THE BROWNS
  Prowl finally got back to teaching computer programming. "Write out the 3 by 3
matrix multiplication in full." he said, "Don't use `for' loops. I know it's
more typing, but it'll run quicker, because all the indexes are numeric and the
computer won't waste time testing and jumping back every time. It'll save
retyping the same stuff if you type it once, then kill it, and yank it nine
times, and alter it where necessary.".
  "Bang, you're dead." said a pupil.
  Prowl reflected on the habit that computer language writers have of using
words like `kill' and `dump' etc with meanings widely different from their
everyday dictionary meanings, and some pupils' ingenuity at finding sillyness to
waste time.
  "Jackson, bring me the rest of those sweets that you're eating behind your
terminal. Can't you last from dinnertime to teatime unaided?" said Prowl.
  On the computer screen when using the `Emacs' text editor, you can delete text
by putting `mark' and `point' on either side of it, and pressing control-K.
Jackson wished that he could do that off the screen to get rid of Prowl's remote
camera which was hidden at the back of the room somewhere.
  Anderson, too busy at home to bother overmuch with such topics as Roman
numerals, had written a history essay about King Henry VIII (= 8), instead of
Henry VII (= 7) as instructed. Prowl received a phone call from the history
teacher saying so and telling him to do the work again, and passed it on to
Mickleson's terminal screen. Mickleson muttered and went back to computer
programming.
  The class and the school day finished. "Pupils doing wrong work!" said a
teacher to Prowl who he was sitting in, "In Physics each year, I tell them to
read up on `transformers', meaning the sort that change electrical voltage, and
every year they did. Then came 1984, and nearly the whole class wrote about
Optimus Prime and Megatron and company! Some of them at great length! We have to
be careful how we set essays, or we merely get our notes copied back at us. Once
I was teaching about the Crusades, and at the same time a children's comic was
running the Crusades in distorted form with science fiction mixed in. That sort
of perpetration in comics can be very confusing to children. Some of it had to
visit that comic's editor in person before it stopped!".
  "My pupils are about getting used to seeing me around, and I don't have to
spend minutes bringing their minds back from Oregon and Cybertron to the matter
in hand." said Prowl, [124] "You humans are lucky. Your past is real. Most of my
memories are fiction from the stories, which were copied into me when I was
made. All those places that I can never return to, for they never existed.".
  "Not quite so different!" the teacher replied, "My past happened in truth: my
childhood home exists; but if returned there, my childhood household wouldn't be
there; the fields where I played have been built over; the stream where I caught
tiddlers and played boats has been culverted. Gone without return like your
Iacon and Cybertron and Mount St.Hilary! My brothers and sisters that I played
with are scattered to the ends of Europe. All gone like a dream, like when your
Optimus woke in your Mr.Wernicke's garage, and found that all his past
surroundings and companions were gone for ever. And my sisters changed their
surnames when they married, which makes it harder for me to keep track of them.
Also my school friends have scattered here and there. That world is gone, only
its site remains. The games we used to play: no point me trying them now, the
boy that I was has vanished also, like your old Cybertronian shapes before the
`Ark' remade you Earth-style, in the stories. Oh well. It's useful you letting
me sit in you to catch up with marking: thinking's impossible in the staff
common room with all the clatter and comings and goings letting draughts in.
  - No, O'Shea! Insulin does not come from St.Pancras Station. Take your mind
away from railways some time.
  - Jackson: Trypsin is not a door-sill that people coming in trip over. I'm
sick of parents giving children silly wild guesses and inane witticisms instead
of proper answers or admitting they don't know.
  - Next question: identify this bone. His answer: `Fido's, and there'll be
trouble if he sees you with it.'. Facetiousness and inattention. See me.
  - That's better, Baxter.
  That's the last. Aaghurh - trying to stretch in a car's not very rewarding -
time I went home.". He got out and said goodnight.

        Prowl drove about to check up round the outside of the school before he went
home. Looking in through a classroom window, he saw Jack Brown, one of the
pupils, inside huddled over a radiator. Prowl put an extension speaker and ear
on a sucker on the window pane and asked: "Hallo? Who's kept you in and what
for?, and where's he gone?".
  "Nobody did. It's cold out and I missed the bus and I don't want to get cold
till the next bus comes." said Jack, feeling too shivery to care where the voice
was coming from.
  "More likely you're ill, huddling over a radiator saying you're cold, this
weather. You better let me take you home." said Prowl.
  "No yet." said Jack, "There'll be nobody in at home for hours. Mummy and Daddy
both work.".
  "Well, you better come out anyway and sit in me. The janitor'll want to lock
up." said Prowl.
  "I'm coming." said Jack resignedly, seeing no end to being driven from pillar
to post by `It's closing time' and `I want to lock up' and suchlike. He wondered
what `in me' meant, since one human can't go inside another. He went out, saw a
car but nobody in it, realized resignedly that someone had called him and then
gone away, and had a violent shivering fit as he came out into the wind.
