BRAITHWAITE FIGHTS BACK Braithwaite came back from Smith & Malton's. Ormscale gave him more target practise with his nailgun while they were waiting. By now Braithwaite was getting used to the bulky nearly-silent apparatus with its un-gunlike shape, and his single shot target accuracy was improving. Suddenly Ormscale exclaimed: "Put it away! Someone's coming!", as a white Lancia sports car drive up and stopped. A voice came from the car: "Mr.Braithwaite? I'm Wheeljack - where did you get one of guns from!? - you were expecting me.". "Nobody's driving it! What spoke?" Ormscale exclaimed. "A real Transformer!" said Braithwaite, "I thought it was a leg-pull about Wernicke's in Droitwich.". "Well, you've got twice the choice of legs to pull." said Ormscale. Braithwaite was the best welder and machinist there, but administratively he was a figurehead at first, with much actual managing done by an intelligent `manager-computer' from Wernicke's. But Braithwaite gradually got the hang of how factories and businesses are run; he was very intelligent despite his previous circumstances. He was content to let the manager-computer carry on its role, having, like Mr.Malton, a dislike of being kept away from proper work by needs to catch up with paperwork. With Wheeljack's help, Braithwaite's finished the first of the work torpedoes, and called the Navy to collect it. Arrangements were made for the big day. Wheeljack set off from Wernicke's to Braithwaite's to be present. In a bush near Braithwaite's works, someone lurked with a gun, [293] and other men lurked in an unmarked van parked nearly. "Everybody different in different places: time he's got to be outside alone, or only one other man with him." said Dr.Chilham impatiently in the front of the van. "False name, thinks he can run a factory, `delusions of grandeur'. And this logo he uses." said a colleague of his, looking with distaste at a factory publicity brochure bearing on its front page the factory logo of a stylized dipygus human form surrounded by the letters `Braithwaites', "He fouled his trail well, but we found him at last!". Waiting is usually 90% of hunting. In the bush, Mr.Eversley, a gate guard of Dr.Chilham's institution, at last saw Braithwaite approach, and only one man with him, for his gun only held two shots, and if those shots failed the bangs would put the whole place into alert while he reloaded. The two stopped and discussed something. "Come on, Fourlegs Robinson, stop yakking and come this way." Eversley thought irritatedly. The discussion finished and Braithwaite walked on and the other man started to walk away. He put his safety catch off and aimed for a quick left and right at the pair - then yowled loudly as a growl and a sharp pain in his right arm told him that he had been found, for he was a typical town security guard type with little notion of bushcraft. "Gerroff me, you #$%^ cur! I suppose you're our four-legged friend's four-legged friend!" he swore and tried to shake the snarling Alsatian off and to shoot one-handed with the other hand while realizing that two shots into three enemies won't go. The other man ran up and quickly grabbed the gun, which Eversley tried to hold on to while watching Braithwaite's four heavy industrial boots and overalled legs flying in various directions as he approached at the usual lurching imitation of a horse's canter used when he had to hurry. "Family to feed, bad growing season, don't tell the squire. He keeps too much land private for his own pleasure." Eversley pleaded, falling back on his cover excuse. "Good dog, good dog." said Ormscale, then to Eversley: "No squire since between the wars! His son had to sell up for death duties and couldn't live off what was left. No shooting syndicates either. And your accent's wrong, you ain't from round here!". "If you're just a poacher, where's your catch? You put up no end of pheasants and partridges in that copse, but you never shot at any." said Braithwaite, grabbing Eversley from behind in his two inner legs and by holding his pickaxe handle across the throat. "Lemme go, you abortion, your mad dog." said Eversley. The dog still held on. Braithwaite recognized Eversley, and said so. "His gun's got funny darts in, not proper cartridges." said Ormscale as he unloaded Eversley's shotgun. "Anaesthetic dart gun! Something's up!" Braithwaite exclaimed, for he had seen them used at the institution, "Ormscale! Help me take this $%& inside, then dress in his clothes ...". Chilham's men waiting by their van by a hedge heard the barking and shouting but did not realize what it was. They saw, as planned, what seemed to be Eversley approaching, gun slung over shoulder, silent and with his face down, pushing a wheelbarrow that he had found somewhere, with Braithwaite slumped limply on his back in it and his four legs hanging out of its front. As he approached the van and the looming end of his freedom, Braithwaite yawned and sleepily called out "erh - Charge!". "Another delusion, he