BRAITHWAITE'S STORY
  [289] About this time Optimus Prime said to someone who had asked him where he
came from: "Since being suddenly dragged out of my fictional world by being
copied and brought to life in this exile-land called `the real world', I have
made 11 of my people copied from my fictional past, and two more are being made,
plus various electromechanical sentient beings which were never in the stories,
such as brains for Smith & Malton's dredgersubs, and suchlike, and Smith &
Malton's factory's `manager-brain'. Anyway, Braithwaite and Aikbeck told me of
Braithwaite's past, and the harm wrought by people who found a difference in
body form to be `disfiguring', something that we Transformers tend to forget
about, since <we> are so used to each other being many different shapes. We
robots are made from parts, and the brain is programmed. How is it with you
humans, whose tissues have to get to all the right places without supervision,
and get it right? It is a long story, but I can tell a little of it, quickly.".
He continued, thus:-
  The original egg grows inside its mother into two bubbles with a flat sheet
between them. On that sheet appears a lump and a point, which will be part of
the head. The point moves and becomes a growing point, leaving a trail of
segments, until there are enough. (These segments can still be seen in fish.)
Then the line of segments pulls away from the flat sheet and becomes round, and
grows into the human or animal. This happens countless times, and usually gets
everything right. Occasionally there are two lumps, then two lines of segments,
and twins are born, twice the happiness, or double trouble, and urgent buying
another of everything. More rarely, it happens in triplicate, and triplets are
born.
  But much rarer than that, the growing point has a glitch part way along, and
divides into two growing points, which leave two trails of segments. Thus it
happened that Paul Robinson suffered this mishap, which he couldn't help, any
more than other children can help skin colour, or spottiness, or bat-ears, or
wanting to be alone a lot of the time, but yet get harassed for it by other
children: he was born with his backbone forked at waist level and his hips and
legs duplicated. Not his fault that his back end growing point had split! Lack
of legs causes sympathy, and wheelchairs, and artificial legs, and much is spent
to compensate for nature's error, and much research is done to find the best
equipment. But too many legs? Years passed, and he had to go to school, as both
parents worked and he couldn't be educated at home. His brain was sound and his
intelligence was well above average; but his shape upset the authorities, who
made excuses that he needed special care. Then his father's employer closed
down, and they had to sell their house and move, and more movings, and
complications, and official reports. He was put into a council home
`temporarily', which became permanent. His parents moved, following
ever-retreating jobs, until contact and interest were lost, as they had five
other children to be raised on his father's income. He was passed between
institutions and forgotten by the outside world. Officials made excuses not to
let him out. But when he proved to be useful with metal and tools, the
institution staff were ready enough to use him to do metalwork and servicing
vehicles and miscellaneous maintenance and repairing etc (including much work
for staff personally and their relatives rather for the institution) to save
them the cost of calling outside workmen in.
  Any complaint by him about overwork and not being paid, or request by him for
parole or leave, was merely ignored or punished for, or treated as a symptom for
nearly everything known to psychiatrists, or brushed off with some excuse.
Between times, nothing to do but sit about and wish that his double hindquarters
and untidy sprawl of four legs were single with two legs like everybody else's,
and unattainable longings to visit even briefly the fabulous `outside world'
seen by him only in newspapers and television. OK, so his shape may have given
some people a shock. Not his fault that his back end growing point split. Few
thanks for saving the institution a fortune in mechanics' and metalworkers'
bills. Helping staff from time to time to restrain violent patients (his extra
legs came in useful then! by holding the other patient in his arms and his two
inner legs while he stood on his two outer legs) merely irritated other staff
who disliked feeling beholden to patients, and earned him from other patients
the accusation "kapo" (a German word for an inmate who helps the guards to keep
order). Suspicions about what was going on were treated as signs of paranoia,
until he learned not to voice them - he was all too familiar with all that
"psychiatric qwertyuiop, the amount of abuse of power I've seen and heard of
here and elsewhere, and one thing and another!", as he called it. At least the
staff let him have all the engineering books he wanted, to keep him occupied;
but they never let him take any formal exam in it. Having an adequately long
quiet think was called "withdrawal and depression". No wonder he sometimes had
the feeling that he could do nothing right. The metalworking room where he
worked sometimes was connected to the rest of the institution by one corridor
only. But in one wall was a goods door to the grass outside. He occasionally
looked longingly at that door, but mostly treated it as merely part of the wall,
for he had never seen it open or heard of it being open. He gradually forgot
hopes of ever being outside again, any more than most men can hope to walk on
the Moon; the outside world was merely an interesting academic subject.