  "Get in me quick. I won't catch it off you." said the car, which Jack now
recognized as the Transformer called Prowl that came sometimes to teach computer
programming. Jack gladly obeyed.
  "... and I ache all over. I've been like this for two days.". said Jack.
  "You hugging yourself, and I can feel that you are shivering - you've got a
temperature." said Prowl.
  "That's better. No wind in here." said Jack, relaxing.
  "You've got flu! You belong in bed! I better take you home and let you in.".
  "Not yet. Dad's on overtime and Mum's going straight from her work to her
drama group that she goes to in the evenings.".
  "What group? Where?".
  "She never told me. I don't know.".
  "Long time to your next meal. What did you have for school dinner?".
  "Nothing. The dinner women are off ill with flu. And not much for breakfast.".
  "I'll get you some fish and chips.". said Prowl, and set off.
  [125] At a roadside fish and chip stand, Jack for the first time felt the
sudden jerk upwards and tip backwards as Prowl unfolded his front suspension and
steering gear into arms and supported his front end on his right elbow as he
reached out with his left arm. The man in the stand knew of Wernicke's
Transformers, and showed no fear of the oversized mechanical arm that reached
across the pavement onto his counter. Prowl put the packet of fish and chips in
through his front left window and set off for Jack's home and parked there while
Jack finished the fish and chips. Jack knew of Prowl, but still felt it odd
being in a driverless car that went by itself and talked. Prowl got the house's
front door open. Jack went in and upstairs to his bedroom, which was at the
front, facing nearly due north. Prowl transformed and looked in. Inside was
Jack's bed, and nothing at all else, and bare floorboards.
  "By Iacon's great dome, your room's bare, and I don't suppose it gets much sun
in. Where's a heater for you?" said Prowl.
  "The electric fire's locked in the big cupboard in the spare room. Daddy says
heat costs too much, even when there's a frost.".
  "Where's the spare room?" asked Prowl.
  "The window above the front door." Jack replied.
  "Go there and open the window so I can get my arm in. Sorry to make you let
the cold in on yourself, but I must do it, to get you some heat." said Prowl,
"They've no business making you hang about in the cold for hours all weathers.".
  Realization of dreadful images of what Prowl intended and the consequences
dawned. "Please!" said Jack, "You're not going to ...".
  "Just do it!" Prowl ordered curtly. Jack had to obey, and watched in dread of
the consequences when his parents came home as Prowl's hand reached across the
spare room and protruded from its fingertips sharp steel claws and forced them
between the two doors of the cupboard, which Jack had never before seen open or
knew what secrets were hidden in it, although at night when assumed to be asleep
in bed he occasionally heard his father Keith open it to put stuff in or take
stuff out. "I'll get blamed." Jack thought, seeing the damage to the mating
edges of the cupboard doors. But he could do nothing as hydraulics in the arm
strained and thick polished wood split and broke. Broken pieces of the right
door hung separately at odd angles from twisted hinges. More pieces lay on the
floor. He feared an age of missing meals to save back the cost of repairing it,
and hoped frantically that Prowl would stay around to back him up. Inside there
was indeed a two-bar electric fire. Prowl told him to take it into his room and
plug it in.
  [126] As Jack took the electric fire out of the cupboard, he recognized
something else in there. A year or so before, an uncle had sent him an electric
train set for a birthday, but Jack had never received it. His father had said it
must have been lost in the post, and Jack knew that it was not wise to show
disbelief of such statements. But in that cupboard that he had never seen open
before, there was the train set, and still tied to it a label saying that it was
for Jack. It was not a great feat of wisdom to guess that it was being kept in
new condition to preserve its possible resale value. Jack took the fire into his
room, and went back for the train set, and undressed and went thankfully to bed.
  "Where do your parents go?" asked Prowl at Jack's bedroom window.
  "I don't know. They don't tell me. They say I mustn't bother them at work.
Please don't tell them." Jack pleaded.
  "Why not?" Prowl replied, "Someone's got to have it out with them about all
this some time. Where are they? This attitude of theirs has to be confronted
some time.".
  "I don't know much." said Jack, "Dad once brought someone home from his work,
he said `third floor, red building. Use the left stairs. Not the right stairs,
that's a baker's. The other man said `Handy, it's only five minutes' walk from
the multi-storey.'.".
  "I know the place! That's one down!".
  "I don't see you, only that sucker on the window. Where are you?".
  "In the street in car shape. It attracts less people. Sounds like you've got
nothing to do but listen to other people. Aren't there any books to read in the
house?".
  "I mustn't read them. Dad says I'd get finger marks on them and they wouldn't
sell for as much. They're all in that cupboard.".
  "I don't care. Get up and get some of them for yourself.".
  "Any idea where your mother goes?" asked Prowl when Jack came back with some
of the books and went back to bed reading one of them.
