, which was on Econofreight's trailer. The police escort
went ahead of us. We turned left into Mandale Road, going the wrong side of a
`Keep Left' bollard, which was low-built and removable, after experience of
getting big loads out of that turning. The usual crowd of Transformers fans
stood on the corner; some had to be shooed away from the inside of the curve,
for long loads invade the corner as they turn. There were bridge repairs at
Maltby on the new bypass on the A19, so we had to go the old way, including the
usual performance manoeuvring our load round Barry's shop corner in the centre
of Stockton on Tees. The edge of our load crushed Barry's shop's awning.
  Barry, upstairs in his shop on the inside angle of the turn, heard a crunch
and looked out and down at the dangling wreckage of his awning, and our load
wedged diagonally across his corner. "Ouch!" he exclaimed, "That's the third
awning this year I've lost! Time someone paid for them. Try Wernicke's, it's him
made those two funny lorries. And me losing trade while that thing's stuck
there".
  "Not guilty." a policeman replied, "You had the usual warning. Anyway, you
have a van, which needs petrol, which needs distilling somewhere, and that's
what their load's for.".
  I pulled at the front. Huffer transformed and stood up to manoeuvre the back
end. With much shouting and radioing our load inched round the corner with an
obstetric tightness of fit between it and the buildings. (In 1965 a flash column
131 feet long from Head Wrightson's took two hours to get round that corner. A
foot longer and it wouldn't have got round.) "Op, steer 10 degrees right, go 4
feet forwards." Huffer radioed as he pushed with his hands at the back of the
load, having more on his mind than which way his exhaust pipe was blowing and
what windows were open behind him. It started to spot with rain: there was
enough to cope with without bad weather. "Nearly there." said Huffer, still
pushing, avoiding tripping on a trailing drawbar, "That right back lug's past
the ornamental column top with `Jiz rules OK' below it. Nothing scraped here
yet.".
  "Back behind the barrier." said a policeman to people, "It'll be in the
newspapers in the morning.".
  "Finished! About time too!" said the manager of a nearly cinema to a policeman
when Huffer had loaded his ballast and hitched up and we drove away, "I run the
Odeon over there. Police and trucker radio getting in my speakers yet again half
the morning: `5 degrees left, back a foot, brrrm, tango victor peeep, I better
unhitch and transform': not the best accompaniment to Folies Bergere.".
  "I told you before. Easy. Rewire with shielded speaker wires." replied the
policeman. Huffer, as we drove away, realized that his trailer had jackknifed to
the left; but he had no trailer, as he was pushing. He yet again recognized the
annoying effect of `phantom trailer' caused by a wet leaf or something which had
got under his trailer nerve connection cover and was pressing on the contacts.
  The rain got heavier. Further on a large unauthorized street market had set
up, reducing the road to a single line of traffic. The traders in that market,
an aggressive dishonest lot, and mostly without street trading licences,
blustered and threatened, and demanded money before they would move their stalls
aside to let us pass or people get cars in or out of their drives, until about
25 police in riotsquad gear pushed them and the public away while a large
front-loader excavator shovelled the stalls and wares into a dumptruck. Both
were yellowish green, and for a moment I thought they were Scrapper and
Longhaul, two of the Constructicons; but the stories never happened and the two
were ordinary vehicles of Men. Both had masked drivers in armoured steel cabs.
One trader who was selling from a backpack went a few yards away and tried to
keep on selling, but a policeman, finding that he had no street trading licence,
took his pack and its contents `as evidence' and flung it in the dumptruck and
ordered him off. The traders complained that anywhere they don't `cause an
obstruction' it is because hardly anybody comes to buy stuff. The people around
complained about blocked drives, and selling of stolen goods, and scavenged
rubbish sold as `nearly new', and general dishonesty, and rumours of drugs.
Drugs were found on some. The people there were thankful that we coming there
had prompted the powers-that-be into getting rid of that market. The traders
alleged conspiracy to suppress competition from undercutting the shops. We drove
away from the place. The Met Office said that there was more rain coming.