thinks he's riding a warhorse." said Chilham as his men went to grab him by a limb each and sling him in their van and clear off, reckoning that he would soon look a lot safer minus helmet and boots and plus handcuffs and leg-chains. "Who's got the syringe?" asked one. "I've got two syringes here for you lot! Back off!" `Eversley' shouted aiming his gun at them as they reached to pick him up. As they heard the Tyneside accent and realized that something was wrong, leaves rustled and twigs broke as a rank of men in riotsquad gear and Braithwaite's firm's issue overalls pushed through or over the hedge and yelled and charged. The Alsatian came with them, barking. Dr.Chilham and his men fled to their van, to pile in it and bolt off - and in it were two more men in Braithwaite's issue overalls and riotsquad gear. Braithwaite got out of the wheelbarrow and put on his own riotsquad gear, which one of his men had brought, and he stood in the rank. Surrounded by shields, sticks, helmets with visors, and work-toughened men trained and eager to use them, who a few weeks before had efficiently pulped a large camp of aggressive threatening tinkers who had ignored a warning and came to camp and thieve nearby as routine, Dr.Chilham and his colleagues anticipated all too clearly to be made short work of. "Right!" Braithwaite called to Dr.Chilham, "Next step'd have been `the tempestuous patient reaps the tempest' in the back of your van on the way back, I suppose? Well, try it! We can withstand a bit of bad weather now!". "This ceases! He's no madder than you or me! Never mind he's a funny shape." said Grimscale standing beside him. "`The tempestuous ...'." Dr.Chilham exclaimed, angry at hearing that (to him) familiar expression from an unexpected mouth, and then remembering all too well how it had become public knowledge, "Don't you throw that Rampton expression at us like you were staff! Ever since that sensationalizing television program and we all get `tarred with the same brush'!". "I'll tell you one thing that happened!" Braithwaite replied, "`Does he take sugar?', as people call it, imagining that cripples can't think for themselves. That plus people getting squeamish at my shape.". For the first time Dr.Chilham was face to face with men he suspected of being the raid squad who at his institution had come and gone like a wolf in the night. "I'll tell you what he's got, you ignorant blowtorch-brain! Fits of withdrawal ..." he said. "Ditto me! I also like a quiet think sometimes." Aikbeck replied. "Institutionalized ..." Chilham started. "He's got over that by now." said Aikbeck. "Rehabbed by a load of aggressive uniformed thug miners `King Arthur Scargill's knights' with a `Sir Galahad complex' imagining that our place was a dragon's dungeon! Workmen and their trade unions, they're as thick as thieves, they thieves." said Chilham. "Now 're imagining conspiracies!" replied Aikbeck. "Not imagination. Trade unions exist. All know that." said Chilham, missing Aikbeck's point. "So does your plan to keep him in and deny he exists, rather than admit you were wrong, and to get several new cars' worth of free metalworking and mechanicking a year out of him! You owe him a fortune in back pay!" said Aikbeck. "Oh that delusion! He plays with bits of cardboard imagining he's metalworking, and you believe him!" said Chilham angrily. "Liar!" Aikbeck shouted, "Then why's he so good at real metalworking, and all those welding spark burns on his arms!? How did he get the experience!?". "'s the liar! They're needle tracks, injections to keep him quiet," said Chilham, "- Yowww!!". [295] Dr.Chilham recognized with dislike Aikbeck's shiny steel rod with attached battery pack and angrily continued: "Electric prod, like I was a cow or a subnormal that wouldn't move! No good when workmen start making for themselves to picket with!". "That's for taking me for a fool!" Aikbeck replied, "I was a shipbuilder for 15 years; I've caught several addicts thieving, and I've been in union squads raiding several addicts' `shooting galleries' [= injecting rooms]! Dope powder all down my overalls! Don't tell I can't tell hypo needle tracks from welding spark burns!". "He's still listed as `not for release'! It takes two to uncertify him! How do know he's sane and safe, you ignorant blowtorch and riveter minded heavy shoving a trained psychiatrist about?" asked Dr.Chilham. "I got two psychiatry books in a medical bookshop in Manchester, when I went to Mather & Platt's for something." said Aikbeck, "It doesn't make me much more of a psychiatrist, than you'd be a welder just by reading about it evenings and weekends for a week and a bit; but at least I now can tell sense from waffle from lies, and I'll know what's being talked about when my union calls in an independent psychiatrist. Until then we guard him with our lives. If we have to go into hiding with him, we will! He is sane!". "I told you so!" said Braithwaite, "And your to keep me in as cheap labour and