  "When she goes to drama group, she goes left outside the door, then turns
right at the end of the street." said Jack, "I don't know further. She says I
mustn't follow her. She said a few times that someone called Mr.Elliott wants
things there.".
  "I know them! I've heard other teachers mention them! That's two down!".
  "A few times she said she was fed up of hearing about people's teeth all day.
Once someone gave her a lift home, and Mum said thankyou, and `--to a
dressmakers across the road from where I work' and `afternoon sun in the front
window dazzling me, boss won't buy me a blind', and the other woman said ...".
  "Dentist's receptionist? Front window facing south or west, across a road from
a dressmakers: I know the place! Hat-trick! Now to go to her at her drama group
to find why they can't let you in and feed you straight after school like most
parents do." said Prowl, and told Jack all three addresses, and reeled in his
extension speaker and ear. He reached the rear of the house via a back entry,
transformed again, and reached in through a window and broke open another locked
inner door. He transformed back and drove away.
  "Now Jack can contact his parents in any emergency that arises." Prowl thought
as he drove to a large old country house that was now surrounded by houses. As
he pulled up on the gravel drive, he heard the start of `Macbeth' coming out of
a downstairs front window. He knew enough of Shakespeare to know that waiting
for the act or scene to end would take longer than he was prepared to.
  Three witches in ragged cloaks, and a cat, sat round a cauldron on a
wind-blasted heath near Forres in Scotland.
  "Where shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" one
cackled.
  "When the battle's lost and won ...." another replied, and the well-known
spell words continued. One witch complained about a sailor's wife who had
refused to give some of her baked chestnuts to the witch but had told the witch
roughly and curtly to clear off, unaware of the witch's vengeful magical powers.
  The witch cackled in glee and called down a plague on the offender's husband
and a storm on his ship: "... weary se'ennghts [= weeks] nine times nine, shall
he wither peak and pine ...", but got no further, when Prowl's horn and flashing
headlights at the window jerked them back to the room in 20th century Worcester
in England.
  "`Where's the astronomy society?' the rump-fed ronyon cried." said one witch
irritatedly, "That and the phone: one day we'll finish an act uninterrupted!
I'll see who it is and what he wants.". She opened the window and looked out.
  "Is Mrs.Elizabeth Brown in there? It's urgent. About her son." said the white
above black two-tone car that she saw parked outside.
  "Lawks!" she said to another of the witches, seeing Prowl's roof light, "Liz,
it's the police! Something about your Jack!".
  "OK, OK, I'm coming," said Elizabeth and went out. "<Now> what's the brat
done?" she asked tiredly into the darkness, "Usually when he hangs around the
parade shops and won't go away, they save it till Saturday, and then they moan
at me when I go there next to shop. Excuse the clothes, we were dress
rehearsing. People keep interrupting us.".
  "You better get in and let me take you to him." said Prowl.
  "Have I got long enough to go back in and change back and get my hat and
coat?" Elizabeth asked sharply, "What's he done? Sheltered in a shop doorway and
wouldn't leave when the shopkeeper told him to?".
  "No, worse!" said Prowl, "Something that he'll probably go to the Old Bailey
for: <catching flu>! You sent him to school with a high temperature two days to
spread it and to have to hang about in the cold until school started and after
it shut. I had to take him home and let him in and put him to bed in the warm.".
  "How did you let him in?" Elizabeth asked sharply, "We don't trust him with a
key.".
  "Never mind how!" Prowl replied, "Couldn't you see he was ill!? I teach at his
school. It was obvious enough to me.".
  "No. No time for that. I've got to get on in the mornings. He keeps on hanging
about on excuses to delay going out, but I've got to lock up and go to work. And
some days my work has a string of emergencies and things-taking-longer, and
today that took so long that I had to come here straight from work." said
Elizabeth.
  "You don't sound very caring towards him!" said Prowl, "Most children can come
straight in after school and find a hot meal ready! He hangs around shops? I
should think so! Nothing to do from 4 till at least 6 pm!, rain or shine, light
or dark, hot or cold. Tomorrow I'll ring your boss and tell him to give you
shorter hours, 9am to 4pm, same as school, so he won't have to ...".
  "No you won't!" Elizabeth replied angrily, "He'd sack and replace me, or dock
my pay right down for the missed time, and I can't afford that! I've got
commitments. How did you noseyparker find this place? Don't tell Jack, he'll
start pestering us at work.".
  "Too late, I have!" said Prowl, "Now he knows this address and both your works
addresses!".
