AT SMITH AND MALTON'S
  [160] As Optimus finished telling about those events, Wheeljack came in to
collect Mr.Malton before going to Smith & Malton's to install the microchips.
Mr.Malton had his own van to go back in, Jack Brown asked if he could go in
Wheeljack to Smith & Malton's, and Wheeljack agreed. It was Jack's first ride in
Wheeljack, and his first sight of a large heavy engineering works. Mr.Malton,
well known as preferring function to appearance when the two demands clashed,
had as his gate guards' standard equipment sturdy helmets with visors rather
than cloth `official hats', and one-piece overall-type uniforms without lapels
and jacket tails that can be grabbed, and a useful long stick hanging from the
belt. They stood to attention for Mr.Malton, and knew Wheeljack, but asked him
who that was in him.
  "It's OK, I said that he could come with me." said Mr.Malton, and led Jack
into a back room of the guard house to be quickly photographed and given a Smith
& Malton's visitor's-entry pass and an overall and a helmet with the Smith &
Malton's works badge on. Wheeljack followed Mr.Malton's van between the big tall
buildings with people and loads going between them. Finally Mr.Malton got out of
his van and put his backpack blowtorch set on and went into a building marked
`No.3 Assembly Building'. Jack got out of [161] Wheeljack, who drove in after
the two. Mr.Malton showed Jack a middle-sized rolling mill for curving steel
plate, and told him to stand well away from under a crane lifting heavy oblong
steel plates, and other things that are used to make things.
  "How does the man in the overhead crane get down?" asked Jack, seeing its cab
hanging over space high above machines and work.
  "He takes it into a corner, where there's a ladder for him to get down." said
Mr.Malton.
  "Can't you park your car outside?" said a foreman wearing a heavy pack full of
tools, "instead of it making carbon monoxious phew!!mes in here, and they tell
us not to smoke - Oh, it's you, Wheeljack. What brings you here?".
  "Microchips to fit in that dredgersub they've just finished.". said Wheeljack.
  "Where's the ..." the foreman started to ask.
  He broke off as another workmen came up behind Mr.Malton and rapped on one of
his blowtorch cylinders with a knuckle and asked "Can Wheeljack help us lift
something in the yard?".
  "What?" said Mr.Malton.
  "Can't you use your mobile crane?" queried Mr.Malton.
  "It <is> the mobile crane's gone wrong and needs seeing to." said the workman.
  "Complications, complications, things arising." complained Mr.Malton, "As long
as it won't take too long. There's those chips to fit in that new dredgersub.
And don't ring on my cylinders, that's not what they're for.".
  "What, again?" said Wheeljack, "That thing keeps in going wrong. (Like those
traffic lights by the library: three days ago they showed green both ways at
once again! Brrrm! Time its electrics box was changed.) Oh well. I'll go look at
it.".
  "Impressive great thing, that dredgersub, I've seen it." said the workman.
  Wheeljack drove after the workman to the place shown. Then parts of his sides
came away as arms, and his bonnet untelescoped and split into legs, and his head
appeared from in his car shape's rear end. Thus having transformed, he stood up.
  "That mobile crane's the $#@ keeps going wrong." said the workman, pointing to
it, "It's supposed to be serviced by a man from its makers, but we need it
urgently, and you're here.".
  Wheeljack unbolted its cover and looked inside. After a few minutes, he hissed
loudly and said: "Is that all it is?! This control rod has a loose joint, I bet
he, asterisk, tightens it down instead of securing it, after a time it works
loose and makes the crane go wrong again and he has to be called again, repeat
from asterisk as often as wished, getting paid for the turnout every time.".
  "Oh <is> he!?" said the workman, "And telling us fairy stories about different
things being wrong.".
  "Aye, like that escalator in the shopping precinct. It was costing the shops
in there a fortune, people fed up of having to walk up and down stairs with
heavy bags of shopping, until they went to other places instead. <Their>
repairman on callout kept trying that trick, until I serviced it instead of him
and found what was going on. The escalator firm was furious, afterwards.".
