THE WITWICKIES
  [55] "What now?" said Derek puzzledly as the map enlarged and changed into a
landscape. The VDU now showed Optimus's point of view as he found himself in the
village of Witowice (pronounced `Vitovitseh'), where he had gone to collect
Sparky and Buster Witwicky were on holiday there for a while in their family's
ancestral home. [see 43] My viewpoint rose to eaves level and went up to a
bedroom window as in the dream I transformed into robot form. The speaker by the
VDU repeated what I was saying or hearing in the dream. "Witwicky?" I asked. The
people in the house, who knew some English, told me that relatives had come, so
they needed the space, and the Witwickys had moved to the Lasowski's in Ptow.
  I drove several miles through lanes to Ptow. The mountain ridge of Ptowskie
Gory (= Ptow Mountains) followed me on my right. But when I asked for the
Lasowski's, all I got that I could understand was "Witwiki? Nie ... w Zarakow na
morze.".
  "Great." I thought, "They've decided to go to the seaside. I <told> them when
and where to be, I don't want to miss our shuttlecraft back.". Next stage was a
long badly-surfaced gear-grinding climb over the forested Ptowskie Gory. At one
place a tree had fallen across the road, and someone had cleared only enough
width for a horse and cart to pass. I swore and transformed and heaved the rest
of the tree off the road. Finally I reached Zarakow and the shore of the
Zarakowski Zalew (= Zarakow Bay) - and how the Matrix to find those two in all
those seaside trippers!? I wished that I knew more Russian, for I am too big to
go in humans' bookshops to get Russian textbooks, and James Wernicke kept being
too busy to get them for him. The umpteenth person that he asked, a fisherman
with a small boat on the shore, at last knew something of use, and in a mixture
of German and Polish and Russian said that "Witwiki? Nie ... v skotnyy rynok ...
Viehmarkttag ... nach dem Kalaschnikauer Viehmarkt mit der Budinski ... - oni
net dzes' ... na wielki grod ..." and similar, which told me that I was soon to
be faced with the place and time that I the least wanted to have to go into in a
hurry: the market and industrial town of Kalasznikow on the day of the monthly
cattle market.
  "Spasibo, thank you, danke schoen, I'll go now, ya poyti teper', ich gehe." I
replied, and transformed and drove away as quick as he could, [56] past the
Wlodzimierzow turning, through Fsziow nad Chrzaszczniem, and through a
crossroads where the right turn was to Bkow (which I wished I could go to
straight; $#@ those two for straying off). Just before Budabdice a big herd of
cattle blocked the road; I transformed and ran through the field past them, in
too much of a hurry to care about not scaring them. Through Budabdice. Past
turnings to Ziow and Budno and Zbiow. After Zapow came another delay: sheep this
time. "I've seen fields and villages before. Why can't he dream of Cybertron
again? Stories with lasers in are exciting. Ordinary people and places with
`las' [Polish for `forest'] in their names, aren't necessarily." Derek thought
as the VDU showed a village church and churchyard and a large name sign with
`Lwow' above a picture of a crouching lion. Lwow was thankfully the last village
to get through; its name means `belonging to a lion'; probably its founder or
first owner or headman was called Lion. The green countryside continued.
  At last the horizon filled with houses and close packed buildings. It was
Kalasznikow, founded in the time of King Sobieski (who defeated Kara Mustafa the
Turkish pasha of Buda and thus saved Vienna from the Turks) by a Russian from
Kiev who fled from the Tartars and settled there to sell baked goods including a
sort of Russian fancy bread called `kalach', whence his surname Kalasznik. (In
Polish, `-ow' means `belonging to', often `son of' or `place belonging to'.)
Other traders settled around him, and a town market developed, to the anger of
the local nobles, who before that used all the peasants' surplus produce.
