JAMESON AGAIN Hoist and Jazz had nearly finished the factory building repair job, and were hoping that the man who had hired them would not go bankrupt owing, leaving creditors with only a fraction of what they are owed. There are so many excuses not to pay bills at any particular time when asked: "I'll pay you next week", "cheque's in the post", "cashier's day off", etc; once James kept getting "cheque's in the post" and other excuses from a customer until he started legal proceedings, when the customer's cheque came at last, dated 19 days previously but in an envelope postmarked only two days previously. Ratchet came in. While he was taking the red Cortina's driver to hospital, the sedative, plus other stuff that the man had taken previously, sent the man into a talkative delirium. It turned out that the `substance' was not a straight import by him to sell, but was someone else's sent in payment for something, and that now that it was lost, he or someone owed the amount again, or unspecified action might be taken. Ratchet had given the police a copy of his recording of what was said, and was glad to get back to ordinary life. James took a small work-table into Ratchet's back. James and Ratchet started making some process control chips for a firm that made aqualungs. "I tried aqualung diving a few times." said James, "Don't you try it, you'd get rust plague from the sea salt, or sand in your bearings. I had a letter today from Smith & Malton's Ltd, they want me to help them to make a sentient computer controlled underwater working vehicle, not necessarily transforming, to save having all the time to design around either the frailties of humans under depth pressure or the need to communicate with an operator on the surface.". "Until I get yet another emergency call, as ambulances are heir to." said Ratchet, "I badly need a full service and check, but every time I find Hoist or someone free to do it, I get called out again. No good if I break down or run a big-end half way to an emergency.". [79] Next morning a `witness summons' came for James re the three Americans [see 30 etseq], and had to explain to me the difference between a witness summons and an ordinary accusation summons. I said that I was going to the local carnival, to be decorated as a float. "Carnival? That's what teacher says cats and dogs and lions are." said across the road's small son Derek who was visiting. "No!" I replied, "They're carni. A carni is a sort of parade. `Carnival' is from the Latin `carni vale', meaning `goodbye to meat'. In the old days the church used to get people not to eat meat in Lent. Before there were shops everywhere, most people had to grow most of their own food, and in England the food often ran short that time of the year. Gardeners call it the `hungry gap'; winter vegetables finish, stored roots get short or bolt in store, stored salted meat gets short or goes bad in store, summer vegetables (broad beans are the first) won't be ready for ages, what few vegetables do come ready in late winter and spring take too much space for the food that they provide, and any eggs and milk the people produced had to be sold to pay the bills. On Shrove Tuesday, which is the last day before Lent, they ate up the odd old bits left in store, to get tidy, and this became a feast and a festival, called `carni vale'; that's why you have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. In hot countries they have big processions then, with decorated floats and people in fancy dress. Then people who moved from hot countries to England, wanted to have carnivals still; but around Shrove Tuesday in England the weather is usually somewhere between `expletive deleted' and `unprintable', so they had to have their carnivals in summer.". I took my trailer and went to the carnival procession assembly point. The students that he was allocated to realized that they would have to revise their decoration plans somewhat, for they had been expecting an ordinary one-piece lorry. Their decoration theme was `Droitwich Tech up the jungle'. One of them, who was wearing a lion costume already, recognized me as "the big red artic that Wernicke's has. It can be remote controlled, I think.". My wide-diameter vertical exhaust pipes threatened to make it rather gaseous for the students riding on my trailer, until they found in my cab some wide flexible industrial ducting that I had brought, to lead the exhaust gas from the ends of the pipes back down and under me. None of them knew what my Autobot badges were. They looked for places to fasten the decorated boards to. I had to tell them not to paint on my metal, and not to stick things to him with glue. They wondered where my voice came from, then guessed that it was someone looking from a distance and talking in over a CB radio. One of them told the `lion' to take his animal suit off, for there was still work to do. One painted on a spare piece of cardboard "Droitwich Tech D.T.'s, seeing animals" and looked for somewhere to tie it on. "Tie it to some of the anchor points on my trailer, that they use when sheeting my loads down. There's plenty of them. Not to hydraulics or nerve wires." I said. They went to tie "Droitwich Tech in darkest Africa" over my radiator grille, blocking the air flow; I told them not to. They finally decided to put it sagittally [= fore and aft in the midline; their biology was showing] at the back. One of them