  The better sorts of amateur astronomical telescopes are very powerful in
magnification. They can see details only a second of an arc (= 1/3600 of a
degree) across. They can see as two stars each component of Epsilon Lyrae, and
see many fine details of the Orion Nebula, and similar feats. Also, by daytime
when the amateur astronomer has nothing better to do, they can read a car number
plate three miles away, and similar feats of nosyness. So it happened that
Ormscale, a coalminer who was an amateur astronomer, who lived near the
institution, saw Paul Robinson through his 10-inch Celestron telescope several
times when some of the patients were let out onto the grass in hot weather, or
when Robinson was in an outside yard working. Ormscale guessed the truth about
why Robinson was being held, and, realizing that he alone couldn't achieve
anything against organized officialdom determined not to admit that it was in
the wrong, contacted some men in his union, including Joseph Aikbeck, who then
worked in an opencast coalmine where B & N (Imports) Ltd was later to be set up.
Careful enquiries including much plying with drink to loosen tongues found much;
but the final showing of evidence and direct challenge to Dr.Chilham the
institution's director to submit Robinson to an open independent psychiatric re-
examination caused the predicted denial that such an unlikely thing as a man
with four legs could ever exist.
  "The Paul Robinson case." said Dr.Chilham at a routine private meeting of his
staff, "Mr.Aikbeck's telephoto photo of Robinson - why can't stargazers stick to
stars, and not spy about by day? Those telescopes of theirs, those Celestrons
and Maksutovs etc, their power frightens me! They can read a car number plate
three miles away! That's not paranoia: ask an astronomer if you don't believe
me! I take it that we keep quiet and `let the monkeys get tired of jumping up
and down screeching' at us?".
  "Yes yes." said another staff member, "He imagines there's a conspiracy to
keep him in and use him as cheap labour. Fits of withdrawal - and that shape!
Imagine a dipygus in the High Street!".
  "Yes yes." said another, "He's been in too long, institutionalized - and
anyway, he's making a security gate for my aunt's flat in town, the outside
metalworkers charge a lot and are busy.".
  "Yes. He's certainly a very competent metalworker. Next case please." said the
chairman. Next day Aikbeck called on Dr.Chilham again. "Paul Robinson? Sorry,
but like I said before we have no patient of that name, and certainly not that
shape!! Yekkh, the idea of it! We had a fancy dress contest on a lawn. Perhaps
your telescope saw that. Now your Mr.Terence Cat Diddums - odd name -" said
Dr.Chilham, hoping to finally brush off "our four-legged friend's friends".
  "No!" Aikbeck interrupted, "It's `teras catadidymum', medicalese for his
shape, means `monster twinned below'. Not his fault his back end growing point
split! And I've got other proof he exists! An independent re-examination, or let
him out!".
  Chilham replied: "Meaning: `a metalworker, of marvellous skill, but of hideous
shape'. Are you sure it's not some old legend you read, and then dreamed about?
My secretary'll show you the way out. Goodbye.".
  Aikbeck, who already knew what conditions at another psychiatric institution
were like after the BBC television blew the lid off goings- on there, decided on
different tactics.
  [290] Above the thick rainclouds the moon would not rise till nearly dawn; no
risk of lightning suddenly revealing everything. A last check by Ormscale
through powerful binoculars confirmed that `Hephaistos' (their codename for Paul
Robinson, after a lame Greek blacksmith god) was indeed in the metalworking
room, finishing some work or another, and not too many other people with him.
They cut the chainlink fence and crawled in. Their dark blue thick overalls and
dark blue helmets hid them in the dark and wet and wind. No dog barked. No
security camera saw them. No silly noisy geese gaggled or hissed. They wore
gasmasks and riotsquad gear, which they had practised with. Ormscale carried
what looked like a battery electric drill but wasn't; he had found it one day
when, impatient with the police's lack of results, he and others `took out' a
gang hideout. They reached the goods door. Aikbeck put a special tool into the
keyhole and squeezed long levers. Inside the lock sharp steel arms opened and
forced the bolt back, mangling the lock mechanism. They entered. Inside were
`Hephaistos' and two other patients, and several guards. (Optimus telling of
this refused to call them `nurses'.) Ormscale aimed and fired his "drill", and
accurate bursts of 4-inch nails, accelerated to bullet speed by powerful coils,
destroyed the phone and the alarm with only a second to spare, with no gun bang
to attract attention, while the others threw teargas cartridges in at the amazed
staff, who quickly went under in a whirl of expertly wielded pickaxe handles,
and shields and thick overalls proved better protection than white coats; nails
from Ormscale's gun thudded into wood as he nailed the other door shut.