because I'm a dipygus.". "Conspiracy - schizophrenia! told so, Aikbeck and your mob!" said Male Nurse Pinhoe, looking scaredly at the surrounding riotsquad-equipped men and their identical works issue overalls with the Braithwaite's logo on the right chest of each. "Conspiracy - truth!" Aikbeck countered, "When I met you at your place those times, you said he didn't exist, but here he is now!". "Lies, delusion." said Pinhoe. "Cassette recorders don't hallucinate! I had one under my shirt then." said Aikbeck. "Lets hear it." said Pinhoe. "Forget snatching it, I copied the tape." said Aikbeck. Pinhoe, having no counter-argument left, swore foully: "#$%^ you! You think of everything! Why, you ...". "Powerful telescopes, hidden recorders, %$^ nasty sneak spy tricks like the KGB and the gutter press!" Chilham shouted, enraged, and attacked Aikbeck, whose shield was on his back at the time. Chilham in his fury ignored the electric shock pain from Aikbeck's prod and tried to grab Aikbeck's pickaxe handle from his belt, to get a weapon, but Braithwaite came up and whacked his own pickaxe handle across the front of Chilham's throat from behind and caught its thick free end in his other hand, and pulled hard, and stood on his outer two legs while he crossed his inner two legs across Chilham's thighs. Chilham, who knew some self-defence tricks, tried to do things to what was holding his neck, but the polished seasoned ashwood transmitted no distracting pain signals to its owner. "Enough! No thanks to me for restraining schizos and all sorts for you down the years! Only `Fourlegs' from you and `Kapo' from the patients! Here it ends, after you lot robbed me of my childhood and teenage and young adulthood!" he shouted in Chilham's ear. "$%^ your extra legs! I can't throw you! Let me at him!" Chilham gasped as the stick pressed painfully on his larynx. "Let him go, let him at me, one to one!" said Aikbeck to Braithwaite. "Urkh - he's got all that kit on, not fair fight." said Chilham. Aikbeck now had visor down and stick at the ready. "Find him a helmet and a pickaxe handle, somebody, me against him, one to one, same weapons." said Aikbeck. "Trial by combat?" said Chilham as Braithwaite's grip slackened a bit, "Now I know you lot are in the past! I'm my institution's director, and I'll not have policy decided by the result of a thug-fight! The law'll catch up with you lot!". "Or with you and your corrupt coverings-up." Braithwaite replied, and released Chilham. "That lot that `sprang' you, I bet they're here! Nothing provable, unless they confess. Ny nurses put off work ..." said Chilham, feeling at his disarranged necktie and missing shirt top button. "Warders! Not nurses! They're in the prison warders' union." said Braithwaite. "Nurse Edzell: broken forearm, depressed skull fracture, effects of teargas. Nurse Petham: compound tibia fracture, torn scalp, effects of teargas. Nurse ..." Chilham started. "Etc etc boohoo, as if they were sweet little female nurseykinses like at ordinary hospitals! Not so!" Braithwaite replied angrily. "Hard dangerous job, violent lunatics to handle, no wonder we `go over the top' occasionally! Then the TV muckrakes!" said Chilham. "`By the broken lock that freed me', I challenge you to prove me sane or insane, in open court with independent medical and other personnel officiating!" said Braithwaite. "You not violent! I saw what your men left of those tinkers, and they'd only come for rubbish that nobody wanted!" said Chilham. "And to thieve and extort and bully. That sort are hard professional criminal vagrants with no idea of telling the truth. Like tramps that say they're `only dossin'', then they thieve and pester, like at Smith & Malton's once." said Braithwaite. "Tell me the old old story, as that load of factory roughs taught you to believe." said Chilham. "Since when have called that class of rootless ruffian honest? Only to contradict me, so I can never be right, as you used to keep doing back at your place." said Braithwaite. A white Lancia sports car with parabola-shaped roof drove up and stopped. "Here's Wheeljack coming. We've got work to do, for the big day." said Braithwaite. "Now he thinks there's real Transformers. I he had delusions!" said Chilham, recognizing the name `Wheeljack' from fiction. The car's bonnet lengthened and split into legs. Parts of its sides became arms. A head unfolded from in its rear end. Its roof collapsed somewhat. It stood, about twenty feet tall, and spoke: "Right, Chilham and his lot! You've wasted a lot of Braithwaite's men's time on an important busy day! Go into the factory and put on a works issue overall each, so you all look the same. Then do as Braithwaite and Aikbeck tell you, to make up for their time that you've wasted.". Chilham gaped vacantly at the fictional suddenly become real, for he had paid little attention to newspaper reports of developments in robotics. "Help! There is! Now, I suppose, the next schizo that thinks he's Napoleon, really will