climbed up and touched one of the videocamera eyes which were on my cab's four top corners; a steel eyelid came over the eye with a click, startling the student, who wondered just what sort of lorry I was. "All ri', all ri'. `Don't touch this, don't touch that.'" he said irritatedly. They went to get the rest of the decoration and the animal suits out of a garage. I drove up to them, startling them again, seeing me moving driverless. A bird settled on my front left cab eye. "Click" went the eye's steel eyelid. "Chakk chakk chakk" went the bird, and flew away in annoyance. They wondered why a lorry had eyelid blink reflexes, or eyes for that matter. One of them drew a picture of a female pink elephant on its nest in a rhubarb tree, and fastened it on the left side of my cab. They finished decorating me. Some dressed as their idea of African natives, with spears and ()-shaped animal-hide shields, and started a war dance round a native straw hut built on the front end of my trailer. Some put the animal suits on, complaining that the local theatrical costumier's hire fees, like most prices, increased each year. One of them pointed out that, before there had been any inflation of English money, a pound sterling had been the value of a pound weight of silver, and a poundsworth of silver coins had weighed a pound, whence the pound unit of money in the first place. They got on and set off along the procession route at 11am, loudly playing tomtoms and recordings of jungle animal noises. [81] The long procession slowly went along its route. There was no wind, and the smell of diesel exhaust gradually lost its charm as the day passed. A policeman warned some students about throwing stuff, and shooed away a street trader, who predictably moaned that everywhere that he didn't attract enough queue to cause an obstruction, he thereby had not enough business to make a living. They gradually noticed that I was driving myself without human aid, and wondered if he was being remote controlled. I felt pain between my left trailer wheels; someone had pulled a nerve wire while poking about for places to tie stuff to, more work for Ratchet when he got home. The procession finished. Droitwich Tech Biology Department, who had me, got the prize for the second best float. The mayor and mayoress's chauffeur, who had taken their car to get petrol, got inextricably trapped in a traffic jam at new roadworks made worse by road closures for the carnival, and radioed in to say so; they asked at vehicles along the procession for a lift, and I was the first they found that was going their way. As the students were removing the jungle decorations, the mayor noticed and recognized my Autobot badges, [82] and thought that I was an artic that someone had painted to look like Optimus Prime the Transformer, who he had heard of; he gaped in amazement as I transformed and showed that I was indeed a real Transformer in the real world. I quickly explained my origin and position in the real world. "Mr.Mayor, I bring you greetings from Cybertron [my home planet in the stories], I mean from Wernicke's." I said, standing 25 feet tall above them, "He made me in imitation of my fictional namesake, complete with all the memories of my fictional past, to which I have no hope of return. My home city is Iacon, or it would be - never mind. It's all gone, or rather it never was, except as dreams. I can only make a living on earth, hauling goods mostly, as you would expect. At least I don't have to look over my shoulder for Decepticons any more in this world. Brrrm, students! It'll take me a week to get clean after this lot. Flour and egg thrown about despite warning from the carnival committee. A damaged nerve in my trailer, giving me neuralgia; someone tied something to it and it pulled, more work for Ratchet. Corners and bits of paper left sellotaped to me. My cab inside strewn with leaflets.". "Ratchet? The transforming ambulance? Your James Wernicke made a real one of him also?" asked the mayor. "No, I did." I said after I had transformed back to lorry form and the mayor and mayoress and their secretary were riding in him through the town, "I got lonely, `remembering' my old world from all that fiction that James read into me to be my memories and experiences. He so much wanted to have for real me his friend who he had got to know so well from fiction. He gained that friend, but I lost 20 friends, left back in my unattainable fictional past. The sky star patterns kept reminding me of them. Finally I had to make some of them. So far there are real ones of: me, Ratchet, Laserbeak, Wheeljack, Hoist, Jazz, Huffer, and Prowl. Who next? Mirage?, who transforms into a racing car, and the constellation of Gemini looks like him. Grapple? (orange truck-crane; Virgo looks like him.) Tracks? (Firebird car; Libra.) Skids? (blue van; Lepus.) Trailbreaker (dark brown van; Corvus and Crater.) Even a Constructicon or two? (I'd get some feeling of victory over them in my unfinished war with the Decepticons, by making them for real as Autobots.) The two halves of the constellation of Cetus look like Hook the truck-crane and Scrapper the front-loader excavator. Forget it. The only Cybertron and Iacon that I have is Wernicke's factory. No hope of return to the `real' Cybertron, or to any other imagined world where ray guns work and travel many times faster than the speed of light is routine, as in so many stories