  Six miles after Stockton is Yarm, where the Gas Board had decided at the last
moment to dig the road up. They didn't like their possession of the road being
disputed, but we were bigger than them, and we had been promised that the road
would be clear. I unfolded my arms and heaved their equipment and piles of earth
onto the pavement and covered their holes with steel plating: heavy load
hauliers tend to carry some with them. We drove over, and Huffer reached
backwards and picked the plating up, and at the first opportunity unhitched and
brought them back to me. The gas men said that if they were an obstruction, so
were we, going at "half a snail miles per hour for ever", and asked why big
objects can't be assembled on site. We went along the Thirsk bypass. (In former
times, bad bends in Thirsk town centre forced big loads to go through
Northallerton.) As made in the real world I have a crawler gear for this sort of
work. At 4 mph in our first day we got to the Boroughbridge bypass. (At
Boroughbridge in 1945 the old bridge over the River Ure collapsed under a steel
mill roll housing being taken from Sheffield to Falkirk. The Government trying
to recover from the 1939-1945 war were <not> pleased.) As it got dark the rain
stopped and the clouds tattered, and stars came out.
  We stopped for the night in a layby near Boroughbridge. The police escort went
home to Tees-side and were replaced by police from Leeds. They had heard of us,
but it puzzled them somewhat to find that we like humans needed to sleep
sometimes. I can't sleep while a human drives me: I tried it once. Next day, 24
miles further on is the centre of Leeds: whoever planned the place would have
won no prizes on Cybertron, the amount of low fixed overbridges and a road
tunnel. At first it was easy: along the A58, then Wetherby Road, then Roundhay
Road; then the fun started. The only way to avoid low flyovers was to go along
North Street against the one-way signs, then a continuous barricade of railway
overbridges too low for our load left us with only one way: the Armley Road
westwards towards Bradford. We crossed the Armley Road bridge, one of the few
places in central Leeds where a railway goes under rather then over a road. The
offending railway didn't start to go under rather than over the roads until the
centre of Bradford, where we could at last turn south to the start of the M606
at Staygate. At least the rain had stopped and the roads had dried. We refuelled
in Bradford. Again the sky was invaded by tufts of strands of thin high cloud
which men call "mares' tails", an ominous sign.
  At the start of the M606 a boy, imitating Transformers videocartoons, called
out "Autobots: transform!"; we ignored him. We were too busy to play to the
audience. "Crumbs." said his father, "That's a big `un those two've got. Looks
like half an oil refinery on the move.". We set off along the M606 and the M62.
After Huddersfield the hills started. I wouldn't have fancied taking that lot
over via Marsden or Nont Sarah's, before the M62 was made. [41] Again the thin
high cloud thickened and deepened as we drove on. After passing Elland the rain
started and fast became heavy with a head wind which strengthened as the M62
climbed into the hills. The road steepened fast through rock cuttings up to and
over the Scammonden dam. The weather worsened as we gradually lost the shelter
effect of the lee side of the Pennines. As Huffer had said to me earlier, it
would have been even steeper, and sharp bends often also, on the old roads, such
as the Snake and Woodhead and Holme Moss. However did they get huge girders up
onto Holme Moss to build the television mast there? (`Snake' is not an ancient
name, but was named after a pub which was named after a snake on the coat of
arms of a local landowner who had the road built to get money from tolls; but
those tolls on public roads are long gone.) Evening drew on as we climbed onto
the high moorland under the high slender bridge of the B6114 over a deep rock
cutting at the top.
  Night on Moss Moor. Over a thousand feet above sea level. Not a tree or a rock
tor to break the force of the westerly gale which blew torrential rain like
watercannon over the empty wilderness of peat moor. The few hardy sheep sought
what shelter they could. Even the M62 seemed lost at times, and its halves
separated and took their own routes, including going one on each side of the
only farm anywhere near. I could go no further in this weather without sleep. We
turned our motors off. The wind howled and the rain lashed my windscreen and the
front end of our load. ICI Stanlow's man slept in my cab. The police escort put
up "obstruction on hard shoulder" signs up and left. My dreaming brain circuitry
returned fast to Cybertron, where it wandered looking in vain in the empty lands
around the Manganese Mountains for my old companions Prowl and Bluestreak until
I woke. It was still raining hard as ever.