  "Could you play this back from your brain onto a videotape? Captain Blowtorch
[= Mr.Malton] 'll be glad to know of this. He's not one to put up easily with
outside men trying petty fiddles.".
  "This crane should work all right now. Now I better go back to what I came
here for". said Wheeljack when he had tightened the loose joint and secured it
properly and checked everything else in the mobile crane. He transformed back to
car form and took the workman to Mr.Malton to tell him what he had found.
  "Oh, he's got that crane mended properly at last?" said a passing workman, "He
still takes some getting used to, a talking car that goes by itself and can turn
into a giant robot and back.".
  "Once more, back to the matter in hand." said Mr.Malton.
  "Where <is> this thing that you and Wheeljack keep talking about?" said Jack.
  "It's in here on my right." said Wheeljack as Jack and Mr.Malton followed him
into No.4 Assembly Building.
  "Crumbs! What on earth's that!?" exclaimed Jack on seeing it.
  [163] Inside they met a commanding-looking man wearing a naval-looking uniform
and a small pack. On the front of his dark blue official hat was a brass badge
with the words `Crabhaven Port Authority' on a circle with the shape of a
lobster inside. He had a small moustache. "This is Captain Hurlock (RN retired),
harbourmaster at Crabhaven, who ordered it. He'll be helping me to test it and
to teach it a few things." said Mr.Malton.
  "Well, Jack, what do you think of it? - or rather `him', when it's had its
brain put in." said Wheeljack.
  "Can it submerge?" asked Jack, "I wouldn't like to meet it underwater!".
  "No, I dare say the boy wouldn't." Captain Hurlock thought, "As long as Smith
& Malton's don't poke about our place at the wrong time when it's in operation -
various uses for it, but one use in particular -- (Real Transformers, what
next?) Well, the sooner their Mr.Wheeljack's done his bit, the sooner I can
start testing it and tuning its mentality to our requirements, including - no
need to bother him with all the details, as it is said."
  "This particular style and size seems popular." said Mr.Malton, "We've had
several enquiries about it, also -- Wait a moment, my walkietalkie.". The
walkietalkie in its pocket beeped, but only Mr.Malton heard the incoming
message, for it was connected to a deaf-aid earpiece in his ear for privacy - a
feature that Captain Hurlock also used in his harbour authority's walkietalkies.
  "Yet another lot climbing our back wire - one of them slipped your visitor's
name out, then pretended it was something else." Mr.Malton heard in his ear the
voice of the leader of a security callout squad from Assembly Building 3.
  "At least these action calls make a change." some of the callout squad men had
said as they left their work and obeyed the call. They collected their riotsquad
gear and got into three vans and rushed out. "Mistlethrush singing." said the
radio message (meaning that intruder alarm 7B was sounding), "Miss Muffet's
talking to a spider. [= Mr.Malton's busy with a visitor.] Bo-Peep here. Send
three sheepdogs [= vanloads of men]. Two round outside the hedge [= perimeter
fence], one straight across inside.".
  The squad leader briefly felt annoyed at the mental load of having to learning
radio code for everything, forced on him by `earsdroppers' who listen to
everything on the radio except authorized public broadcast channels, then he
replied: "Lucky we've got three. One's just back from a dogshow [= from other
duties].".