of men. In Homer's old Greek stories, Odysseus was ten years in war at Troy, then ten years wandering, but returned in the 20th year to his home country. The people of Israel were 19 centuries exiled, and yearned for return, but at last returned, and in 1948 got their own state in their ancient homeland. But not me. I am a manufacture of men, yearning for a heritage and a history, but not finding it. All my people's real history is in the future. Oh well. Time I got back to James's. Where are you three going to?". "Those students' college. Here it is. The principal's giving us dinner." said the mayor. I stopped, and the three got out. "Thanks for the lift. Not every day I meet a real Transformer!" said the mayor, and the three went into the college. [83] At Droitwich Hospital, where Stephen Jameson's intracranial haematoma [see 72] had just been operated on, there was a somewhat acrimonious confrontation between a hospital receptionist and a policeman. "When will Stephen Jameson be out of anaesthetic? He needs to be questioned about a multiple pile-up on the M5." said the policeman. "Please!" the receptionist girl exclaimed harrassedly, "Enough of that pile-up, and now yet again cops turning wards into interrogation rooms, interrupting medical routine. Once he's out of anaesthetic he's going to Birmingham Hospital to recover, where there's more bed space. Can't you wait till he's recovered and home?, for merely a traffic offence?". A hospital trolley with Stephen Jameson on came past. The policeman followed it into casualty, where an ambulance was waiting. A businessman with an overfull briefcase joined him. So did a woman with two bags of shopping. He noticed briefly that the ambulance, unusually for England, had one big rear door. "Stephen Jameson?" said the policeman, looking into the ambulance. "What? So soon? OK, it is." said Stephen Jameson tiredly. "I better catch you quickly." said the businessman as Stephen Jameson was being transferred into the ambulance. "You as well. I can't think properly right now. I've just had an operation." Stephen Jameson moaned, recognizing his boss. "He's going to Birmingham Hospital. I don't know which ward. Can't you cops wait?" said the ambulanceman crossly. The policeman saw and recognized a stylized robot face logo on the ambulance's rear above the middle of its rear door opening. "Lets have it from the beginning. How long since your last proper night's sleep, when you set off?" the policeman insisted. "Excuse, officer, I'll only be a moment." said Jameson's boss abruptly, "I just need his opinion and signature on a matter. It's needed at Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. I've a plane to catch.". "No, wait. So many calls on the police. I can't wait about here." said the policeman sharply. "Oh, Steve! The children were getting so ..." said the woman. "Not now, woman!" the policeman interrupted curtly. "Clocks don't wait. Planes don't wait. If you've got unable to think under pressure, I better review your ..." Jameson's boss started. " long was it?" the policeman rapped. "Sales info! Plane goes soon! Think!" Jameson's boss urged. "How long? How much alcohol, and when? Think!" the policeman urged. A mechanical arm unfolded from under the ambulance's roof. While the policeman wondered what it was going to do, half an inch of needle protruded from its end. Recognizing now all too well the arm and its purpose and its owner, the businessman jumped into the ambulance grabbing at the arm with an angry shout of: "Keep your mechanized scorpion sting of him, you Cybertronian tin @#$%^&*! There's £170,000 on this! I need him alert, not full of sedative!! Just five minutes of his time!". In reply a loud synthesized voice sounded from the front of the ambulance: "Get out of me, and get away from me, the lot of you, and let my door shut, argue argue, sending his heart rate and blood pressure up! Typical high powered businessman driving himself and everybody else to the limit and totally selfish and can't spare a second! Leave my kit alone!" A second mechanical arm unfolded from the ambulance's roof. One of the arms injected Jameson, and he went to sleep. "If I lose out on -ouch!- this, I'll sue your James Wernicke for every penn ..." Jameson's boss started, then slept, for the other mechanical arm had injected him. The arms retracted their needles and put him on the ambulance's other stretcher. The policeman left, reflecting that Wernicke's Autobots were indeed like people, including that medical Autobots are as unwilling as medical humans to let anything outside get to their patients out of schedule. [84] He went away, reporting on his personal radio what had happened. Hearing his statement that "the ambulance sedatived [for `sedated'] him", his sergeant at base thought he meant "the ambulanceman sedated him", and had to be told that the ambulance was the robot ambulance Ratchet that Wernicke's made. He thought of reporting Ratchet, or Wernicke's, for obstructing the police, then thought better of it. Ratchet radioed to his destination telling them of his extra passenger. On arrival, the casualty staff, complaining about police and other officials and patients' friends and enemies in general disrupting hospital routine, took Jameson into a post-surgical ward and dumped his boss on a settee in the ambulancemen's area to come round. Jameson's boss hid in a patch of bushes while Genghis Khan's