be!" he stammered. "Wernicke's robots." said Pinhoe, "Unnatural, I call it, a human-style mind in a silicon brain. We better do what it says, that size and that whacking great handnet it's taking out. I suppose one of them radioed to it what's happened here.". Chilham and his men were ordered to put on Braithwaite's works issue overalls, with works badge on right chest, and the wearer's name in marker pen on a strip of white cloth quickly sewn onto the left chest; and work boots with steel toecaps instead of soft-toed unprotecting city shoes; and safety helmets. Tools were brought out. Orders were given, and delayed work was started urgently. Male Nurse Fosbury had as little liking of the look of the lit blowtorch whose cylinders were now strapped to Braithwaite's back, as of his own new rank of `Construction Squad' which his overall was labelled with, on his chest above the stylized dipygus factory logo, and the whole idea of being made to do heavy manual work under the command of "that monstrosity" who the badge represented; but he felt it best to stand to attention and not offer defiance. Braithwaite started a compressor and gave him a piece of paper and ordered: "Fosbury! Knock down ten feet of this wall as on this plan! Hurry! And put your safety helmet back on!". "Me? Use a pneumatic drill? And if I drill at the bottom, it'll fall on me." Fosbury bleated. "Drill part way up, then clear that rubble away, then drill at the bottom." Braithwaite explained. "How? Hold something that heavy, horizontal like an ordinary electric drill!?" Fosbury pleaded desperately. "Yes!" Braithwaite exclaimed, You've enough muscle on you! Pretend it's an uppity patient that needs to be taught a lesson, like you were so fond of doing! Or I'll make you do army-style rifle drill with it!". Well!" Fosbury thought at yet another sarcastic variant of the "Pretend it's ..." type of advice used to harness aggressiveness to get more power out of manual workers, "Whatever Chilham says Fourlegs has got, I say it's sadism, him making me use a full sized pneumatic drill horizontal in my arms like a submachine gun! There's not even many professional navvies in a hundred that can do that! Typical heavy manual worker's contempt for ordinary weak people! I better start. Lucky I've been doing some weightlifting. Ckkk!, it's heavy holding it like this. Where's the trigger? On the wrong handle, I must turn it over.". He started work. [296] Braithwaite went inside and came out pulling a flat truck loaded with square steel tube. Chilham and Pinhoe wandered past in an indeterminate manner, not pleased to "bear the sign of the monster" on their overalls indicating whose command they were under. He saw them, and ordered them: "Chilham and Pinhoe! Shift all that steel rod and stillages out of the way into number 3 store!, while I build a crush barrier with this steel. I see you've learned one workman's skill already: how to mooch casually past hoping the foreman won't notice you and find work for you.". "Work, work, and no prize what the logo on our uniforms represents!" Pinhoe complained. "OK, OK, you overgrown teratology specimen." said Chilham tiredly. "What's a stillage?" Pinhoe asked. As Braithwaite cut and welded to make the crush barrier, he looked with surprise at Fosbury, who had accepted the inevitable and was well set into his work, supporting the drill's heavy cylindrical bulk in his arms, not wanting to be come second to tools any more than to patients. A length of rope ran from the pneumatic drill's butt over Fosbury's shoulder to the bit-holder at the drill's front end. Contrary to Braithwaite's expectations, memory store occupation by Freud and Kant and the ego and the id etc had left enough of Fosbury's brain unoccupied for him to think to make a shoulder sling to carry some of the drill's weight. The compressor revved continuously; the smell of its exhaust had lost its charms for him some time before. He now knew what an idea felt like when it was trying to get through a mental block. The world seemed to shut itself off except for the drill's clatter and heavy vibration in his arms, and the rope sling cutting into his left shoulder, and the part of the wall that he was working on. The work was finished, and Braithwaite ordered his men, including Chilham's squad, to parade ready for the naval visitors. In some of his men, an idea did break through. "I, Napoleon, demand transport back to my palace at Fontainebleau !" said one. "Help! All the garden gnomes are in a conspiracy against my goldfish!" said another. "Yabaka yazawa kakaka ...." another gibbered. The clamour got louder as each of them started to try to outdo the others in mimicking his own idea of madness, to `take the mickey' of Chilham's unfortunate men. Braithwaite looked with disgust, for he had seen too much of the real thing. "Ten-shun! Stop that clowning!" he shouted. They stopped it. A car with naval numberplates drove in and stopped, and Captain Buckley (RN) got out of it. Braithwaite