Kalasznikow on cattle market day. The name had an ominous sound. So it turned
out, for the road was choked by woolly and hairy beasts protesting noisily at
being driven so far, and waving horned heads, and cartfuls of grunting pigs and
cackling poultry, and vehicles, and people going to market, and the inevitable
fouled state of the road surface. I wondered briefly which of the cattle were
Budinski's, and whether the Witwickys were still with him or had wandered off
even from him to shop or something. I somewhat forlornly called out at intervals
above the din of moo and bleat and grunt and hoof and herdsmen's shouts: "Will
the Witwickys please come to the big red artic cab in the Lwow road! Pozhaluysta
Witwikiye poyti k velikomu krasnomu gruzoviku na L'vovskom pute!" and decided
not to attempt it in Polish.
  The two came with less delay than feared. They had forgotten the date and
time. I unfolded my right arm to lift them and their mass of shopping into my
cab. "Time and tide and Autobot shuttlecraft wait for no man." I said
irritatedly, "Now to get out of all this traffic somehow and get to that big
common west of Bkow before sunset. That's the pickup point.". [57] I turned
right, past a big sign with the name `Kalasznikow' above the town's symbol,
which was a side view of a bull. This side road led to the road out to Fszar,
which the police kept for outgoing traffic only on cattle market day. Soon came
another delay. A big artic with a box trailer marked "Jakob Iwanow. Zapow" was
jackknifed across the road. In the circumstances it took no particular knowledge
of Polish to guess what the temporary sign "Policja, Stoj" meant. I told the two
to get out of me, and transformed and walked past the blocked traffic and heaved
the obstruction aside. I had to break a street light post to get room to work.
The policeman in charge there 's knowledge of Russian was not the best, and mine
was worse, but enough for me to find that the cause was nothing exotic: the
lorry had been going too fast and its driver had swerved to avoid a dog which
ran out of a house.
  "Tracking you two here and there." I complained as I transformed back to artic
cab form, "Tree on the road in the Ptow Pass. Having to ask umpteen people at
Zarakow before I found where you two had gone. Kalasznikow on the worst day in
the month for traffic. I'm not Bumblebee [who transforms to a Volkswagen Beetle,
in the stories], to slip in and out of traffic. Sun's low already. I go to Bkow
by the shortest route. Anything that you've left anywhere'll have to stay
there.".
  "Please, Op." Sparky pleaded, "Our luggage. 3 Pomorzna Ulica, in Zarakow. It's
a boarding house on the seafront.".
  "Sorry. No." I replied, "Bkow. Direct. The shuttlecraft's due at sunset, and
this is no place to hang about waiting, the local air force starts to get
nosy.".
  Luckily the rush into town had stopped and the rush home had not started. I
reached the edge of town easily, and accelerated away. The road was empty as I
sped through Fszar and Wiow with the speed of the wrath of Cybertron. I passed
an oxcart easily, just before the big `Dutch barn' in Wiow. Buster pointed to
the left at the forested hills called Wielki Zapowski Las (Great Forest of
Zapow), where they had had a pleasant day with the Budinskis. I reminded them
curtly that the sun was very low and that they couldn't stop for scenery. The
summer cumulus clouds started to flatten down, as they do in the evening. Zapow
church spire appeared above a small hill, and I hoped to reach the pickup point
in time; but I had to stop again, and a delay while cows for milking crossed the
road. The Witwickys started to lament three changes of clothes, and an electric
razor, and photo negatives, and the usual holiday clutter, all left at Zarakow,
and that they should have remembered the date.
  [58] I sped on. Half the sun was gone. Nothing seems quite so bleak and
endless as a straight road in the country at sunset. I reached a crossroads. The
left turn was to Zbiow and Fszap, and the right turn to Budabdice, all totally
irrelevant in my hurry. Seeing the name Budabdice, Sparky lamented some local
knitwear (also left at Zarakow) which he had bought there. Trying to pronounce
the name caused the usual splutterings and machine gun noises before he got his
tongue round it. A police car siren started behind me, and I could not afford to
stop yet again, for some silly document check. Another police car came in ahead
of me from a side turning. I had to decide to keep speed so the cop car had to
run ahead of me or let me pass or be bumped, as I had no time to transform and
walk past obstructions now. Rounded hills rose higher ahead. I longed to see
Bkow church tower. And, as I had feared, jet fighters started to fly about
vaguely above like crows over hunting wolves. The sun had gone completely, and
it started to get dark on the endless fields and scattered trees. The police car
ahead started to shoot at my front tyres. Overhead more of what I called "Polski
Lettuce Leaves or however it's pronounced" flew in, and started to shoot.