  Planet Cybertron, the ancient home of my people, evaporated yet again in the
cold morning reality of England. We restarted our engines and continued. We went
under a high slender bridge where the Pennine Way goes over a deep rock cutting
at the end of the high moor. The road dropped fast through rock cuttings and
over a bridge over a narrow valley, to Milnrow in its valley. Town and people
again at last. Five miles further, at the Birch services near Middleton, we
refuelled, and the humans with us had a badly needed hot meal. The rain
slackened at last. Oh to get to Stanlow and back to 50mph instead of 5mph. At
least we were paid plenty to haul these enormous loads across the width of
England. At Birch, seeing me refuel myself caused the usual remarks from
onlookers.
  "What's that enormous thing that red lorry's pulling?" said a boy to his
mother.
  "It's a fractional distillation column, for an oil refinery near Ellesmere
Port." I said.
  "Crumbs, Mum, you said there was no such thing as real Transformers." he said.
  "It isn't ..." she said, "Ohh! Nobody in it! Then what talked!?".
  "We're learning fractions in school." he said.
  "Not that sort of fraction. Look up `petroleum' in an encyclopedia." I said.
  At a roundabout in Warrington, although both I and Huffer kept our ends of the
load as far out as possible, the middle of our load flattened a traffic light on
the edge of the central grass. Warrington Corporation later sent us a bill for
it, which we sent back unpaid. The workmen who should have removed it had given
it a miss to get home in time to see a football match on television. We finally
reached ICI Stanlow and left the distillation column there on its trailer, [42]
and went to a factory in Birkenhead and delivered the two crates. While the
factory men were contradicting each other as to where the crates were to go, the
manager's small son settled in my cab out of everybody's way to read a war
comic. This exposed me to it whether I wanted to read it or not.
  It was a chance for me to find what children are getting to read nowadays.
After the minimum of scene setting, battle was joined. Characters did little but
shoot and curse each other. There were at least 34 successive frames of violent
battle, full of every possible spelling of conventional and laser gunfire. Ptow,
eeyow, bkow, krump. I at least am what Carlyle in his book `The French
Revolution' called "a reader who wearies of death poured out in great floods".
Zapow, fssarr, etc. I had enough of that for `real' back on Cybertron, I don't
want to return to it. Buddabuddabudda, aagh: Must the author do that? There are
enough ways of spelling (sub)machinegun noise, without misusing the name of
Gautama Buddha the teacher of peace to spell the noise of a murderous weapon.
Zzzap, fsszzz, ptow, next week's thrilling episode. The arguing continued for a
while in the factory's gate office, then someone came out. I told the boy to get
out of me, and we transformed and unloaded each other and left.
  We got home at last. It was dark. Another new Autobot head stood silently on a
shelf by a window. I looked out of that window at the big bright cross-shaped
summer constellation of Jetfire, which humans call Cygnus the Swan. Jetfire in
the stories is a big white Autobot who transforms into a jet fighter, a strong
ally against the Decepticons. If Buster Witwicky hadn't kept my Creation Matrix
computer program safe that time in the stories, Jetfire would have been made as
a Decepticon instead. He would have to stay fictional and memories only, for it
was well beyond our reach to make a full-sized jet fighter.

        Like humans, I had to sleep, to let my brain `sweep and tidy' itself after a
busy day. yet again seeing a constellation set my mind back to my unattainable
fiction past in Oregon, where I had many faithful followers and companions.
Jetfire, Aerialbots, Blades! It was like they had suddenly flown away and never
returned. All their forms were in the sky (Cygnus; Pisces, with Aquila and
Scutum as Silverbolt; Auriga). I needed a lot more space and resources before I
could make jet fighters and a helicopter! In Jetfire's cockpit is the strange
varying star Chi Cygni, like Buster rode in him that time to bring him to me. I
missed Buster also. But there was one who I was to meet for real before
midsummer (21 June). The by now familiar heap of bits of him was accumulating in
a corner, waiting for us to assemble them, so I could bring him to life with his
memories and personality like I remembered him. I went to sleep.