went to meet him. The television cameraman aimed at their heads and shoulders only, waiting to catch the exchange of documents. Braithwaite handed a thick folder of papers over, at hip level. The cameraman had to follow them down. "Show the papers but for 'ssakes leave Braithwaite's legs out of shot - now what's he done?, taking them down there - #$%!" came a frantic voice in his ear from an intercom link. The cameraman cursed the dilemma and took the two men full length into shot. The nation's viewers saw Braithwaite complete and close up, two pelvises and four legs and all, and the commentator briefly explained what the dipygus deformity was, following emergency instructions. "... Despite this disadvantage, he became a first rate metalworker, and with Mr.Aikbeck and others helped to keep this venture together. This is a symbol for all who have disabilities or otherwise have a bad start. The legal status of ownership of B & N (Imports) Ltd's former premises is still to be settled. Orders have been placed with him for several types of engineering products. Mr.Braithwaite and Captain Buckley (RN) are exchanging documents at the delivery of the first ADT underwater work craft." said the commentator, "It has been tested and it works. Thanks are due to Smith & Malton's and to Mr.Wheeljack ... industrial success story in an employment black spot ...". "Thankyou, they'll be most useful for certain jobs." said Captain Buckley. "Smith & Malton's sent me the plans, we just made it." said Braithwaite. Optimus Prime drove out of an assembly building with the ADT on his flatbed trailer. Dr.Chilham, already feeling unreal from being ordered about by a dipygus and a robot, saw that Optimus's cab had nobody in it and realized that he was alive and not merely an ordinary lorry. He guessed, correctly, that the ADT was alive also. "Yet more of those unnatural wirebrains! I better leave Robinson alias Braithwaite, too much publicity and attention.", he realized. [297] "Agh! People thinking my head bandage is a turban - arm in a sling - and here's the culprit on the national news!, four legs and all." Nurse Edzell thought sourly as he saw this on the BBC TV news at home. The navy men left in their car, following Optimus. The BBC packed up and left. "Chilham, keep your men in order!" Braithwaite ordered as they started to disperse and chatter. "'Tension, silence." Chilham called, unused to using parade ground language at men who he considered to be colleagues and equals. Braithwaite ordered, and his men set off back into their factory at a steady hard hobnail booted rhythmical jogtrot in step, unwearying to the workmen but not to Chilham and his men who had to follow suit. Inside, Chilham's men started to disperse again, but were stopped. Braithwaite's men were much amused by Chilham's squad's attempts at basic parade drill under Aikbeck's command. Finally Braithwaite did order Chilham's squad to "Dis-miss and hand over your work gear!". They readily obeyed, thankful to be rid of thick overalls, and head-enclosing helmets, and heavy boots which agonized their unaccustomed city feet, and everything with the stylized dipygus works badge on, and being ordered about by a partly-double monster. "Next time I see anything like that, the top half of one body on the bottom halves of two," Chilham thought, "it better be safely in formalin rather than alive, well over six feet tall, blowtorch-equipped, cylinder-backed, with I don't like the idea of what in that big canvas pouch on its chest, in thick overalls and full riotsquad gear, and with a load of factory roughs under its command.". "Here's your overalls back!" said Fosbury to Braithwaite, "You dislike white coats; I feel uneasy with men wearing overalls this thick, as if they are ready to do things rougher than ordinary work! Owk! My back's `reaped the tempest' from your pneumatic drill, using me as a navvy.". "No riddance of white coats for me." Braithwaite said to Dr.Chilham, "Some of the things we'll be making have computer chips in, and the rules say to wear white coats where computer parts are exposed. Agh, I suppose I'll get used to it. And in future, if I'm explaining something, I'll bring in something else as a metaphor or a parallel if I want to, never mind you calling it `flight of ideas' or `incoherence'. I got sick of that! You see too many symptoms!". Chilham and his men got into their vehicles and went back to their institution. The inevitable court case was long and complicated, and often rowdy, with several parties bringing civil and criminal actions against each other. It was in Newcastle on Tyne Crown Court. There is no need to quote it in full here, but parts of it can stand for the rest as a sample. "Where's that dress?" a court usher asked Braithwaite outside the court building before the case. "My wife loved it!" said Braithwaite. "No! It was for you - hide those legs - people gawping." said the usher. "No!" Braithwaite replied, "Men dressing as women give me the