  Two men, Richard and Stephen Simmons, walking along the outside of Smith &
Maltons's perimeter fence, saw no danger, and climbed the fence. They had not
got far up when two vans marked "Smith & Malton's" stopped behind them. Ten men
ran out of each van as its sides hinged up. Their identical thick overalls,
helmets with visors, shields, walkietalkies, pickaxe handles with wrist loops,
cloth masks, and impression of trained readiness at once told the Simmonses, as
others before, that without quick access to a fast vehicle there was no escape
and little chance of taking home anything of theirs that could possibly be
classed as `observation equipment'. They desperately tried to climb over - and a
third vanful of men arrived on the other side of the wire. Richard knew not to
attempt judo - at Smith & Malton's that sort of thing usually ended up with
teargas or a throwing-net or an anaesthetic dart, if the culprit was lucky, else
in a whirl of pickaxe handles inside a wall of shields. The two were dragged
down from the fence, efficiently subdued, and thoroughly searched. Their
cameras, binoculars, rucksacks, and pocket contents vanished into the squad
men's packs. Each of the two was handcuffed behind his back and fastened in a
chain harness between two squad-men, who thus had him totally under control
while all their arms were free for any more action that might arise. So it was
through the years: tramp, gipsy, tinker, hiker, naturalist, birdwatcher,
industrial spy, thief whether singly or in a gang, demonstrator over `common
rights', all were the same to Smith & Maltons's workmen when on security squad
callout. The vans drove away; the squad marched their prisoners at a hard pace
to a gate in the fence and straight across the back-land to the usual unintended
destination of trespassers - No.2 gatehouse.
  [164] "Lemme go." Richard Simmons moaned, "Jumping us two with three squads of
uniformed thugs like the French riotsquad - can't I watch a few birds in peace
now? OK, I know what you want: film out of my camera, my notebook. Then can I
go? You aren't police with powers of arrest. My legs are turning to water, you
making us march so far at your pace.".
  "Tweet-tweet!" said the squad leader roughly, irritated by the common excuse
of alleged birdwatching, "That's not what you said to your mate earlier! A
microphone picked it up.".
  "He had these on him." said a squad man, handing some papers to his leader,
who looked quickly at them and said to the prisoners:
  "Oh, I see you're more `Ready Spies with Powerful Binoculars', like that lot
before who claimed to be in the RSPB [correctly = Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds], all documents OK, very learned display of `ornate logic',
so we let them go - and two weeks later two of them were in a bunch that tried
to rob our wages van. `Get in there, see what they're making for Hurlock,
photograph it, and scarper!', <that>'s what you said!".
  "Meaning that you're once deceived so twice suspicious. The word's
`ornithology', you philistine." said Stephen.
  "<And> the fancy climbing foot claws and the pliers, please." the squad leader
ordered Stephen.
  "They're called `crampons', they're <mine>" Stephen objected.
  "<And> two gipsies nosing round that time, said they were nature-studying."
one of the two squad men who Stephen was slung between replied, "Quit wriggling
or we pull tighter.".
  "And that fence you were climbing is ours. Your kit and no more lip, or we
search you again." said the squad leader.
  "This should be a public open area, it's common-land!" Stephen complained,
"You fencing it off. Used to be rare plants on it. You running sheep on it to
keep the grass too short for prowlers to hide in, never mind the ecology - who
wants to study the ecology of the ordinary overgrazed sheep pasture?".
  "But you <would> like to study the ecology of our non-ferrous store, `Korky
the Cat', for that's what you called yourself last time when I challenged you
and you scarpered on a pushbike. It fits, I suppose. Cats go after birds." said
the squad leader.
  "OK! OK!" Stephen admitted angrily, "Forced to run two miles slung between two
highly-trained riot-equipped thugs. OK! We <were> looking in your works! I don't
like at all the sound of some of the tales of some of the stuff you're making in
here! If we start getting at Crabhaven what - your secrecy and riot-gear and
pass-checks -.".
  "Now it comes out! We make stuff needed for the world's future. Never mind
having to ask half the world's opinion of what scruffy little short-term wants
it gets in the way of, before proceeding, or nothing'd get done." said the
squad-leader, and then to his men: "Photograph them, fingerprint them, let them
go.".
  "No, bring them here." said Mr.Malton over his walkietalkie.
  "Sorry, but shall I go and have a meal while you're finishing this that's
arisen?" said Captain Hurlock to Mr.Malton.
  "Two men caught climbing my back wire to investigate what we're making for
you, then they tried to pretend they're birdwatchers." said Mr.Malton.
  "Tweet-tweet." angrily said Captain Hurlock, who had had his own share of
outsiders alleging intention to watch seagulls or other birds as an excuse to
infest his harbour or launch boats for unwelcome purposes, "Same as at my
harbour, people nosying all over the yard and back-land on excuses. You better
let me see those two, in case I know them.".