(Polish `leciec'' means `to fly'.) One of them seemed familiar to me. "If only
those two had stayed put at Ptow!" I thought angrily. Now a jet fighter swooped
low at me, strafing. Suddenly large objects fastened to me with clanks and bumps
and lifted me into the air. [59] The Autobot shuttlecraft had come at last. The
pursuers could only swear as powerful electromagnets on chains pulled me inside.
  Inside were some of my people who I remembered from the stories. The
countryside that I had sped through was now far below me like a map, seen
through the hatch in the floor. With a blast of jets Fireflight the Aerialbot
(Autobot jet fighter) flew in through the hatch and stopped on the shuttlecraft
floor. He had a few bullet holes in his wings: more work for Ratchet later. The
hatch shut. From the control panel in front came the overheard radio voices of
the frustrated ground and air pursuers, deciding to report the events as a UFO
incident. "Fireflight, why did you rush off like that?" Sideswipe asked.
  "I thought I'd better get those two fleshlings' luggage back." Fireflight
said, "I hedgehopped both ways, but I still got chased. Good thing I'm a VTOL [=
Vertical TakeOff and Landing]. I landed on Zarakow beach and transformed. I
scared their landlady, it couldn't be helped. She threw everything anyhow in my
cockpit. I paid her for those two's stay. She mistrusted, she hadn't seen
American dollars before.".
  "Bumblebee, get Optimus some fuel. He'll need it after that chase." said Prowl
sitting at the control panel, "Of all the times and places for you to have to go
in after them. I saw Kalasznikow from the air, it was solid with traffic and
livestock. How ever did you find them?".
  "Good thing you saw me. Just in time. I've got the Witwickys." I said, and
started to tell what had happened.
  It was now nearly dark. Waves roared against the high cliff where the Ptowskie
Gory met the sea as the shuttlecraft flew over, back to the Ark in Mount
St.Hilary in Oregon in the USA. "That's the last of Poland. The things I do for
fleshlings." said Fireflight, "Those two had a lot of stuff, what with their
original luggage, and what they've bought. My cockpit's stuffed full of it. All
their accumulated laundry.".
  "When they found me, they were loaded enough with stuff they'd bought at
Fsziow and Zapow and Lwow, without having a chance at the town shops. No wonder
they forgot the time." I said.
  Buster and Sparky got out of me to stretch their legs, [60] and walked over to
Fireflight to recover their luggage. A single seater jet fighter cockpit is not
roomy like a car, but is a compact hard little transparent-roofed blister that
the pilot fits into almost as exactly as into his clothes; there is also a small
store cavity for a few necessary items. In the urgency in the dusk at Zarakow
Fireflight's oversized steel hands had baled the luggage so effectively to fit
it inside that when Buster and Sparky took it out some of it looked like it had
been in a rubbish compacter; but it was better than not getting it back at all.
As Derek continued to watch this with interest through the VDU, the inside of
the shuttlecraft turned to vertical brick walls, and all except Buster
disappeared. Then Derek realized with flat disappointment that he was not seeing
Buster any more, but himself, and the inside of Wernicke's garage. I had woken,
and the VDU was now showing what he was actually seeing. "Gone like a dream", it
is said.
  "Derek! There you are! It's way past your bedtime! Optimus, why didn't you
send him home or ring us to tell us where he was?" asked Derek's mother who had
just come in. She was gradually getting used to talking to Wernicke's robots,
but a mind without a flesh body still seemed unnatural to her.
  "Op dreamed he was in Poland with the Witwickys." said Derek.
  "He came to get his comic, them I went to sleep. I'd had a busy day. The
neuroanatomy class had left my brain's seeing cortex connected to a TV monitor.
He was watching me dreaming of some of the people that I remember from the
stories. I've just woken.". I explained.
  "Come on now." said his mother, and took him home.