creeps! I'm not the dirty laundry to be shoved out of sight under the stairs when visitors call! My overall is quite clean, I keep this one for best. Not my fault my back end growing point split.". "Like Mr.Malton that time, overall and rucksack and factory helmet with visor instead of best suit and briefcase and hat. At least he isn't wearing riotsquad kit or his blowtorch this time." the court usher complained to himself. "I make my own overalls, but who sells business suits for dipyguses?" said Braithwaite. The case started. Braithwaite's strange partly double shape and four-legged walk reminded all present of how much was at stake. "Illegal occupation of our premises - loss of profits thereby resulting - unauthorized alterations to our premises." Mr.Bewdley complained, acting for B & N (Imports) Ltd. "Wasting foreign exchange importing stuff past the noses of local mass unemployed who could have made it, and not one job for local people despite promises! Too many rehandlers, too few manufacturers!" Aikbeck replied. "And Smith & Malton's putting you up to it and sending you machinery, to aid and abet you! Dirty factory instead of tidy warehouse!" Mr.Bewdley replied. "Making you do factory work, why didn't you testify?" Mr.Bewdley asked Skelgill (formerly Mr.Walton) during a lunch adjourment. "I might, if I get my job with you back. Not my fault they occupied the place and I'm stuck as a welder." said Skelgill. "Sorry, no use for you now." said Mr.Bewdley curtly and unhelpfully, as businessman do. "I can't put `sorry' in the bank or spend it! I must keep the job I've got at Braithwaite's." said Skelgill. The case resumed. The opposing sides' psychiatrists argued angrily. "Robinson, calls himself Braithwaite: fantasizing!" Dr.Chilham accused. "No! Ordinary sane lying, and no wonder, to keep away from your lot!" replied Mrs.Langley, who Aikbeck's union had called in. "Fits of withdrawal!" said Dr.Chilham. "Having a quiet think!" Mrs.Langley replied. "He plays with cardboard and thinks it's metalworking! I've got videos of it!" said Dr.Chilham. "Before a difficult job, he's entitled to make a mock-up of it, to check things!". "He imagines there's a conspiracy to keep him in, and most people know what imagining conspiracies means!". "There was a real conspiracy!, and all the free metalwork and mechanic's work you lot got off him.". "He's been in so long that he's severely institutionalized." said Dr.Chilham. "He's got over that." said Mrs.Langley. "Yes, rehabbed [= rehabilitated] by a load of aggressive miner and shipbuilder types! And that shape! Not just some creepy late night television story that can be switched off, but living real flesh in public among us, forked body and two rear ends! He can't help it; I can't help that it scares people!" said Dr.Chilham angrily. "Ditto ordinary cripples and the like! Deformity isn't insanity!" Mrs.Langley replied. "But think! Those legs, in public?' Dr.Chilham appealed desperately, "And if I `eat dirt' and admit I shouldn't have held him, the of damages for loss of earnings and enjoyment he'll want! It'll beggar my institution's finances! And likely some of my staff'll go traitor and turn `BBC's evidence' like when the BBC muckraked round Rampton that time! I went there once, after that. Awful atmosphere there, no staff member could trust another not to be a telltale.". "So let it be! Paul Robinson alias John Braithwaite is sane!" said Mrs.Langley. "Detaining us, making us do heavy manual work." Dr.Chilham accused Braithwaite. "Trying to kidnap me back to your place! I'm legally sane now, and I was always actually sane, as Mrs.Langley said! I'm entitled to defend myself at need! You lot wasted a lot of our time on a busy important day." Braithwaite replied angrily. "Stirring up old mud! There's a lot of important reputations at stake." said Dr.Chilham. "I don't care. I want all my damages and back pay." said Braithwaite curtly. "And you, Aikbeck, harbouring him as an escapee!" said Dr.Chilham. "You held him falsely! That is now legally proved!" Aikbeck replied. "OK! OK! You win! Challenged to a pickaxe handle duel - ordered to pretend to be a bunch of his workmen at that parade in his works issue overalls with his stylized dipygus factory logo on to boast about his deformity - made to move metal bar - you win! No need to look for a second doctor to uncertify him, I'll be the second! Save all our time! Certification form - write `He is and always was sane and mentally normal' in the appropriate place - I sign, you sign - court clerk please photocopy it - blank cheque from my institution's account for his $%^@ damages, then be proud of the scandal and row you cause as the heap of smashed reputations grows higher and higher! Then I close his patient-file and wait for the storm to break!". said Dr.Chilham to Mrs.Langley finally. "And kiss goodbye to all that cheap metalwork and mechanicking." he thought. [298] Nurse Petham came to the witness stand, on two arm crutches, a leg in