  "All right. They won't be long." said Mr.Malton. A van drove up, and its side
hinged up, revealing the two prisoners, each slung between two squad-men.
Captain Hurlock approached the van and recognized the two at once. "You two!
Trying it on here, pretending to be different things, like you used to at my
harbour." he said.
  "It's Hurlock from Crabhaven! I <thought> he was up to something!" said
Richard in surprise and dismay.
  "When I visit factories and why, is <my> business." Captain Hurlock replied
curtly.
  "I knew we shouldn't have come here! This place felt alive as soon as I
touched the fence." Richard moaned.
  "if you're so curious about my factory, try writing in for the usual
brochures! Or had you spent out on spying kit, so you couldn't even afford a
stamp?" Mr.Malton asked angrily, and then ordered the squad: "That's all. They
can go.".
  "Dump them at the usual, then back to seeing what's wrong with that horizontal
milling machine. $%^&%, work interrupted by security callouts." said the squad
leader.
  It was the first time the Simmonses had seen Mr.Malton, often known as
`Captain Blowtorch', and they felt no desire to get closer to his thick
overalls, riotsquad gear, and blowtorch with its cylinders on his back and look
as if he had few scruples what or who he used it on. "Thankyou, Miss Muffet and
spider! Don't think I can't decipher that junk you use as radio code! Expect a
solicitor's letter about my kit that your men took!" he accused as the van
lowered its hinged side and drove away.
  [165] Who <are> those two?" asked Mr.Malton, "They seem rather concerned about
something - unless their air of concern was a pretence and they were just two
more industrial spies or thieves - or even real birdwatchers trespassing to
birdwatch after all.".
  "They belong with a group that pilfers round my harbour, and your new
equipment threatens their `livelihood' - same as scrap-pickers don't like your
new scrap-recyclers." said Captain Hurlock, not quite telling the truth, for he
saw no point in trying to explain certain things to people who don't have to get
a living from the sea. "Soon, soon, when this thing's been trucked to our port."
he thought as he crawled about on the craft's rounded hull to where Wheeljack
was wiring in and programming its brain.
  Wheeljack said: "Here it leaves Wernicke's simulator for the real world, like
that one they sold to Bangor port in North Wales that time.", and remembered
how, at the beginning of real Transformers, Optimus's brain was taken off the
simulator and put into a real functioning body in the real world, so that in the
end Optimus made other real Transformers including Wheeljack, to try to get some
of his fictional world and companions back.
  Meanwhile Mr.Malton said to Jack: "One of those intruders they caught was
right in a way! - this place <is> alive, sort of.".
  "Oo-er!" said Jack, "Do you mean `haunted'? A workman in the building called
`Millwrights' said that 200 years ago highwaymen did things - and witches tried
to call up things and couldn't `put them away' afterwards - he had me scared!
You look like you've the right kit to stop it! - `Something weird in the
neighbourhood - who are you going to call? Ghost-bus-ters!', as the song goes.".
  Mr.Malton swore briefly and said: "That Yablanovski in Millwrights and his
ghost stories! Forget them! There's nothing there! What I'm wearing isn't a
`proton pack' out of `Ghostbusters', but an oxyacetylene torch to heat and cut
and weld metal. Which reminds me, I better start using it, I've got some welding
to catch up with. Unlike some factory owners, I <don't> live in idleness on fat
`director's fees'. Anyway, real Transformers are for me quite enough
fictional-made-real. Ghosts can stay safely on the other side of the page and
the screen, where they belong.".
  "I knew, I was only joking." said Jack.
  Mr.Malton knelt and started welding. "Look! Your poker's melting away." said
Jack.
  "No!" Mr.Malton replied, "It's a `welding rod', I'm melting it to make more
molten metal to run into the joint like glue to set and join the parts together.
And don't talk to men who are working, you may distract them and cause mistakes
and accidents.".