  "Oh no!" Elizabeth exclaimed, "He'll be back to mithering for things. We told
him straight: if he mithers for a meal, he doesn't get that meal. Same with
mithering for other things. Nothing like a good clout to stop mithering and
silly questions. We've got to get on. He had a few books, but he kept reading
them instead of getting on in the mornings to let us lock up in time to go to
work, so we locked them away. Bad enough when he kept on going ill. I lost a
fortune in pay docked for time off nursing him like a nurse, and in the end he
cost me a good job. Measles, German measles, bronchitis, chickenpox (which he
gave me, I missed it as a girl), mumps, scarlet fever - and then whooping cough,
and that letter from my boss! `Dear Madam,' (not my name!) `... while I have
sympathy for your son's repeated ill-health, we regret that we cannot keep
holding your place open in your repeated resulting absences ...', and a
dismissal notice and my insurance card and a get-well card all in the same
envelope!".
  "Meaning that you put your career before your son. Get in." Prowl ordered,
"Macbeth can manage with two weird sisters for once!".
  "It's `The Scottish Play' to you!" Elizabeth corrected, "Stage people say it's
unlucky! They only put it on because it's popular and people pay to see it.".
  "Likely he'll end up going out with some gang because of sheer boredom and to
get some money of his own!, being shut out for hours!" said Prowl angrily, "I've
seen it before! You start letting him in and a good meal ready for him as soon
as he's home from school! Get in! <I>'ve not got all night either!", and opened
his right door for her to get in.
  "What are you?" asked Elizabeth, noticing Prowl's roof light, "A cop teaching
at school, `wearing two hats'? Which of the two are you acting as right now? If
you're talking as his teacher, as you seem to be, stick to teaching him to read
and write and add up, and mind your own business about what happens outside
school!" Then she looked in Prowl and saw that there was --- nobody in him.
"Where are you!?" she asked irritatedly, "I hear you, but I don't see you! You
want me urgently and importantly, and then you wander off somewhere! Just like
men accuse women of being!". She sat in the car to wait until its supposed human
driver came back.
  [128] The driverless car shut its door and set off down the drive. She thought
at first that its driver had forgotten to put its handbrake on. Then it turned
down the drive and into the street by itself. "Help! What's happening!" she
yelled.
  "I am Prowl." came a voice from the car's dashboard, "I need no driver. I
teach computer programming at Jack's school. I will take you home to your proper
duties as a mother.".
  "Oh help." she said, "Now I know that play's unlucky. So Jack's silly stories
about a real Transformer teaching at school, are true! Or is it merely under
remote control? Or am I imagining things?".
  "When you get in, apologize properly to him for sending him out ill and
putting him second to earning pin-money." said Prowl.
  "Nosey teachers prying into people's private affairs - next it'll be the
council welfare wanting us to do the impossible on my husband's pay, and our
name dragged in the mud through the courts and the newspapers. Not <my> fault
we've both got to work.".
  "It <is> teachers' business if school performance and thus his future career
suffer because of it! Same as the headmaster had to prosecute a farmer for
keeping his sons off school most of summer for a succession of excuses of urgent
farm work. His future matters!" said Prowl as he stopped outside the Browns'
house. She got out of him and unlocked her front door and went in.
  "Grrr! That witch stuff in that play makes my mind feel funny!" she said going
through into the kitchen, "making me think that cop's car was going and talking
by itself. I'll feel better after a cup of tea. Where's Jack and what's who put
him up to doing while I was out? @#$ cop dragging me out of a dress rehearsal to
nursemaid Darling Babbykins. Phew, home at last!". She put water on to boil and
put the teapot to warm. Then she went to get the sugar, which was locked up in -
  "<The pantry>!!" she screeched, rushing upstairs and into Jack's room like a
fury, "You forced it open to pinch food! Lock broken out of the woodwork! How
much food did you take! I knew not to trust you with food in reach! Lucky Keith
keeps a padlock and hasp that he can put on there for temp'ry [= temporary]! If
you're strong enough to do that, you aren't ill! Get up!".
  "Prowl did it!" said Jack pleadingly, "I was hungry, the dinner women at
school are off ill with the flu that's going round, so no school dinners, and
you only give me bread for breakfast.".
  "Hungry's no excuse." she shouted, and then saw something on the floor, "Fish
and chip papers! Where did you get the money! You telling tales to teacher, he's
told me one! He found you waiting for the next bus: where did you get the fare!?
Any money you get goes in the kitty, not wasted on sweets and comics and rubbish
and luxuries and bus fares to `ride in state' instead of walking.".
  "<He> got me the fish and chips! as we passed a stand." said Jack, enduring
the storm while it lasted, "I sometimes help someone in his shop from 4 to 6 for
a bit of money. It's <my> money. Prowl says you don't put your money in the
kitty, you spend it on your drama group. He knows about them from other teachers
at school.".
  "And you've got careless, you've got back to saying `my this, my that' again
as if you own things! Watch your lip with your `my'! Nothing's yours! We just
let you use it! You know what happens if either of us catches you saying `my
anything'!, such as the bed in here's not yours but your father's and he bought
it and he paid for it and it's his property, and next time either of us hears of
you saying `my bed' again you sleep on the floor for a week. And you've been
putting the paper back exactly how it was so we won't know that you've read it!