  "Here's one back, you whitecoated thug, like that other place of yours that
was on the telly then about it!" Grimscale shouted, ungrammatical in the haste
of his anger.
  "Khakh - it's not like that here -" a male nurse whined at Grimscale's helmet
and gasmask, and then was clubbed down.
  "I can't see! What are you? Called the riot cops to do me over!?" Robinson
exclaimed in fear, feeling totally unreal at what had burst in through a door
that he had never seen open or heard of being open.
  "No!" Aikbeck replied, "Miners from Tyneside! We're getting you out of here!
You're teargassed and you can't run with those legs! Lie on that table so we can
carry you between us!".
  They ran out carrying him by his arms and legs. Ormscale slammed the goods
door shut on the staff in the teargas-filled metalworking room and quickly
nailed it shut with his gun. The raid squad ignored two other patients who had
got out through it. They ran across the grass and flung him and themselves into
a hired van and fled. They were far away when the staff in the room managed to
ventilate the teargas out and blowtorch the bars off a window (it was the first
time any of them had used a blowtorch; luckily there was one in there) and get
out and to a telephone to raise the alarm. Of the other two patients, one got
away, and the other was found wandering dazed on the grass outside.
  "Where are you taking me?" asked Robinson.
  "Away, till the cops stop chasing about. Then to the television and the
papers, to get the lid blown off your case!" said Aikbeck, who was carrying him
by his right arm.
  "Ukh, he's heavy with all the muscle he's put on heaving metal about, and with
those tools in that pack." said Ormscale, who was carrying him by his left outer
leg.
  "I want my pay at union rates for all the work I've done for them.
Compensation for false imprisonment. I could have had school exam passes, a wife
and children, holidays to remember, a proper job. Don't ditch my tools I've got
on me, they're all I've got. Not my fault my back end growing point split.".
  "Can't ditch them anyway, it'd take too long, all those straps and fastenings.
Hurry!" said Aikbeck urgently.
  A police car ignored them, so no alarm had been raised yet. In an alley they
transferred to a hired van of different colour and make. Seven minutes later
police found the first van abandoned there. The roads were busy from it being
chucking-out time in the pubs, and the trail was safely dead. Onto the motorway
and away home to Tyneside, and into one of the squad members' houses before
light. Robinson sprawled on a settee, exhausted and feeling unreal at so
suddenly being outside. He watched the breakfast TV news.
  " - raid on a secure institution - - patient abducted - - violent, not to be
approached - " said the newsreader.
  "Now they've told the cops $%^ lies!" Robinson thought, "How long before it's
safe for me to go out of this ward, I mean room? Now I must start getting used
to being in the outside world instead of just reading about it. Lucky they
allowed me plenty of newspapers and television, to keep in track of it.".
  "Here's some eggs and bacon and toast and plum jam." said Aikbeck coming in
with a tray, still in his riotsquad gear.
  "This is nice. I hardly remember my old home." said Robinson, so glad to be
away from white coats and madness and institutional atmosphere that Aikbeck's
overall and helmet with visor and shield and gasmask-bag and pickaxe handle
dangling from belt seemed welcoming rather than threatening. Then with a
betrayed look he exclaimed "Cops!?", as a voice came from a small radio in one
of Aikbeck's overall pockets: "Tango oscar, nationwide alert, man with four
legs, repeat, man with four legs, abducted in raid on ...".
  Aikbeck laughed briefly and said: "It's only my shortwave that I'm
eavesdropping with! Excuse the rough-stuff kit, but I still feel uneasy after
that chase.".
  "Four legs?" said a voice on Aikbeck's radio, "Wanted for unpaid parking fines
for his flying saucer? Pull <my> other three legs till you find the one with
bells on.".
  "I thought that sort of thing might happen! I can guess that Chilham's face if
he heard it! Not so many cops have heard of that sort of thing! Any more
metalworking, you'll be paid for at union rates at last!" said Aikbeck.