  Unlike in that comic that I saw at Birkenhead, my fictional Witwicky family
were well defined as personalities. Where in their fictional world did they come
from? Their surname looks Polish. Polish `c' is pronounced `ts'. I never saw
either of those with a gun, but they played good parts in the stories. I'll
never meet them again except in dreams. James's thinking had been interrupted
too often this month by road men's pneumatic drills, without wanting gun noises
also. But people need excitement in their reading. I wished I could meet Buster
and his father Sparky again for real. My brain started to go over the day's
events as I slept. That causes dreams as a side-effect. The less appropriate a
resemblance is (such as that comic strip spellings of gun noises, and Polish
placenames, both often end in `-ow'), the likelier it is to be used as a theme
in dreams as the brain runs with its long term memory storer running in reverse
to remove inappropriate connections between ideas.
  I dreamed I was in Birkenhead again, and of that boy reading his comic in me.
In the way that dreams jump sometimes, the writing on the comic's cover changed
to `Atlas Polski, Atlas of Poland', and the boy changed to Buster Witwicky, and
Sparky sat beside him. I was driving through a (fictional) part of Poland,
taking them to their family's ancestral village of Witowice (pronounced
`Vitovitseh'). [43] At the next junction, signs pointed to Zarakow and Ptow and
Wlodzimierzow and Tatarsk, but not Witowice. "Witowice? Nie." said a man who
Sparky asked. I drove on through fertile green countryside and stopped in the
village of Bkow. A sign pointed to Ptow, and to the Ptowski Przelecz (= Ptow
Pass); Buster, looking in his atlas, found places called "Fsziow nad
(unpronounceable), Tatatat (sorry) Tatarsk if we turn round here, Fszap, Zapow,
Budabdice, everywhere but Witowice". In Polish, `-ow' means `belonging to',
often `son of' or `place of'. "It must be somewhere." said Sparky. Third time
lucky: we reached a junction, where the signpost pointed only to Bkow, Fszar nad
Gorzem, Zapow, Budabdice, Zbiow, and Budno; but a man at the junction pointed
down the Zbiow turning and said "Witowice? Tak [= `yes'].". The road degenerated
into a cart track. Some sheep came the other way. They bleated at me; I made
engine revving noises at them. The man with the sheep drove them into a field
and I drove on. Finally I came to Witowice, whose name means `the place of
something twisted'; perhaps the first settlers there found an odd-shaped tree,
and indeed in the angle where the road forked to Fszap and Piow stood a big tree
with spiral grooves going up its trunk. As the Witwickies got out of me to
explore the place of their ancestors, I heard a fire engine coming, and as
Poland disappeared, leaving me back in James's garage, the tree changed into
some chain slings which Ratchet was noisily shaking to untangle them.

        [44] Again a boy was reading a comic in my cab, but it was only James's nephew
William reading Transformers comic, to keep in track of the adventures that my
people are supposed to be having in their fictional world. Exciting at times,
but I still felt safer in the real England. Hoist started servicing Huffer.
James and Jazz continued making some microchips for a firm called Kuehnle Kopp
und Kirsch who make gas turbines and steam turbines and centrifugal pumps in the
Ruhr in Germany. James's brother Peter climbed to my left cab window and called
William to his breakfast. Jazz did all he could right then and transformed back
to car form to rest, and William settled in him and started to play chess with
him on his dashboard computer screen. Suddenly William's small sister Sue's loud
scared voice called out from a store alcove: "help! I can't get down. It's too
high.".
  Sue was sitting, scared, on a high store shelf. Hoist walked over to her and
reached out his big cold steel hand to lift her down. She backed away and said:
"Who are you? You look funny, like pieces of Uncle James's green towtruck put
together wrong.". Hoist explained that he transformed like me and the rest, and
asked her how she got into the store area in the first place. He took her off
the shelf and radioed to Jazz to relay to William what had happened and to tell
William to fetch his mummy or daddy, and to keep his walkietalkie open on
Hoist's and Jazz's channel.
  William went into the living area. His father Peter was busy with James. His
mother Mary was gone and so was her shopping bag. He went to the room that Sue
had been left in; its door was open and a chair was by the door. "Sue's got
strong and clever enough to move things to stand on them to reach things." he
realized, and told Jazz so on his walkietalkie.
  "Oh no." Jazz replied, "That means she can open doors now and she can't be
left in rooms. Go tell Daddy that.".
  William ran to Peter, who complained that he was still busy with James and
that he had told William to stay in Jazz; but William, looking a bit scared at
James who was wearing his riotsquad gear as usual, at once said without stopping
for breath: "Sue pushed a chair to her room door to reach the doorknob and she
got in the work area and she went up the shelves and got scared and Hoist got
her down and Jazz told me to tell you that now she knows how to get out of rooms
if she's left alone. Why's James wearing the security guard gear?".