plaster, and two thirds of his scalp shaved bald except for a large `centipede' of surgical stitches. The magistrate asked him: "Mr.Petham, for the record, how did Mr.Robinson alias Mr.Braithwaite escape? "He was finishing some metalwork late that evening." Nurse Petham replied, "He was using a blowtorch. (It's OK, there was a radio controlled device on it so we could turn the gas off by remote control if we had to.) Suddenly the goods door was forced open and in rushed several men in what looked like riotsquad gear including gasmasks. The air was suddenly all teargas and pickaxe handles, we couldn't stop them, and they smashed the phone and the alarm. One of them [= Grimscale], I'll call him `X', went for Nurse Edzell, who tried a judo throw (push him and trip him, it's called `something-Garry' [= osotogari], he told me once), but X skipped back. That X was a real artist with his pickaxe handle. He must have practised a lot with it. When Edzell tried another throw, X quick as lightning hit Edzell's left forearm and broke both bones. Then his other elbow, like the riotsquad do sometimes, then his head. I couldn't stop to watch or stop this, I had to try to stop another of them [= Ormscale] from nailing up the inside door with his nailgun. I heard someone coming up behind me, and it was X. I went for him with a chair that I picked up, but X put his shield up and knelt and swung his stick sideways and broke my left tibia, and down I went. As I fell, my head hit a cupboard hard, and that must have knocked me out. (Two other patients ran away, but we recaptured one later.) As the raid squad left, they nailed the goods door shut, so one of us had to blowtorch the bars off a window (lucky it was a metalwork room and there was a blowtorch in there) to get out and go round to raise the alarm. By then they were far away. Fourlegs Robinson! We trusted him, we put other patients under him to hold and carry things for him when there was a work rush, and this is how he repays us!". The long acrimonious hate-ridden case ended. The damages awarded to Braithwaite promised to go a long way towards buying his factory off B & N (Imports) Ltd. He went to a table, picked up a large door lock labelled `Exhibit A', and took it to the magistrate, asking him: "Sorry to sound silly, but unless there's an appeal what happens to this?". "Why do you ask?" the magistrate replied. "As Chilham said, it's that goods door lock, `the broken lock that freed me'!, to quote from Rudyard Kipling." said Braithwaite, "There I was, a day like all others, no hope of freedom, I'd never seen that door open, to me it was just part of the wall, and suddenly something I wouldn't have thought possible breaks in through it, and three minutes later I was on my way away to freedom and my own life!". "Do you mean that you want it as a memento?" the magistrate asked. "OK, OK, let him have it, I've had it replaced." said Dr.Chilham resignedly. "Thank you." said Braithwaite. "Any point me asking you who were those men that got you out?" the magistrate asked, trying to catch him in a communicative mood. "Gasmasks on all the time." said Braithwaite briefly, too wary to be caught out that way. "Oh." said the magistrate disappointedly. "Leg in plaster, and I miss a hiking holiday I'd been looking forward to." said Nurse Petham angrily to Braithwaite. "I've missed all my holidays from the beginning, thanks to someone going squeamish at what shape I was!" Braithwaite replied. "That's enough! Everybody out, so the next case can start." the court usher called. "At least one person wasn't squeamish and I was allowed to live when I was born - there are dark rumours -" Braithwaite thought. [298 & 299] Outside, a newspaper reporter heard behind him what he first thought was the footsteps of a scuffle between two men in hobnailed boots, but he realized what it was. He looked round and saw that, as expected, it was Braithwaite, who, in his odd rolling canter of a dipygus in a hurry, reached him and quickly looked at his reporting pad and pulled at it. "No, you $%^& print that!" Braithwaite said angrily to the protesting reporter, "`strange schizophrenic body shape': you the court agree I'm sane! Lucky I caught you just in time, else yet another hassle getting a sensationalizing newspaper to print a properly worded and visible withdrawal and apology!". "You partly double in shape." said the reporter, feeling uneasy at Braithwaite's size and thick overalls and riotsquad helmet. "No. `Schizophrenic' does mean `double mind', and certainly not `double body'! It ain't my mind's double, anyway, but the other end of me! Too many people use that word wrongly!" said Braithwaite angrily. "There's free speech in Britain. He can print what he likes." Dr.Chilham pointed out as he approached. "Except libel! Do one last thing for me, shrink, tell this ignorant newshound what schizophrenia actually is!" said Braithwaite. "Phew! That's over at last! Chilham seen off, my occupation of B & N's premises legalized. Now