endless horde passed; none of them saw him. Finally he could get out and stretch his legs; but still the nearest water (at Chagaan Bogdo Hudag) was three days by camel away. Someone rode up; perhaps able to spare some water and a lift. Then he saw that the rider wore an ambulanceman's uniform with Birmingham badges on. While he was realizing that that was not usual wear in Mongolia, the desert dissolved as he woke, feeling woozy. "Whatever that stuff was, it causes odd dreams." he said groggily, and yawned, and saw a clock. "!!" he exclaimed, "My plane! Forget it, without that decision and signature there'd be nothing for me to do in Rio except listen to our Brazil department `washing its dirty linen in public'.". He stood up, still wobbly, reflecting that now Japan would get the investment and £170,000 was rather expensive for a few anaesthetic dreams and an unwanted trip into Birmingham. He went out and found a bus stop and went home. Ratchet also drove home to Wernicke's and went straight in and straight to sleep, and dreamed of being on Cybertron yet again. [85] A few days later, James Wernicke's small niece Sue was in my cab talking to me. She wondered why I had for the last two days come in heavily muddy. "I was in St.Andrews church crypt again, finding what was making subsidence in there" I said, "It was people tunnelling across underneath without back-filling properly above the roof of the tunnel.". Sue shivered a bit, for she had heard a variety of creepy legends and tales about crypts. I told her that that crypt at least only contained miscellaneous stores and old church drama scenery, and bats, and spiders and their webs, and a furnished area for meetings, and at one end a lot of messy muddy subsidence which had alarmed the vicar into calling me in to investigate it. "Across the road think I'm the world's expert in keeping children amused, never mind that I've got work to do." I thought, "`Go to Wernicke's and sit in Op's cab and talk to him while we go out.' they say. She's got till Hoist's finished servicing me, then she must go in one of the rooms.". "The man where I buy diesel 's been asking me for creepy tales, also, from in there. There are none, unless you want to hear of the small affairs of the spiders and creepy crawlies. The most I bother about spiders is that I don't want them spinning webs on exposed circuitry, dirtying it." I said. "Our garage's full of spiders. They spin webs on everything." said Sue, "They keep spinning webs across the garden path in the night, then I walk into them, sticky across my face. Why won't anyone near here play dolls with me? My brother says dolls are sissy. I've got two Fluffo dolls, and I take her comic, but I've read the latest copy twice already. If I play with myself, I always know what I'm going to do. Playing with someone else'd be different.". "Brrrm." I thought resignedly, "Having to think down to young children's intelligence. At least it's a change from hauling all day. Back on Cybertron I ruled the city of Iacon. Oh well, here goes.". I asked Sue if her brother had any Transformer toys. "He's got a jet fighter with white wings and a blue body and two rudders." said Sue. "Oh him, one of the Decepticons." I said, well remembering him from many encounters in my fictional past, "If you want me to make up a Fluffo story for you, I'll try to. Wait a minute ... One day she got an offer to act in a film in Hollywood. That's in California, a long way, and they wanted her next day. Some people expect things to happen in a moment. She tried to book a plane seat, but it was holiday time and all the seats were taken. But California is next to Oregon, where I live in the stories. So that Transformer jet that your brother's got, he flew from Oregon to England over the Atlantic, that wide cold water that some call `the herring pond'. He came to Fluffo's and landed transforming on her lawn. His jet blast made a big burnt patch on it. She got a case that she had packed and got in his cockpit. He flew up and away into the west and away over the sea. It seemed to stay the same time for a long time, for he was following the sun. Across Ireland, then nothing but grey sea till he reached America. Then, six miles up and still 1400 miles to go, shut in his small tightly-fitting cockpit with two hot jetmotors blasting close behind her and nothing to look at but sky and deep ocean and a lot of instruments that she didn't know what they were for, she found that one of her garage spiders had come for the ride. Well, most people know what some women are like with spiders: perhaps that's why that Transformer jet fighter is called Starscream. Anyway, she got to Hollywood and acted there.". "That's finished servicing you." said Hoist, on hands and knees screwing my radiator cover back on, "You had some frayed sensory nerve wires near your left front suspension. "Come on, Sue, back to the real world, out of me and go into James's area out of the way. I've got work to do. We are stranded here in the real world with no G.B.Blackrock to keep us in fuel like in the stories. We must work for a living.". "Waow?" asked Tabbins, who had been watching Hoist. "All right, all right, Tabbins, I'll get you some fish." said Hoist. Sue went to stroke Tabbins, but I told her to go right out of the garage out of the way, for the rule was that moving real Transformers were traffic and the usual traffic safety rules applied.