  "There's expensive stuff here." said James, "I must guard it. The Autobots
here are too big to go in all the small rooms with me.".
  [45] "I better transform to towtruck form and put you in my cab where you'll
be safe till Mummy comes back. She shouldn't have wandered off shopping leaving
you alone." said Hoist to Sue who he held in his hands, "Oh, you've lost a shoe.
Where's it gone?".
  "I want my mummay." wailed Sue, You're all hard and cold iron and no proper
face. I went up the shelves and I couldn't look down.".
  "What's this here?" said Hoist, pointing to her toes, "Five little pigs?",
hoping to interest her in the wellknown nursery tale.
  "Daddy doesn't keep pigs." said Sue, who hadn't heard of it.
  Hoist knew it, as part of a general knowledge package about humans that I had
copied into him. He put a big piece of foam rubber packing on the floor and put
Sue down on it. He was programmed as a repairman and to break up scrap metal,
not as a babysitter; but all sorts of odd jobs come to people from time to time.
"Five little piglets." he said, then looked at her bare foot, and counted, and
with a slightly surprised "brrrm" realized that he would have to change the
story a bit this time. "Oh well." he said, and protruded a built-in screwdriver
from one of his hollow fingers to use as a pointer, and started at the little
toe end:-
 "This little pig went to market.
  This little pig stayed at home.
  This little pig had roast beef.
  This little pig had none. Not enough roast beef to go round, I suppose.
Happens sometimes.
  This little pig said `Eeyer eeyer, what's all this 'ere?', and ran all the way
home.
  But this big piglet at the end, the mother sow said to him `You're bigger and
stronger than the rest, it's time you went into the wide world and earned your
own living.', same as Optimus had to when he found himself here alone, with
Cybertron and Oregon and G.B.Blackrock and his followers gone beyond recall, and
only the strength of his motor to earn a living by among men.'.".
  "I saw a litter of piglets once and the man picked one up and it said
`eeeeeee' till he put it down." said Sue, "What did those on my other foot do,
Mr.Hoist?".
  "If I've got time, I'll make up a story about them and tell you it later, or
lineprinter it out and mail it to you so you can read it." said Hoist hastily,
"Promise me you won't come in the work area by yourself or climb on things
again. You could have hurt yourself. Where's your other shoe gone? Shoes cost,
your mother'll get cross. Oh, <there> it is, you <have> been exploring. Here it
is for you. Put it on, so you won't get axle grease and bits in your foot. Mummy
should have realized that you'd get strong enough to move chairs some time.
Mummy's gone out shopping, she'll be back.".
  "Look! Ratchet's finger's on fire!" said Sue.
  "It's a built-in oxyacetylene blowtorch, to cut and weld metal with." Hoist
explained, "I've got one also, but I've kept it pulled in and cold. I'll
transform and put you in my cab, so you won't wander off again, till Mummy or
Daddy comes. You're too small to be let wander about among work.". Hoist's body
split open, belly from back; then he `opened like a flower', as someone once
described it, and collapsed forwards. The loosely hinging parts closed up in a
different arrangement, until what had been a humanoid robot was now, undeniably,
a large green towtruck. Sue found herself in its cab. "What's Ratchet making?"
she asked.
  "He's making parts for ..." Hoist started, then said "Daddy's coming now.".
  "How can you see to drive with your head folded inside?" asked Sue.
  "If James gave you a computer terminal, you'd wear out the `?' key in no
time." Hoist replied, "We robots aren't limited to two eyes each like you
humans. We have other eyes for when we're in vehicle form.".
  Peter took Sue out of Hoist and hugged her. "Oh here you are, Sue, wandering
off like that." he said, "Sorry you've been interrupted from your work, Hoist.
We're off home. I'll collect William from James and go. Trust Mary to wander off
shopping. Did she say how long she'd be? Can't people stay where they say they'd
stay?".
  In reply, out of Hoist came James's voice over Optimus's radio saying that
William was with James's secretary, and Huffer's voice saying that Mary had said
that she was going to go straight home from shopping. They all got home safely.