The paper's ours, not yours, and you don't touch it and you don't sneak looks at
the top page.".
  "You never listen to me. You're always in a hurry. You always say `don't
mither'.".
  "Bread only? You know why! You mithered till I switched the clock off along
with the radio by mistake, and it made me late for work, and you get bread only
to save back the pay that I was docked for it!".
  "I wanted the nice music. Why couldn't I have it left on?".
  "Agh! `When grandparents come in at the door, discipline flies out of the
window.' it is said, and that man Prowle with his car painted like a Yank cop
car's as bad! And it's warm in here! <That electric fire>! <You've been in that
cupboard>!!".
  "Why don't you get a telly like most people?".
  "It'd cost, and people'd keep watching it instead of getting on with things.
And if we did have one, it'd be ours and not yours, and not for you to use it.
You and that nosy Mr.Prowle have ferreted out an awful lot of me and your
father's private business!, putting your heads together. Teachers belong at
school, not here. Bits that you've overheard listening to what you shouldn't
have been listening to, plus bits that he knows, and bang goes our order that
you and people from school aren't to follow us when we go out! You wait till
your father comes!".
  [129] His father Keith Brown was coming. He heard this argument as he reached
his house. There was a car parked there. It had a roof light like only police
cars have. "Right." he decided, "<That>'s happened. Now he gets it." and came in
and marched upstairs and into Jack's room. "Complaints, complaints, about you
hanging about in shops. And, I told you, if you ever fetch the law here (and
what else is that parked outside?), you're for it.". Then he noticed that the
room was warm, and saw the electric fire on, and the train set unpacked and laid
out on the floor! "I told you he wasn't to have that fire!, the 'lectric costs,
and what's that train set doing out and used so I can't sell it as new?".
  "He says he caught flu and one of the teachers called Mr.Prowle brought him
home in his car and broke that cupboard open to get heat and put him up to
defying us." said Elizabeth.
  Keith, alarmed, ran into the spare room to see what had happened, and looked
aghast at the forced-open cupboard, and the splintered ruin of its right door,
and the scattered contents. "That brat's new friend must be strong!" he called
back, "Half inch deal door torn up like a fag packet! Locks wrenched out of
their seatings! How I'm going to mend that, I don't know.".
  "Pantry door too, and he helped himself to a huge supper." Elizabeth added.
Keith stormed back into Jack's room. "That teacher of yours has brushed a great
lot of obstacles aside to get you the maximum possible patient care!" he raged,
"What about <my> permission, here!? Every so often you get insubordinate. Only a
fortnight ago I found you with the radio on without my permission. Now what do I
find!? Two locked storages forced with much damage, electricity used, food used,
the value of that train set cut to a third at most because it's been opened and
played with, and moreover ...". He broke off for a moment, wondering what was
making a succession of metallic clicks and air hissings outside under the
window.
  "<You> had the fire when you were ill that time." said Jack, desperately
trying to shelter in the bedclothes, "And I've got the coldest room in the
house. Prowl says I need the heat or I may get pneumonia.".
  "And he's been doing jobs for money from 4 to 6 for shopkeepers while waiting,
to buy meals and things to bypass the effects of punishments. And that Mr.Prowle
of his even told me to give up my drama group to stay home to baby him." added
Elizabeth.
  "Insolence from you, insolence to your mother from that nosy teacher or cop in
a fancy car that you brought round: you need a reminder." shouted Keith, and
pulled his right arm back.
  "Keith, no, he's ill. That at least is true!" Elizabeth uncharacteristically
pleaded, then desperately "Look out! The window!".
  [130] Keith was in too foul a temper to notice the big dark shape outside the
window. "Don't try that again!" said a voice outside as with a jangle of glass
and a splintering of wood a steel arm three times as big each way as a man's
came in through the window and grabbed him. Elizabeth screamed and Keith gave a
horrible yell of pain as his flying fist his the steel wrist glancingly, and a
sharp edge, dirty with axle grease and road grit from its alternate role as part
of Prowl's front suspension, cut the backs of the first joints of the fingers
through skin and extensor tendons and blood vessels to the bone. "Police!
Ambulance! Army! So that little %$#'s tales from school of a giant robot teacher
were true! I've cut my fingers to the bone!" he howled, desperately squeezing
the wrist with his other hand.
  "I'll radio for an ambulance. Again we find ourselves picking up fleshlings'
pieces." said Prowl, and told him where to squeeze his wrist to stop the blood
flow. Keith had to obey him, and continued to howl like a dog as Prowl's arm
withdrew and his huge steel face appeared at the broken window. Keith and
Elizabeth looked at it in hate and fear.
  "Don't you criticize the drama group! I've put so much into it!" said
Elizabeth, plucking up the courage to address it.