  "Sorry." said Jack.
  Later, Mr.Malton said to Jack: "This factory has many security and condition
sensors and videocameras and microphones in the buildings and open areas,
connected to one of Wernicke's intelligent computers, so it literally has a mind
of its own! which also runs the accounts and does much routine management. One
thing <we> don't need many of is plushy offices! Over the years it's spotted all
sorts from dogs chasing our sheep that we keep on our back-land to a tree
wanting to fall in a gale (via vibration sensors) to one of my guard dogs
scavenging instead of guarding to a noseyparker buzzing us in a powered
hang-glider. Odd to say, I'm also the lord of the manor round here! I bought a
farmhouse and its land to extend my factory, and I found I'd bought the lordship
of a manor along with it! (Not the only time it's happened, a railwayman once
became the lord of a manor when he bought a cottage to retire into.) (It doesn't
give me right of command over people around though, since local government was
made democratic last century.)".
  Jack yawned. Mr.Malton said: "Time Wheeljack took you home. Here's some cold
chicken from the canteen. By the time you've finished it, he'll be ready to take
you back to Wernicke's.".
  Wheeljack finished programming the sub's brain and transformed to car form and
went to pick Jack up. "'Night" said Mr.Malton.
  "What happens when Captain Hurlock's ready to take it away?" Wheeljack asked
as Jack got into him.
  "He's got an low-loader artic here. He sleeps in its cab each night, then
he'll drive it to Crabhaven himself." said Mr.Malton.
  "'Night" said Wheeljack, and drove away.
  [166] Jack went to his room, tired after a long exciting day, yawned, sat on
the side of his bed, put down the Smith & Malton's safety helmet with visor that
Mr.Malton had let him keep, and switched his television on. The BBC news was on:
  "... were hurt in a fight between vagrants and market traders over use of a
covered area near Droitwich bus station. Police were called ...
  The M5 northbound is blocked north of Worcester where a lorry shed its load of
steel pipes ...
  The Prime Minister is to visit Worcester ...
  Now over to Bangor in Gwynedd [in Wales] for the latest news on the search for
12 scuba divers and their 2 inflatables that failed to return after a dive at
Puffin Island at the southeast corner of Anglesey ... currents and deep water
... A spokesman for the BSAC [= British Sub-Aqua Club] said that this sort of
incident is not typical, they were all well trained ... There has been an
outbreak of sheep scab at ...".
  He stood and stretched, and yawned again. "The usual assortment of doom and
gloom. Can't anything cheerful happen?" he complained to himself, having some
time ago realized that losing sleep over such events would help the outcome not
at all.
  The next item, about wildlife, sounded more interesting: "`Froggy would
a-wooing go', or how the formerly `common' frog is threatened in many areas by
shortage of suitable water to breed in. Over to Peter Hazelton from Birmingham
University, who has studied the problem.".
  "More disaster and woe, even with wildlife." Jack thought, "I may as well keep
in touch with what's happening around me.".
  Peter Hazelton started: "When my father was young, when he walked in fields he
usually disturbed a few frogs. Now they're rarely seen. If their breeding water
hasn't been filled with rubbish tip or polluted or drained, access is over main
roads, or someone keeps domestic or ornamental ducks on it. Both are bad news:
the one is bred far bigger than nature, and dredges everything up like a JCB in
a garden; the other are wild species but kept in far greater numbers than would
be in the wild, no foxes or winter food shortage, and the water is still dredged
clean by them. And shortage of insects as food, due to pesticides. I am a scuba
diver, and I can sympathize! (The first time the breathing set and flippers type
of diver was seen in Britain, they were called `frogmen' from the flippers.) We
get some of the same problems! Go to a known inland diving site, and it's
usually being used as landfill to tip rubbish, or is polluted. Also more and
more sea is polluted by cities' outfall or pesticides washed in from farmland,
so no undersea life worth seeing. Or the local people fish the crabs and
lobsters too heavily and blame us for taking them, same as the ancient Greeks
wrongly blamed frogs for what was actually slug and snail damage to vegetables.