home and a l-o-n-g night's sleep!" Braithwaite thought as he rode home on his motorcycle. (He remembered when a police car driver, seeing two of his legs on the same side of his motorcycle, pulled him up and its driver started to `rip him off a strip' for "not being in proper control, namely riding sidesaddle, $%^ ass stunt trick" when Braithwaite dismounted, and unzipped his motorcycle suit right down to show that all four of his legs were natural; the two policemen looked pale and one of them ran hurriedly to the roadside ditch; Braithwaite sighed at the tiresomeness and rode away.) Braithwaite got home and collapsed wearily onto a settee, and his children sat one on each of his two laps. He started to tell Mary what happened at the court case. Mary gave him a big helping of steak and chips. Dr.Chilham returned to his institution, where he called a meeting to patch up matters after his defeat. "`What about the others?', newspapers and the telly are saying." he said, "I suppose the next step is a general hue and cry after patients held for merely deformity. All this bad publicity. Well, the nation now knows what a dipygus is. That door had to be mended, and other things. The staff men's union getting stroppy about compensation for Nurses Edzell and Petham. Nurse Pinhoe was too stiff to move for a week after being made to use that pneumatic drill horizontal in his arms like that. Court costs. I move that we pay what we must, but Fourlegs Robinson's damages'll have to wait till the next financial year - then till the next, likeliest.". Another board member answered in a troublesome mood: "That's right, the court making us discharge patients. Like he accused us of saying: `The tempestuous patient reaps the tempest.': let him eat up the value of his precious damages in legal fees suing us to make us cough up! Nurses Edzell and Petham have first call on our money!". "Not so easy!" Dr.Chilham replied, "I was a workmen for that monster's firm for a day, and in the course of it I learned a fair bit more about workmen's mentality. men's union'll back up! Next step'll likely be them ordering our maintenance men to strike, and to order delivery men to black us - pickets, aggro, nurses having to be taken off the wards to do maintenance work.". "So no escorted trips out for patients, and much other nuisance." said the other member, "OK, we better pay him his damages. It'll %$# our budget, things postponed and so on.". Braithwaite's, with aid from Smith & Malton's, and with the damages payment from Dr.Chilham's institution, bought B & N (Imports) Ltd's premises, and expanded, and made miscellaneous engineering products. "Thankyou!" Blackrigg thought looking at Braithwaite's oversized blowtorch-equipped form as Optimus Prime left with a big centrifugal pump for Thames Valley Water Board on his flatbed trailer, "When I was John Blore, consultant to B & N (Imports) Ltd, we'd just bought that foundry and closed it down, since it was competing with our imports, and now he's got it running full blast again.". Captain Buckley took one of the `ADT work-torpedoes' to the bank of a reservoir and launched it, thinking: "Right! Now that unusually unsightly but efficient unit of human industrial machinery's done his stuff - and I did my bit after I got it - let's see if this handy little craft'll do one of the things we bought it for.". "Right!" he said to it over a walkietalkie, "Collect and return! This cuts out a lot of hassle.". At Braithwaite's normal life continued. Looking at the oversized steel bulk and parabolic chest-plate (which becomes the car form's roof) of Wheeljack who was helping to make something, and at Braithwaite who was turning something on a metalworking lathe, Blackrigg thought sourly: "How much longer mending people's dirty artic trailers? Once I was John Blore, businessman, till embezzlement caused bankruptcy and I'm stuck with the false name `Blackrigg' that he gave me, and if I go public under my old name I'll have that baying pack of creditors after me again. Associate I'd planned of my choice, with eye for cash which none could dodge, same interests 'bout which to voice, same golf-club and same Mason-lodge; who now instead is sent to me? Cold steel Wheeljack. To buy, import, and sell for more, to maximize what profits bring, to him I'd chosen, was law, not dirty manufacturing. Who now instead is sent to me? Tin can Wheeljack. As fond of me of nightspot shows is he who f'r assistant chose. All gone! as flowers when sand-wind blows in desert. Instead, my waking knows Dipygus Braithwaite's harsh commands, and wirebrain Wheeljack. Papers speculate wildly about `faceless men' behind Braithwaite. Yes, literally! That Wernicke's `manager-computer' that I can't even take to a show in town, such shows as there are around here; and that Wheeljack's only got a maskface, not a proper face. Both electromechanical, so I can't even take them out to dinner, not that I can easily afford such things on a welder's pay anyway.".