  [291] "Crumbs! Efficient squad of thugs you lot were back there! That nasty
Nurse Edzell who kept bullying new patients and withdrawing privileges for
nothing: down he went, when one of your men got him! Serve him right!".
  "Yes. That was Peter Grimscale did it. I'm sorry to keep wearing this lot, but
with all this hue and cry about ..." said Aikbeck.
  "As long as it isn't white coats. At least you lot are rough outside and
decent inside, not the other way round. What happens now?" said Robinson.
  "First, new clothes for you." said Aikbeck, "One of our women to alter them to
fit you or make them from cloth, starting with a good thick overall in case of
any rough stuff, not that crude bodge-up you've got on now. And before that, to
design a pattern for them! Undress and lie flat while I do no end of measuring
and thinking! I've got the cloth. I've made up my own overalls before when
overalls in shops aren't thick enough or with enough pockets.".
  Aikbeck started work. He found that scratching his helmet didn't activate his
brain much, but carried on measuring: "Neck to fork of spine - fork of spine to
tailbone - etc - same both sides - tailbone to #$% - as normal, like two
ordinary half overalls; but now the extra bit between. #$% to fork of body -
outside of outer hip to fork of body, but more when you twist your pelvises
backwards, I'll have to let a piece in, not too much or it'll dangle and catch
on things - extra half belt under the fork of spine - etc - Mary Braithwaite's
good at making clothes, but a workman knows his overall best, I say - front
opening to fork level with fork of spine, that'll look best, considering that -
plenty of pockets - wowk! So much for haute couture! Dior of Paris - the
fictional `Sindy of London' that the Sindy doll appears as in that silly comic
that my daughter gets - now for Aikbeck of Tyneside!".
  After a day or two's rest, they went to Mary Braithwaite's, and she started
cutting out and sewing the clothes.
  "You'll need a new name. I can't hide those legs, but at least I can stop
`them' from finding your name in lists." said Aikbeck.
  "While everybody else was accumulating memories of school and work and
holidays and friends and visits to places, and mementoes of life - not my fault
that my back end growing point split - a wife, babies." said Robinson.
  "Oh! Poor man!" said Mary Braithwaite, "I know how he feels, a bit. I've got
two children, but I've never had a husband. I dream about having one. Yes! Let
Paul Robinson vanish like `they' want him to! I'll call you `John Braithwaite',
and my children get a father, and I'll show you photos of where I've been down
the years, and you can say you were there with me.".
  The overalls were finished, and John Braithwaite tried them on. They fitted.
"Yes, that looks better, plenty of inside and outside pockets, not like shop
overalls. Solid thick material." said Aikbeck, "Adapting shop underpants to fit
you'll be easier.".
  "The sooner I'm back in metalworking, the better. The tailor'll have a fit, if
I go for a made-to-fit suit!" said Braithwaite.
  "Nah." Aikbeck replied, "Forget office suits, loose lapels and tails to be
grabbed by, in any rough stuff and by machinery. Cost the earth and wear out too
quick. Keep an overall clean for best. Forget shop shoes also. Stick to
rubber-soled safety boots for best, cost less, last a lot longer, presentable,
and steel toecaps.".
  "Are you our new daddy?" asked one of two children who came in just then.
  "Yes." said John Braithwaite as he and Mary Braithwaite hugged and kissed,
"I'll change my name to yours, not vice-versa. `Paul Robinson, metalworker'
suddenly appearing in Yellow Pages'd make even a Down's Syndrome smell a rat.".
  "My uncle used to live here, until he died." said Mary, "Fetched off sudden,
meningitis. Joseph Braithwaite, he was an engineer. I've still got all his
engineering periodicals. You can read them and catch up with matters, and keep
up with getting issues of them. These are Paul and Sandra, my boy and girl
twins. Poor man, I'll soon fill in details of an ordinary life to say you had
instead of that awful place.", and they kissed at length again.
  "Who's their real father?" asked John.
  "Oh, him!" said Mary in disgust, "As far as I'm concerned, he never existed.
He took me out, he promised the earth, then he went off as a sailor on a
container ship and I've never heard of or from him since.".
  "Aikbeck said that Mr.Malton of Smith & Malton's in Droitwich'd teach me what
I've missed in engineering and run me through his firm's end of apprenticeship
tests, to give me a paper qualification at last." said John.