  "Jack, get up and pack whatever clothes and bedding you want, and your train
set and whatever of those books you want." said Prowl, "You can sleep in me
tonight, then to the corporation children's welfare in the morning. I'll leave
you no longer with <these>.".
  "Don't you dare take him away! He's ours!" Elizabeth exclaimed.
  "If you're so fond of him, why did you send him to school ill?, so I had to
let him in and force open two locked storages to get him some warm and a bite of
supper!?" said Prowl, "Him ill with a temperature and no heat in the coldest
room on the house.".
  "Taking stuff, back answering his mother over her drama group - it seems I
can't stop you!" said Keith, "Not my fault I've got commitments!".
  "Straxus's pit take your drama group!, if it's taken all the affection and
time and money that you should've given to your son! They likely won't keep you
long after this business here!". said Prowl to Elizabeth.
  "Just because I'm hurt. That overgrown thing out of science fiction can't stay
here forever. First that brat does every odd job he can to pay for the window
and the cupboard door and the pantry door and what he's used and all my time off
work ..." Keith started.
  "Forget it, Keith." Elizabeth interrupted, "Let Jack go! First you tried to
make <me> account for every penny and crumb, till I took a job and an evening
interest to get away from it. Then you started on our son. Now it ends as I
thought it would, with the children's welfare baying our heels. Let him go,
without rather than with our name smeared through the courts and the papers.".
  Prowl's face disappeared from the window, and there were clickings and
hissings. Keith, looking out to see what was happening, saw Prowl folding
himself and becoming the police car that had seen there when he came from work.
"A real Transformer!, like Jack said." he said bleakly, "Another sort of
official device to order people about, I suppose. That's the end of that! - I
hope. Hope my boss'll hold my job open while my hand heals. Get this window
mended first, and it put the laths as well as the glass through. Patch up our
affairs as we can.".
  Meanwhile Jack carried armfuls of stuff to the front door, slowed by aches and
shivering fits. He dumped it in Prowl's boot and got into Prowl's front, and
entered that house no more. As Prowl drove away, Keith and Elizabeth shouted out
of the window "Bad bye!". Not even one affectionate word even in final parting.
And older science fiction conventionally called robots cold and impersonal!
  [131] An ambulance came. Keith noticed that, unusually for England, it was
wedge-fronted and had one big rear door. "Get in and I'll look at it." said a
voice in the ambulance, "Good thing I can treat you here, else I might have
wondered why you couldn't have found your own way to hospital,if that's all it
is. Ambulances aren't taxis.".
  "I can't ride my bicycle like this, and getting to the hospital's two buses
and a lot of messing about." Keith complained. Keith got into the ambulance.
Inside, two thin mechanical arms came down from the roof and examined the wound.
A voice from somewhere commented on road dirt and axle grease gone up the tendon
tunnels, and asked if he wanted want a local or a general anaesthetic. Keith,
too shocked already to feel much more surprise at not seeing a human
ambulanceman in there, said that he had been hammering and the work had slipped.
  "Good try." said the voice, "Pity I know what actually happened, when I was
radioed to call me out.".
  "Called out by who?" said Keith, "What? Another robot? How many are there?".
  "I am called Ratchet. Lie down and let me operate." said the ambulance.
  Elizabeth Brown's lengthy interrogation of her son Jack continued. She had a
cake tin in one hand.
  "Lets try it again!" she repeated, "There should be 1-2-3-4-5 rolls in this
tin! Now there's only 4! What happened to the 5th!?".
  "I've told you! T haven't had it! I swear it! Dad must've eaten it!" Jack
replied for the n'th time.
  "Lets try it again!" she countered, "He's been out since this morning! You
being hungry's no excuse! Where's - that - roll!?".
  "I've not seen it!" moaned Jack, "Please let me alone. You've been at me four
hours about a 20p plain bread roll!".
  "5 - 1 = 4!" she rated, "I'm sick of you treating punishments as something
like the weather to endure and then forget! I'll keep on till you own up! Then
it counts as your tea and tomorrow's breakfast!".
  "I've not had it! I didn't know you had rolls in! Did you have 5?" Jack
pleaded.
  "Never mind `hungry' - you still haven't paid for the gas I caught you burning
running the kitchen stove that time.".
  "But I was cold.".
  "Then you stay cold. Gas costs." his father Keith ordered coming into the
room, "Don't you dare accuse your mother of miscounting! A roll! or I force the
truth out of you!".
  "Please! I swear it! I haven't touched it! I haven't seen a roll! Let me
alone!" said Jack desperately.
  "And running the radio without permission, using up current. Just because I've
got a hand in plaster, don't think I'm too damaged to enforce discipline!" added
Keith.
  "You don't deserve food, you whining thing! If I have to economize, I will!
Why not still 5 rolls in the tin?" she persisted.
  "And you've been criticizing us to other children, and it comes back to us
when we go shopping! You mind your lip about us to third parties!" added Keith.