At least we in England don't get what ...".
  Nextdoor to Jack's former address, Richard and Stephen Simmons were watching
this program also. Richard complained: "Oww, my arms still ache from being
frogmarched by Smith & Malton's men - jumped on like cats on mice - them in
army-style fitness and me not.".
  "That man on the telly speaks all too truly!" Stephen replied, "People say we
spread our kit about, like people blame frogs for waking them croaking in the
spring and leaving slimy spawn everywhere it isn't wanted - `Froggy would
a-wooing go' this item is called, how does the rhyme go on? Froggy has a party,
routine anthropomorphized animal story kids' stuff - `a cat and her kittens came
tumbling in' - we've had that bit, from Smith & Maltons's %^#^#*'s! He got away,
`but as poor Froggy was crossing a brook, a lily-white duck came and gobbled him
up' - I hope not! from what I know of what Smith & Malton's makes! New machines,
new risks! All of a sudden, another silly idea is no longer silly! No longer a
joke!".
  "Same as computers that can think like men! <They> were only storybook stuff,
until that man Wernicke in Droitwich made real ones!", said Richard, "Thieves,
thieves, the knock-on effects of crime! If that lot hadn't been pushed into all
that security, we'd likely have photographed that contraption and got clean away
unnoticed!".
  Stephen replied: "Same as there's no living for rag and bone men now! People
used to save their meat bones, and get a bit for them from the man that came
round and sold them to the glue factory for a bit. Now, burglars, burglars, so
many people keep dogs as alarms that Fido gets most of the bones! But at least
they can pick the tip - for now. Not if that purple mobile refuse destructor
that I saw gets common: everything tidily digested and sorted into energy and
metals for the well-to-do to re-use. Not only rubbish! They say that that thing
once pumped its tank full of camping gear and luggage and instruments and disco
kit when helping police to break up an unauthorized pop music festival that
residents had complained about! - and it ground up and digested the lot without
sorting it. No hope of getting any of it back off the tip! And I suspect that
the same thing happens in the sea. Hidden by low visibility British sea water,
anything could happen, and surface-goers and people ashore see nothing. Already,
certain companies and people in ports are selling amazing amounts of granular
oxides of valuable metals, that look as if they've come out of some sort of
materials-recoverer. Watch out if Crabhaven also ...".
  "So much for talking rubbish about rubbish." said Richard, "OK, metals need
recovering, the mines won't last for ever. So far, so good. But what else is
happening? Does Smith & Malton's know what's happening at sea, if what I suspect
is happening? Those diver disappearances, a party here, an inflatableful there,
not like the old days: `they' blame sea conditions. Some diving clubs are
getting worried. `Jaws?' said one popular-press headline, speculating wildly!
And it's already inspired one political cartoon.".
  "No - no dangerous sharks big enough round Britain, luckily. Our sea's too
cold for them." said Stephen.
  [167] `Froggy would a-wooing go' finished at last, and the next item was
football. Jack switched off, having little interest in the outcome of "22 men
quarrelling over a ball", as he called it. He was thinking of going to see what
Optimus and the rest were doing, when Wheeljack's big steel face appeared at the
wall-hatch and said "Come and get it, chicken fried rice, ginger pork spareribs;
cakey pudding to follow. No more visits from nasty night-ghosties, and no need
to call the `Emperor's Frontier Guard', I hope?".
  Jack was puzzled for a moment, then remembered the pun between "atishoo" and
the Chinese for "Emperor's Frontier Guard" that Wheeljack had thought of while
Jack was eating his first meal at Wernicke's while still suffering from the cold
and flu that had caused the final crisis between officialdom and Jack's unloving
real parents. Wheeljack had learned some skill in cooking Chinese food. "No more
colds." said Jack, "Oh, I've had some chicken already, `Captain Blowtorch'
[=Mr.Malton] gave me some - I'll have it anyway, seeing you've made it. How long
before you finish Captain Hurlock's sub?".
  "Two more days" said Wheeljack.