  "Oh, what you must have been through, just because some silly official
couldn't stand your shape." said Mary.
  "That's right." said John, "They shut me up out of sight and told lies, until
I had to be `sprung' out by an armed raid. Soon to the television and the
papers, and get the lid blown off all that.".

        [292] John Braithwaite lived with Mary. The house had a workshop built on. The
other men brought him enough tools for him to start work, including a blowtorch
with a fullsized pair of oxygen and acetylene cylinders in a trolley. He for a
time was bothered by the wide expanses of the outside world, but got used to it.
He adjusted quicker than expected to having money, and buying things, and
suchlike. His metalworking had kept his mind active, and too much contact with
staff or patients who tried to deceive him or were in risky moods made him
foxily wary rather than naively treating everything unknown as reliable and
honest. He did miscellaneous metalworking for people and firms - he was soon
locally known as being very good at it. Someone brought from Aikbeck's mine a
dumperful of steel bar for Braithwaite to make into a security gate for £350.
Time passed, and the memories of his time before the rescue faded into a dim
past. He made replacement parts for farmers' machinery, and had to put up with
the usual unrealistic demands to make worn-out parts last a season longer. He
reflected that much of his life still centred round locks and gates and bars -
at least now he got well paid for it.
  "Yes." he thought once as he welded steel bar to make steel security gates
that the tenants in a block of flats had had a whipround to pay him to make,
"Paul Robinson has vanished like `they' wanted him to. I am John Braithwaite,
and I've always lived here. I've about learned the local dialect - those funny
`r''s of theirs scrape my throat, but I've suffered worse in my time.".
  "Four legs?" he said once to Ormscale, "Dragging the blowtorch cylinder
trolley about as well as carrying other stuff, what I need sometimes is four
arms, so I don't have to go back for stuff so much. And working up scaffolding
and on top of things, miles of gas tube from the cylinders to the torch trailing
over everything weighing a ton.", and went back to his work.
  "What about this?" said Ormscale to him next day, "It's like one Mr.Malton's
got, except I've put altered the straps to fit you.".
  "Handy!" said Braithwaite. It was a blowtorch with smallish cylinders in a
pack harness. He took his tool pouch off. He opened the cylinder top valves, as
often before with fullsize cylinders. He put his arms through the shoulder
straps and slung the cylinders in their harness onto his back. He reached for
the two outer waist straps and brought them round his sides, and brought the
middle waist strap up between his pelvises below where his backbone forked, and
clipped all three together. He found the torch head and put it in its holster on
one of the chest straps; its gas-tubes looped over his shoulders. A small pocket
proved to contain an oblong piece of shiny thin sheet steel: with it as a mirror
he could see the cylinder gauges `looking' over his shoulders. He walked about
with it on; he felt no straps cutting in, and no bumping from his load shifting
about. He merely felt heavier, as if the cylinders were a built-on part of his
body. "This fits well! Real neat!" he exclaimed, "I could go up ladders and in
windows and anywhere with this on, all sorts of places where people don't think
blowtorches could get to! I'm not afraid of Chilham with this on!".
  "Cool it!" Ormscale exclaimed, "It's only a blowtorch. It's not a proton pack
like the Ghostbusters have in the stories. As regards Chilham's bunch, we stay
together so he can't snatch you back.".
  Time passed. As stated above [see 285], local discontents with unemployment
and dashed hopes and broken promises led to occupation of B & N (Imports) Ltd's
warehouse and offices. While planning the occupation, discussion arose what to
call the cooperative.
  "`Braithwaite's'?" Ormscale suggested, "He's about the best metalworker here,
and he needs some honour such as having this place named after him to compensate
for losing his schooldays and young adulthood freedom.".
  Braithwaite and Aikbeck's men formed a cooperative in B & N (Imports) Ltd's
former premises. Braithwaite went to Smith & Malton's for a time, to pass
engineering exams, as planned.
  "Order from Smith & Malton's for a sort of work-torpedo for the Navy." said
Aikbeck to Ormscale, "They'll send us machinery, and a man called Mr.Wheeljack
to advise us. Braithwaite'll be back soon from that course at Smith &
Malton's.".
  "Wheeljack - unusual name, same as one of my son's Transformer toys." said
Ormscale, "I heard that Smith & Malton's is trying to buy this place off B &
N's.".