  "I haven't done anything to a roll!" said Jack, building up to one of his
occasional releasings of his feelings which could not in the end be suppressed,
even though it invariably had painful consequences, "I hope the devil takes your
precious roll! Why don't you ever believe me!? Go away! Go away! Let me out!".
He reached and started tugging frantically at a car-door-type handle that he
found on his bedhead. Jack tried to unwind himself from his blankets and get
Prowl's left front door open to escape. Prowl knew that something that he had
been fearing, was happening. Jack still struggled with the door. His mother's
nasty, shrill, accusing voice gradually turned into several cats caterwauling in
the park to the left. His father's nasty, ordering, accusing voice gradually
turned into a shut-in or shut-out dog barking continuously somewhere among the
houses to the right. Jack woke fully and started to tell Prowl what had
happened.
  "Quiet now!" said Prowl, "It was only a nightmare. They were never here. It's
only cats in the park, and someone's dog. I gave you a fish and chips, and all
that other stuff. Why should I chase odd rolls? Really, the silly ways dreaming
brains reinterpret things! The sooner you've had some nice experiences to dream
about, the better! Now go back to sleep, it's 3.27am.".
  [132] Jack went back to sleep. The cats and the dog continued their unwanted
outdoor concert. After a time Prowl saw Jack's eyes starting to flick about
under his eyelids, and thus knew that he was dreaming again - and could guess
what about, judging by the way Jack's heart rate and breathing speeded up. Jack
muttered about a roll. Prowl wished he could do more to liberate Jack from hard
interrogators which were part of Jack's own dreaming mind and reactivated
memories. (The eyes are the only part of the human body that routinely acts out
dreams.) But the dream finished without Jack waking, and thus he mercifully
forgot it completely. The dream came again, without waking him. Finally at
7.54am, when Jack was not dreaming, Prowl woke him. The cats and the dog were
silent at last. Birds sang in trees in the park. People passed about their
business.
  "Wakey wakey, rise and shine, time for me to see if Mr.Wernicke where I
live'll get you some breakfast.". said Prowl.
  "Aagherh." said Jack, stretching. "Another session about that roll last night.
Why didn't you drive away as they came up? How did they find me?" he asked,
sounding betrayed and shocked after a dream so vivid that he needed time to
distinguish it from reality.
  "No!" Prowl replied, "No jumping to conclusions accusations please! You've had
to many accusations from those two that you must learn not to imitate. They
never came. It was only a bad dream. Nothing happened. It's all right. Listen to
the birds singing in the trees in the park. Forget nasty dreams.".
  "And he took my train set away. He said I wasn't fit to have it, spoiling its
newness so it wouldn't sell for as much." said Jack.
  "No!!" said Prowl, "Only a dream! It's still in my boot! If you don't believe
me, go and look!".
  "By the scrap heaps of Polyhex!" Prowl thought, "His brain circuitry's had a
lot of dirt trodden into it by those two! Lets hope that a roll, and a bit of
radio, and suchlike capital offences, don't trail too much of their dirty
rat's-tails through his sleep before he gets over it.".
  "Why do people dream? I don't want nasty dreams." asked Jack as Prowl set off.
  "To put it very simply," said Prowl, "the brain keeps several copies of
things, when it remembers things and events. Sometimes by mistake it stores two
things at the same place. Say the two ideas `aqualung' and `scorpion' share a
place in someone's brain, and likewise `hat' and `tree'. Then aqualungs would
make you think of scorpions, and vice versa, although they have nothing really
to do with each other. This way madness lies, if these address clashes were
allowed to accumulate and make you confuse different ideas. So when he dreams,
and something looks at the place in the brain that is `double booked' for
`aqualung' and `scorpion', he dreams of a scorpion wearing an aqualung, or a
scorpion with an aqualung for a body, or some other such crazy surreal mixture
of the two; and the place `double booked' by `hat' and `tree' makes him dream
also of a tree wearing a hat, or a tree that grows hats instead of fruit. Other
parts of the brain say `This is wrong!', and so the dream stays with it, with
the brain's long term rememberer running in reverse to rub out the `double
booking', and so the ideas `aqualung' and `scorpion' are kept separate, as is
sensible; and likewise `hat' and `tree'. That's why people dream about strange
things and old things and surprising things. So your brain kept dreaming of
those two to try to make you forget about them. Hallo: here's Bahadur's shop
open already. Perhaps if I get you some fruited rolls of your own, and some hot
sausage rolls with them, you may not dream so much about that matter of an odd
roll. Forget nasty dreams. I'll ring the council Children's Welfare from
Wernicke's, to try to find you some proper people to live with.".
  [133] "Bap-ree! [Indian expression of surprise] That boy's hungry! Where's he
putting it all?" said Bahadur, who had come outside to serve Prowl. He knew
Wernicke's Transformers, and they often bought stuff for James Wernicke there.
  "Mind the crumbs." said Prowl to Jack, "I don't want mice in. If that's all
you want now, put the rest back in the bag for later. Now to Wernicke's and get
you a hot bath and your clothes washed.".
  Prowl got to Wernicke's, and explained that James Wernicke, who made computers
and computer parts, made a real Optimus Prime with the memories of his fictional
original, and James's Optimus made other real Transformers. Prowl plugged
himself into the telephone socket and rang the council. The council welfare man
decided that, as Transformers can't catch flu, leaving Jack at Wernicke's until
he got over his flu was the better part of not spreading any more flu through
the council welfare system. Prowl radioed James, who said that Jack could go in
one of the rooms that he kept in case a visitor has to sleep the night at his
works. "See!" said Prowl, "I told you. Your train set's still in my boot. Forget
nasty dreams. Any night-ghosties coming here'll have to get past 7 Autobots and
2 Decepticons and Timmy the guard dog. There's a television in there, and a
power point to run your train off. I can't stop. I've got to get back to school.
Perhaps Wheeljack'll make something Chinese for your dinner, he's good at that;
or perh' - (Oi! Tabbins! Do you mind? `Pussy on the prowl' again!, your muddy
paws after the warm patch over my engine.) Now take your stuff out of me into
your room and have a hot bath and go to bed. I'll tell the school that you're
off ill.".
  "How high can I run the water to, please?" Jack asked.
  "As much as you like! Never mind!" said Prowl.
  Between shivering fits and sneezes, Jack took his stuff into his room. After
his bath, he started to make the bed. [134] "No!" said a voice through a wall,
"You're still ill. Just lie on the bottom sheet, and I'll tuck the blankets in
over you. Tell me when you've got enough.".
  "Prowl, your arm looks different." he said to a robot arm with a car wheel on
its shoulder that came in through a hatch in the wall.
  "No. I'm Wheeljack. What would you like for dinner later?".
  "I - I'd - a - tishoo - choo - tishoo - ".
  "Oh. It seems that you also have heard that colds and flu go if you call
enough times on the Chinese god Ti Shu, whose name means `The Emperor's Frontier
Guard'. I don't know if <he> likes chicken fried rice or sweet and sour pork,
but I dare say you might.".
  Jack went to sleep, and the Transformers went back to work to earn their
living. Hoist was repairing yet another car. His previous job had been a yellow
Volkswagen Beetle; Wheeljack for a moment had thought in surprise that it was
the Transformer Bumblebee, who had not as yet been made as real. Jazz's last
customer was a bossy farmer that wanted him to squeeze another season's use out
of an ancient plough that was more rust and repairmen's welds than original
metal. Wheeljack found that all that was wrong with a large centrifugal pump
that a factory had brought in to him was a piece of wood jammed between the
blades; sometimes it jammed, sometimes it didn't. Intermittent faults can be the
devil, and usually by `Murphy's law' temporarily go away when the mechanic
comes. Tabbins went over to the pump to look in it.
  "No fish in there." said Wheeljack, "The factory have an intake grille to keep
foreign matter out, but it gets clogged and cleaning it's a messy cold wet job
and the workmen feel tempted to run without the grille. Fish get caught on the
grille also, and some waterbailiff keeps moaning about the workmen keeping them
to eat instead of letting them go. None of my business.".
  Wheeljack and Jazz finished those jobs and started making some microchips for
the CEGB (= Central Electricity Generating Board).
  Jack woke at dinnertime with a sneezing bout. "A Ch'u [= Chinese for `O Sir'],
a Ti Shu, ch'u, fnuffle, atchoo choo, I ache all over." he said to Wheeljack who
was handing his dinner tray in through the wall hatch.
  "You get that with flu. It'll pass." said Wheeljack, "A student nurse in an
exam once called the mouth `a bonny holler lined with atishoo'. Now I know why!
Oh well, it should be over soon. <We>'ve had to guard James's `frontiers' a few
times when doubtful characters have called. That makes us enough of a `Ti Shu'
to pass muster. Anyway, here's chicken fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and
crispy noodles. Sometimes I have to cook for visitors when James is out or busy.
You seem to have a cold as well as flu.".
  "What if James catches my flu? Two months ago I caught a cold at school and
<they> caught it off me and were both off work a day with it and they said I
must pay them for what they'd been docked ...".  "Never mind that! That's over!
People can't help colds and flu going round. I think the culprit this time's a
cleaner woman who came to work at your school ill with it, she said she didn't
want to lose a day's pay for it, so, etc, said Prowl; apportioning subfractions
of blame's a tedious business and often unnecessary. Anyway, we robots can look
after you without catching it. Matrix's sakes, stop `looking over your shoulder'
all the time!".
  The days passed. After a day or so, Jack learned that in Wernicke's, like in
most places, permission was not needed for everything he did except breathing;
and he became more willing to use the pronoun `my' and to complain if he felt
that something was wrong.